You did not know when you died. Perhaps that was a blessing, that short but untrackable distance between life and death. If he fell dead on this hillside all oaths would be null and void. Yet he did not want to die. He did not want to leave the world where Drey Sevrance, Effie Sevrance and Ash March existed. Drey, who had taken his swearstone that morning on the greatcourt, was the center of all things. Raif could still remember his brothers last touch on the rivershore west of Ganmiddich. We part here. For always. Take my portion of guide-stone … I would not see you unprotected.
Raif Sevrance would not see Drey unprotected either. If he found the sword. If he lived. Any unmade man or beast he slew with it would be one less evil in the world, one less threat to his family, and his clan. The circle of clear sky was close now. Mish'al Nij. The hillside leading toward it was steep. Long spines of red rock pushed through the ground and snow. White pines and cedars crowded the spaces in between them. The wind was bending the trees, revealing the silvery underside of their boughs. Addie had given up on a path. A ditchlike springbed cut deep into the slope was the best he could manage. The spring was dry of water, but scree and pinecones bounced downstream. When they reached the springhead—a lens of thick blue ice that was leaking rust—they were forced back into the trees. Raif lost sight of the sky. Cedar branches swiped his cloak and face mask and all he could see were green terraces of pine. Addie had the lead and Raif followed his small and lightly stamped footprints in the frozen snow. Lightning struck. Hailstones sizzled into puffs of steam.
"I see the ridge ahead," Addie shouted.
Raif concentrated on his feet. The sandstone was cracked and loose here and days of thaws followed by frost had left every surface slick. He wouldn't think about the Red Ice until he saw it with his own two eyes.
The cragsman disappeared into the green. Raif found himself remembering the night on the rimrock when the Forsworn sword had given way. Was that the moment his future had been lost, the instant the blade had bent? If the sword had stayed true would he be here today? Traggis Mole would not have been torn open by the Unmade serpent, and a new oath would not have been spoken. A dying man's request. Behind his hareskin face mask, Raif cracked a dark smile. Request was hardly the word for it. Traggis Mole had demanded.
Swear it.
Noticing the trees had begun to clear, Raif picked up his pace. The wound he'd taken back at the camp pulled at the skin on his gut as he straightened upright. He'd been bent against the wind for so long it had begun to heal. Ahead, Raif saw Addie standing on the ndgelme.
The cragsman had released his hold on his cloak and the brown wool billowed out like a boat. Five minutes earlier it would have been ripped from his throat. Yet the wind wasn't dying; Raif could hear it below him in the trees. It was as if the storm could not reach beyond AddigGunn. He stood on a barrier it could not pass.
The cragsman did not turn as Raif drew abreast of him. He had removed his face mask and gray stormlight lit the side of his face. His jaw was moving. He was naming the Stone Gods.
"Ganolith, Hammada, Ione, Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus."
Loss.
The fourth Stone God. And the name of the sword.
Raif looked down into a valley framed by steep and wooded hills on three sides and by a dam of mist on the fourth. The mist wall spanned the space between hills to the north, a towering rampart of white and shifting haze that plumed and curled, switching between states. The mist rivers of the Want lay behind there, Raif realized. This was the border between worlds.
Raif thought of the lamb brothers, and touched the piece of storm-glass tucked between the trapper skins at his chest. They had not been as far from their goal as he, and possibly they, had imagined. If he was right and the Want lay beyond that dam they could be just a short walk away on the other side.
Or so far they would never reach it in a million years.
Lightning lit up the sky to the east as Raif Sevrance looked down upon the Red Ice. Hills rose steeply from the lake, denying it shoreline on all sides. It was roughly circular and perhaps a league across, and he could not tell exactly where it ended in the north and the wall of mist began. Its surface was covered in a fine crystalline powder of snow, but you could still see the true color of the ice. It was as the lamb brothers had said: a lake of frozen blood.
Seeing it Raif understood Addie Gunn's impulse to name the old gods. The cragsman had broken no oath and perhaps he had a claim to that comfort. Raif knew he had no such claim himself.
Pushing aside his face mask, he set off down the slope. The woods were not as dense on this side of the talley and it was easy to make a path. The groundsnow was lighter, crisper. If you looked directly overhead you could view the night's first stars. They seemed familiar, but Raif was on guard against the Want and no longer wholly believed what he saw. Flawless had told him that Bluddsmen rode right past this valley and did not see it. He had been doubtful of that claim. Now he was not.
The nearer he drew to the ice the deeper its color became. Light was foiling strangely, staying close to the ground as it drained. Around him he was aware of the storm waging a war upon the north, but here in its eye all was calm.
"Night falls and the shadows gather, and to watch you must grow accustomed to the dark. Bide where I stand, Raif Twelve Kill—alone and armed in the darkness—and ask yourself is this a prize worth winning, or a hole without end that will suck away your life?"
Traggis Mole's words seemed to steal out of the mist, snaking toward him like the Want. They contained truth without hope. The sword's name promised more of the same. Loss.
Raif steeled himself against the bleakness of his thoughts. He had come this far. Ahead, somewhere in that dark expanse of Red Ice, lay the chance to fulfill his oath to Traggis Mole. And arm himself against the Endlords.
Grow wide shoulders, Clansman. You'll need them for all of your burdens.
About a hundred feet above the ice he stopped and pulled off his pack. Addie was closing distance through the cedars and Raif waited for him. The air was well below freezing here and his breath crackled into clouds. How long had this lake been frozen? How many thousands of years?
When the cragsman reached him, he said, "You have been a good friend to me, Addie Gunn."
Addie knew all that this meant. As he went to stand by Raif's pack there was sadness in his eyes, but no surprise. "Think I'll try some of that tea. Good luck to you, lad."
Their gazes locked. You seconded my oath, Raif wanted to tell him. Like Drey. He remained silent though, and left the cragsman alone on the hill as he headed down to the Red Ice.
All trees stopped thirty feet above the lake and nothing grew on the bare rock, Raif was careful as he descended. Things were happening to his body. Old wounds and new wounds were stretching his skin tight like nails hammered into a canvas. His fingertips were tingling.
He realized the ice was groaning when he neared the shore. When he had first heard the sound he had mistaken it for thunder. Now he could tell it was the low moan of a substance under pressure. Cautiously he slid down the rocks toward it.
The instant he slid his toe upon the Red Ice, the leech dropped from his back. Its slimy, rubbery body landed with a squelch on the surface of the lake. It was the same color as the ice.
Oh gods. Raif moved past it and took his first steps upon the lake. Ice whitened in starbursts where it took his weight. He looked down and could see nothing beyond the iron-dark surface. Stilling himself, he waited for lightning to strike close by. When three bolts hit in quick succession over the eastern hills, he used the flashes of brightness to search the lake's depths. The ice was opaque, blacky red and partly frosted. Nothing could be seen beneath the surface. Raif let his gaze circle the lake. He reckoned it would take him a quarter hour to cross from one side to the other.