A Sword from Red Ice

Raina shivered at her own coldness. Her clan was marching south to defend the Crab Gate, and here she was wishing that some steel-plated city man would thrust his blade through her husband's heart. What was it Bessie Flapp always said? Be careful with wishes. Once in a blue moon a god will grant them and show us just how selfish we are.

Bessie was right. The clan would not benefit from losing its chief. Not now, with wars against Dhoone and Bludd to be fought. It wasn't even certain that she, Raina Blackhail, would benefit from her husband's death. If Mace were to die in battle his tide would be up for grabs. She had told exactly two people of her plans to be chief—Orwin Shank and Anwyn Bird—and their support, while gratifying, was hardly enough to claim the prize. Anyone with enough jaw could step ahead of her.

Shaking her head in frustration, Raina set the matter aside. She could not afford to be distracted. Her destination was drawing close and if she wasn't alert she would miss the entrance.

After Effie's three-day disappearing act, Raina had forced the girl to show her the paths she took below the roundhouse. That way, if Effie ever went missing again, Raina would know exactly where to find her. Effie had frowned and tutted and looked critically at Raina, before finally saying, "It will ruin your dress."

A ruined dress was a small price to pay for an education. Effie moved around the roundhouse like a mole in a set, diving beneath footstones and through holes in the walls, and scurrying between cracks. Raina had been afraid to blink lest she loose sight of her. She had still been afraid of rats back then, and remembered getting cross and a little bit shaky and commanding Effie to Slow down. Still, it had been worth it. Blackhail was the oldest clan in the North and it had the oldest roundhouse, yet most of the time when you were aboveground you didn't see its age and its history. Belowground was different. There were no plastered panels or tapestries concealing the rough stone walls, no wooden boards laid over floors. No chief, dissatisfied with what he saw, had ordered its halls to be knocked down and rebuilt. The under-levels of the roundhouse had been left alone and disregarded. Oh some clansmen stubbornly maintained cells here and the great open space of the cattlefold was still in use, but mostly his was dead space. Rats swam in the standing pools. Bats nested overhead between the ceiling groins. History lived here, quiet as dripping water.

If she had taken a left turn instead of a right one at the T-junction Raina knew that she would have ended up in a room full of grave holes. Nearly two hundred people had been interred in the dome-shaped chamber, their bodies inserted head first into narrow, deeply dug holes. Stones so heavy Raina wondered how they had been transported here capped every grave, and if you walked into the room with good lighting you could discern a pattern in their placement. The stones formed a map of Bannen's clanhold.

Fifteen hundred years ago the great Bann chief Hector Bannen had launched a surprise assault on the Hailhold. Blackhail was in decline and infighting had left it vulnerable; Hector had seen an opportunity and seized it. That wasn't his sin though, and no one judged him for it. No, what Hector had done to deserve being buried on his head along with his two hundred best warriors was break his oath to Blackhail. Only five years earlier Hector had sworn allegiance to the Hail chief Dowerish Blackhail. Dowerish was still chief at the time of the assault—though his younger brother Eagon was pursuing that position for himself—and with a cleverly staged mock-surrender Dowerish had lured Hector's front line into the roundhouse, cut them off, and then cut them down.

It had not been a proud moment for either clan, and most current histories did not include it. But the stones did not lie. Raina had stood and watched as Effie Sevrance skipped between them, attempting to locate the stone under which Hector Bannen had lain for fifteen hundred years.

Feeling her thigh muscles begin to shake, Raina picked up her pace. The lode was digging into her back and it was becoming difficult to inhale two full lungs of air. She couldn't go much farther. Where was the opening?

A breeze hitting her cheek made her turn to look down a corridor. Iron bars, thickly crusted with rust, flickered in the light from the safe-lamp. Down that way lay Blackhail's ancient and derelict dungeon, the Hellhold, and that meant she was getting close. Another breeze confirmed it: the narrow passage to the left led to the chief's chamber. Effie said it didn't look like it would, but if you took the ramp instead of the stairs it led straight to a secret entrance. Raina shook her head. How could Effie have possibly learned such a thing?