Read A Cavern of Black Ice for Free Online

plague you. What sort of a father could I call myself if I
did not watch my daughter closely?"
    Ash bent her head. She wanted to sleep,
close her eyes, and not have to dream. Her foster father was too
clever for her. Lies, even small ones, were as silken rope in his
hands. He could pull and distort them, use them to tie their speaker
up in knots. She had gotten herself into enough trouble tonight. The
best thing to do would be to say nothing more, nod her head meekly,
and let her foster father bid her good night. He was already making
his way toward the door; another minute and he would be gone.
    Yet…
    She was Ash March, Foundling, left
outside Vaingate to die. She had been abandoned in two feet of snow,
wrapped in a blanket stiff with womb blood, beneath a sky as dark as
night in the twelfth storm of winter. She had been forsaken, yet
somehow she had lived. She had been weak, yet some tiny spark of life
within her had proven strong. Straightening her spine, she looked her
foster father straight in the eyes and said, "I want to know
what's happening to me."
    Holding her gaze, Iss reached for the
kerosene lamp. The iron base was stamped with the Surlord's seal: the
Killhound rampant, the great smoke gray bird of prey sinking claws
the size of meat hooks into the tip of the Iron Spire. Ash remembered
her foster father telling her that although killhounds fed on spring
lambs, bear cubs, and elk calves, they were known for killing hunting
dogs that ranged too close to their aeries. "They never feed
upon the hounds they kill," Iss had said, a gleam of fascination
firing his normally cold eyes. "Though they do make sport with
the carcasses."
    Ash shivered.
    Iss closed the spillhole, snuffing the
lamp. Holding open the fossil-wood door, he stepped into the column
of cold air that rushed in from the corridor beyond. "There's
nothing for you to be worried about, almost-daughter. You're just
catching up, that's all. Surely Katia must have told you that most
girls your age are women in
all
senses of the word? Your
body is simply doing those things that theirs have already done. One
would hardly expect such changes to occur without some small measure
of pain."
    With that he moved into the shadows of
the corridor, swiftly becoming one himself. The metal chains sewn
into his coat chimed softly like faraway bells, and then the door
clicked shut and there was silence.
    Ash fell back onto the bed. Shaking and
strangely excited, she pulled the covers over her chest and set her
mind to thinking of ways she could find answers for herself. Her
foster father's words only
sounded
like the truth. She knew
she wouldn't sleep, could absolutely
swear
she wouldn't
sleep, yet somehow, unbelievably, she did.
    Her dreams, when they came, were all of
ice.
    *** The Listener could not sleep. His
ears—what were left of them—pained him like two rotting
teeth. Nolo had brought him fresh bear tallow from the rendering pit,
and it was good and white and looked creamy enough to eat, so the
Listener had done just that. Waste of good tallow—using it to
plug up two old black holes that had once been ears. Waste of good
muskox hair to warm them, too. But there was little to be done about
that: Nothing needed warming as much as an old scar.
    Nolo's footprints formed a visible line
to and from the rendering pit and then over to the meat rack in the
center of the cleared space. Looking at them, the Listener made a
mental note to have a talk with Nolo's wife, Sila: She wasn't filling
her husband's mukluks with enough dried grass. Nolo's booted feet had
melted snow! Sila would have to get chewing.
    The Listener spent an idle moment
imagining Sila's plump lips chewing on a tuft of colt grass to make
it soft enough for stuffing into the space between her husband's
outer and inner boots. It was a very pleasant moment. Sila had
unusually fine lips.
    Still, he was old and had no ears, and
Sila was young and had a husband, and together they had four