A Sword from Red Ice

Annoyed with herself for still shivering, she set her mind on something else. She tried to sort out who and what she was without her lore. Effie Sevrance, daughter to Tern and Megg, sister to Drey and Raif, bearer of the stone lore, Hailsman: those were her names and titles, Tem and Megg were dead. Drey might be too. She doubted if she'd see Blackhail in a very long time—Clan Gray was the direct diagonal opposite of Blackhail, and maybe a thousand leagues away-and to top it all off a fish had eaten her lore. Now she was simply Effie, sister to Raif, bearer of no lore, not even the twine that had held it. Did that mean her knowledge had gone? She didn't know. Some days it felt as if it had.

And then there were days like today when something tingled in the center of her breastbone, right in the place where her lore used to lie. It had happened while she and Chedd were eating the fairy shrimp. They were tiny things, floating upside down in the icy water. Chedd said you ate them whole and raw, so that's what they did. They'd tasted like fish fins, which, as far as Effie knew, were the one part of the fish you weren't supposed to eat. Chedd had disagreed and said quite seri-ously they tasted like fish eyes. Bony fish eyes. That had them both laughing. And that was when she'd felt the queemess in her chest. It was like a thumb jabbing against her chest. No laughing matter. Not today.

After that she didn't eat any more shrimp and went to sit alone by the boat. Some of the shrimp shell had stuck in her throat. Now Eggtooth's words were stuck back there too. Tie stones to their chests and sink 'em.

The ghost of her lore, that's what she decided to name the sensation in her chest. The ghost of her lore had spoken and given her a warning about today.

And tonight. Effie swatted a black fry who fancied a piece of her wrist. The horn-covered lamp clipped to the bow of the boat created an eerie circle of light She wished she could paddle. To do something would be good, to get tired and a bit sore, and have something else beside her thoughts to think about—if that made any sense. Waker and Waker's father were poling though, standing in the boat and using long sticks to punt — through the water. T he fiver was too shallow for paddling, barely a river at all anymore.

The Mouseweed. Only a few days earlier Effie had thought it an underserving sort of name. She and Chedd had spotted beaver dams and big barnacly trout, and the river was at leas thirty feet across. Now the only things to spot were flies. And its width had grown decidedly uncertain. Black water wept beyond the banks and into fields of sedge and rushes. The hills had ended and the land had sunk. The tallest things around were the alders and silky willows, trees clinging grimly to last summer's crisped leaves.

The river was too shallow for paddling. And too full of weeds. The water meandered around great islands of bulrushes and cattails, and then widened into wet fields. Channels were no longer obvious and Waker and his father needed to be able to turn the boat on a point.

Four days back they had passed Clan Otler's roundhouse in the night. Waker had snuffed the prow lamp and his father had propelled the boat while he himself did something strange. Waker had sat forward in the prow seat and made sweeping motions with the pole. Chedd had whispered that Waker was checking for trip wires above the water. Effie had frowned at this at first, thinking it a highly unlikely figment of Chedd's overly dramatic imagination. Trip wires above the water indeed. What was next, attack fish? This odd behavior had gone on for nearly an hour—Waker pivoting the butt of the pole against his chest as he swung the tip in a half-circle—and during that time Effie couldn't come up with a single explanation that sounded better. And Waker had never repeated the action any night since then. It certainly made her think.

Oder's roundhouse had been lit with fiery red torches that doubled their light by reflecting in the water. It was strange to see a roundhouse built from wood and raised on stilts. The Otlerhouse was huge and beautifully made. Entire stripped logs had been carved into curves to form the roundwall. The cedar gleamed in the firelight, thickly oiled against mist and river damp. Three turrets rose from its domed roof. Lamps burned in the top galleries of each tower and the windows were guarded by meshed wire stretched over X-shaped frames. Both the towers and the roundhouse were roofed in white lead; probably to reduce the risk of fire, Effie guessed. Lead had also been added to the chinking between the logs, endowing the roundhouse with a series of pale horizontal stripes that reflected in the dark water as glowing rings.