A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  “Tell me the details,” said the Crouching Maiden in her silken ribbon of a voice.

  Iss thought of Angus Lok, thought of the Phage, of old hates and old worries that had prayed on his mind for sixteen years. He gave the details. The meeting lasted scant minutes after that.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Watcher of the Dead

  Raif burned. His skin was hot to the touch, wet, swollen. When he touched the broken flesh on his arms, it was like probing a roast pulled from the fire. All of him ached, yet he could barely make sense of the pain. Mostly his body plunged him into sleep. Fever thrived in the darkness, shooting out purple bloodlines along his chest and rattling his bones with shivers so intense, he felt them even as he slept.

  His dreams were no longer filled with people and places he knew. Strangers spoke to him, calling him Watcher of the Dead, massive silver-pelted wolves chased him through forests of pale trees and across frozen lakes polished so highly they reflected the moon and stars. A pair of mated ravens flew overhead, leading him north, always north. Sometimes he glimpsed the broken walls and skeletal arches of a ruined city above the treetops. Once he looked down at his feet and saw that the hard surface he walked upon was a sea of frozen blood.

  In and out of sleep, he weaved, waking for short, dizzying moments when even the effort to lift his tongue from the base of his mouth was too much to be endured.

  No one beat him now. They came, once or twice a day, bringing swim bladders full of freshwater and sotted oats cooked in beer. Most spat as they made for the door, as if tending him had left a bad taste in their mouths, one they had no wish to carry home to their womenfolk and hearths. Some signed to the Stone Gods if they happened to touch him. Others swore under their breaths, calling him the Hail Wolf’s Firstborn or other damning curses. All desired his death; Raif saw it in the cold black centers of their eyes.

  Close and unharmed. Even now, after he had long forgotten their meaning, those words held power over him. Sometimes when he was lost in the deep well of fever bliss, his lungs hissing like war engines, the heat on his forehead raising hard, clear blisters, he would hear himself say those words.

  Always they brought him back. He’d wake, dry mouthed and blinking, to find his hand at his throat and his fingers glued fast to his lore.

  It was enough to keep his mind intact.

  When the worst night came and he lay shivering on the stone bench, his clothes wet as a drowned man’s, his mind shifting between real dreams and hallucinations the fever sent him, he felt himself slide closer to the world’s edge. Death was a pale presence in the cell. Raif did not have to see her to know what she was. Like a brother parted from his sister at birth, he recognized her in an instant.

  We are alike, you and I.

  The words came from nowhere, sliding down his spine like beads of ice. Half beings, tall and distorted as children’s shadows at sunset, danced in the far quarters of his vision. Raif licked lips as dry as paper. He thought he should be afraid, but neither his body nor his mind could generate the physical state of fear. He blinked, because that was one thing he could do.

  Shall I take you, Watcher?

  The voice sounded in the space beneath his jaw, causing a soft, intimate pain like a lover’s bite or a sister’s pinch. The shadow beings rippled and grew larger with every word.

  Raif held himself still. Something brushed against his cheek. An exhaled breath condensed against his teeth and retinas. The sweet, just turned odor of sour milk filled his mouth. The scent of new death.

  Close and unharmed. He didn’t know where the words came from. They were simply there inside his head, tugging away like a child at his father’s coattails. Close and unharmed. Raif strained for the memory. Who?

  The shadow beings filled his vision, their limbs of smoke curling around his fingers and thighs, the vacant sockets of their eyes and mouths sucking the life heat from him. Cold entered through pores in his skin, sinking downward through layers of fat, muscle, membranes, and bone toward the one thing Death wanted: his soul.

  Raif gasped. Something glimpsed or half glimpsed in the center of the cell stopped his heart. Death showed her wares. Raif knew terror then, knew in every particle of his being that he did not want to travel that path, did not want to visit the hell that was waiting for him in the space between her arms.

  Close and unharmed. The words thundered through his skull. Close and unharmed. Close and unharmed. Raif thrashed against the stone bench. He had to know, had to remember, had to find a reason to fight back.

  The shadow beings began to feed. Painless as mosquitoes drawing blood, they sank their diamond fangs into his flesh. Strings of saliva flashed like spider’s silk, each one landing on his skin with a hiss of utter coldness.

  Raif raised his hand toward his throat. A dozen of Death’s creatures fed on his arm, weighing it down, sucking its juice, but he fought them with jaws clenched. He was Raif Sevrance, Raven Born, Oath Breaker, and Watcher of the Dead, and nothing would stop him from reaching his lore.

  Anger was hot within him, pumping blood to the far reaches of his body, where necrosis had already begun. More half beings gathered, drawn to the heat that was their one stock in trade. His arm shredded their insubstance, split their death’s-heads in two. Close and unharmed. Fingers stabbing at hollow eyes, Raif reached for his lore. As his fingertip grazed the cool black horn, Death fought him, but he was too close and too angry to let her have her way. Wrenching his arm free, he grabbed the raven’s bill.

  Close and unharmed.

  A moment stretched to breaking as Raif pressed the lore against the meat of his palm. The creatures continued to feed, but he did not heed them. His heart beat, just once, as the lore spoke a name for his ears alone.

  Ash.

  Ash was close and unharmed. And that was reason enough to fight Death tooth and nail.

  Letting the lore drop against his chest, Raif braced himself for war. He had made Ash a promise, and he would not fail her, and if he had to battle his namesake, then so be it.

  As he raised his torso from the stone bench, a murmur passed through the half beings. In an instant they were gone. Fled.

  Soft laughter tinkled through the cell. Shadows grew within shadows, becoming darker and darker until it seemed as if the very substance of time collapsed under their weight. Perhaps I won’t take you yet, Watcher. You fight in my image and live in my shadow, and if I leave you where you are, I know you’ll provide much fresh meat for my children. Death smiled as she withdrew. Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance. Any less and I just might call you back.

  “No!” Raif screamed into the emptiness of his cell. NOOOOOOOOO . . .

  A thin keyhole of sunlight shining down upon his face woke him. Even before he opened his eyes he knew the fever had broken. Lying there motionless, enjoying the sun’s warmth upon his face, he let the aches and hurts of his body occupy his mind. Memories hovered close, and he knew he could retrieve them, but first he had to deal with the pain.

  Thirst made him probe the bench’s ledge for the water bladder. His tongue felt large in his mouth, bloated and sore with many cuts. When he found the skin he spilled more water than he drank, letting the cool liquid run down his chin and neck. His throat stung as he swallowed, and he found he was quickly sated. He didn’t have the strength to return the bladder to its place, so he let it drop into the water, where it floated for a while and then sank.

  He slept for some time after that, and when he next woke the cell was dark. He missed the sun. He had not intended to sleep.

  More water and a fresh bowl of sotted oats lay at his feet. Their presence reassured him: The world he had come to know remained unchanged. He drank the water—all of it this time—but had no stomach for the oats. Pain shot up his arm as he pushed the bowl away, and memories of the night before came with it. Creatures feeding on his flesh. Fangs as cold as ice. Raif shook his head, drove the images back.

  He relieved himself in the corner of the cell and then let sleep take him
once more.

  He did not dream, or if he did, it was of simple things that had no meaning. He slept well and long, and when he next opened his eyes it was dawn.

  His body moved more easily from the bench this time. His head pounded less. When he reached for the freshwater bladder, he tensed, but the pain when it came was less than expected. Having drunk his fill, he probed the cuts, bruises, and sore points on his body. A rib broken during the first of many beatings had already begun to mend. It hurt when he touched it, but the join seemed surprisingly smooth. A bruise the size and shape of a ewe’s heart colored the skin above his left kidney. The organ beneath was tender, and he winced as his fingers examined it. The split stitchwork on his chest was hard with scabbed flesh, and his arms and legs were striped with cuts at various stages of healing. All of his muscles ached. When he probed the glands that lay beneath his jawline, his fingers brushed against the cord that held his lore.

  Ash. Close and unharmed. He didn’t even need to touch the lore itself to know it.

  After that he stopped tending his wounds and lay down on the bench to rest and think of Ash. The knowledge she was safe soothed him, and he soon fell asleep.

  He awoke to the awareness that he was not alone in the cell. Without opening his eyes or changing his breathing pattern, he tested the light levels through his eyelids and drew air across his tongue. It was full dark. It could have been anytime in the long winter’s night, but the darkness had a weight and complexity to it that came only with many hours of nightfall. The air tasted of dogskins and rendered dog fat, and Raif knew he was in the presence of the Dog Lord.

  He opened his eyes.

  Moonlight silvered the cell, glinting upon the water and turning stone walls to blocks of ice. The Dog Lord was looking straight at him, his face half-hidden by shadow, his eyes the color of ink. Taking a breath, he filled his chest with air that stank of death. “They told me the fever would not take you.”

  Raif acknowledged the words with a small movement of his jaw. The movement annoyed the Dog Lord, and he kicked the water at his feet, sending it spraying into Raif’s face. “Why is it that you live so easily when those who cross you die more quickly than newborns in a wolf’s jaw?”

  Shaking drops of river water from his face, Raif rose to sit upright on the bench. He made no reply. The only sound was the water sloshing against the walls of the cell.

  The Dog Lord ran a large red hand over his face and his braids. For a moment he looked very old. When he spoke his voice trembled. “Tell me, what evil lies at the heart of your clan, that men such as you and the Hail Wolf are born?”

  The Hail Wolf. So that’s what they were calling Mace Blackhail these days. Raif said, “Do not link my name with his.”

  “Why? You slew in his name on the Bluddroad, then again in the snow outside Duff’s.”

  Raif’s face burned. There was nothing to say.

  “Answer me!”

  He flinched but did not speak. To answer would be a betrayal of his clan . . . of Drey. The truth had died that day on the Bluddroad. He would not be the one to resurrect it.

  The Dog Lord came for him, lunging through the river water to take Raif’s throat in his hands. Pressing his thumbs into Raif’s wind-pipe, he cried, “You slew my babies. Out there, in the cold and the snow. Children, they were, just children. Scared, shivering, clutching at their mothers’ skirts.” His voice was terrible to hear, rough with grief so powerful that each word shook him like a fever. The image he created was so close to the truth that Raif could not meet his eyes. “And they called for their granda to help them. And their granda did not hear.”

  Abruptly the Dog Lord released his hold and turned away. Muscles to either side of his neck jerked powerfully, yet within a second he had stilled them.

  Raif spat blood. His throat was on fire, but he made his voice hard as he said, “You slew our chief in the badlands, him and a dozen more. You started this dance of swords. You struck the first blow.”

  The Dog Lord lashed at air with his hand, pushing Raif’s words from him. “Clan Bludd made no raid on Blackhail. It may have suited the Hail Wolf to claim it, but Dagro Blackhail did not die by my hand.”

  Raif stood. He knew he should be surprised at what the Dog Lord said, but he wasn’t. A cold anger grew within him, and he felt his face tighten as he stared at the Dog Lord’s turned back. “Why didn’t you deny it?”

  “Who would? When half of the clanholds is praising your jaw for carrying off such a raid, and the other half are so scared that it might happen to them that the piss freezes to their thighs at the sound of your name, who’s going to stand up and forswear it?” The Dog Lord shook his head. “Not me.”

  “Who, then? Who did it?”

  Something in Raif’s voice made the Dog Lord turn to face him. His eyes were hard as sapphires, yet Raif met them with a hardness of his own. This man standing before him possessed knowledge that could have stopped a war.

  The Dog Lord’s braids rose and fell against his chest as he gathered breath to speak. His voice, when it came, was unrepentant. “You’ll hear no answers about the badlands raid from me. I wasn’t the one who rode home from a killing field and named myself a chief.”

  Raif felt a portion of his anger leave him. The Dog Lord had spoken his own thoughts right back to him. Struggling to find sense, Raif said, “What of the wounds? Bron Hawk was there the night you made raid on the Dhoonehouse. He said your swords entered flesh but drew no blood. I saw the same thing at the badlands camp. My father’s rib cage was smashed to pieces, yet there was barely enough blood to dye his shirt.”

  The Dog Lord swore. Placing a hand upon the cell wall, he let the ancient stone of the Ganmiddich Tower bear a portion of his weight. “I should have known,” he murmured. “The devil is playing both sides.”

  Hairs on Raif’s arms prickled, and in the space of one second he remembered all that Death had said. Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance. Raif shivered. He heard his voice say, “What do you mean?”

  The Dog Lord turned on him. “What do I mean? What do I mean? You dare ask me what I mean? You, who have slain children in cold blood and butchered three of my warriors so badly that I could not let the widows tend their corpses.” Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke, and his braids cracked against his shoulders like whips. “I will answer no questions from Watcher of the Dead. Cluff Drybannock was right. You must be finished, and quickly. Would that he and his men had cut you down where they found you, and not thought to save you for me. Would that the deed had been done, and my hands need not be stained with your blood.”

  Raif stood tall and silent in the face of the Dog Lord’s fury. He wondered how much of it had to do with him. The Bludd chief had not known about the wounds at the badlands camp. Yet he knew now, and that knowledge had shaken him.

  The Dog Lord took the three steps necessary to bring himself opposite Raif. Reaching out, he closed his hands around Raif’s lore. “They said your guide had named you a raven.” With one quick movement he snapped the twine. “If it wasn’t for an oath spoken to the Surlord’s daughter, you would be dead this night, Raif Sevrance. Know that. Think on that. And then spend the next night praying to the Stone Gods for mercy, for when the time comes you shall get none from me.”

  With that he turned and walked toward the door. Before he reached inside the lock hole to open it, he dropped the raven lore into the dark, greasy water at his feet.

  Raif swayed, forced himself to stay upright until the Dog Lord had gone.

  FORTY

  In the Crab Chief’s Chamber

  Noticing that the smoke from the fish-oil lanterns irritated Sarga Veys’ eyes, Vaylo Bludd ordered another two to be lit. He couldn’t stand the stench of them himself—he’d been in this blasted tall roundhouse for six days now, and his clothes and braids reeked of river trout—but he’d be damned if he’d make this meeting any easier for the Halfman. They could call him the Fish Lord first!

  Neither Marafice Eye nor the Halfman looke
d at ease. The Knife had already staked out a corner of the chief’s chamber and made it his own. He walked it now, his massive body straining against his urine-softened leathers as he moved. Every now and then he would look around, his gaze alighting on blunt objects, metal pokers, and ceremonial weaponry like a prisoner contemplating escape. The Dog Lord detected a limp, carefully concealed. As for the Halfman, well, he looked no different from when Vaylo had seen him last. Despite the long ride from Ille Glaive, his white robe and kidskin boots were barely soiled, and he must have shaved on the hoof for his jaw was smoother than a purse made of silk.

  They had arrived at noon. Ten men in all: the Knife, the Halfman, a sworn brother with only three fingers on his right hand, and a full Rive Watch sept. The sept’s appearance upon the bluff south of the roundhouse had caused a stir among the clan. The Rive Watch, with their bloodred blades, their black leather cloaks, and the Killhound embroidered at their breasts, represented the might of Spire Vanis to the clansmen. They wore iron bird helms, which none removed until they were challenged by a dozen spearmen a hundred paces from the roundhouse door. It was an act of arrogance and hostility that Vaylo had made them pay for.

  After four hours’ forced wait in the ewe pen, the sept’s manners seemed little improved.

  It was dark now, early evening. A high wind rattled the shutters and breathed down the chimney, causing the flames in the hearth to leap into the room. The sept and the man with eight fingers had been led to the Ganmiddich kitchen, where Molo Bean had them well in hand. Vaylo almost pitied them, for Molo was an excellent hammerman and a fine cook, yet he hated city men with a vengeance. Eighteen summers ago a troop of white helms from Morning Star had killed his brother in a dawn raid upon his father’s homestead in Clan Otler. The white helms had taken offense at a damn built by Shaunie Bean to direct water from the Wolf River northward to wet his fields.

  Vaylo sucked on his aching teeth. The city of Morning Star was no friend to Clan Bludd. He would have to remember to send an osprey to his first son, Quarro, tell him to set more watches on the Bluddhold’s southern borders. The Lord Rising and his white-helmed cockerels would get no land from Vaylo Bludd.