A Cavern of Black Ice (54 page)

"The Halfman." Marafice Eye
spat the word.

"Yes. The Halfman. He will be able
to track Asarhia in ways you cannot."

"I will not have him in any sept
of my choosing."

"Don't be a fool. If this clansman
is a demon, as you say, then who better to deal with him than a demon
of our own?"

Marafice Eye grunted.

"And you do want them back, don't
you? All three of them. Asarhia must be brought to me alive and
unharmed, but the men…"

"They slaughtered my own."

"Precisely. Kill the clansman
where you find him. Angus Lok must be brought to the Cask and
tortured. He's so full of secrets his skin will likely burst the
moment we strap him to the wheel." Iss glanced quickly at the
Knife, then added, "You can have him when Caydis is done."

"Don't make light with me,
Surlord. I'm not one of your grangelings."

"No. But you want Lok and the
clansman, and it seems to me that Sarga Veys is your best chance of
getting them." Iss' temper rose as he spoke. The thought of
Sarga Veys tracking down Asarhia chilled him, yet time was running
out and new dangers had come into play, and Asarhia must be found. A
dry sept might easily lose her, especially now that she had the
protection of a man who could heart-kill seven brothers with seven
arrows if he chose. A fully formed sept was the answer: six armed men
and one magic user. Such small, fast-moving forces had once been the
scourge of the North.

Marafice Eye glowered. "Very well.
I'll take him with me, though I can't vouch for his good health on my
return."

Iss forced himself to smile. "As
you wish." Perhaps things wouldn't be so bad after all. The
Knife would keep an eye on Sarga Veys… that and one of his
dog-size fists. "Send him to me before you leave."

"Here?" The Knife snapped his
head in a circle, indicating the walls of red steel, the embossed
shields and iron bird helms arrayed on racks, the life-size statue of
the Killhound standing at the foot of the great fireplace, carved
from marble so black that to look at it hurt one's eyes, and the
tapestries nailed to the ceiling for want of a better place to hang
them, tapestries depicting Thomas Mar, Theron and Rangor Pengaron,
the Whitehog, and a dozen other men armed to the teeth and bathed in
blood.

Iss saw the Knife's point. "No…
tell him I'll meet him in the guardroom instead."

That
made Marafice Eye smile.
"There are a lot of angry brothers there tonight."

Iss shrugged innocently. "Then he
won't be lonely if I'm a little late."

*** Keep the rag in her mouth until she
wakes." Angus stood, grimacing as his muscles stretched and
twisted. He thrust a fist against the wet sparrow-size hole in his
chest, counted twelve seconds under his breath, then spoke again.
"You'd better take another draw of the ghost-meal. We have a
long night ahead."

Raif was kneeling over Ash's lifeless
body. Angus had found them an hour ago, drawn by Raif's cry. Shaking
with fatigue, his fingers yellow with the first sign of frostbite,
and his face black with blood, he had barely spared a glance for Raif
before starting work on Ash. After wadding a horse shammy into a
ball, he had thrust it into her mouth, then held her jaws together,
until nothing, not even breath, could leak out. Raif felt the sorcery
stop as quickly as a candle snuffed by hand. Even before the stench
of metal had dissipated, Angus began working on something else. He
lit a small alcohol-fueled fire, heated snowmelt in a tin cup, then
added dried herbs and roots to the liquid once it had boiled. The
concoction soon turned yellowy green and gave off an odor that
reminded Raif of the Oldwood in spring. "Bethroot to slow
bleeding, valerian to calm her mind," Angus said.

As he turned back to tend Ash, Raif
noticed that his uncle's sword was gone. The sheepskin scabbard was
limp and misshapen, striped with sword cuts and dark with blood.
After a moment Raif looked away. It was hard to think about what
Angus must have gone through to reach here.

When the green concoction was ready,
Angus came and knelt at Raif's side. Gently he eased the wadded
shammy from Ash's mouth and dribbled steaming liquid down her throat.
He said things, whispers too low for Raif to understand, all the
while rocking her back and forth against his chest. When he was
satisfied that she had swallowed enough of the liquid, Angus glanced
at Raif. "Turn your back." It was fiercely said, and Raif
obeyed immediately. Sounds of fabric being lifted and torn followed.
Water was poured. Rags were wrung dry. "Hand me the clean shirt
from my pack." Raif did so without once glancing at Ash. He
wondered how Angus could continue working with his chest wound still
open and leaking. The hole needed to be cleaned and stitched, yet
Raif knew his uncle would welcome no reminders.

The sound of fabric being knotted was
soon followed by a series of commands. "I need grease. Warmed
wax. The silver vial from my pack. Whatever spare clothes you have
must be cut to a size to fit her. Beat the ice from my buckskin
mitts, then take the chill from them over the fire. Quick now. There
is little time."

Raif didn't know how long it took to
fetch all the things Angus needed, yet the steady drop in temperature
made him aware of time passing. The night had turned as dark and
still as the inside of a sealed cairn. The fierce blue flames from
the alcohol fire gave off more heat than light, and Raif wondered how
his uncle could see to work. When Angus was done with tending to Ash,
he returned the shammy to her mouth and bade Raif watch her while he
saw to his own hurts.

He was a good deal harder on himself
than the girl. Tippling frequently from the rabbit flask, he cleaned
and stitched his own flesh. There was a lot of blood, and Angus was
by turns anguished then impatient. He swore like a hammerman. When he
was finished he had an ugly mass of black stitches on his chest. Raif
thought they looked like a heap of dead spiders, yet didn't say
anything. Angus stamped out the fire. "Get the horses ready.
I'll wake the girl. Have you taken that ghostmeal yet?"

Raif shook his head. Ghostmeal was as
false as the twin landscapes that hovered above the earth on cold,
bright days in the badlands. It fooled the senses, nothing more. Raif
preferred to be exhausted and
know
he was exhausted.

Brushing snow from his dogskin pants,
he rose and made his way to the horses. Moose welcomed his approach
by snuffling gently and nudging Raif's chest with his head. The gray
was a good horse, well suited to long treks through deep snow. Raif
brushed him down, cleaning ice from his eyelashes and nostrils. "It's
been a long day for you, too," he said, thinking of Orwin Shank
and all the fine horses he had bred. "Not much farther to go
tonight."

A faint groan sounded, and Raif looked
over Moose's shoulder to where Angus was crouched over Ash. "Wake
now, little lass. You're safe. Safe and amongst friends."

Ash opened her eyes. A wary, animal
expression crossed her face, and she shied away from Angus' touch.
Angus let her go, yet Raif sensed he did not want to.

"It's all right," he said
softly. "I'm Angus, and that's Raif, and we're taking you
somewhere safe."

"How long was I… asleep?"
Ash frowned as she spoke, her mouth twisting as if she'd tasted
something unpleasant.

"A wee nonce, nothing more."
Standing, Angus held out his hand for her to take. Once she was
upright she glanced around, at Raif, the horses, their surroundings.
Last, she looked down at her clothes.

"Your dress was as stiff as a
board when I got here, so I had little choice but to strip it away."
Angus met Ash's eyes, and after a moment she looked down, suddenly
finding a leather strap that needed retying beneath her chin. Angus
did not share her embarrassment. Clapping his hands together, he
said, "Well then. We'd better make a start. Raif. Roll the
blankets. I'll take Ash on the bay wi' me."

Despite Angus' casual tone of voice,
they broke camp quickly, burying the remains of the fire and filling
the empty waterskins with snow. As Raif turned Moose, ready to head
back onto the road, Angus stopped him with an almost imperceptible
nod in the direction of Spire Vanis. "I think we'll take the
high road," he said.

Which meant they took no road at all.
Angus made his own trail through the gorse and malformed pines above
the road, Ash pale and silent at his back. Raif took up the rear.
From the pace his uncle was setting and the small gesture he had made
toward the city, Raif knew there was a good chance they were being
pursued.

The thought did not make for an easy
ride. Raif found himself wishing he had reclaimed the arrows from the
dead men at Vaingate. Angus' sword was gone, the bow was useless
without sticks to fire, and between them they now had nothing more
deadly than a pair of belt knives and a halfsword. Neither of them
was in any fit state to fight if it came to it, and fleeing in haste
was no longer practical, as Angus' bay was loaded with weight.

Frowning, Raif turned his attention to
Ash. She was now dressed in a blue wool shirt donated by Angus and a
tanned hide coat and pants that had once belonged to Drey. Raif had
to admit that they suited her well enough. Strands of hair peeking
through her fox hood flashed silver in the snowlight. Why had Angus
risked everything to protect her? And what would have happened if he
hadn't come along in time to halt her sorcery? Deciding the answers
didn't bear thinking about, Raif turned his mind to following the
path instead.

The slope above the east road was
heavily canted, mined with bog holes and draws. Snow made the uneven
ground difficult to read. Bitter cold made breathing, moving, even
looking
, an ordeal to be endured. No one spoke. Angus
appeared to have a destination in mind, as he picked each step with a
deliberateness that Raif found vaguely reassuring. Angus always knew
a back way, a hidden path, a break between the rocks.

As they rode through a stand of limber
pines, Raif became aware of noises sounding in the road below. The
drum of hooves, the tinny clink of tack, and the rough bark of
someone coughing wafted up the slope along with a growing tide of
mist. Angus said nothing, merely increased his pace. Most of the
metal on Moose and the bay was covered with sheepskin to prevent
frostbite in the colder temperatures to the north, so the horses made
little sound as they trotted.

Eventually the ground began to level
off and a path of sorts opened up before them, narrow and soiled with
deer droppings. The going became easier, and it took Raif some time
to realize that they were actually back on some distant eastern slope
of Mount Slain. The steady pace of the horses rocked Ash to sleep,
and her head came to rest against Angus' shoulder. Strangely, Raif
wasn't worried about her; she wasn't absent, as she had been earlier.
She was simply exhausted and sleeping.

After a while Raif risked speaking to
Angus. "Where are we headed?"

"Aye. You
would
be
wanting to know that." Angus' voice was softer than the mist at
his heels. "If your old uncle's memory serves him well enough,
there's a bit of a tunnel somewhere along this path that leads down
from the mountain and under the east road."

Raif wasn't sure how he felt about
tunnels. "Won't those following us simply take the tunnel, too?"

"Nay, lad. The sept'll likely stay
on the road and wait for us to come down. They know we can't stay up
here forever. It leads nowhere."

"They know we're up here?"

"If they're using a fully formed
sept, they will."

"Fully formed sept?"

"Six blades and one magic user.
It's the way sorcerers have been hunted for centuries. Irgar the
Unchained, the Red Priest Syracies, Maormor of Trance Vor, and Asanna
the Mountain Queen all used them. It takes a magic user to find one.
Force isn't enough. Some with the old skill can stir air and water
and earth. They can crack ice that a squad treads on, fuel storms
that they ride through, and shake earth they sleep upon in the dark
hours of night. They can turn hunting dogs mad and make them attack
their own pack brothers, and ignite tiny sparks of sorcery inside a
stallion's heart." Angus glanced over at Raif.

Raif felt his cheeks heat. He pulled
hard on the reins, treating Moose roughly.

"A trained sorcerer is capable of
great subtlety. They can do more with less. They are taught how to
deflect and contain powers greater than their own, how to shield
those around them by setting blood-wards, and hook their claws into
others like themselves, and leech the power from them bit by bit.
They can confuse and disorient an enemy, weaving a fine mesh of
sorcery called a fret." Angus frowned into the mist. "And
they hunt magic users like dogs."

Raif shivered. The mist was heavy and
wet, like a shifting sea around them. Suddenly it was impossible to
see more than ten paces ahead. "How do they hunt people?"

"They hunt sorcery, not people,
Raif." Angus glanced over his shoulder, pinning Raif with his
coppery eyes. "All sorcery leaves an aftermath that can be
tracked. Users can
taste
the blood of a person who draws the
old skill, smell the metal they feed into the air. Even weeks later
residue can still cling to a user's hair and clothes, leaving a trail
as surely as a deer musking pines in a forest."

"So what Ash did…"

"Aye, lad. A sept is likely
tracking her aftermath as we speak."

"Then how can we hope to escape?
Even if we find a way down from the mountain, they will know it."

Angus was silent a moment as he walked
the bay through a crop of oily rocks. Ash, disturbed by the change in
motion, made a soft, snuffling sound and resettled herself against
Angus' back. When Angus spoke again, Raif had to strain to hear him.