The Want held in place.
Raif looked down at his feet. He thought for a moment he saw something pale and head-shaped lying beneath the ice.. Perhaps it was one of the lamb brothers" lost souls. Perhaps it was his own reflection. It did not matter. Either way the ice would not hreak.
He needed to find its weak point
Raif suddenly remembered what Addie had told him, that morning after the first camp out of the city. A small charge of possibility fired along his nerves. Quickening his pace he headed toward the dam of mist. He could feel it now, the freezing fog, switching back and forth between ice and superfine droplets of water, moving between worlds.
The Red Ice spread out before him like an eye hill of blood How many men had died here? How marry bodies waited beneath the surface to be released? He believed he saw them now, pale legs and torsos, severed heads and smashed feet, sections of gut with gray and pipelike intestines spilled out, how-curved hips with the sexual organs frozen into forms that looked like split fruit. All mouths and eyes were open and gaping; black holes in the ice where the terror still lived. The demon hordes of the Unmade had slaughtered thousands. It was easy to close his eyes and see the violent fury, the cracking of spines, the fountaining of blood, the blades that sucked in light hacking limbs. Was it possible that such a battle would need to be fought again?
Raif Sevrance could not say No.
The mist dam spread before him, soaring hundreds of feet into the air. Lobes of cloud broke off and floated south across the lake. They peeled and divided, rotating into ever-thinning veils before vanishing-Sucked dry. Raif had assumed that if he walked close enough to the mist he would be lost, but now he was not so sure. Something held the Want back. And he was beginning to think he knew what that was.
He was far into the ice now and the hills were nothing but dark mounds in the distance. When lightning flashed, he judged the distance between the east and west shore and and altered his course to center himself between the two. Sull and clanhold. Satisfied, he concentrated upon the ke beneath his feet as he walked toward the Great Want
His left hand was numb to the wrist now and tingles jumped along his arm toward his heart. Stay, he told something. He wasn't sure what.
The crack in the ice was as fine as a drawn wire, a line of perfect blackness cutting through the Red Iee. The Want's mists would not, could not, pass it. It was the great flaw in the continent. The Rift.
It never closes, not wholly. North of Bludd it narrows so that men can cross it, but it's always there, a black crack running through the forests between here and the Night Sea.
Raif fell to his knees before it. Stupid tears were coming to his eyes. Relief and longing welled up in his failing heart. This was the fourth world, the darkness that lay in wait beneath the earth. The passageway to the Blind.
Ice fog coated his face and clothing as he drew Traggis Mole's longknife. The Want existed less than a foot away, on the north side of the Rift, and Raif breathed it in as he stripped off his gloves and molded his left hand around the haft. Using his right hand to fasten the numb fingers in place, he raised the knife above his head.
For Drey. Always and everything for Drey.
For the oath he had seconded. And Raif had failed.
A tower of lightning lit up the north as Raif Sevrance drove his blade into the Red Ice. A whoosh of air shot across the lake. The ice groaned as steel went deep into the hairline fissure of the Rift, down into the frozen blood. Cracks ran along the ice like burning fuses. Explosive charges followed them, firing up fist-size bursts of frozen matter and shattering the lake's surface like glass. As destruction fled outward from the blade, the surrounding clouds closed in. Whatever sorcery had held them at bay had snapped the instant the ice was breached, and the storm now rolled in.
The knife went deep. When the crosshilts slammed into the ice the knife continued sinking. Raif's fists slid down after them, and he leaned forward driving the steel as far as it could go. Around him the lake was fracturing and whitening, riding up in great plates and splintering into fragments. Corpses encased in ice were flung into the air. He could smell the battle now, the blood and fear, the horse shit and unmade flesh.
Thunder concussed the valley as Traggis Mole's knife ground to a halt. Freezing dust shimmered like falling snow. Raif looked at the shattered plates in front of his knees and saw the shadow of a man lying beneath the debris. As he dislodged the knife he was aware of a tightness in his chest. It seemed important that he did not die before he found the sword so he moved quickly, using his hands as shovels to dig and push aside the broken ice.
He saw the hand first, the flesh so bloated that each finger had exploded, leaving peels of skin around the bones. The ghostly remains of the hand still grasped something. The black and cankered haft of a sword. Raif picked at the ice with his knife, wedged his fingers under the plates and pried them out. He could see the blade now, its edge shining as dimly as an old coin, its crosshilts overgrown with rusticles. It lay upon a torso that was twisted sideways and had no head. Dark metallic armor ridged in spines still protected what little was left of the man who had worn it. Raven lord, Tallal had called him. Raif had never seen such thick and brutal plate before; it looked like an armored sarcophagus.
Who was he, this warrior who had ridden into a battle and single-handedly changed its course? The lamb brothers had not known his name.
Raif thought about that. He owned many names now, but fewer and fewer people knew his real name, the one he shared with Effie and Drey. Was that how it had happened for the raven lord? Had he started out as a young man with a normal name and normal prospects, and as his life altered and darkened had people called him by other names? And had those new names created him?
Mor Drakka. Watcher of the Dead. Twelve Kill.
Raif thrust his hand through chunks of crumbling ice and grasped the hilt of the sword. The raven lord's frozen fingers cleaved to his and for a moment they were joined. In that instant Raif knew things. He saw the Endlords, massive forces compressed into forms that could be comprehended by man. He felt their perfect and unearthly coldness, and the absolute singularity of their purpose. They were coming to destroy the world.
Soon. They promised, their bleak and glittering gazes meeting Raif's through the dead man's flesh.
Soon.
Raif Sevrance drew the sword named Loss from the Red Ice. It was heavier than he imagined, long and ugly. Black. As he brought his left arm up to support the weight, a spasm shot up his shoulder to his heart.
Shadowflesh moved.
Homed.
Raif's heart stopped beating. An eyeblink. An untrackable journey. A flash of lightning. And he was gone.
FORTY-SIX Aftermath
Raif let Addie Gunn help him out of the tent. "Go," he said to the cragsman once they were a short distance from the camp. "I need to piss."
Addie frowned like he didn't much believe this. Given the subject matter he could hardly object. "Here," he said, holding out the simple oak staff he used for walking. "Take the stick."
Raif took the stick.
"Don't piss too long," Addie warned before leaving.
Pushing the butt of the stick into the snow and pine needles of the forest floor, Raif waited for him to be gone. It was warm again today and the snow was loose and full of holes. You could smell the earth, the minerals and tannins and rotting leaves. Black flies and mosquitoes were hatching. Something buzzed close to his ear, but he couldn't trust himself to swat it away. He needed the stick more than he had realized. Half of his weight had sunk upon it. It was a good piece of wood, smoothly sanded and sturdy. It vibrated only because the person who held it was shaking; it had been designed to transfer force.
When he saw Addie return to the tent he felt free to breathe and slump further into the stick. Addie was a good man and a good friend, but Raif needed a break from his watching. He needed to think.