A Sword from Red Ice

by Julia V Jones

  Effie tried not to think about her lore, but Waker's father had a way of getting under her skin. Stoney broke. It was considered the worst kind of luck to lose your lore, like a doom. Inigar Stoop told chilling stories of those clansmen unfortunate enough to lose their lores. Jon Marrow had accidentally dropped his squirrel lore down a well shaft east of the Wedge. He was jumped by Dhoonesmen the next day, so the story went, and while he was defending himself against their hammer blows something horrible happened to his man parts. Effie thought they might have froze. Then there was the tale of little Mavis Gornley, who had lost her lore whilst riding to the Banhouse to wed her betrothed, a dashing Bann swordsman with teeth filed to points. As soon as she realized her grouse lore was missing, Mavis had dismounted and retraced her steps, carefully inspecting every hoofprint made by her horse. Mavis was so intent upon looking down that she hadn't see the big grizzly who came loping out of the woods and tore off her head. The only way to save yourself from similar misfortune was to rush back home to your clan guide and beg him to replace the missing lore. This was a tricky business apparently, and could take several months. During that time you were left vulnerable and unprotected and were advised to stay inside.

  Well, Effie thought, glancing up at the crumbly red walls of the gorge and the hemlock forests that lay beyond them. There's exactly nothing I can do about that.

  In a way the stories didn't bother her. Bad luck was something she didn't believe in. It was the actual missing of the stone that felt bad. She hadn't realized how much she had relied upon the ear-shaped chunk of granite until it had gone. Her uncle Angus had once told her how bats were able to fly in the dark. "They listen for their cries bouncing back off trees and walls." "But they don't make any sound," she had replied. "Not any that you can hear," he had countered. She'd thought about that conversation many times since, as it seemed to her that her lore was a bit like bat ears: able to detect sounds that no one eke could hear. Vibrations caused by changes. Stirrings in the air. Course when you put it into words it also sounded a bit … pikish, but Effie Sevrance knew what she knew. And she missed knowing it. That was the worst thing, the absence of reassurance, the forewarning of danger. Now bad things could happen and she would only know about them at the same time everyone else did.

  It was like losing a sense. And a tooth. The hole was there, new and strange, and she kept poking it in disbelief.

  Realizing that she'd been paddling for too long on one side, Effie switched her oar to the right. It was getting colder and her breath began to make clouds. She thought she detected the pitchy green sharpness of burning pine and searched for woodsmoke above the tree line. She couldn't see any, but Waker Stone's father wasn't taking any chances and steered the boat closer to shore.

  The curved prow of the boat glided over the still water, and for a while the only sound to be heard was the muted splash of paddles as they broke the surface. Oddly enough the silence seemed to waken Chedd and he jerked forward in his seat and had to scramble to steady himself.

  "Looks like we're going ashore," he said to Effie, glancing around.

  "Silence," Waker warned, muscling the paddle. The walls of the gorge were closing in on them, and Effie could see rocks beneath the water. Red spruce and birches extended out over the river, their limbs fingering the surface. Effie could not see how it would be possible to go ashore. The cliffs were too high and there was no place to beach the boat. She thought perhaps that Waker was using the cliffs for cover, that by pulling close to them he was making the boat less visible from above. It was no use asking questions, that was for sure. Spiced peas and information were two separate things.

  Using his paddle as a tiller, Waker's rather steered around the rocks with ease. As they rounded the river bend, Effie saw that the gorge wall was lowering and wedges of forest had forced their way to the shore. Undercut cliffs had toppled forward and sheets of sandstone lay half-submerged in the water, bleeding sand the color of rust. Waker was paddling with long, deep strokes and the boat moved quickly around the ledges. Both he and his father appeared to know this stretch of the river well and anticipated problems before they reached them. Just as they were moving out from the shore to avoid some willow-choked shallows something dropped into the river about thirty feet ahead of them. Effie had been minding her paddle strokes, and didn't catch what it was, but she saw the splash. A big crater in the water. Waker turned around and nodded at his father. The Grayman's eyes were bulging with force, but he looked more displeased than afraid. Effie noticed that just before he dug his paddle into the water for his next stroke his right hand slipped away to check on his twin knives.

  Once they'd passed the shallows they headed to the nearest landing. As Waker and his father maneuvered the boat parallel to one of the collapsed sandstone ledges, Chedd glanced back at Effie, his eyebrows high. Effie shrugged weakly. It would have been a pretty good time to have her lore.

  Waker tied the mooring rope around a fist of rootwood that no longer had a tree attached, and then draped the air bladder over the side of the gunwale to act as a buffer against the rocks.

  "You two," he said, looking from Effie to Chedd. "Stay here. Keep your mouths shut and don't try anything." Waker's eyes jiggled like gut fat as he waited for them to nod. Satisfied, he sent a hand signal to his father, plucked his daypack from beneath the bow seat, and alighted onto the ledge.

  As Effie braced herself against the roll of the boat she checked upshore. The cliff wall that had been exposed when the ledge collapsed was deeply, damply red. Trees had not yet found their way into its crevices, but ropy vines were creeping down from the woods above. Two ravines split the cliff. The largest was running with meltwater that frothed over big sandstone boulders. The second appeared to be a path leading up. Waker headed toward it, jumping across a break in the ledge along the way. Within seconds he had passed out of sight.

  Chedd, Effie and Waker's father sat in the boat and waited. Effie put her booted feet against the back of Chedd's seat to give them a rest from the standing water. Just as Chedd turned around to complain about them, men's voices sounded overhead. Someone shouted, "Weapons on the rock." In the silence that followed, Effie imagined Waker pulling out his twin knives, the frog and the salamander, and placing them carefully on the appointed ledge. Her gaze tracked the the path Waker had taken into the narrow, winding ravine.

  Suddenly harsh laugher exploded from a point lower and closer to the shore. Metal was rapped against rock. Something squealed. A command was issued in a low, guttural voice and the sound of footsteps tramping brush and crunching stone soon followed. Behind her, Waker's father drummed his fingers lightly against the flat of his paddle. As the footsteps grew louder and closer, Effie realized that Waker was being marched back down the ravine. Someone was holding a spear or a stick that scraped against the sands stone with every step. What she saw next was hard to fathom. A black-and-pink pig came into view. It was haltered like a horse with a bit between its teeth and someone was leading it on a leash. The pig's eyes were small and mean and its hairy chewed-up ears flopped around the sides of them like blinkers. Snuffing wetly, it snouted through the sedge and berry canes at the bottom of the ravine. The man holding the leash came into view next. He was nearly as ugly as his pig. His nose had been broken so many times it looked as if it had knuckles. Hefty but turning to lard, he was dressed in a stripy red-and-gold cloak and donkey-hair pants that were too tight. His weapon was a two-pronged spear that he held upright like a pitchfork. A slack iron chain, not unlike a hammer chain, connected the spear head to a leather band at his wrist.

  Waker followed next, and two other men brought up the rear. Both men were armed with evil-looking four-bladed spears.The smaller man wore a cloak that had been embellished with iridescent disks that flashed like fishskin. Effie could not tell if any of them were clan.

  "What 'ave we here, my little piggy?" the man with the broken nose said, spying the boat "Livestock, by the looks of it. Good and healthy."

  Waker came
forward. He was unrestrained and Effie saw that his knives were riding high in their sheaths. Tar oozed over their hilts. The strangers must have poured it on the blades to disable them. "They're mine, Eggtooth. I've paid the toll on them."

  The pig trotted over the sandstone to investigate the boat. The man named Eggtooth followed. "That was before I had me a proper look at 'em." His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and they were now focused on Effie. He licked his lips. The pig began to squeal. Reaching the boat, it pushed its wet, pine-needle-encrusted snout against Chedd's arm. Chedd jerked away and the boat rolled. Waker's father made a quick adjustment. Steadying.

  Eggtooth glanced at him. "Good day to you" Effie leant forward, thinking, Here it is: Waker's father's name, "old man."

  Waker's father made no reply. The pig would not go near him, Effie observed.

  "And what 'ave we here?" Eggtooth jabbed her chin with the butt of his spear, forcing her to raise her head. "A little scar I see. The stitcher did good work."

  Effie resisted the urge to touch her cheek. She had forgotten the scar existed. No one had mentioned it to her since the day Laida Moon had winkled out the stitches. Cutty Moss's knife had cut deep, but Laida had told her she was lucky because the luntman had picked the one spot on her cheek where there was no muscle underlying the skin. When Laida had held up the glass and shown Effie her handiwork, Effie remembered thinking Is that all? She had expected something…grander.

  Unsure what to do she looked at Eggtooth evenly. His nose was covered in broken veins and there was some kind of insect bite on the left nostril.

  "Cool as milk," he commented, throwing the remark backward to his men. "Pretty hair. A man could make good coin just in the scalp- ing."

  Effie frowned. Why was he trying to goad her? The pig, finished with examining Chedd, turned its flat pink face toward her. She wasn't about to have any of it and clapped her hands right in front of its snout. With a loud grunt, the pig closed its tiny black eyes and launched itself at her throat. Eggtooth snapped on the leash, lassoing the pig in midair. Ungodly squealing followed. Chedd plugged his fingers in his ears.

  Under cover of the noise, Waker's father leaned forward a fraction in the boat and whispered in Effie's ear, "To get rid of scum, best play dumb."

  Eggtooth twisted the leash so that the metal bit dug into the comers' of the pig's mouth. The creature's eye bulged and it began to wheeze pathetically. After a few seconds, Eggtooth released the slack.

  "On your way to the Cursed Clan, eh?" he said, still addressing Effie. "Know what they do to young uns there?"

  Effie nearly, but did not, say No.

  "Feed 'em to the bog," Eggtooth said with a nasty laugh.

  A strangled, airless sound came from Chedd's throat.

  "Tie stones to their chests and sink 'em," Eggtooth said, switching fire from Effie to Chedd. "Pull 'em up a week later and eat what the fish didn't want."

  Chedd fainted. One moment he was sitting upright, if a little forward on his seat, and the next he keeled right over, felling straight into the prow of the boat. Something cracked. The boat rocked wildly. Effie dug her heels into the deck to stop herself from sliding forward.

  Eggtooth and his men roared with laughter. The one with the fish-scale cloak slapped his side. The pig sneered at Effie. Walter's father stretched his arm to work out a cramp. On the sandstone ledge fifteen feet away, Waker watched his father's arm. Effie felt her mouth begin to tingle.

  "I told you these two were no good," Waker said, speaking over the laughter. "A fattie and a mute. You've had a gold piece for them— they're not worth any more."

  Eggtooth tapped his forked spear against the rock. He seemed to be thinking. The pig had found a lump of duck crap and was licking it.

  "She's no mute," Eggtooth declared finally, staring straight at Erne.

  A long pause followed, and then Waker Stone said quietly, "Go ahead, look for yourself."

  All the while Eggtooth had been tapping his spear, the strange tingly numbness had been growing in Effie's mouth. It felt like she was being pricked with dozens of needles, only there was no pain, just weird pricking. By the time that Chedd had pulled himself up from the prow and lumped himself down on the seat, the numbness had turned into thickness and now she no longer recognized the landscape of tumorous ridges that had become the insmes of her mouth.

  Suspecting a trap, Eggtooth made a signal to his men. Lowering the points of their spears, they sheared fur from Waker's otter-skin coat. Eggtooth took a step forward and carefully brought the twin points of his spear to the roof of EfFie's jaw. "Open up," he told her.

  Effie opened her mouth. Something darker and thicker than air smoked out.

  Eggtooth leant toward her. Peered inside. Frowned. Everyone was quiet, even the pig. Eggtooth's own mouth fell open. "Sweet gods. She doesn't even have teeth, let alone a tongue." Shuddering with feeling, he withdrew the spear.

  Erne closed her mouth. The thickness was wearing thin. Behind her, Waker's father's seat creaked.

  "Get going, the lot of you!" ordered Eggtoothmth a mighty stamp of his spear. Sodding freaks."

  Waker wasted no time in jumping into the boat and pushing off. Not bothering to recoil mooring rope, he left it trailing behind in the water. Instinctively Effie knew that she had to steegmore than paddle, and she plunged he oar deep into the starboard side, guiding the boat away from shore. Directly ahead of her, Chedd paddled with real force. Directly behind her, Waker Stone's father hung on grimly to the gunwales, exhausted.

  Chedd and Waker quickly fell into a strong rhythm, and the three men and the pig were soon left behind on the northern shore. When the boat finally rounded the riverbend and they passed beyond sight, Chedd turned to Effie. A square welt on his forehead marked the place where he'd hit the deck.

  "Pirates without boats," he said with satisfaction and relief.

  Effie decided that now wasn't a good time to remind him what Eggtooth had said about Clan Gray.

  Floating east on the Mouseweed, she tried very hard to feel saved.

  THIRTY-ONE A Journey Begins

  “Give me one more day," Thomas Argola, the outlander, had said. "Do not leave in the morning."

  They had been standing in his cave, the only one with a hinged door in the entire city, and Raif kept his hand on the bolt to keep the door from closing. "No," he had replied. "I go tomorrow. Tell me what you've learned."

  Raif thought about that conversation now as he and Addie Gunn headed due east along the rim of the Rift. They had been traveling for the better part of the day and the going was hard and rocky. Stony bluffs, mounds of boulders and steep and sudden drops had to be navigated with care. Ground snow was a problem, concealing cracks and loose stones, but at least it wasn't hard with ice. Weeds poked through the white. Mounds of black sedge concentrated the warmth of the sun, turning the surrounding snow into mush. The air was clear and smelled of stone, but Addie warned that come nightfall there'd be mist "Air's dry. Land's wet. Fog'll rise with the dark." There was not much the small, fair-haired cragsman did not know about the land, and Raif accepted his words without question. It did not mean they would stop though. When you've given a dead man your word you only stop to sleep.

  Topping a cracked shelf of granite, Raif turned to see if Addie needed a hand up the slope. The cragsman was wearing his brown wool cloak and carrying his oak staff, and he waved Raif away as if he were a bothersome fly. "Been scuffing the crags since afore you were born, laddie. And most days I was toting sheep. Only time I'll need a hand from you is to stir the beans while I make the tea."

  He was only half joking, Raif realized, and nodded somberly. "Sorry, Addie."

  Addie Gunn grumbled something that sounded like "Glad we've got that sorted" before hiking solidly onto the ledge.

  The granite was weak here, veined with softer limestone. The limestone that had been exposed to the surface had worn away, creating dimples in the surface that were now filled with snowmelt. The shelf jutted out over the Rift an
d both men paused to look south. Snow had melted at a faster rate in the clanholds and most of the hills were bare. Winter-rotted groundcover made the north-facing slopes look burned. Raif wondered what Addie was thinking as he stood there and minded his former homeland. Wellhouse was likely due south of here; the cragsman's old clan.

  "Lambs'll need stabling this year," the cragsman murmured softly, to himself. Turning to Raif, he said, "C'mon, lad. If we can get on the headland afore dark it'll make for an easier start in the morning."

  Raif let Addie Gunn lead the way.

  They had departed the Rift at dawn, at the exact moment the sun had appeared in the east above the rim. Arrangements had been made the night before, many of them while Raif slept. The attack by the unmade beast had left him exhausted and unable to fully catch his breath, and he had slept through most of that night and a good portion of the next day. When he had awoken at noon he had told Stillborn what he meant to do. "I'll need supplies for the journey," Raif had told him. "Pull together what you can. I have to meet with the outlander."

  Stillborn had been bewildered and hurt. "Supplies for both of us you mean?" he had asked. At some point that morning he had shaved his face, and the bristles that normally stuck out of his facial scars were neatly clipped. "I will be going with you."

  Raif shook his head. "I need you here, leading the Maimed Men."

  No argument carried weight against the stark fact that Traggis Mole was dead, and Stillborn knew it. "But they want you," he had said. "Not me. It was you who killed that beastie right in front of their eyes. You who laid the Mole to rest."