A Sword from Red Ice

FORTY The Cursed Clan

The river smelled different at night, older and deeper, black with tar. Insects hunted its surfaces, black flies and phan-tom crane flies, mosquitoes and biting midges. Effie wondered if they hatched from the snow. Mist slid along the sides of the boai keeping close to its breeding ground, the water. The alders and water willows were quiet, unmoved by wind, and the only sounds beyond the splash of poles breaking the surface were the hollow cry of the night heron and the shriek of wild dogs far to the north.

It was a bleak and uncertain landscape filled with traps for the boat. The Curseway, Waker had called it. The watery path that led to Clan Gray. Effie swallowed and tried not to think about what Eggtooth the pirate had said about the Cursed Clan. She tried, but did not succeed. Know what they do to young uns there? Tie stones to their chest and sink em" Effie began shivering and could not stop. She really should have learned how to swim.

Waker Stone and his father had taken to poling after sunset and often struck camp during the bright hours of the day. Until today this had suited Effie Sevrance well enough, for in all her eight-almost-nine-year life she could never recall being afraid of the dark. Tonight was afferent, though. Cold and strange-smelling. And she couldn't get Eggtooth's words out of her head.

"Pull em up a week later and eat what the fish didn't want"

A water rat launching itself into the river nearby made a soft sloshing noise as it carved a trough in the water. Overhead the quarter— moon seemed to keep pace with the boat. Directly ahead of her Chedd Limehouse had faked his way into sleep. It had started out with a bout of pretend head-nodding and some truly stupendous wet-sounding snores—he had definitely taken notes from Eggtooth's pig. The next thing you knew the snoring had gotten softer, the head had tipped forward and he was really, properly asleep. That boy had some undeniable talents, Effie reckoned. Until she'd met him she'd never realized that a space existed between fake and real, let alone that it could be exploited.

Thinking about Chedd helped Effie feel better. Not that she was afraid, of course. Just… anxious.

Chedd was interesting to Effie. He knew things in the way she knew things. Different knowledge, but got the same way. Take that water rat. All she'd need to do was poke Chedd's chubby shoulder and ask "Girl or boy?" and Chedd would tell her its sex. Might tell her a few other things too. Like whether or not the rat was hunting or fleeing or simply out to have a cooling swim. He was good at finding hibernating turtles and salamanders under rocks, though for some reason he had less luck with fish. Always he saw things on the shore before she did; the beaver amidst the sticks, the fawn in the trees, the heron standing still in the rushes. "There's a bear cub over there," he would say casually, flicking his hand toward one of the banks. Effie had given up trying to prove him wrong, for even when the animal never emerged from hiding they both knew it was there. "How do you know?" Effie had asked him more than once.

Chedd had a way of shrugging that made his neck disappear into his chest. "Dunno," he'd told her jusathis morning as they stood ankle-deep in the snowmelt pool searching for fairy shrimp. "Until I was your age I thought everyone knew when animals were around."

Your age. She'd feigned some disgust over that particular comment but in a way Chedd's answer was oddly reassuring. You knew what you knew. That's how Effie had always felt about her lore: when it was there, hanging around her neck, she just knew things. Nothing fancy about it. No hocus-pocus or song-and-dance. Knowledge was there and if she chose to she could draw it in. It was like sporting something blurry in the distance: you could stop and look and concentrate upon the object, or pass it right by.

Effie extended her arm over the gunwale and let her hand touch the greasy black water. She hoped it wasn't bog. Eggtooth had been most particular about that: it was bog she and Chedd would be fed to, not river water.

Annoyed with herself for still shivering, she set her mind on something else. She tried to sort out who and what she was without her lore. Effie Sevrance, daughter to Tern and Megg, sister to Drey and Raif, bearer of the stone lore, Hailsman: those were her names and titles, Tem and Megg were dead. Drey might be too. She doubted if she'd see Blackhail in a very long time—Clan Gray was the direct diagonal opposite of Blackhail, and maybe a thousand leagues away-and to top it all off a fish had eaten her lore. Now she was simply Effie, sister to Raif, bearer of no lore, not even the twine that had held it. Did that mean her knowledge had gone? She didn't know. Some days it felt as if it had.

And then there were days like today when something tingled in the center of her breastbone, right in the place where her lore used to lie. It had happened while she and Chedd were eating the fairy shrimp. They were tiny things, floating upside down in the icy water. Chedd said you ate them whole and raw, so that's what they did. They'd tasted like fish fins, which, as far as Effie knew, were the one part of the fish you weren't supposed to eat. Chedd had disagreed and said quite seri-ously they tasted like fish eyes. Bony fish eyes. That had them both laughing. And that was when she'd felt the queemess in her chest. It was like a thumb jabbing against her chest. No laughing matter. Not today.

After that she didn't eat any more shrimp and went to sit alone by the boat. Some of the shrimp shell had stuck in her throat. Now Eggtooth's words were stuck back there too. Tie stones to their chests and sink 'em.

The ghost of her lore, that's what she decided to name the sensation in her chest. The ghost of her lore had spoken and given her a warning about today.

And tonight. Effie swatted a black fry who fancied a piece of her wrist. The horn-covered lamp clipped to the bow of the boat created an eerie circle of light She wished she could paddle. To do something would be good, to get tired and a bit sore, and have something else beside her thoughts to think about—if that made any sense. Waker and Waker's father were poling though, standing in the boat and using long sticks to punt — through the water. T he fiver was too shallow for paddling, barely a river at all anymore.

The Mouseweed. Only a few days earlier Effie had thought it an underserving sort of name. She and Chedd had spotted beaver dams and big barnacly trout, and the river was at leas thirty feet across. Now the only things to spot were flies. And its width had grown decidedly uncertain. Black water wept beyond the banks and into fields of sedge and rushes. The hills had ended and the land had sunk. The tallest things around were the alders and silky willows, trees clinging grimly to last summer's crisped leaves.

The river was too shallow for paddling. And too full of weeds. The water meandered around great islands of bulrushes and cattails, and then widened into wet fields. Channels were no longer obvious and Waker and his father needed to be able to turn the boat on a point.

Four days back they had passed Clan Otler's roundhouse in the night. Waker had snuffed the prow lamp and his father had propelled the boat while he himself did something strange. Waker had sat forward in the prow seat and made sweeping motions with the pole. Chedd had whispered that Waker was checking for trip wires above the water. Effie had frowned at this at first, thinking it a highly unlikely figment of Chedd's overly dramatic imagination. Trip wires above the water indeed. What was next, attack fish? This odd behavior had gone on for nearly an hour—Waker pivoting the butt of the pole against his chest as he swung the tip in a half-circle—and during that time Effie couldn't come up with a single explanation that sounded better. And Waker had never repeated the action any night since then. It certainly made her think.

Oder's roundhouse had been lit with fiery red torches that doubled their light by reflecting in the water. It was strange to see a roundhouse built from wood and raised on stilts. The Otlerhouse was huge and beautifully made. Entire stripped logs had been carved into curves to form the roundwall. The cedar gleamed in the firelight, thickly oiled against mist and river damp. Three turrets rose from its domed roof. Lamps burned in the top galleries of each tower and the windows were guarded by meshed wire stretched over X-shaped frames. Both the towers and the roundhouse were roofed in white lead; probably to reduce the risk of fire, Effie guessed. Lead had also been added to the chinking between the logs, endowing the roundhouse with a series of pale horizontal stripes that reflected in the dark water as glowing rings.

As far as Effie could tell normal kinds of trees—oaks and cedars and elms—grew at the rear of the roundhouse, so solid ground must lie back there. At the front of the roundhouse a series of landings and jetties projected out across the water and many small boats were tied up there. Guards were watching from both the turrets and the highest landing, but they never spotted Waker's boat. Waker's father was poling through the reeds on the southern shore and you couldn't even hear his paddle enter the water.

Effie had wondered about the passing. Beforehand both Waker and his father had been nervous, shifting in their seats, making adjustments to the load, communicating in the terse hand signals they seemed to prefer over language. Clouds had snuffed the moon and there was no mist. Good and bad. Just as they spied the first lights, Effie felt a little creepy sensation crawl along her skin. She thought it might be a cloud of midges, only how had the midges managed to fly into the bodice of her dress? Then she thought about the day Eggtooth had stopped the boat by chucking a big stone into the water. She remembered the prickly sensation in her mouth when Waker's father had removed her tongue and teeth; either winking them out of existence entirely or concealing them behind shadows so deep that no normal glance could find them. Whatever had gone on, Effie had been mightily glad to get them back.

The night they'd floated past Otler she suspected Waker's father had been up to his tricks. Nothing as drastic as with her teeth but something—a blurring or shadowing or some subtle misdirection—had taken place. How else could you explain the fact Otlermen armed with crossbows and looking out across the water had not seen a shallow boat containing four people moving along the opposite shore?

The creepiness Effie had felt subsided quickly once they'd passed the roundhouse. Waker's father had rested in the back while Waker returned to poling. The whole episode struck Effie as odd. Otler and Gray were neighbors, they shared borders and vulnerability to Trance Vor. You'd think they'd be friendly out of necessity if nothing else, seeing as they were both stranded in the far southeastern reaches of the clanholds. And they both held war oaths to Bludd. So why then couldn't a Grayman paddle past Otler at midday? Because Clan Gray is different, stupid. It's cursed. Effie frowned. Needing some distraction she did the crawly hands on the back of Chedd's neckJghedd's head jerked back and his hand came up to slap away the fly. Effie pressed her lips together to stop laughing and ended up making a snorting noise instead. The beauty of the crawly hands was that she could do it easily to Chedd but Chedd wouldn't do it easily back. It was a masterstroke of gaming and it very nearly made up for the now-legendary disaster that had become bear: naked!

"Eff," Chedd said, using the kind of voice she had not expected, quiet and puzzled. "There's half-things around."

"Ssh," Waker warned from the bow of the boat.

Effie looked at the back of Chedd's head. Her feet and legs suddenly felt cold, and the chains around her ankles chinked as she shivered.

"The way to Cray is lined with prey," Waker s father whispered softly in her ear. "Nothing worse than being cursed"

She hoped Chedd hadn't heard him.

The moon was setting now, slipping behind the low alders. Something rustled on the near shore, hopefully a muskrat or river rat—or weird nocturnal duck. Waker's father thrust his pole deep into the river mud and held it there for a moment, allowing Waker to swiftly turn the boat. As the butt of the poll came out of the water Effie saw it was glistening with tar.

Old peat and tar beds lay here, Chedd had told her earlier back at the camp, that was why the water was so black. You could dig up the mud, light it, and watch it burn. He was all for giving it a try, but then they'd found the pool with the fairy shrimp and got distracted. The water had been clear in the pool, she remembered. Snowmelt, not river water. It was difficult to imagine fairy shrimp—or much else for that matter—living within this murky, acidic water.

She really, really hoped it wasn't bog.

Things had started to change pretty quickly the day after the encounter with Eggtooth. The river cliffs north of the Mouseweed had sunk into the river, forming huge mounds of boulders and gravel. The hills to the south had begun to fail, and soon there were no uplands at all, just rolling forested plains. After that the entire landmass had seemed to sink. They'd passed a flooded forest and a series of big muddy river pools that smelled bad. East of Otler the water had begun to darken, and it wasn't always easy to tell when the river ended and the land began. Waker and his father appeared to know the area well and the campsites they chose were always firm ground above the water.

People— lived here., for sometimes Effie would spot lights on the shore. Occasionally fbev passed oihei rivercraft shallow skiffs and one-seat longboats putted by gaunt — looking men and women wrapped in boiled skins and beavers fur. Waker and his father offered no greeting to their fellow boatmen. Effie guessed they were in the Graylands by then. She and Chedd didn't talk much about Clan Gray anymore. Eggtooth's words had thrown a large damp blanket on the subject She could no longer argue against Chedd's crazy notions of human sacrifices and bog baiting. She'd even started thinking that she and Chedd would have been better off if they'd been pirated by Eggtooth. You could stab a pig.

She wasn't so sure about half-things. Leaning forward, she touched Chedd lightly on the cheek. "What's wrong?" she murmured as quietly as she could.

Chedd shook his head. They were both aware that Waker's father was behind them, watching their every move. It was so dark now that you could see only the few feet of water beyond the boat that were illuminated by the bow lamp. Chedd made a small motion with his right arm, flexing it as if he was warding off a cramp. Something plonked into the water nearby and as it did so Chedd murmured over his shoulder to Effie, "It's like ghosts."

For her own sake just as much as Chedd's Effie Sevrance decided she was going to stay calm. She decided this very firmly, nodding her head. Whatever Chedd perceived—and she believed he perceived something—was probably not unknown to Waker and his father. They knew these waters. This was their clanhold. And unless it happened to be one of those special nights that came around once or twice a year when all sorts of spirits and dead things were permitted to walk the earth for reasons that were unclear to Effie—then this was a normal occurrence. It didn't mean it was good—Waker was paddling like a fiddler playing a particularly fast and difficult tune—but it didn't mean there was any reason to panic.

No reason at all.

We are Gray and Stone Gods fear us and leave us be. Repeating part of the Gray boast didn't help. So she tried the Blackhail one instead. We are Blackhail, first amongst clans. And we do not cower and we do not hide. And we will have our revenge. That was more like it.

Waker and his father executed a series of sharp turns that zig-zagged the boat around an island of woody rushes and steered them away from the main channel. Soon the rushes began closing in. They formed fences oi either side of the boat, rising as tall as ten feet, bristling and pale flattened in places and crushed in others. They stank like meat broth turned bad. Effie scrunched up her shoulders and brought her elbows to meetfeoss her chest. She did not want them scratching her. Festerers, that's what Drey would have called them.

Both Waker and his father sat. Waker ceased poling completely, but his father began a tilling motion with the paddle, gently keeping the boat in motion. The channel narrowed and the rushes created a tunnel around the hull. Rush heads scraped against the gunwales, rustling and scratching, bending and snapping off. A sting of pain on her cheek told Effie she had been stabbed, and as she raised her hand to bat the offending stem away she spotted the dim glow of lights reflecting in the water. The sight of them made her gulp. They were a deep, unearthly green.

Waker grunted something to his father, and the old man took his paddle from the water. Effie turned to look at him and she watched as he cupped his hands around his lips and issued a deep whooping noise, like a crane. A second passed and then the call was returned from two separate locations. Waker's father grinned at Effie as she turned to track them.

"Feed the dog a bone. Girlie's coming home"

Suddenly the reed stands cleared and water opened up ahead. Effie saw rings of green lights burning just above the surface. Waker stood again, but before he resumed poling he glanced over his shoulder at Effie and Chedd. A man checking on his cargo, Effie thought. She hoped Chedd had stopped feeling the ghosts. Behind her, Waker's father began rummaging noisily through a sack. Effie tried to resist thinking about what he was up to but in the end she could not bear it, and looked round.

It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Waker's father was combing his near baldy head with a pickax, dragging the scant and greasy hairs back one by one. He had a mean and victorious look in his eye. Effie began work on her best, most withering glare— the man truly was insane—and then the missing piece of the puzzle fell into place. The memory of Waker's words from a month earlier burned through her brain like drops of acid. "Tomorrow I put leg irons on you. Once they are on there is nothing in my possession that can remove them. I carry no ax strong enough to cut the chains or no pick with the correct hore to punch out the pins."

She had believed hiim She and Chedd had believed them. She had lost her love and nearly died because of those chains. And he had still kept them on her. Foolishly she had thought there was some honor between them and that after Waker had pulled her from the water she owed it to him to be a good passenger. She had owed him nothing. He and his father were kidnappers, and if she and Chedd had thought there was a possibility of freeing themselves from the chains they would have tried an escape. Chedd Limehouse and Effie Sevrance would have given it a go. The master faker and master gamer could have cooked something up.

Effie felt betrayed. And stupid. And suddenly very afraid. She and Chedd were going to be fed to the bog.

Waker's father waited for full comprehension to dawn's on Effie's face and then carelessly tossed the pickax in the water.

Facing front, Effie tried to breathe away the tightness in her chest. She should have snatched the pickax from him and put it through his eye. More soberly she wondered if she would ever tell Chedd. Was there any point? Only if the fish decide not to eat us.

A fortress of bulrushes encircled the open water that contained Clan Gray's roundhouse. Dark paths led through the tangle of hard canes like mouse cracks in a wall. Waker completed punting the boat through one such crack and they floated into the shallow lake. Giant rings of green light burned just above the water. Effie could hear the hiss of marsh gases and smell the methane. The Gray roundhouse was a black hump in the center of the lake. Massive torches circled it, their stands twenty feet high, their heads shaped like giant beehives. The same eerie green flames that flickered above the water burned at the top of each torch.

The roundhouse sat on an island of oozing mud shored with stones, bird skeletons, muskrat bones and a basketwork of canes. Wooden landings and causeways extended out from the main structure, supported by pilings for the first few feet and then left to float upon the lake. Ladders woven from canes and rushes led below the black water. Rafts and other shallow craft were tied to mooring poles. Some poles sticking out from the lake had iron baskets lashed to them; Effie could not see what was inside them.

Gray's roundhouse was not round; it was an octagon made from rotting cedar planks and marsh mud baked into clinker. Part of it looked to be sinking. Bands of square windows ran along its upper stories but all of the shutters were closed. Some had been boarded up. A few had been sealed with metal bars. Weeds were growing from softened sections of roof timber and a snarl of chokevines was threatening to overgrow the clan door. "Buckets of mother-mud!" Chedd whispered with feeling. Effie had never heard that particular curse before but it seemed to sum things up.

A man and a woman floating on a basic raft of lashed logs moved to intercept the boat. The woman had a scrawny coon hat perched on her head like a bird's nest—she was the one doing the poling. The man was sitting cross-legged. He was wearing muskrat furs dyed green, and his skin was mottled like a newt's.

"Way-Ker" he said, turning the name into two separate words and seeming somehow to disparage it. "What birdies have you brought us today?"

Waker set down the pole and let the boat drift toward the raft. "Boy and a girl. Real nice. The boy has the old animal skills and the girl" Waker turned to look at Effie with his oversize bulging eyes. "She's a smart one. There's no telling all she can do."

Effie spat at him.

Waker's expression didn't change as the spittle landed on his cheek and in his eye. He blinked, and as he did so he seemed to be dismissing Effie Sevrance as someone who no longer held his interest. Raising his fist he wiped his face clean and returned his attention to the green-fur man.

"She's from Blackhail," Waker told him, "and the boy's a Bannerman."

The man's gaze settled on Effie. His eyes were the same black tar as the water. "Haul 'em up. Come see me tomorrow—I'll mind you get paid."

Waker's father steered the boat so it pulled alongside the raft. The woman with the coon hat set down her pole and gripped the boat's gunwales to dock the boat against raft. Waker turned to Chedd and said, "Up." He meant both of them, but he never looked at Effie Sevrance again.

Chedd and Effie stood, their leg chains rattling in unison. Understanding that they had limited movement, the green-fur man slid over to the edge of the raft and helped them alight. Chedd first. Effie next. The man's hands dug deep into Effie's armpits as she stumbled against him. "Good shot" he whispered, as he guided her down onto her backside. He might have winked at her, but she couldn't be sure.

As soon as she and Chedd were safely on board and sitting down, the coon hat woman pushed off from the boat. "Girlie, girlie, girlie, girlie. Never assume you'll he treated fairly."

It was the old man's idea of a farewell. Effie ignored it. She did not look at him or his son as the woman turned the raft and poled toward the Grayhouse.

"I reckon you'll both be hungry," said the green-fur man, tossing Effie and Chedd an apple each. "That Waker is a tight one with his stores."

Chedd and Effie looked at each other and then the apples. Was the green-fiir man trying to fatten them up?

Suspicious, Effie dropped her apple in the water. Chedd looked regretfully at his own apple but eventually did the same.

The green-fur man shrugged. The coon-hat woman shot out a hand and plucked Chedd's apple from the water.

"We won't go willingly to the bog," Effie said loudly and firmly. "We're prepared to fight."

The green-fur man chuckled knowingly. "Believe me, girl. If I intended to feed you to the bog, the pike would be eating your eyeballs by now."

Chedd Limehouse and Effie Sevrance exchanged a long and surprised glance as they floated across the black-water lake toward the Grayhouse on a raft made entirely of relief.