A Sword from Red Ice

The dairymaids were now busy with the churning and the steady thump and slop of the plungers competed with the sound of Millard Flag and Little Coll stacking vats against the far wall. The head dairyman looked up at Bram as he emerged from the cold room, a question on his small wrinkled face. Bram ignored it. He had to get out of the noise. He knew he was due to feed the boiler, which lay just outside the milk room so the heat from the fire wouldn't spoil the churning, but he passed it right by.

The dairy court was quiet except for a half dozen cows that had been walked onto the newly cleared ground and tossed a bale of hay. The dairymaid watching over them was keeping herself warm by hugging a hot stone wrapped in a blanket to her chest. She regarded Bram with some interest as he passed. Only minutes earlier the chief had visited the milk room and now here was Bram Connac coming out. That would give the dairymaids something to talk about at second milking.

Bram checked on the sun. It wouldn't be long now before midday. Drouse Ogmore would expect him at the guidehouse at noon and there was no telling how long the guide would keep him—usually till well after dark. Ogmore was currently teaching him how to sift and grade the rock dust that shed from the stone during chiseling. An elaborate succession of hoop-shaped sieves was employed, and once the dust had been separated into particles of similar size, the larger pieces had to be sorted by hand. Stone chips, pieces of chalk, pyrite nuggets, fossils and pellets of hardened shale oil: all had to be separated and judged. It was the judging that was the difficult thing, the developing of an eye for pieces that were extraordinary and needed to be set aside for special use. Bram erred on the side of caution, and had been saving a lot of grit. Trouble was, if you stared at any piece of stone for long enough it began to look like it was special. There were always shadings and sparkly bits and veins.

The fine powder that made it to the bottom of the sieving process was easy to deal with. It was packed in small purses and sent out to the hi mum to use in the fields. The next level might be employed in the roundhouse-a small percentage of the sand overlaying the Churn Hall floor was gutdestone — and it was custom to sprinkle a portion on all hearths that were newly lit. The level up from that was where the grit lay and it was here that things began to get tricky. Tiny pieces of guidestone, no bigger than pumpkin seeds, had to be sorted by hand Ogmore could do it in a single movement, passing a flat palm over the chips as they lay atop the wire mesh. The action would turn the pieces over and it was this turning, this revelation of a second side, that was enough for Ogmore to pick out anything worthwhile. "The important pieces flash like diamonds," he had said to Bram more than once. "When your eye is trained you will spot them straightaway."

Bram figured his eye needed more training. The day before yesterday he had picked out every shiny piece from the third layer—it had taken him more than two hours—only to have Ogmore come along and dump it all back in the sieve. "No. No. No," he had cried. "All stones that shine are not precious and not all precious stones shine." Bram had been deeply confused.

Ogmore had picked a chip from the sieve. "This," he had said, holding it between his index finger and thumb so Bram could take a look at it, "is what we look for. See how its lines of cleavage fall counter to its veins?" Bram nodded. It was tiny thing but if you squinted hard you could just make out where the chip had split off from the guidestone on a plain counter to its weak points. Like a piece of meat cut across the grain. "That's where the gods lie. There. They are not bound by the laws of nature. I chip one way, using the lines of cleavage to aid my work, and the gods are content for me to do so and remain passive within the stone. Every so often though they push against the natural order—that is how gods work. This push is what we look for in the stone chips. It gives us evidence the gods are nimble. And reminds us we suffer their tolerance. If they chose to they could sunder the entire stone—look at the Hailstone, blasted to nothing. That is why we must monitor what is shed from the stone. Vigilance is the first and greatest responsibility of all clan guides, and vigilance begins with sifting through the dust."

It had been a lot to take in. It was interesting, but it wasn't enough. Bram wanted to learn about things larger than dust. Where did the Stone Gods come from? Had they existed as long as the Sull gods? What would happen if the Sull decided they wanted the clanholds back? Would the two sets of gods go to war?

There was no fooling Ogmore; he knew when you weren't paying attention. "Go,"he had said coldly after Bram had made a series of mistakes. "Perhaps tomorrow you will learn more."