A Cavern of Black Ice by J. V. Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

and salt water streamed from them, running
down his cheeks. He continued to look straight ahead. The exact piece
of ground Tem lay on was etched upon his soul, and it was his Stone
God-given duty to watch it until it had burned to dust.
    Finally there came a time when he could
look away. Turning, he looked to his brother. Drey would not meet his
eyes. Drey's hand was bunched so tightly into a fist it caused his
chest to shake. After a moment he spoke. "Let's go."
    Without glancing up to check his
brother's reaction, Drey crossed over to the horse posts, picked up
his share of the supplies, and hefted them over his back. From the
bulky look of the packs, Raif guessed Drey had chosen to carry the
heaviest bundles himself.
    Drey waited by the post. He would not
look at his brother, but he would wait for him.
    Raif walked to meet him. As he
suspected, the packs Drey had left were light, and Raif shrugged them
on his back like a coat. He wanted to say something to Drey, but
nothing seemed right, so he kept his silence instead.
    The fire roared at their backs as they
left the badlands campsite and headed south. Smoke followed them,
fire stench sickened them, and ashes settled on their shoulders like
the first shadows of night. They crossed the floodplain and the sedge
meadow and headed over the great grasslands that led home. The sun
set slow but early, lighting the sky behind them with a lingering
bloody light.
    Drey never mentioned continuing the
search for Mace Blackhail, and Raif was glad. Glad because it meant
his brother saw the same things he did along the way: a broken pane
of ice on a melt pond, a horse's hoof clearly stamped in the lichen,
a ptarmigan bone, its end black from the roastfire, picked clean.
    When exhaustion finally got the better
of them, they halted. An island of blackstone pines formed their
shelter for the night. The great centuries-old trees had grown in a
protective ring, originally seeded from a single mother tree that had
matured in the center, then later died. Raif liked being there. It
was like camping within a guide circle.
    Drey lit a dry fire and pulled an
elkhide over his shoulders to keep warm. Raif did the same, and the
two brothers sat close around the flames and ate strips of hung
mutton and boiled eggs gone black. They drank Tern's dark, virtually
undrinkable homebrew, and the sour taste and tarlike smell reminded
Raif so strongly of his father it made him smile. Tem Sevrance's
homebrew was the worst in the entire clan; everyone said so, no one
would drink it, and it was rumored to have killed a dog. Yet Tem
never changed his brew. Much like heroes in stories who poisoned
themselves a little each day to protect against attacks from artful
assassins, Tem had become immune to it.
    Drey smiled, too. It was impossible not
to smile when faced with the very real possibility of death by beer.
A soreness came to Raif's throat. There was just three of them now:
he, Drey, and Effie.
    Effie
. The smile drained from
Raif's face. How would they tell Effie her da had gone? She had never
known their mother. Meg had died on the birthing table in a pool of
her own blood, and Tem had reared Effie on his own. Many clansmen and
more than a few clanswomen had told Tem he should remarry to provide
his sons and daughter with a mother, yet Tem had flatly refused. "I
have loved once, completely," he would say. "And that's
blessing enough for me."
    Suddenly Drey reached over and cuffed
Raif lightly on the cheek. "Don't worry," he said. "We'll
be all right."
    Raif nodded, glad to his heart that
Drey had spoken and comforted by the realization that the same
thoughts sifting through his mind were sifting through Drey's as
well.
    Sitting back, Drey adjusted the fire
with
a
stick. Red-and-blue flames danced close to his gloved
hand as he turned out charred logs. "We'll make Clan Bludd pay
for what they did, Raif. I swear it."
    A hand of pure ice gripped Raif's gut.
Clan Bludd? Drey had no proof of what he said. The raid