A Cavern of Black Ice (69 page)

He was ill humored now, sitting
awkwardly in his chair at the head of a broad oak table laid with
chained books, rolled hides, and copper tablets as thin as blades.
Mud glistened on the walls behind his back, oozing softly as the
goose-fat lantern warmed the chamber. "I don't understand,"
Ash said. "What is the Blind?" Heritas Cant and Angus
exchanged a glance. Raif watched his uncle's face carefully, trying
to see beyond Angus' guard of good humor. Angus and Ash were sitting
close, sharing a bench across the table from Cant. Raif sat with his
back against the far wall, glad of his place in the background in the
dim low-ceilinged space.

"The Blind is a place of
darkness," Heritas said. "Some would call it the
underworld, others would say it is the boundary where hell and earth
meet. More learned men will tell you that it is a place of holding, a
prison if you like, where beings that should never have been brought
into existence are walled in by the bricks and mortar of ancient
spells." A pause followed, where Heritas settled his crippled
legs into a more comfortable position against the chair. When he
resumed speaking his voice was sharp with pain, but as he continued,
everything—the chamber, the mud walls, the light from the
lantern, and even his own pain—fell away.

"The Blind is home to those who
should be dead. Things live there who crave the light and the warmth
of the world we inhabit. Hunger is all they know. Need is all they
feel. For a thousand years none amongst them have reached the light,
but still they do not forget or stop craving. Desire only deepens
with time. The Blind is as cold and empty as eternity; it is fed by
the dark rivers of hell, held in place by spells so terrible and
lasting that closeness to its boundaries can kill.

"The creatures who wait there are
chained in blood. They hate living men with all the substance of
their souls. Once they were human. Once they walked our world as men,
yet dark times came and some would say the world cracked open and
through the breach rode the Endlords. They have many names, these
lords: Lords of Shadow and Lords of Night, the Unleashed, the
Condemned, the Shadow Warriors, and the Takers of Men. One touch is
all it takes for an Endlord to claim a man's body and soul. Their
flesh bleeds darkness. Cut them open and the black substance of evil
leaks out. In the Time of Shadows they massed great warhosts that
stretched from sea to sea. They were terrible to behold, human yet
not human, wearing the faces of men and women they had claimed,
stinking of death, their eyes burning black and red, their bodies
shifting shadows beneath them. The Endlords rode at the head of their
armies, great beastmen on black horses, with weapons forged from
voided steel that reflected no light.

"It is said that they were birthed
at the same time as the gods, and if it is the gods' purpose to make
life, then it is the Endlords' purpose to destroy it. Make no
mistake, the world
will
end, perhaps not for a thousand
thousand years, but when it does it will be the Endlords who will
dance upon the wreckage.

"They ride the earth every
thousand years to claim more men for their armies. When a man or
woman is touched by them, they become Unmade. Not dead,
never
dead, but something different, cold and craving. The shadows enter
them, snuffing the light from their eyes and the warmth from their
hearts. Everything is lost. Their memories leave them first, seeping
from them like blood from skinned flesh. The ability to think and
understand comes next and with it all emotion except need. Blood and
skin and bone is lost, changed into something the Sull call
maer
dan
: shadowflesh.

"These men and women are known as
Shadow Wearers, the Bound Men, Wralls, and the Taken. The Endlords
have taken others, too, beasts from forgotten ages, things that are
half man and half monster, giants, bloodwraiths… things that
no longer walk this earth.

"All have but one memory left: the
knowledge they were once counted amongst the living. This is the core
of their existence. It is what drives them to battle… and to
hate.

"There was a time when the Shadow
Wearers and their masters rode unchecked in our world. Their numbers
massed and their power cumulated and the long night of darkness
began. Terrible wars were fought. Wars so ancient and devastating
that only scraps of their history remain. Wars of Blood and Shadow,
the Ruinwars, Wars of the Blind. Hundreds of thousands of lives were
lost. Generations of sorcerer-Warriors were massacred. Losses became
so great that those fighting could see no end, only the complete and
utter silence of destruction. That's when the Hearth of Ten came
together to bring an end to the wars and banish the Shadow Wearers
and the lords who had made them, exile them to a place where their
powers were rendered futile and they could no longer walk the earth.

"I do not know if the Hearth of
Ten created the Blind or found it. Some say the Blind is where the
Endlords first came from, that they originated in a place beyond the
boundaries of our world and that the Hearth of Ten did nothing but
drive them back. Others will tell you that the Blind is wholly the
creation of man, that it is as artificial as a glass eye and as
monstrous as a cage riven with inward-pointing spikes. "One
thing is certain, though: The Hearth of Ten
sealed
the
Blind. The ten greatest bloodlines of sorcerer-warriors came together
and worked upon the sealing for ten generations. Spells and dark
sorceries, heavy with kin-blood, thick with time's passage, shared
sacrifices and loss, were woven over the course of three hundred
years. The Hearth of Ten created new sorceries as they worked,
inventing new methods of seeing, new ways of combining their powers,
and massing them over time.

"By such methods they built a wall
around the Blind, such a wall as had never been seen or imagined, one
that could never again be duplicated, whose secrets died with the
generations of sorcerer-warriors who had created it, their blood,
bones, ashes, and souls ground into the substance of the wall.

"And so the Blind was sealed and
remains sealed, and those beings that feed on men abide there,
remembering, waiting, living quarter-lives in an absence of light.
The Blind is their prison and may one day be their tomb, and no man,
woman, or sorcerer may go there. No one except a Reach."

At some point while he spoke, Heritas
Cant had stopped being a crippled man with stunted, misshapen legs
and a listing spine and become a powerful sorcerer instead. Now,
finished, he set his green eyes upon Ash and watched to see what she
would do. He shrank as he waited. The distance between his shoulder
blades contracted, his chest sagged, and the skin on his hands
settled, revealing white ridges of bone.

He is two people
, Raif
thought,
one broken and twisted like his body, and one powerful
and in pain and not often shown
.

No one spoke. Ash sat and suffered
Heritas Cant's gaze as if it were a necessary torture. Since she had
been wakened an hour earlier she had said little and seemed glad to
sit and listen. Now all eyes were upon her as she readied herself to
speak.

Raif kept his face still, as he had
done all through Cant's speech. He would not show his fear to this
man… or Ash. Especially not Ash.

Finally she moved, rocking forward on
the bench so that her face caught the light. Angus' hand came up to
touch her wrist, but she shook it away as if it were a moth or a bit
of dust. Gray eyes met and held Cant's gaze, and then she spoke a
command. "Tell me what I am."

Heritas' good hand came up to support
his drooping jaw. A thin line of drool slid along his chin. "To
know what a Reach is you must understand where the Blind lies in
relation to our world. The two exist alongside each other and
within
each other, yet remain wholly separate places. They are divided by a
gray plain, a no-man's-land known as the borderlands or the Gray
Marches."

"The Gray Marches," Ash
repeated, showing her teeth.

"Yes. March is an old word meaning
the boundary between lands." Heritas Cant's smile was knowing.
Angus had not told him who Ash was, yet it was obvious he had already
worked it out. With a little click of his sticks, he carried on.
"These borderlands hold the Blind apart from our world. Powerful
sorcerers can enter them, some may even catch a glimpse of the
Blindwall, but no one but a Reach can know them truly. And no one but
a Reach can lay her hands upon the wall
and breach it
."

Ash flinched at the word
breach
.
Angus muttered something to whatever gods he believed in. Raif
concentrated on the mud walls behind Heritas Cant's back, watching
them ooze and drip and deteriorate as he imagined putting his fist
into Cant's face. The cripple was taking pleasure in this. His green
eyes glinted as he took another breath and spoke.

"A Reach is born every thousand
years, a man or woman who can enter the dead space of the
borderlands, approach the Blindwall, and free the creatures who lie
beyond it."

When he was sure the anger had left his
eyes, Raif turned to look at Ash. Almost she didn't shake. Her hands
were clenched on the table before her, the tendons on her wrists
pulsing. Slowly her gaze rose to meet his. A question filled her
large gray eyes, and even before he fully understood what it was she
asked, Raif answered with a swift jab of his jaw.

Acknowledging his reply with a smile
not quite cool enough to hide her relief, she turned back to Heritas
Cant and said, "So you think me a Reach?"

"Yes."

"And you think I was born to free
the creatures in the Blind?"

"Yes."

"And if I tell you that for the
past six months I have dreamed of creatures calling me, begging me to
reach out and help them, then you will tell me I have been listening
to the creatures of the Blind?"

"Yes."

A muscle at the corner of Ash's lips
began to quiver. She worked quickly to stop it, white teeth jabbing
at lipflesh. "Answer me this, then, Heritas Cant. If I am not
the first Reach to be born, why is the Blindwall still intact?"

Angus and Heritas Cant exchanged a
glance. Heritas shifted in his chair, his good hand dealing awkwardly
with his legs. When he spoke his voice was peevish. "The wall is
still in place for several reasons. First of all, breaks can be
sealed if swift action is taken and certain conditions are met.
Second, not all Reaches have lived to an age where they could cause a
breach. And third, a place exists where a Reach can discharge the
power that builds within her without threatening the integrity of the
wall."

Raif frowned. Compared with Cant's
other answers, this one was short and evasive. Raif thought of asking
why it was that some Reaches didn't live long enough to cause a
breach, then decided against it. All possible answers worried him.

Ash did not reply straightaway. Her
fingers traced along the table's edge, fingernails collecting wax.
Finally she said, "Do I have no choice but to discharge this…
power that is building inside of me?"

Heritas Cant nodded. "You are the
Reach and you have newly come into womanhood and by all rights you
should have caused the breach by now. Great power masses within you;
I felt it when I laid my hands upon your skin. It pushes with cold
force, displacing organs, feeding upon your blood, forcing the air
from your lungs. It must be released or it will destroy you."

"But she has fought it so far,"
Angus cried.

"Yes, and look what it has done to
her. She is being eaten from inside. Her body is skin and bone, her
skin is yellowing with jaundice, her breathing is shallow. And you
cannot see what I have felt: the punctured kidney, the compressed
chest organs, the poisons cumulating in her liver, the rapid beat of
her heart. Soon her mouth will run dry, her gums will turn gray and
crack, her eyes will sink into their sockets, her hair and
fingernails will—

"
Enough
!" Raif
stood. In his anger, he sent his chair cracking against the wall.
Angus and Ash turned to look at him. Heritas Cant regarded him with
interest, as if he were seeing some new species of insect for the
very first time. Raif sent a look to wipe all fascination from his
face. "Tell us what we must do."

Again, a certain unspoken communication
passed between Angus and Cant. Raif hardly cared.
Will you help
me in this
? Ash had asked him across the room moments earlier.
Yes
, he had replied in an instant.

Crossing the room, Raif was aware of
the size and health of his own body compared with the wheel-broken
shell that was Heritas Cant. He saw envy and even the cold sparkle of
fear in the man's green eyes, and he could not say he was sorry for
it. Drawing himself up to his full height, he sent a hand down for
his sword.

Heritas Cant shrank back.

"
Raif
," Angus
warned.

"Stay out of this, Angus,"
Raif said without looking around. "If I were to harm anyone over
this matter, it would be you. You knew it all from the start, from
that very first moment outside Vaingate. That's why you saved her: to
bring her here to Cant."

"No." Angus rose. Raif heard
the soft scrape of chair legs, saw Angus' growing shadow on the wall.
"I moved to save Ash for other reasons. I-"

"I know what you
mean
to
say, Angus. You have your reasons yet cannot speak them." Raif
turned to face his uncle. "Don't think that just because you
switch a subject or avoid it completely you can stop me from thinking
on it. You are my uncle and my respect is your due, but I will not
stand by and let you deliver Ash into this man's hands." Only as
he spoke did he realize the truth of what he said: Heritas Cant 
did
want Ash. With all his broken bones and misjointed limbs he suddenly
looked like a spider to Raif.