Grayness merged with darkness, and as she moved forward she crossed into Glor Rhakis. No-Man's-Land.
All was the same. The swordsmen came toward her, stepping apart as they prepared to take her from both sides. The stars burned blue. The fortress still stood. It was the edges that were different, the margins, the shadows, the cracks in the walls. They became charged with the energy of another world.
The ancient and evil presence was here, sliding along the deeply black shadows cast by Fort Defeat's double walls. Turning the huge millwheel of its awareness toward her, it murmured an instruction.
Reach.
Ash dropped the rock. Swords came for her. Weightless, her right hand drifted up. A breach existed in the Blindwall, but it had never been big enough. They had always wanted more.
Aid me, she commanded them.
As her right hand drew parallel with her left she heard a word spoken in a dread and terrible voice.
"Daughter."
Mal Naysayer, Son of the Sull and chosen Far Rider, rode through the fortress's main gate. His six-foot longsword with the raven pommel was drawn and in motion. Galloping forward, he swung it in a great arc and severed the first man's head. Hot blood sprayed across Ash's belly and breasts. The head came bouncing toward her and hit her shin. The eyes were blinking.
The Naysayer spun his huge blue stallion and kicked it into motion. His teeth were bared and his eyes burned colder than ice. Dropping the reins, he wrapped both hands around the grip of his sword as he charged. The second man hesitated, torn between standing his ground and defending himself, and running. The hesitation cost him more than his head. Mal Naysayer's fearful blade ripped trough the muscle and organs in his stomach, cleaving his body in two. The pieces thudded dully as they fell into the snow.
Ash heard a noise beyond the wall; the drum of hooves on stone. Lan was riding away. The Naysayer heard it too, for his head tilted for a moment as he listened.
There was never any question that Mal would go after him. She had a sense that it would not be the last either of them saw of Lan Fallstar. For now, though, the coward could wait. The Naysayer slid from his horse and unhooked his wolverine greatcloak. He was breathing hard and she thought she saw tears sparkling in his eyes. His sword was streaked with blood and stomach chyme and he laid it on the ground before he approached.
"Daughter," he said, his voice rough as he slipped the cloak around her naked and bloody body. "I have come."
Ash fell against him. She was shivering intensely, and her arms were burning with pain. The world of shadows had gone now, dissolved like salt in water. What had happened just then, she wondered. Had she reached?
Mal Naysayer picked her up with great gentleness and carried her through the gate.
FORTY-THREE A Place of No Cloud
The night after they left the trappers' camp the sky cleared and the temperature began to drop. The thaw had reversed while Raif and Addie slept, and when they woke in the morning oozing snow had been frozen into glasslike mounds. Addie took one look at the sky and deemed it a "nosebleeder." All clouds had gone and there were none on the horizon. Suddenly the north had turned to ice.
"Pray the clouds don't come back," Addie said, warming his hands around a steaming cup of tea. "If warm air hits this freezing ground we'll be in for the devil of a storm."
"It's spring," Raif replied, knowing his voice sounded strained yet forcing himself to speak anyway. It had not been easy for him to talk to Addie last night and this morning. "You'd think we'd be due some mild weather."
The cragsman frowned at him thoughtfully. "I'm not sure spring's going to come, lad. Not this year."
They were quiet after that. Sitting on opposite sides of the crackling and fragrant cedar fire, blankets pulled tight across their shoulders, they supped on hot, spicy tea.
The remains of the young deer Raif had brought down at sunset had frozen into pink chunks. He'd done a hasty job of the butchering and had not skinned the carcass. Addie had helped, but there was only so much you could do after dark. Neither of them had expected the hard frost, and now most of the meat would have to be either cached or discarded. The pieces were too large to carry and could no longer be divided into smaller parts. They had the liver, which Addie had sliced into squares before he went to sleep, and the remains of the hind leg had been roasted with some of the Trenchlanders' sharp and soapy-tasting herbs. Looking at the frozen hunks of meat with the deer hide still attached Raif wondered if he was any better than the bear trappers. Even the ravens wouldn't be able to feed on it until it thawed.
" I'll put some of it in a wee bag and haul it up the tree," Addie said, showing that he had been following Raif s gaze. "But first we'd better check on those little suckers on your back."
It was not a pleasant few minutes for either of them. Addie had slept with the jar of leeches and had to travel with them close to his body all day. The risk of freezing was too great. Maybe a frozen leech could be revived, maybe it couldn't, but neither of them were taking any chances. They were already down to twenty-one and counting. Twenty after Addie rolled his fingers in the snow to cool them, spoke the three-worded prayer Gods help me and stuck his hand in the jar of black worms. He did not have Flawless' knack for it and gripped the leech midbelly, rather than below either of its sucking heads, and that meant he had to move fast. Two sets of mouth parts wanted a go at him. Raif could do nothing but pull his new rawhide tunic around his shoulders and present his back to Addie Gunn.
The cragsman's breaths were telling: short and wet with disgust. "Keep still," he cautioned, though in truth Raif had not been moving. "Sweet mother of gods."
When it was done the skin on Addie's face was tinged green. "You're gonna need to get that whole mess seen to," he said. "There's half a dozen wounds back there leaking blood, skin's peeling, something's turned black." He shuddered. "We'd better get a move on."
While Addie cached the meat—for no purpose, it seemed, other than treating the slain deer with some respect; neither of them expected to be back here again—Raif broke up the camp.
They had made good time yesterday and were now deep into the rolling cedar forests northwest of the Trenchlanders' camp. Once Raif had brought down the deer, Addie had attempted to locate some kind of meaningful clearing for setting camp, but had been forced instead to call a halt in a fallen timber gap between the trees. The ancient cedar that had toppled had provided partially seasoned wood for the fire and they'd had good, hot flames for roasting and tea-making. The embers were still firing as Raif covered them with snow.
He wished Addie had kept his opinions to himself about his back. With every movement he made he could feel the wrongness; the tight skin where the plaster had been attached, the bloating, the wounds. The teeth. Last night he'd slept on his back and when he'd risen two bloated leeches had dropped onto the blankets. They were slimy with his blood.
"Here," Addie said, startling Raif. "Eat."
Raif took the frozen cube of liver and popped it in his mouth. He sucked on it as they struck a path north through cedars the size of watch towers. It didn't please him very much, but he appreciated Addie's care. Blood for blood.
The rising sun was piercingly bright, illuminating individual ice crystals floating in the air and bringing out the red and purple tones that lay beneath the dark greens of the cedars. The trees had shed their snow and now had frozen moats around the bases of the trunks. If the temperature held trees would be lost. Sudden frosts after thaws could split pines clean in two.
Raif and Addie did not speak as they hiked up the rise, and this suited Raif well enough. He had some thinking to do. Woodpeckers were the only birds making noise in the forest and the sound of them drilling tree bark sharpened and clipped his thoughts.