A Cavern of Black Ice Read Free Page A

needles were
missing. The pitch in the trunk preserved the crown, and the cold
dryness of the badlands hindered the growth of fungus beneath the
bark. Tem said that in the Great Want trees took hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of years to decay.
    Seconds passed as Raif concentrated on
the target. The longer he held his sights, the deader the tree
seemed. Something was missing. Ice hares were real living things.
Raif felt their warmth in the space between his eyes. He imagined the
lode of hot pulsing blood in'their hearts and saw the still line that
linked those hearts to his arrowhead as clearly as a dog sees his
leash. Slowly Raif was coming to realize that still line meant death.
    Frustration finally got the better of
him, and he stopped searching for the inner heart of the target and
centered his sights on the
visual
heart instead. With the
fletchings of Drey's arrow in his eyeline, Raif released the shot.
    The moment his thumb lifted from the
string, a raven
kaawed
. High and shrill, the carrion
feeder's cry seemed to split the very substance of time. Raif felt a
finger of ice tap his spine. His vision blurred. Saliva jetted into
his mouth, thick and hot and tasting of metal. Stumbling back, he
lost his grip on the bow and it fell to the ground point first. A
crack sounded as it landed. The arrow hit the tree with a dull thud,
placing a knuckle short of Drey's own shot. Raif didn't care. Black
points raced across his vision, scorching like soot belched from a
fire.
    'Raif! Raif!"
    Raif felt Drey's huge, muscular arms
clamp around his shoulders, smelled his brother's scent of
neat's-foot oil, tanned leather, horses, and sweat. Glancing up, Raif
saw Drey's brown eyes staring into his. He looked worried. His prized
yewbow lay flat on the ground.
    'Here, sit." Not waiting for any
compliance on Raifs part, Drey forced his younger brother onto the
tundra floor. The frozen earth bit into Raifs buckskin pants. Turning
away from his brother, Raif cleared his mouth of the metal-tasting
saliva. His eyes stung. A sickening pain in his forehead made him
retch. He clenched his jaw until bone clicked.
    Seconds passed. Drey said nothing, just
held his brother as tightly as he could. Part of Raif wanted to
smile; the last time Drey had crushed him like this was after he fell
twenty feet from a foxtail pine three springs back. The fall only
broke an ankle. Drey's subsequent bear hug had succeeded in breaking
two ribs.
    Strangely, the memory had a calming
effect on Raif, and the pain slowly subsided. Raif's vision blurred
sharply and then reset itself. A feeling of badness grew in him.
Swiveling around in his brother's grip, Raif looked in the direction
of the camp. The stench of metal washed over him, as thick as grease
smoke from the rendering pits.
    Drey followed his gaze. "What's
the matter?" His voice was tight, strained.
    'Don't you feel it?"
    Drey shook his head.
    The camp was five leagues to the south,
hidden in the shelter of the flood basin. All Raif could see was the
rapidly darkening sky and the low ridges and rocky flats of the
badlands. Yet he felt something. Something unspeakable, as when
nightmares jolted him awake in pitch darkness or when he thought back
to the day Tem had shut him in the guidehouse with his mother's
corpse. He had been eight at the time, old enough to pay due respect
to the dead. The guidehouse was dark and filled with smoke. The
hollowed-out basswood where his mother lay smelled of wet earth and
rotten things. Sulfur had been rubbed into the carved inner trunk to
keep insects and carrion feeders away from the body when it was laid
upon the ground.
    Raif smelled badness now. He smelled
stinking metal and sulfur and death. Fighting against Drey's grip, he
cried, "We have to go back."
    Drey released his grip on Raif and
pulled himself to his feet. He plucked his dogskin gloves from his
belt and pulled them on with two violent movements. "Why?"
    Raif shook his head. The pain and
nausea had gone, but something