A Sword From Red Ice (98 page)

What was he missing? What was the fourth world?

The moon rose in the clearing above the valley, a
lean sickle of silver surrounded by a blue corona. It had grown too
dark to make out the details of the clouds, and it was strange to see
the stars restricted to the space above his head. Lightning and the
distant rumble of thunder were his only indications that the storm
was still playing itself out across the northern forests.

Raif went over everything anyone had ever told him
about the sword named Loss and the Red Ice. There wasn't much.
Sadaluk of the Ice Trappers had been the first one to mention Loss,
though not by name. Did you really think this will be the sword that
makes you? Those had been his words as he'd handed Raif the Forsworn
blade. He had not mentioned where this better, second sword might be
found. Tallal of the lamb brothers had known about the sword also.
The Red Ice was sacred to them: a flooded battlefield where thousands
of their dead lay frozen.

Raif shivered. Squatting, he placed his gloved
hands upon the ice and scrubbed away at the surface. He thought
perhaps that if he generated enough friction it might melt the top
layer of ice and help to clear it. The lake was too cold though and
as he scratched its surface it refroze in pale streaks. What had kept
it frozen for so long? Even this far north there were summers. Maygi
hide it, that was what Flawless had claimed. Perhaps he was right and
some ancient sorcery held it in place.

Or perhaps it had something to do with the Want.
For there it was, curling out its mist limbs toward him, beckoning
him back.

Step too far and I am lost. Step back and I will
never fulfill my oath.

Maybe he could just stay here, squatting on the
ice.

Lighting bolted across the sky in a thick,
muscular fork. Raif stood. As his legs took his weight he experienced
a brief instant of disorientation. Not dizziness, he told himself
quickly. Just the normal thing that happens when you rise quickly to
your feet.

He could no longer feel the fingers on his left
hand.

Ignoring them, he forced his mind elsewhere. What
held the Want in place, he wondered. Why didn't the wall of mist just
come tumbling across the lake? One thing he had always assumed about
the shifting uncertainty that topped the continent was that it was
unbounded, able to stretch and shrink at will. Yet it only stretched
partway across the Red Ice. Why?

The tone of his footsteps changed as he neared the
center of the lake. There was a hollowness to them now. They rang. On
impulse he drove the heel of his boot deep into the ice. It was like
kicking a wall.

"To break it you must stand in all four
worlds at once." Argola's words sounded like a taunt.

Clanholds. Sull. Want. What else? Raif Sevrance's
heart failed a beat. He perceived it as a moment of prolonged
suction, a hardness, followed by softness, followed by the release of
another beat. He carried on walking . . . because there was nothing
else to do.

Shadow homes to shadow.

Four worlds.

The Want held in place.

Raif looked down at his feet. He thought for a
moment he saw something pale and head-shaped lying beneath the ice.
Perhaps it was one of the lamb brothers' lost souls. Perhaps it was
his own reflection. It did not matter. Either way the ice would not
break.

He needed to find its weak point.

Raif suddenly remembered what Addie had told him,
that morning after the first camp out of the city. A small charge of
possibility fired along his nerves. Quickening his pace he headed
toward the dam of mist. He could feel it now, the freezing fog,
switching back and forth between ice and superfine droplets of water,
moving between worlds.

The Red Ice spread out before him like an eye full
of blood. How many men had died here? How marry bodies waited beneath
the surface to be released? He believed he saw them now, pale legs
and torsos, severed heads and smashed feet, sections of gut with gray
and pipelike intestines spilled out, bow-curved hips with the sexual
organs frozen into forms that looked like split fruit. All mouths and
eyes were open and gaping; black holes in the ice where the terror
still lived. The demon hordes of the Unmade had slaughtered
thousands. It was easy to close his eyes and see the violent fury,
the cracking of spines, the fountaining of blood, the blades that
sucked in light hacking limbs. Was it possible that such a battle
would need to be fought again?

Raif Sevrance could not say, No.

The mist dam spread before him, soaring hundreds
of feet into the air. Lobes of cloud broke off and floated south
across the lake. They peeled and divided, rotating into ever-thinning
veils before vanishing. Sucked dry. Raif had assumed that if he
walked close enough to the mist he would be lost, but now he was not
so sure. Something held the Want back. And he was beginning to think
he knew what that was.

He was far into the ice now and the hills were
nothing but dark mounds in the distance. When lightning flashed, he
judged the distance between the east and west shore and altered his
course to center himself between the two. Sull and clanhold.
Satisfied, he concentrated upon the ice beneath his feet as he walked
toward the Great Want.

His left hand was numb to the wrist now and
tingles jumped along his arm toward his heart. Stay, he told
something. He wasn't sure what.

The crack in the ice was as fine as a drawn wire,
a line of perfect blackness cutting through the Red Ice. The Want's
mists would not, could not, pass it. It was the great flaw in the
continent. The Rift.

It never closes, not wholly. North of Bludd it
narrows so that men can cross it, but it's always there, a black
crack running through the forests between here and the Night Sea.

Raif fell to his knees before it. Stupid tears
were coming to his eyes. Relief and longing welled up in his failing
heart. This was the fourth world, the darkness that lay in wait
beneath the earth. The passageway to the Blind.

Ice fog coated his face and clothing as he drew
Traggis Mole's longknife. The Want existed less than a foot away, on
the north side of the Rift, and Raif breathed it in as he stripped
off his gloves and molded his left hand around the haft. Using his
right hand to fasten the numb fingers in place, he raised the knife
above his head.

For Drey. Always and everything for Drey.

For the oath he had seconded. And Raif had failed.

A tower of lightning lit up the north as Raif
Sevrance drove his blade into the Red Ice. A whoosh of air shot
across the lake. The ice groaned as steel went deep into the hairline
fissure of the Rift, down into the frozen blood. Cracks ran along the
ice like burning fuses. Explosive charges followed them, firing up
fist-size bursts of frozen matter and shattering the lake's surface
like glass. As destruction fled outward from the blade, the
surrounding clouds closed in. Whatever sorcery had held them at bay
had snapped the instant the ice was breached, and the storm now
rolled in.

The knife went deep. When the crosshilts slammed
into the ice the knife continued sinking. Raif's fists slid down
after them, and he leaned forward driving the steel as far as it
could go. Around him the lake was fracturing and whitening, riding up
in great plates and splintering into fragments. Corpses encased in
ice were flung into the air. He could smell the battle now, the blood
and fear, the horse shit and unmade flesh.

Thunder concussed the valley as Traggis Mole's
knife ground to a halt. Freezing dust shimmered like falling snow.
Raif looked at the shattered plates in front of his knees and saw the
shadow of a man lying beneath the debris. As he dislodged the knife
he was aware of a tightness in his chest. It seemed important that
he did not die before he found the sword so he moved quickly, using
his hands as shovels to dig and push aside the broken ice.

He saw the hand first, the flesh so bloated that
each finger had exploded, leaving peels of skin around the bones. The
ghostly remains of the hand still grasped something. The black and
cankered haft of a sword. Raif picked at the ice with his knife,
wedged his fingers under the plates and pried them out. He could see
the blade now, its edge shining as dimly as an old coin, its
crosshilts overgrown with rusticles. It lay upon a torso that was
twisted sideways and had no head. Dark metallic armor ridged in
spines still protected what little was left of the man who had worn
it. Raven lord, Tallal had called him. Raif had never seen such thick
and brutal plate before; it looked like an armored sarcophagus.

Who was he, this warrior who had ridden into a
battle and single-handedly changed its course? The lamb brothers had
not known his name.

Raif thought about that. He owned many names now,
but fewer and fewer people knew his real name, the one he shared with
Effie and Drey. Was that how it had happened for the raven lord? Had
he started out as a young man with a normal name and normal
prospects, and as his life altered and darkened had people called him
by other names? And had those new names created him?

Mor Drakka. Watcher of the Dead. Twelve Kill.

Raif thrust his hand through chunks of crumbling
ice and grasped the hilt of the sword. The raven lord's frozen
fingers cleaved to his and for a moment they were joined. In that
instant Raif knew things. He saw the Endlords, massive forces
compressed into forms that could be comprehended by man. He felt
their perfect and unearthly coldness, and the absolute singularity of
their purpose. They were coming to destroy the world.

Soon. They promised, their bleak and glittering
gazes meeting Raif's through the dead man's flesh.

Soon.

Raif Sevrance drew the sword named Loss from the
Red Ice. It was heavier than he imagined, long and ugly. Black. As he
brought his left arm up to support the weight, a spasm shot up his
shoulder to his heart.

Shadowflesh moved.

Homed.

Raif's heart stopped beating. An eyeblink. An
untrackable journey. A flash of lightning. And he was gone.

Aftermath

Raif let Addie Gunn help him out of the tent.
"Go," he said to the cragsman once they were a short
distance from the camp. "I need to piss."

Addie frowned like he didn't much believe this.
Given the subject matter he could hardly object. "Here," he
said, holding out the simple oak staff he used for walking. "Take
the stick."

Raif took the stick.

"Don't piss too long," Addie warned
before leaving.

Pushing the butt of the stick into the snow and
pine needles of the forest floor, Raif waited for him to be gone. It
was warm again today and the snow was loose and full of holes. You
could smell the earth, the minerals and tannins and rotting leaves.
Black flies and mosquitoes were hatching. Something buzzed close to
his ear, but he couldn't trust himself to swat it away. He needed the
stick more than he had realized. Half of his weight had sunk upon it.
It was a good piece of wood, smoothly sanded and sturdy. It vibrated
only because the person who held it was shaking; it had been designed
to transfer force.

When he saw Addie return to the tent he felt free
to breathe and slump further into the stick. Addie was a good man and
a good friend, but Raif needed a break from his watching. He needed
to think.

Spying a rock in the shade of the cedars he
decided it looked like a fine place to sit and rest. The hardest part
of getting there was yanking the stick out of the ground. He moved
slowly, aware of the heaviness of his body and his legs' inability to
bear it. The pain in his chest, the depth of it, was something he
would not think about. Enough worry had been spent there. No more
today.

It took him a long time to reach the rock. The sun
moved while he was shambling from foot to foot, rising high in the
pale and clear sky and stealing away the shade. Raif found the rock's
appeal undiminished. It was a big spur of sandstone, flaking and
chalky, and so deeply undercut it looked like a boulder. Maybe it was
a boulder. Raif wondered what was happening to his mind.

Sitting down was a more challenging discipline
than walking and he found himself awkward at it. Several tiring
moments followed where he attempted to lever his weight with the
stick. That didn't work, and the best he could manage was a barely
controlled drop.

Won't be getting up any time soon, he realized,
settling down on the cool and slightly damp stone. His heart was
beating swiftly, accelerated and under strain, and his legs were
shaking in fierce jumps. He could not make them stop.

Below he saw the camp and counted all five
clarified hide tents and the animal corral. It was strange to see
them in this place, this hillside of giant cedars and white pines.
They must have cleared some timber to make the campsite; saplings and
yearlings from the looks of things. Addie carried a hand adze, but
its small rounded head was insufficient for logging. That meant one
of the lamb brothers possessed a decent ax. It was disconcerting to
think of them chopping up timber. They were strong men, he understood
that, but they were Sand People. None of Tallal's stories had ever
mentioned trees.

It looked as if none of the brothers were around.
With Addie standing watch over the fire and the camp, they were free
to do their work. Raif would be forever grateful to the cragsman for
insisting that the camp be raised out of sight of the lake.

"Told 'em, I did," Addie had explained
to him last night. "Said if you ever did wake up the last thing
you'd want to see is that damned Red Ice. But here there is a natural
clearing, says the tall one, pointing at some fool place above the
shore. Let's go unnatural, I says back."