A Cavern of Black Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

waiting…
    Ash shivered. Swinging her hand down
onto the bed, she beat the images back by pummeling the mattress as
hard as she could. She wouldn't think about the dream. Didn't want to
know what those cold eyes wanted.
    Thht. Thht. Thht
. Three knocks
rang lightly against the fossilwood door.
    Something deep inside Ash's chest, a
band of muscle connecting her lungs to her heart, stiffened. Although
breathless from beating the pillow, she didn't take a breath or even
blink. Silent as settling dust, she told herself as her eyes focused
on the door.
    Finely grained and hard as nails, the
door's perfect gray surface was marred by three black thumb-size
pits: bolt holes. Six months earlier Ash had paid her maidservant,
Katia, four halfsilvers to go down to the metalworkers' market near
Almsgate and purchase a bolt and socket for the chamber door. Katia
had done her bidding, returning with an iron bar big enough to secure
a fort. Ash had fixed the metal plate and socket in place herself.
She had blackened a fingernail in the process and broken the backs of
two silver brushes, but the bolt pins had gone in and the fastening
mechanism had worked smoothly, and for a week Ash had slept more
soundly than she could ever remember sleeping.
    Until…
    Thht Thht. Thht.
    Ash stared at the empty bolt holes. She
made no motion to answer the second round of knocking.
    'Asarhia." A pause.
"Almost-daughter, I will have no games played with me."
    Tilting her body minutely, Ash slid
down amid the covers. One hand stole beneath her head to turn the
sweat-stained pillow facedown upon mattress, while her other hand
smoothed her hair. Just as she closed her eyes, the door creaked
open.
    Penthero Iss had brought his own lamp,
and the fierce blue glow of burning kerosene put Ash's own resin lamp
in the shade. Iss stood in the doorway and looked at Ash. Even with
her eyes closed she knew what he was about.
    He made her wait before he spoke.
"Almost-daughter, don't you think I know when I'm being
deceived?"
    Ash kept her eyelids closed, but not
tightly—he had caught her on that in the past. In no way did
she respond to his words, simply concentrated on keeping her
breathing low and metered.
    "Asarhia!"
    It was hard not to flinch. Mimicking a
kind of dazed surprise, she opened her eyes and rubbed them
vigorously. "Oh," she said. "It's you.
    Ignoring her show of bafflement,
Penthero Iss walked into the room proper, set his lamp on the
rootwood prayer ledge next to the offering bowls of dried fruits and
pieces of myrrh, brought his long-fingered hands together, and shook
his head. "The cushions, almost-daughter." The index finger
on his left hand circled, indicating the foot of the bed. "A
sound night's sleep seldom includes kicking cushions so hard that the
impression of one's foot stays upon them till dawn."
    Ash cursed all the cushions in Mask
Fortress. She cursed Katia for piling the silly, fluffy, useless bags
of goosedown high on her bed each night.
    Penthero Iss crossed over to Ash's bed.
Fine gold chains woven into the fabric of his heavy silk coat chinked
softly as he moved. Although not muscular, he carried something hard
within him, as if his skeleton were made out of stone. His face had
the shape and smoothness of a skinned hare. Holding out a long,
carefully manicured, completely hairless hand, he asked, "How
much do I love you, almost-daughter?" Untaken, the hand moved
away to carve a circle in the air. "Look at all I give you:
dresses, silver brushes, perfumed oils—
    'You are my father who loves me more
than any real father ever could." Ash spoke Iss' own words back
to him. She had lost count of how many times he had said them to her
over the past sixteen years.
    Penthero Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis,
Lord Commander of the Rive Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress, and Master
of the Four Gates, shook his head with disappointment. "You
would mock me, almost-daughter?"
    Feeling a bite of guilt, Ash slid her
hand over his. She owed