A Sword from Red Ice

Now, approaching the guidehouse, Bram wasn't sure he had the mind-set necessary to spend the rest of the day sorting tiny pieces of stone. It all seemed very small.

He kept thinking about Robbie, knowing he shouldn't, yet going ahead and doing it anyway. It was like having a sore tooth that you couldn't stop prodding. Why hadn't Robbie sent a message? Did he no longer consider Bram kin?

"Bram Cormac."

Startled Bram looked up. He had been walking through the unclearffll snow just west of the guidehouse and had not thought anyone was in sight.

The man with the yellow-green eyes who had taken the ferry crossing earlier stepped out from the shadows of the guidehouse's northern wall. He was older than he looked from a distance, but age rested differently on him than other men. His face had hardened rather than slackened. Bone had grown in to replace fat, and decades of exposure to ice and sunlight had pulled the skin tight across the bridge of his nose and jaw. As he walked toward Bram his floor-length saddle coat left draglines in the snow.

"I am Hew Mallin," he said speaking in the kind of voice that was rarely ignored. "I am a ranger. And friend to Angus Lok."

Bram had a strong memory of Angus Lok's visit to the Dhoonehouse. Yet he would not expect a stranger to know that… unless Angus Lok himself had told this man of their meeting.

"Walk with me," Hew Mallin said, assuming many things.

The ranger struck a path northwest toward the woods. Bram saw that he was still carrying the item he'd held during the river crossing. It was a square of black bearskin. A flattened hat.

The guidehouse door-within-a-door was closed and Bram looked at it for a long moment before following the ranger into the cover of the trees.

The woods to the north of the Milkhouse were a dense, snarled cage of choke vines, oaks, elms, hemlocks, basswoods and blackstone pines. Roots, vine runners and thornbushes lurked beneath the snow like traps, ready to trip and stab. Bram thought about stopping for a moment to tuck his pants into his boots but Hew Mallin was walking with purpose and within seconds he would be out of sight. The ranger did not look back to check on Bram's progress.

He had to be armed, Bram reckoned, but any weapons he possessed were concealed beneath his coat. Had he presented himself to Wrayan Castlemilk or the head warrior Harald Mawl? Bram guessed that if the ranger had wanted to arrive in secret he would have come in from the north and not taken the river crossing. How long had he been waiting behind the guidehouse? Brain's thoughts raced ahead of him, and he found himself remembering Jackdaw Thundys words. Hawk and spider that was how the swordmaster had described the ranger Angus Lok.

Reaching a clearing where hardwood saplings were fighting for territory with tiny, perfectly formed pines, Hew Mallin slowed and then stopped. "In Alban's day they used to hold the old ghostwatches here," he said, using the bearskin hat to brush snow from a felled log. "Twice a year, on the longest and shortest days. They'd build a twenty-foot pyramid of timber and light it as the sun set. It's purpose was to ward off ghosts and other evil things. You might say it worked for the ghost-watch hasn't been held since Wrayan took her brother's place, and the ghosts are only now coming back."

Hew Mallin sat on the log. His face was deeply ice-tanned, yet his lips were pale. His brown and graying hair had been needle-braided and pulled back in a warrior's knot. It was the kind of work that took an expert braider an entire day to achieve, yet once done it rendered any sort of care unnecessary for six months.

"What of the forest?" Bram asked, the first words he had spoken. "With a fire that big it could have gone up in flames."

"That is the crux," Mallin replied coolly, fixing Bram with his yellow eyes. "If one is serious about fighting ghosts there is always a cost."

Bram felt the world spinning on him. He had thought it spun ear-lier, in the cold room, but looking back now he realized that was just the first tug necessary to set a jammed wheel in motion. The Castlemilk guidestone had shown him this man: the bearskin hat, the fork in the path.

"You have been marked, Bram Cormac son of Mabb. The rangers have observed you for five years. We have minded you on the practice court and in the scribes' hall at Dhoone. We have asked others about matters concerning you and received answers that satisfied. Your part in Skinner Dhoone's downfall has been noted. Your actions the night VayloBludd was located on a hillside east of Dhoone are known to us. We see much that others do not, and we watch for others like us." A small, weighted pause, "And that watching has brought me to you."