A Sword from Red Ice

Taking small, slow steps through the water Raina began to study the sandstone walls. Every few paces brick stanchions stood out from the stone at right angles, bracing the great weight of the roundhouse. The shadows and hollows they created had to be carefully inspected. Not all sunken panels were as they seemed.

Spying the faint outline of a palmprint on an inset block of stone, Raina halted. This was it. She placed her hand on the palmprint and was glad to see it matched perfectly—no one else had been here since Dagro's death. Pressing firmly against the stone, she pushed her hand sideways and drew the stone aside. It was a tile set on a track lubricated by superfine sand. Once it was in motion it moved with ease. A line of sand spilled from the edge of the track as air trapped in the darkness for five months rushed through the opening.

Am I doing the right thing? she wondered, knowing there was no one to give her an answer. Sometimes she imagined there weren't any right answers, just things men and women did and the talk they used to justify them. Could she justify this then? Yes, she could.

The opening was at hip height and Raina realized she could not climb through it with the load on her back, so she set down the safe-lamp and shouldered off the pack. It was a lot heavier in her arms than it had been on back and as she lifted it through the opening her arm muscles wobbled. Quickly, she lowered the pack to the ground.

The water in her boots ran up her thighs as she hiked into the room. It was not a pleasant sensation. By some unexpected piece of luck the ground here was dry. Good. Turning, she slid the tile facade back in place and then took a moment to enjoy the relief of no longer bearing a five-stone weight on her back. She would pay for it tomorrow, but right now she felt strong and capable.

She, Raina Blackhail, had carried the largest remaining piece of the shattered Hailstone to safety whilst thirty feet above her Scarpemen were working to grind the remains down to nothing and dump them in Cold Lake.

It was an outrage and she was powerless to stop it and the only way she had of fighting back was to steal a piece of the stone before it was destroyed and hide it in a place where Scarpes would never find it. Here, in this ancient strongroom outfitted by the Silver chief Yarro Blackhail to conceal his treasures, was where the last piece of Hailstone would come to rest.

Raina did not know much about the gods, had never understood their secret motives, and had not once in her thirty-three-year life felt touched by them, but she had been moved to act by a strong sense of wrongness. Stannig Beade, the new clan guide from Scarpe, had not wasted any time asserting his power. "The Hailstone is dead," he had told the crowd assembled on the greateourt five days back, "and just like a corpse we must mourn and bury it."

The word bury had been a mistake. This was Blackhail, not Scarpe, and a Blackhail corpse was left to rot above ground in hollowed-out basswoods, and the crowd had grown restive. Stannig Beade had a sharp eye and a subtle mind and had quickly realized his mistake. "Just: as a slain Blackhail warrior is left in sight of the gods, we will do the same with the stone. We will grind it down to powder and scatter it over the earth. I know it is hard to hear. I look before me and see good men and women who loved the Hailstone like a god. But make no mistake, the Hailstone was never a god. It was a place where the gods rested, and now it has been shattered they have nowhere to dwell when they come to Blackhail. Do you want that, Hailsmen and Hailswomen? Do you want the Stone Gods to pass by your roundhouse and your clan?"

No they had not, and many in the crowd began to nod their heads in agreement. Stannig Beade was a clever speaker; his voice had been sharp and rasping, but his words had got him exactly what he wanted.

Already he had made a lie of them. The remains of the Hailstone were being dumped in Cold Lake, not scattered on open ground as he had claimed. The first cartload had been hauled west yesterday at dawn. Raina had seen it leave. She had asked questions and got no answers, so she had saddled Mercy and followed the tracks left by the cart. Tarp had been roped over the rubble, but a wormhole in the cartbed leaked dust. Raina was not given to fancy, but there had been a moment when she had first spotted the trail of granite powder lying lightly amid the yellow winter grass where she felt as if the Hailstone was letting her know where it was and what she must do.

The trail of Hail dust led all the way to the east shore of Cold Lake. She had watched from a careful distance, concealed by the boughs of a two-year hemlock, as the Scarpeman driving the cart had backed the bed up against the lake, released the tailgate and let the cart roll down to the shore. The rubble had gone crashing into the water. Raina had not waited to see the dust cloud settle and had promptly turned Mercy and galloped home.