A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  Hood, sworn brother-in-the-watch and distant kinsman to the Lord of the Straw Granges, sat across from his general on a birchwood bench, working his way through a keg of black beer thickened with egg and a haunch of roasted elk as big as a child. Hood and Sarga Veys had ridden to the city while the Knife was carted in a one-horse wagon like a bale of hay. Hood’s excellent horsemanship had not been affected in the slightest by the loss of two fingers on his right hand. Indeed, the man seemed determined to make the best of it. Veys thought him mad. Just last night Hood had stopped him in the corridor and waggled the stumps in his face. Make you sick, do they? he had said, his wet lips coming close to Veys’ ear. You should see how they pleasure the wenches.

  Veys’ face darkened at the memory. He hated being holed up with Marafice Eye and his thick-necked crony. Where was the sept Penthero Iss had promised? Veys wouldn’t have put it past the Surlord to slow their sending just to torture him further. Everyone was intent on causing him harm. Letting his anger seep into his voice, Veys said to the Knife, “The top layer of skin must shed before you can strap on a boot.”

  “And how long might that be?”

  “A week,” Veys replied, deliberately adding a few extra days to the tally.

  The Knife cursed. Swiping a hand across the table, he sent dishes and flagons crashing to the floor. Beer hissed where it landed on the hearthstone. “A week! A week! You said it was cured. Now look at it.” He thrust the blistered and weeping foot toward Veys. “Your foul magics have made a leper of me.”

  “I said that I had warmed the flesh as best I could. You will not lose your foot. You will be able to walk and ride as normal. What is happening now is just the natural course of events. I cannot make your skin heal any faster.”

  “Aye, but you’d make it heal slower if you could.” Hood turned over a cracked dish with the toe of his boot. “If the limb festers, you die, Halfman. My own eight fingers will see to that.”

  Veys pinched his lips tight. He didn’t understand Hood’s loyalty to the Knife, yet he knew it was something real. Hood would kill him, and it would be out of some strange and twisted brother love for Marafice Eye.

  Pale eyes glinting in anger, Veys watched as the innkeeper—a fat man with womanish breasts—shoved one of his girls toward their table to clear up the mess. The girl was blond, fleshy, and brazen, exactly the kind of woman Veys despised and Hood and the Knife well liked. Deciding it was time to leave, Veys stood. He had no wish to witness Hood and the Knife exchanging the kinds of obscenities they took for flirting with some cheap, overfed whore.

  Looking to the Knife’s foot, he said, “As long as it’s cleaned and packed with dog mercury each night, the skin will not fester.”

  Marafice Eye grunted.

  Hood smiled slowly, revealing a good portion of unswallowed elk between his teeth. Grabbing the blond girl by the waist, he forced her into his lap. “Running off to your bed, Halfman? The thought of our little Moll here scares you that much!”

  The sound of Hood’s laughter accompanied Veys from the taproom.

  Holding his white robe above the stair level so it didn’t catch dust from the floor, Veys mounted the inn’s main staircase and headed for his private chamber. The third best inn in Ille Glaive was named the Dropped Calf, and calf hides, calf pelt rugs, and paintings of calves formed the main decorations. Even the wax candles that lit the stairwell shone from scrubbed calf craniums, giving Sarga Veys the feeling he was being watched by the spirits of long-dead grasseaters as he made his escape.

  The quiet grandeur of his room soothed him. No dirty rushes, no cheap boxed pallet, no tallow, unwashed linen, or pests. Instead there was a proper pitch pine floor, a bed carved from fruitwood, a dozen beeswax candles whiter than his own teeth, bed linens as crisp as autumn leaves, and nothing but stray filaments of dust buzzing around the light. Gratifyingly enough, upon their arrival at the Dropped Calf the innkeeper had mistaken him for the head of the party and had housed Marafice Eye and Hood on the far side of the inn, in a chamber that looked out across the vinegar brewery next door. Veys had at first been surprised when Marafice Eye discovered the error and chose to do nothing about it, then contemptuous. The Knife could think no further than the Rive Watch and his men.

  Of course, the passing days had shown the innkeeper who the real leader was, yet it pleased Sarga Veys’ vanity to remind himself that on first look he had seemed the superior man.

  The greasy smoke in the taproom had agitated Veys’ eyes, and he crossed to the nearest of the two north-facing windows and flung back the shutters to let in the night. Icy darkness soothed him like a dip into a still pool.

  The Dropped Calf was situated close to the north wall of the city, and its height and elevation allowed Veys a view across the battlements to the cityhold beyond.

  The glacier-ground peaks of the Bitter Hills were a distant break on the horizon, topped by a crown of silver storm clouds. Each winter a hundred storms traveled south from the clanholds and the Want, some so close behind each other that three had been known to hit in the course of a single day. The Bitter Hills took punishment from them all. Perhaps once they had been mountains, yet between the grinding of ancient glaciers and the lashing of a million storms, they had been reduced to that awkward height that man had no right name for. Clansmen called them hills, yet that was just clannish bravado. And Veys knew all about that.

  Making a small grimace of distaste that exposed his fine, inward-slanting teeth to the light, Veys sat at the oak desk that was positioned in front of the window. An excellent, large-scale map of the Ille Glaive cityhold lay unraveled and pinned to the wood. The map had cost Veys a small fortune, purchased earlier that day from a young ambitious chartmaker named Siddius Horn, and it merited every coin paid and more.

  “All villages within thirty leagues of the city are marked and plotted,” boasted Siddius Horn from behind the shabby, acid-burned counter of his shop. “All hamlets, all proper farms, all roads, shared cattle trails, and elevations.”

  It was a very good map.

  Veys trailed a finger over the bleached silk-rag paper, tracing the course of Ille Glaive’s northern road. The road, painstakingly traced in iron ink with a hair-fine sable brush, led directly from the Old Sull Gate to the Ganmiddich Pass. Angus Lok and his two companions had taken that road from the city. Veys knew that. He also knew that instead of continuing north to the pass or turning west toward Clan Blackhail, they had turned east instead.

  The first piece of information had come cheaply enough. Gatekeepers were as willingly bribed as small children. It had taken Hood but quarter of a day to find the right gate and the right gatekeeper and purchase what intelligence was needed. The second piece of information was all Veys.

  Yesterday morning, after Hood had returned to the Dropped Calf, Veys had paid a visit to the Old Sull Gate himself. More coins had changed hands. All bore the fine undetectable film of grease that formed on objects much handled and much used, yet one bore a little something extra as well: a compulsion. Compulsions were high sorcery, and Veys was good at them. More often than not a compulsion was spoken, not passed from hand to hand, but Veys didn’t have the voice for it. A warm, rich, compelling voice was best. The sort of voice that encouraged a man to take part in one’s schemes, that flattered his ego, and played tricks with his reason, and made the most irregular requests sound sane. A good voice and a commanding presence were half the work of a compulsion. Without them, such sorcery was hard work.

  It had taken Veys most of the night to fix the compulsion on the coin. It was a simple one, of course. Compulsions only worked when the request was modest and of a nature that did not antagonize the victim in any way. Mostly they were good for information. With a compulsion upon him, a jailer might let slip the time of day when his prisoner was fed and the cell door was open, a pretty chambermaid might disclose her mistress’s bedtime indiscretions, and a respectable innkeeper might point the way to the room of a guest who had just paid him good money for silenc
e. The trick was in making the person want to fulfill one’s request.

  With the five silver coins that Veys had passed to the lean-bodied, smoke-eyed guardsman, he had also passed along the suggestion that the man ask all who passed into the city that morning a simple question. Had they seen two men and a woman riding together, the men mounted on good horses and the woman atop a gray hill-bred pony?

  The guardsman’s eyes had turned from smoky to blank as Veys spoke his request. No power was present in Veys’ voice, yet the coin pressing against the red flesh of the guard’s palm had burned cold with sorcery. The guard had nodded his assent even before Veys had reached the words gray hill-bred pony.

  Half a day had been enough. After a small but excellent noonday meal of pheasant prepared in a crust of its own blood, Veys had returned to the guard and the gate. The guard related his intelligence in a voice that was fast and furtive—somewhere deep inside he knew that what he did was wrong. Several people had sighted the three companions heading north toward the pass, and Veys was about to conclude that Angus Lok and his party had indeed crossed into the clanholds when the guard offered his last piece of information.

  “A drover and his son said they saw such a party heading east three nights back. Said they were about ten leagues off the north road, traveling along a cattle path known only to locals and drovers.”

  Veys made no reply—one did not thank an ensorcelled man—simply turned his back and walked away. A few discreet inquiries produced the name of the best chartmaker in the city, and not many hours later Veys was back in the comfort of his well-appointed chamber, plotting Angus Lok’s journey with a pot of lampblack ink and a twig.

  The guard’s information was sound. It was just like Angus Lok to know the back ways: the low roads, cattle paths, game tracks, and dogtrots. If a drover had claimed to see him in such a place, then the drover was likely right.

  Satisfied in that regard, at least, Veys sat back and contemplated Siddius Horn’s map. Until an hour ago he had assumed that Lok’s final destination lay east. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Asarhia March’s trail was dead. Either the sorcery that had clung to her had worn off or she had been warded by someone very clever indeed. Warding was a difficult business. One could not set wardings in place without giving something of oneself to the person who was being protected. Only few magic users could manage them, and almost all were likely members of the Phage.

  Veys’ lip twisted with the force of unwanted memories. Yes, there were one or two people in this city capable of warding Asarhia March . . . but that was not what concerned him now. Other sorceries did.

  An hour earlier, while he had sat with Marafice Eye and Hood in the taproom, wetting his lips with beer he found too coarse to swallow and cutting slivers of meat from the inner loin of elk, he had felt a different source of power in the North. Three fast jabs, one after another. Barely sorcery at all, so instinctively was it used by he who drew it.

  The Clansman.

  Veys had perceived him twice before. Once, in Spire Vanis as he heart-killed four sworn brothers in the shadow of Vaingate, and again on the shore of the Black Spill when he took down a pair of hounds. His aftermath reeked of Old Blood. It made Veys’ skin crawl. As soon as he perceived it, it was gone.

  North was all Veys knew. North, not east. North.

  A clean and perfectly filed fingernail scratched a furrow in Siddius Horn’s map. After a three-day detour east, Angus Lok and his party were back at the Ganmiddich Pass.

  To Sarga Veys that meant only one thing: Angus Lok had taken his new friends home. Smiling softly to himself as he worked, Veys began to work out how far three people mounted on good horses could travel east in a day in thick snow.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  In the Tower

  They separated him from Angus and Ash—that he was grateful for. That was one thing to hold on to in the darkness that was to come: Ash would not see or know.

  The skiff traveled smoothly over water as slick and black as volcanic glass. The storm had long passed, and the Wolf River was sleeping after a night spent howling at the moon. Raif could smell the thick animal odor of the water, water that in spring moved so swiftly and with such force that it killed more elk, horned sheep, snagcats, bear cubs, and small game than the largest pack of wolves in the North. It smelled of those kills now, of carrion suspended, half-frozen, in water so thick and cold that nothing would rot until spring.

  The Ganmiddich Inch lay ahead. The Inch was a shoulder of granite that broke water in the river’s middle, rising above the surface like the dome of an ancient temple, long sunk. The Ganmiddich Tower was built upon its bedrock. The red fire burning in the tower’s uppermost chamber provided the only light for the skiff’s skipper to steer by.

  It was close to dawn. Raif could tell that much from the lay of the stars and the restless switching of air currents as night made way for day. He lay bound in the belly of the skiff, the booted feet of six Bludd oarsmen keeping him in place. A rope lashed across the bridge of his nose made it difficult to breathe, and another binding the soft tissue of his throat made any but the slightest movements impossible. He had not been beaten, but rough handling had broken open the hard, inflexible scar tissue on his chest. Bluddsmen’s spit was still wet on his face and neck, and scratches on his temples and forehead leaked blood into the hull of the boat.

  Cluff Drybannock stood at the prow, one foot up upon gunwales, his entire body leaning forward toward the Inch. Earlier, as they’d ridden north toward Ganmiddich, he had let down his braids, and now his waist-long black hair streamed behind him in the predawn chill.

  Raif knew Cluff Drybannock by reputation—all clansfolk did. He was the Dog Lord’s right hand, his fostered son, a fatherless Trenchland bastard who was named after the first meal he had eaten at Clan Bludd: dry bread. Now he was known to all as Drybone. He was the only man the Dog Lord trusted, people said, the only one who could speak and fight in his likeness. And he was the best longswordsman in the North.

  A rasping noise broke the quiet of slow-moving water as the boat’s keel scraped against granite pebbles on the Inch’s shore. The oarsmen raised their oars and waded into the river to haul the body of the skiff ashore. Cluff Drybannock worked with the men as one of the team, the tail ends of his hair floating in the animal-scented water as he shouldered his portion of the weight.

  Raif looked up at the vast five-sided tower that had been standing since before the clanholds were settled. Algae, mud, and mineral stains ringed the tower’s lower chambers, each ring marking high water levels of ancient floods. The stench of the river clung to the stone, hiding in pockmarks and clefts in the granite. Ice, colored green and orange by rust, hung in storm-broken fingers from the tower’s ledges, overhangs, and mooring rings.

  The skipper tied the skiff to the nearest ring and then fell in line with the oarsmen, awaiting Cluff Drybannock’s word.

  Time passed. Cluff Drybannock stood, half-in, half-out the water, watching the red fire burn thirty stories above him. Weariness was a hard presence on his face, and Raif wondered what it had taken for him and his men to capture Ganmiddich’s roundhouse and hold.

  Finally the Bluddsman spoke, his vivid blue eyes not once leaving the light of the fire. “Take him inside and beat him.”

  The words were heavily said, and the six oarsmen and the skipper reacted to the tone of their leader’s voice by moving slowly and silently about their task.

  Raif felt large cool hands grasp his shoulders, ankles, and wrists. Somewhere ahead, an iron door creaked open, and for the first time that night Raif felt his stomach betray him by clenching in fear. Chains rattled as he was lifted from the stench and dampness of the skiff. Fresh air skimmed across his face, but the ropes at his nose and throat stopped him from inhaling deeply. The Bluddsmen’s breaths came short and ragged as they hauled him inside the tower.

  Inside all was as still and dark as a mineshaft. Wet mud sucked at the Bluddsmen’s boots. Leaking moisture dropped like
slow rain on their backs. The smell of the river was concentrated to a thick stock of meat, minerals, and mud. Smoke filtering down from the Bludd Fire provided the only relief from the stench. Raif watched stone ceilings pass above him as he was carried into the tower’s heart. He thought perhaps they would take him upward, but they bore him down instead.

  Mud turned to wet slime and then thick, blood-colored water as they descended. No one spoke. No tallow was lit to guide the way. Thin shavings of dawn light came from sources Raif could neither identify nor see. River sounds filled his senses. Even in winter, when the water was thick with suspended ice and sluggish with cold undertows, its current throbbed against the watch tower like a stallion’s heart. All around water trickled and dripped, poured and rushed, making the tower echo like a sea cave.

  A second door opened. Water sloshed around the Bluddsmen’s ankles, then Raif was thrown to the ground. His shoulder and temple struck hard stone. Water filled his mouth and nose. The rope at his throat was suddenly tight enough to choke him. Someone said, “Cut him free,” and cool blades licked his skin.

  Raif saw pale edges: a curved endwall, the lip of a stone bench, a square grille overhead that let in a keyhole’s worth of light. River water, foul smelling and turgid with algae and gelatinous strings of animal matter, formed a shin-high pool above the floor. Raif had no time to take in more details before the first blow was struck.

  Pain exploded in his head, streaking the world white and gray and filling his mouth with hot blood. Other blows followed, swift, well placed, each one a hard wedge in the soft belly of his flesh. Bluddsmen grunted. Water rode high against the walls, spraying the cell like a ship’s prow in a storm. Raif rose and fell with the waves, grasping water, then air, fingers scrambling for handholds in the stone.