A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Slowly, she backed away, feeling for a wall to support her. The guidehouse was in disarray, the smoke fire almost burned out, grit and ashes littering the floor, chisels scattered like sticks. Even the clan guide’s clothes had been neglected, and his once fine pigskins were stained and torn. Suddenly she felt pity for him, but knew better than to show it. “Have you told Mace?”

  “You know I have not. What good would it do to strike fear amongst the clan?”

  “Yet you show no such scruples to me?”

  “You are a woman and do not fight.”

  She wanted to strike him for his arrogance. How dare he! She fought. Gods knew how she fought for this clan. Shaking, she said, “I wonder why you brought me here since you think so little of me.” With that she turned to leave.

  “Stay,” he commanded, his voice calm with practiced authority. “I said only that you do not fight, not that you hold no power.”

  Tired of games, she threw the pigskin gloves onto the floor. “What would you have of me? The stone is broken and I cannot fix it. I’d have to be a god for that.”

  Still he did not rise to her anger. Moving to pick up the gloves he said, “Do you know all stones have lives? Ask any farmer. Stones can appear in their fields overnight, cast up by the restless earth. Mountains calf and move them, rivers and glaciers carry them, and heat and ice destroy them when all else is done. Whenever a guidestone dies a new one must be found to take its place.”

  Inigar Stoop grew silent, and Raina found herself wondering when he had ceased talking of stones and begun talking about himself.

  “I want Effie Sevrance, Raina. Tell me where she is.”

  So this was what he wanted. Effie. She should have guessed it. “You cannot protect her, Inigar.”

  “I am clan guide. I watch over this clan, and will watch over her.”

  Yet you did not watch over her the night Stanner Hawk tried to burn her in the forge. And then the damning thought, None of us did. Anger at her own failing made her sharp. “You are only one man, Inigar Stoop, one amongst thousands. Effie is no longer safe in this clan.”

  Inigar’s hawk nose whitened across the bridge. “She is needed. I choose her to be the next guide.”

  Raina stopped herself from replying sharply. Looking at the guidehouse, at the smoke-blackened walls, stone troughs and stark benches, she knew Inigar did not see this place as she did. Again the pity came. He is sick and will one day die, and there is no one to take his place. She said gently, “You must choose another, Inigar. Effie will soon be gone from here; I’m sending her south to my sister at Dregg.”

  Cold anger burned in the guide’s eyes. “So the girl is more important to you than clan?”

  It was not a fair question, and she could not answer it. All she knew was that when Bitty Shank came running to find her on the Eve of Breaking, telling of how he’d found Effie outside in the dog cotes, shaking with cold and fright, she had thought her heart might break. No child had lost as much as Effie Sevrance; Raina was determined she would lose no more.

  Inigar spoke over her thoughts. “I have searched for five years for someone to train as my replacement. Every time a boy was born I hoped. Whenever a child took a special interest in the guidehouse I watched and waited and dreamt . . . but no new guide ever came. And then Effie began to come here and sit beneath that bench. No child has ever disturbed my dreams like she has. There’s power in her, Raina. Power this clan can use. She is young yet, but she will grow and learn more. I will teach her myself.

  “I know you see only the bleakness of this guidehouse. Don’t deny it. It’s plainly written on your face. What you don’t see is the life behind it. When I stand here and take a chisel to the guidestone I deal in men’s souls. Every man and woman in this clan holds steel fired by Brog Widdie and powdered guidestone ground by me. Which is the most powerful, Raina? Tell me. That which kills or grants grace?”

  He paused, not for her to answer, but to allow her time to think. The Hailstone smoked behind him, a giant slowly dying as it froze.

  “It would not be a bad life for her. Sparse and solitary, yes, but ordered and meaningful too. I think if you were honest you would say it would suit her. She came here often enough of her own free will. You know she is happiest in closed, dark spaces. Let me take her and teach her. She can sleep on one of the benches, and take her meals with me.”

  Almost he persuaded her, for there was much truth and sense in his words. Effie feared open spaces—Gods knew how they would get her to Dregg. But get her there they would. What Inigar offered was a kind of half-life, led amidst darkness and quiet and smoke. Raina would not have it for her. She had raised Effie as her own child, taught her how to speak and hold her spoon, and she wanted simple happiness for her. She wanted her to dance at Dregg.

  Inigar read it all on her face, and she was prepared for his anger, but in the end there was only resignation. “Take her, then,” he said. “No matter if she ends up in Dregg or the farthest badlands, you cannot change her fate. She was born to the stone, Raina Blackhail, she wears it around her neck. You’re an eagle and can see clearly and know I speak the truth.”

  Raina nodded, and there was nothing else to say, so she left Inigar there in the darkness, a broken man with a broken stone.

  She couldn’t get out of the roundhouse quick enough. Running, she made her way along the tunnel and out through the entrance hall. People saw and tried to hail her, but she paid them no heed. She needed light and wind and freshness, and she raced to the stables to saddle Mercy.

  Sweet-faced Jebb Onnacre trotted out her mare. “I thought you might be taking a run,” he said. “Be careful around Cold Lake, the ice is rotting there.” As she took the reins from him their gazes met. “I’ll be telling anyone who asks that you headed south to the Wedge.”

  She thanked him, glad in her heart for the small kindness. Jebb was a Shank by marriage, and the Shanks’ loyalty to Effie remained unchanged. Orwin Shank knew where the girl was hidden, and Jebb had doubtless guessed that Raina was on her way there. Well, she was, but she’d lay a little ghost trail first. Mace had her watched and she had to be careful.

  Little mice with weasels’ tails.

  Shaking off her unease, Raina gave Mercy her head.

  Oh, it was glorious to ride! To feel the mare’s muscles beneath her, and the wind buffeting her chest. She grinned with the joy of it, sending Mercy galloping over a series of hedgerows for no good reason at all.

  South first, must be careful, she counseled herself, somehow afraid that her joy might make her careless. Turn west only when you reach the trees.

  They had tried to find Effie, of course. Mace and Stanner Hawk and Turby Flapp. They suspected Raina and the Shanks had concealed her, but the Shanks and the Blackhail hammermen had closed ranks: Effie was one of their own, and no one was going to find her, so help them Gods. Mace had questioned Raina about it, casually asking why she’d rode out so often these past ten days, especially given the freeze. He knew she was lying, but could not press her. After all, his interest in Effie had to be seen to be purely honorable, a chief concerned for a little girl. He did not fool Raina. She knew whose hand lay behind the burning of the hound. She had heard the threat herself.

  Slowing her pace to a canter, Raina turned for Cold Lake. All about her stone pines and black birch showed signs of the sudden freeze. Ten days back the temperature had dropped so low so quickly that you could hear the trees exploding. A thaw had begun a week earlier and the winter-starved trees had begun drawing water. Longhead said that the freeze couldn’t have come at a worse time, for the water in the pines turned to ice and split the trunks clean open. Over five hundred mature trees had been lost in the Wedge alone, the worst anyone could remember in a single season.

  More bad omens, thought Raina grimly as she turned onto a little-used dogtrot to the lake. Two hours passed as Mercy worked her way through a mire of half-frozen bulrushes and mud. Raina found herself thinking longingly of the fine trail that led direct
ly from the roundhouse to the lakeshore and could be traveled in less than a hour. Damn rushes! They tore her ankles to shreds, and Gods only knew whether firm ground or water lay beneath them. When she finally spied the ugly little crannog extending out across the lake, she let out a great sigh of relief.

  Mad Binny was out upon the pier, waiting for her, cool as if she’d known all along Raina would come. The old clan spinster was dressed in black, and she held a wooden mallet in her hands. “For the fishes,” she said in greeting, seeing Raina’s gaze upon it. “They come up to the surface by the poles, and they’re slow at this time of year.”

  Raina could think of nothing to say to that, though she did notice that several fair-sized bull trout lay skipping at the spinster’s feet. Dismounting, she looked over the queer little crannog Mad Binny had claimed as her own.

  Raised on stilts above the water, it commanded the southernmost shore of the lake. It had been built by Ewan Blackhail in the time of the River Wars, when every clan chief worth his guidestone had been obsessed with running water and the need to defend it. Looking around, Raina could not understand the crannog’s position, for none of the streams that fed the lake looked wide enough to hold a boat. Still, men would be men, and if other clans were building defensive crannogs then so, by Gods, would Blackhail.

  Trouble was, this one hadn’t been built well at all—Hailsmen not being rivermen and so unfamiliar with the challenges of building over water—and forty years later it had fallen to ruin. The roof sagged, and had been mended here and there with bulrushes and animal hides, the window frames were rotten and broken, and an entire wall of outbuildings had half sunk into the lake. Gods knew what lay beneath the water. It was a wonder the thing still stood.

  “You’ll be wanting to see the bairn, then?” Mad Binny squatted and hit one of the skipping trout with the mallet. “She’s inside, learning how to make a broth to boil a fish.”

  Raina was growing accustomed to being speechless in this woman’s presence. It was hard to believe that this strange, big-boned woman had once been a great beauty, betrothed to Orwin Shank. Birna Lorn, her name was, and some old men in the roundhouse could still recall the day when Orwin and Will Hawk had fought for her hand in the graze. Not much later she had been named as a witch, for she had correctly predicted that Norala’s unborn child would be born dead. If I ever turn into a prophet, Raina thought dryly, I’ll keep all the bad news to myself.

  “You should learn how to kill a fish, Raina Blackhail,” Mad Binny said, clubbing another trout. “It’s good practice for killing men.” Brilliant green eyes caught the light, and Raina couldn’t decide if she saw madness or cleverness in them.

  “Take me to Effie.”

  “Take yourself. Door’s right there, what’s left of it. I’ll be in when I’ve headed the trout.”

  Knowing that was one thing she definitely did not want to see, Raina climbed the rickety ladder and made her way inside the crannog. The room she entered was dim and warm, scented with the mulish odor of wet rot and lit by a tiny iron stove. Effie stood by the stove with her back toward Raina, stirring a little pot. She was singing as she did so, some song about the shankshounds and how they had once saved a baby from the snow. Standing at the doorway, watching her, it occurred to Raina that she had never before heard Effie Sevrance sing. When a board beneath Raina’s foot creaked, Effie started, spilling the broth.

  Fear changed to recognition in an instant, and Effie ran to Raina with arms outstretched. “Raina! I’ve been making broth! Did you know you put carrots and onions in it, and then boil them till they nearly disappear?”

  Raina nodded. She was still seeing Effie’s start of fear in her mind and her chest was too tight to speak.

  “Binny says it won’t be done until she brings the trout and I boil their heads in it. Is Drey back yet?”

  Raina had visited Effie three times in nine days, and each time she did so she was greeted with the same question: Where was Drey? Disentangling herself from the girl’s embrace, she thought what she should say. It suits Mace to have Drey away at the moment while he decides how best to deal with you. So he keeps coming up with things your brother can do that will keep him far from home. No, that wouldn’t do. Aloud she said, “I heard word from Paille Trotter’s son. He saw Drey ten days back at Ganmiddich, and thinks Drey will head home soon.”

  Effie was not fooled by Raina’s forced optimism, and she returned dispirited to her broth.

  Raina wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but she knew better than to speak lies to a child. “So, what has Mad Binny been teaching you?”

  “Lots of things. Cooking. Herbs. Do you know that maggots can eat the pus from a wound and make it heal faster? And that piles shrink when you put vinegar on them?”

  Raina laughed. In many ways the clan guide had been right: Effie needed to learn. Suddenly tired, Raina sat on an old chicken crate, content simply to watch Effie chop onions and stir broth. She had to believe she’d done the right thing. The guidehouse was no place for this bright and lovely girl.

  In this light you could hardly see the scars. Effie’s long lustrous hair covered most of them, and the one on her cheek had been so expertly stitched by Laida Moon that it looked as if a fine feather rested there. Some would think it beautiful. Raina did.

  “Here we are. Trout. Effie, put those heads in the pot. Yes, they have eyes. Too bad they didn’t use them.” Mad Binny took command of the room, detailing how the broth should be made and the fish cooked, directing Raina to the woodpile for firewood, and Effie to the storage chest for hard liquor. It was a relief to let someone else take charge for a change—even if she were a madwoman—and Raina found herself surprisingly happy to be told what to do.

  When they had eaten a good plain meal of trout in its own broth and black rye bread smothered in honey, Mad Binny told Effie to go outside and try her hand at stunning passing fish with the mallet. “But it’s nearly dark,” Effie observed.

  “Even better then. They’ll be half asleep already.”

  Effie had no argument for that, and she picked up the mallet and let herself out. Raina had her money on the fish.

  “So,” said Mad Binny, pouring a double measure of malt into Raina’s cup. “Has that old sourpuss Inigar Stoop made a play for the girl yet?”

  Raina couldn’t stop her eyes from widening.

  “You needn’t look so pelt-shorn, Raina Blackhail. Why d’you think they drove me to this mud bucket in the first place?”

  “I . . . well . . .”

  “Aye. I’m either a madman or a witch. Possibly both.” Mad Binny slammed the malt flask onto the table, flattening a fly. “I’ll tell you this, Raina, that girl can’t stay in Blackhail. And if you don’t know that you’re a fool.”

  Raina nodded, still reeling from the turn of the conversation. “I’m planning to move her to Dregg.”

  “When?”

  “When her brother returns. She won’t leave without seeing him.”

  Mad Binny raised the malt flask and studied the squashed fly. “Well, she’ll be leaving soon, then, since Drey Sevrance is on his way here this night.”

  Raina felt a rush of pleasure and relief, then told herself she was a fool. “You’re making it up.”

  “Am I, now? Well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime I’m going to tell you what you should do with that child, and you’re going to sit there and listen.” Mad Binny spoke with the calmness of one who had seldom been contradicted. Raina supposed it was a benefit of living by oneself.

  “Effie Sevrance should be delivered to the cloister at Owl’s Reach. It’s in the mountains, east of Hound’s Mire—the locals can tell you where. They teach the old lores: herb and animal, far seeing and far speech, summonings and compulsions and other ancient magics. She has the quickness for it, and I need not tell you she has the power. The sisters there will value her, and she’ll grow to become one of them, accepted for what she is.”

  Raina stood. She was sick of people telling her what
to do about Effie. This was a child they spoke of, not some dangerous animal that must be either trained or caged. “I’m not sending Effie to a place full of strangers who are not clan. Who will love her? Not some cold-eyed sorceress who seeks to control her. No. Dregg will be good for her. I was only a year older than she is now when I was fostered from my birth clan; it will be no different for her. She’ll make friends, and all this sorcery nonsense will be forgotten.” In her agitation, Raina knocked over her cup.

  Mad Binny caught it before it rolled to the floor. “It’s a pity to see a woman as clever as you fool herself. Look at me. Thirty years alone here. Would you want the same for the child?”

  No, Raina would not. The two women looked at each other, the older one calm, the younger one shaking. Raina almost knew what Mad Binny would say next, and she did not want to hear it.

  “Dregg is a young clan,” Mad Binny said quietly. “Its warriors are fierce and they wield the heavy swords with the broad blades. Its women are held to be passing fair, and dress in bright cloths they weave with their own hands. It’s said their chief is a good man, and their roundhouse is well set and well built. All this is known, yet clan is still clan. Tell me, when was the last time you were there, Raina? Ten years ago? Twenty?” The spinster’s green eyes were knowing and there might have been pity in them. “Do you really think they will treat Effie any differently than Blackhail once they know the power of her lore?”

  Raina made a small gesture with her hand, pushing the words away. It will be better for her at Dregg, she told herself. There’s no Mace Blackhail there. Yet the thought gave her little comfort, and she found her mind returning to the morning after Effie had fled. In her haste to escape the roundhouse, the girl had dropped the bowl of liquid she had used to threaten the men. It had landed on the great court, just outside the clan door. Effie had since told Raina that the black liquid was nothing more than charcoal mixed with malt liquor, and Raina believed her . . . yet it had burned the stone clean through.