A Sword from Red Ice

SEVENTEEN The Clan That Walks Swords

It was two hours past sunset and the Milkhouse's primary door was closed and unlit. Bram Cormac hesitated to approach it and demand entry. The ferryman who had transported Bram and his horse across the Milk River was poling his barge away from the shore. "Do'na dawdle, boy. The longer you leave it the harder you'll have to knock." Laughing as if he'd said something amusing, the ferryman floated away.

Bram looked at his feet. They were wet; the barge had taken in water once the weight of Guy Morloch's stallion had settled upon it. Still, it was better than having to swim across. Last time Bram was here there had been no ferryman to provide crossing.

Gaberil, Guy's horse, nosed Bram's side, playful now that the trauma of the crossing was behind him. "Easy, Gabbie," Bram murmured, absently running his hand over the horse's mane as he stared at the massive glowing dome of the Milkhouse. "I just need a moment to decide what to do."

It wasn't the truth. He knew what he must do—there was no decision involved—but it didn't mean that he couldn't stand here for a bit and just wait.

He had been lucky in a way, for the journey here had been his own. Once Guy Morloch and Jordie Sarson had left for the Stonefly, running off to alert Dhoonesmen to the Dog Lord's presence, Bram had no one to answer to but himself. Such a thing had never happened to him before and it had been scary, but also good. He'd remembered falling asleep that first night, crazily bedding down on an exposed hillside without fire or tent, thinking Gods, what am I going to do? Now he knew the answer. Go slow.

Without anyone to shepherd him to the Milkhouse, Bram Cormac could take his time. It did not change his obligation to this clan, just delayed it by a few days. It was freedom and the Dog Lord of Clan Bludd had bought it for him, and Bram thought he'd better enjoy it while it lasted.

The best possible thing had happened that next morning. Bram had been woken by a bored horse. The night before Gabbie had fled in terror and panic as Vaylo Bludd's dogs closed in on him. He'd thrown his rider, Guy Morloch, and trampled one of the dogs. Bram thought he'd seen the last of him—a spooked horse far from home might simply take off and never come back— but Gabbie was smart, and although he'd spent only a short time on the hillside southeast of Dhoone, he'd found his way back overnight. Wasn't a bit sorry, either.

The two of them had shared a good breakfast of cheesebread and raw leeks, and once Bram had sorted out Gabbie's saddle—it had ended up beneath him, hanging from his belly—they'd taken a ride south. It had been a perfect day, Bram remembered, with a fresh breeze and just the right amount of cloud. It wasn't long before they'd run into the Fleece, a deep and narrow tributary of the Flow. They'd followed the Fleece west for a while toward Wellhouse, but when Bram spotted a settlement of tied clansman's cottages on the shore ahead, he turned Gabbie around and began looking for a crossing.

The land south of Dhoone was dotted with limestone farmhouses. Barely, wheat, oats and rye were grown here, and squares of burned stubble poking through thawing snow became a familiar sight to Bram. He'd spent two nights camping on the north shore of the Fleece, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of being master of his own time. Mabb Cormac had taught both his sons how to fish, and Bram had whittled a pole and unraveled the border of one of his woolen blankets for twine. He didn't catch anything, but he learned why men loved to fish. You could do nothing and something at exactly the same time.

The weather changed and it rained a bit, then snowed. Gabbie shivered until he was given a blanket, and then began to chew on it. Bram thought about taking it away, but didn't. He decided it was quite possible for a horse to digest wool.

Eventually they crossed the river. An ancient hog-backed bridge spanned the Fleece just west of Clan Camber. The tiny clanhold defended the crossing with a stone and timber redoubt and a system of pulleys and river chains, but for some reason they weren't manned. Later that day Bram ran into a tied Camberman driving a pair of white oxen with a stick. The man had taken one look at Bram's Dhoone-blue cloak and driven his cattle from the road.

After that incident, Bram had considered taking off the fine cloak given to him by his brother Robbie and switching it for his old ratty half-cape. The cloak identified him not only as a Dhoonesman, but also as one of Robbie's elite crew of warriors. Bram didn't want to get into any fights. Still, he had to admit he'd felt a small thrill when the Camberman left the rode to make way for him—such was the reputation of Robbie Dun Dhoone.

In the end Bram had decided to continue wearing the cloak. His reasons were complicated and not all of them were noble. Soon enough he would wear the cream wool of Castlemilk.

He tried not to think of it, and mostly that worked as a strategy. Castlemilk later. Travel in the now. Once several years back, before Bludd had seized the Dhoonehouse, and while Maggis was still chief, a visitor had come to the roundhouse. Maggis spent half a day in conference with the stranger and later walked with him around the clanhold, introducing him to various clansmen and women. Bram was curious about the stranger, but had assumed he would not be introduced—he was twelve at the time and smaller his age and of little consequence to anyone except his mother, Tilda. Yet the stranger had spotted Bram spreading hay for the horses in the stable. The stranger had been talking with the swordmaster Jackdaw Thundy in a manner that suggested they were old and good friends. "Is he one of Cormac's boys?" the stranger had asked Jackdaw, nodding his head toward Bram. "Aye," Jackdaw had replied. "That's Mabb's youngest, Bram. Come over here, boy, and meet the ranger Angus Lok."

Up until then Bram had never heard of such a thing as a ranger, yet the unfamiliar word had caused a flutter in his chest. Angus Lok greeted him soberly man-to-man, and for a wonder he didn't ask any of the questions that Bram normally dreaded: How come you don't look like your brother Rab? Did Bodie Hallax pull you from hammer training, or did you just drop out? Is it true your brothers related to the Dhoone kings? Instead Angus Lok inquired about Bram's mother, asked Bram's opinion on his new sword—drawing it smartly on cue for Bram's inspection—and told Bram he should not neglect his studies; sword and pen was better than sword alone. Bram had been mightily impressed. The meeting had lasted only scant minutes, but it left him with a good feeling that had endured for months. He recalled seeking out Jackdaw Thundy some time later and asking him about the ranger. "Angus is a dying breed," Jackdaw had said. "Circles like a hawk, waits like a spider. Knows the North like its a wheatfield he's planted, and spends so much time in the saddle that it's a wonder he's not got wishbones for legs," It was a curiously vague answer, but Bram hadn't realized that at the time. Instead he was taken with the romance of a man crossing the country on a horse, alone, and watchful as a hawk.

That was how Bram had spent most of those free days after Guy Morloch and Jordie Sarson had left him; riding and being watchful, a hawk and a spider.

He wished he knew more about the histories. Every day he passed lengths of standing wall, broken bits of fortifications, paved roads gone to seed, bumed-out barns, dismantled river dams, ancient way markers, sealed wells, burial mounds. Ruins, all of them. Whenever he spotted something interesting he stopped to inspect it, brushing away moss or snow, dead leaves or cobwebs: whatever had accumulated over time. Occasionally he spied faint signs scribed into the stone, but mostly the surfaces were blank. Markings had been worn away, dissolved by rain and tannins, and scoured by the wind. History had been lost. Who had built the perfectly placed dam on the Fleece? And who had destroyed it?

That was the recurring theme of the ruins, Bram had noticed. Something built, then destroyed. Thinking about it made him restless. Who would know such things? Who could tell him what had happened in the past?

Angus Lok, the ranger. He would know.

Bram had lost a whole day to the ruins he'd found in the north-racing lee of a hill in the pinelands above the Flow. Something circular—a watchtower, granary or small fort—had once stood in the shadows thrown by the hills steep ridges. Something looking north. Scrambling over the shattered remains of cornerstones, footing blocks and lintels, Bram wondered who had erected this here and why. The nearest clanhold was Wellhouse. Its roundhouse was built from traprock. This structure had been built from hard and lustrous blue-stone. Although he looked for identifying markers in the stone, Bram could find nothing to confirm his secret hope. If the structure had been built by the Sull, its ruins were keeping that knowledge to them selves.

That night he made camp against the small section of wall that was still standing. And dreamed of secrets and the Sull.

The next day he and Cabbie arrived at the Easterly Flow. The largest river in the clanholds had swollen above its banks and its waters were murky and swift. To the east Wellhouse maintained a crossing and to the west Dhoone commanded the Cinch, a narrow river gorge between two cliffs that could be strung with ropes to form a bridge. Most people crossed by boat; it was the horses that were a problem. Bram walked the stallion east along the shore, aware as he did so that he was heading away from Castlemilk. The Milkhouse now lay directly south of him. It was difficult to put his heart into finding a crossing. Cabbie was not a horse who took well to water and it was easy to say, He'st not going to swim across so I might as well take the crossing at W'ellhouse. Bram knew it for a lie. At some point during the journey Gbabbie had become his horse, not Guy's, and if forced he would take the crossing for his master.

They wasted a day traveling to Wellhouse and paid a silver coin for the crossing. Bram had avoided the roundhouse and steered clear of Wellmcn but he could not evade their stares. All knew him as a Dhoonesman and all were greedy for news of their sworn clan. The Name Robbie Dun Dhoone was on everyone's lips, spoken in hushed tones, with fear. By now word had spread about Skinner Dhoone's crashing defeat at the Withyhouse. Rumor had it that Robbie Dun Dhoone had lured his fellow clansmen to their deaths. Little did the Wellmen realize that the slight, dark-haired youth who rode through their clanhold at dusk had been the one Robbie had sent to Skinner to set the trap.

Robbie didn't intend for Skinner and his men to die, Bram repeated to himself stubbornly. He just wonted to insure that Skinner didn't steal a march on the Dhoomhouse, so fooled Skinner into attacking Withy instead of Dhoone.

After the crossing at Wellhouse Bram wasted a second dav heading south when he should have turned west The land south of the Flow was old and wild and there were parts that had been lost to clan. Ancient forests of dead and dying trees formed impenetrable masses known as the Ruinwoods. Keep to the trails, that was the prevailing clannish wisdom concerning the Ruinwoods. Bram tried to adhere to it, but sometimes the temptation to explore long-abandoned cabins half-glimpsed through the trees was too much. Curiosity hadn't killed him, but he'd gotten lost, had his right pant leg ripped open by a blackthorn, stepped knee-deep into a sinkhole filled with wood tar and collected enough moose ticks to keep him busy with a handknife through the night. Often he saw deer and sometimes bears. One time Gabbie had shied and Bram couldn't understand why until he spied fresh snagcat tracks in the mud. From the looks of the prints it was a big male. And it was close, because Gabbie had either seen or smelled it.

"Make a lot of noise" Bram could not recall who had given him that particular nugget of information, but it sounded good to him and he began to half shout, half sing the Dhoone boast while striking the handle of his sword against Guy Morloch's fine pewter tippler.

Not long after that Bram decided to head west. It was time. Castlemilk was owed Bram Cormac.

He had miscalculated and headed too far south, so now he had to cross the Milk. Poor Gabbie, three rivers and he had to cross every one of them. River crossings, bears and snagcats: it probably didn't get much worse for a horse.

Luckily the Milk was calm. Spring thaw did not affect it in the same way as other rivers. Its waters ran white, not high. Legend had it that the Milk ran through a gorge where the Sull had once mined milk-stone. No living clansmen knew if this were true or not as none had managed to penetrate the tangle of Ruinwoods through which the Milk flowed. "Why can't someone simply pole upstream?" Bram had asked Guy Morloch once. Guy had tutted in disgust at Bram's ignorance. "Have you ever tried poling up a river fell? You know what happens? You get wet."

Bram shook away the memory of Guy's unpleasant laughter. While he was standing and thinking by the rivershore a full moon had risen above the Milkhouse. It was a heartbreakingly beautiful sight; the pearl dome of the roundhouse beneath a red moon. Bram clicked his, tongue for the horse. "C'mon, Gabbie, let's see if we can wake some Milkmen and get you some hay."

It was strange to Bram that he could arrive at the door of the Milkhouse unchallenged by guards. Yet just as he was about to rap on the oyster-glazed wood, the door swung open, and he realized that unchallenged and unwatched were different things. A big hard-bitten Milkman with shorn gray hair and tattoos tacked along the muscle lines of his bare arms greeted Bram. "You Robbie's kin?"

Bram nodded, surprised that he was both known and expected. The Milk warrior held a fiercely burning kerosene torch and Bram was startled by how close the man let the flames get to his skin.

Looking over Bram's shoulder, he nodded, "I see you've brought one of our horses back. Leave him there. I'll send a groom."

Of course, Gabbie was Guy Morloch's horse and Guy was a Castleman. Or had been.

"Inside now," the warrior said, yanking his chin back to indicate the roundhouse's interior. "No one'll see you tonight. I'll get you sorted with food and cotting."

Bram followed the man inside. It did not take much light to illuminate the small horn-shaped entrance hall, just a few covered candles suspended on chains from the walls. Milkstone was a strange thing. In the day it seemed to store the light; in the night it gave it back. Bram had little time for wonder, for already the warrior had disappeared around a corner and Bram knew that if he didn't follow closely he'd be lost. The groundfloor of the Milkhouse had been built as maze to confuse enemies, and to the untrained eye every turn and corridor looked the same. He had been here before, on the night his brother had negotiated for manpower with Wrayan Castlemilk, the Milk chief, but it still looked new to him. Somewhere on this floor he knew there must be halls and chambers but all he saw was endless corridors and a single white door.

The warrior led him through the roundhouse and then out the other side to a kitchen block that had been built on to the exterior wall. A half-dozen long oak tables were laid side by side with plank benches running between them. About a third of them were occupied by Castlemen, women and children, eating supper, rolling dice, drinking beer, shining armor, honing blades and stitching cloth. Mothers were braiding their children's hair, talking with mouths full of pins to other mothers. Some were coaxing babies to eat spoons of lumpy oat mush. A handful of clan maids were sitting prettily, buffing their fingernails with raw felt and popping stars of sugared anise between discreetly stained lips. All stopped what they were doing to turn and look at Bram.

"For Ione's sake! It's Robbie's brother alright. You've had a good look now get back to … your," words failed the warrior accompanying Bram and he made an all-inclusive gesture with his big, muscled arm, "dooderlings."

Laugher erupted from the table containing the Castlemen warriors. "Dooderlings, Pol?" chipped up some large, grizzled hatchetman, "that'a new one to me." More laughter followed, and this time women and children joined in.

Pol glared back; he didn't seem especially annoyed. "C'mon, boy," he said to Bram. "Supper. Set yourself down over there and I'll see what cook can manage."

Bram did just that, walking past the table of clan maids to the place at the back indicated by Pol. His cheeks were hot and he felt a bit dazed by all the life spread out before him. It had been a long time since he'd been in an informal kitchen hall like this one, and the presence of women befuddled him. One of the maids, a round-faced girl with raven-dark hair, shot out a hand and poked his leg as he passed. High, pretty laugher followed. Bram reckoned she must have done it on a dare.

Bram found his place and sat. When he looked back at the clan maids he found them all staring at him. With little titters of delighted embarrassment they looked away.

"Here you go." Pol slid a wooden board in front of Bram. "It's fry night. We're in luck."

Fried radishes, fried bread and rabbit fried in breadcrumbs were piled high in two bowls. Pol took the largest for himself and began to eat. Bram, suddenly realizing how hungry he was and how little he had consumed these past seven days, did likewise. The food was good and hot and plain. Watered ale helped it down.

As Bram was sucking on the last of the rabbit bones, a Castleman detached himself from the group at the far table and walked over toward them. It was the head warrior, Wrayan Castlemilk's right hand; Bram recognized him from the night in the Brume Hall. Bram put down the bone and stood to greet him. Such a man was due respect. "Set down now," the warrior said evenly. He was of middle height and middle age, and he was powerful around the chest and beginning to loosen in the gut. A vial containing his measure of Milkstone suspended in water hung from a waxed string around his neck. "I'm Harald Mawl and on behalf of my chief I welcome you, Bram Cormac son of Mabb, to this clan."

Bram's throat tightened; he wasn't sure why. The head warrior of Castlemilk stood before him and he didn't want to make a mistake. With a small cough, he replied, "I thank you, Harald Mawl. Castlemilk is the clan that walks swords and I am glad to have come." Harald nodded once, gruff but satisfied, and then turned with some formality and walked away.

"C'mon," Pol said, standing. "Let's find you a cot for the night." Bram was led back into the dome of the roundhouse. The clan maids were quiet as he left. After climbing a narrow flight of stairs and walking along a circular gallery that was open to the hall below, Pol halted and nodded his head toward a plain white door. "Chief expects you at dawn," he said in parting.

For a moment Bram just stood and looked at the door. The wood was fine-grained birch stained with lime. A pull ring forged from powdered iron was fixed to the wood by a fox-head plate. The White Fox of Castlemilk. Pulling the ring back he discovered a tiny fan-shaped cell with a wooden sleeping box laid with a thin mattress and two goatskins. A single covered candle burned on the near wall, and the only other items in the room were a filled water pitcher and leather bucket. Bram entered and closed the door. As he sat on the bed he wondered if feeling glad to be alone was a character flaw.

After spitting on his fingers he reached toward the candle. And then killed the light. He thought he'd better try and sleep, but his words to Harald Mawl worried him and he hoped he hadn't spoken a lie. I am glad to have come. Yet Bram wasn't sure how he felt. Arriving he had expected … less. He had not anticipated this Irving, breathing clan. When he had spent time here during the winter it had been at the Tower on the Milk, a league to the east Outfitted as a makeshift barracks, the broken tower had been far removed from the warmth and vibrancy of the Milkhouse. And Wrayan Castlemilk had shrewdly lim-ited the Dhoonesmen's access to her hearth.

Bram pulled the goatskins all the way up to his chin. They were old and no longer smelled of goats, just dust As he lay there, looking out, he realized it wasn't wholly dark. The milkstone glowed. He fell asleep, and for once he did not dream about his brother Robbie. Just the milkstone.

He awoke to the strange thuds and calls of a foreign clan. Close by a door was shut with force. Someone shouted, "Blade court at dawn!" Someone else shouted back, "Go away and let me sleep!"

Bram rose and scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. His possessions were in Gabbie's saddlebags, so he couldn't do much about his hair, clothes or teeth. Plucking at the front panel of his tunic, he brought it to his nose and sniffed. Not good. And today he had to meet a chief. Drastic action was called for. Lifting the water pitcher high, he emptied its contents over his head. It felt cold and good. Maybe it would help with the smell.

After he aired the goatskins and relieved himself Bram headed downstairs to find the Milk chief. Clanfolk were up and about, sweeping corridors, dousing torches, chasing children, carrying buckets of fresh water up through the house and slop buckets down to the river, buckling armor as they raced toward weapons practice and hauling packs as they made their way to the stables. Most people ignored Bram, though one or two glanced at his blue cloak. Last night as Pol was showing him to his cell, Bram had made sure to memorize the route. It was an easy thing for him, for once he saw something he seldom forgot it, and he had no problem finding his way back to the kitchen. From there he headed left toward the entrance hall. Outside the sun was rising, and he quickly learned how to orient himself in the maze that formed the groundfloor of the Milkhouse. Exterior walls appeared brighter to the eye than interior, dividing walls. It was a fact that wouldn't do him any good at night, he realized, but was surprisingly useful at dawn when you knew the sunlight was coming in from the east.

The Oyster Doors were flung wide open and a stiff breezing was blowing off the Milk. A crew of swordsmen had gathered on the wide steps outside the entrance hall and Bram looked to see if one of them might be Pol. They were big men, with graying hair and deeply lined faces, their bodies toughened by decades of hard work. Some were wearing cloaks pieced together from white fox pelts and others had fox-head brooches fastened at their throats. All carried the one-handed fighting swords Castlemilk was known for, the curved knuckleguards and finger rings clearly visible above the tops of their scabbards.

Unable to locate Pol, Bram asked the nearest swordsman where he might find the chief. The man was sitting with his back against the doorframe, picking gravel from the sole of his boot He did not look up as he said, "Chiefs out back, paying her respects."

Bram hiked over the man's legs and went outside. Sunlight glinting off the river dazzled him and it took a moment for his eyesight to clear.

The white sand on the landing beach was blowing across the grass and onto the gravel road that led from the river to the roundhouse. On the far shore, hemlocks and black spruce murmured as they moved in the wind. Turning his back on the dark and glossy trees, Bram headed up the path that ran along the roundhouse's exterior wall. He could feel his hair drying as he walked.

When he rounded the rear quadrant of the Milkhouse he spied Wrayan Castlemilk, the Milk chief, in the distance, standing alone. A quarter-league north of the path, beyond the orderly beds of the kitchen gardens, the hard standings, training courts, eel tanks, pigsties and cattle pens lay a large, white-walled enclosure. The gate leading to the enclosure was open and Wrayan Castlemilk stood just beyond the threshold with her back to the roundhouse. Although the wind was still high, her silver cloak did not move: stones just have been sewn into the hem.

Muscles in Bram's stomach loosened. He had heard of Castlemilk's gravepool and wondered if it was proper to approach it. The sheen of water was clearly visible on either side of Wrayan Castlemilk, and as Bram watched she knelt down and leaned forward. He continued walking toward the pool, curious and cautious, passing a children's court that had been colored with orange and blue chalk, and a mulched and caned vegetable bed, before coming to a halt thirty paces before the wall.

Unlike the roundhouse, the wall enclosing the gravepool was built from simple baked bricks, not milkstone and it had not aged well. Green mold grew at the base and mortar had worn away leaving deep cracks around the bricks. One of the gateposts was listing, and the gate itself had been hastily stained with the same matte limewash as the wall. A fox head, deeply carved into the wood, was its only decoration.

Beyond the gate, Wrayan Castlemilk rose to her feet and brushed dirt from her cloak. Her right hand glistened with water. Turning, she saw Bram. With a small crook of her wrist she beckoned him forward and then waited, motionless, as he approached.

"Welcome" she said once he had come to a halt. "I had expected you sooner."

Bram's face flushed with blood, and he was about to apologize when he remembered his brother Robbie's contempt for people who tried to explain their actions. A king has no use for sorry.

Wrayan Castlemilk watched Bram, her brown eyes shrewd and thoughtful She was the second-longest-reigning chief in the clanholds and had ruled Castlemilk for nearly thirty years. Bram could not guess how old she was. Her face was unlined, though her waist-length braid was equal parts red and gray. "Our guide, Drouse Ogmore, is acquainted with Robbie's new guide at Dhoone. Both men keep birds, in the manner of the old clans, and it is not unknown for messages to pass between them." The chief raised a cool eyebrow. "So if a boy was to leave Dhoone for Castlemilk and arrive ten days late Drouse, and therefore I, might know it."

Aware he was being reprimanded, Bram bowed his head.

"Come, Bram Cormac," Wrayan said. "Take a walk with me around the pool." She did not wait for him, and began walking a circuit of the artificial lake.

It was a perfect circle, about eighty feet in a diameter. Only a three-foot grass verge separated the lake from the wall that enclosed it. Bram was nervous as he followed the chiefs footsteps, worried that some errant impulse might make him leap into the water.

And that was one place he did not want to be.

He could see the lead coffins, dozens of them, lying beneath nine feet of water. Round and encrusted with mussels, they looked like pale, ghostly boulders. Bram wondered how the bodies of the Castlemilk chiefs had been fitted inside them, and didn't very much like the answer he came up with.

"Skerro Castlemilk, the Winter chief, used to farm the mussels and eat them." Wrayan came to a halt by the edge. "He went insane. Some say it was the lead."

Bram could think of no suitable response. He frowned at the water, hoping to look serious and alert.

Wrayan Castlemilk did not appear to notice. "The milkstone silt at the bottom is nearly a foot deep. At one time it was custom to have a boy stir it every day with a paddle so it looked as if the caskets were submerged in milk." She smiled flatly at Bram. Sunlight sparkling off the shoulders of her silver cloak threw a strange brightness upon her face. "My brother Alban lies here, though he swore every day of his life that he did not wish to end up in this pool. Once a chief is dead, though, he has no say over his clan, his body. His sister."

She had ordered her brother buried here against his wishes, Bram realized.

Wrayan acknowledged Bram's expression with a small nod. "Someone will do it to me one day, order my body cut and sunk. It is the Milk way, and a clan is nothing without its ways. Dhoone, Blackhail, Bludd: what do you think makes them different?" A tiny movement of her wrist indicated that Bram need not bother formulating an answer: the Milk chief would supply one for him. "Our customs are the only things that separate us from other clans. We worship the same gods, abide by the same laws, want the same thing. It is in the small details that we forge an identity as clan; boasts we speak, weapons we carry, the manner in which we dispose of our dead. Twenty-eight years ago, when given a choice between betraying Alban and betraying the customs of this clan, there was only one answer for me. I am chief. If I fail to uphold the old ways I diminish us." She gave him a cold look, a warning, before continuing.

"Castlemilk is an old and proud clan, Bram Cormac, and I am an old and proud chief. We dance the swords, and mix our guidestone with oil and water and drink it like milk. Our best warriors fight with two swords and name themselves the Cream, and our girl children are taught one new way how to kill a man every year until they reach sixteen. We have been sworn to Dhoone for four hundred years but before that we stood alone. If you believe you have come to a lesser clan you are mistaken and you can march yourself right back to Dhoone. I will have you only on one term: and that is absolute loyalty to Castlemilk. Drouse is in the guidehouse, waiting upon my word. He expects to hear an oath and so do I."

She paused, her chest rising and falling beneath the fine silver weave of her cloak. For the first time Bram noticed the elk lore, fastened to the cinch of her braid. A thick hoop of spine. "I will leave you now," she said, her voice calm. 'You have a quarter-hour, then you will either make your way to the guidehouse or collect your belongings and depart this clan."

Bram nodded once in understanding and she left him standing by the man-dug lake. A moment passed and then something—a fish or an eel—broke the surface of the water, flashed briefly, then was gone. Bram wasn't sure but he thought he saw tee%*

Clouds heading in from the north were moving swiftly toward the sun and he could tell it wouldn't be long before they killed the sunlight. For no good reason whatsoever he drew his sword and stood on the grass and inspected it in the last of the full sun. Light on the watered steel moved upblade toward the point. He tried angling the sword in different directions but he could not get it to move the other way.

"It wont be so bad, Bram. We both know you were never really cut out for Dhoone." Robbie's parting words sounded in Bram's head.

No going back.

Abruptly, he sheathed the sword and headed out of the walled enclosure. He had made his decision.