A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  Despite Angus’ casual tone of voice, they broke camp quickly, burying the remains of the fire and filling the empty waterskins with snow. As Raif turned Moose, ready to head back onto the road, Angus stopped him with an almost imperceptible nod in the direction of Spire Vanis. “I think we’ll take the high road,” he said.

  Which meant they took no road at all. Angus made his own trail through the gorse and malformed pines above the road, Ash pale and silent at his back. Raif took up the rear. From the pace his uncle was setting and the small gesture he had made toward the city, Raif knew there was a good chance they were being pursued.

  The thought did not make for an easy ride. Raif found himself wishing he had reclaimed the arrows from the dead men at Vaingate. Angus’ sword was gone, the bow was useless without sticks to fire, and between them they now had nothing more deadly than a pair of belt knives and a halfsword. Neither of them was in any fit state to fight if it came to it, and fleeing in haste was no longer practical, as Angus’ bay was loaded with weight.

  Frowning, Raif turned his attention to Ash. She was now dressed in a blue wool shirt donated by Angus and a tanned hide coat and pants that had once belonged to Drey. Raif had to admit that they suited her well enough. Strands of hair peeking through her fox hood flashed silver in the snowlight. Why had Angus risked everything to protect her? And what would have happened if he hadn’t come along in time to halt her sorcery? Deciding the answers didn’t bear thinking about, Raif turned his mind to following the path instead.

  The slope above the east road was heavily canted, mined with bog holes and draws. Snow made the uneven ground difficult to read. Bitter cold made breathing, moving, even looking, an ordeal to be endured. No one spoke. Angus appeared to have a destination in mind, as he picked each step with a deliberateness that Raif found vaguely reassuring. Angus always knew a back way, a hidden path, a break between the rocks.

  As they rode through a stand of limber pines, Raif became aware of noises sounding in the road below. The drum of hooves, the tinny clink of tack, and the rough bark of someone coughing wafted up the slope along with a growing tide of mist. Angus said nothing, merely increased his pace. Most of the metal on Moose and the bay was covered with sheepskin to prevent frostbite in the colder temperatures to the north, so the horses made little sound as they trotted.

  Eventually the ground began to level off and a path of sorts opened up before them, narrow and soiled with deer droppings. The going became easier, and it took Raif some time to realize that they were actually back on some distant eastern slope of Mount Slain. The steady pace of the horses rocked Ash to sleep, and her head came to rest against Angus’ shoulder. Strangely, Raif wasn’t worried about her; she wasn’t absent, as she had been earlier. She was simply exhausted and sleeping.

  After a while Raif risked speaking to Angus. “Where are we headed?”

  “Aye. You would be wanting to know that.” Angus’ voice was softer than the mist at his heels. “If your old uncle’s memory serves him well enough, there’s a bit of a tunnel somewhere along this path that leads down from the mountain and under the east road.”

  Raif wasn’t sure how he felt about tunnels. “Won’t those following us simply take the tunnel, too?”

  “Nay, lad. The sept’ll likely stay on the road and wait for us to come down. They know we can’t stay up here forever. It leads nowhere.”

  “They know we’re up here?”

  “If they’re using a fully formed sept, they will.”

  “Fully formed sept?”

  “Six blades and one magic user. It’s the way sorcerers have been hunted for centuries. Irgar the Unchained, the Red Priest Syracies, Maormor of Trance Vor, and Asanna the Mountain Queen all used them. It takes a magic user to find one. Force isn’t enough. Some with the old skill can stir air and water and earth. They can crack ice that a squad treads on, fuel storms that they ride through, and shake earth they sleep upon in the dark hours of night. They can turn hunting dogs mad and make them attack their own pack brothers, and ignite tiny sparks of sorcery inside a stallion’s heart.” Angus glanced over at Raif.

  Raif felt his cheeks heat. He pulled hard on the reins, treating Moose roughly.

  “A trained sorcerer is capable of great subtlety. They can do more with less. They are taught how to deflect and contain powers greater than their own, how to shield those around them by setting bloodwards, and hook their claws into others like themselves, and leech the power from them bit by bit. They can confuse and disorient an enemy, weaving a fine mesh of sorcery called a fret.” Angus frowned into the mist. “And they hunt magic users like dogs.”

  Raif shivered. The mist was heavy and wet, like a shifting sea around them. Suddenly it was impossible to see more than ten paces ahead. “How do they hunt people?”

  “They hunt sorcery, not people, Raif.” Angus glanced over his shoulder, pinning Raif with his coppery eyes. “All sorcery leaves an aftermath that can be tracked. Users can taste the blood of a person who draws the old skill, smell the metal they feed into the air. Even weeks later residue can still cling to a user’s hair and clothes, leaving a trail as surely as a deer musking pines in a forest.”

  “So what Ash did . . .”

  “Aye, lad. A sept is likely tracking her aftermath as we speak.”

  “Then how can we hope to escape? Even if we find a way down from the mountain, they will know it.”

  Angus was silent a moment as he walked the bay through a crop of oily rocks. Ash, disturbed by the change in motion, made a soft, snuffling sound and resettled herself against Angus’ back. When Angus spoke again, Raif had to strain to hear him.

  “Tracking someone with sorcery is a risk unto itself. Sometimes a sorcerer must take drugs and forsake his body while he searches. Such skills never come cheap. They use a man up completely, leaving him as weak as a horse ridden clean through the night. Sometimes those who forsake their bodies never come back. The firmament glitters for them, tempting them out toward its cold, hard edge. Secrets lie there, they say. All things become known at the moment of death. Men who cannot resist simply leave their bodies behind. Their minds die the instant their spirit touches the roof of the world, but their bodies waste slowly over weeks.”

  Cold. Raif felt so cold his lungs ached. He found himself looking up at the black arc of the sky. Yes, I can see how a man might be tempted.

  Angus saw where his gaze had rested. “I can’t say as we’ll be tracked that way tonight, not with us being so close to the city. The cost is too high for it to be lightly done. Any time a man or woman draws upon the old skills it takes something from them. The body pays a price. Different people weaken in different ways. I’ve seen some men bleed from the mouth, and others shiver as if a fever is upon them. A few lose part of their memories or their minds. I knew a man once, one of the Storm Dogs who live on the high slopes of the Join, whose body wasted in small portions every time he broke a storm. The first time I met him I thought he’d been burned. His arms and legs were black and withered. Dead.”

  Raif turned away. He hated sorcery. Clansmen would have no part of it. Strength of mind, will, and body was what counted in the clanholds. Sorcery was the weapon of the weak and the damned. Raif remembered watching as Dagro Blackhail and Gat Murdock clubbed a dark-haired girl senseless one cold winter’s morning on the court. Raif couldn’t recall who the girl was, perhaps a sister to Craw Bannering or a daughter to Meth Ganlow, but he knew the girl had been discovered calling animals to her without speaking words. She had died a week later. No one, not even her family, mourned her. And then there was Mad Binny, living in her ancient crannog over Cold Lake, exiled from the roundhouse for thirty years. She could make ewes drop their lambs, people said, tell which winters would drive the hardest and cull the most deaths.

  “Most magic users need rest after a drawing,” Angus said, pulling Raif back. “Many need to sleep. Some take drugs to lend them strength.”

  “Like the ghostmeal?”

  “Yes, l
ike the ghostmeal.”

  Raif looked round to find Angus watching him, and he suddenly realized the purpose of everything his uncle had said. Accept what you are, he seemed to say. You possess the old skills, I have shown you that. I have spoken of their dangers and forewarned you of their limits. Now you must learn to accept it and stomach your distaste.

  Mist washed in and out of Angus’ mouth as he breathed. “Not all people condemn the old skills. There are places that would fail to exist without them, where they are woven so tightly into the threads of history that you cannot separate the people from their sorcery. Perhaps you and I will travel to those lands one day.”

  Raif made no reply. He didn’t want to hear any more. He longed for clan, imagined riding across the thick white snow on the graze, shooting targets with Drey on the court, and sitting so close to the Great Hearth that its hot yellow flames burned his cheeks.

  “The girl is waking,” he said after a time.

  Angus’ eyes narrowed. A fraction of a second later Ash moved against his back. Before he turned his attention to her, Angus searched Raif’s face, and Raif guessed he had given something away. He had known Ash was waking before his uncle had felt a thing. Abruptly he pulled on Moose’s reins, dropping back.

  Angus and Ash spoke softly for some time, Ash turning once to retrieve a parcel of trail meat and a waterskin from Angus’ pack. Raif thought she looked little better for sleep. Following her lead, he drank some water himself. The liquid was thick and icy, and it numbed something within him for a while.

  The landscape changed as they threaded through the upper reaches of the tree line, becoming rougher and more inhospitable to plants. Bare rocks rose to either side of the path, swept clean of snow by persistent winds. Pines twisted close to the ground, their trunks smooth as bones, their needles shriveled and gray. The air smelled of resin, and the mist was sticky, as if it had slipped into the heartwood and stolen the sap from the pines.

  Angus trotted the bay through a series of sharp turns and then surprised Raif by calling a halt and dismounting. “Wait here,” he said, handing Raif the reins. By the time Raif had dismounted himself, Angus had disappeared into the mist. Ash stared after him.

  Silence followed. Raif had no desire to speak. He felt a dull resentment toward the girl; it was almost as if she’d stolen upon him while he slept, slit the skin on his wrist, and made a blood kin of him. He’d been given no choice in the matter, yet somehow he felt bound. And she was so young and thin, her face red with snowburn, her hair matted with many kinds of dirt. Only her eyes held his interest: huge gray eyes that shone like polished metal, silver one moment, iron the next.

  “Good. You’ve both dismounted. We’re on foot from now on.” Angus’ voice emerged from the mist ahead of his body. “Raif. Cut a torch from that hemlock. Strip it until the juices run.”

  Raif was glad of something to do. He cut three sticks, hacking at the branches until his dogskin mitts were soaked with sap. Shaving the sticks with his belt knife, he created a series of thin wood curls to catch the sparks from his flint and hold them against the sapwood until it kindled. The business of making fires in snow and ice was something he knew well, and it felt good to do something plain and honest with his hands.

  The first torch was lit by the time Angus had brushed down the horses. Ash had taken charge of Moose and was saying horsey things to him and scratching behind his ears. Moose seemed stupidly pleased, snuffling and clucking like a hen. Raif glared at him. Traitor horse.

  Angus led them into a deep draw between the rocks. The pale, ice-riven banks grew higher as they descended, and the path began to narrow and steepen. Soon the walls curved overhead, and Raif got the sense that they were traveling into the mountain. The same kind of oily stone they had passed earlier caught and reflected light. When flames from Raif’s torch licked against the wetness, it hissed. Mist rolled around the horses’ fetlocks like seafoam, turning from gray to green with each flick of the light. The air became noticeably colder.

  Then, suddenly, there was no draw. The rocks fused overhead, and what might have been a water channel during spring melt became a tunnel instead.

  Raif felt his stitches itch. The raven lore was as cold as a fossil against his chest.

  “Easy now,” Angus said. “Stay close. There are ways here that are not ours to take. Raif. Step forward with the torch. Ash. Keep an eye to Moose. Don’t forget to tear a bit of rue leaf now and then and chew on it.”

  As he positioned himself at the head of the party, Raif was aware of the ground changing beneath his feet. What minutes earlier had been rough, uncut rock now had the smooth shine of stone once tended by a chisel. The walls were more lightly touched, hewn only to prevent sharp edges. Something—mineral oil or water—tapped away in the distance like a leaking roof. All surfaces collected shadows as easily as ditches filling with rainwater.

  Raif’s first thought was that Effie would have loved this. No one knew the caves in the clanhold like Effie. The only time she ever came out of the roundhouse in summer was to explore the sandstone caverns around the Wedge. Raif smiled. He remembered taking her out one summer morning and having to wait for hours while she explored some odd bit of a pothole not much wider than her own head. He wasn’t about to go in after her, and Tem would have given him a beating if he’d left her to return home alone.

  “What is this place?” asked Ash.

  It was hard for Raif to pull back from his memories. For no reason other than she wasn’t Effie, he felt a tide of ill feelings toward the girl. She wasn’t who she showed herself to be. Her voice was clear and insistent, and she sounded like no beggar girl in any story Turby Flapp or Gat Murdock had ever told.

  “It’s just a wee tunnel, nothing more.” Angus took a slug from his rabbit flask. “It was cut many thousands of years ago, before Spire Vanis was even built.”

  Ash reached out a hand and touched the wall. “Who built it?”

  “The Sull.”

  Raif sucked in air and held it in his lungs. This was the third time Angus had mentioned the Sull, yet the word sounded no better for repetition. The Sull were enemies to all. They hated the Mountain Cities and the clans. And even though they protected the Trenchlanders with their lives, they hated them, too. Hiding in their vast forests, amid their cities of blue and silver stone, they refused to trade and treaty. Rumor had it they emerged from the Racklands only to defend their borders and reclaim their dead. “What use is a tunnel here, in the west, to the Sull?”

  “Do you think, Raif Sevrance, that this land has always been held by the Mountain Cities?” Angus’ tone made Raif wish he hadn’t asked the question. “Before there were cities, before even there were clans, there were the Sull. Clan Blackhail might call itself the first of the clans, yet it’s a poor claim when compared to the Sull’s. They call themselves the First Born, and they do not mean solely in the Northern Territories.”

  Ash spoke after a moment of silence. “The Sull were the first men in the Known Lands?”

  “So legend says. The same legends that tell how they were driven first from the Far South, and then the Soft Lands of the middle, finally making a home of the North. All of it, not just the Boreal Sway and the Great Snake Coast and the Red Glaciers they claim today. All of it, from the Breaking Grounds in the farthest north, to Old Goat’s Pass in these Ranges.” Angus’ voice was hard, his eyes dark. “So this small tunnel, cut so the Sull could cross the mountains and descend Mount Slain without being sniffed out by the Mountain Queen’s septs, or scented by Wetcloaks and their hounds, may not be much use to them now. But it once was, and there are a score of others like it in the Ranges.”

  “Who is this Mountain Queen?” Ash said. “And the Wetcloaks? I’ve never heard of them.”

  Angus shook his head. “People and forces from another age, before the Red Priest and the Founding Quarterlords were born, before religion took its hold on the Soft Lands to the south, when the world was ruled by emperors and kings, and sorcery was their weapo
n of control.”

  Raif held the torch away from his body. The damp air was making it crackle and spit. “You said the Sull could use sorcery. So why didn’t they build an empire of their own?”

  “Once they did,” Angus said quietly. “Once they did. Now . . .” He shook his head. “Now they seek only to survive.”

  Frowning, Raif walked deeper into the tunnel. What Angus said didn’t fit with clan beliefs about the Sull. “But the Sull are the fiercest—”

  “Aye,” Angus said, cutting him short. “The Sull are the fiercest warriors ever to raise their banns over the North. They have to be. They are a people unto themselves, deeply private and self-sustaining, and every king, emperor, and warlord in the Known Lands for the past thirteen thousand years has feared them. The Sull have been driven north and east through three continents, and now all that’s left to them is the Racklands.” Angus’ voice quieted and turned oddly cold. “And I pity anyone who tries to take it from them . . . for they have nowhere else to go.”

  Raif and Ash exchanged a glance, both affected by Angus’ words. Ash’s eyes looked almost blue in the cave light.

  “We must leave something for the journey,” Angus said, working to regain his good humor. “’Tis an old custom and doubtless seems foolish to do so when none but dark-winged bats will likely collect it. But Darra would have my earlobes for salt dishes if I failed to pay my due.”

  “Darra?” asked Ash.

  “My lady wife.”

  Ash made no reply, and silence grew around them.

  Reaching back behind his neck, Raif felt for the band of silver that bound his hair. With one swift movement he tugged it free. “Here,” he said, offering it to Angus. “Take this for the journey.”

  Angus closed his large red hand around Raif’s. “Nay, lad. That’s a clan token. Keep it. I’ll pay this passage.”