"Jones, J V - Sword Of Shadows 02 - A Fortress Of Gray Ice V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones J. V)

Mace said, “Wait, and I risk the possibility that clansmen will take matters into their own hands, and that’s something we both might regret.” He favored Raina with a husband’s smile. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
It was no answer, and they both knew it. He would see Effie harmed either by trial or delay. And that meant she was no longer safe in this roundhouse. Raina pulled Merritt Ganlow’s shawl about her. Suddenly she wanted very much to be gone.
“Be about your business,” he said, dismissing her. “And take comfort in the fact that I’ll be keeping Effie close.”
His voice was so soft and reassuring it barely sounded like a threat.

CHAPTER THREE
In the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes
The Tomb of the Dhoone Princes was located a hundred yards north of the Dhoonehouse, sunk to a depth of eighty feet. A single passageway, cut out of the hard blue sandstone on which Dhoone was built, connected the tomb to the great barrel-vaulted guidehouse where kings and princes had once lain in state. Vaylo Bludd walked that passageway now, his bulk heavy upon him, his sword clad in dogskin at his thigh.
He told himself he was old and jaded and hard to impress, yet he couldn’t help but marvel at the blue-gray light that shone upon him, filtered down through man-size blocks of cyanide quartz sunk deep into the earth. Only light the color of the Dhoone kings’ eyes was allowed entry into their grave.
A nice fancy, Vaylo thought. But it was probably just as well no one had ever thought to do such a thing for Bludd, for the Bludd chiefs were a hard-drinking, hard-fighting lot and their eyes always burned red. Vaylo grinned. Stone Gods! But the Bludd chiefs were ugly! No one would have raised fancy tombs for them, that was for sure. Old Gullit’s nose had been split so many times by brawling and hammer blows that it looked just like a burst plum . . . and as for Thrago before him, well, men said it wasn’t for nothing that he was known as the Horse Lord.
Vaylo’s smile faded as the corridor widened before him and he entered the coldness of the vault. The same blue light that spotted the corridor lay soft upon the standing tombs of Dhoone. They lined the great circle of the vault wall, stone coffins the size of men, with the likenesses of kings carved deep upon them, each one raised upright, as if they bore living, standing flesh, not dust. It made Vaylo’s hair rise to see them. The clanholds had been settled for three thousand years and the Dhoone kings had reigned for a third of that. One thousand years of kings, sealed within the silence of stone.
Now, at last, he realized the weight of Ayan Blackhail’s sin. To bring an end to this with a Hailish arrow, carelessly loosed to the throat.
The Dog Lord shook his grizzled head, feeling the weight of his braids at his back. He wasn’t one for wonder, and could recall having felt it only twice in his life. The first time was at Cedarlode, when the mist parted before him to reveal the mounted might of the Sull.
The second was here, in this tomb.
The air was dry and it moved strangely in the lungs. Vaylo could taste the age of it. It made him feel young and unimportant, a fish inside a whale. There before him, dominating the center of the space, stood the stone table that Jamie Roy had brought across the mountains during the Great Settlement. It had taken an army of men to move it, had occupied ancient roundhouses that no longer stood, spent a hundred years rotting at the bottom of the Flow, and now it lived here, with the bones of the Dhoone kings. Vaylo had no desire to touch it, yet his hand moved toward it all the same.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Dog Lord. Last I heard that table was cursed.”
Vaylo stayed his hand and turned to face the man who had entered the vault.
Angus Lok shrugged. “Of course, if you have a fancy for your hair falling out and your manhood falling off, go ahead and stroke it. Just be sure to step into the shadows if you do, as I imagine it’s not a pretty sight.”
Vaylo huffed . . . yet he did not touch the stone.
The ranger ignored him and began looking around the vault. “So these are the famous standing tombs of Dhoone? I see a few of them have gone to their knees.” It was true enough. Some of the older coffins had crumbled and fallen open, revealing nothing but blackness inside.
Vaylo said, “Only your first time here, ranger? I’d have thought you’d have skulked your way in before now.”
“Skulk?” Angus Lok showed his teeth. “That’s a fancy word, Dog Lord. How long have you been saving it for?”
Vaylo showed teeth of his own. “Since I caught you and the clansman at Ganmiddich.”
If Angus Lok was stirred by Vaylo’s anger he did not show it, merely moved across the vault to inspect one of the more hideously carved tombs. The eight weeks of his confinement had gone easy upon him, and he looked little changed from the day Vaylo had seen him sealed in the pit cell beneath the chief’s chamber at Ganmiddich. His kind always prospered. He had the gift of turning enemies into friends, could coax extra rations from the most heartless of jailers, draw information from the most tight-lipped of guards. Even when Ganmiddich had been beset by Blackhail and retaken, the ranger had managed to talk Hammie Faa, his jailer, into letting him take up a sword. Angus had given his word that he would make no attempt to escape, merely defend himself against attack. He had kept it too, Vaylo had to give him that. And Hammie swore that the ranger had kept open the retreat at the Crab Gate, whilst the old Bludd retainers rode through. Vaylo himself had seen none of it, though he never doubted a Faaman’s word.
Now Angus was here, at the Dhoonehouse, held in one of the strange and echoing mole holes under Dhoone. The Dog Lord had considered calling for him many times, yet had only today decided firm.
Slapping his side in search of the small leather pouch that held his chewing curd, he said, “Since we’re talking of words, Angus Lok, mayhap you can help me with the meaning of one of them.”
“If I can.”
The Dog Lord softened a cube of black curd in his fist. “You can tell me what exactly it is that a ranger does.”
Angus was inspecting the stone likeness of some ancient and unknowable king, and did not turn as he said, “A ranger ranges, Dog Lord. Surely you know that.” Admiring the curve of the king’s intricately carved greatshield, he crouched and ran a finger across the boss. “We ride wide and far, bearing messages and small goods where we can, spinning tales for our supper and trading news for our keep. We take day labor where we find it, trap game if we’re so inclined. I even knew one man who made his living teaching clanwives how to dance like city bawds.” Angus straightened his spine. “As for myself, well I’m no dancer, and the last thing I trapped with a wire was my own left foot, so I mostly rely on trade.”
An easy smile warmed the ranger’s handsome face. “Why, you wouldn’t happen to have a proposition for me, Dog Lord?”
Indeed he did, but he’d be damned if he’d let this clever-spoken dog trick him into speaking before he was ready. Crossing the vault, Vaylo made his way toward the effigy of the Dark King, Burnie Dhoone.
The man who had destroyed Clan Morrow had been carved without eyes. The stonework on his greathelm was so fine that Vaylo could see the join where the nosepiece had been welded to the crown, yet on either side of the smoothly planed stone, the carving gave way to sockets of jagged rock.
Vaylo touched the powdered guidestone at his waist. Who had ordered him carved so, and why?
“The Thistle Blood ran thick within him,” murmured Angus, coming to stand at the Dog Lord’s back. “It’s said that he got it from both sides.”
Vaylo had never heard such a thing before. “How so?”
“His mother was raped by her father, the king.”
“Stone Gods.” Vaylo suddenly wished for the company of his dogs, yet they were close to the heart of the matter now: how a ranger came to know more about the clanholds than a clan chief himself. So he said, “I remember the summer I turned seventeen. It was hot enough to bake mud, and the sky had that haze to it that only comes with long days of sun. I couldna keep myself in the roundhouse, so hot and restless was I, so I’d ride out every day at dawn to cool myself in the forests south of Bludd. There’s old trees in that forest, and man-cut stones and ruins amongst them. When it got too hot to hunt I’d take my stick and fish for trout. I was not a patient fisherman, and doubtless scared more fishes than I caught, yet I liked it well enough. There was green water, and it was cool, and some ancient bit of archway shaded me, and one day when I came to my secret place I met a ranger there.”
Angus Lok didn’t stir, though Vaylo knew he had the man’s attention in full. So he took his time with the telling; let no one say the Dog Lord couldn’t spin a tale when he chose to.
“He called himself Hew Mallin, though I learned later he was known by many names. Sitting right on my spot, he was. Bold as brass, with a line in the water. Greeted me by my name, and told me that I’d best pick another hole next time as I’d never pull anything bigger than sticklebacks from this. Why do you fish here then? I challenged him. And he looked me right in the eye, cool as milk, and said, Because I’m here to hook men, not fish.”
“Well I was young and suspicious and hard to impress, yet I still felt a thrill all the same. He knew about me, this man. Knew what kind of bastard I was, and what kind of father had begot me. There’s no love for you in that roundhouse, he said. Come south with me and I’ll show you a place where your strengths won’t go unrewarded. There are fights to be fought and a world that needs watching, for even as we speak the enemy masses at the gate.” Vaylo turned to face the ranger full-on. “Aye, Angus Lok. Your fine, secret brotherhood thought to have me in their fold.”
A moment passed, and then Angus said quietly, “I can see why.” It was not the response he had expected. He had been prepared for derision or disbelief . . . but not grace. It lightened something within him to receive it.
Angus watched him closely. “How did you answer them?”
Vaylo waved his fist. “I told Hew that I might be a bastard but I was a Bluddsman to the core, and that I’d shrivel and dry to nothing the moment I stepped on land that wasn’t clan. Oh, don’t think I wasn’t tempted—bastards dream of little except grabbing glory far from home—but the desire was already in me to make myself Lord of the Clans.” He shrugged. “Besides, I had a small idea to steal the Dhoonestone from Dhoone.”
Angus nodded. “Fishing will do that to a man—give him ideas.”
“Aye, I’ve learned so.”
Silence grew then, as the ranger waited for the clan chief to name the terms of his deal. Vaylo did not fool himself about who was the cleverer man here: Angus Lok had him pegged from the start. You could see it in the blandness of his face. Old Ockish Bull had looked as bland as that, and no one had ever risen early enough or stayed out late enough to put anything by him.
Outside it was growing dark, and the filtered light dimmed to the deepest blue. Sull blue, Vaylo thought. Gone was the light, grayish thistle-blue of Dhoone. The Dhoone kings were probably spinning in their graves.
But if they were you couldn’t hear them.
Vaylo spoke into the silence they created. “You know Spynie Orrl was killed after visiting me, here, in the Dhoonehouse.” A nod from Angus; no surprises there. “And did you know what he came to tell me? This old man who was no one’s fool, and knew exactly what he risked to come here?”
Angus did not nod this time, but Vaylo saw awareness in his copper-green eyes.