A whole coin each. Raif couldn't remember what he did with his, maybe swapped it for some rusty piece of weaponry from Bev Shank. Drey had given his to Da. He had always been the better man.
Raif let the memory fall away from him, forcing himself back into the present. Straightaway he realized something was wrong. The air was still. No mist washed against his face, no breeze lifted his hair. Without a current to walk against he had no guide. Halting, he tried to pin down his mistake. When he'd first heard the rats he was pretty sure the current was still pushing against him. What had he done then? Thinking about Drey had distracted him. Had he veered off course? He turned his head, knowing as he did so that to look behind was useless but unable to break the habit of a lifetime.
Then he realized something strange. He could see the barest outline, a black-on-black edge about ten feet above him. Blinking, he waited. One grain of light at a time, the world came into view. Raif's eyes protested the growing brightness, sending out weird blooms of color and floating dots. Sky emerged above the edge, gray and pearly, swamped with clouds. The ravine appeared below it. Blue sandstone walls rose on two sides, their surfaces riven with cracks, their ledges collecting grounds for deadwood and loose scree. Underfoot, the porous stone was venting skeins of mist that quickly dissipated in the dry air. Ahead, where the ravine wall met the bedrock, a bony bristle-cone pine lay twisted and on its side, its needles a pale ashy green.
Raif glanced down the length of the ravine. It was still dark back there. Turning, he walked toward the bristlecone pine. It was alive, he could smell it. As he knelt, rubbing the fragrant needles between his fingertips, the light increased and the way ahead became clear. Sourwood bushes, rock oak and hornbeam choked the foot of the ravine where it dovetailed into a large dry riverbed. No, Raif corrected himself, the river wasn't dry. A line of green water glinted in its center.
It was canyon country, west of the Rift. He had been here twice before. He knew the lay of the land, its faults and undercuts, its shrunken willows and yellow sedge. It was probably less than two days' walk to the city on the edge of the abyss.
As Raif stepped from the ravine and into the dry riverbed, a final cry echoed from the dark place behind him.
Keep away from the Red Ice.
He did not look back.
SIXTEEN Crouching in the Underworld
Raina Blackhail crouched in dank and fetid underlevels of the roundhouse and prayed her light wouldn't go out. It was one of those horn-covered safelamps that was supposedly impervious to the wind. The lamp's bulb-shaped brass reservoir was pleasingly full and felt good in her hand, but there was no getting round it: the flame was jumping.
Darn thing. And what on earth was she doing down here anyway, when she could be upstairs enjoying a fine midday meal with Anwyn Bird in the good light—and fresh air—of day? Instead the smells of rotten leaves, night soils and dead mice were assaulting her senses as she paddled through a half-foot of standing water. The underlevels of the Hailhouse stank like an old man. They were shrinking like one too. According to Longhead, who was one of the very few people in the clan who cared about such things, the Hailhouse sank a little each year. "It's the weight of the stone," he'd explained to her many years ago. "When the spring thaws come the earth softens and the walls begin to sink. Not much, but certainly enough." He had wanted to show her the marker he had scribed on the base of the roundhouse in order to monitor the rate of sinkage. Raina had declined. She'd been twenty-two at the time and madly in love, and she wouldn't have cared if the entire Hailhold had sunk ten feet in a single day.
Well it's sinking now. And the irony was that she, Raina Blackhail, had turned into Longhead: a person with a marker, monitoring the decline. Raina smiled at the thought. It made what she did seem less grim.
Noticing a flattening-out of an overhead ceiling groin, she straightened her spine and rested a moment. Her back was aching with the strain of carrying her lode and she wondered if she should have asked Jebb Onnacre to help. No, she shook her head. Jebb was a good man and she trusted him, but this risk must be hers alone.
Pushing herself off from the wall she concentrated on remembering the way ahead. The standing water was deeper than when she'd been here last and she was glad she'd had the sense to put on her knee-high leather riding boots. As she moved, the pack strapped to her shoulders kept sliding out of place and she had to constantly reach back to reccn-ter the weight. She wasn't sure how much longer she could carry it Sweat was trickling past her ears, and two dark stains were spreading across the armpits of her dress. The sopping wool felt like itchy mush.
Shunting the weight sideways, she slipped between two stone columns and entered the dark airless labyrinth of the foundation space, the bottommost level in the roundhouse. It was surprisingly warm and some kind of rain was falling—the ceiling must be saturated with groundwater. The safelamp began to hiss and Raina brought it close to her body for protection. Bending at the waist, she cleared the entrance tunnel and followed the passage as it led down.
It wasn't long before oily water started flooding over the tops of her boots. Awkwardly, she hiked up her sodden skirts and tucked them under her belt. As she worked, the safelamp swung lazily in her free hand, sending an egg-shaped beam of light rocking across the walls.
A fuzz of blue-black mold covered the stone. In the corner where the sandstone walls braced the ceiling, moths had laid their eggs. Thousand of white maggots fed on the mold. Some had pupated into pod-shaped cocoons that hung suspended from the ceiling by dusty threads of silk. When a breeze came they clicked together, making a noise like rustling leaves. Raina averted her eyes and resumed walking.
Built solely as a buffer between the roundhouse and the cold earth, the foundation space had not been designed for walking. Raina reckoned the ceiling height was under five feet, and looking ahead she could see it was dropping. The strange thing was she wasn't as afraid of this place as she had been in the past. Old fears were felling away. Fear of rats and other small things now seemed like a silly luxury, like wearing a lace bonnet on a windy day. Vain too, a demonstration of delicacy, an announcement that one has managed to steer clear of the hardships of everyday life. Same with spiders and darkness and thunderstorms: girlish fears for girls who did not know the real things they should fear. Raina could tell them. Sometimes she would like to yell them out loud just to get them off her chest.
Spying a T-junction ahead, Raina took a moment to rest the weight and run over the directions in her head. She did not want to make a wrong turn. Effie Sevrance had shown her this place. That girl knew the roundhouse like the back of her hand. Strongrooms, crypts, wet cells, mole holes, clay pits, ice pits, well heads, dungeons: Effie knew all the dark and secret spaces beneath the roundhouse. She would go missing for entire days and no one, not even her brothers, could find her. When she finally emerged, blinking and baffled at all the fuss, she would say simply, "Sorry. I forgot." Raina had come down hard on her after the time she'd gone missing for three whole days. "You will stay here in my chambers, within my sight, for the next ten days. And you'll spend that time composing apologies for all those you have worried and inconvenienced." Poor Effie had done just that.