A Sword from Red Ice

Beade rolled up the scroll as she moved forward, but her eyes were quicker than his hands and she saw it was a map of Blackhail and its bordering clans.

''Welcome," he said, pushing aside the scroll.

He must have trained for the hammer in his youth, Raina decided, for his shoulders were powerful and two big muscles sloped down from his neck. The tattoos across his eyelids had healed, but whoever had punctured them had done a hasty job and the pigment-filled holes looked like bird tracks.

"You know why I have summoned you?"

She could not begin to guess. 'What do you want?"

He stood and crossed over to the sole lamp in the small oval chamber and rolled back the wick. Light decreased. "Your behavior in this clan does not befit a chiefs wife. People have noted your forwardness and brought it to my attention. Raina Blackhail overreaches herself, they say. She makes decisions she has no right to make. I have tried to let it pass, if you had attended me at noon as I requested I would simply have reminded you of your place. But after the scandal you created on the greatcourt I must take action. I am guide, and my responsibilty is to the well-being of this dan. As Blackhail's armies are away, I have arranged for those newly housed in the widow' wall to move into quarters vacated by sworn clansmen. This will leave the widows' hearth free once more for the widows. After you leave my chamber you will move your belongings there, and from this night forth restrict your activities to caring for the bereaved and the sick."

"How dare you."

Stannig Beade responded to the ice in her voice by moving closer. "Never interrupt a warriors' private parley again."

"You are no warrior."

The blow was so hard and shocking Raina stumbled backward. She lost a second of consciousness, and found herself crumpled by the door.

Stannig Beade was standing over her, breathing hard. He drew back his hand to strike her again, but the sound of footsteps bounding down the stairway halted him in his tracks.

The high, girlish voice of Jani Gaylo called out, "Did Her High-and-mightyness come? I gave her your message but you know what a bitch she is."

"Get up" Stannig Beade hissed at Raina. And then to Jani Gaylo, who had just rounded the corner, "Raina is overcome with grief, help her to her feet."

The girl's red eyebrows went up and her cheeks turned pink. She stood for a moment, taking in the scene of the chief's wife on the floor with her skirts and braid in disarray, and then dashed forward to help. "Lady, I"

"Hush," Raina told her, looking into Stannig Beade's cold glittering eyes. "I can help myself."

They watched as she rose to her feet. Shaking and with the imprint of Beade's open hand flaring on the side of her face, Raina fled.

THIRTY Three Men and a Pig

The river was named the Mouseweed and it flowed between gorges and through brush-choked valleys in the Bitter Hills and Stone Hills. Herons fished in its shallows and moose picked paths along its gravel banks as they came to eat tender water weeds and drink. Bears patrolled the shores, and cracked open the overnight ice on beaver ponds in search of sluggish fish.

Yesterday Effie and Chedd had played a game of dams, which meant that whenever you saw a beaver dam you cried, "Damn!" It had been extraordinarily satisfying at first, the cussing without seeming to, but there were just so many dams along the river that within a matter of hours the game had gotten old, and Chedd had started repeating the word so quickly it made a noise like buzzing flies. Damndamndamndamndamn. She had poked him in the back to make him stop, which of course just made him do it more. Then she had to think of another game to distract him, but nothing quite matched the-if she did say so herself-sheer brilliance of dams, and the only thing she could come up with was bear: naked. Chedd had sniggered at this, and she wished straightaway she could take it back. Naked was not a word you used around eleven-year-old boys. She hadn't known it then. But she did now.

"Otter," Chedd Limehouse said now, swiveling his fat neck toward her. "Naked!"

Effie glared at him. There was no otter. This was the second day she'd had to put up with him naming nonexistent animals and declar-ing them naked. As they were paddling through a narrow stretch of the Mouseweed in broad daylight, Effie had some hope that Waker would silence him, but the Grayman appeared distracted. His large bulbous eyes were fixed on the way ahead.

They were making good time, Effie observed. The channel was deep here and the current logy. Good paddling conditions, she thought, taking some pleasure in the knowledge and vocabulary she had picked up from traveling with Waker Stone and his fiercely odd father, who might, or might not, be named Darrow.