by J. V. Jones
Carrying a covered bundle in his left arm, Iss walked faster than was normally his wont. Blue silk, heavily embroidered with metal chains and pieces of agate, thrashed against his thighs as he moved.
Ash held her breath. All of her shrank back, away from her foster father. She closed her eyes as he passed.
Only he didn’t pass. Not completely. He walked to a point and then stopped. All was silent. Realizing she had been discovered, Ash opened her eyes. The sleepwalking excuse was a dead dog now.
Ash blinked. Fully expecting her foster father’s pale green gaze to be upon her, she was surprised to see that he wasn’t even looking her way. His back was toward her, and he was standing in front of the iron door. Ash saw the tendons in his wrist rise and fall, and then a muffled clunk sounded as lock and key turned.
In all her years of living within Mask Fortress, Ash had never once seen the iron door opened. It led through to the unused east gallery and then to the Splinter beyond. No one ever visited the Splinter. It was forbidden by rule of law. Workmen had died there, people said, plunging to their deaths through gaps in rotten timbers, crushed by falling masonry, and impaled upon the banister of spikes that wove around the main stairway like a handrail to hell.
Ash inched forward, resting her hand on Torny Fyfe’s smoothly chiseled rear.
The door swung back as Penthero Iss pushed against the metal plating. Stale air breathed into the corridor like fine mist. Ash smelled the dry, itchy odor of old stone and withered things. It was the same smell—part of it—that clung to Iss sometimes when he visited her chambers in the middle of the night. Ash trembled, not sure if she was excited or afraid. The lock had turned with barely a sound! The door hinges glided as smoothly as a pat of butter running down a roast. Everything had been oiled. Recently. There was no rust, no rot.
Iss slid into the darkness on the far side of the door. All previous vows about returning to her room forgotten, Ash willed her foster father not to lock the door behind him. He was in a hurry, she knew that. Would he pause to lock the door?
The iron door closed as easily as something a quarter of its size. Switching air caused one of the iron plates to jiggle in its frame. Ash listened for the sound of Iss inserting his key. She heard something, a click or tap, and then everything was quiet.
Ash waited. Her heart was pumping fast and hard, and she was ready to run for the door. She forced herself to count seconds. Her foster father had gone to the Splinter. The Splinter.
Minutes passed. Beneath Ash’s hand, Torny Fyfe’s backside warmed to a toasty glow. Ash patted the marble. She was growing rather fond of the old Quarterlord.
This time she slipped smoothly from the recess, tucking her hair beneath her nightdress and lifting her ankles high to avoid sharp edges. Working the stiffness from her legs and back, she crossed to the door. Seen up close, the metal plates were scored and then case hardened to form a rigid skin of steel. The mark of the Killhound standing high atop the Iron Spire was stamped upon each one.
Unsettled, Ash pushed against the door. The cool metal gave, sweeping back beneath her palm. Shadows and old air stole across Ash’s fingers and up along her arm. Iss had not locked the door. It seemed mad, impossible. Doubt spiked in her stomach like a violent cramp. Still she kept pushing, forcing the door back into the corridor beyond. Secrets lay ahead, she was sure of it. And she had to know if those secrets involved her.
Stepping into the shadows, she let the door fall shut behind her. A different kind of coldness from that present in the rotunda gripped at her chest: dry, bitter, and weighted, as if the air were thick with particles of freezing dust. Ash stilled herself for a moment, giving her eyes time to adjust to the darkness.
The east gallery was a long arcade of limestone arches roofed with slate—she knew that because the structure formed the massive east wall of the quadrangle—yet the shadows surrounding her gave little of that away. Dark gashes of open space, pale glimmering edges, and hoods of matted stone were all she could see. Soft warbling sounds came from somewhere high above, and Ash guessed that pigeons had found their way in to roost.
Hoping they were the only living things she would encounter, she began to walk in the direction she imagined was forward. Stone dust crunched beneath her slippers with each step. Icy fingers of frost tugged at her arms and ankles. The odor of dry decay sharpened. Suddenly nervous, she picked up her pace, striding into the tunneling darkness. I can turn back at any time, she told herself, trying to sound strong.
The gallery stretched on and on, and except for occasional chinks in boarded-up windows where single beams of moonlight shone through, there was no increase in light. Ash glanced into the shadows pooled to either side of the walkway. What could a man see in such darkness? She slowed. What could he do?
Ash halted and peered into the distance. A curving endwall, black yet planed smooth enough to reflect some measure of light, blocked the way ahead. Just visible against the dark stonework was the outline of a heavily carved door. Ash recognized it instantly. Another identical door, locked, barred, and boarded, stood outside against the fortress wall. The wood had been worked in such a way to fool the eyes into thinking that the door was already open and Robb Claw, great-grandson of the Bastard Lord Glamis Claw, was on his way through.
The second entrance to the Splinter.
Even as Ash tensed muscles to step toward it, the ground beneath her feet shuddered. Overhead beams creaked. Dust sifted to the floor like fine rain. Tiny hairs along her arms lifted. Everything stilled, yet something within the air and shadows continued to change. Ahead the endwall seemed to grow darker, blacker, deeper, siphoning substance from the night. The air temperature dropped so quickly it felt like liquid against Ash’s skin. Shadows bled. Bearings shifted. Everything became somehow less than it was.
And then Ash felt it.
Something evil and wanting and broken. Something trapped in the darkness, drying slowly to a scaly husk. Something nameless and full of hate, driven by loneliness and terror and savage, blinding, unspeakable pain. Malice filled it, fear consumed it, need pumped like blood through its dark, voided heart. It wanted, wanted. It hardly knew what, but it wanted. And hated. And was utterly alone.
Dread stole over Ash like deep cold. All the organs in her chest stopped pumping, leaving her heart hanging dead in her chest. An instant floated in the air like dust too fine to settle. Ash felt as if she were sinking in ice cold water. She couldn’t breathe, move, think.
Slowly, slowly, and at terrible cost, the nameless wanting thing turned its mind toward Ash March. Ash felt the great millwheel of its awareness pass over her, and in those seconds she came to know the full burden of its existence. It made her mouth go dry.
The creature reached.
It wasn’t there, wasn’t beside, above, or beneath her. But it reached.
Ash shrank back. She sucked in breath, turned on her heel and ran.
Fists beating air, hair streaming loose, moleskin slippers smacking against stone, Ash raced along the east gallery, back toward the iron door. Walls, arches, and openings blurred into a single streak. Ash’s heart beat in her throat. When she came upon the iron-plated door, she blasted through it like a bear through sheet ice. The rotunda corridor was warm and full of light. The torch she had extinguished had been relit and burned with a crackling yellow flame. Part of her wanted to rip it from the wall and throw it into the darkness beyond the door and burn whatever lived there.
The desire to flee was greater. Not stopping to watch the door swing shut behind her, or check if anyone was coming, Ash dashed along the rotunda toward the stairs. Limestone walls that earlier had felt as cold as gravestones now seemed as warm as sun-baked clay.
Ash shook her head as she took the stairs two and three at a time. She had been a fool. A fool. Everyone knew there was no such thing as good secrets. She should have kept away, not looked, not dared. Even if she had gone to her foster father’s private chambers instead of heading for the Splinter, the story would have
been the same. She wasn’t really going to find some magical slip of paper that told of how she was more than just a foundling, how Penthero Iss had robbed and tricked her real parents into giving her up. There were no good secrets. And she was a fool for believing otherwise.
Ash let out a hysterical sob.
She was Ash March, Foundling, left outside Vaingate to die.
Tears stung her eyes as she climbed the last stairs to her chamber. She didn’t want to think about the nameless creature in the Splinter, didn’t want to know what it was.
“What have we here?”
Ash rounded the final turn in the staircase and came face-to-face with Marafice Eye. The Knife moved directly into her path, preventing her from taking another step. The bow curve of his chest forced her to edge back. Marafice Eye had small eyes and a small mouth and hands as big as dogs. Ash was scared of his hands. She had seen him break iron chains with them.
“Where have you been? Sick of pissing in a pot? Thought you might get up and use the jacks instead?”
Ash made no reply. Marafice Eye liked to use obscenities around women. He took pleasure in it.
Holding her gaze down, refusing to meet his eyes, Ash stepped to the side, meaning to pass the Knife. She didn’t want him to know she was upset.
Marafice Eye stepped with her, barring her way once more. The block of purple flesh that formed the Knife’s left fist swung up to Ash’s chin. The fist barely touched flesh, grazing the underside of her jaw with a knuckle the size of a bird’s skull, yet it was enough to make Ash look up.
The Knife’s lips twisted into a smile. “What’s upset our little girly, then? Did she see something she wasn’t supposed to, or did the frost just bite?”
“Leave me alone!” Ash exploded forward, pushing against Marafice Eye’s chest with all that was in her. The Knife barely swayed. His oxblood leather tunic creaked as he leaned forward to absorb the blow. Ash fell back on her heels, jolted and off balance as if she had walked straight into a door.
Smile twisting to its narrow limits, the Knife resettled his fist under Ash’s jawline, pushing his knuckles into the soft hollow where her neck and jaw met. “I’ve killed women for less,” he said, small eyes glinting. “What makes you so sure I wouldn’t kill you?”
Ash’s legs felt like straw sticks. She could feel the nameless creature’s presence like greasy residue against her skin. Her chest was shaking with exhaustion, and despite running through the fortress at full speed, she felt as cold as if she had been standing still.
Raising her head clear of Marafice Eye’s fist, she took a deep breath and said, “Iss set you to watch, not touch me. Now step aside and leave me be, and perhaps, just perhaps, come tomorrow I won’t tell him how easy it was to slip through your guard.”
The Knife’s eyes narrowed to two dark slits. The slabs of flesh on his face stiffened. He looked at Ash, breathed on Ash, and then, in his own good time, stood aside and let her pass.
Ash felt malice on her back for the second time that night as she climbed the last three steps and took the short walk back to her chamber. Marafice Eye watched her all the way. As her hand reached for the chamber door, he spoke. “Push me again, Asarhia March, and you will end up dead.”
Ash closed her eyes, shutting out the words. Her knees buckled and she had to lean into the door to stop herself from falling. Although she didn’t look around, she knew Marafice Eye had seen her collapse. She hated him for it.
With all the strength she could muster, she pushed against the door. It opened and she half staggered, half fell, into her chamber. Even though she could barely stand, the first thing she did was pull the chair from her dresser and jam it against the door. It wasn’t enough. Ash looked wildly around the room. Settling on her cedarwood clothes chest, she dragged it from its warm, dry place by the charcoal brazier and set it in place next to the chair. That done, she picked up her three-legged nightstool and added that to the pile. Still not satisfied, she went to work on the dresser itself, shouldering and then kicking the wood until it slid along the floor. She moved slowly, methodically, dazed with exhaustion, piling things high against the fossilwood door.
FIVE
Homecoming
Sleet fell in gray sheets as they entered the clanhold. Raif hated sleet—rather rain or snow or hailstones. Something that knew what it was.
It was bitterly cold. Not freezing, but the wind made it seem so, blowing and switching, making it impossible to feel warm. Everything in sight was gray. The oldgrowth forest in the Wedge, the pines on top of Pikes Peak, the stream that led into Cold Lake, and Mad Binny’s crannog that was built on stilts over the water’s edge: all as gray as slate. Raif kicked at a sod of dirt and grass. A sense of wrongness itched at his gut.
Drey jabbed his arm. “Smoke. Over there.”
Raif looked where his brother pointed. Ragged gusts of smoke blew above the line of oaks and basswoods that spread across the rise. Seeing them made muscles in Raif’s throat tighten. The roundhouse lay in the valley beyond. Home was nearer than he thought.
“Be there soon.” Drey made a point of moving into Raif’s line of view as he spoke. Both of them had their fox hoods pulled close around their faces, and unless they faced each other head-on, they couldn’t see each other’s eyes. Sleet hung in Drey’s eyelashes and the bristles of his six-day beard. “Be there soon,” he repeated. “Warm fire, warm food. Home.”
Raif knew Drey wanted him to say something, to reminisce out loud about sleeping around the Great Hearth, or sitting at table and eating Anwyn Bird’s fine mint-wrapped lamb and roasted onions, or standing beside the guidestone and singing to the Stone Gods. Yet words wouldn’t come. Raif tried, but they wouldn’t.
After a moment Drey moved ahead, shoulders stiffening beneath his oilskins, gloved hands running along his elkhide pack to brush off sleet. Raif knew he was disappointed. “Drey.”
“What?”
Raif took a breath. It suddenly seemed important to say something, now, before they reached the roundhouse. Only he wasn’t sure what, or why. “The raid.”
“What of it?” Drey didn’t look up. Thick tufts of grass hid ankle-breaking boulders, bog holes, and snags of long-gone trees, and Drey suddenly seemed engrossed in choosing his steps.
“We can’t say who attacked the camp.” Raif struggled for the right words. “We just need to be . . . careful, that’s all. You and me. Careful.” The wind picked up as he spoke, howling through the trees on the slope, thrashing grass flat against the earth and driving sleet into their faces. Raif shivered. He glanced at Drey.
His brother’s hood now pointed ahead. After a moment Drey pushed it back, exposing his face. He stopped in his tracks. “There’s Corbie Meese. Up on the rise, by the old black oak.”
A muscle in Raif’s stomach pulled with a soft, sickening twist. Hadn’t Drey heard what he said? Raif opened his mouth to speak again, but Drey’s arm came up and he began shouting.
“Corbie! Corbie! Over here!”
Raif pushed back his own hood and ran his hand through his hair. He watched as the gray figure on the slope raised a hand in acknowledgment, then slipped back a few paces and trotted his horse into view. It was Corbie Meese all right. Even from this distance his stocky hammerman’s body with its disproportionately muscular arms and neck was clearly identifiable. Even the slight flattening on the left side of his head above his ear, where a training hammer had clipped his skull when he was just a boy, showed up against the light gray sky. Corbie’s hammer was strapped to his back, as always. Raif noticed that its iron head reflected no light as Corbie swung up to mount his horse. Which meant the normally smooth metal had been laid upon an anvil and chisel scored.
“He’s riding back,” Drey said. After a moment he spoke again, his voice soft. “He must be meaning to gather the clan.”
Raif sucked in breath. A hammerman scored his hammer only in times of war. Smooth metal reflected light and could give away a position, plus a glancing blow with smooth metal was ju
st that—a glancing blow—but with metal raised in jagged ridges a glancing blow could tear the skin from a man’s face.
Raif’s hand came up to his neck to search for the reassuring smoothness of his raven lore. Clan preparing for war? Had they already received word of the raid?
Five days he and Drey had been traveling on foot. Five days of freezing nights, bitterly cold days, and driving winds. Raif was tired beyond knowing. He couldn’t recall the last time he had felt warm or completely dry. They had run out of ale on the second day, and Raif’s lips were cracked from sucking on ice. It was only yesterday morning, when they’d finally crossed over the balds and into the clanholds, that the temperature had begun to rise above freezing. Yet that was when the sleet started, so there was little reward for leaving the badlands behind.
Through it all Raif had felt a deep sense of unease. Freshly broken twigs, sap frozen around the break, hoofprints stamped in hoarfrost, and broken ice over melt ponds kept catching his eye. Elks and bears could break surface ice and twigs, he told himself, and lone hunters from Clan Orrl often used Blackhail’s hunting paths. Yet Raif felt no better for telling himself such things. They sounded reasonable, but they didn’t stick.
“Come on, Raif. Race you to the rise.” Drey grabbed Raif’s arm and yanked it hard as he ran ahead. Raif grinned. Not wanting to disappoint his brother again, he tore after him, crashing through tangles of ground birch and alder, his pack slamming against his side as he ran.
Drey was the stronger runner, and even sweeping in wide arcs and topping every rock and fallen log he encountered, he reached the slope well before Raif. Climbing halfway to the rise, Drey turned, grinned, and waited for his brother to catch up.
Raif was breathless by the time he reached him. Blisters on his heels rubbed raw by days of walking throbbed like burned skin. Raif found comfort in the fact that Drey was clearly favoring his right foot, and his face was as red as beet water.