A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  His jaws clenched and unclenched as he accepted the Bluddsmen’s blows. Boot tips hammered at his spine. Knuckles found the same places in his ribs . . . again and again, like a machine. Boot heels were thrust below the water level, seeking out the hidden tissue of thighs and groin. Raif thrashed like a hooked fish, knowing the same terror and confusion. Pain tore at his senses, causing him to breathe water and swallow air. Still the blows came, so many kicks and punches that soon they could not be separated or counted. Hard dots of white light burned in place of his vision. Vomit blocked his nasal cavity and flooded in and out of his mouth like driftwood carried on the tide.

  Soon he lost all sense of where he was and what was happening. Blows and dealing with the pain of them were all he knew. Water buoyed but did not cool him. His back was afire, stripped of skin and bleeding acid in place of blood. His stomach contracted in hard waves, yet each time he tried to raise his knees to his chest to soothe the cramping, he was beaten below the water . . . held under by booted feet.

  He lost time. Slaps revived him. A half-closed fist thudded against his chest, forcing water from his lungs. Fingers found his raven lore, twisted it round and round until the twine that held it was like a garrote against his throat. Breathing was impossible . . .

  More time lost. Through closed eyes he judged an increase in light. His eyelids were gummed together—whether by blood, mucus, or swollen tissue, he did not know. His throat burned. Breathing caused excruciating pain. A voice grunted words he could no longer understand, then something that could only have been a human hand pressed against his skull, forcing his head under the water once more.

  When he came to again he was no longer in the water. Hard stone dug into his spine and ribs. His clothes were sodden. Daylight was gone. People were gone. He was alone in the darkness with his pain.

  Hours passed before he could work up the strength to move his right hand. He wasted nothing of himself by trying to open the bruised flaps of flesh that were eyelids or lick lips that were so dry that a single breath exhaled through the mouth could cause them to crack and bleed. Everything within him he put toward raising his hand to his throat.

  Pain made him pass out more than once. Sour matter in his mouth stung his gums. The desire for water, just a few clear drops, was strong. But the desire to reach his raven lore was stronger.

  Fingers swollen with bruises grasped at the horn that had been embedded in his throat. Blood made the ivory slippery. Gobs of flesh came away as he pulled on the twine and closed his fist around the lore.

  Ash. He felt her presence immediately, like a warm breeze or a sliver of sunlight shining upon his back. She was close and unharmed.

  Close and unharmed.

  Those words made the next beating bearable.

  They came for him at some unknowable point in the night, or perhaps it was the next night and he had slept or been unconscious through a full day. This time they brought a hood for his head. He wanted to tell them not to bother, as he could not open his eyes, but instinctively he knew that any words spoken would condemn him to torture of a worse kind. They beat him in silence, always silence, grunting softly when striking a blow, breathing hard when tired by their exertions. Someone brought a knife and slit open skin on his thighs and buttocks. Someone else urinated on the wounds.

  Days passed. For hours at a time he was strung up on dog hooks hammered into the cell wall. His arms were dead. The hood over his face made every breath taste of his own trapped sweat. He was not fed, and what water he drank came from the cell floor. Sometimes the river rose then fell, washing his own filth away.

  Close and unharmed.

  Whenever he woke, he spoke those words to himself. Time came when he no longer knew their meaning, yet even then they calmed him, like a prayer spoken in a foreign tongue.

  Often he dreamed of Drey: Drey racing through the long summer grass in the graze; Drey teaching him how to tie and trim trout lures in the dead of winter when all the trout lakes were frozen; Drey waiting for him on the camp boundary the day they set Tem’s corpse ablaze. The ambush on the Bluddroad always played itself out one beat slower than real time. Time and time again Raif saw the two hard points of his brother’s eyes as he swung his war-scratched hammer into the Bluddswoman’s face.

  No. Raif’s dream-self fought the memory. That was not his brother swinging the hammer that day on the Bluddroad. That was not the Drey he knew.

  Hunger gnawed at Raif’s body, then his mind, robbing flesh and sanity and the simple ability to rest in peace. Waiting became worse than the beatings. Waiting, he was alone, utterly alone. Thoughts and dreams tormented him. Inigar Stoop pointed a finger, calling him Watcher of the Dead. Tem walked from the badlands fire, his body alive with flames, his mouth opening and closing as he spoke the names of the men who had killed him. Raif strained and strained but could not hear them. Later Effie was there in the cell with him, standing knee deep in water, calmly reciting a list of the lives he had taken . . . and somehow Shor Gormalin and Banron Lye were on the list, and he wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that he had killed no Hailsmen, but she disappeared before he could form the words. Later still Mace Blackhail was there, beneath the water, his wolf teeth flashing yellow as he laughed and said, I knew you’d push me too far, Sevrance.

  Pain was something Raif passed out from and woke to every day. Bruises blackened his body, yet he could not see them. Split skin knitted and festered, healed and reopened, raising scars and welts that only his fingers knew. Unseen Bluddsmen choked and suffocated him into submission every night, his head held underwater until his lungs burned like furnaces, the cord that held his lore twisted until it robbed his breath. Soon the sickening blackness of unconsciousness was all he knew of sleep.

  Then one day the beatings stopped. The high whine of the cell door woke him from unknowable hours of senselessness. Through the fog of wakening senses, Raif waited for the first blow to land. His body was stiff with pain, his stomach sick with it. Above his head his arms ached with the strain of bearing his weight. Every breath cost him. A muscle spasm in his knee made his entire body jerk.

  Close and unharmed. Who? Effie? Was she here?

  All thoughts left him as air switched against his throat. He hated his body for flinching, hated the fear that came to him as instantly as if he were a child listening for monsters in the dark.

  The expected blow did not come. Instead hands worked on the rope that bound his wrists to the dog hook. The sour taste of helplessness stung his mouth. The routine was to beat him while he was strung, then later, when he was incapable of taking action to protect himself from a fall, let him drop to the stone bench or the floor. The change in tactics made him nervous. When firm hands took him by the shoulders, he heard himself make an animal sound, like a hiss.

  Fingers grabbed the base of his hood, snapping his head back. “Now is no time to fight, Hailsman.” The voice was rough, heavily accented. Its owner took Raif’s weight when the last of the ropes was cut and then laid him down upon the bench.

  Relief soaked through Raif like water through a rag, leaving his body cold and limp. Another pair of hands clutched his throat, but he hardly cared. At least he would be beaten lying down.

  A knife point pricked his jaw as the rope that held the burlap hood in place was sawed. Blood rolled into the crease between Raif’s lips. The Bluddsman working the knife smelled of the last meal he had eaten. The stench of scorched animal fat and roasted leeks drove Raif to open his mouth and make a bloodmeal of the fluids accumulated there. When the rope was severed, the Bluddsman’s fingers hooked the hem of the hood and pulled it free.

  Raif squeezed his eyes more tightly closed. It had been days since he had last seen the faces of those who beat him, and he had no wish to see them now. Fresh air buffeted his face—also unwelcome. Suddenly he wished very much the beating would begin.

  Water sloshed as the man who had handled him left the cell. Raif heard the door close, yet he did not trust his senses and kept himself st
ill. They had never left him awake before. Minutes passed. The Wolf River rolled like liquid thunder against the tower’s exterior wall. Somewhere high above him, water dripped in perfect time like a pulse. Nothing moved in the cell. Raif concentrated on breathing . . . that, at least, was something he could do.

  “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  The voice came from close to the door. It was not the same man who had spoken earlier, though both shared the Bluddsman’s accent. This voice was harder, older, wearier.

  Water lashed against the cell’s walls. “I said LOOK AT ME!”

  Raif obeyed. Skin on his eyelids tore and bled as he forced the gummed tissue apart. Through a film of blood he saw a man of medium height, heavily built and turning to stoutness, with hair of such brilliant grayness that the braids that hung down his back seemed like something woven from silver, not human hair.

  The Dog Lord.

  Raif knew it instantly. The man’s presence filled the cell like a guidestone. It was impossible not to look at his deep blue eyes, impossible not to edge back in his presence. How had he stood there for so long, watching in utter silence, without making himself known?

  The Dog Lord said nothing. He looked at Raif and through him, his eyes pulling answers, his entire being pressing against Raif with a force so great it made breathing impossible.

  Raif held his gaze steady. He thought of the four Bluddsmen at Duff’s Stovehouse, the Bludd women and children running through the snow the day of the ambush. Shame burned him.

  The Dog Lord continued looking, seeing, knowing. His heavy breaths made the shin-deep water ripple as if with dropped stones. Suddenly he moved. Raif braced himself for a blow, but instead the Dog Lord turned his back.

  A cold dagger entered Raif’s heart. The contempt of the gesture cut him to the core. You are not worthy of my fist, it said. You are not worthy of my breath.

  As the Dog Lord opened the cell door and entered the world waiting on the other side, Raif felt himself shrink and wither like a dead leaf cast from a tree. He was nothing. The Bludd chief’s scorn had stripped away what the beatings could not. He was an oath breaker, an outcast, a killer of men. As Angus had promised, the story of the killings at Duff’s Stovehouse had spread. Raif Sevrance’s name and his deeds were known to all. His presence at the Bluddroad ambush was known, and the betrayal of his clan.

  Raif brought his knees to his chest and prayed for the senselessness of sleep. He did not want to feel or think. The pain was not enough, though. The leaking eye, the cracked ribs, the slit ear and lip, and the torn muscles in his arms and thighs were suddenly hurts that could be borne. He lay there in the quarter light and suffered the voices from his past.

  You are no good for this clan, Raif Sevrance, murmured Inigar Stoop. You are chosen to watch the dead.

  You knew I would leave! Raif fired back at him. So why did you not stop me from taking First Oath?

  Inigar Stoop shook his head from his place behind the shadows, the silver medallions sewn to his pig coat making a sound like breaking glass. Ask that of the Stone Gods, Raif Sevrance. It is they who form your fate, not I.

  Raif turned away, shifting limbs that felt hot to the touch. Still the voices hounded him. Raina warned him about Effie: Just you be careful with her, Raif Sevrance. You and Drey are all she has.

  And Drey spoke up for him that day on the court: I will stand second to his oath.

  Raif howled into the darkness.

  Hours later, fever finally took him to sleep.

  When next he woke the world was soft around the edges. Someone, a Bluddsman, placed a bowl containing thick gray liquid beside him on the bench. Raif watched the bowl intently. He did not move. Fever lines spreading along in his chest made his body tremble. Thirst tore at his throat, yet he could take no action to relieve it. Watching the bowl was all he could manage, and he did it diligently until he knew no more.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Lords and Maidens

  Vaylo Bludd slipped a square of black curd into his mouth and chewed on it. The wolf dog and the other dogs sat in a circle around their master, their great jaws firmly closed, their ears pinned close to their heads in sign of submission. Occasionally one would moan softly, making a sound as if in physical pain.

  Vaylo sat in silence, chewing. Ahead in the distance lay the shimmering black line of the Wolf River and the dark hump in its center that formed the Ganmiddich Inch. It was bitterly cold, yet the Dog Lord felt little of it. The night air was still, and the sky above the clanhold was cloudless, revealing a clawed moon and a thousand ice blue stars. Sitting where he was, on a block of trap rock used for blunting hammer edges and filleting trout pulled from the river, Vaylo could see both the Ganmiddich Tower and the roundhouse. All his now. All the land south to the Bitter Hills was his.

  Footsteps crunched in the snow behind his back. The Dog Lord did not need to look around to know the identity of the one who approached. The reaction of his dogs told him all he needed to know.

  “Does he still live?”

  Cluff Drybannock made no answer, yet Vaylo knew well enough the question had been heard and understood. Coming to crouch by the dogs, Drybone gazed out across the river as he warmed his hands against the wolf dog’s throat. After a while he said, “He’s still fevered. Cawdo doesn’t know how he’s made it through the past five days. Says any other Hailsman would be dead by now.”

  Vaylo spat the curd into his glove. Suddenly he didn’t want to be out in the cold any longer. He wanted to be close to the hearth, his arms full of the two grandchildren he had left. Without a word, he stood.

  The dogs were as much a part of him as the gray braids that fell down his back, and they rose as a single body the moment they heard their master’s boot leather creak. Drybone also rose. He need not have done—Cluff Drybannock had led the raiding party that took the Ganmiddich clanhold, and his due respect was now great enough that he need stand for no man, even his chief—yet he did so as quickly as always. Others might have dismissed the gesture as mere force of habit, but Vaylo knew better than that. Cluff Drybannock stood because he was a bastard and that’s what bastards did.

  Vaylo placed his hand on Drybone’s shoulder, and together man and chief took the short walk back to the roundhouse.

  The Ganmiddich roundhouse was small compared with those of Dhoone and Bludd. Built of trap rock and green riverstone, it commanded a high bank above the river and the forest of oldgrowth oaks known as the Nest. The main structure rose a full six stories aboveground, in fitting with the Ganmiddich boast: Over mountains and our enemies we tower alike. Like most northern clansmen, Vaylo felt nothing but distrust for a roundhouse that rose to meet the clouds. A roundhouse’s strength should come from the earth and the Stone Gods that lived there. Yet many of the southern clans built high roundhouses, betraying the influence of the Mountain Cities and the god of sky, air, and nothingness that the city men prayed to.

  The Dog Lord shook his head as he and Drybone entered the storm-smoothed edifice of the roundhouse’s southern wall. He found little joy in possession. Crab Ganmiddich, the Ganmiddich chief, was a man who had come to power only five years after he had. Crab swore like a trapper, would start a fight with any man who looked at him the wrong way, and had fathered as many bastards as most men had eaten meals, yet Vaylo had liked him well enough. He never lied, never failed to acknowledge his bastards, and once ten years ago when wetpox killed off all of neighboring Clan Withy’s spring lambs, he had sent sixty head of blacknecks as a gift.

  Vaylo sucked on his aching teeth. He had no grievances with Crab Ganmiddich, none save the man’s newly struck friendship with the Hail Wolf. The attack on Bannen had made the Crab chief nervous, and rather than rely solely upon Dhoone for protection, he had been making overtures to Blackhail. Dhoone was weak, broken, and dispossessed. Blackhail was strong and getting stronger. Who could blame the Crab chief for dancing to two fiddles? As for Mace Blackhail . . . well, he had fought beside Dhoonesmen to save Bannen, and once t
he battle was done and he had returned home to that dark stinking Hailhold of his, he must have turned his gaze south and asked himself, “What did I get for my trouble?”

  The Dog Lord shook out his braids. Next time Clan Blackhail came to the defense of a Dhoone-sworn clan, he doubted very much that the Hail Wolf would return home empty-handed. He had ambitions, that one. Vaylo recognized the taint.

  “The Crab’s fled east to Croser,” Drybone said, as always his thoughts closely following his chief’s. “He’s gathered forty score men about him and taken possession of the old fortalice.”

  Vaylo grunted. Slowly his enemies were mounting on his borders. Dhoone was split among Gnash, Bannen, and Castlemilk, and now Ganmiddich was housed at Croser. Any other time these facts would have consumed him, yet here and now his mind would not settle. The Hailsman was too close. Half the rooms in the Ganmiddich roundhouse looked out upon the tower and the Inch. All Vaylo had to do was raise his head and look.

  He looked now, one last time before Drybone drew the great clan door closed, shutting out the frost and the night. Thirty stories of green granite rose above the river’s surface like a Stone God’s finger pointing at the sky: Ganmiddich Tower. Raif Sevrance was held there at water level. Watcher of the Dead.

  A shiver passed along the Dog Lord’s body, making his seventeen teeth rattle in their casings of bone.

  “Nan. Bring the bairns to me. I’ll be in the chief’s chamber.” He spoke to a middle-aged Bluddswoman with braids the color and texture of sea rope, who approached with beer and sotted oats as he and Drybone crossed the vaulted expanse of the great hall. The woman met eyes with Vaylo for half an instant, nodded, then withdrew.

  Nan Culldayis had traveled down from Dhoone with him. She looked after his grandchildren now their mother and elder sister were gone. Vaylo trusted Nan with his life. She had nursed his wife through the last year of her illness and cared for his grandchildren and sons’ wives since. For many years now she had provided him with what private comforts he needed. She was of an age where conception and childbirth were well behind her, and that suited Vaylo well enough. Thirty-five years ago on his wedding day he had sworn to himself he would father no bastards.