A Cavern of Black Ice Read Free Page B

else had come in its place. A tight
shivering fear. "The camp."
    Drey nodded. He took a deep breath and
looked set to speak, then abruptly stopped himself. Offering Raif his
hand, he heaved his brother off the ground with a single tug. By
the time Raif had brushed the frost from his buckskins, Drey had
collected both bows and was pulling the arrow shafts from the dead
tree. As he turned away from the blackstone pine, Raif noticed the
Retchings in Drey's grip were shaking. This one small sign of his
brother's fear worried Raif more than anything else. Drey was his
older brother by two years. Drey was afraid of nothing.
    They had left the camp before dawn,
before even the embers on the firepit had burned cold. No one except
Tern knew they had gone. It was their last chance to shoot game
before they broke camp and returned to the roundhouse for winter. The
previous night Tern had warned them about going off on their own in
the badlands, though he knew well enough that nothing he said would
stop them.
    'Sons!" he had said, shaking his
large, grizzled head. "I might as well spend my days picking
ticks from the dogs as tell you two what you should and shouldn't do.
At least come sundown I'd have a deloused pup to show for my
trouble." Tern would glower as he spoke, and the skin above his
eyebrows would bunch into knots, yet his eyes always gave him away.
    Just this morning as Raif pulled back
the hide fastening on the tent he shared with his father and brother,
he noticed a small bundle set upon the warming stone. It was food.
Hunters' food. Tern had packed two whole smoke-cured ptarmigan, a
brace of hard-boiled eggs, and enough strips of hung mutton to mend
an elk-size hole in a tent. All this for his sons to eat on a hunting
trip he had expressly forbidden them to take.
    Raif smiled. Tem Sevrance knew his sons
well.
    "Put on your gloves." It was
Drey, acting just like an older brother. "And pull up your hood.
Temperature's dropping fast."
    Raif did what he was told, struggling
to put on gloves with hands that felt big and slow. Drey was right:
It was getting colder. Another shiver worked its way up Raif's spine,
making his shoulders jerk awkwardly. "Let's go." Drey's
thoroughness was beginning to nettle him. They had to get back to the
camp. Now. Something wasn't right.
    Although Tem warned them constantly
about the danger of using up all their energy by running in the cold,
Raif couldn't stop himself. Despite spitting profusely, he couldn't
remove the taste of metal from his mouth. The air smelled bad, and
the clouds overhead seemed darker, lower,
closer
. To
the south lay a line of bald, featureless hills, and west of them lay
the Coastal Ranges. Tem said that the Ranges were the reason why the
Want and the badlands were so dry. He said their peaks milked every
last drop of moisture from passing storms.
    The three hares Raif had shot earlier
thumped up and down in his pack as he ran. Raif hated their warmth
against his thigh, was sickened by their fresh-kill smell. When the
two brothers came upon Old Hoopers Lake, Raif tore the pack from his
belt and threw it into the center of the dull black water. Old
Hoopers wasn't frozen yet. River fed, it would take a full week of
frost before its current-driven waters plated. Still, the lake had
the greasy look of imminent ice about it. As Raifs pack sank to the
bottom, swirls of vegetable oils and tufts of elk hair bobbed up and
down on the surface.
    Drey swore. Raif didn't catch what he
said, but he imagined the words
waste of fine game
in their
place.
    As the brothers ran south, the
landscape gradually changed. Trees grew straighter and taller, and
there were more of them. Beds of lichen were replaced by long
grasses, bushes, and sedge. Horse and game tracks formed paths
through the frozen foliage, and fat grouse flew up from the
undergrowth, all flying feathers and spitting beaks.
    Raif barely noticed. Close to the camp
perimeter now, they should have been able to see smoke, hear