{"id":5659,"date":"2026-01-04T01:41:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/sword-of-shadows-01-jones-jv\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T01:41:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:41:25","slug":"sword-of-shadows-01-jones-jv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/sword-of-shadows-01-jones-jv\/","title":{"rendered":"Sword of Shadows 01 – Jones, JV"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Book Preview<\/h3>\n
\n

\n======================<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBook Information:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nGenre: Fantasy<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAuthor: J.V. Jones<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTitle: A Cavern of Black Ice<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSeries: Sword of Shadows Book 1<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A Cavern of Black Ice<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sword of Shadows Book 1 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>J.V. Jones<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>PROLOGUE<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA Birth, a Death, and a Binding arissa whispered a hope out loud before looking up at the sky. “Please make it lighter than before. Please.” As her lips came together she looked up past the wind-twisted pines and the ridge of frost-riven granite, up toward the position of the sun. Only the sun wasn’t there. Stormheads rolled across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, massing, churning, driven by winds that snapped and circled like pack wolves around sheep. Tarissa made a small gesture with her hand. The storm wasn’t passing overhead. It had come to the mountain to stay.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Dropping her gaze, she took a steadying breath. She couldn’t afford to panic. The city lay a thousand feet below her, rising from the shadow of the mountain like a second, lesser peak. She could see the ring towers clearly now, four of them, two built hard against the wall, the tallest piercing the storm with its iron stake. It was a long way down. Hours of walk, even. And she had to be careful.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Resting her hand on her swollen stomach, she forced herself to smile. Storms? They were nothing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>She moved quickly. Loose scree, bird skeletons, and snags of wind-blasted wood tripped her feet. It was hard to walk, even harder to keep her balance on the ever sharpening slope. Steep draws and creases forced her sideways instead of down. The temperature was falling, and for the first time all day Tarissa noticed her breath came out white. Her left glove had been gone for days-lost somewhere on the far side of <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>the mountain-and she stripped off her right glove, turned it inside out, and pulled it onto her left hand. The fingers there had started to grow numb.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Dead trees blocked her path. Some of their trunks were so smooth they looked polished. As she reached out to steady herself against one of the hard black limbs, she felt a sharp pain in her lower abdomen. Something shifted. Wetness spilled down her thighs. A soft sting sounded in her lower back, and a wave of sickness washed up her gullet, depositing the taste of sour milk in her mouth. Tarissa closed her eyes. This time she kept her hopes to herself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Wet snow began to fall as she pushed herself off from the dead tree. Her glove was sticky with sap, and bits of pine needles were glued to the fingers. Underfoot the granite ledge was unstable; gravel spilled from deep gashes, and husks of failed saplings crumbled to nothing the instant they took her weight. Despite the cold, Tarissa started to sweat. The pain in her back chewed inward, and although she didn’t want to admit it, didn’t even want to acknowledge it, her lower abdomen began contracting in rhythmic waves.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No. No. NO. Her baby wasn’t due yet. Two weeks more-it had to be. She needed to make it to the city, to find shelter. She’d even held back enough coins for a midwife and a room.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Finding a lead through the rocks, she picked up her pace. A lone raven, its plumage dark and oily as a scorched liver, watched her in silence from the distorted upper branch of a blackstone pine. Spying it, Tarissa was conscious of how ridiculous she must look: fat bellied, wild haired, scrambling down a mountainside in a race against a storm. Grimacing, she looked away from the bird. She didn’t like how it made her feel.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Contractions were coming faster now, and Tarissa found that it helped if she kept on the move. Stopping made the suffering linger, gave her seconds to count and think.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mist rose from crevices. Snow flew in Tarissa’s face, and the wind lifted the cloak from her back. Overhead, the clouds mimicked her descent, following her down the mountain as if she were showing them the way. Tarissa walked with her gloved hand cradling her belly. The fluid between her legs had dried to a sticky film that sucked her thighs together as she moved. Heat pumped up through the arteries in her neck, flushing her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Faster. She had to move faster.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Spotting a clear run between boulders, Tarissa switched her path farther to her right. Thorns snagged her skirt, and she yanked on the fabric, losing patience. As she turned back to face the path, the raven took flight. Its black wings beat against the storm current, snapping and tearing like teeth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The instant Tarissa stepped forward, gravel and rocks began running beneath her feet. She felt herself falling, and she flung out her arms to grab at something, anything, to hold her. The mist bid everything at ground level, and Tarissa’s hands found only loose stones and twigs. Pain exploded in her shoulder as she was thrown against a rock. Pinecones and rocks bounced overhead as she tried desperately to break her fall. Her bare hand grasped at a tussock of wolfgrass, but her body kept sliding downward and the roots pulled free in her hand. Her hip bashed against a granite ridge, something sharp shaved skin from the back of her knee, and when she opened her mouth to scream, snow flew between her lips, freezing the cry on her tongue.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>She came to. There was no pain, just a fog of ragged light lying between her and the outside world. Above her, as far as her eyes could see, stretched walls of hand-polished limestone, mason cut and smooth as bone. She’d finally made it to the city with the Iron Spire.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Dimly she was aware of something pushing far below her. Minutes passed before she realized that it was her body working to expel the child. She swallowed hard. Suddenly she missed all the people she had run from. Leaving home had been a mistake.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Kaaw!<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tarissa tried to shift her head toward the sound. A hot needle of pain jabbed at the vertebrae in the base of her neck. She blacked out. When she came to again she saw the raven sitting on a rock before her. Black-and-gold eyes pinned her with a look that was devoid of pity. Bobbing its head and raising its scaly yellow claws, it danced a little jig of damnation. When it was done it made a soft clucking noise that sounded just like a mother scolding a child and then flung itself to the mercy of the storm. Cold currents bore it swiftly away.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Pushing. Her body kept pushing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tarissa felt herself drifting… she was so tired… so very, very tired. If only she could find a way through the fog… if only her eyes could show her more.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As her eyelids closed for the last time and her ribs pressed an unused breath from her lungs, she saw a pair of booted feet walking toward her. The tar-blackened leather melted snowflakes on contact.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>They applied the leeches to him in rings of six. His body was crusted with sweat and rock dust and dirt, and the first man scraped the skin clean with deer tallow and a cedarwood wedge, while the second worked in his shadow with metal pincers, a pitchpine bucket, and heavy buckskin gloves.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The man who no longer knew his name strained against his bindings, testing. Thick coils of rope pressed into his neck, upper arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. He could shudder and breathe and blink.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nothing more.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He could barely feel the leeches. One settled in the fold between his inner thigh and groin, and he tensed for a moment. Pincer took a pinch of white powder from a pouch around his neck and applied it to the leech. Salt. The leech dropped away. A fresh leech was applied, higher this time so it couldn’t attach itself to skin that wasn’t fit.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>That done, Pincer stripped off his gloves and spoke a word that sent Accomplice to the far side of the cell. A moment later Accomplice returned with a tray and a soapstone lamp. A single red flame burned within the lamp, heating the contents of the crucible above. When he saw the flame, the man with no name flinched so hard that the rope binding his wrists split his skin. Flames were all he had now. Memories of flames. He hated the flames and feared them, yet he needed them, too. Familiarity bred contempt, they said. But the man with no name knew that was only half of it. Familiarity bred dependence as well.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Thoughts lost in the dance of flames, he didn’t see Pincer kneading an oakum wad in his fist. He was aware only of Accomplice’s hands on his jaw, repositioning his head, brushing his hair to one side, and pushing his skull hard against the bench. The man with no name felt the frayed rope and beeswax wad thrust into his left ear. Ship’s caulking. They were shoring him up like a storm-battered hull. A second wad was thrust into his right ear, and then Accomplice held the nameless man’s jaws wide while Pincer thrust a third wad into the back of his throat. The desire to vomit was sudden and overpowering, but Pincer slapped one large hand on the nameless man’s chest and another on his belly and pressed hard against the contracting muscles, forcing them flat. A minute later the urge had passed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Still Accomplice held on to his jaw. Pincer paid attention to the tray, his hands casting claw shadows against the cell wall as he worked. Seconds later he turned about. A thread of animal sinew was stretched between his thumbs. Seeing it, Accomplice shifted his grip, opening the nameless man’s jaws wider, pulling back lip tissue along with bone. The man with no name felt thick fingers in his mouth. He tasted urine and salt and leech water. His tongue was pressed to the base of his mouth, and then sinew was woven across his bottom teeth, binding his tongue in place.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fear came alive in the nameless man’s chest. Perhaps flames weren’t the only things that could harm him. “He’s done,” said Pincer, drawing back.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What about the wax?” breathed a third voice from the shadows near the door. It was the One Who Issued Orders. “You are supposed to seal his eyes shut.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Wax is too hot. It could blind him if we use it now.” “Use it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The flame in the soapstone lamp wavered as Accomplice drew the crucible away. The man with no name smelled smoke given off from the impurities in the wax. When the burning came it shocked him. After everything he had been through, all the suffering he had borne, he imagined he had outlived pain. He was wrong. And as the hours wore on and his bones were broken methodically by Pincer wielding a goosedown padded mallet, Accomplice following after to ensure the splintered ends were pulled apart, and his internal organs were manipulated with needles so long and fine that they could puncture specific chambers in his lungs and heart while leaving the surrounding tissue intact, he began to realize that pain-and the ability to feel it-was the last sense to go.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>When the One Who Issued Orders stepped close and began breathing words of binding older than the city he currently stood in, the man with no name no longer cared. His mind had returned to the flames. There, at least, was a pain that he knew.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>ONE The Badlands Raif Sevrance set his sights on the target and called the ice hare to him. A moment of disorientation followed, where the world dropped out of focus like a great dark stone sinking to the bottom of a lake; then, in the shortest space that a moment could be, he perceived the animal’s heart. The light, sounds, and odors of the badlands slid away, leaving nothing but the weight of blood in the ice hare’s chest and the hummingbird flutter of its heart. Slowly, deliberately, Raif angled his bow away from the target. The arrow cracked the freezing air like a word spoken out loud. As its iron blade shot past the hare, the creature’s head came up and it sprang for cover in a cushion of black sedge.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Take the shot again,” Drey said. “You sent that wide on purpose.” Raif lowered his bow and glanced over at his older brother. Drey’s face was partially shaded by his fox hood, but the firm set of his mouth was clear. Raif paused, considered arguing, then shrugged and reset his footing on the tundra. It never felt good deceiving Drey.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fingers smoothing down the backing of his horn-and-sinew bow, Raif looked over the windblown flats of the badlands. Panes of ice already lay thick over melt ponds. In the flattened colt grass beneath Raif’s feet hoarfrost grew as silently and insidiously as mold on second-day bread. The few trees that managed to survive in the gravelly flood-plain were wind-crippled blackstone pines and prostrate hemlock. Directly ahead lay a shallow draw filled with loose rocks and scrubby bushes that looked as tough and bony as moose antlers. Raif dipped his gaze a fraction lower to the brown lichen mat surrounding a pile of wet rocks. Even on a morning as cold as this, the lick was still running.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Raif watched, another ice hare popped up its head. Cheeks puffing, ears trembling, it held its position, listening for danger. It wanted the salt in the lick. Game animals came from leagues around to drink at the trickle of salt water that bled across the rocks in the draw. Tem said the lick welled up from an underground stream.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif raised his bow, slid an arrow from the quiver at his waist. In one smooth motion he nocked the iron arrowhead against the plate and drew the bowstring back to his chest. The hare swiveled its head. Its dark eyes looked straight at Raif. Too late. Raif already had the creature’s heart in his sights. Kissing the string, Raif let the arrow fly. Fingers of ice mist parted, a faint hiss sounded, and the arrowhead shot straight into the hare’s rib cage. If the creature made a sound, Raif didn’t hear it. Carried back by the force of the blow, it collapsed into the lick.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘That’s three to you. None to me.” Drey’s voice sounded flat, resigned.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif pretended to check his bow for hairpin cracks. “Come on. Let’s shoot at targets. No more hares are going to show now you’ve sent a live one into the lick.” Drey reached out and touched Raif’s bow. “You could have used a smaller head on that arrow, you know. You’re supposed to kill the hare, not disembowel it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif looked up. Drey was grinning, just a bit. Relieved, Raif grinned back at him. Drey was two years older than he, better at everything an older brother should be better at. Up until this winter he had been better at shooting, too. A lot better.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Abruptly Raif tucked his bow into his belt and ran for the draw. Tem never let them shoot anything purely for sport, and the hares had to be taken back to camp, skinned, and roasted. The pelts were Raif’s. Another couple more and he’d have enough for a winter coat for Effie. Not that Effie had much use for a coat. She was the only eight-year-old in Clan Blackhail who didn’t enjoy running around in the snow. Frowning, Raif twisted the arrows free from the twig-thin bones of the hare’s rib cage, careful not to break the shafts. Timber straight enough for arrows was rare in the badlands.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As he sealed the carcass in his game pouch, Raif checked the position of the sun. Nearly noon now. A storm heading elsewhere blew eastward in the far north. Dark gray clouds rolled across the horizon like smoke from a distant fire. Raif shivered. The Great Want lay to the north. Tem said that if a storm didn’t begin in the Want, then it sure as stone would end there.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Hey! Rough Jaw! Get your bow over here and let’s shred some wood.” Drey sent an expertly pitched stone skittering off rocks and hummocks, to land with a devilish skip precisely at Raif’s feet. “Or are you scared your lucky streak just ended?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Almost against his will, Raif’s hand rose to his chin. His skin felt as bristly as a frozen pinecone. He was Rough Jaw all right. No argument there. “Paint the target, Sevrance Cur. Then I’ll let you take a hand’s worth of practice shots while I restring my bow for wood.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Even a hundred paces in the distance, Raif saw Drey’s jaw drop. Restring my bow for wood was exactly the sort of high-blown thing a master bowman would say. Raif could hardly keep from laughing out loud. Ignoring the insult and the boasting, Drey snorted loudly and began plucking fistfuls of grass from the tundra. By the time Raif caught up with him, Drey had smeared the grass over the trunk of a frost-killed pine, forming a roughly circular target, wet with snowmelt and grass sap.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey shot first. Stepping back one hundred and fifty paces, he held his bow at arm’s length. Drey’s bow was a recurve made of winter-cut yew, dried over two full years, and hand-tillered to reduce shock. Raif envied him for it. His own bow was a clan hand-down, used by anyone who had the string to brace it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey took his time sighting his bow. He had a sure, unshakable grip and the strength to hold the string for as long as his ungloved fingers could bear. Just when Raif was set to call “Shot due,” his brother released the string. The arrow landed with a dull thunk, dead center of the smeared-on target. Turning, Drey inclined his head at his younger brother. He did not smile.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif’s bow was already in hand, his arrow already chosen. With Drey’s arrow shaft still quivering in the target, Raif sighted his bow. The pine was long dead. Cold. When Raif tried to call it to him as he had with the ice hare, it wouldn’t come. The wood stood its distance. Raif felt nothing: no quickening of his pulse, no dull pain behind his eyes, no metal tang in his mouth. Nothing. The target was just a target. Unsettled, Raif centered his bow and searched for the still line that would lead his arrow home. Seeing nothing but a faraway tree, Raif released his string. Straightaway he knew the shot was bad. He’d been gripping the handle too tightly, and his fingertips had grazed the string on release. The bow shot back with a thwack, and Raifs shoulder took a bad recoil. The arrow landed a good two hands lower than the target. “Shoot again.” Drey’s voice was cold.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif massaged his shoulder, then selected a second arrow. For luck, he brushed the fletchings against the raven lore he wore on a cord around his neck. The second shot was better, but it still hit a thumb’s length short of dead center. Raif turned to look at his brother. It was his shot.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey made a small motion with his bow. “Again.” Raif shook his head. “No. It’s your turn.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey shook his own head right back. “You sent those two wide on purpose. Now shoot.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘No, I didn’t. It was a true shot. I-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>“No one heart-kills three hares on the run, then misses a target as big as a man’s chest. No one.” Drey pushed back his fox hood. His eyes were dark. He spat out the wad of black curd he’d been chewing. “I don’t need mercy shots. Either shoot with me fair, or not at all.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Looking at his brother, seeing his big hands pressing hard into the wood of his bow and the whiteness of his thumbs as he worked on an imagined imperfection, Raif knew words would get him nowhere. Drey Sevrance was eighteen years old, a yearman in the clan. This past summer he’d taken to braiding his hair with black leather strips and wearing a silver earring in his ear. Last night around the firepit, when Dagro Blackhail had burned the scum off an old malt and dropped his earring into the clear liquor remaining, Drey had done the same. All the sworn clansmen had. Metal next to the skin attracted frostbite. And everyone in the clan had seen the black nubs of unidentifiable flesh that the ‘bite left behind. You could find many willing to tell the story of how Jon Marrow’s member had frozen solid when he was jumped by Dhoonesmen while he was relieving himself in the brack. By the time he had seen the Dhoonesmen off and pulled himself up from the nail-hard tundra, his manhood was frozen like a cache of winter meat. By all accounts he hadn’t felt a thing until he was brought into the warmth of the roundhouse and the stretched and shiny flesh began to thaw. His screams had kept the clan awake all night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I Raif ran his hand along his bowstring, warming the wax. If Drey needed to see him take a third shot to prove he wasn’t shamming, then take another shot he would. He’d lost the desire to fight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Again Raif tried to call the dead tree to him, searching for the still line that would guide his arrow to the heart. Although the blackstone pine had perished ten hunting seasons earlier, it had hardly withered at all. Only the needles were missing. The pitch in the trunk preserved the crown, and the cold dryness of the badlands hindered the growth of fungus beneath the bark. Tem said that in the Great Want trees took hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years to decay.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Seconds passed as Raif concentrated on the target. The longer he held his sights, the deader the tree seemed. Something was missing. Ice hares were real living things. Raif felt their warmth in the space between his eyes. He imagined the lode of hot pulsing blood in’their hearts and saw the still line that linked those hearts to his arrowhead as clearly as a dog sees his leash. Slowly Raif was coming to realize that still line meant death.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Frustration finally got the better of him, and he stopped searching for the inner heart of the target and centered his sights on the visual heart instead. With the fletchings of Drey’s arrow in his eyeline, Raif released the shot.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The moment his thumb lifted from the string, a raven kaawed. High and shrill, the carrion feeder’s cry seemed to split the very substance of time. Raif felt a finger of ice tap his spine. His vision blurred. Saliva jetted into his mouth, thick and hot and tasting of metal. Stumbling back, he lost his grip on the bow and it fell to the ground point first. A crack sounded as it landed. The arrow hit the tree with a dull thud, placing a knuckle short of Drey’s own shot. Raif didn’t care. Black points raced across his vision, scorching like soot belched from a fire.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Raif! Raif!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif felt Drey’s huge, muscular arms clamp around his shoulders, smelled his brother’s scent of neat’s-foot oil, tanned leather, horses, and sweat. Glancing up, Raif saw Drey’s brown eyes staring into his. He looked worried. His prized yewbow lay flat on the ground.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Here, sit.” Not waiting for any compliance on Raifs part, Drey forced his younger brother onto the tundra floor. The frozen earth bit into Raifs buckskin pants. Turning away from his brother, Raif cleared <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>his mouth of the metal-tasting saliva. His eyes stung. A sickening pain in his forehead made him retch. He clenched his jaw until bone clicked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Seconds passed. Drey said nothing, just held his brother as tightly as he could. Part of Raif wanted to smile; the last time Drey had crushed him like this was after he fell twenty feet from a foxtail pine three springs back. The fall only broke an ankle. Drey’s subsequent bear hug had succeeded in breaking two ribs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Strangely, the memory had a calming effect on Raif, and the pain slowly subsided. Raif’s vision blurred sharply and then reset itself. A feeling of badness grew in him. Swiveling around in his brother’s grip, Raif looked in the direction of the camp. The stench of metal washed over him, as thick as grease smoke from the rendering pits.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey followed his gaze. “What’s the matter?” His voice was tight, strained.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Don’t you feel it?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey shook his head.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The camp was five leagues to the south, hidden in the shelter of the flood basin. All Raif could see was the rapidly darkening sky and the low ridges and rocky flats of the badlands. Yet he felt something. Something unspeakable, as when nightmares jolted him awake in pitch darkness or when he thought back to the day Tem had shut him in the guidehouse with his mother’s corpse. He had been eight at the time, old enough to pay due respect to the dead. The guidehouse was dark and filled with smoke. The hollowed-out basswood where his mother lay smelled of wet earth and rotten things. Sulfur had been rubbed into the carved inner trunk to keep insects and carrion feeders away from the body when it was laid upon the ground.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif smelled badness now. He smelled stinking metal and sulfur and death. Fighting against Drey’s grip, he cried, “We have to go back.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey released his grip on Raif and pulled himself to his feet. He plucked his dogskin gloves from his belt and pulled them on with two violent movements. “Why?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shook his head. The pain and nausea had gone, but something else had come in its place. A tight shivering fear. “The camp.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey nodded. He took a deep breath and looked set to speak, then abruptly stopped himself. Offering Raif his hand, he heaved his t brother off the ground with a single tug. By the time Raif had brushed the frost from his buckskins, Drey had collected both bows and was pulling the arrow shafts from the dead tree. As he turned away from the blackstone pine, Raif noticed the Retchings in Drey’s grip were shaking. This one small sign of his brother’s fear worried Raif more than anything else. Drey was his older brother by two years. Drey was afraid of nothing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>They had left the camp before dawn, before even the embers on the firepit had burned cold. No one except Tern knew they had gone. It was their last chance to shoot game before they broke camp and returned to the roundhouse for winter. The previous night Tern had warned them about going off on their own in the badlands, though he knew well enough that nothing he said would stop them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Sons!” he had said, shaking his large, grizzled head. “I might as well spend my days picking ticks from the dogs as tell you two what you should and shouldn’t do. At least come sundown I’d have a deloused pup to show for my trouble.” Tern would glower as he spoke, and the skin above his eyebrows would bunch into knots, yet his eyes always gave him away.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Just this morning as Raif pulled back the hide fastening on the tent he shared with his father and brother, he noticed a small bundle set upon the warming stone. It was food. Hunters’ food. Tern had packed two whole smoke-cured ptarmigan, a brace of hard-boiled eggs, and enough strips of hung mutton to mend an elk-size hole in a tent. All this for his sons to eat on a hunting trip he had expressly forbidden them to take.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif smiled. Tem Sevrance knew his sons well.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Put on your gloves.” It was Drey, acting just like an older brother. “And pull up your hood. Temperature’s dropping fast.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif did what he was told, struggling to put on gloves with hands that felt big and slow. Drey was right: It was getting colder. Another shiver worked its way up Raif’s spine, making his shoulders jerk awkwardly. “Let’s go.” Drey’s thoroughness was beginning to nettle him. They had to get back to the camp. Now. Something wasn’t right.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Although Tem warned them constantly about the danger of using up all their energy by running in the cold, Raif couldn’t stop himself. Despite spitting profusely, he couldn’t remove the taste of metal from his mouth. The air smelled bad, and the clouds overhead seemed ONES darker, lower, closer. To the south lay a line of bald, featureless hills, and west of them lay the Coastal Ranges. Tem said that the Ranges were the reason why the Want and the badlands were so dry. He said their peaks milked every last drop of moisture from passing storms.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The three hares Raif had shot earlier thumped up and down in his pack as he ran. Raif hated their warmth against his thigh, was sickened by their fresh-kill smell. When the two brothers came upon Old Hoopers Lake, Raif tore the pack from his belt and threw it into the center of the dull black water. Old Hoopers wasn’t frozen yet. River fed, it would take a full week of frost before its current-driven waters plated. Still, the lake had the greasy look of imminent ice about it. As Raifs pack sank to the bottom, swirls of vegetable oils and tufts of elk hair bobbed up and down on the surface.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey swore. Raif didn’t catch what he said, but he imagined the words waste of fine game in their place.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As the brothers ran south, the landscape gradually changed. Trees grew straighter and taller, and there were more of them. Beds of lichen were replaced by long grasses, bushes, and sedge. Horse and game tracks formed paths through the frozen foliage, and fat grouse flew up from the undergrowth, all flying feathers and spitting beaks.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif barely noticed. Close to the camp perimeter now, they should have been able to see smoke, hear the sound of metal rasping against metal, raised voices, laughter. Dagro Blackhail’s foster son, Mace, should be riding to greet them on his fat-necked cob.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey swore again. Quietly, to himself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif resisted the urge to glance over at his brother’s face. He was frightened of what he might see.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A powerful horseman, archer, and hammerman, Drey pulled ahead of Raif as he charged down the slope to the camp. Raif pushed himself harder, balling his fists and thrusting out his chin. He didn’t want to lose sight of his brother, hated the thought of Drey arriving at the tent circle alone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fear stretched over Raifs body like a drying hide, pulling at his skin and gut. They had left thirteen men standing by at the camp: Dagro Blackball and his son, Mace; Tem; Chad and Jorry Shank; Mallon Clayhorn and his son, Darri, whom everyone called Halfmast…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shook his head softly. Thirteen men alone on the badlands plains suddenly seemed unbelievably easy prey. Dhoonesmen, Bludds men, and Maimed Men were out there. Raifs stomach clenched. And the Sull. The Sull were out there, too.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The dark, weather-stained tents came into view. All was quiet. There were no horses or dogs in sight. The firepit was a dark gaping hole in the center of the cleared space. Loose tent flaps ripped in the wind like banners at battle’s end. Drey had broken ahead, but now he stopped and waited for Raif to join him. His breath came hard and fast, and spent air vented from his nose and mouth in great white streams. He did not look round as Raif approached.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Draw your weapon,” he hissed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif already had, but he scored the blade of his halfsword against its boiled-leather scabbard, mimicking the noise of drawing. Drey moved forward when he heard it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>They came upon Jorry Shank’s body first. It was lying in a feed ditch close to the horse posts. Drey had to turn the body to find the deathwound. The portion of Jorry’s face that had been lying against the earth had taken on the yellow bloom of frozen flesh. The wound was as big as a fist, heart deep, made with a greatsword, and for some reason there was hardly any blood.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Maybe the blood froze as it left him,” Drey murmured, settling the body back in place. The words sounded like a prayer.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘He never got chance to draw his weapon. Look.” Raif was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey nodded. He patted Jorry’s shoulder and then stood away.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘There’s horse tracks. See.” Raif kicked the ground near the first post. He found it easier to concentrate on what he could see here, on the camp perimeter, than turn his sights toward the tent circle and the one shabby, oft repaired, hide-and-moose-felt tent that belonged to Tem Sevrance. “Those shoemarks weren’t made by Blackhail horses.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Bluddsmen use a grooved shoe.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>So did other clans and even some city men, yet Raif had no desire to contradict his brother. Clan Bludd’s numbers were swelling, and border and cattle raids had become more frequent. Vaylo Bludd had seven sons, and it was rumored he wanted a separate clanhold for each of them. Mace Blackhail said that Vaylo Bludd killed and ate his own dogs, even when he had elk and bear meat turning on the spit above his fire. Raif didn’t believe the story for a moment-to eat one’s own dogs was considered a kind of cannibalism to a clansman, justifiable <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>only in the event of ice-bound starvation and imminent death-but others, including Drey, did. Mace Blackhail was three years older than Drey: when he spoke, Drey took heed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Drey and Raif approached the tent circle, their pace slowed. Dead dogs lay in the dirt, saliva frozen around their blunted fangs, their coats shaggy with ice. Fixed yellow eyes stared from massive gray heads. Glacial winds had set rising hackles in place, giving the dogs’ corpses the bunched-neck look of buffalo. As with Jorry Shank’s body, there was little blood.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif smelled stinking, smelted metal everywhere. The air around the camp seemed different, yet he didn’t have the words to describe it. It reminded him of the slowly congealing surface water on Old Hoopers Lake. Something had caused the very air to thicken and change. Something with the force of winter itself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Raif! Here!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey had crossed into the tent circle and was kneeling close to the firepit. Raif saw the usual line of pots and drying hides suspended on spruce branches over the pit, and the load of timber waiting to be quartered for firewood. He even saw the partially butchered black bear carcass that Dagro Blackhail had brought down yesterday in the sedge meadow to the east. The bearskin, which he had been so proud of, had been set to dry on a nearby rack. Dagro had planned to present it as a gift to his wife, Raina, when the hunt party returned to the roundhouse.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But Dagro Blackhail, chief of Clan Blackhail, would never return home.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey knelt over his partially frozen corpse. Dagro had taken a massive broadsword stroke from behind. His hands were speckled with blood, and the thick-bladed cleaver he still held in his grip was similarly marked. The blood was neither his nor his attackers’. It came from the skinned and eviscerated bear carcass lying at his feet; Dagro must have been finishing the butchering when he was jumped from behind.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif took a quick unsteady breath and sank down by his brother’s side. Something was blocking his throat. Dagro Blackhail’s great bear of a face looked up at him. The clan chief did not look at peace. Fury was frozen in his eyes. Glaciated ice in his beard and mustache framed a mouth pressed hard in anger. Raif thanked the Stone Gods that his t brother wasn’t the kind of man to speak needlessly, and the two sat in silence, shoulders touching, as they paid due respect to the man who had led Clan Blackhail for twenty-nine years and was loved and honored by all in the clan.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘He’s a fair man,” Tern had said once about the clan chief in a rare moment when he was inclined to speak about matters other than hunting and dogs. “It may seem like small purchase, and you’ll find others in the clan willing to heap all manner of praise upon Dagro Blackhail’s head, but fairness is the hardest thing for a man to practice day to day. A chief can find himself having to speak up against his sworn brothers and his kin. And that’s not easy for anyone to do.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was, Raif thought, one of the longest speeches he’d ever heard his father make.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘It’s not right, Raif.” Drey said only that as he raised himself clear of Dagro Blackhail’s body, but Raif knew what he meant. It wasn’t right.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mounted men had been here; broadswords and greatswords had been used; clan horses were gone, stolen. Dogs were slaughtered. The camp lay in open ground, Mace Blackhail was standing dogwatch: a raiding party should not have been able to approach unheeded. Mounted men made noise, especially here in the badlands, where the bone-hard tundra dealt harshly with anything traveling upon it. And then there was the lack of blood…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif pushed back his hood and ran a gloved hand through the tangle of his dark hair. Drey was making his way toward Tern’s tent. Raif wanted to call him back, to tell him that they should check the other tents first, the rendering pits, the stream bank, the far perimeter, anywhere except that tent. Drey, as if sensing some small portion of his younger brother’s thoughts, turned. He made a small beckoning gesture with his hand and then waited. Two bright points of pain prickled directly behind Raif’s eyes. Drey always waited.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Together the sons of Tern Sevrance entered their father’s tent. The body was just a few paces short of the entrance. Tern looked as if he had been on his way out when the broadsword cracked his sternum and clavicle, sending splinters of bone into his windpipe, lungs, and heart. He had fallen with his halfsword in his hand, but as with Jorry Shank, the weapon was unbloodied.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Broadsword again,” Drey said, his voice high and then rough as he sought to control it. “Bludd favors them.” l8 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif didn’t acknowledge the words. It took all he had just to stand and look upon his father’s body. Suddenly there was too much hollow space in his chest. Tern didn’t seem as stiff as the others, and Raif stripped off his right glove and bent to touch what was visible of his father’s cheek. Cold, dead flesh. Not frozen, but utterly cold, absent.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Pulling back as if he had touched something scorching hot rather than just plain cold, Raif rubbed his hand on his buckskins, wiping off whatever he imagined to be upon it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tem was gone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Gone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Without waiting for Drey, Raif pushed aside the tent flap and struck out into the rapidly darkening camp. His heart was beating in wild, irregular beats, and taking action seemed the only way to stop it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>When Drey found him a quarter later, Raif’s right arm was stripped to the shoulder and blood from three separate cuts was pouring along his forearm and down to his wrist. Drey understood immediately. Tearing at his own sleeve, he joined his brother as he went among the slain men. All had died without blood on their weapons. To a clansman there was no honor in dying with a clean blade, so Raif was taking up their weapons one by one, drawing their blades across his skin, and spilling his own blood as a substitute. It was the one thing the two brothers could give to their clan. When they returned home to the roundhouse and someone asked, as someone always did, if the men had died fighting, Raif and Drey could now reply, “Their weapons ran with blood.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To a clansman those words mattered dear.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>So the two brothers moved around the camp, discovering bodies in and out of tents, some with pale icicles of urine frozen to their legs, others with hair set in spiky mats where they had been caught bathing, a few with frozen wads of black curds still in their mouths, and one man-Meth Ganlow-with his beefy arms fixed around his favorite dog, protecting the wolfling even in death. A single swordstroke had killed both man and beast.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was only later, when moonlight formed silver pools in the hard earth, and Tern’s body was lying beside the firepit, close to the others but set apart, that Raif suddenly stopped in his tracks. “We never found Mace Blackhail,” he said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>TWO Days Darker Than Night Ash March shot awake. Sitting up in bed, she dragged the heavy silk sheets up over her arms and shoulders and clutched them tight. She had been dreaming of ice again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Taking deep breaths to calm herself, she looked around her chamber, checking. Of the two amber lamps on the mantel, only one was still burning. Good. That meant Katia had not been in to refuel it. The small ball of Ash’s silver blond hair that she had pulled from her hairbrush before she slept still lay fast against the door. So no one else had entered her chamber, either.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash relaxed just a little. Her toes formed two knobby lumps be-<\/span>
\n\u0081<\/span>
\neath the covers, and as they looked a ridiculously long distance from her body, she wiggled them just to check that they were hers. She smiled when they wiggled right back at her. Toes were funny things.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The smile didn’t quite take. As soon as Ash’s face muscles relaxed, the fact of her dream came back to her. The sheets were twisted around her waist and they were sticky with sweat, and the yeasty smell of fear was upon them. She’d had another bad dream and another bad night, and it was the second in less than a week.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Without thinking Ash brought her hand to her mouth, almost as if she were trying to hold something in. Despite the warmth of the chamber-the charcoal smoking in the brazier beneath a layer of oil-soaked felt, and the hot water pipes so diligently tended by a furnace-man and his team working three stories below-her fingers felt icy cold. Against her will and her very best efforts, images from the dream O <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>came back to her. She saw a cavern with walls of black ice. A burned hand reaching toward her, cracks between its fingers oozing blood. Dark eyes watching, waiting…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shivered. Swinging her hand down onto the bed, she beat the images back by pummeling the mattress as hard as she could. She wouldn’t think about the dream. Didn’t want to know what those cold eyes wanted.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Thht. Thht. Thht. Three knocks rang lightly against the fossilwood door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Something deep inside Ash’s chest, a band of muscle connecting her lungs to her heart, stiffened. Although breathless from beating the pillow, she didn’t take a breath or even blink. Silent as settling dust, she told herself as her eyes focused on the door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Finely grained and hard as nails, the door’s perfect gray surface was marred by three black thumb-size pits: bolt holes. Six months earlier Ash had paid her maidservant, Katia, four halfsilvers to go down to the metalworkers’ market near Almsgate and purchase a bolt and socket for the chamber door. Katia had done her bidding, returning with an iron bar big enough to secure a fort. Ash had fixed the metal plate and socket in place herself. She had blackened a fingernail in the process and broken the backs of two silver brushes, but the bolt pins had gone in and the fastening mechanism had worked smoothly, and for a week Ash had slept more soundly than she could ever remember sleeping.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Until…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Thht Thht. Thht.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash stared at the empty bolt holes. She made no motion to answer the second round of knocking.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Asarhia.” A pause. “Almost-daughter, I will have no games played with me.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tilting her body minutely, Ash slid down amid the covers. One hand stole beneath her head to turn the sweat-stained pillow facedown upon mattress, while her other hand smoothed her hair. Just as she closed her eyes, the door creaked open.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Penthero Iss had brought his own lamp, and the fierce blue glow of burning kerosene put Ash’s own resin lamp in the shade. Iss stood in the doorway and looked at Ash. Even with her eyes closed she knew what he was about.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He made her wait before he spoke. “Almost-daughter, don’t you think I know when I’m being deceived?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash kept her eyelids closed, but not tightly-he had caught her on that in the past. In no way did she respond to his words, simply concentrated on keeping her breathing low and metered.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>“Asarhia!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was hard not to flinch. Mimicking a kind of dazed surprise, she opened her eyes and rubbed them vigorously. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ignoring her show of bafflement, Penthero Iss walked into the room proper, set his lamp on the rootwood prayer ledge next to the offering bowls of dried fruits and pieces of myrrh, brought his long-fingered hands together, and shook his head. “The cushions, almost-daughter.” The index finger on his left hand circled, indicating the foot of the bed. “A sound night’s sleep seldom includes kicking cushions so hard that the impression of one’s foot stays upon them till dawn.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash cursed all the cushions in Mask Fortress. She cursed Katia for piling the silly, fluffy, useless bags of goosedown high on her bed each night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Penthero Iss crossed over to Ash’s bed. Fine gold chains woven into the fabric of his heavy silk coat chinked softly as he moved. Although not muscular, he carried something hard within him, as if his skeleton were made out of stone. His face had the shape and smoothness of a skinned hare. Holding out a long, carefully manicured, completely hairless hand, he asked, “How much do I love you, almost-daughter?” Untaken, the hand moved away to carve a circle in the air. “Look at all I give you: dresses, silver brushes, perfumed oils-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘You are my father who loves me more than any real father ever could.” Ash spoke Iss’ own words back to him. She had lost count of how many times he had said them to her over the past sixteen years.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Penthero Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis, Lord Commander of the Rive Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress, and Master of the Four Gates, shook his head with disappointment. “You would mock me, almost-daughter?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling a bite of guilt, Ash slid her hand over his. She owed love and respect to the man who was her foster father and surlord.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sixteen years ago, before he took the title of surlord for his own, Penthero Iss had found her outside Vaingate. She was a newborn, a <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>foundling abandoned within ten paces of the city gate. All such foundlings were considered Protector’s Trove. Iss had been Protector General at the time, in charge of city security and defenses. He had patrolled the Four Gates, led his red-bladed brothers-in-the-watch, and commanded the forces that manned the walls.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ever since Thomas Mar had forged the first Rive Sword with the steel and rendered blood of the men who had betrayed him at Hove Hill, no protector general had ever been paid for his work. For centuries protector generals lived off income from their grangeholds, inheritances, and land grants. Today there was no land left to grant, and more and more baseborn men were joining the Watch, and protector generals now gained income by other, less noble means. Contraband goods; swords of illegal length or blade curvature, arrows with barbed tips; prohibited substances such as sulfur, resins, and saltpeter that could be used in making siege powders; unlawfully produced liquor, poisons, sleeping drafts and pain dullers; ill-gotten gains; anything found in the possession of known criminals; and all goods abandoned within the city-whether they be crates of rotting cabbages, fat pigs broken loose from their tethers, or newborns left to die in the snow-were the protector general’s to do with as he saw fit.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Protector’s Trove had made Penthero Iss a rich man.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As if guessing her thoughts, Iss brought his lips close to Ash’s ear. “Never forget, almost-daughter, that during my commission I came upon dozens of foundling babies, yet you were the only one I chose to raise as my own.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash tried, but she couldn’t quite stifle the shiver that worked its way down her spine. He had sold the other babies to the dark-skinned priests in the Bone Temple.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘You are cold, almost-daughter.” Penthero Iss’ hand, with its hairless knuckles that never cracked, glided up Ash’s arm and along her shoulder. His fingers prodded the flesh of Ash’s neck, testing for warmth, blood pulse, and swollen glands.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The urge to shrink away from his touch was overwhelming, but Ash fought it. She didn’t want to provoke Iss in any way. If she needed any proof of that, all she had to do was look at the three blind bolt holes in the fossilwood door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Your blood is racing, Asarhia.” Iss’ hand moved lower. “And your heart…”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Unable to stand it any longer, Ash jerked back. Iss grabbed hold of her nightgown and twisted the fabric in his fist. “You’ve been having the dream again, haven’t you?” She didn’t answer. Threads of muslin in her nightgown were laddering under the pressure of his grip. “I said haven’t you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Still Ash made no reply, but she knew, she just knew, that her face gave her away. Her skin flushed with every lie.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What did you see? Was it the gray land? The cavern? Where were you? Think. Think.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shaking her head, Ash cried, “I don’t know. I don’t know. There was a cavern lined with ice… it could be anywhere.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Did you see what lay beyond?” The words left Iss’ mouth like frost smoke, sparkling blue and utterly cold. They hung in the air, cooling the space between Ash and her foster father, making it difficult for Ash to breathe. Ash saw Iss’ lower jaw come to rest. She heard saliva smack inside his mouth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Father, I don’t understand what you mean. The dream was over so quickly; I hardly remember what I saw.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Penthero Iss blinked at Ash’s use of the word Father. Sadness flitted across his face so quickly, she doubted she’d seen it at all. Slowly, intentionally, he showed his gray-cast teeth. “So it has come to this? Lies from the foundling I raised as my own.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Rare were the times when Iss showed his teeth. They were small and positioned well above his lip line. Rumor had it that a sorcerous healing practiced upon him when he was just a boy had burned the enamel from them. Whatever the cause, Iss made it his habit to speak, smile, eat, and drink without ever drawing back his lips.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With one quick movement Iss found and pressed the curve of Ash’s left breast. He weighed the small globe of flesh and then pinched it. “You can’t stay a child forever, Asarhia. The old blood will show soon enough.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash felt her cheeks burn. She didn’t understand what he meant.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss regarded Ash for a long moment, his green silk robe switching colors in the fierce light of burning kerosene, before releasing his hold on her nightgown and standing. “Tidy yourself up, child. Do not force me to lay hands on you again.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash kept her breath steady and tried not to let her fear show. Questions piled on her tongue, but she knew better than to ask them. Iss had a way with answers. He gave them, they sounded perfectly logical, but then later when you were alone and had time to think, you realized he had told you nothing at all.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Iss moved away, Ash got a whiff of the smell that sometimes clung to her foster father. The smell of old, old things locked away so tightly that they dried to brittle husks. Something shifted at the edge of Ash’s vision. All the hairs on her body bristled, and against her will she was drawn back to her dream…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Reaching, she was reaching in the darkness.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Asarhia?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash snapped back. Penthero Iss was looking at her, his long, skinned-man’s face showing the faintest sheen of excitement. Light from his lamp sent his shadow flickering across the watered-silk panels on the walls. Ash could still remember the soft marten and sable furs that had once hung in their stead. Iss had sent a brother-in-the-watch to tear them down and replace them with smooth, bloodless silk. Furs and animal hides were distasteful to him; he called them barbaric and would have none hung in any chamber he might chance to enter in the massive, sprawling, four-towered fortress that formed the heart of Spire Vanis.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash missed the furs. Her chamber seemed cold and bare without them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘You are not well, almost-daughter.” As Iss spoke, his hands came together in a smooth knot of knuckle and flesh that was peculiar to him alone. “I will sit with you through the last hour of night.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Please. I need to rest.” Ash rubbed her forehead, struggling to keep her mind in the now. What was wrong with her? Raising her voice, she said, “Go. Just go. I have to use the chamber pot. I drank too much wine at dinner.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss remained calm. “Yes, wine… and to think Katia informed me that you refused both the pewter containing the red and the silver she brought later with the white.” A dull metal tap sounded: Iss kicking the empty chamber pot that lay at the foot of Ash’s bed in the center of a hill of cushions. “And somehow you managed to wait until now to relieve yourself.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Katia. Always Katia. Ash scowled. Her head ached, and her body felt as tired and shaky as if she’d spent the night running uphill rather than sleeping in her bed. She desperately wanted to be alone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I Surprisingly, Iss crossed over to the door. Fingers slipping into the vacant bolt holes, he turned to face Ash and said, “I will have my Knife stay outside your door tonight. You are not well, almost-daughter. I worry.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The idea of having the Knife camped outside her chamber frightened Ash nearly as much as her dream. Marafice Eye scared her-he scared at lot of people in Mask Fortress. That was, she supposed, the main reason her foster father kept him around. “Can’t we call Katia instead?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss began shaking his head before Ash finished speaking. “I think our little Katia might not be a wholly reliable guardian. Take tonight: You said you drank wine, yet she swore you didn’t, and of course I must take my daughter’s word over that of a common servant. So I have no choice but to conclude the girl reported wrongly and might easily do so again.” A cold smile. “You are not well, Asarhia. Ill dreams trouble you, headaches plague you. What sort of a father could I call myself if I did not watch my daughter closely?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash bent her head. She wanted to sleep, close her eyes, and not have to dream. Her foster father was too clever for her. Lies, even small ones, were as silken rope in his hands. He could pull and distort them, use them to tie their speaker up in knots. She had gotten herself into enough trouble tonight. The best thing to do would be to say nothing more, nod her head meekly, and let her foster father bid her good night. He was already making his way toward the door; another minute and he would be gone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Yet…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>She was Ash March, Foundling, left outside Vaingate to die. She had been abandoned in two feet of snow, wrapped in a blanket stiff with womb blood, beneath a sky as dark as night in the twelfth storm of winter. She had been forsaken, yet somehow she had lived. She had been weak, yet some tiny spark of life within her had proven strong. Straightening her spine, she looked her foster father straight in the eyes and said, “I want to know what’s happening to me.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Holding her gaze, Iss reached for the kerosene lamp. The iron base was stamped with the Surlord’s seal: the Killhound rampant, the great smoke gray bird of prey sinking claws the size of meat hooks into the tip of the Iron Spire. Ash remembered her foster father telling her that although killhounds fed on spring lambs, bear cubs, and elk calves,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>O J they were known for killing hunting dogs that ranged too close to their aeries. “They never feed upon the hounds they kill,” Iss had said, a gleam of fascination firing his normally cold eyes. “Though they do make sport with the carcasses.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shivered.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss closed the spillhole, snuffing the lamp. Holding open the fossil-wood door, he stepped into the column of cold air that rushed in from the corridor beyond. “There’s nothing for you to be worried about, almost-daughter. You’re just catching up, that’s all. Surely Katia must have told you that most girls your age are women in all senses of the word? Your body is simply doing those things that theirs have already done. One would hardly expect such changes to occur without some small measure of pain.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With that he moved into the shadows of the corridor, swiftly becoming one himself. The metal chains sewn into his coat chimed softly like faraway bells, and then the door clicked shut and there was silence.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash fell back onto the bed. Shaking and strangely excited, she pulled the covers over her chest and set her mind to thinking of ways she could find answers for herself. Her foster father’s words only sounded like the truth. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, could absolutely swear she wouldn’t sleep, yet somehow, unbelievably, she did.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Her dreams, when they came, were all of ice.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>t ‘t The Listener could not sleep. His ears-what were left of them-pained him like two rotting teeth. Nolo had brought him fresh bear tallow from the rendering pit, and it was good and white and looked creamy enough to eat, so the Listener had done just that. Waste of good tallow-using it to plug up two old black holes that had once been ears. Waste of good muskox hair to warm them, too. But there was little to be done about that: Nothing needed warming as much as an old scar.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nolo’s footprints formed a visible line to and from the rendering pit and then over to the meat rack in the center of the cleared space. Looking at them, the Listener made a mental note to have a talk with Nolo’s wife, Sila: She wasn’t filling her husband’s mukluks with enough dried grass. Nolo’s booted feet had melted snow! Sila would have to get chewing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener spent an idle moment imagining Sila’s plump lips chewing on a tuft of colt grass to make it soft enough for stuffing into the space between her husband’s outer and inner boots. It was a very pleasant moment. Sila had unusually fine lips.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Still, he was old and had no ears, and Sila was young and had a husband, and together they had four good ears between them, so the Listener nudged aside the image of Sila and turned to the matter at hand: his dream.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sitting on a stool carved out of whalebone, with his old brain-tanned bear’s hide around his shoulders, the Listener sat at the entrance to his ground and looked out at the night. Heat from his two soapstone lamps warmed his back, and cold from the still, freezing air chilled his front: that was the way he liked it when he was listening to his dreams.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Lootavek, the one who listened before him, swore that a man could only hear his dreams as he was having them, yet the Listener thought him mistaken. Much like Nolo’s boot lining, dreams needed to be chewed on.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener listened. In his lap he held the hollow tip of a narwhal’s tusk, a little silver knife that had once been used to kill a starving child, and a chunk of sea salt-hardened driftwood from a wrecked ship that had been beset then stoved in by the cold blue ice of Endsea. Like all good talismans, they felt right in the hand, and as the Listener’s body heat warmed them in varying degrees, they released his mind into the halfworld that was part darkness and part light.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Fear gripped at the Listener’s belly as he fell into his dreams.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Hands reached. Loss wept. A man with an impossible choice made the best decision he could…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Sadaluk! Sadaluk! You must awaken before the cold burns your skin.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener opened his eyes. Nolo was standing above him. The small, dark-skinned man had his prized squirrel coat tucked under his arm and a bowl of something hot and steaming in his hand.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener shifted his gaze from Nolo to the night sky. The pale glow of dawn could clearly be seen across the Bay of Auks. Stars faded even as the Listener looked away. He had been listening to his dream for half the night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nolo tucked the squirrel coat around the Listener’s shoulders and then held out the steaming bowl. “Bear soup, Sadaluk. Sila made me swear to watch you drink it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener nodded gruffly, though in truth he was quite pleased-not about the bear soup, which he could get from any fire around the rendering pit, but for the fact of Sila’s attention.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The bear soup was hot, dark, and strong, and bits of sinew, bear fat, and marrow bobbed upon the surface. The Listener enjoyed the feel of steam on his face as he drank. The warmth of the bone bowl soothed the joints in his black, hard-as-wood hands. When he had finished he held out the empty bowl for Nolo to take. “Go now. I will return the squirrel coat to you when I am rested.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nolo took the bowl with all the usual carefulness of a husband handling one of his wife’s best dishes and made his way back to his ground.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener envied him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>After what his dreams had shown him this night, the Listener knew that such a base and mortal emotion should be beneath him. But it wasn’t, and that was the way of the world.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Listener had seen the One with Reaching Arms reach out and beckon the darkness. And that meant only one thing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Days darker than night lay ahead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Pulling hides across his doorway, the Listener retreated into the warmth and golden light of his ground. His bench was thick with animal skins heaped high with fresh white heather, and he lay down upon it and closed his eyes. He had no wish to dream and sleep, so he turned his thoughts to Sila and imagined her and Nolo sledding across the frozen margins of Endsea. He imagined the rime of ice beneath the sled runners wearing thin and Nolo calling a halt so that his wife could make new ice by the quickest way she could.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This pleasant image held the Listener’s attention for only a short spell. There was work to be done. Messages had to be sent. Days darker than night lay ahead, and those who lived to know such things needed to be told. Let no one say that Sadaluk, Listener of the Ice Trapper tribe, was not the first to know.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>THREE A Circle of Dust Are you sure you checked the rear of the horse corral?” The freezing wind made Drey Sevrance squint as he spoke. Ice crystals glittered in the fox fur of his hood, and pine needles clung like matted hair to his shoulders, arms, and back.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif thought his brother looked tired, and older than he had ever looked before. Dawn light was showing yellow on the horizon, and it cast pits of sulfur shadow on his face. “I checked,” Raif said. “No sign of Mace.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What about the alder swamp and the stream?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Swamp’s frozen. I walked along the stream bank. Nothing.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey stripped off his gloves and ran his bare hands over his face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘The current might have carried the body downstream.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shook his head. “There’s not enough water to carry a bloated fox from one bend to another, let alone a full-grown man clear from the camp.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘It would have been running faster yesterday at noon.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif took a breath to speak, then thought better of it. The only time that stream would ever be strong enough to carry a body was during the second week of spring thaw when the runoff from the balds and Coastal Ranges was at its height-Drey knew that. Suddenly uneasy but not sure why, Raif reached out and touched Drey’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s get back to the firepit.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Mace Blackhail is out here somewhere, Raif.” Drey pushed a \u00f8 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>hand through the frozen air. “I know he’s more than likely dead, but what if he isn’t? What if he’s wounded and fallen?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘There were those tracks-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I don’t want to hear about those tracks again. Is that clear? They could have been left by anyone at any time. Mace was standing dogwatch-he could have been anywhere when the raid came. Now either the raiders got to him first and he’s lying frozen in some draw on the floodplain, or he made it back to the camp, warned the others, and we just haven’t found him yet.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif hung his head. He didn’t know how to reply. How could he tell his brother he had a feeling that no matter how long and carefully they searched, they would still find no sign of Mace Blackhail? Shrugging heavily, he decided to say nothing. He was dead tired, and he didn’t want to argue with Drey.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey’s face softened a fraction. Frozen colt grass cracked beneath his feet as he shifted his weight from left to right. “All right. We’ll head back to the firepit. We’ll search wider for Mace come full daylight.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Too exhausted to hide his relief, Raif followed Drey back to the tent circle. Wind-twisted hemlocks and blackstone pines thrashed against the sky like chained beasts. Somewhere close by, water trickled over loose shale, and far beyond the horizon a raven screamed at the dawn. Hearing the rough and angry cry of the bird the clan called Watcher of the Dead, Raif raised his hand to his throat. With his thick dogskin gloves on he could barely feel the hard hook of the raven’s bill he wore suspended on a length of retted flax. The raven was his lore, chosen for him at birth by the clan guide.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The guide who had given Raif the raven lore was five years dead now. No one had been more deeply honored in the clan. He was ancient and he’d stunk of pigs and Raif had hated him with a vengeance. He had saved the worst possible lore for Tem Sevrance’s second son. No one before or after had ever been given the raven. Ravens were scavengers, carrion feeders; they could kill, but they preferred to steal. Raif had seen how they followed a lone wolf for days, hoping to snatch a meal from an opened carcass. Everyone else in the clan, men and women alike, had fared better with their lores. Drey had been given a bear claw, like Tem before him. Dagro Blackhail’s lore was an elk stag, Jorry Shank’s a river pike, Mallon Clayhorn’s a badger. Shor Gormalin was an eagle, like Raina Blackhail. As for Dagro’s foster son, Mace…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif thought for a moment. What was his lore? Then it came to him: Mace Blackhail was a wolf.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The only person in the entire clan who had a lore stranger than a raven was Effie. The guide had given her nothing but an ear-shaped piece of stone. Raif grew angry just thinking about it. What had the Sevrances ever done to the old bastard to deserve such short shrift?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif tugged at the raven’s lore, testing its oiled binding. When he was younger he had thrown the thing away more times than he could recount, yet somehow the guide always found it and brought it back. “It’s yours, Raif Sevrance,” he would say, holding out the black piece of horn in his scarred filthy palm. “And one day you may be glad of it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>All thoughts of ravens flew from Raif’s mind as he and Drey approached the tent circle. The first rays of sunlight slid across the frozen tundra, illuminating the campsite with long threads of morning light. Already the six hide-and-moose-felt tents, the horse posts, the firepit, the drying racks, and the chopping stump had the look of ruins about them. Tem had once told Raif a story about a great dark deathship that mariners swore guarded the entrance to Endsea, keeping all but the blind and insane away. That was what the tents looked like now: the sails of a dead ship.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shivered. His hand dropped from his neck to the hollowed-out antler tine that was attached to his gear belt by a ring of tar-blackened brass. Sealed inside the tine was hallowed earth: dust ground from the guidestone that formed the Heart of Clan. Every clan had a guide-stone, and every clansman carried a portion of it with him until he died.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Clan Blackhail guidestone was a massive slab of folded granite as big as a stable block, shot with veins of black graphite and slick with grease. Clan Bludd’s guidestone was also folded granite, but it was studded with seams of red garnets that shone like drying blood. Raif had never seen the powder that came from the Bluddstone, but he thought it must look pretty much the same as that ground from the Hailstone: smooth gray powder that ran through the hand like liquid smoke.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As he neared the firepit, he plucked the tine from his belt, breaking the brass ring. The tine was sealed closed with a cap of beaten silver, and Raif ran his thumb along the tine’s length, feeling for the edge r-p , <-‘ O O O Iwelve men had died here, and only two remained. And two men without horses, carts, or sleds could never hope to bring back the dead. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The roundhouse lay five days’ hard travel south, and that was more than time enough for scavengers to tear the bodies to shreds.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif wouldn’t have it. Ravens were in the sky already, turning circles a league across, and soon wolves, coyotes, bears, and tundra cats would harken to the sound of their kaawmg. All beasts that fed upon dead things would be drawn to the camp, in search of one final meal to gorge on before winter started true.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shaking his head with a single savage blow, Raif flicked the cap from the tine. It popped open with a small hiss. Fine powder from the guidestone streamed in the wind like a comet’s tail, bringing the taste of granite to Raif’s lips. After a moment of utter silence, he began walking the circle. Around the firepit, the drying racks, the tents, and the bodies he moved, carving a path of air and dust. The gray powder sailed long on winter’s breath, riding the cold eddies and swirling up-drafts before sinking to its frozen bed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nothing was ever going to take Tern Sevrance. Ever. No ravens would pick at his eyes and his lips, no wolves would sink their fangs into his belly and his rump, no bears would suck the marrow from his bones, and no dogs would fight over scraps. He’d be damned to the darkest pits in hell if they would.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Raif?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Looking round, Raif saw Drey standing at the entrance to their father’s tent, carrying a bundle of supplies pressed hard against his chest. “What are you doing?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I’m drawing a guide circle. We’re going to burn the camp.” Raif hardly recognized his own voice as he spoke. He sounded cold, and there was a challenge in his words he had not originally intended.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey looked at him a long while. His normally light brown eyes were as dark as the walls of the firepit. He knew Raif’s reasons-they were too close as brothers not to know each other’s minds-but Raif could tell he was not pleased. He’d had plans of his own for the bodies.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Finally the muscles in Drey’s neck began to work, and after a moment he spoke, his voice hard. “Finish the circle. I’ll load these supplies by the horse posts, then find what oil and pitch I can.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A deep band of muscle in Raif’s chest relaxed. His mouth was dry-too dry to speak. So he nodded once and continued walking. Raif felt Drey’s gaze upon his back until the moment the circle was joined. And he knew with utter certainty that he had taken something pre cious from his brother. Drey was eldest. He should have had first say with the dead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey Sevrance did what was needed to start a good fire. He worked thoroughly and tirelessly; chipping and shredding firewood, stripping nearby trees of their needles to kindle the bare ground between the tents and the pit, spreading great heaps of moss around the bodies, and lacing everything with wads of rendered elk fat and ribbons of oil and pitch. The tent hides he doused with the hard liquor that was always to be found in Meth Ganlow’s pack.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Through all the preparations, Raif did only those things Drey asked of him, nothing more; suggesting nothing, saying nothing. Giving Drey his due.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ravens circled closer as they worked, their long black wings casting knife shadows on the snow, their harsh carrion calls a constant reminder to Raif of the thing he wore at his throat. Watcher of the Dead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>When it was all done and the two brothers stood outside the guide circle, looking in at the primed firetrap they had created, Drey took out his flint and striker. The circle Raif had drawn was not visible to the eye. The powder was fine and the colt grass thick, and the wind had carried much of it away. But it was there. Both Raif and Drey knew it was there. A guide circle carried all the power of the guide-stone it had been drawn with. It was Heart of Clan, here, on the frozen tundra of the badlands. All those within it lay upon hallowed ground.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tern had once told Raif that far to the south in the Soft Lands of flat-roofed cities, grassy plains, and warm seas, there were others who used guide circles to protect them. Knights, they were called. And Tern said they burned their circles into their flesh.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif didn’t know about that, but he knew a clansman would sooner leave the roundhouse without his sword than without a flask, pouch, antler tine, or horn containing his measure of powdered guidestone. With a sword, a man could only fight. Within the hallowed ground of a guide circle, he could speak with the Stone Gods, ask for deliverance, absolution, or a swift and merciful death.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A wolf howled in the distance, and as if its call had woken him from a trance, Drey pushed back his hood and stripped off his gloves. Raif did the same. All was still and quiet. The wind had died, the ravens landed, the wolf silent, perhaps scenting prey. Neither brother spoke. Words had never been the Sevrances’ way. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey struck the flint. The kindling caught, flaring fiercely in Drey’s hand. Drey stepped forward, knelt on one knee, and lit the run of alcohol-laced moss he had laid.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif forced himself to watch. It was hard, but he was clan, and his chief and his father lay here, and he would not look away. Flames raced toward Tem Sevrance, eager yellow fingers, sharp red claws. Hellfire. And it would eat him as surely as any beast.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tem…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly Raif could think of nothing but stamping the blaze out. He stepped forward, but even as he did so, liquid fire found the first tent, and the primed elkhide burst into a sheet of flames. Sparks flew upward with a great gasp of smoke, and a thunderous roar of destruction shook the badlands to its core. Flames so hot they burned white danced in the rising wind. Pockets of ground ice melted with animal hisses, and then the stench of burning men rose from the pyre. Rippling air pushed against Raif’s cheek. His eyes burned, and salt water streamed from them, running down his cheeks. He continued to look straight ahead. The exact piece of ground Tem lay on was etched upon his soul, and it was his Stone God-given duty to watch it until it had burned to dust.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Finally there came a time when he could look away. Turning, he looked to his brother. Drey would not meet his eyes. Drey’s hand was bunched so tightly into a fist it caused his chest to shake. After a moment he spoke. “Let’s go.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Without glancing up to check his brother’s reaction, Drey crossed over to the horse posts, picked up his share of the supplies, and hefted them over his back. From the bulky look of the packs, Raif guessed Drey had chosen to carry the heaviest bundles himself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey waited by the post. He would not look at his brother, but he would wait for him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif walked to meet him. As he suspected, the packs Drey had left were light, and Raif shrugged them on his back like a coat. He wanted to say something to Drey, but nothing seemed right, so he kept his silence instead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The fire roared at their backs as they left the badlands campsite and headed south. Smoke followed them, fire stench sickened them, and ashes settled on their shoulders like the first shadows of night. They crossed the floodplain and the sedge meadow and headed over the great grasslands that led home. The sun set slow but early, lighting the sky behind them with a lingering bloody light.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey never mentioned continuing the search for Mace Blackhail, and Raif was glad. Glad because it meant his brother saw the same things he did along the way: a broken pane of ice on a melt pond, a horse’s hoof clearly stamped in the lichen, a ptarmigan bone, its end black from the roastfire, picked clean.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>When exhaustion finally got the better of them, they halted. An island of blackstone pines formed their shelter for the night. The great centuries-old trees had grown in a protective ring, originally seeded from a single mother tree that had matured in the center, then later died. Raif liked being there. It was like camping within a guide circle.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey lit a dry fire and pulled an elkhide over his shoulders to keep warm. Raif did the same, and the two brothers sat close around the flames and ate strips of hung mutton and boiled eggs gone black. They drank Tern’s dark, virtually undrinkable homebrew, and the sour taste and tarlike smell reminded Raif so strongly of his father it made him smile. Tem Sevrance’s homebrew was the worst in the entire clan; everyone said so, no one would drink it, and it was rumored to have killed a dog. Yet Tem never changed his brew. Much like heroes in stories who poisoned themselves a little each day to protect against attacks from artful assassins, Tem had become immune to it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey smiled, too. It was impossible not to smile when faced with the very real possibility of death by beer. A soreness came to Raif’s throat. There was just three of them now: he, Drey, and Effie.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie. The smile drained from Raif’sface. How would they tell Effie her da had gone? She had never known their mother. Meg had died on the birthing table in a pool of her own blood, and Tem had reared Effie on his own. Many clansmen and more than a few clanswomen had told Tem he should remarry to provide his sons and daughter with a mother, yet Tem had flatly refused. “I have loved once, completely,” he would say. “And that’s blessing enough for me.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly Drey reached over and cuffed Raif lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif nodded, glad to his heart that Drey had spoken and comforted by the realization that the same thoughts sifting through his mind were sifting through Drey’s as well.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sitting back, Drey adjusted the fire with a stick. Red-and-blue <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>flames danced close to his gloved hand as he turned out charred logs. “We’ll make Clan Bludd pay for what they did, Raif. I swear it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A hand of pure ice gripped Raif’s gut. Clan Bludd? Drey had no proof of what he said. The raid could have been mounted by any number of parties: Clan Dhoone, Clan Croser, Clan Gnash, a band of Maimed Men. The Sull. And then there was the nature of the wounds, the stench of badness, the feeling that something more than death had taken place. The warriors of Clan Bludd were fierce beyond telling, with their spiked and lead-weighted hammers, their case-hardened spears, their partly shorn heads, and their greatswords cut with deep center grooves for channeling their enemies’ blood; yet Raif had never once heard either Tern or Dagro Blackhail say that Clan Bludd was involved in…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shook his head. He had no words for what had happened at the campground. He just knew that any clansman worth his lore would turn his back on such a thing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Glancing over at Drey, Raif took a breath to speak. Then, seeing how viciously Drey poked at the fire and how the stick he held was bent close to breaking, he let the breath out, unused. In five days they would be back home. All truths would come out then.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>FOUR A Raven Has Come Angus Lok was receiving kisses. Fourteen of them, to be exact, one for each halfpenny that Beth and Little Moo would cost him. It was Beth’s idea, of course; she wanted new ribbons for her hair, and she was prepared to do anything-kissing included-to get them. Little Moo was far too young to have formed any opinion on ribbons other than that they were good to chew on; yet she was kissing her father anyway, giggling wildly and wetting Angus’ face with sticky, ever-so-slightly gritty kisses that tasted of oatcakes.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Please, Father. Please,” Beth said. “You promised.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Pweez, Papa,” echoed Little Moo.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus Lok groaned. He knew when he was beaten. Slapping a hand on his chest, he cried, “All right! All right! You’ve torn your poor father’s heart out along wi’ his purse! Ribbons it is! I suppose I should ask what colors you’ll both be wanting?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Pink,” said Beth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Noos,” said Little Moo.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus Lok picked up Little Moo, lifted her from his lap, and planted her gently on the fox pelt rug at his feet. “Pink and noos it is, then.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Beth giggled as she laid one last kiss on her father’s cheek and stood. “Blue, Father. Little Moo wants blue.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Noos. Noos,” echoed Little Moo happily.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Angus.” <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus looked up at the sound of his wife’s voice. Two syllables, yet straightaway he knew something was wrong. “What is it, love?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra Lok hesitated a moment in the doorway, as if reluctant to move forward, then took a small, resigned breath and walked into the farmhouse kitchen. Coming to join Angus by the fire, she paused to push a stray strand of hair from Beth’s face and deprive Little Moo of a hairy bit of oatcake that the child had just plucked from the depths of the fox pelt rug.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sitting down on the oakwood bench that her father’s steward had made for her as a wedding gift eighteen years earlier, Darra Lok took her husband’s hand in hers. Checking first that the two youngest of her three daughters were caught up in their own worlds of ribbons and oatcakes, she leaned close to Angus and said, “A raven has come.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus Lok took a deep breath and held it. Closing his eyes, he spoke a silent prayer to any and all gods who might be listening. Please let it not be a raven. Please let Darra be mistaken and it be a rook, a jackdaw, or a hooded crow. Even as he wished it, he knew he was wrong. Darra Lok knew a raven when she saw one.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus raised his wife’s hand to his lips and kissed it. He knew the gods didn’t like it if a man asked for one thing straight after another, so he didn’t pray that his fear wasn’t showing on his face. He simply hid it as well as he could.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra’s dark blue eyes looked into his. Her normally lovely face was pale, and little lines Angus had barely noticed before were etched deep into her brow. “Gassy spotted it this morning, circling the house. It didn’t come to land until now.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Take me to it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra Lok let go of her husband’s hand and nodded. She stood slowly, reluctantly, brushing imaginary dirt from her apron. “Beth. Watch your sister. See she doesn’t get too close to the fire. I’ll be back in just a minute.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Beth nodded in a movement that was so similar to the one Darra had just made, it turned Angus’ heart to lead. A raven had come to his house, and although the massive blue black birds with their long knife wings, powerful jaws, and human voices meant many different things to many different people, to Angus Lok they meant just one: leaving home.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra walked ahead of him out of the kitchen, and Angus paused a t moment to run his hand over Beth’s cheek. “Pink and blue,” he mouthed as he left, so she knew he wouldn’t forget about the ribbons.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was raining outside, a steady drizzle that had begun just before dawn, and the grounds around the Lok farm were turning to mud. Darra had spent most of the morning harvesting the last of her herb garden before first frost, and the small patch of ground just below the kitchen window was stripped bare. To the side of the herb garden, the chickens clucked nervously in the coup, built in a lean-to against the kitchen chimney. They knew all about ravens.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Father!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus Lok turned toward the voice of his eldest daughter. Gassy Lok had dirt smeared on her face, her hair was plastered to the sides of her head in two wet sheets, and she was wearing an ancient oilskin cape that had come with the farm together with a milk churn and two rotting plows. Yet to Angus she looked perfectly beautiful. High spots of color glowed in her cheeks, and her hazel eyes were as bright as raindrops glistening on amber. Sixteen, she was. Old enough to be wed and have children of her own. Angus frowned. How was she ever going to meet a young man, hidden out here in the farm and woodlands two days’ northeast of Ille Glaive? She wasn’t. And that was one reason Angus Lok didn’t sleep well at night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Have you come to take a look at the raven?” Gassy said, excitement spilling into her voice as she ran to join her father. “It’s a messenger, like the rooks that sometimes come. Only bigger. There’s something tied to its leg.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra and Angus Lok exchanged a glance. “Gassy, go inside and warm yourself. Your father and I will see to the bird.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘But-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Inside, Casilyn.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Gassy brought her lips together, made a small huffing sound, then turned and made her way inside the house. Darra seldom used her full name.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus ran a hand over his face, brushing the rain from his eyebrows and beard. He watched as Gassy closed the kitchen door behind her. She was a good girl. He’d talk to her later, explain what he could.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘This way. The bird has no liking for the rookery like the rest. It’s perched itself in the old elm around the back.” Without waiting for her husband to acknowledge what she said, Darra cut across the yard j1 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>and down along the side of the house. Angus had lived with his wife too long not to know that her briskness was a cover. Darra was nervous and trying not to show it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To the rear of the Lok farmhouse lay open woodland. Great old oaks, elms, and basswoods grew tall and spread wide over a rich damp underwood of lichen, dead leaves, loam, and ferns. In spring Gassy and Beth would search for blue duck eggs, wood frogs, and wild mint, and in summer they’d spend entire days in the woods, picking cloudberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and black plums, coming home after sundown with sticky faces and baskets crammed with dark mushy fruits that would have to be soaked in water to drown the maggots out. In autumn they would hunt for field mushrooms and milk caps, and in winter, during those times when Angus’ work took him away, Darra would set traps to catch small game.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Kaaw! Kaaw!<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The raven announced its presence with two short, angry notes, drawing Angus Lok’s gaze skyward, up through the branches of the great white elm that provided summer shade for the entire house. Even surrounded by branches as thick as arms, the raven’s form was unmistakable. It perched in the tree with all the arrogance of a panther resting after an easy kill. Black and still, it watched Angus Lok with eyes of liquid gold.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus’ gaze shifted from the creature’s eyes to its legs. A marked thickening directly above its left claw was clearly visible: pikeskin, sinew bound, then painted with a resin seal.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Kaaw! Kaaw!<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Look, I dare you.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus heard the raven’s call as a challenge. Only two people in the Northern Territories used ravens to carry their messages, and Angus knew in the soft marrow of his bones that he didn’t want to hear from either of them. The past lay within that pikeskin pouch, and he and the raven knew it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Call it down.” Darra’s voice was low, her hands twisted at the fabric of her apron.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nodding softly, Angus whistled as he had once been taught nearly twenty years earlier: two short chirrs followed by a single long note.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The raven bobbed its head and shook out its wings. Gold eyes appraised Angus Lok. Seconds passed, and then, making a noise that sounded just like human laughter, the raven flew down from the branch.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra stepped back as the huge bird landed. Angus had to fight the urge to step back himself. The raven’s bill was as big as a spearhead, sharp and hooked like the shredder on a plow. Apparently delighted by Darra’s fear, the bird danced toward her, bobbing its head and calling softly.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Nay, yer little beastie.” Angus grabbed at the raven, one hand circling its belly, the other clamping down on its bill. Pulling the bird from the ground, he hefted it fast against his chest. The raven jerked its wings and clawed its feet, but Angus held it firm, increasing his pressure on its bill. “Darra. Take the knife from my belt and cut the message.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra did as she was asked, though her knifehand shook so much as she broke the seal that she nearly bled the bird. With the sinew and resin bindings broken, the small package, no bigger than a child’s little finger, fell into Darra’s left palm.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus turned away from his wife and threw the raven from him. The bird spread its wings and soared into the air, laughing, laughing, as it disappeared into the blade-metal sky.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Here. Take it.” Darra Lok held out the package. The pikeskin wrapping was badly stained by rain, resin, and bird lime, but small silvery green patches of skin were still visible along its length. Pikeskin was light, strong, and waterproof and could be molded in place when wet. A useful material, yet Angus couldn’t recall the last time he’d received a message so wrapped. The moment Angus’ fingers closed around the soft, damp package, Darra took a step back. Angus sent his wife a glance. Stay.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Darra shook her head. “No, my husband. I’ve been married to you for eighteen years, and I have never once looked upon any message they have sent. I do not think it would be a good time to break my tally now.” With that Darra Lok ran a hand over her husband’s right cheek and turned and walked away.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Angus cupped his hand to his face where his wife had touched him, holding on to her warmth as he watched her disappear behind the corner of the house. He didn’t deserve her. She was a Ross of Clad Hill, and her father was a grangelord, and nineteen years ago when they’d first met, she could have had any man she chose. Angus Lok I (ONES never forgot that. It ran through his mind now as he unraveled the roll of pikeskin and pulled out the length of saliva-softened whitespruce bark.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sliced so thinly that Angus could see his thumb through the fibers, the soft strip of inner bark carried a border of seals chasing quarter moons burned into the wood. The message was also burned in, painstakingly pricked out with the tip of a red-hot needle:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The One with Reaching Arms Beckons Days Darker Than Night Lie Ahead Sadaluk Angus stepped toward the great old elm and leaned heavily against its trunk. Rain dripped around him, forming a curtain of beaded light. Many things he had been prepared for, many terrible, terrible things. But this… A bitter smile flashed across Angus’ face. This was something he had thought well behind him. They all had.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It’s your choice, Angus Lok. Make of it what you will. The past pulled like a much used muscle within Angus’ chest. It shortened his breath, making it difficult to breathe. He would have to leave. Tonight. Head for Ille Glaive, meet with those who needed to be told. It never occurred to him to doubt the message. Sadaluk of the Ice Trapper tribe was not the sort of man given to rash communication. Twenty years, and this was the first time Angus had ever heard from him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Beneath Angus’ feet, the bald earth around the elm turned to mud. The raven’s laughter echoed in the last of the tree’s attached leaves. Angus glanced at his house. Inside Gassy would be helping Darra stack the fire before supper, Beth would be rolling dough for the sweet, sticky unnameable pastries that she and Little Moo loved to eat. As for Little Moo… well, she had probably keeled over on the rug and was currently fast asleep. That child could sleep anywhere.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Pain, which had never quite left Angus’ chest, reasserted itself with a single, soft stab. How safe were all his children tonight?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tucking the message in a slip inside his waistcoat, Angus pushed himself off from the elm and headed for the warmth of his house. No. He wouldn’t leave his home, not in darkness. Those who sent mes sages could go to the deepest spiraling hell. He had promised Beth and Little Moo ribbons, and by all the gods, they were going to get them. Yet even as Angus Lok found some satisfaction in defiance, fear settled like dust within his bones. A raven had come, and a message had been received, and the past was now a tightly held fist knocking at his door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>t ‘t As quiet as settling dust, Ash March told herself as she slipped through her chamber door. Cool air from the corridor brushed against her nightdress, and Ash had to bite the inside of her mouth to stop herself from shivering. Why did it have to be so cold? She glanced back at the door. Should she have brought an outer robe after all? Suddenly the idea of wandering around Mask Fortress wearing little but a nightdress and a wool tunic didn’t seem nearly as clever as it had earlier. Still, this way, if she were caught, she could at least claim sleepwalking and have a chance of being believed. Wearing a cloak would make things harder. Did sleepwalkers dress before they went outside? Ash didn’t know.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Looking ahead at what she could see of the gently spiraling corridor of cut and angled stone, Ash listened for the sound of Marafice Eye. The Knife had moved from his post by Ash’s door some minutes earlier, probably assuming his charge was fast asleep. Ash didn’t know where he had gone, had no idea when and if he would return. She just knew that he was sick of spending his nights camped outside her door. She didn’t blame him. It was cold enough to turn breath white, and, discounting watching dust settle and greenwood torches burn out one by one, there was nothing to do.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Laughter. Ash tensed. The sound came again, down the corridor and off to the right. Katia’s room. Yet that wasn’t Katia laughing. Not unless she’d spent the night swilling hot tar and chewing on gravel.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I said blow out the light.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Immediately Ash recognized the cold, imperative tones of Marafice Eye. He was in Katia’s room… with Katia. Ash shuddered; she didn’t like the thought of that one bit. Katia was so small, dark and tiny like a doll. And Marafice Eye was a huge bull of a man, with arms that took the sleeves of four men to cover them and wrists like iron ‘I J- V- <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>bars. Slipping into the shadows against the opposite wall, Ash walked quickly ahead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The limestone walls were bitterly cold, and Ash avoided touching them as she moved. Both her own and Katia’s chambers were situated in the shortest and thickest of the four towers in Mask Fortress: the Cask. The Cask was the principal fortified structure in Spire Vanis, and its walls were twenty feet thick. A series of spiraling corridors and winding staircases led up from its base like a path weaving around a hill, breaking occasionally for defensive bastions, archers’ roosts, chambers, walled-in snugs, and recessed alcoves with cut stone benches known as graymeets.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash’s chamber formed the heart of the Cask. Directly below her floor, the tower wall was spiked with a ring of fortifications so thick that from outside they looked like a massive limestone bird’s nest clustered around a tree. The Cask was not a pretty sight. Of the three towers that were livable within the fortress, it was the least graciously set, having none of the wrought ironwork and lead cladding found in the Horn or the crow-step gables and black marble eyelets of the Bight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As for the Splinter, the tallest tower in Mask Fortress, capped with the Iron Spire, where high traitors were once impaled at a height of six hundred feet so that everyone within the city could see them and know fear… Ash shook her head. No one had been there for years. The Splinter was unstable, uninhabitable, freezing, damp, broken. It was a wonder the whole thing didn’t collapse. One end was said to be embedded so deeply within the frozen bedrock of Mount Slain that the tower shuddered along with the mountain. And the other end soared so high into the clouds that moisture continually ran in rivulets down its walls whether it was raining or not. In winter the entire structure was encased within a layer of rime ice a knuckle thick. Pale, narrow, and twisting, the ice-bound tower had been called by many names: the Winter Spire, the White Thorn, Penthero Iss’ Bloodless Prick. Ash frowned. Katia was always passing along such nonsense.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Reaching the first set of steps, Ash risked looking back. Katia must have blown out the light as Marafice Eye had bidden, for the space beneath the little maid’s door was now dark. That was good, Ash told herself, moving her mind away from the subject. She didn’t want to think about what might be happening within.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Solid limestone steps muffled her footfalls as she descended the stairs. Iron hooks, mottled brown and orange with rot and rust, jutted from the stairwall like bird claws, forcing her to walk dead center. Once they had been used to suspend great fire-blackened chains that linked all the Cask’s portcullises to a single lever in the strongroom below. Now they were just one more hazard to avoid, like servants, brothers-in-the-watch, and the raw mountain air.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash rubbed her arms. She was so cold. Freezing. Yet she had thought to wear her thickest nightgown, and her feet were slippered in moleskin. It wasn’t even winter yet, not properly, so why could she never get warm?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>You are not well, almost-daughter. I worry.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shook her foster father’s voice from her head. She wasn’t unwell in the way he meant. Katia had told her all about what happened to girls when they came into their blood, and nightmares and cold sweats formed no part of it. “You get stomach cramps,” Katia had said, an air of vast superiority warming her voice. “And your mind starts turning to men.” Ash blew air through her nostrils. Men. No, that definitely wasn’t happening to her.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Something else was. Ten nights in a row she had dreamed of ice. Always she awoke to find sheets damp with sweat twisted around her arms like rope. The dreams were so real, and the voices of the creatures who spoke to her were like nothing she had ever heard before. Mistressss, they murmured, as sickly pleasing as sweet rolls spread with honey and jam, come for us, stretch toward us, reach…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash took a deep breath to stop herself from shivering. The thought of returning to her bedchamber was suddenly there in her mind, and it was hard to keep moving forward. Her foster father knew what was wrong with her, she was sure of it. She was also sure he would never tell her the truth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He watched her constantly; stealing into her room when she was sleeping, examining her breasts, her hair, her teeth, questioning Katia about the tiniest details of her life. Nothing was too insignificant for him: the contents of her chamber pot, the amount of goose fat left on her plate after dinner, the changing dimensions of her corselet and small linens. What did he want with her? Wasn’t being his almost-daughter enough?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash pushed the hurt away before it reached her. He wasn’t her real <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>father, she had to remember that. He never called her daughter without speaking the word almost first.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The stairs came to an abrupt halt between stories to allow access to the battlements, then resumed after a short ramp. Ash increased her speed. The light level was rising, and shouted orders and the clatter of steel on steel began to filter up from the Red Forge below.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Penthero Iss knew something, something about her, her parents, or the circumstances of her birth. Something that made him guard her closely at all times, set his Knife outside her door, and call upon her day and night unannounced, hoping to catch her… doing what? Ash shook her head. She might find the answer to that tonight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Every evening in the hour before midnight, Iss left his private chambers in the base of the Cask and went elsewhere. Ash had seen him leave and return countless times over the years, yet she did not know where he went. According to Katia, he seldom locked the chamber door behind him. It was late, and the Cask was secure, and only Ash, Katia, and a handful of trusted servants were allowed access during the night. The Rive Watch garrison, the mighty Red Forge where brothers-in-the-watch struck and cooled their bloodred swords, was situated adjacent to the Cask. No one could enter the tower unchallenged. Iss’ chamber was secure against intruders, but not against someone who was already within the tower.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>All her foster father’s private papers were held within his chamber. If there was any record of the day he had found and claimed her, it would be buried somewhere deep beneath his slate books and ledgers, his onionskin atlases and manifests and lists.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash began her descent of the second flight of stairs, her hand trailing from hook to hook along the stairwall. Iss’ voice followed her like smoke from the greenwood torches. Is this how you repay me, almost-daughter? I clothe you and feed you, and then as soon as my back is turned you betray me like this. You disappoint me, Asarhia. I thought you loved your father more.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Asarhia. Ash bristled. She was Ash, just Ash, yet no one within Mask Fortress would acknowledge it. Everyone called her Asarhia or Lady Asarhia or mistress. It was yet another thing she owed to Penthero Iss. He had found and then named her: Asarhia because it was a fashionable name given to ladies of high birth, and March because of where she was found: on the very border of the city itself. Five paces farther south of Vaingate, almost-daughter, and you would not have been mine to keep. Protector’s Trove ends within a shadow’s fall of the gate.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash breathed in cold air from the shadows as she paused upon the final landing to listen for sounds of brothers-in-the-watch.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Vaingate. Why Vaingate? Spire Vanis had four gates, each one facing a cardinal point. Vaingate faced south. South. No roads led from it, no brothers-in-the-watch patrolled it, no carts loaded with wares ever trundled past its posts. Vaingate opened onto the north face of Mount Slain! It had been built purely for show, satisfying some ancient masonic code of order that demanded a walled city have four gates. Who would leave a baby outside a gate that was never used?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The answer came to Ash with the same sickening pull as always: Someone who wanted their baby dead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Voices. Close by.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash stilled herself. She spent hours each day watching fortress cats chase mice and birds in the quadrangle, and one thing she knew for sure was that a cat never pounced unless it saw something move. The trick was keeping your nerve. Mice didn’t, birds didn’t, but some old hares did. Ash had seen them, sitting perfectly still on the archers’ block as brazen as you like. The shadows on the stairwell were deep, slanting, and Ash leaned into them, pressing her shoulders against the limestone wall. The voices grew louder. Footsteps clicked over tile, click, click, click.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Don’t hold the bowl out at arm’s length like a used chamber pot, you great moose. It’ll cool in no time that way. Hold it against your chest. Can’t have His Coldness complaining about lukewarm beans-not with them being late and all.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘And why not? It’s certainly not him that eats them. Beans is common fare, and we all know how high and mighty the Killhound is. Wouldn’t eat a pork sausage if his life depended on it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I don’t know nothing about that. Beans in soft butter he’s asked for, and beans he’s going to get. Now deliver ’em sharpish-they’re long past due as it is. And be sure to let him know that no one in the kitchen’s to blame. Furnacemen! Hmph! When I find which of those dog-faced devils killed my stove, I swear I’ll…”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The voices trailed off as the two figures disappeared along the corridor, and Ash pulled back from the wall. It was just Mistress Wence and <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>a manservant. They hadn’t even glanced up as they passed. From the sound of things, they were late delivering food to her foster father. Which meant that Iss was still in his chamber. Annoyed, Ash brushed lime dust from her shoulders. What was she going to do now?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Matters were decided for her by the sound of booted feet descending the stairs. A brother-in-the-watch, judging from the faint jingle of metal that accompanied each step, so there was no going back. Leaving the safe haven of the shadows, Ash took the last of the steps and moved into the corridor below. The entrance to the Red Forge lay on the south side of the tower, so she took the way north instead, following Mistress Wence and the manservant toward Iss’ chamber.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>At ground level the curvature of the Cask’s corridors was so slight, it was easy to forget they ran in a circuit around the base of the tower. Only a quarter of the rotunda was given over to Iss’ private rooms. The remaining space was taken by state rooms: the Hall of Trials, the Blackvault, and the main entrances to the quadrangle and the Red Forge. Along the entire length of the circuit ran a series of life-size statues hewn from marble the color of smoke: the Founding Quarterlords and Impaled Beasts of Spire Vanis.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shivered hard as she heard the brother-in-the-watch open the main rotunda door behind her. Cold air pushed against the backs of her legs. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t started this. But then, doing anything these days was preferable to sleeping.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Dreams woke her every night. Her mind drifted… she saw the ice cave, felt the terrible cold breath that steamed from its shining walls…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Another door banged closed, bringing Ash back. Voices again. Mistress Wence and the servant returning from Iss’ chamber. They would be here any moment.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Panicking, Ash wheeled around. Smooth walls, an iron-plated door that led to the unused east gallery and was kept locked at all times, a lit greenwood torch, and a recess housing a statue of Torny Fyfe, Bastard Lord, swordsman and glutton, and least highly regarded of the Founding Quarterlords were the only things in sight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mistress Wence’s heels tapped a march against the limestone floor. Her thin nasal voice piped in displeasure.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash ran for the greenwood torch, tugged it from its pewter casing, and rammed the burning end against the wall. The flames died in I stantly, killing the light. Thick smoke from the charred end curled toward the ceiling as Ash recouched the torch. The smell of burned resin helped clear her head. Turning about, she ran for the statue of Torny Fyfe, squeezing herself behind his great marble thighs and thanking the Maker for every eight-course meal the Quarterlord had ever eaten. The shadow cast by his overhanging belly was enough to provide a team of dogs with shade.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Really! Between you and furnacemen I don’t know who’s the dimmest. You were supposed to tell Iss that it wasn’t the kitchen staffs fault. Not just stand there mumbling a lot of old nonsense about the lumber and the fire.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Rounding the curve, Mistress Wence and the manservant came to an abrupt halt several paces short of Torny Fyfe’s likeness. Although light in the corridor was now limited, it was far from dark, and Ash could clearly see Mistress Wence’s sharp nose quiver.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Torch has gone out. Take a flint to it, Grice. We don’t want to give His Coldness anything else to find fault with.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Grice slapped his tunic looking for a flint, Ash felt a trickle of cold sweat slide past her ear. Dream or no dream, she was returning to her chamber as soon as this pair was gone. She should never have come here. The whole idea had been a mistake from the start. She’d rather be lying in bed dreaming of ice than wedged behind a marble backside, hiding from the fortress staff.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Realizing Grice was flintless, Mistress Wence sniffed with venom. “Really! How can you call yourself a man and not carry a flint?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I can relight it from one of the torches, mistress.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To Ash’s very great relief, Mistress Wence shook her head, shoulders, and chest. “You will do no such thing, you great oaf. What if Iss came from his chamber and saw you hulking around with a smoking torch in your hand at this time of night?” Three sniffs followed in rapid succession. “He’d think you were a hideclad come to finish him off, that’s what. And sure as rotten apples bring flies, he’d make you pay for it. You’re coming to the kitchen with me and pick up a flint this minute. Move sharpish, now!” With that Mistress Wence and the manservant resumed their journey along the corridor.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Slumping forward against Torny Fyfe’s shoulder, Ash exhaled softly. A wisp of marble dust spilled down her neck, cold and grainy like powdered snow. Ash shook it away. She was stiff, half-frozen, and \u00f8 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>her nightgown was plastered to her back with icy sweat. Sucking in her chest and stomach, she squeezed herself free of Torny Fyfe’s shoulders and shuffled her ankles clear of his blocky, basestone feet. As she stepped into the open corridor, her head jerked back painfully. Turning about, she saw where a lock of her hair had snagged in the Quar-terlord’s elaborately worked scabbard. Cursing all fat men with swords, Ash edged back to release it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Besides arming Torny Fyfe with a sword long enough to impale a horse, the sculptor had also conceived of a brisk wind to blow at his cape, and sharp folds of marble shaved Ash’s shins as she moved. Letting out a sound halfway between a squeak and a sob, Ash vowed to run back to her chamber and never, ever, venture out again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sss. A door whirred open in the distance, making a faint hissing sound. Ash looked up. The noise came from the direction of Penthero Iss’ private chamber. Even before she could decide what to do, she heard softly soled feet slapping stone. Iss was coming this way.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Wrenching her trapped hair free, Ash drew herself into the deepest shadows of the recess. Iss would be furious if he found her here. Furious. The time she fixed the bolt on her door was nothing compared to this.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Before she had chance to settle herself into a position she could comfortably hold, her foster father rounded the corner. Thin, pale, and hairless except for his closely shorn scalp, Penthero Iss had the look of something drowned and then pulled up a week later from a lake. Everything about him was pallid, smooth, and bloodless. His eyes were green, but barely so; his lips and cheeks had the color and texture of cooked veal; and the skin on his earlobes let through light.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Carrying a covered bundle in his left arm, Iss walked faster than was normally his wont. Blue silk, heavily embroidered with metal chains and pieces of agate, thrashed against his thighs as he moved.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash held her breath. All of her shrank back, away from her foster father. She closed her eyes as he passed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Only he didn’t pass. Not completely. He walked to a point and then stopped. All was silent. Realizing she had been discovered, Ash opened her eyes. The sleepwalking excuse was a dead dog now.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash blinked. Fully expecting her foster father’s pale green gaze to be upon her, she was surprised to see that he wasn’t even looking her way. His back was toward her, and he was standing in front of the iron door. Ash saw the tendons in his wrist rise and fall, and then a muffled clunk sounded as lock and key turned.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In all her years of living within Mask Fortress, Ash had never once seen the iron door opened. It led through to the unused east gallery and then to the Splinter beyond. No one ever visited the Splinter. It was forbidden by rule of law. Workmen had died there, people said, plunging to their deaths through gaps in rotten timbers, crushed by falling masonry, and impaled upon the banister of spikes that wove around the main stairway like a handrail to hell.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash inched forward, resting her hand on Torny Fyfe’s smoothly chiseled rear.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The door swung back as Penthero Iss pushed against the metal plating. Stale air breathed into the corridor like fine mist. Ash smelled the dry, itchy odor of old stone and withered things. It was the same smell-part of it-that clung to Iss sometimes when he visited her chambers in the middle of the night. Ash trembled, not sure if she was excited or afraid. The lock had turned with barely a sound! The door hinges glided as smoothly as a pat of butter running down a roast. Everything had been oiled. Recently. There was no rust, no rot.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss slid into the darkness on the far side of the door. All previous vows about returning to her room forgotten, Ash willed her foster father not to lock the door behind him. He was in a hurry, she knew that. Would he pause to lock the door?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The iron door closed as easily as something a quarter of its size. Switching air caused one of the iron plates to jiggle in its frame. Ash listened for the sound of Iss inserting his key. She heard something, a click or tap, and then everything was quiet.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash waited. Her heart was pumping fast and hard, and she was ready to run for the door. She forced herself to count seconds. Her foster father had gone to the Splinter. The Splinter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Minutes passed. Beneath Ash’s hand, Torny Fyfe’s backside warmed to a toasty glow. Ash patted the marble. She was growing rather fond of the old Quarterlord.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This time she slipped smoothly from the recess, tucking her hair beneath her nightdress and lifting her ankles high to avoid sharp edges. Working the stiffness from her legs and back, she crossed to the door. Seen up close, the metal plates were scored and then case hardened to form a rigid skin of steel. The mark of the Killhound standing high atop the Iron Spire was stamped upon each one.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Unsettled, Ash pushed against the door. The cool metal gave, sweeping back beneath her palm. Shadows and old air stole across Ash’s fingers and up along her arm. Iss had not locked the door. It seemed mad, impossible. Doubt spiked in her stomach like a violent cramp. Still she kept pushing, forcing the door back into the corridor beyond. Secrets lay ahead, she was sure of it. And she had to know if those secrets involved her.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Stepping into the shadows, she let the door fall shut behind her. A different kind of coldness from that present in the rotunda gripped at her chest: dry, bitter, and weighted, as if the air were thick with particles of freezing dust. Ash stilled herself for a moment, giving her eyes time to adjust to the darkness.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The east gallery was a long arcade of limestone arches roofed with slate-she knew that because the structure formed the massive east wall of the quadrangle-yet the shadows surrounding her gave little of that away. Dark gashes of open space, pale glimmering edges, and hoods of matted stone were all she could see. Soft warbling sounds came from somewhere high above, and Ash guessed that pigeons had found their way in to roost.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Hoping they were the only living things she would encounter, she began to walk in the direction she imagined was forward. Stone dust crunched beneath her slippers with each step. Icy fingers of frost tugged at her arms and ankles. The odor of dry decay sharpened. Suddenly nervous, she picked up her pace, striding into the tunneling darkness. ,’ can turn back at any time, she told herself, trying to sound strong.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The gallery stretched on and on, and except for occasional chinks in boarded-up windows where single beams of moonlight shone through, there was no increase in light. Ash glanced into the shadows pooled to either side of the walkway. What could a man see in such darkness? She slowed. What could he do?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash halted and peered into the distance. A curving endwall, black yet planed smooth enough to reflect some measure of light, blocked the way ahead. Just visible against the dark stonework was the outline of a heavily carved door. Ash recognized it instantly. Another identical door, locked, barred, and boarded, stood outside against the fortress wall. The wood had been worked in such a way to fool the eyes into thinking that the door was already open and Robb Claw, great-grandson of the Bastard Lord Glamis Claw, was on his way through.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The second entrance to the Splinter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Even as Ash tensed muscles to step toward it, the ground beneath her feet shuddered. Overhead beams creaked. Dust sifted to the floor like fine rain. Tiny hairs along her arms lifted. Everything stilled, yet something within the air and shadows continued to change. Ahead the endwall seemed to grow darker, blacker, deeper, siphoning substance from the night. The air temperature dropped so quickly it felt like liquid against Ash’s skin. Shadows bled. Bearings shifted. Everything became somehow less than it was.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>And then Ash felt it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Something evil and wanting and broken. Something trapped in the darkness, drying slowly to a scaly husk. Something nameless and full of hate, driven by loneliness and terror and savage, blinding, unspeakable pain. Malice filled it, fear consumed it, need pumped like blood through its dark, voided heart. It wanted, wanted. It hardly knew what, but it wanted. And hated. And was utterly alone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Dread stole over Ash like deep cold. All the breath rushed from her body, leaving her lungs hanging dead in her chest. An instant floated in the air like dust too fine to settle. Ash felt as if she were sinking in ice cold water. She couldn’t breathe, move, think.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Slowly, slowly, and at terrible cost, the nameless wanting thing turned its mind toward Ash March. Ash felt the great millwheel of its awareness pass over her, and in those seconds she came to know the full burden of its existence. It made her mouth go dry.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The creature reached.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It wasn’t there, wasn’t beside, above, or beneath her. But it reached.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Ash shrank back. She sucked in breath, turned on her heel and ran.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fists beating air, hair streaming loose, moleskin slippers smacking against stone, Ash raced along the east gallery, back toward the iron door. Walls, arches, and openings blurred into a single streak. Ash’s heart beat in her throat. When she came upon the iron-plated door, she blasted through it like a bear through sheet ice. The rotunda corridor was warm and full of light. The torch she had extinguished had been relit and burned with a crackling yellow flame. Part of her <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>wanted to rip it from the wall and throw it into the darkness beyond the door and burn whatever lived there.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The desire to flee was greater. Not stopping to watch the door swing shut behind her, or check if anyone was coming, Ash dashed along the rotunda toward the stairs. Limestone walls that earlier had felt as cold as gravestones now seemed as warm as sun-baked clay.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shook her head as she took the stairs two and three at a time. She had been a fool. A fool. Everyone knew there was no such thing as good secrets. She should have kept away, not looked, not dared. Even if she had gone to her foster father’s private chambers instead of heading for the Splinter, the story would have been the same. She wasn’t really going to find some magical slip of paper that told of how she was more than just a foundling, how Penthero Iss had robbed and tricked her real parents into giving her up. There were no good secrets. And she was a fool for believing otherwise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash let out a hysterical sob.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>She was Ash March, Foundling, left outside Vaingate to die.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tears stung her eyes as she climbed the last stairs to her chamber. She didn’t want to think about the nameless creature in the Splinter, didn’t want to know what it was.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What have we here?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash rounded the final turn in the staircase and came face-to-face with Marafice Eye. The Knife moved directly into her path, preventing her from taking another step. The bow curve of his chest forced her to edge back. Marafice Eye had small eyes and a small mouth and hands as big as dogs. Ash was scared of his hands. She had seen him break iron chains with them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Where have you been? Sick of pissing in a pot? Thought you might get up and use the jacks instead?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash made no reply. Marafice Eye liked to use obscenities around women. He took pleasure in it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Holding her gaze down, refusing to meet his eyes, Ash stepped to the side, meaning to pass the Knife. She didn’t want him to know she was upset.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Marafice Eye stepped with her, barring her way once more. The block of purple flesh that formed the Knife’s left fist swung up to Ash’s chin. The fist barely touched flesh, grazing the underside of her jaw with a knuckle the size of a bird’s skull, yet it was enough to make Ash look up.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Knife’s lips twisted into a smile. “What’s upset our little girly, then? Did she see something she wasn’t supposed to, or did the frost just bite?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Leave me alone!” Ash exploded forward, pushing against Marafice Eye’s chest with all that was in her. The Knife barely swayed. His oxblood leather tunic creaked as he leaned forward to absorb the blow. Ash fell back on her heels, jolted and off balance as if she had walked straight into a door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Smile twisting to its narrow limits, the Knife resettled his fist under Ash’s jawline, pushing his knuckles into the soft hollow where her neck and jaw met. “I’ve killed women for less,” he said, small eyes glinting. “What makes you so sure I wouldn’t kill you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash’s legs felt like straw sticks. She could feel the nameless creature’s presence like greasy residue against her skin. Her chest was shaking with exhaustion, and despite running through the fortress at full speed, she felt as cold as if she had been standing still.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raising her head clear of Marafice Eye’s fist, she took a deep breath and said, “Iss set you to watch, not touch me. Now step aside and leave me be, and perhaps, just perhaps, come tomorrow I won’t tell him how easy it was to slip through your guard.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Knife’s eyes narrowed to two dark slits. The slabs of flesh on his face stiffened. He looked at Ash, breathed on Ash, and then, in his own good time, stood aside and let her pass.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash felt malice on her back for the second time that night as she climbed the last three steps and took the short walk back to her chamber. Marafice Eye watched her all the way. As her hand reached for the chamber door, he spoke. “Push me again, Asarhia March, and you will end up dead.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash closed her eyes, shutting out the words. Her knees buckled and she had to lean into the door to stop herself from falling. Although she didn’t look around, she knew Marafice Eye had seen her collapse. She hated him for it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With all the strength she could muster, she pushed against the door. It opened and she half staggered, half fell, into her chamber. Even though she could barely stand, the first thing she did was pull the chair from her dresser and jam it against the door. It wasn’t enough. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>standing beside the guidestone and singing to the Stone Gods. Yet words wouldn’t come. Raif tried, but they wouldn’t.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>After a moment Drey moved ahead, shoulders stiffening beneath his oilskins, gloved hands running along his elkhide pack to brush off sleet. Raif knew he was disappointed. “Drey.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif took a breath. It suddenly seemed important to say something, now, before they reached the roundhouse. Only he wasn’t sure what, or why. “The raid.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What of it?” Drey didn’t look up. Thick tufts of grass hid ankle-breaking boulders, bog holes, and snags of long-gone trees, and Drey suddenly seemed engrossed in choosing his steps.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘We can’t say who attacked the camp.” Raif struggled for the right words. “We just need to be… careful, that’s all. You and me. Careful.” The wind picked up as he spoke, howling through the trees on the slope, thrashing grass flat against the earth and driving sleet into their faces. Raif shivered. He glanced at Drey.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>His brother’s hood now pointed ahead. After a moment Drey pushed it back, exposing his face. He stopped in his tracks. “There’s Corbie Meese. Up on the rise, by the old black oak.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A muscle in Raif’sstomach pulled with a soft, sickening twist. Hadn’t Drey heard what he said? Raif opened his mouth to speak again, but Drey’s arm came up and he began shouting.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Corbie! Corbie! Over here!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif pushed back his own hood and ran his hand through his hair. He watched as the gray figure on the slope raised a hand in acknowledgment, then slipped back a few paces and trotted his horse into view. It was Corbie Meese all right. Even from this distance his stocky hammerman’s body with its disproportionately muscular arms and neck was clearly identifiable. Even the slight flattening on the left side of his head above his ear, where a training hammer had clipped his skull when he was just a boy, showed up against the light gray sky. Corbie’s hammer was strapped to his back, as always. Raif noticed that its iron head reflected no light as Corbie swung up to mount his horse. Which meant the normally smooth metal had been laid upon an anvil and chisel scored.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘He’s riding back,” Drey said. After a moment he spoke again, his voice soft. “He must be meaning to gather the clan.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif sucked in breath. A hammerman scored his hammer only in times of war. Smooth metal reflected light and could give away a position, plus a glancing blow with smooth metal was just that-a glancing bjow_but with metal raised in jagged ridges a glancing blow could tear the skin from a man’s face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif’s hand came up to his neck to search for the reassuring smoothness of his raven lore. Clan preparing for war? Had they already received word of the raid?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Five days he and Drey had been traveling on foot. Five days of freezing nights, bitterly cold days, and driving winds. Raif was tired beyond knowing. He couldn’t recall the last time he had felt warm or completely dry. They had run out of ale on the second day, and Raif’slips were cracked from sucking on ice. It was only yesterday morning, when they’d finally crossed over the balds and into the clanholds, that the temperature had begun to rise above freezing. Yet that was when the sleet started, so there was little reward for leaving the badlands behind.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Through it all Raif had felt a deep sense of unease. Freshly broken twigs, sap frozen around the break, hoofprints stamped in hoarfrost, and broken ice over melt ponds kept catching his eye. Elks and bears could break surface ice and twigs, he told himself, and lone hunters from Clan Orrl often used Blackhail’s hunting paths. Yet Raif felt no better for telling himself such things. They sounded reasonable, but they didn’t stick.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>‘Come on, Raif. Race you to the rise.” Drey grabbed Raif’sarm and yanked it hard as he ran ahead. Raif grinned. Not wanting to disappoint his brother again, he tore after him, crashing through tangles of ground birch and alder, his pack slamming against his side as he ran.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey was the stronger runner, and even sweeping in wide arcs and topping every rock and fallen log he encountered, he reached the slope well before Raif. Climbing halfway to the rise, Drey turned, grinned, and waited for his brother to catch up.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif was breathless by the time he reached him. Blisters on his heels rubbed raw by days of walking throbbed like burned skin. Raif found comfort in the fact that Drey was clearly favoring his right foot, and his face was as red as beet water.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘We’re home, Raif,” Drey said, punching Raif’s pack. “Home!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif swung a punch at Drey’s ribs, then took off at full speed toward <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>the rise. Drey yelled after him to wait, called him a devil’s cur and a moose stag in rut, and then started running himself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Laughing, whooping, and wrestling, the two brothers reached the rise. They stopped dead when they saw the meet party riding up the leeward slope toward them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Corbie Meese, Shor Gormalin, Orwin Shank and his two middle sons, Will Hawk, Bailie the Red, a dozen yearmen and tied clansmen, Raina Blackhail, Merritt Ganlow, and the clan guide Inigar Stoop. All including the women and Inigar Stoop were heavily armed. Spears bristled in their couchings, and greatswords, hammers, and more than a few war axes weighed across backs. Bailie the Red’s great yew longbow was braced and ready in its case, his side quiver fat with the red arrows that gave him his name. Shor Gormalin carried only a short-sword. It was all the soft-spoken swordsman ever needed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Then, as Raif and Drey stood on the ridge, side by side, breathless, their exposed faces cooling in the sleety air, the troop of two dozen parted and through their midst, wearing a cloak made of black wolf fur that rippled in the wind like a living, breathing thing, rode Mace Blackhail high atop Dagro Blackhail’s blue roan.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey gasped.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif looked hard into Mace Blackhail’s face. And didn’t stop looking until Mace met his eyes. “Traitor.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The word brought the meet party to a halt.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>At his side, Raif heard Drey inhale sharply.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail didn’t blink. Bringing up a hand gloved in the finest lamb’s leather and dyed three times until it was the perfect shade of black, he made a settling motion to those behind him. He held Raif’s gaze for a time, sleet collecting in his oiled braids and sliding down his narrow nose and cheeks. When he spoke it was to Drey.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Where were you when the attack came?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey straightened his shoulders. “Raif and I were out at the lick, shooting hares.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Where were you?” The hardness of Raif’s voice caused some in the party to draw breath. Raif hardly cared. Mace Blackhail was standing before him, mounted on Dagro Blackhail’s horse, unharmed, well fed, and acting like lord of the clan. Raif’slore burned like a hot coal around his neck. While he and Drey had stayed at the camp taking care of the dead, Mace Blackhail had ridden back to the roundhouse 6l in haste. It was the blue roan that had stamped its hooves in mud and hoarfrost and broken ice in newly set ponds, not some daring Maimed Raider or a lone Orrlsman tracking game.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I,” Mace Blackhail said, his voice equally as hard as Raif’s, “was seeing off a bear at Old Hoopers Lake. The beast broke bounds at first light, spooked the horses. Killed two dogs. I headed it off, chased it east along the rush, and speared its neck. Just as I was set to finish the kill, I heard sounds of fighting from the west. I rode back to the camp at full gallop, but it was too late. The last of the Clan Bludd raiders were already riding away.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As he spoke the last sentence, Mace looked down and touched the pouch containing ground guidestone that hung from one of the many leather belts around his waist. Others in the party did likewise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>After a moment Drey did the same. The muscles in his throat worked a moment, and then he repeated softly, “Clan Bludd?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace nodded. His wolf cloak gleamed like oil floating on the surface of a lake. “I saw the last of them. Caught sight of their spiked hammers and the red felt laid over their horses’ docks.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Bailie the Red shook his head gently, his callused archer’s hands caressing the red-tailed hawk fletchings on his arrows. ” Tis a bad thing for a clansman to do: make raid on another’s camp at first light.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Corbie Meese, Will Hawk, and others grunted in agreement.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif spoke up to silence them. “The raid didn’t take place at first light. It happened at noon. I didn’t feel anything until-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif felt Drey’s fist hit the small of his back. Not an all-out punch, but enough to knock some wind from his lungs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘We don’t know when the raid took place, Raif,” Drey said over-loudly, clearly unhappy at having to speak out. “You got a bad notion in the pit of your stomach at noon, but who’s to say the raid didn’t happen before then?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘But, Drey-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>“Raif!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In all his life Raif had never heard Drey speak his name with such harshness. Raif pressed his lips to a line. Heat flared in his cheeks.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Drey.” Raina Blackhail trotted her filly forward, coming to a halt a few paces ahead of her foster son, Mace. White smoke streamed from the filly’s nostrils. “What did you see when you came upon the campsite?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif watched Raina’s face as he waited for his brother to reply. Raina Blackhail’s gray eyes gave little away. Dagro Blackhail’s first wife, Norala, had died of lump fever, and Raina was his second wife, taken in the hope that she would provide the clan chief with a son to carry his name. After the second year of marriage, when Raina’s belly had failed to quicken, Dagro Blackhail had reluctantly taken a foster son, a child of his sister’s from Clan Scarpe. Mace had been eleven when he was brought to the Blackhail roundhouse, just eight years younger than his foster mother, Raina.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey glanced at Raif before he answered Raina’s question. “We reached the camp about an hour before dark. We saw the dogs first, then Jorry Shank…” Drey hesitated. Orwin Shank, Jorry’s father, leaned forward in his saddle, his normally ruddy face as pale as if it were covered by a sheet of rime ice. “I don’t know how long he’d been there, lying in the scrub, but he was part frozen. And there wasn’t a lot of blood.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail kicked the roan’s flank, then quickly pulled the reins, causing the gelding to stamp its feet and shake its head. “It’s just as I said,” he cried, easily controlling the agitated roan. “The Bludds-men are arming themselves with hell-forged swords. They slip into a man’s gut as smooth as a spoon scooping bacon fat, then burn his in-sides hot and fast, roasting his flesh around the blade.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Merritt Ganlow swayed in her saddle. White-haired Inigar Stoop leaned over and steadied her, his pouches, horns, and slices of bone tinkling like shells as he moved.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raina Blackhail shot a warning glance to her foster son. “Drey hasn’t finished yet.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey shifted his weight. He wasn’t comfortable being the center of attention. “Well… I don’t know about hell-forged blades. I didn’t see any signs of burnt flesh…”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Go on.” Raina Blackhail’s voice, while not gentle, was no longer as severe as it had been.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Raif and I went around the camp. We tended the bodies: Meth Ganlow, Halfmast-I mean Darri-Mallon Clayhorn, Chad… all the others.” Drey swallowed hard. Raif saw where his brother had gripped his oilskin so tight, the hide had split along the seam. “All the wounds looked the same: clean, not much blood, swiftly done. Broadswords or greatswords looked to have been used.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘It’s as Mace says,” murmured Bailie the Red. “Clan Bludd.” Many in the party nodded and murmured, “Aye.” Noticing that Raina Blackhail was one of the few who remained silent, Raif spoke up, addressing his words to her alone. “Clan Bludd aren’t the only ones who use greatswords. Clan Dhoone, Clan Croser, Clan Gnash”-Raif stopped himself from naming Clan Scarpe, Mace Blackhail’s birth clan-“Maimed Men: All use swords as their second weapons.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail kicked the roan forward, coming to rest mere paces in front of Raif. “I said I saw Bluddsmen fleeing from the camp. Are you calling me a liar, Sevrance?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Out of the corner of his eye, Raif saw Drey’s hand come up, meaning to pull him back. Raif stepped away, out of his brother’s reach. He would not be silenced in this. Gaze fixed firmly on Mace Blackhail’s narrow, gray-skinned face, Raif said, “Drey and I saw to our clansmen. We didn’t leave them out on the tundra for the carrion beasts to take them. We gave them blood rites, drew a guide circle around them. Paid them due respect. What I am saying is that perhaps you were in too much of a hurry to get back to the roundhouse to pay retreating raiders fair due.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey swore, softly to himself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Everyone in the meet party had some reaction. Bailie the Red snorted, Merritt Ganlow let out a high, wailing cry, Corbie Meese sucked air between his wind-cracked lips, and the color returned to Orwin Shank’s face as quickly as if he had been sprayed with paint. Shor Gormalin moved his head in what might have been a nod of agreement.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raina Blackhail, almost as if she were afraid of showing any reaction, raised a gloved hand to her shoulders and pulled up her sable hood. Even though he was aware it was ridiculous to think of such a thing at such a time, Raif couldn’t help but be struck by Raina Black-bail’s beauty. She wasn’t pretty, not in the way that young girls like Lansa and Hailly Tanner were, but a kind of clear strength shone in her eyes that made everyone who saw her look twice. Raif wondered if she would ever marry again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail waited until everyone was quiet before he spoke his reply. His eyes were as hard and bloody as frozen meat. A small movement sent his wolf fur rippling and served to expose the sword at <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>his thigh. Ignoring Raif completely, he turned to face the meet party. “I won’t deny that I rode back as fast as I could-the boy has the truth of it there.” Mace paused, allowing a moment for the slight emphasis he had placed on the word boy to sink in.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I wasn’t thinking of the dead, I admit that. And I look back now and I’m ashamed of what I did. But when I saw my father’s body lying on the ground near the posts, his eyes frosting over even as I looked, all I could think of were the people at home. The Bluddsmen were heading east, yet what if they turned at the Muzzle and headed south instead? What if, whilst I stood there deciding whether to pull my father’s body from the cold or hold blood rites where it lay, a second, greater party descended on the roundhouse itself? What if I returned to find that the same thing that had happened to my father and his camp had happened here in the Heart of Clan?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail met the eyes of all who counted one by one. No one spoke, but some of the yearmen, including Orwin Shank’s two middle sons, shifted restlessly in their saddles.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sleet flew into the faces of the meet party, melting against the hot, flushed skins of Orwin Shank and his sons, Bailie the Red, Corbie Meese, and Merritt Ganlow, while clinging and staying partially frozen against the paler skins of Shor Gormalin, Raina Blackhail, and Will Hawk. All sleet that fell on Mace Blackhail turned to ice.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Finally, after he had forced many in the meet party to look away, Mace Blackhail spoke again. “I am sorry for what I did, but I would not change it. I believe my father would have done the same. It was a choice between the living and the dead, and everyone here who knew and loved Dagro Blackhail must allow that his first thoughts would have been for his wife and his clan.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Bailie the Red nodded. Others followed. The tendons to either side of Corbie Meese’s powerful hammerman’s neck strained against his skin, and after a moment he looked down and murmured, “That’s the truth of it.” Raina Blackhail edged her filly round, so that her face was not visible to anyone in the party, including her foster son.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif stood at Mace’s back. The bristling anger he had felt at being called a boy was now mixed with something else: a kind of slow-setting fear. Mace Blackhail was going to get away with it. Raif could see it on the faces of the meet party. Even Shor Gormalin, who never rushed to judgment on anything and was as careful about all decisions he made t as he was with his blade around children, was nodding along with the rest. Didn’t he see? Didn’t he realize?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>And then there was Drey. Raif glanced over his shoulder, where Drey stood only a pace behind him, a handful of Raif’soilskin twisting in his fist. If Raif meant to move forward to speak, Drey meant to pull him back.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Dagro’s body,” Raif hissed for Drey’s ears alone. “It wasn’t-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What’s that you say, boy?” Mace Blackhail spun the roan around. Brass bow and hammer hooks jangled like bells. “Speak up. We are all clan here. What you say to one you must say to all.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Anger made Raif slam his elbow into Drey’s fist to free himself from his brother’s hold. Blood pumped into his temples as he spoke. “I said that Dagro Blackhail didn’t fall by the posts. We found him by the rack. He was butchering the black bear carcass when he was taken.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail’s eyes darkened. His lips curled, and for half an instant Raif thought he was about to smile. Then just as quickly he wheeled back to face the meet party, stopping all hushed mutterings dead. “I moved the body from the posts to the drying rack. I didn’t want to leave my father outside the tent circle, exposed. It may have been foolish, but I wanted to him close to the fire.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘But the bear’s blood-‘<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey grabbed Raif’s wrist with such force that bones cracked. “Enough, Raif. You’re hounding the wrong person. It’s the Dog Lord and his clan that we should be attacking. We both saw the grooved hoofprints made by the Bluddsmen, you can’t deny that. What else didn’t we see? In our way we acted just like Mace-doing things foolishly without thinking. We weren’t there, remember. We weren’t there. While we crept away in the dark to shoot ice hares, Mace was standing dogwatch over the camp. We can’t blame him for slipping bounds to see off a bear. Either one of us would have done the same.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Releasing his hold on Raif’s wrist, Drey turned and faced his brother full on. Although his expression was tense, there was an unmistakable appeal in his eyes. “Mace did the right thing coming back, Raif. He acted like clan, doing what any experienced clansman would have done. We acted like”-Drey hesitated, searching for the right words-“two brothers who had just lost their da.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif looked down, away from his brother’s gaze and the sharp looks of the meet party. Drey had just won himself a lot of respect in the <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>eyes of the clan; Raif saw it in their eyes as they listened to him speak. Drey was the voice of reason, humbling himself, speaking with the same weighted reluctance that his father had before him. Raif swallowed, his throat suddenly sore. For a moment it had been just like listening to Tem.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Glancing up, Raif saw Mace Blackhail watching him. His face was fixed in lines of concern, in keeping with the new mood Drey had set, in keeping also with rest of the meet party, who waited quietly, gravely, to see what Drey Sevrance’s troublesome younger brother would do. Raif’sgaze descended from Mace Blackhail’s face to his gloved hands, which flicked at the roan’s mane with all the satisfaction of a wolf switching its tail. Drey had done his work for him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mace Blackhail’s gaze met Raif s, and in that instant Raif knew he was dealing with something worse than a craven. Mace Blackhail had ridden to the badlands on a stocky, fat-necked cob, one of twenty dozen other yearmen, a fosterling from another, lesser clan. Now he sat on his foster father’s blue smoke roan, wearing a wolf cloak that reflected only rich shades of black, speaking with a newly modulated voice and manner, and adopting the clan chiefs authority along with his clothes and his horse.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif massaged his wrist where Drey had gripped it. It wasn’t even worth asking how Mace had come to ride home upon his foster father’s gelding. Mace Blackhail wasn’t going to be caught out this late in the game.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Raif.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drey’s voice brought Raif back to the meet. Looking into his brother’s face, Raif saw how tired his brother looked. It had been a long six days for both of them, yet it was Drey who had carried a greater portion of the weight on the journey back, Drey who had spent an extra hour each night stripping logs down to the heartwood so the fire wouldn’t burn out while they slept.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘You two lads need to come inside.” It was Shor Gormalin, speaking in his soft burr. The small, fair-haired man, whose quiet ways disguised the fiercest swordsman in the clan, looked from Drey to Raif as he spoke. “You’ve walked a long way, and had a hard journey, and seen things that none here would wish to see. And no matter what was the right and wrong of what you did, you stayed and saw to our dead. For that alone we owe you more than any here can repay.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shor paused. Everyone in the meet party either nodded or murmured, “Aye.” A muffled sob escaped from Merritt Ganlow’s lips.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘So come wi’ me now. Let Inigar grind some guidestone for your tines, and let us warm you and feed you and welcome you home. You are clan, and you are needed, and you must tell us of our kin.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The swordsman’s words had a profound effect on the faces of the meet party. Orwin Shank closed his eyes and held a fist to his heart. Seeing their father’s actions, the two Shank yearmen did likewise. Other yearmen followed, and within seconds the entire meet party sat high on their saddles, eyes closed or cast down, paying due respect to those who were dead. Raina Blackhail trotted her horse over to Shor Gormalin’s side and laid her hand on the swordsman’s arm.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Out of the corner of his eye, Raif saw Mace Blackhail look up and take note of the contact. His eyes caught and reflected a thin break of sunlight, and for an instant they shone yellow like a wolfs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Forcing aside his unease, Raif stepped toward his brother. Drey was waiting for him and brought up his arm straightaway, wrapping it around Raif’sshoulder. He didn’t speak, and Raif was glad of it. There was little choice here: Raif loved his brother and respected Shor Gormalin too much to hold out against them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shor Gormalin vaulted from his horse with the speed and agility that never failed to surprise Raif, even though he had seen the swordsman do so many times before. A moment later Corbie Meese also dismounted, and the two clansmen came forward, offering Drey and Raif their mounts. Mace Blackhail trotted his horse down the slope, positioning himself to be head rider when the meet party turned for home.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shor Gormalin’s blue eyes looked straight at Raif as he handed him his reins. ” ‘Tis a good thing you did, lad, you and your brother. We are Blackhail, the first of all clans. We must be and act as one in this.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif took the reins. Although he didn’t say it outright, Shor Gormalin spoke of war.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The party of twenty-six rode in single and double file down the slope toward the roundhouse. As the wind had turned and quickened, they were forced to ride through the roundhouse’s smoke. Raif didn’t mind. The smoke was warm and smelled of good, honest things like resinous wood, charred mutton, and shale oil. The darkness it created hid his face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00f8 <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Not well. She seemed…” Raina shook her head, searched for the right word. “Angry. She ran away, and for the longest time no one could find her. We tore the roundhouse apart looking. Corbie Meese and Longhead arranged a search party. Letty and the girls lit torches and walked the length of the graze. Orwin Shank’s two eldest rode as far as the Wedge. It was Shor Gormalin who found her in the end-tucked in the corner of the little dog cote, stiff with cold and covered in dirt. Had that blessed stone of hers in her hand. Rocking back and forth with it, she was. Made herself so sick she could barely stand.” Raina clicked her tongue. “How she managed not to get eaten by those wolfhounds the Shanks keep, I’ll never know. Orwin feeds them but twice a week, I swear.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Relaxing his grip on his reins, Raif guided Shor Gormalin’s gelding around a bank of loose shale. His own anger suddenly didn’t seem important anymore. “How’s she been since?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Well, that’s what I came to warn you about. She’s lost a bit of weight. And she keeps so much to herself…” Raina’s words trailed away as a small figure stepped out from the roundhouse below.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Raif and Raina trotted their horses down into the valley, and Mace Blackhail and his lead riders drew close to the roundhouse, the figure took hesitant, child-size steps forward. It was Effie. Her dark auburn hair gave her away. Raif leaned forward in his saddle. She was so thin.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Just you be careful with her, Raif Sevrance,” Raina Blackhail said, kicking her horse forward. “You and Drey are all she has.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif barely acknowledged what Raina said. He glanced two riders ahead, where Drey was riding at Orwin Shank’s side. Drey looked back. His fox hood was up again, and the sky was nearly black, but the expression on his face was clear. What has happened to Effie?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling a stab of unease in his chest, Raif kicked Shor Gormalin’s gelding into a canter and raced along the file. Drey came seconds behind.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The beaten clay court outside the roundhouse greatdoor was filling rapidly with people. Some carried pitch-soaked torches, others smoking racks of charred mutton and spits of rabbits roasted in their skins. A few brought feed and blankets for the horses. One figure, Anwyn Bird by the looks of her round belly, rolled a keg of hearth-warmed beer before her that belched steam into the freezing air.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie stood ahead of everyone, her shoulders hunched together, shivering and clutching her blue woolen dress. No one had thought to throw a cloak over her shoulders or push mitts on her hands. As Raif approached, he saw where his sister’s cheeks had sunk away, leaving little pits beneath her eyes and around her jaw. His heart ached to see them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He slid from his horse and ran to her. Effie took a small step forward. Her grave little face was turned up toward his, and after a moment she held out her arms and waited to be taken. Raif scooped her up and brought her to his chest. Pushing her body against his, he drew her within the folds of his oilskin to protect her from the cold. She was so light. It was like picking up a blanket stuffed with straw. Raif hugged her harder, wanting to give her his heat and his strength.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Then Drey was there, and Effie shifted in Raif’s arms and Raif released her to his brother. Drey’s big arms enveloped Effie completely, and his head came down to hers, and he kissed her hair and her temples and the bridge of her nose. “It’s all right, little one. We’re back now. Raif and I are back.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie snuggled against Drey’s chest. “I knew,” she said quietly, seriously, glancing from Drey to Raif, then over to Mace Blackhail, who was busy hefting the saddle from the roan. “He said you were dead, but I knew it wasn’t so.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>S I X The Inverted Spire Ash March twisted the sheets around herself as she turned in her sleep. Linen spun so smoothly by the old women of Maker’s Isle that it felt as cool as glass rode up between her thighs, wound around her belly, and coiled about her wrists.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash dreamed she was enclosed within a womb of ice. Blue white light shone on her arms and legs, making them gleam like smooth metal. The icewall was slick where she had touched it, skin warmed and dripping. Ice squeaked and cracked as she moved. Frost fumes filled her mouth like milk.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>If she could just push further, deeper.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Something shifted. The massive lode of ice above her juddered, and freezing splinters rained on her face and chest. Spiky and hard as needles, they punctured the skin on her arms and her breasts, drawing tiny drops of blood. Even as Ash brushed away the splinters, the ice ceiling dropped. A blizzard of cold air pumped against her face, and then the ice ceiling slammed into her chest. Ice shattered against her skin with a crack of white light, and a spume of sleet and smoke filled the air.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash screamed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly there was nothing below her, and she fell and fell and fell.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Voices whispered to her, coaxed and pleaded like starving men. Reach, mistressss. So cold here, so dark. Reach.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash shook her head. She tried to move, but her body was numb. Frozen.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No longer falling, she stood in the center of . All was dark except for the glimmer of smoothly frozen things. Even the breath that steamed from the walls was dark and dense, like smoke from a poorly aired fire. Fear gnawed at the edges of Ash’s thoughts. When she breathed she took in the smell of cold things. She was not alone. Something within the cavern stirred. It made no move toward her, but it shifted its weight so that its presence would be known.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We have waited such a long time, mistressss: a thousand years in our chains of blood. Dare you make us wait a thousand more?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash felt her knees buckle. The voice pulled.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In the distance, beyond where she could see, beyond even the walls of the cave, creatures with muzzles howled. Shadows flickered upon the surface of the ice, man shapes and beasts and demon horses. And then suddenly there was no ice at all, just darkness that stretched toward a place where Ash knew in the deepest depths of her soul that she did not want to be.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Reach, mistressss. Pretty mistressss. Reach.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>At her side, the bones in her wrists twisted. Saddles of muscle in her chest and back tensed, ready to pull weight. Tendons strained. Fingers uncurled, forcing a closed fist into an open hand as knuckles cracked like wet sticks.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Reach for us. Reach for us. REACH.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Bones glided in their sockets as Ash’s arms began to rise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Kaawl A raven’s cry pierced the darkness, jolting Ash’s body like a needle in her spine.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Her eyes sprang open. The darkness sped away in a long blurred streak. She was in her chamber. The embers in the brazier glowed with a faint orange light. Both amber lamps were dead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Knocking.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash’s head spun around toward the source of the sound. Not the door, but the tiny shuttered window on the opposite side of the room. She waited. The noise didn’t come again, but a soft tearing sound, like the flap of wings beating air, faded into the distance. A bird. Ash shuddered. A raven.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly aware of how cold and wet the sheets were, she tugged them from her body. Her nightdress was soaking, so she pulled it over <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>her head and threw it the way of the sheets. Freezing and naked, she ran over to the charcoal brazier and knelt in its warm glow. Using the little copper tongs that were hooked at its base, she stirred the embers within. The oil-soaked felt had long since burned away, taking the odor of almonds and sandalwood with it. Ash was glad. She was in no mood to breathe in rich and sickly scents.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Her hands shook as she replaced the tongs. A haze of cold sweat covered her skin, and her knees felt as shaky as if she had run up all the stairs in the Cask without pausing to rest halfway. With a small sigh, she pulled at the corners of the needlepoint rug she was kneeling on, drawing the soft green wool around shoulders and making a little pocket for herself in the center. She was so tired. All she wanted to do was sleep.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling a bit better for being wrapped up, she glanced over to the door. The empty bolt holes stood as a reminder that either Marafice Eye or Penthero Iss could enter her chamber any time they pleased. Not that Marafice Eye ever had, but Ash knew he was out there, sitting on a graymeet bench, big hands testing the give of the leather bindings on his tunic or pushing against the bench’s armrests, bringing the entire weight of his body to bear upon any flaws he found in the stone. He was always testing things to see what it took to break them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash pulled the rug closer. She had tried to avoid Marafice Eye for the past week, ever since the night he had first blocked her way on the steps. The Knife didn’t like to be avoided, though, and had now taken to blocking her way whenever he safely could. If he met Ash alone in a corridor or on the stairs, he would step directly in front of her and wait, forcing her to walk around him. He never touched her, never spoke, but his small lips would twist with pleasure and his small eyes would look beyond her as if she weren’t there at all. Like the armrests on the bench and the leather of his tunic, she had become yet another thing to push to breaking.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash tugged a hand through her hair. She was a foundling, alive only because Penthero Iss had chosen to save her. She wasn’t a noblewoman and she wasn’t a servant, so where did she fit in? Marafice Eye didn’t know; that was why he was testing her: to see just how far he could go before Iss stopped him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Miss.” A soft voice whispered through the door. “Can I enter, miss?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash didn’t want to see anyone. Not now, not like this. “Go away,” she mumbled. Disgusted by how weak her voice sounded, she tried again. “I’m tired, Katia. Let me sleep.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I’ve brought some hot milk and rose cakes.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>So Iss had sent her. Ash stood, allowing the rug to drop flat on the floor. “Wait a moment while I dress.” There was no point in sending Katia away, not when she was under orders from Iss; the girl would just stand outside the door all night, calling every few minutes for permission to enter until she wore Ash down. Penthero Iss never raised his voice, never threatened violence, but he had a way of getting people to do exactly as he wished.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Wrapping a fresh linen robe around her shoulders, Ash took a few deep breaths and tried to settle herself back to normal. More and more these days it was harder to remember what normal was, though. She never felt like herself, she was always tired and sweating and cold. Then there was her body… Ash glanced down. That definitely wasn’t normal anymore. Breasts had come from nowhere in just two months.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘You can come in now.” Ash stepped into the corner as she spoke. She didn’t want Marafice Eye to see her as Katia opened the door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia was small and olive skinned, with dark eyes and dark lips and black curls that spat out pins. Ash could never look at the girl without feeling a stab of envy. Katia made her feel pale and bony and straight, Everything of Katia’s curved: her lips, her cheeks, her hips, her hair. Ash’s own hair fell as sheer as water, pale and silver blond, down past her waist. Ash had tried hot irons, damp rags, pins, and nightly braiding, yet her hair would have none of it, defying her every time by unraveling straight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Put the tray on the stand, Katia.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia jumped at the sound of Ash’s voice. “There you are, miss. Gave me such a fright hiding behind the door.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash ignored Katia’s statement. The girl was always claiming fright over something.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Having placed the copper tray on the stand, Katia moved over to the mantel to relight the lamps. Briefly Ash considered speaking up to stop her, then decided against it. Penthero Iss had doubtless given Katia orders to take a good look at her mistress, and the fastest way to get the whole thing over and done with was to let her go right ahead.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As Katia refilled the lamp with the small pieces of amber that she kept in a cloth bag around her waist, Ash took the opportunity to smooth down her hair and rub her face. She wished she didn’t feel so shaky. But there was nothing to be done about that.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘One should be enough,” Ash said after the wick thrust into the oil-and-amber mixture took the spark. “Come here, and let’s have it over and done with.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Have what done with, miss?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash smiled. Katia was a terrible liar. “Well, my foster father obviously sent you to check up on me, so go right ahead and check.” She held out her arms, letting her robe fall open around her breasts. “Should I strip naked, or will this be enough?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia shook her head, black curls bouncing. “Why, you’re wicked, miss! Plain wicked. His Lordship never said such a thing. I came here to bring you a late supper out of the goodness of my own heart, and this is what I get for my trouble!” She nodded in the direction of Ash’s silver-banded dressing table, where an untidy stack of books and folded manuscripts looked set to topple over. “Been reading too much for your own good, if you ask me. A hot supper’s just a hot supper, you know. Nothing’s attached but the skin on the milk.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly glad Katia was there, Ash pulled her robe together. Katia had been with her for fourteen months now-longer than any other maid she’d ever had-and it felt good to know someone well enough to tease them. “I’m sorry, Katia. But the rose cakes always give Iss away. They’re quite tasteless, smell like old roses, and cost a small fortune to prepare.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia snorted, but quietly. “Well, if you don’t want them…”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Take them. In future, if you must interrupt me in the middle of the night, bring me fresh bread, salt butter and lots of it, and beer instead of milk. A dark brew, mind. One that’s thick enough to float a spoon and has to be sieved through a cheesecloth to remove the hops.” Ash tried to keep her face straight as she spoke, but the word cheesecloth proved too much, and she burst out laughing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Oh, miss! You are wicked.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia’s laugh was just a little too loud to be considered feminine, and Ash loved to hear it. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Katia was a full year younger than she was. Katia was so grown-up,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>t so … well… rounded, yet whenever she laughed she became a child again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Abruptly, the smile slid from Ash’s face. “Katia.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Yes, miss?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash struggled to find words. “Are you still”-seeing the servant girl’s large dark eyes looking straight into hers, Ash hesitated, wishing she had never started-“friendly with Marafice Eye?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia’s expression changed. “And if I am? Taint nothing to do with you.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash took a breath, decided not to say any more, then went right ahead and spoke anyway. “He’s such a big and powerful man. Like an ox. You should be careful, that’s all.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With a forceful shake of her head, Katia said, “What I do in my own good time is my business. Unlike some around here, I’m a full-grown woman, and those that aren’t and hain’t ever so much as kissed a man should keep their opinions to themselves.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Blood flushed Ash’s cheeks. She didn’t speak. Stupidly, ridiculously, she felt her eyes stinging.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>After a moment Katia’s expression changed right back again, and she crossed the room and put her hand on Ash’s arm. “I’m sorry, miss. Truly I am. You made me speak a stock of nonsense that I surely didn’t mean. You’ll come to your blood any day now, I’m certain of that.” She drew Ash over to the bed as she spoke. “And as soon as that happens you’ll have fine, proper dresses, a ladies’ maid to preen your hair, and suitors lining up from Hoargate to the Red Forge, all begging for the priv’lege of your hand.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia placed a hand on Ash’s shoulder, gently pressing her to sit. A second hand flitted to her brow. “Why, you’re shaking, miss. And hot and cold all in one.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I’m fine, Katia, really. Carry on telling me what will happen when my blood comes.” Ash didn’t much care for the idea of suitors lining up from one end of the city to the other, and she knew that any ladies’ maid worth her salt would end up storming off in frustration within a week, muttering to herself about hair that refused to take a curl. Yet she liked to hear about them anyway. When Katia spoke of such things, Ash could almost believe that everything was normal and would continue to be normal, and that the strange, almost hungry look she saw in <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>her foster father’s eyes when he studied her these past few months was nothing more than a trick of the light.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia reached for a brush and started working on Ash’s hair. “Well, miss, let me see. There’ll be new shoes, of course, a dozen of them: lamb’s hide for day and embroidered silk and stiff lace for night. You’ll have to have a new riding habit-trimmed with black fox, no matter what His Lordship says-and you’ll need a proper lady’s filly, not that old cob Master Haysticks lets you ride around the quad. His Lordship might even bring in some old cloistress t’elp with your manners and table ‘port. Though there’s no need to teach you how to read and write, His Lordship’s done that himself…”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash nodded, enjoying the sensation of Katia’s capable hands brushing her hair and letting her mind slip away as the little maid chattered on.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Too much had changed this last year. There had been a time when her foster father was different, when he sent for her each day and spent his own time teaching her how to read and write. Any number of priests and scribes could have done the work for him, yet Penthero Iss had chosen to do it himself. And it wasn’t just because he liked to keep her away from anyone who might befriend her-though Ash had recognized that possessiveness in him early on, as time after time maidservants and fortress children whom she became close to were routinely sent away. No. Her foster father had genuinely enjoyed instructing her. Knowledge was one of his joys.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘… and of course there’ll be a new chamber, one with proper isinglass windows and-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash blinked back, suddenly interested in what Katia was saying. “A new chamber?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Why, yes, miss. That much is certain as ice on the Splinter.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I don’t understand. Why?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia put down her brush. Eyes darting in quick glances as if she suspected people could be hiding and listening, she lowered her voice and said, “Oh yes. There’s been talk of it already. Just the other day when I was… er… visiting with the Knife in the Forge, His Lordship came in and told him that he needs to be ready to move you on his say. ‘Course when old Vealskin saw me he stopped dead, gave me one of his looks-you know the sort, all pale and scary like a frosted t over corpse-and sent me running out of the room without so much as a spoken word.” Katia beamed. She loved telling secrets.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash swallowed. She was glad she was sitting. “Move me on his say?” Nodding, Katia crossed to the dresser and popped one of the precious rose cakes in her mouth. Chewing, she spoke. “That’s what was said. If you ask me, it’ll be to one of those fancy upper chambers in the Bight, with all the black marble and dark glass cut into the floors. Might even have a private entrance and a staircase all your own.” Katia took a second rose cake, looked at it, then set it down. “You must swear to take me with you, miss. Wherever you go. I couldn’t stand going back to the kitchens and scrubbing pots again. Couldn’t stand being made to-“<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Hush, Katia.” The servant girl’s chatter was beginning to irritate Ash.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia’s mouth closed with a squeak. Skirts whipping air, she moved around the chamber and began checking shutters, stirring the brazier and making preparations for the night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash barely noticed. A move away from the Cask? It was unthinkable. This chamber had been her home for as long as she could remember. Of all the four towers in Mask Fortress, the Cask was the only one she knew. She had broken her arm here, climbing the outer battlements when she was six; when she was eight she had been confined to her room for two months because of blood fever, and her foster father had visited her every day, bringing iced honey and yellow pears; and when she was eleven her caged bird had grown sick in this very chamber and had started pulling out its own flight feathers and chewing on its claws, and to please her Iss had performed a little ceremony by the door before sending it to Caydis for a mercy killing. All her life was here. All of it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Distressed, Ash drew her feet off the floor and hugged her knees to her chest. No one had mentioned a move to her. Nothing had been planned; no workmen or carpenters called. Surely someone should have told her something? She rubbed her bare shins. The sheets beneath her feet were damp with sweat. Icy.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No. Ash shook her head. She wouldn’t think about the dream. It was nothing. Nothing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia popped the remaining two rose cakes into her amber pouch. “Will you be wanting anything else, miss, ‘fore I go?” <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘No.” Something about the sight of Katia walking toward the door made Ash change her mind. “I mean yes. One more thing.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What?” Katia’s full lips were made more so by an exaggerated pout.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘I know you’re going to see my foster father now-” Seeing Katia ready to protest, Ash held out her hand. “No, don’t deny it. I don’t blame you. It’s what you have to do to keep out of the kitchen. I’d do the same if I were you.” Katia remained sullen, yet Ash carried on. “I don’t mind you telling him that I don’t feel well and don’t look well, and even that the bed is messed. But please don’t tell him that I know he’s planning to move me. Please.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia looked at her mistress. Ash knew that the servant girl was envious of her and coveted all the clothes and pretty things in her chamber like silver brushes and tortoiseshell combs. Yet she also knew that Katia could be kind when it suited her. She had once walked all the way to Almsgate and back to purchase a bolt and plate for the door.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sighing with exaggerated force, Katia sent her curls dancing. “All right. I’ll do my best-but only for my own sake, mind. If old Vealskin finds I’ve been blabbing about things I overheard and wasn’t supposed to, he’ll have me downstairs in no time. And it won’t be in the kitchens scrubbing pots.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Thank you, Katia.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Katia harrumphed as she stepped toward the door. “I still have to tell him how you are, though. There’s no getting round that. You know how he is.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ash nodded as she snuffed out the lamp. She knew exactly how Iss was.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>t ‘t The caul flies hummed within their netting, black translucent wings beating faster than the eye could see. Four winged, lean bodied, and with the long, double-jointed legs of flesh settlers, the creatures flew slowly despite their efforts, swinging clumsily from side to side. These were females, of course. The shiny green black sacs around their abdomens were bloated with hundreds of eggs. Penthero Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis, Lord Commander of the Rive Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress, and Master of the Four Gates, preferred not to hold the net ting too close. The caul flies were past due and were desperate to lay, and their serrated chitinous mouthparts were quite capable of breaking through gauze. Especially if the females smelled blood.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss watched with fascination as one female flew to where his pale hand gripped the netting. The skin was clean and unbroken, not what the creature wanted at all, but Iss had seen some caul flies capable of causing the wounds they needed. This one, however, would not get that chance. With his free hand, Iss pulled a cloth of blue felt from around his waist and laid it over the top portion of the netting. He would arrive at his destination within the quarter, and a short period of darkness would not make the females drowsy. Iss had made a study of their weaknesses. It was the cold, not the dark, that slowed them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As he walked through the deserted east gallery toward the Splinter, Iss counted days. Six. He kept records, of course, but he trusted the thoroughness of his own mind more than any scribbles on a page. He didn’t want to risk weakening the Bound One too soon after the previous drawing. Thoroughness in all things, most especially the use of power.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Six was enough, though. Six was well and good.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Winter came early to the mountains and the city of Spire Vanis, and the temperature in the east gallery was currently just below freezing. Iss fought the desire to shiver. He had grown up hating the cold. Cold meant too little wood on the fire and not enough blankets for the bed, and Iss knew all about that. As a child he had dreamed of glowing hearths and crackling flames and layer upon layer of goosedown piled high upon his chest. Forty years later he had all that, yet he could not say it was enough.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He was surlord, not king, and although he might rule for twenty years or more, a violent death would be his in the end. It was the way of things in Spire Vanis. Historians might speak the names of Uron the Pure and Rhees Gryphon and a handful of other men who had ruled the city and died in their sleep. Yet Iss had stood in the shadows and watched as five sworn brothers cut Borhis Horgo to strips. Old he was, dry and shriveled; Iss could hardly believe how much he bled. Sometimes he saw the blood in his dreams. Sometimes the blood was his.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>So many surlords. Borhis Horgo, Rannock Hews, Theric Hews, Connad Hews, Lewick Crieff, who was called the Halfking, Garath Lors, Stornoway the Bold… and so the list went on, back and back, to <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Theron Pengaron, who was slain by his nephew’s hideclads on ground where the Splinter lay today. All had died a surlord’s death: knifed in the back, shot at distance, poisoned, bludgeoned, betrayed. The only law of succession in Spire Vanis was the law of superior might. Once a rival smelled weakness, he drew his conspirators about him and plotted his surlord’s death. Iss knew his likely fate. He knew and refused to accept it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It wasn’t enough to be surlord. He must make himself something else.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Cold air settled in Iss’ lungs as he neared the Splinter. Limestone as pale and smooth as lake ice stole the warmth from the soles of his feet. Heavy things swung from his belt, nestling against the double-woven silk of his robes. The little stone lamp so ingeniously crafted by the barbarians who lived in the north along the coast, with its baleen guards and shaved horn covering, gave off heat and light more safely than any other lamp. It could be knocked over, and still the flame would stay inside the central chamber. Even now, bumping lightly against his thigh, it was a benign and pleasing warmth to enjoy. As for the other two packages that hung from the belt, Mistress Wence had better hope she’d wrapped them securely. Pan-heated honey and mashed then strained yellowbeans could both leak juices that a man wearing silk had no use for.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss had found the caul flies liked to feed after they had laid their eggs. It was a common misconception that mature females fed off blood. Iss had observed them and knew they did not. Honey was what they liked best, preferably warm. The flies had been fortress bred in the cold climes of the Northern Territories, yet they still retained memories of the Far South where they belonged.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As for the yellowbeans, they were to feed the Bound One. Iss had asked Mistress Wence to enrich them with butter and egg yolks and salt them as mildly as she would food for a child.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Holding the partially covered netting out before him, Iss approached the Splinter. As always, the temperature dropped the nearer one drew to the door. In just the past few days water weeping from the stonework had quickened to form a skin of blue ice above the arch. Iss took out the key. Impaled beasts with many heads and the thick muscular tails of serpents watched the lock turn from their position at the spire’s base. The oil lamp flickered, making the relief carvings dance t upon their poles. Iss adjusted the lamp, the light dimmed, and the creatures stilled to stone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The door opened with a small hiss. Frost smoke writhed through the opening, like the tissue of a newly risen ghost. Within the netting, the caul flies drew in their wings and dropped to the bottom of the makeshift bag.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>First frost was always the worst in the Splinter. The outer stonework ran with moisture year-round, and every arch, ledge, and cornerstone let in rain. The interior walls bled. Rivulets ran in thin lines, following the curves of bias-cut stone and the edges of steps. Drips gained mass on overhangs, pools collected in ruts and trenches, and entire walls glistened with damp. First frost turned it all to freezing mist. As the weeks passed and the days shortened and rime ice formed on the exterior walls, the water would cool, then freeze. Expanding as it quickened, the ice split rock as surely as a mason with a mallet. Each mild spell and subsequent thawing pushed the Splinter one step closer to collapse. The entire structure was flawed, crumbling, broken. The only thing that kept it standing was the precision cut and placement of each stone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>And the foundations, of course, Iss thought with a quick humorless smile. No building in the Northern Territories had foundations to compare with the Splinter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The light from the stone lamp did little but reflect back in Iss7 face as he stepped through the smoke into the tower’s lower rotunda. Cracked tiles rocked beneath his feet as he moved. Whole sections of the original flooring were missing, either torn up by greedy workmen or destroyed by frosts and falling stones. Iss didn’t care. The Splinter’s staircase spiraled through the tower’s heart, stopping off at thirty-nine successive stories before reaching its apex in the spire that pierced storms, yet Iss had little but a passing interest in any of it. Aboveground the Splinter’s stone was as dead and worthless as a foot black with frostbite. It was belowground, in the Inverted Spire, that the stone became a vital, living thing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss crossed to the base of the spiral stair, to the dark shadows and awkwardly shaped space that lay beneath the first flight of steps. Bending his back as needed, he followed the crook of the stairs until his body was tucked against the endwall.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tensing his jaw and his fists, he spoke a word. It weakened him I <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>more severely than he anticipated, and drops of urine splashed against his thigh. The pain was sharp but fleeting, and a powerful contraction of his stomach wall flooded his mouth with the taste of salt.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Even before he could spit it away, the stairwell rumbled and began to swing inward like a gate. The grinding of iron wheels and chains was muffled by walls three feet thick. Above Iss’ head, the great stone staircase shuddered, its blocks shifting minutely in their beds of rotten mortar. Limestone dust sifted onto his shoulders as the wall completed its movement, revealing a cavity not much larger than the size of a crouching man.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This was the part Iss hated. Still shaken from the drawing, his knee joints as weak as green timber, and urine still wet upon his thigh, he forced himself through the breach. No frost smoke rose from the void to greet him. The coldness here had a different, more permanent quality, and all mist had long since settled and froze. Deep down at the apex of the Inverted Spire the air was different, warmer, but ice seams remained year-round at the rim.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Like the cold, the darkness was also more concentrated, and Iss was forced to unhook the stone lamp from his belt and adjust the baleen fibers to let in greater amounts of air. He didn’t care much for darkness, though he was willing to allow it had its uses. Things kept within it usually broke down given time.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Spitting to clean the last traces of metal from his mouth, he edged forward in small, toe-size movements until his feet found the lip of the first stair. Unlike the tower above, the Inverted Spire did not boast a central staircase; rather the steps ran along the outer wall, gradually spiraling downward in a great winding arc. A gaping many-storied trough lay in its center. Black as night, colder than pack ice, fed by self-generating winds, and subject to each shift and roll of the mountain it bored down through, the Inverted Spire was a force unto itself. As deep as the Splinter was tall, narrowing to a nail-hard point, it pierced the bedrock of Mount Slain like a stake in its heart.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Its frost-riven walls glittered in the light of Iss’ lamp. The farther the Surlord descended, the clearer and harder the ice became. Ground to lenses by the weight and compression of Mount Slain, the ice found colors in the lamplight that no eye could see. Not for the first time, Iss resisted the urge to reach out and touch it. Once, nearly eight years ago now, he had lost the skin on his middle finger that way.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The mountain fought the Inverted Spire, chewing through whole sections of granite facing like oak roots through earth. Even breached as they were by the white knuckles and bones of Mount Slain, the walls remained intact. The facing had been mined from the Tower-lode at Linn, and there were said to be blood spells and sorcerers’ curses set deep into the stone. Robb Claw, great-grandson of Glamis Claw and builder of Mask Fortress, had once claimed that it would take an act of God to break the Spire.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Shivering, Iss drew the netting to his chest. The cold had made the caul flies torpid, and not one of the dozen females now moved. A few would die; he was prepared for that. Once, several years earlier, in the middle of one of the coldest winters Spire Vanis had ever known, all of the laying females had died. It had been messy, but he had managed to extricate their eggs. Though regrettably a much smaller portion than normal had gone on to hatch and survive.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With one hand holding the lamp and the other clutching the netting, he found the descent slow and difficult. Iss had long since mastered the art of not looking down, yet the knowledge of the deep chasm below lay like clothing next to his skin. Each stair was three feet wide-a goodly length-yet the steps began in pressure-formed granite as slick as glass and ended in fresh air, and a man couldn’t be too careful where he stepped. Iss kept to dead center and turned his mind to matters he found pleasing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Take the servant girl Katia, for instance. Such a sly, bright girl. Too good by far to be penetrated by the Knife. Iss had no interest in bedding her himself, though it would be interesting to see just how far she would go, just what she would do to free herself from the threat of the kitchens.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss smiled with all the satisfaction of a jeweler setting a gem. That was Katia’s weakness: her fear of ending up in the kitchens, broken veined and red faced, her once high breasts resting like drained water-skins upon her belly, her once bright hair turned to gray. Fortress born and bred, Katia had grown up seeing the exact same thing happen to every other woman who worked there: Mask Fortress took and took but seldom gave. Now the sharp little minx was afraid that the same thing would happen to her.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Once Iss discovered a person’s fears they were his. Katia was his now. The girl loved Asarhia March, admired and protected her. Yet <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>she was also envious of Asarhia. Deeply so. Envy and love warred within her heart, yet the fear of returning to the kitchens always won the day. Take tonight. The girl had clearly not wanted to tell him that her mistress’s chamber, bedclothes, and hair were in disarray; that Asarhia’s skin was hot, yet the sweat that lay upon it was as cold as water wept from ice. Yet Katia had told all that and more. Her mistress wasn’t the one who could save her from a life in the kitchens. Iss made sure the girl knew that.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As for the other matter-the possibility that the girl had told Asarhia what she had overhead the other day in the Red Forge-well, that really didn’t matter at all. The Knife watched Asarhia day and night, even when she left her chambers and didn’t realize she was being watched. Iss’ steps slowed for just a moment. He did not relish taking such measures against his almost-daughter. Asarhia was normally such a sweet and trusting girl, yet she was beginning to get frightened. And Iss knew from experience that people who were frightened did foolish things.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling a gust of warmer air puff against his cheeks, Iss made his final adjustment of the lamp. The first chamber couldn’t be much farther down now. The Inverted Spire had only three chambers, all lying close to or just above apex. By the time one descended to the first of them, the spire had narrowed to the width of a bullpen. The second chamber was smaller still, and the final chamber was barely the size of a well shaft. Cupped within a seam of black rock, its base ended in a needlepoint of steel.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Not for the first time, Penthero Iss found himself wishing the stone lamp could better light his way. The curve of the stairs was more pronounced lower down and the gradient sharper. Stepping from one worn and sloping step to another was a danger of the worst kind. Iss knew he could use sorcery to draw forth light, yet he also knew it wasn’t a cost he cared to pay. The speck of frozen urine currently thawing against his thigh was reminder enough of that. He was not a man of great ability, like some. He had enough. Only enough. His strengths lay elsewhere… as in his ability to choose men.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Marafice Eye was one of his chosen. The Protector General of the Rive Watch was dangerous; he could inspire loyalty in fighting men. Iss had realized this early on, in the days when Marafice Eye was a lowly brother-in-the-watch, with a new-made sword at his thigh and the muck of Hoargate still caked upon his boots. Iss had been protector general then, always on the watch for rivals. Another man might have made it his business to destroy Marafice Eye, slay him before he grew into a threat. Iss had made it his business to draw him close. He saw a man who could be useful to him, one who had qualities of dominance and brutality he lacked. When the time came to storm the fortress and overthrow the aging and sickly Borhis Horgo, it had been Marafice Eye who had commanded the Rive Watch; Marafice Eye who’d slain a dozen grangelords and Forsworn on the Horn’s icy steps.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It had been a bloody ten days. The Forsworn had been expelled from the city; and their walled keeps, which they called Shrineholds, had been stormed and broken. When it was done, Penthero Iss, kinsman to lord of the Sundered Granges, had taken the title of surlord for himself. Marafice Eye has stood at his side, his protector general and Knife.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fifteen years later, and they were still surlord and Knife. Iss had little cause to regret his choice. With Marafice Eye at his back, keeping the Rive Watch loyal, his hands were free to deal with the grangelords.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The great houses of Spire Vanis were a thorn in his side, braying constantly for land and titles and gold. Thirteen years ago a bargain had been struck, and the grangelords never let Iss forget it. “You promised us the chance to win land and glory,” the Whitehog had said just six days ago in Iss’ private chamber. “That’s the only reason why you’re surlord today. Forget that, and we just might forget that we spoke oaths in the Blackvault to protect you.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss had almost smiled as the Whitehog spoke. Threats from seventeen-year-old boys had that effect on him. Still, he had seen enough to realize that the young and ambitious grangeling who stood before him, wearing the white and gold of Hews and carrying a five-foot greatsword on his back, might one day make a bid for his place. The boy had already taken to calling himself the Whitehog, in honor of his great-grandfather who had led the Rive Watch to victory at High Rood. It didn’t take a seer to know that he held similar dreams of glory for himself.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Well, Iss thought, peering into the darkness below, perhaps the Whitehog might get the chance to lead a force sooner than he thinks. Perhaps he just might find a clansman’s ax thrust into his porcine heart. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Spying the top of the first stone ceiling beneath him, Iss allowed himself to relax a little. Now if he fell, he wouldn’t break his neck.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The ceiling stretched across the Inverted Spire like a great stone valve across a pipe. Over the centuries debris had collected on the topside, shaken down from the walls above. Rock fragments, facing tiles, and odd pieces of masonry lay in disjointed heaps amid the yellowing bones of rats, pigeons, and bats that had gained entry to the spire by means Iss couldn’t guess. Human bones were down there, too. Two rib cages could clearly be seen peeking through mounds of rock dust like spiders hiding in sand. Iss had made it his business to search once, yet he’d only ever found one skull.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Bits of food, strips of netting, and a few other scraps had fallen from the Surlord’s own hands. Last summer during Almsfest, he had brought a basket of soft strawberries with him, only to find they had slipped from his hand halfway through the descent. They were still there now, spread across the stonework like spattered blood. Red and glistening and smelling like perfume on a filthy whore, they were only just beginning to turn. This deep within the mountain’s core, things took years to decay.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ahead, the staircase ducked below the stone platform and into the chamber below. Iss minded his head. The air stilled immediately, no longer subject to the chasm’s winds. Increased warmth came with the calm. The flame within the stone lamp shivered and darted, lighting a circular chamber with polished walls. Dog hooks and metal rings had been hammered into the stone. Chains ran through a series of loops and then ended abruptly, hacked off in midlink. If one looked closely, one could see scraps of brown fabric caught within the chains. Un-tanned leather, it might be, yet if Iss had to put money on it he’d guess human skin.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Descending on a curving slant along the perimeter of the chamber, he barely spared a passing glance for the chamber’s contents. Soon, very soon, he would have Caydis remove the wire cage and the weight-stone and the cracked and greasy wheel. Pretty things would be brought in their place: plump cushions, silkwood chests, and tapestries woven with blue and gold thread. Things that would please a girl.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Descending into the apex chamber, Iss shrugged away all thoughts but those he needed. The air down here was as thick and heavy as still water at the bottom of a lake. No matter how many times he neared the final chamber, the sudden change always took him by surprise. His lungs had difficulty expelling air, and deep within his ears two sharp points of pain pushed inward. The Surlord swallowed hard, prayed that his ears wouldn’t pick this time to bleed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The stone facing here was thicker than anywhere else in the Spire. Pressure-formed granite, whorly and knotted like the bark of a tree, defied breaking by all but the most violent convulsions of Mount Slain. Flecks of bastard’s gold shone within the stone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Unhooking the packs containing honey and yellowbeans from his belt, Iss took the final seventeen steps and descended into the apex chamber. The Bound One waited there: hungry, broken, desperate for light, perfectly insulated from the outside world by the structure and peculiar properties of the Inverted Spire.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Iss took out his silver tweezers and uncovered the caul flies. He would draw power beyond his means tonight.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>SEVEN The Great Hearth said?” ffie, you know what you said the other day when Drey and I came home, when we first met you outside the roundhouse?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I Raif waited until his sister nodded. “Remember what you ‘Yes. I said I knew you and Drey would come back.” EfFie Sevrance regarded her older brother with serious blue eyes. “I tried to tell the others, but no one would listen.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif shifted his weight from one leg to another. He was crouching in the shadow of the clan guidestone, in the dark and smoke-filled structure of the guidehouse. A full twelve tapers were lit, but the guidestone soaked up light and heat like a black body of trees at the center of a snowmelt. The stone’s granite surface was rough and unfinished, and only jagged edges shone. Sometimes the chiseled edges looked like ears, sometimes like chips of bone and teeth. Veins of graphite formed bruises around the newer chisel marks, forcing beads of greasy ink to the surface. No guidestone liked to be cut.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No matter what time of day he came to the guidehouse, Raif always thought it felt like night. Built adjacent to the roundhouse, the guidehouse was not as well protected or insulated from the cold. Some clans kept their guidestones inside the main building, fearing that raiding clans might make off with them under cover of darkness. Looking up at the massive slab of folded granite that was the size of a one-room cottage, Raif couldn’t see how any but a band of giants equipped with rollers, pulleys, and levers could ever hope to steal it away within the space of a single night. And Blackhail’s stone was only half the size of some.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Still, thirty-six years earlier Clan Bludd had managed to steal Dhoone’s guidestone, forcing the mightiest of the clans to send their guide south to the stonefields of Trance Vor in search of a replacement. Raif had heard many of his own clansmen speak about the incident, talking in the hushed voices they normally used around bloodshed. All of them held that Clan Dhoone had never been the same since.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Clan Bludd had broken the Dhoonestone down into rocks and built an outhouse from it. The entire operation-the raid, the movement of the stone, and its subsequent breaking and rebuilding-had been planned by the Dog Lord, Vaylo Bludd. A yearman at the time, Vaylo Bludd had been a bastard son of the clan chief, Gullit Bludd. Within that same year Vaylo killed his two half-brothers, married his half-sister, and usurped his father’s place. To this day it was said that Vaylo Bludd made it his business to use the outhouse every night before he slept.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif frowned. Sometimes he didn’t know what to make of all the stories surrounding the Dog Lord. Mace Blackhail came up with new ones by the day.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling a hot sting of anger in his chest, Raif pushed aside all thoughts of Mace Blackhail. Now wasn’t the time for them. Effie was sitting cross-legged before him, her pale face made old by shadows, her lovely auburn hair tangled, her skirt damp from sitting beneath the stone bench where he had found her. In her hands and littered across her lap were her collection of rocks and stones. She played with them while she waited for him to speak, moving one piece and then another in sequence. For some reason Raif found himself wishing he could brush away the entire collection.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘What made you so sure Drey and I would come back, Effie?” he asked softly. “Did you feel something bad”-Raif jabbed his stomach-“here, inside?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie thought about the question. She pushed out her bottom lip, fixed her gaze in midair, then slowly shook her head. “No, Raif.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif looked at Effie a long moment, then breathed a sigh of relief. Effie hadn’t felt anything similar to the sensation he’d experienced the day of the raid. That was good. One outsider in the family was enough.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie’s words had been on Raif’smind for days. He had been meaning to talk to her about them ever since he’d returned from the badlands, but the first night hadn’t been a good time, as the clan wanted nothing more than to hear the story of what he and Drey had done to the bodies of their kin. The day after was given over to mourning. Inigar Stoop had split a heart-size chunk from the guidestone, cracked it into twelve pieces-one for each man who had died at the camp-and then laid them upon the earth in place of bodies.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It had gone hard on everyone. When Corbie Meese and Shor Gor-malin had sung deathsongs in their fine low voices, and all the women who had lost husbands, including Merritt Ganlow and Raina Black-hail, cut widow’s weals around their wrists, Raif had not been able to think of anyone except Tern. The only time the silence was broken that night was by Mace Blackhail swearing vengeance against Clan Bludd.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The following day Raif had looked for Effie but found her only when it was too late for anything except sleep. Now, finally, he had her here. Shor Gormalin had told him how he often saw Effie slipping out to play in the guidehouse when it wasn’t in use. And sure enough Effie had been here, sitting in almost-darkness, hiding beneath the bench where Inigar Stoop normally sat grinding stone, playing with her bits of rock.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif looked at Effie. She had lost a shocking amount of weight while he and Drey were away. Her eyes were huge and dark, blue as their mother’s had been before her. Such a serious little girl, she never smiled, never played with other children. It was easy to forget she was only eight years old. Raif held out his arms. “Come here and give your old brother a hug.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie thought a moment. “You won’t be wanting to kiss me, will\u00a0 <\/span>V” you?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was a serious question, and Raif treated it as such. He thought a moment. “No. Just a hug will do.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>‘Very well.” With great care Effie laid her collection of rocks on the packed earth floor, then shuffled over to Raif. “No kiss, mind,” she repeated as she let herself be hugged.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif grinned as he held her in his arms. Effie had reached the age when she didn’t care to be kissed by any men, even her brothers. Still, she made no move to pull away from him and nestled close to his t chest, resting her head on his shoulder. “Da will never come back,” she said. “I knew that all along.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The grin slid from Raif’s face. Effie spoke with such quiet certainty it chilled him. Unconsciously he hugged her closer. As he did so, he felt something hard press against his ribs. Gently he edged Effie back. “What have you got there?” he asked, nodding toward her neck.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie looked down. “My lore.” Small hands fished inside the neck of her dress and pulled out the plum-size stone. It was gray, featureless, by far the plainest rock in Effie’s collection. A tiny hole had been bored close to the edge, and a strand of coarse twine had been threaded through. “Inigar made a hole for me last spring,” she said. “So I could wear it next to my skin like everyone else.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Raif took Effie’s lore from her hand. It wasn’t unusually heavy or cool to the touch. Just plain stone. Abruptly he let it go. Easing Effie from his lap, he stood. “I say we go and find ourselves some supper. Anwyn Bird has been boiling bacon all day, and unless someone stops her soon we’ll never get rid of the smell.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Effie began gathering her rock collection into a pile. The bones in her arms showed through her skin as she reached forward to scoop up a handful of pebbles. Raif hated to see them. He’d make sure she ate well from now on.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With her rocks in her little rabbit pouch, Effie took Raif’s hand and together they left the guidehouse. It was good to get out of the smoke. The short tunnel that led through to the roundhouse was lit by a series of overhead slits. The sky outside was turning dark. Noon had passed less than two hours earlier, yet that never mattered much in winter. Within a month there would hardly be any daylight at all, and everyone who lived on the clanhold in crofts, strongwalls, farms, or woodsmen’s huts would come to the roundhouse to sit out winter’s worst. Numbers had already begun to swell, yet Raif didn’t think it had much to do with the season.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Even as he and Effie walked through to the main entrance hall, a group of crofters were being greeted by Anwyn Bird. The stout-bellied matron wasted no time in ordering the men to strip down to their soft-skins and felt boots. Raif took note of the snow on the crofters’ shoulders and hoods. He also noticed that all three men had their bows braced and ready. The oldest man, a great red-haired giant who Raif recalled was named Faille Trotter, had a donkey basket on his back <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>crammed with arrow and spear shafts and a bucket of neat’s-foot oil hanging on a rope around his neck. It was a point of honor among all tied clansmen that they never came to the roundhouse empty-handed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD EPUB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Preview ====================== Book Information: Genre: Fantasy Author: J.V. Jones Title: A Cavern of Black Ice Series: Sword of Shadows Book 1 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A Cavern of Black Ice \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sword of Shadows Book 1 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 J.V. Jones \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 PROLOGUE A Birth, a Death, and a Binding arissa whispered a hope out loud … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[388],"class_list":["post-5659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jv-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}