A Sword from Red Ice

Yet hadn't the retreat already begun? Frost had been living in the Hailstone since the Eve of Breaking, when good clansmen had turned against their own, sending a hound to the fire and trying a child as a witch. It went back farther than that, though. Frost could not enter a shored-up house. Blackhail's house had been vulnerable for half a year, ever since it's chief had been slaughtered in the Badlands by nameless raiders. Something evil had punched a hole through clan walls that day. Something immense and calculating, whose age was greater than the earth he stood upon and whose purpose Inigar feared to name.

I cannot dwell on it. A guide blunted by fear is no good for his clam Sharp of mind and sharp of chisel: that is the way we must be.

Working from touch alone he slipped on braided leather sandals and pulled a polished pigskin cloak across his shoulders. Air was quickening. The short gray hairs at the base of Inigar's scalp rocked in their follicles like loose teeth. Once as a seven-year-old he had climbed down a wellshaft on a dare. The well had been known as Witch's Cunt, and a collapsed embankment upcountry had poisoned its water with tar. It was old beyond knowing, and so deep that as Inigar had descended, probing for toeholds in the dark, the very nature of the air had changed. Saturated with groundwater, it resisted exhalation. That sense of aliveness, the sudden revelation that air had a will of its own and there were some places in this world where it would rather not be, had haunted Inigar's dreams for fifty years. He had felt it two other times since then: the day on the great court when Raif Sevrance had sworn his oath to his clan; and here and now in the guidehouse at the hangman s hour before dawn.

The guide's swollen fingers sifted for a flint and striker along the workbench. Ice growing in the heart of the Hailstone made the guide-house colder by the day. Fires could not warm it, and the dour and god-fearing masons of Blackhail had insured sunlight never entered this place. As Inigar knelt before the firepit and struck a light, he found himself wishing for a single window in the south wall so that he could throw back its shutters and let in the glow of the moon. The great bodies that circled the earth had powers to combat darkness that no man-struck flame could match.

Still. He felt some easing in his chest when the kindling finally took and the red glow of a smokepile seeded with iron filings lit the room. Yet even as he took his first deep breath since waking he became aware of the presence of the guidestone.

The great turning-wheel of its awareness, the sense of seeing and knowing, was gone. What was left was something forceless, an ember flickering after a fire. A year ago Inigar could not lay a hand upon the monolith without feeling a jolt of life. Now the stone would rip off his skin if he touched it without the protection of padded gloves. Ice had spread through the guidestone like cancer; cumulating crystal upon crystal, sparkling, sharp and irreversibly cold, gnawing away at the rock. Two weeks ago the guidestone might have sent out a flare, a feeble attempt at communion, a weak assertion of power. Touch it tonight and Inigar knew what he would feel: something dying beneath the surface.

Reaching for the bellows, Inigar returned his attention to the fire. The first thing he had been taught as an apprentice was how to tend a smokefire. The old clan guide Beardy Hail had been uncle to Dagro Blackhail, the chief. Beardy never explained things more than once and never gave praise for a job well done. Every morning when he took possession of the guidehouse he would inspect the smokefire for flames. A flame of any sort was not permitted. The smokepile had to smolder, not burn. Inigar had spent most of those early days attending the fire; chopping green wood, breaking coal, filing iron. Too much fuel and flames would ignite, too little and the fire would die. For years Inigar had wondered why it mattered—smoke resulted either way—yet one day, when Beardy was laid up with the gout and unable to check the smokepile, Inigar had come to an understanding.

Any fool could build a fire; stack logs, lay kindling, strike a flint and blow. Once lit, the fire would burn hot and die out in its own time. But a smoke fire was never done. You could not walk away and leave it unattended. A smokefire had to be fueled and doused, stacked and banked, raked and poked and pumped. Most of all it must be watched.

It was, Inigar decided, the most important lesson Beardy had ever taught him. A clan guide must be vigilant. He could not afford to turn his back and let his clan burn or die. A smolder must be maintained. And the watch never cease.