A Sword from Red Ice

Raif grinned as he remembered the three days he and Drey had lived in the underlevels, sleeping on the damp, muddy floor, eating trail meat like proper hunters and strategizing endlessly about rats. It had been a good time. Raif couldn't recall earning the rats' trust, but he did remember deploying the net. Constantly. In the end they caught eight whole rats and an angry raccoon. When they brought their bounty to the head keep, Longhead had scratched his head. "I didn't say anything about coons." Seeing their feces fall he added, "But now I come to think of it one coon is more of a nuisance than two rats. A rat can't lift the lids and get into the grain bins. Coon can. A copper for both of you—and this stays between you and me."

A whole coin each. Raif couldn't remember what he did with his, maybe swapped it for some rusty piece of weaponry from Bev Shank. Drey had given his to Da. He had always been the better man.

Raif let the memory fall away from him, forcing himself back into the present. Straightaway he realized something was wrong. The air was still. No mist washed against his face, no breeze lifted his hair. Without a current to walk against he had no guide. Halting, he tried to pin down his mistake. When he'd first heard the rats he was pretty sure the current was still pushing against him. What had he done then? Thinking about Drey had distracted him. Had he veered off course? He turned his head, knowing as he did so that to look behind was useless but unable to break the habit of a lifetime.

Then he realized something strange. He could see the barest outline, a black-on-black edge about ten feet above him. Blinking, he waited. One grain of light at a time, the world came into view. Raif's eyes protested the growing brightness, sending out weird blooms of color and floating dots. Sky emerged above the edge, gray and pearly, swamped with clouds. The ravine appeared below it. Blue sandstone walls rose on two sides, their surfaces riven with cracks, their ledges collecting grounds for deadwood and loose scree. Underfoot, the porous stone was venting skeins of mist that quickly dissipated in the dry air. Ahead, where the ravine wall met the bedrock, a bony bristle-cone pine lay twisted and on its side, its needles a pale ashy green.

Raif glanced down the length of the ravine. It was still dark back there. Turning, he walked toward the bristlecone pine. It was alive, he could smell it. As he knelt, rubbing the fragrant needles between his fingertips, the light increased and the way ahead became clear. Sourwood bushes, rock oak and hornbeam choked the foot of the ravine where it dovetailed into a large dry riverbed. No, Raif corrected himself, the river wasn't dry. A line of green water glinted in its center.

It was canyon country, west of the Rift. He had been here twice before. He knew the lay of the land, its faults and undercuts, its shrunken willows and yellow sedge. It was probably less than two days' walk to the city on the edge of the abyss.

As Raif stepped from the ravine and into the dry riverbed, a final cry echoed from the dark place behind him.

Keep away from the Red Ice.

He did not look back.

SIXTEEN Crouching in the Underworld

Raina Blackhail crouched in dank and fetid underlevels of the roundhouse and prayed her light wouldn't go out. It was one of those horn-covered safelamps that was supposedly impervious to the wind. The lamp's bulb-shaped brass reservoir was pleasingly full and felt good in her hand, but there was no getting round it: the flame was jumping.

Darn thing. And what on earth was she doing down here anyway, when she could be upstairs enjoying a fine midday meal with Anwyn Bird in the good light—and fresh air—of day? Instead the smells of rotten leaves, night soils and dead mice were assaulting her senses as she paddled through a half-foot of standing water. The underlevels of the Hailhouse stank like an old man. They were shrinking like one too. According to Longhead, who was one of the very few people in the clan who cared about such things, the Hailhouse sank a little each year. "It's the weight of the stone," he'd explained to her many years ago. "When the spring thaws come the earth softens and the walls begin to sink. Not much, but certainly enough." He had wanted to show her the marker he had scribed on the base of the roundhouse in order to monitor the rate of sinkage. Raina had declined. She'd been twenty-two at the time and madly in love, and she wouldn't have cared if the entire Hailhold had sunk ten feet in a single day.

Well it's sinking now. And the irony was that she, Raina Blackhail, had turned into Longhead: a person with a marker, monitoring the decline. Raina smiled at the thought. It made what she did seem less grim.