A Sword from Red Ice

No longer able to stand in the hurricane, Inigar dropped to his knees. The air was full of debris now; strips of leather, shammies, ashes, woodchips, and dust. The oak workbench he'd sat at every day slid across the room, legs squealing. A powerful blast of air sent it smashing against the wall. Inigar felt little shards of oak pierce his shoulder. A moment later something punctured his hip. Looking down he saw his chisel poking from the pad of muscle at the top of his thigh. He took its handle in his fist and yanked it out.

An eye was forming above the center of the guidestone. It was beautiful and terrible, a calmness in the storm of spinning clouds. A noise bass and so full of power set the walls and floor vibrating, boomed out of the stone. Inigar's eyes and nose began to bleed. His pigskin cloak was snatched from his back and sucked into the tow. He was beyond feeling pain now, and barely registered the missiles slamming against his side. He was the guide of Clan Blackhail and he had his chisel in his hand, and witnessing the gods' power was not a bad way to die.

Suddenly everything stopped. Litter dropped from the air, thudding and tinkling. Mist sank away like water down a drain. The guidestone stood still and silent, as old as the earth itself. Wonder and sadness filled Inigar's heart. Who would guile Blackhail when he wllgone?

And then the Hailstone exploded into a million bits of shrapnel and the clan guide knew no more.

The man who had lost his soul approached the house. Timbers framing the doorway were black and shiny. Creosote deposited during the burning gave them the oily iridescence of ravens' wings. The door that had once been suspended between them had fallen on the front stoop. Its metal hinge pins had popped out of their casings like cooked sausage meat. Charred panels in the door crumbled as the man's weight came down on them. In a different life he had stained and waxed the panels, proofing them against the brutal winter storms that hit from the north.

Protecting this house from harm.

The man rocked backward, bringing force to bear on the heel of his left boot, crushing the brittle wood, stretching the moment before he entered the house.

and the snow fallen. The curious and opportunistic. Young boys on dares; thieves in search of locked boxes, silverware, metal for scrapping; officials gathering information along with a fine story to tell their wives over supper. The man understood the pull of such places. Death and ruin dwelt here, and a person could come and view it and be glad it was not his family, his house, his life.

Ignoring the footsteps, the man headed down the central hall toward the kitchen. His mind was working; cataloguing details, noting absences, testing them against the theory coalescing in his head. It was the only way to remain sane.

The devil was in the details. The damage to the doors and exterior walls was far greater than in the interior of the house. Here, in the kitchen, the stone fireplace was barely damaged. The fire irons had been stolen, not melted. The facing stones were black, yet the heat had been insufficient to crack the mortar between them. On the opposite wall, where the external door was located, the destruction was far worse. The two windows were black holes. Plaster surrounding them had warped and cracked. Varnish on the adjoining floorboards had blistered. Part of the wall above the eastern window had fallen in taking a chunk of the upper story along with it. The man looked up and saw sky. When he looked down he noticed that one of the house's exterior sandstone blocks had tumbled in. Its once dusty orange face had been smelted into glass.

Xhalia ex nihl. All becomes nothing: words he'd learned from the Sull. They spoke them in times of grief as a comfort… and in times of joy as a reminder. He'd thought them wise and fair. He was wrong.

His wife and daughters were dead. His three girls and the woman he had loved for half his life were gone. Murdered.

The moment he had turned the corner in the road and seen the burned house he knew. He had lived with risk for so long that the anticipation of disaster had become a reflex, a string held at tension waiting to snap. A muscle contracting in his gut had told him everything. The walk through the house had simply confirmed it. The blaze had burned from the outside in. Fires had been set at windows and doors. The occupants had been trapped inside and forced to fill their lungs with hot, lethal smoke.

The man pushed a fist against the charred plaster and took a breath.

And then another. His wife and girls had trusted him with their safety. And he had failed them. He, who knew more than most about evil and the men and women who practiced it, and knew just how long they | would wait for an opportunity to bring harm. He, who had dedicated his life to opposing the dark and unfathomable forces of destruction. |