A Sword from Red Ice

As she waded her way through a tangle of burdock and cloudberries, the Far Rider appeared on the path ahead. His bow was braced and he was carrying a lean and bloody coari by its ringed tail. When he saw her he blinked in surprise. Ash felt heat rush to her face. It looked as if she was spying on him. Silently, he held up the coati for her to see. There was a smear of blood on his forearm, but it was probably from the animal. She backed out of the bushes, feeling ashamed.

Later that morning they'd headed south.

Ash watched Lan Fallstar as he rode ahead of her on the causeway. She suspected she did not know enough about the Sull to accurately judge him. Ark Veinsplitter and Mai Naysayer might have appeared more forthcoming, but they had kept their silence on many things. Neither one would tell her what it meant to be Reach. She recalled Ark warning her once that she was in danger unless she became Sull. He had not told her why. Perhaps this was the way it would be with all of them. She was an outsider, not to be trusted with their deepest secrets. The color of her eyes might have darkened from gray to midnight blue that night in the mountain pool, but nothing else on the outside had changed. She did not look Sull, so how could she expect Lan Fallstar to treat her as an equal? She had known all along the Sull believed themselves to be superior to men.

Reaching the end of the raised path, Lan slowed his stallion to a walk. Without any signal from Ash, the gelding followed his lead. Wind moaned in her ears as the horses climbed up a narrow— and crumbling stair cut into the bluff. Pale weeds grew in the cracks in the steps, and icy streams trickling along their edges had deposited streaks of green algae and calcium salts. The horses moved slowly, placing their hoofs with care. Ash spotted a footprint stamped half in the snow and half in the algae. Did Sull still come here?

Light faded as they passed into a tunnel mined deep into the crenel-lations of the cliff. Water dripped and plonked in the darkness. Ash smelled tree roots and the faint tinge of sulfur. Quite suddenly she realized she had never opened a vein and paid a toll for passage; she did not possess that Sull instinct. Yet as she moved through the tunnel something within her thought, Now would be a good time to let blood. When light from the exit came sliding along the walls, she saw marks tattooed into the rock. Star maps, tailed comets, meteor showers, eclipsed suns and the moon in alljmts phases had been carved into limestone and filled with a cloudy whitetsubstance that was slowly moldering to green. Seeing the markings Ash had a sense that finally she was drawing close to the heart of Sull. They had fought and lost major battles here. Khal Hark'rial. The Fortress of the Hard Gate.

They emerged on a circular stairwell whose ancient Ane floor was speckled with calcium deposits and lichen. The patches looked like bird droppings. A spring gurgled over the raw rockwall before passing into an underground channel. Lan headed up more steps and Ash followed him. She could see the sky again now. Clouds were fleeing west with the sun.

Finally they reached the plateau, climbing onto land that was flat and green with trees. Fort Defeat was a massive and featureless cur-tainwall built from dressed ashlar that was paler than the limestone bluffs. It was larger than she had imagined, its ramparts rising fifty feet. The walls were curved outward like barrels and nothing had been done to add grace or bring relief to its primitive form. Earthworks mounded at its base were overgrown with burdock, nettles and white thorns. A full-grown cedar grew straight out from a crack in the wall, its pale roots grasping the stone like claws.

Lan spoke a word inlull she did not know and dismounted. A stone path led through the woods and around to the northern face of the fortress. Ash remained in the saddle as they took it. The wind was high here and it blew the fur on her cloak flat, revealing the pooled pink skin of the lynx.

As they rounded the northern facade Ash spied the first of the towers and the arched gate. The tower was the tallest of the three, and had no exterior walls on its remaining top floors. The gate was a gaping and undefended hole in the curtainwall. Some of the capstones had gone, and others were smashed and crumbling. A relief carving of a raven in flight that surmounted the gate had been broken into shards. Its wingtips and feet were missing, and its head and bill were a spiderweb of cracks. Ash felt some slight hesitation from the gelding as she guided the horse underneath it.