A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  Not displeased by the memory, Veys unhooked the latch and stepped outside.

  Cold air blasted his face, and the sharp tang of snow filled his nose and his mouth. A white landscape presented itself to his watering eyes. He saw the lake down below him, cloaked in mist, saw tall spruces and white oaks glittering with hoarfrost, and his own bloody trail stamped into the snow. He had not come as far as he’d thought. The trout guddler’s cabin was a mere forty paces from the water, set in a crown of man-high birches above the bank. Veys shrugged tightly. He told himself the distance hardly mattered; it did not detract from his feat.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement. Instinctively he stepped back, into the shadows provided by the door. Shifting his gaze to the left, he saw the movement again. There, down by the shore, something gray moved. Sarga Veys licked dry lips. It was a man . . . no, two men. One lying down on the shore ice, another kneeling, tending him. Veys’ stomach twisted into a knot. The kneeling man’s outer cloak wasn’t gray . . . it was black leather crusted with snow. The Rive Watch. He had thought he was rid of them.

  A long moment passed where Veys contemplated the shore-fast ice, speculated how thick it was and whether there would be sufficient water underneath to drown two men. Yet ice was a mystery he knew little of, and he set aside the idea of murder before it was fully formed.

  “Halfman! Over here!”

  Startled, Veys focused his gaze upon the kneeling man. He had his hand raised over his head, and Veys saw immediately that something wasn’t right with it. Two bloody stumps waggled where fingers should have been. Perceiving the weakness made Veys’ heart beat more calmly, and he stepped from the shadows into the light.

  The man’s name came to him as he treaded through the snow toward the bank. Hood. A filthy guardsman with dirt under his nails and shredded food between his teeth, who claimed kinship to Lord of the Straw Granges and as proof wore a grangelord insignia—arms set in a cruciform—at his chest. Veys detested him. He was Marafice Eye’s creature—all the sept were—but he more so than the rest. He could not open his mouth without speaking filth.

  “Help me get him to the cabin. His foot is hard froze.”

  Veys paid little heed to Hood’s words as he picked his way across the rutted and frozen mud along the shore. He now had a better view of the second man, and his heart had started beating wildly once more. The huge head, the fine light brown hair, and the shoulders the size of sheep: It was Marafice Eye. Sarga Veys’ skin paled. He had thought the Knife dead, lost to the black waters of the Spill.

  “Aye, Halfman. You left me to the devil, and the devil threw me back.” A small eye, perfectly blue, regarded Sarga Veys with something akin to satisfaction. The Knife was lying on his side, half on the bank, half on the ice. The skin on his face was yellow and waxy, his cheeks and nose split by tissue expanding as it froze. Strips of flesh hung from his small mouth, flapping as he breathed and spoke. One eye was frozen shut. One hand was curled like a bird’s claw, yellow and scaly and twitching. The frozen foot was still booted, resting on the ice like a shovel.

  Marafice Eye smiled, a terrible sight to see on a frozen face. “You may well look frightened, Halfman. I saw you with Stagro’s horse. I clawed after you in the water, watched as you pulled yourself onto the ice.”

  “I looked for you, but the ice was churning. It was impossible to see—”

  “Save your lies for those who need them, Halfman.” Marafice Eye winced as Hood began to cut the boot free of the frozen foot. “The only thing that matters to me is whether you acted from cowardice or spite. Did you wish me dead, eh? Or were you so involved with saving your own skin that you didn’t give me or my men a second thought?”

  Veys shifted ground. He saw Hood slow down with the sheath knife, awaiting his reply. Marafice Eye breathed steadily, good hand clenched to control the pain. Two men, both injured but still dangerous. Veys swallowed bile then spoke. “I do not wish you dead, Knife. You cannot doubt that. The ice was not under my control. It was the girl’s fault it broke . . . she led us too far. Her horse was more lightly burdened, and it knew how to dance. When I fell into the water I had no mind but to get to safety. I was hardly thinking . . . Stagro’s horse was close . . . I did what I had to. By the time I crawled from the water I had no strength for anything else.”

  “Yet you made it to the cabin,” said the Knife.

  “And stripped the frozen clothes from your back,” added Hood.

  “I did these things without thinking. I—”

  “Hush, man. You bother me like jiggers at my crotch. You claim to be a coward, not a murderer. Then you must prove that by using your foul magics upon me. I will not lose my foot and my hand. I will not. You will save them for me.”

  “But—”

  The Knife slammed his good hand onto the ice. “I saw how you were with the horse. You took its flesh and warmed it. Now you must do the same for me, only gently, without scorching. Hood will stand by. He will see you do no harm.”

  Hood smiled pleasantly, displaying filaments of trail meat packed between his teeth. “Devil help you if you hurt him, Halfman.”

  Veys actually took a step back. To perform a healing—on the Knife. The idea was horrifying to him. He was not a physician, he had not been trained in the ways of blood and organs as some sorcerers were. Sickness and disease were abhorrent to him. Marafice Eye’s yellow swollen flesh repulsed him as surely as the sight of maggots at a corpse. And then there was the loss of strength. How could he be expected to draw power after all that had happened yesterday? He needed to rest, sleep.

  “Come. You must help Hood carry me to the cabin.”

  “I cannot heal you. It’s impossible. Impossible.”

  Marafice Eye shook his head. The strain cost him dearly, pulling tissue and ligaments that should not have been pulled. “Nay, Halfman, I’m not giving you a choice. Four of my best men have died. One with an arrow in his liver, another with a blade-sized hole in his heart. The other two died here”—he punched the lake ice with his fist—“in the Spill. And if you’d had the balls, you could have saved them. Mind me well, Sarga Veys, for I know the blackness in your heart. You meant to walk free from this place, travel back to Spire Vanis and your master Penthero Iss, spin a tale with you as the hero and me and my men as victims of the lake. That will never happen. Hood may have lost two fingers, but he’s still a better man with eight than you are with ten. He’d kill you now on my say, and do not think I’m not tempted. Your only use to me now is as a healer. So heal me, and perhaps Hood will forget the loss of his sworn brothers and let you live.”

  Veys looked into the Knife’s open eye. Even lying prostrate on the ice, he was a dangerous beast. Veys believed him capable of any sort of violence, and he was just the sort of man to survive if abandoned in this frozen waste. He pulled himself free of the lake! That act alone told of the strength of his will.

  “Ready to weep, Halfman?”

  Veys glared at Hood and had the satisfaction of forcing the thick-necked badger of a man to look away. This was not the first time one of the sept had passed comment on his red and stinging eyes. Savagely he wiped away the tears. “Let’s get him to the cabin.”

  The Knife said nothing as they carried him up the bank. Hood took most of the weight, and Veys was left to haul the legs and feet. It was a difficult journey and Marafice Eye must have suffered much in the handling, yet he did not cry out or curse or show any but the briefest signs of pain. Veys supposed some men would call such stoicism bravery, but he had little care for it. Dread of the task that lay ahead weighed like lead upon his chest.

  When finally they arrived at the trout guddler’s cabin, Veys became aware of a new pressure pushing against his mind with the steady throb of a sore tooth. “Take him inside,” he said to Hood, “and strip him. Pry up the floorboards for firewood. We will need a quick fire.”

  “Don’t settle yourself by the door, Halfman. You’re coming with us.” Hood dragged Marafice Eye across the thr
eshold. The Knife himself did not speak. Perhaps delirium had set in. Veys hardly cared.

  “My master calls me. I must speak with him.”

  The words had a profound effect on Hood, who like all the barbarians in the Rive Watch feared sorcery like the Skinned One himself. His hand rose to touch the grangelord insignia at his breast, and he muttered the Maker’s given name under his breath.

  “Go,” hissed Veys, pleased by the man’s superstitious dread and well aware that it would do him no harm to play to it. “You would not want to risk standing here when his fetch appears before me.”

  Hood worked the latch quickly for a man with eight fingers. In his haste he trapped his cloak tails in the door, and Veys heard a tearing sound come from the other side as the man decided it was better to lose a fistful of leather than reopen the door and risk seeing a fetch.

  Veys smiled with spite. Fetches, wraiths, scantlings: They were always good for scaring children and witless men.

  The smiled faded as quickly as it came as Veys steadied himself against the cabin’s exterior wall and laid himself open to the one who called him.

  Shock and pain took his breath. Penthero Iss was there, suddenly inside him like a new heart. Every hair on Veys’ body bristled, every pore opened and exuded sweat. How could he do such a thing? The power it took to perform such a drawing from such a distance was unthinkable. This wasn’t simply far-speaking, this was the breaching of another’s flesh. And then there was the threat of the backlash. True, he had invited Iss in, but the mind and the body did not always work together in matters of sorcery, and the instinct to protect oneself was greater than any given thought. What if the drawing snapped?

  Calm yourself, Sarga Veys. Did I not tell you that I would speak with you along the way?

  Veys shuddered so deeply bones cracked in his spine. Fear burned with a pure and fierce flame, like alcohol igniting on his skin. What do you ask of me?

  Is Asarhia with you?

  No. She travels north to Ille Glaive. The Knife tried to take her yesterday on the lake, but the ice broke beneath us and she escaped.

  And the sept?

  The sept is gone. The Knife suffers from frostbite; Hood has lost fingers on his swordhand. The rest are dead. It did not occur to Veys to lie. Iss was inside him; what else could he do?

  I will send another sept to you. Make your way to Ille Glaive and await them there.

  But we must return to Spire Vanis. The Knife needs—

  See to him, Sarga Veys. That is why you are there. Asarhia must be followed north. She must be brought back. Angus Lok’s family lives near Ille Glaive; he will not pass that close without seeing them. Find them for me also.

  Veys knew he could not argue. Penthero Iss seemed so much more than he was. His power was potent, foreign. It tasted of another world.

  Do not fail me. The words stretched southward across a continent as Iss withdrew to Spire Vanis and the craven warmth of his flesh.

  Veys slumped against the cabin wall, his shoulders scraping the skin of rime ice from the timbers. The vestiges of Iss’ drawing had left a gritty film in his mouth, but he did not like to spit, so he swallowed it instead. How did Iss get the power? He was a weakling; Veys had known that from the day they’d first met, when a discreet and gentle probing had told him all he needed to know. Now this.

  Running a hand across his jaw, Veys worked to calm himself. A day’s growth of beard made his mouth shrink in distaste.

  “Get in here, Halfman!”

  Hood’s call made Veys flinch. Taking a series of fast, shallow breaths, he pushed himself off from the wall and made his way inside the cabin. Marafice Eye waited there, his foot made yellow by frozen bile, the chilblained skin on his face shedding in strips as wet and slippery as vegetable scrapings. Veys gathered power to himself, fear leaving him as quickly as fear did leave a man who was angry and eager to prove himself to those who considered themselves his betters. So Hood would kill him if he failed, eh? Well, who was to say that one day Hood wouldn’t wake to find his remaining eight fingers gone the way of the other two? And who was to say that one day Penthero Iss wouldn’t wake to find his own body invaded and the secret source of power he tapped into taken over by a better man than himself?

  Such thoughts stayed in Veys’ mind only long enough to calm him. He had a job to do, and although he hated Marafice Eye with bright malice, his pride demanded that he perform no drawing that wasn’t equal to his best.

  Suppressing a shudder of revulsion, Veys entered the frozen canals of the Knife’s frostbitten flesh.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Ille Glaive

  Raif recognized the Dhoonesmen at five hundred paces.

  War dressed in the blue and copper of Dhoone, mounted on fully laden shire horses, spears so highly polished they shone like glass, they rode south along the Glaive Road, forcing farmers and cart boys from their path. Two men only, there were, yet they had a power to them that drew the eyes as surely as a mountain made of steel. They sat high in their saddles, backs straight, eyes forward, left hands on the shafts of their couched spears, blue tattoos pulsing like veins beneath their Dhoonehelms.

  Angus said something, perhaps a warning to keep eyes down as the Dhoonesmen approached, but Raif had no mind for it.

  Clansmen, here in the Glaivehold. Without thinking, Raif reached behind his neck to the leather strip that held his hair. The Blackhail silver was long gone. Even the black thread on his elkskin coat now lay concealed beneath a layer of muck. All he had left to tell of his clan was the silver cap that sealed his measure of guidestone in his tine, and the bit of silver wire around the grip of Tem’s sword. Soon even his hair would outgrow his clan. Hailsmen kept their hair shortest of all clans, scorning the intricate plaitings, braidings, oilings, and part shavings that were as much a part of the clanholds as the white heather that bloomed on the fellfields each spring.

  “Raif. Ease to the side of the road and let them pass.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Raif was aware of Angus pulling the bay’s reins and setting the Sull horse on a path to lead its riders from the road. So even Angus makes way for Dhoonesmen. The thought made something ache in Raif’s chest.

  The heavy-shod hooves of the shire horses set the packed-earth road ringing. The late afternoon sun shone directly onto the Dhoonesmen’s faces as they rode toward Raif at a trot. Raif saw their eyes flick to him, then just as quickly flick away. Even though Raif held the center of the road, they made no motion to alter their path and continued to head straight for him as if he were nothing more than a speck of dust.

  Abruptly Raif kicked Moose into a turn and headed off the road. Even before horse and rider gained the ditch, the Dhoonesmen claimed the space they’d left behind. Heads held high, never once looking back, the Dhoonesmen continued south.

  Minutes passed. Flecks of gray snow kicked up by the Dhoonesmen floated back down to earth. Raif could feel Angus’ gaze upon him, yet he did not turn to look at him, even when his uncle spoke. “Let’s head back onto the road. I want to reach the Glaive before dark.”

  Raif breathed and breathed, and after a while he nodded. After turning Moose out of the ditch, he took the road ahead of Angus, deliberately setting a pace that would keep him well ahead of the twice laden bay.

  He had been less than nothing to the Dhoonesmen.

  Raif bound Moose’s reins around his fist as he rode the winding curves and humpbacks of the Glaive Road. The Spill lay below him, its oily surface turned the color of bird blood by the first real sun to shine in days. Farms, mills, smokehouses, stovehouses, broken watch towers and fortifications, and crannogs extending out over the lake on stilts, all lay within a short distance of the road. Other people traveled the road, mostly carters, drovers, and market traders, but occasionally a fine lady dressed in scarlet velvet and sables, accompanied by her men-at-arms, or a pair of Forsworn knights, wearing iron scale gleaming with bone oil, cloth-of-skin cloaks, and the thorned collars known as the Penance, would pass by
or overtake them.

  Raif paid them little heed. Angus shouted ahead, informing him that the city itself would likely come into view any moment, yet Raif made no effort to search for it. The blank, disinterested gazes of the Dhoonesmen filled his sights. He wasn’t one of them now. Somehow, though his clothes hadn’t changed and his hair had barely grown, the weeks spent with Angus had changed him. A month ago the Dhoonesmen would have hailed him, asked what news he had of Dhoone yearmen fostered at Blackhail, what lakes had frozen on the Hailhold, what he was doing so far from home, did he need help or food or company. They would have seen him as one of their own. Instead they had seen nothing but a man on a horse who had no status or due respect in their world.

  Raif breathed heavily. With an effort he loosened his grip on Moose’s reins and set his mind elsewhere. Lowering himself in the saddle, he concentrated on guiding the gelding up the steep slope to the headlands that lay high above the lake.

  The surface of the road was especially bad on the incline, and mud broke away in frozen clumps as Moose searched for hoof holds in the ice. Five hours’ worth of sunlight had melted parts of the surface, and Raif’s gaze had settled upon a particularly treacherous-looking ditch filled with loose stones and wet ice, when Angus whistled softly at his back. Straightaway Raif looked up.

  Ille Glaive rose before him like a cliff of golden light. He saw stone walls and slate rooftops and needle-thin towers, all transformed in the sunset to gleaming metal things. A thousand tear-shaped windows collected shadows the color of dark amber, and a network of bridges, ledges, and battlements glinted like human spines dipped into gold. At the foot of the southern wall, the lake reflected a smaller, smoky version of the city, a mirror image seen through old glass.

  As Moose topped the slope, Raif studied the lakeshore, wondering how many men it took to break and clear the ice. Then he noticed the steam and bubbling water forming a stewpot along the bank.