A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  Effie took the stairs and headed for the small stone corridor that linked the main building to the guidehouse. It was late afternoon, not the time of day she’d normally choose to visit the guidehouse. Inigar Stoop was always there until sundown, and although Effie loved the dark smoke-filled quiet of the guidehouse very much, she always felt cold and itchy around the man who called it his home. Inigar smelled funny. Ever since the war started, he butchered hogs with his own hands and poured their blood on the smoke fires to make them burn thick and long. And his eyes were so dark they were like mirrors, and when you saw yourself in them you looked very small. Effie ducked to avoid a bloodwood beam leaking pitch. Inigar had a way of looking at you with those dark eyes that made you sure he knew all your secrets and bad thoughts.

  The great clang and hiss of the clan forge could be heard throughout the roundhouse day and night ever since Mace Blackhail had ordered Brog Widdie and his crew to turn every bit of metal in the roundhouse into an arrow or a hammerhead, yet as Effie approached the green-stained door of the guidehouse the noise receded to the distant clamor of a kitchen at mealtime. Effie didn’t like the forge. It was hot and bright, and the roughest of the tied clansmen worked there under Brog Widdie’s Dhoone-blue eyes. Yet she had grown accustomed to the noise. Things seemed too quiet when it was gone.

  Like many outlying parts of the roundhouse, the guidehouse corridor had ceded to damp. There were no longer enough men to plaster and rechink the walls, and Raina Blackhail had forbidden any woman to spend a moment plugging leaks or repairing cracks when she could be tending to war needs instead. Supplies were the biggest problem. Even with the tied farmers and free crofters yielding their livestock and grain to the clan’s keep, they were stretched for fresh eggs, butter, and milk. So many of the spring lambs had been slaughtered for meat that it was impossible to find a room in the roundhouse that was not hung with airing hides. Raina had fought many fights with the tied farmers. “Would you send your clansmen to fight on lard and oats?” she had cried when Hays Mullit threatened to drive his forty blacknecks back to his croft. Raina had shamed him and others into staying, though Effie only had to walk through the lower levels of the roundhouse to hear the sheep farmers nursing ill feeling toward the clan.

  Effie frowned. Just this morning Raina had ordered one in every five yearlings slain. With no clansmen free to hunt and no migrating elk butchered and rendered this season, meat was in short supply. And yearling lambs ate their weight in hay and feed once a week.

  All thoughts of war slipped from her mind as her hand came up to work the latch upon the guidehouse door. She took a breath, like a diver before entering the water. Smoke as blue as ice trickled through the opening, bearing the smells and shadows of the guidestone to Effie’s nose and eyes. Instinctively she brought her hand to her chest to touch her lore. Only it wasn’t there.

  “Not wearing your lore, Effie Sevrance?” Inigar Stoop emerged from the shadows, his body breaking strands of smoke as he moved. Smudges of black paint beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks made him look like someone wasted by disease and ready to die. The cuffs of his pig coat were singed in recognition of the war: He was the clan guide, and he would not fight or raise a weapon in his own defense, yet every time he lit a smoke fire, guided a clansman’s prayer, or chipped a warrior’s portion from the guidestone, he did so with hands ringed with death. “Step inside. Close the door. Approach me.”

  Effie did as she was told. The smoke was stinging her eyes. Suddenly she wished very much she had not taken her lore from around her neck.

  Inigar Stoop stood silent as she walked the length of the guidehouse. At one time Effie would have run her fingers along the guidestone as she passed it . . . but that was before the war. The stone was different now. Colder. Its surface was wet with pale seeping fluids that collected in ruts and hollows and hardened like tiny teeth. Even the great blocky profile of the stone had changed, and its many faces and creases were now misshapen by chisel cuts. Many clansmen had died far from home, their bodies claimed by enemy soil, leaving Inigar Stoop no choice but to cut surrogate remains from the stone. Families needed something to grieve over. Widows without bones needed stone.

  A thick litter of stone dust and soot hushed Effie’s footsteps as she came to stand in front of the guide. Inigar was always grinding these days, grinding and burning and speaking with the dead.

  “You have not answered my question, Effie Sevrance. Why do you not wear your lore?”

  Effie looked for a moment into the guide’s black eyes, then thought better of it and took to studying her feet. “I have lost it.”

  “Did the twine break?”

  “No.”

  “So you took it from your own neck?”

  “Yes.”

  Inigar Stoop chose silence for his reply. Effie felt her cheeks heat. The guide’s gaze was like a hand around her neck. It forced her to look up to receive the next question.

  “Why?”

  Effie thought of lying, but the guide’s black eyes were upon her and she saw her own face reflected there. She found she could not lie to herself. “It’s not always easy to wear it, not since Da died . . . and Raif left.”

  Inigar Stoop’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of Raif’s name. “Our lores drive us hard in times of war. Why should you stand before me and claim yours drives you harder than most?”

  Effie shook her head. That was not what she had meant to say.

  “Does it show you things, Effie Sevrance? Does it pour the un-ripened juice of the future in your ear?” Inigar’s bony fingers gripped her arm. “Tell me the truth, daughter of the clan. When you lie in bed at night with the lore upon your chest, are your dreams of things that will one day come to be?”

  Effie yanked her arm free. Her breath was coming hard and fast, and she felt fingers of smoke clutching the insides of her lungs. “No. It’s not like that. It doesn’t show me anything. It never enters my dreams. It pushes me. Here—” She hit her chest. “And when I take it in my hand I know things. Small things, like . . . like . . .”

  “Like what?”

  Muscles in Effie’s face fell slack. Her own words had trapped her. Her lore told her no small things. She had to think a moment before answering. “When Mace Blackhail came back from the badlands and he was riding his foster father’s horse, and he said that no one but him had survived the raid, I knew it wasn’t so. I knew Drey and Raif would come back.”

  The guide’s eyes glinted like two pieces of coal. “What else?”

  She searched for something to say. She would not speak of what had happened in the Oldwood the day she and Raina went to check on Raina’s traps. Nor would she tell him of the night her lore had awakened her and told her to run away. Those things were bad secrets, and she had learned her lesson about telling those. Raising her chin, she said, “I knew Raif would leave the clan. I knew it the day that he took his oath.”

  “That too.” The guide’s face did not soften one fraction, but when he spoke again there was less anger in his voice. “It was right that your brother left us, child. There is no place for a raven in this clan.”

  “Will he come back?”

  “Not as you know him.”

  Effie swallowed. She didn’t understand Inigar’s words, yet they made her insides ache. In all the months that Raif had been gone, she had not spoken about him to anyone. His name was no longer said in the clan. “I see him sometimes, when I hold my lore. I see ice and storms and wolves and dead men . . . and I want to warn him and tell him to be careful, but he’s not here.” Tears prickled in her eyes. “He’s not here.”

  “Is that why you’re not wearing your lore, child? Because it shows you things you do not want to see?”

  Effie nodded. “It pushes me all the time . . . and I get frightened. I don’t want to see bad things happen to Raif and Drey.”

  “Yet it is your lore, given to you by the man who was guide before me. No clanswoman can ever turn her back on her lore.”

&
nbsp; “I know. I only took it off for a bit. It’s worst when Drey’s away. Every time it pushes . . . I . . . I think—”

  “Hush, child. I know you love your brother very much.”

  Brothers, Effie amended to herself.

  “You must wear your lore, Effie Sevrance. Our clan is at war, and if the Stone Gods choose to send messages to you, what right do you have to turn away? Our warriors fight with fear in their bellies: How much less is their burden than yours?”

  Effie had no answer for that. What Inigar said was right and true. She only had to think of Drey to know that her fears were foolish compared with his. He had to ride from clan to clan in ice and darkness, never sure when the next battle would come or what it would bring. Clansmen he had taken his yearman’s oath with were dead.

  “Put your lore back in its place,” said the guide. “You need fear no more questions from me. You are a daughter of this clan, and you have the rock as your lore, and that means you are steadfast and silent. I trust you will speak to no others about this. There are many in the clan who would not understand the knowledge your lore brings, call it by a name which it does not deserve.”

  Effie nodded. She understood what Inigar meant. Mad Binny in her crannog over the lake was called bad names. Anwyn Bird said that at one time Mad Binny was the most beautiful maid in the clan. Her name had been Birna Lorn, and Will Hawk and Orwin Shank had once fought on the graze for her hand. Orwin had won, but once the banns had been spoken and the wedding day set, rumors began to spread about Birna being a witch woman. She always knew which cows would die from grass fever and which ewes would cast their lambs before time. Clanswomen began to fear her, for all she had to do was look at a pregnant woman to tell whether or not she would give birth to a healthy child. A month before her wedding to Orwin Shank, Birna met Dagro Blackhail’s first wife, Norala, in the kaleyard. According to Anwyn, Norala’s belly was newly quickened with child, but not even Norala knew it. The moment Birna Lorn saw her, she said, “That bairn you’re carrying will die in your womb.” Three weeks later when a bloody sack was cast from Norala’s belly, Birna Lorn was driven from the guidehouse by an armed and angry mob. Norala blamed her for the miscarriage of the chief’s first child.

  “Effie Sevrance . . .” The guide’s cold, irritable voice broke through her thoughts. “See to your lore.”

  She shook herself. “I don’t know where it is. I took it off and put it in my fleece bag with all my other stones. Only now I can’t remember what I did with it afterwards.”

  “Your fleece bag is beneath my work bench. Fetch it now and do not leave it here again.”

  Too embarrassed to feel relief, Effie shuffled past Inigar Stoop and made her way to the far corner of the guidehouse, where the business of chiseling and grinding was done. She was such a fool! Of course she had come here last night! It was too cold to venture outside to the little dog cote, and she had so wanted to be somewhere quiet and alone. And safe.

  As she plucked the fleece bag from the floor, Inigar said, “Do you think me a hard man, child?” She turned and shook her head, but he did not seem to notice. His eyes were focused deep within the smoke. “Mace Blackhail is the chief, and he does what a chief must in times of war, yet his eyes only see so far ahead. He thinks in terms of his own lifetime; what he can gain for himself, his family, and his clan. I do not fault him for this. It is the way of all chiefs. It’s not his place to think of those to come. The dark times are coming and shadows are massing in the Want. Soon the sky will burn red, and the City of Ghosts will rise from the ice, and a sword will be drawn from frozen blood. If I told this to Mace Blackhail, it would mean nothing to him. Clan battle men, not shadows, he would say. Yet he would be wrong. The Stone Gods will not turn their backs on this fight.”

  Careful not to make a sound, Effie tied the fleece bag to her belt. She didn’t understand what Inigar’s words had to do with her.

  “It is I who must guide the clan through the long night ahead. My lore is the hawk, and I see farther than most, and that is why when your brother came to me seeking guidance, I spoke words to unbind him from this clan. My duty is to Blackhail and the gods who live in stone.”

  Effie breathed quietly as she listened to the guide speak. Inigar was old and wise, but she knew words alone had not sent Raif away. “Hawks do not see in the darkness,” she said quietly. “Owls do.”

  Inigar Stoop’s small, paint-smudged face turned toward her, and his gaze sought her out through the smoke. “You have the right of it, child, yet there is no owl lore amongst us. I would like to think that if you had been born two years later, after the old guide had died and his duties fell to me, I would have chosen the owl for you.”

  It was the nearest thing to kindness she had ever received from Inigar Stoop. Tears for herself and Raif collected in her eyes. “But guides do not choose the lores of new babies. They dream them.”

  “For you and Raif I would have dreamed again.”

  A tear slid down Effie’s cheek.

  “Go, child. Be sure to wear your lore day and night.”

  Effie moved past the guide, careful to touch neither him nor the guidestone. Only when she reached the door did she remember Anwyn’s message. “Orwin Shank called a meeting in the Great Hearth. He asks for your presence there.”

  Inigar Stoop nodded. “Tell him I will come once I have seen to the smoke fires.” His thin brown fingers caressed the burned matter at his cuffs. “And Effie, keep yourself safe.”

  The look he gave her almost made her speak. It would be such a relief to tell someone about the time Nellie Moss’ son came for her in the middle of the night. She could not tell Drey, for his honor would leave him no choice but to go straight to Mace Blackhail and confront him. Effie’s stomach twisted sharply at that thought. Drey must never know. Abruptly she dropped her hand to the fleece bag at her waist. She had her lore back now; that would warn her if Cutty Moss came again . . . if he ever did. In all the days that had passed since she’d overheard Nellie Moss speaking with Mace Blackhail outside the dog cotes, her lore hadn’t once told her to flee. Perhaps she was safe. Perhaps she’d made more of the thing than it was worth. Already the details of what had been said had grown fuzzy in her mind.

  “Are you all right, child?” Inigar’s voice was almost gentle.

  But in the end it wasn’t enough. Effie tapped her fleece bag. “I’m just glad to have my lore back.” Before any more questions could be asked, she slipped through the door and into the cool, damp corridor beyond. The fresher air pleased her, and with a little skip she broke into a run. She had a message to deliver to Orwin Shank, but first she would do what the guide had commanded and return her lore to its proper place. This was a thing that couldn’t be done anywhere, for she was governed by her own secret rules in this matter. She needed somewhere quiet, just to hold it for a bit first, make up for time lost.

  The space under the stairs in the entrance hall was a good place to sit for a while and not be noticed. It was good and dark, and there were all sorts of interesting dead spiders to look at. Once she’d tucked herself into the deepest part, where the ceiling was lowest and the stone floor was furry with dust missed by Anwyn’s broom, she slipped her hand into her bag. Smooth, lifeless pebbles and chunks of rocks met her fingers. Frowning, she reached deeper and spread her hand wide, yet still could not feel her lore. Quickly she pulled the bag free from her waist and emptied the contents onto the floor.

  Effie felt her face go cold as she watched the dust settle. Her lore wasn’t there.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The Iron Chamber

  The secret to blood sorcery, thought Penthero Iss as he hooked the baleen lamp to a nail hammered deep into the wall, was to remove the caul fly whole. Any fool could take a scalpel to the host’s skin, make an incision above the fidgeting almond-size mass of the parasite, swiftly grip the body sac with a pair of tongs, and tug it out. Trouble was, with that method the caul fly nearly always failed to cooperate. As soon as the scalpel edge cam
e down upon the skin, the parasite would throw itself into paroxysms. Its double-jointed legs would begin to flay. Its wings, folded over its thorax in a protective carapace until the creature was ready to leave its host, would spread and break. Its horned mouthpiece would sink into muscle flesh and its massive, articulate jaws lock in place.

  It was messy, very messy. Bits of caul fly always broke off, and no matter how hard one tried to remove all the detritus, some tiny bit of matter was often overlooked. And overlooked pieces of caul fly had a nasty habit of festering and causing gangrene in the host.

  Frowning, Iss turned and contemplated the iron chamber and the Bound One chained to its walls. Light seemed to shine differently here, in the very apex of the Inverted Spire, and the air was heavier and harder to breathe. The Bound One wheezed as he drew breath, the skin at his throat pulling so tight that Iss could count the veins. Iss took a step toward him. In his hand he held a pair of fine tweezers, their tips black with carbon from a whole hour spent above a flame, and a jeweler’s wedge-shaped knife just in case.

  A muscle as thin as trap wire contracted in the Bound One’s forearm as he attempted to raise his hand toward his master. One of his eyes was as pale as milk and quite dead. The other was cloudy, the iris stained white in places, yet he could see. Iss had long decided he could see.

  Iss knelt upon the iron lip of the apex and pushed apart the loose folds of the Bound One’s tunic. A small bandage, the size and shape of an eyepatch, was fixed in place on the uppermost section of the Bound One’s back. One had to asphyxiate a caul fly if one wanted to remove it whole: block its airhole with a bead of fish glue, fasten a cap of bladderskin over the boil, then seal the cap edges with more glue. Eight hours was usually enough to send the caul fly to sleep.