A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  “Raif.”

  Raif looked up, surprised to see Angus crouching close. He began to rise.

  “Nay, lad. Stay where you are. I’ll stand both watches tonight.” Angus nodded toward Ash. “Is she sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Resting in her mind?”

  Raif nodded. He couldn’t recall at what point during the past four days Angus had come to know about the connection between him and Ash, but he did, and the question he asked showed it. Unsure how he felt about that, Raif was silent for a moment, thinking. Finally he said, “About what I said earlier—”

  “Hush, lad. Don’t think for one moment I didn’t deserve it. What you and Ash said was right and proper: You have a right to know what you’re putting yourself in danger for.” Angus slid his hand inside his tunic and pulled out his rabbit flask; that was one thing that hadn’t been lost with the saddlebags. He shook it in his fist. “Damn thing’s empty—I’d clean forgotten.”

  Regarding the flask as a man might regard a beloved old dog who had just turned around and bitten him, he said, “First of all there are some things I’m hard sworn to. I can’t explain how and why I know Sarga Veys, you must simply accept that. Perhaps later you will come to know. What I can tell you is that Sarga Veys is closely spun. He’s dangerous and unpredictable, and if you’d sighted that bow at any man’s heart today, chances are he would have killed you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Angus sighed. “Aye, well, you wouldn’t. A clansman would sooner prick his belly with a pitching fork and soak himself in vinegar for a week rather than sit and talk of sorcery. You’ve got Hoggie Dhoone and a whole line of Stone God-fearing Clan Kings to thank for that. Don’t give me that Sevrance frown, lad. Such is the way things are. What you must come to accept is that whenever you pick up a bow and sight it upon a man’s heart, you’re drawing on the old skills. I know it’s not what you want to hear, and I know we could both waste a lot of time talking ourselves soft around the subject, but for now just listen to what your old uncle says.” Angus’ copper eyes twinkled like newly struck pennies: He seemed to be fully recovered from the blow of the empty rabbit flask.

  “The most important thing you’ll ever learn about sorcery is this: Entering a man’s body to cause harm is the most dangerous thing a sorcerer can do. Our bodies work to preserve us in a thousand different ways. The pain of touching hot coals will cause a child to snap back her hand, fear will make a man move faster, fight harder, and cold will make him shiver to warm his blood. If we sicken with lung fever, something within us battles the disease, and if we are fed tainted food, our livers work to rid us of the badness. There’s a natural instinct in all of us to fight anything that threatens our survival. And when sorcery enters our body, it meets that instinct full on.”

  Angus leaned over toward Ash and tucked the elk coat close around her chin. “Sorcery is an invasion of the worst kind. It’s unnatural in every way, and a body will fight it tooth and nail. Nothing can prepare a sorcerer for the sheer force of a person’s will. It can sever the thread of a drawing within seconds, sending it snapping back like a whiplash of red fire.

  “I saw the face burned from a man once, a sorcerer who thought himself cleverer than most. We were walking together in the Sluice—an old section of Trance Vor that we were both arrogant enough to think we’d be safe in despite the world of rumors that surrounds it—when a young sharper lightened me of my purse. I was for running the lad down, but Brenn would have none of it. Drew sorcery then and there on the street. Whether he had a mind to kill the lad, slow him, or simply force him to drop the purse, I canna say. It didn’t really matter in the end. Whatever he did it wasn’t quick enough, and the young sharper’s will broke the drawing. Sent it back to Brenn tenfold.”

  Angus closed his eyes. “It was a long night. Brenn’s face and chest were burned black. Black . . . It was all I could do to end his pain.” Angus breathed softly for a while, then opened his eyes and looked at Raif. “That’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t let you target the sept.”

  “But I’ve targeted men before now without being harmed.”

  “That’s part of your gift. What you do happens in less than an instant. Your mind enters another’s body, joins with the heart, then leaves within an eyeblink. You don’t damage or interfere with the heart in any way, you mark it. It all happens so fast that the victim doesn’t have chance to respond. And even if they did, your arrow hits them a second later and then they’re dead.

  “You use sorcery as your accomplice, not your weapon. It’s a subtle difference at best, but that, and the sheer speed of what you do, saves you from any backlash.”

  Raif tilted his head back and looked up through the clouds to the stars. His heart was beating rapidly in his chest. What Angus had said disturbed him deeply; he’d described exactly what happened when Raif drew his bow, right down to marking the heart. “How do you know so much?” he asked.

  “I know a man with nearly the same gift as yours—”

  “Mors Stormyielder. The Sull.”

  If Angus was surprised at Raif’s guess, he did not show it, merely ran a hand over the rough stubble on his jaw. “Aye. He’s the one. Can kill any animal he sets his sights on.”

  “And it’s the same for him as well?”

  Angus nodded. “Close enough. Animals have wills to survive just as you and I do. They cannot be interfered with lightly. Mors knows that. I never knew him to spend a moment longer than necessary in any beast.”

  “Yet he couldn’t target people?”

  “No.” Angus looked at Raif only an instant before looking away.

  Raif waited, but the silence between them only deepened, and Raif guessed he had touched upon yet another subject that Angus had no liking for. Having little liking for it himself, Raif let it go. Perhaps his uncle was right: Some things were no better for the knowing.

  Shifting himself against Ash’s body, he said, “I still don’t understand what this has to do with Sarga Veys. If I can target people as quickly as you say, where’s the danger?”

  Angus seemed relieved at the question. During the silence he had taken to looking longingly at the empty flask. “It’s simple. You should never set your sights on any sorcerer. Ever. They’ll know the moment you enter them, and if they’re quick enough and clever enough, they’ll send your sorcery back home with a vengeance. It doesn’t matter that what you do is little more than a sighting, a bowman taking aim on his target. The act of severing is where the power comes from. By severing the thread between you, a sorcerer can take a small insignificant drawing and whiplash it into a force.”

  Angus still wasn’t finished. Now that he had decided to speak, he seemed determined to say the worst and have done with it. “From the night we left Spire Vanis I knew we were being tracked by a magic user, yet until I saw Sarga Veys on the ridge I couldn’t be sure who it was. If it had been another man, I might not have taken the bow from you. As long as you’d targeted the other sept members, chances are you would have been safe. But Sarga Veys isn’t like most sorcerers. Sorcery lives within him like the future lives within prophets and hell lives within the insane. He can do things that no one else can, clever things, subtle things, things that people say canna be done. As soon as he realized you had a man’s heart in your sights, he could have slid his power in beside yours and sent your drawing snapping back like hellfire.”

  Angus showed his teeth. “And such a small thing like that, a little snapping motion, wouldn’t even weary him to the point where he needed a ghostmeal.”

  Raif held his body still, determined to show Angus nothing of the fear that lived within him. Suddenly he longed for Drey and Effie and clan. “If Veys has so much power, why didn’t he strike sooner, from afar?”

  “Sarga Veys knows his limits. More than likely he was saving his strength for when he caught up with us, in case you used your trick with the bow, or Ash did something that sent everyone running. No matter what happened, he would have l
eft the killing and capture to the sept. Sorcery is useful in many ways—you heard what happened on the lake, how he pushed the mist aside so the Knife could follow Ash—but if you’ve a mind to kill someone, you’re safer using an arrow or a sword.”

  Several things struck Raif about what Angus had just said, and he was silent for a while as he thought. Or Ash did something that sent everyone running . . . The words had been spoken lightly enough, but the idea behind them was hard to comprehend. What could Ash do that would make a full sept, half a dozen dogs, and a sorcerer run away? Raif pressed Ash’s body against his. She was breathing steadily, no longer shivering, relaxed in a deep dreamless sleep. Penthero Iss’ almost-daughter. As soon as she had told him that, he had assumed they were being hunted because the Surlord of Spire Vanis wanted his daughter back. Now it seemed there was more.

  Raif glanced at his uncle. With Angus there was always more. Then there was the other thing that struck Raif. Twice now Angus had said that sorcery was no good for killing. Yet he, Raif Sevrance, could kill with it. Oh, Angus would say that the arrow killed, not the drawing. But Angus was wrong. Vaingate had proven that. At some point while he’d stood shooting men through the grating, Raif had realized that as soon as a heart was within his sights the man whom it beat for was as good as dead. The arrow was just the medium, like wine carrying poison; the act of killing had already been made.

  So what did that make him? Raif shook his head slowly, forbidding the answer to come to him. Inigar Stoop knew; perhaps even Angus knew: It was better left at that.

  Angus touched Raif’s shoulder. “You should get some rest. I’ll be waking you at dawn.”

  Raif nodded. Suddenly he wanted very much to sleep.

  “I canna tell you what business brought me to Spire Vanis,” Angus said, adjusting the elk coat around Raif and Ash so it let in no drafts. “That city is alive with secrets, it was built on them, and you shouldna blame your old uncle for holding a few of them back.”

  “And Ille Glaive?” Raif asked, barely able to keep his eyes open.

  “Aye. The City of Tears. A man lives there whom I must visit. He’s a tower-trained scholar and as stingy as a goat, but he does have a talent for finding truths. I remember once when I was coursing for gray foxes along the Chaddiway . . .”

  Raif drifted into sleep. Perfect darkness folded around him, creating a secure place where no dreams or thoughts could enter. Time passed. Sounds began to niggle at the back of his mind, and he turned restlessly from them. Still they pursued him, louder now, dream voices, begging for something he did not have and could not give. Irritated, he turned from them once more. Couldn’t they see that he slept? At last they went, leaving him to a deep stupor that lasted through the night.

  When he awoke at first light it was pain, not voices, that stirred him. He was lying on his stomach, and something cold and sharp pressed against his chest. Thinking it was a stone, he reached beneath himself to push it away. As soon as his fingers touched the surface of the object, he knew it was his lore. Ash . . .

  His eyes shot open and his hand reached upward, but already he knew it was too late. She was cold, motionless, lost to the world of voices.

  He called Angus, and together they tried to wake her, but her eyes would not open and her body lay heavy and unresponsive, and finally Angus lifted her onto the bay, strapped her against his back, and set a grim pace for Ille Glaive.

  THIRTY

  Frostbite

  Sarga Veys opened his eyes. Unlike other men who needed time to come around, put the dreamworld behind them and recall the day ahead, Sarga Veys knew all instantly the moment he awoke. He never dreamed. That was one human weakness he was free from.

  The timbers above him were black and furry with mold, and the entire ceiling bowed under the weight of accumulated snow. The trout guddler’s cabin had not been lived in for at least two seasons, yet the stench of fish and old men remained. Ancient oilcloths, now brittle and dusty, hung from the walls along with snowshoes, rotten nets, and racks for drying fish. The oak floor was crusted with salt. In the far corner, hiding behind cords of rotten firewood and split crates, lay a small basswood shrine to the Maker. Sarga Veys’ lip curled to see it. Fishermen, whether they manned trawlers on the Wrecking Sea or sat upon a lakeshore fishing with their hands, were always superstitious about God.

  Gathering his strength to him, Sarga Veys raised his shoulders from the floor. Naked beneath the buckskins he had found folded in a pile near the saltpit, his entire body shuddered and worked against him as he moved. Sour liquid rose in his gullet, and he fought it by forcing his lips against his teeth. He would not vomit. Such foulness would not pass from his stomach to his mouth.

  After a few seconds the sickness lifted, leaving him feeling little better for it. His head throbbed, and his legs felt swollen and full of water. The smell of his own body disgusted him, the drowned-man’s stench of fish oil and algae and fear.

  Veys exhaled softly. He very nearly had drowned out there, in that greasy body of water so rightly named the Black Spill. The first shock of the cold had been breathtaking. He remembered freezing water seizing his throat and his groin, and utter darkness robbing his thoughts. It had been a kind of hell. Cold hell. The screams, the cracking ice, the horses . . . Veys shuddered. It had made animals of four grown men.

  But, he thought. But. It had been a trial of ice and darkness that he had passed. Surely now he must be stronger? He, Sarga Veys, son of no man willing to claim him and a mother who had taken her own life by slashing her stomach a dozen times with a jeweler’s knife, had swum in the Black Spill in midwinter and survived.

  He should not have been able to do it. Only minutes before the ice cracked he had spent everything within him opening a corridor in the mist. Such drawings never came cheap. Sarga Veys could do a hundred things more showy and more impressive: little tricks with fire and smoke guaranteed to make children and goodwives fear him. Yet parting mist, which impressed no one, most especially not the Knife, had a cost far above such japery. For five long and excruciating minutes, Sarga Veys had set his will against nature.

  It had left him barely enough strength to breathe and think. When the ice cracked and day turned into night and black water rose to take him, he had been as limp and powerless as a man made of straw. Yet fear of death had woken something in him. A tiny spark of hidden strength had ignited close to his heart. It wasn’t much, but he was Sarga Veys, the most brilliant sorcerer born in half a century, and he could turn not much into quite a lot.

  The horse was close to death when he had taken it. Bereft of strength of will, it could do little to fight the drawing. As its insides had kindled and horseflesh had cauterized then cooked, the carcass had floated upward toward the light. Sarga Veys had ridden it to the surface like a wraith riding his ghost horse from hell. The heat from its flesh had warmed him, and the buoyancy of its gas-filled body had been more than sufficient to float his own. Clinging to the black, stinking flesh, he had paddled with his legs and feet toward the nearest ledge.

  Raped of power and strength, he had hauled himself onto firm ice. How he had crawled across the lake and up the bank to shelter was an ordeal he would sooner forget. The skin on his elbows and knees would grow back. Chilblains and frost sores would fade. The burns on his hands were another matter, but he had read the secret histories of all the brilliant sorcerers, and such scars and deformities were common among them. All who were born to greatness were marked in some way.

  Only when he had found the trout guddler’s cabin and stripped the stiff, icy clothing from his back had he given himself over to exhaustion. Judging from the light slicing under the door, he had slept for close to a day.

  Overcome with thirst and the sudden need to relieve himself, Veys tested his strength by extending his leg across the salt-encrusted floor. Weakness made him cringe like a child. Hate for Penthero Iss filled him. How dared that man send him north again! His talents were wasted here on the east shore of Black Spill, chasing the Surlor
d’s errant daughter and the Phage’s trusty sheepdog Angus Lok.

  Anger succeeded in rousing Veys sufficiently to the point where he could stand, and he gathered the coarse hide around himself and stumbled toward the door. Of course, the very fact that Iss had sent him north in a sept with Marafice Eye told of just how important the task of returning Asarhia March was. She was dangerous, that girl. Veys had felt the truth of it the night Iss had summoned him to the Red Forge and bade him travel from the city to find her. Power had been drawn that night. Dark and unfamiliar, it had switched against his skin like a draft of air from a mineshaft or the deepest, driest well. It had come from Iss’ almost-daughter, and it excited him in ways he hardly understood.

  He had been following its aftermath ever since. It wetted his tongue even now. She was moving north again. He knew it without even probing outside himself, so strong was the trail she left behind.

  Reaching the door, Veys steadied himself against the jamb, taking a moment to regain his strength. He cursed the loss of his saddlebags. Drugs, waxed bandages, oil of cloves, blood of the poppy, eyebright, handknives, coiled wire, combs, wax candles, flints, honey, sweetened milk, spare clothes, and clean linen had all been lost. All things except food he could do without, yet he had little liking for making do. A childhood spent living in the filth and glossy mud of Dirtlake had seen to that.

  Glancing back at the frozen, greasy heap that was his clothes, he shuddered. The action pulled muscles in his chest and groin. He needed a ghostmeal badly. He craved warm milk thickened with honey and the soothing sap of eyebright dropped from a hollow needle into his eyes. His eyes were not troubling him now, but they would soon enough. Weak eyes prone to redness and infection were his curse. “It is their color,” a man in Ille Glaive had once said. “So unusual . . . startling, even. In a woman they would be celebrated, painted. In a man they are considered ill luck. Either way you will have much trouble with them. Purple is the color of the gods.”