Raif did not understand why the outlander was playing games with him. "Then draw it out"
"That skill is beyond me."
More games. "You tend Traggis Mole."
"And I can do nothing for him. He dies."
Raif punched the meat of his hand against the door. Left shoulder. Left arm. Two hundred pounds of pull in a fully drawn longbow and the left shoulder and arm must brace against it. "Why do you manipulate me?"
"You know why."
Raifs gaze met the outlander's. At least he did not bother to lie. "Who are you?"
"Thomas Bireon Argola, from a city you've never heard of called Hanatta. I lay small claim to the old skills and have some experience as a healer. I came north three years ago with my sister, for reasons that are not yours to know. And I do not lie about the drawing of the maer dan. It is an art practiced by races older than mine and the Sull." "Are you whole?
"Do not make me show you all the ways that I am not." Raifs anger collapsed. Suddenly he felt tired and out of his depth. His shoulder seemed to ache more now than it did before Argola's pronouncement, and he remembered that he had hurt his ankle. And now it hurt.
Argola looked tired too, the corners of his mouth were turned down, the lips pale. Raif wondered if his thoughts were similar to his own: It would be good to have some peace.
"Can I live with the maer dan inside me?"
"You do," Argola said, almost gently. Then, in a stronger voice, "It is situated in the muscle above the back of your heart. If it moves inward there is no bone to stop it." Oh gods.
"The closest Sull settlement is due east of here, in the great taiga where the Deadwoods meet the Sway."
Here it was, the manipulation. Raif felt it in the hollow center of his bones. It was a funny thing, manipulation; even when you knew someone was doing it and they admitted to doing it, it could still work. It is a hard journey north, he had said last time. Now east. "Have you heard of the Lake of Red Ice?" "I have."
"Do you know where it is?" "All I know I have said."
Raif looked at the blood in Argola's right eye and imagined how it had got there. "Look for me," he commanded.
The outlander's face registered surprise, and then—Raif would remember for the rest of his life—satisfaction.
"If you are to watch you must be prepared when they come." Raif thought about all these words revealed. Argola knew about the sword. Knew also about the name he had taken for his own. Mor Drakka. Watcher of the Dead. How did he learn these things? What did he know that Raif did not?
Thomas Argola's small, sharp-featured face gave nothing away. His plain brown robes reminded Raif of what the monks in the Mountain Cities wore to demonstrate they had no interest in worldly things.
"Did they tell you the name of the sword?"
It was as if the outlander had a stick and kept poking him harder and harder to see what he might do. Raif s back was against the door; he could not be driven any farther. "No they did not."
Argola received the warning, seemed pleased by it Again there was that lip stretch of satisfaction. "The sword that lies beneath the Red Ice is named Loss."
Loss.
"There are some things in the Blind that will not fall by any other blade."
It was too much. Raif punched back the door bolt and let himself out. He did not look back or close the door.
Sunlight streamed against his face and he could barely make sense of it. Bouncing off the snow on the ground, it came at him from every direction. Bright, razoring light. It should have dispelled the dark seizures in his brain, yet it just seemed to feed them.
Loss.
He headed toward the upper ledge. A knotted rope hung from the ledge he had jumped and he yanked himself up it He had left behind his gloves and cloak in the outlander's cave, and the cold and the rope burns added to strange energy of pain and twitching thoughts he had become.
I will not slit your throat I will defend the Rift Brothers. I will become lord of the Rift. Every time he spoke these days he seemed to take on another oath.
He had given none to Argola, though. Yet he had allowed the man to push him. Releasing his hands from the rope, Raif landed on the rimrock. Snow crunched as he flattened it. Had he allowed Stillborn to push him too?
Deciding no good would come of knowing, he switched his mind away from all of it. Argola's motives. The puncture wound. The sword. It was just past midday and the sun was at its highest point above the clanholds. Raif walked to the edge of the broad table of rock and sucked in the sight of his homeland. Seven hundred paces, that was the distance that separated the clan-holds from the Rift in this place. A man could cross it in a matter of minutes—east of here there was a hidden bridge. Yet there might as well be a wall as tall as the sky. Raif Sevrance could never go back.
He stood and let the sun warm him and the snow cool him. And when he was ready he looked down into the Rift.
For the first time ever, Raif was aware of beating hearts deep within its depths.
TWENTY-SEVEN A Castleman for a Year
Dalhousie Selco, the swordmaster at Castlemilk, kept an hourglass slung around his neck on a chain and used it as a torture device. If you as much as glanced at it he'd grab the chain and twist it, turning the hourglass from vertical to horizontal. Stopping time. Only when he was satisfied that you and the other young men he was training had been suitably punished did he twist the chain back and let time run.
Bram was learning fast: Best not even to look at the swordmaster, let alone his glass. That path led to double trouble. Trouble from Dalhousie now. Trouble from the other boys later. You made him give us an extra fifteen minutes—in the snow.
It was true enough. They were training on the smallest of the three swordcourts at the rear of the roundhouse, and when they'd trudged out before noon and Dalhousie had directed them to the only court that had not been cleared of snow they all thought he'd made a mistake. No one had dared say so. Though Enoch had whispered to Bram, "Either Housie's off his nut or he's going to make us shovel snow." Whispering was a grave error in the swordmaster's presence. If he heard you he would whack your shoulder with his wooden scabbard. Luckily for Enoch there was snow: five pairs of feet crunching through it on their way to the swordcourt had provided sufficient noise to camouflage his offense.
Even when it had become obvious that Dalhousie had not made a mistake and did indeed intend to put them through their forms while making them stand in two feet of snow, the full extent of his evil plan had yet to be revealed. Bram had trained with Jackdaw Thundy, the old swordmaster at Dhoone, and he knew that any swordmaster worth his salt was tough and demanding. He hadn't known they were capable of torture.
"Castlemen," Dalhousie had shouted when they were all assembled on the court. "Pull off your left boots and let's get moving."
Bram Cormac, Enoch Odkin, Trorty Pickering and Shamie Weese, known as Beesweese, had looked at each other, round-eyed and blinking.
"Now!" roared Dalhousie.
At first Bram had been glad he had his socks on—tube-shaped sheaths of rabbit skin rendered bald by constant use—but after five minutes of plunging his foot in and out of the snow the material had become wet and icy and he ended up pulling it off. At least the bare skin could dry off a bit between dunkings. Dalhousie had set them in pairs—Bram against Enoch, Trotty against Beesweese—and made them stand opposite each other while they took turns executing and defending forms.
"Swan's neck! Bluddsmen's farewell! Hammer cut! Harking's needle!" Dalhousie Selco marched from one end of the court to the other, shouting out the forms. Every so often he would explode into motion, and his chosen victim would have to defend himself against a series of attack forms while screaming out their names. Occasionally Dalhousie would throw in a new form, and Gods help you if you mistook it for something else.