A Sword from Red Ice

Knowing he would have to walk past her to search for the gray door, he became acutely aware of his movements. He cursed his ankle, for even as he took his first step he knew it would make him limp. Glancing ahead, he spied two other cave mouths, one closed off with a bamboo screen and one that stood unguarded. He continued walking. To attempt to swing back up to the rimrock while the woman watched seemed an action loaded with potential for embarrassment. As he neared her he couldn't decide where to look, and his gaze jumped from her face to the way ahead and then, inexplicably, to her feet. She was standing in a half-moon of roughly cleared snow.

He missed the fact that she was also standing in front of an open door. The door opened inward and had swung into the shadows of the timber-framed cave mouth. Only when he passed the woman and stole a quick glance back did he see it. Faced with a choice between stopping, turning and speaking to her, or continuing to walk along the ledge, he was uncertain. The fact that the ledge came to an end just beyond the unguarded cave helped clear his mind. He had to go back. She watched him as he came toward her a second time. The cuff of her green dress was wet where she had held the snow.

"Does Thomas Argola live here?" he asked, satisfied that his voice sounded normal.

"He does." She looked at him with eyes that were darkly, greenly, brown.

Raif waited, but she offered no more. "Is he here? Can I see him?" "He is here. I will ask if he will see you." She did not immediately move like others would. Instead she created a deliberate pause and did nothing to fill it.

Just when Raif thought he should speak again, she whirled around and headed for the door. As he waited he searched for, and found, the pile of snow she had dropped. The imprint of her fingers were still upon it.

"Raif." The slight and loose form of Thomas Argola appeared in the doorway. "Come."

Raif followed him into the cave. Two copper lamps set on recesses in the wall were glowing with smokeless light. The cave was small and nearly round. Its ceiling was strikingly uneven, the rock dipping low in concertina-like folds and then muscling into high vaults. A natural flue had formed at the apex of the tallest vault and Raif could feel its draw. At least two other chambers led from the cave where the rock wall bored down into the cliff. Their entrances were screened with lengths of faded gold and green brocade. One of them was moving. The girl was gone.

"Sit." Thomas Argola spread a long-fingered, olive-skinned hand toward the cushions and rugs arranged around a small brass brazier set at knee height.

Raif resisted the direction, preferring to move about the space, looking at glazed boxes, straw baskets, frayed silk rugs and tarnished metal bowls piled with rolled parchments, hollow eggs, cards of silk thread and dried yarrow heads that lay on the cave floor. He was too keyed up to sit.

Realizing that Thomas Argola was was waiting for him to speak, Raif searched for a way to start a conversation. The girl had thrown him off center. "We're lucky the storm didn't stay longer."

Thomas Argola executed a movement that looked like a controlled drop, collapsing his body onto one of the silk cushions. "Our luck is someone else's misfortune." He spoke the words with a pointed lightness that Raif suspected was intended to convey meaning. He waited, and the outlander spoke again. "The storm was disturbed, its course deflected south."

Raif halted by the brocade screen that had been moving when he entered. A design of dragons and pear trees was woven into the cloth. "How is that possible?"

"It very nearly isn't." Thomas Argola bit each word as he said it.

Feeling his skin cool, Raif turned to face the outlander. Argola's expression was flat and challenging. A speck of blood was caught between his cornea and the white of his eye. Seeing it Raif abandoned the hope they were talking about natural forces.

"We live in dangerous times," Argola said in confirmation. "Sit and I will pour us some broth."

Raif sat. It was hard to comprehend what he had just heard, and he took the small bone cup offered by the outlander without acknowledgment. A storm could be made to alter its course? Surely not.

"To our health," Argola said, raising his own cup, "and sanity."

They seemed good things to toast just then. Cups struck, Raif and the outlander drank deeply. The broth was well made, salty and rich with marrow and thyme. The outlander seemed pleased to pour Raif a second cup.

"Mallia makes it, though she must do without the ginger from our homeland. Thyme serves as its substitute."

Raif drank and did not speak. He told himself he wasn't waiting, but he didn't think he fooled Argola.

"My sister,"the outlander revealed eventually.

Now he had said it, Raif saw the resemblance; the coloring, the hair. But not the eyes. They were different. Needing to change the subject, he asked, "What do you know of Traggis Mole's… health?"