Watcher of the Dead Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1 - Departures

  CHAPTER 2 - A House in the City

  CHAPTER 3 - Do and Be Damned

  CHAPTER 4 - Marafice Eye

  CHAPTER 5 - North of Bludd

  CHAPTER 6 - Wolf Dog

  CHAPTER 7 - Captive

  CHAPTER 8 - Stovehouse

  CHAPTER 9 - Sinking into the Swamp

  CHAPTER 10 - The Treasure Hall

  CHAPTER 11 - The Sull

  CHAPTER 12 - A Maiden’s Head

  CHAPTER 13 - Enemies All Along

  CHAPTER 14 - Deadwoods

  CHAPTER 15 - Names

  CHAPTER 16 - In the Star Chamber

  CHAPTER 17 - The Lost Clan

  CHAPTER 18 - Lost Men

  CHAPTER 19 - A Day in the Marshes

  CHAPTER 20 - Hailstone

  CHAPTER 21 - He Picked Up the Sword and Fought

  CHAPTER 22 - Morning Star

  CHAPTER 23 - This Old Heart

  CHAPTER 24 - Stillwater

  CHAPTER 25 - Target Practice

  CHAPTER 26 - Small Game

  CHAPTER 27 - The Phage

  CHAPTER 28 - In the Guidehouse at Clan Gray

  CHAPTER 29 - An Uninvited Guest

  CHAPTER 30 - Heart Fires of the Sull

  CHAPTER 31 - Watcher of the Dead

  CHAPTER 32 - Strike Upon the Weasel Camp

  CHAPTER 33 - Floating on the Sull-Clan Border

  CHAPTER 34 - Watcher of the Damned

  CHAPTER 35 - For All Bluddsmen

  CHAPTER 36 - Schemes

  CHAPTER 37 - The Night River

  CHAPTER 38 - Stripping Outer Bark

  EPILOGUE

  BY J. V. JONES

  The Book of Words

  The Baker’s Boy

  A Man Betrayed

  Master and Fool

  Sword of Shadows

  A Cavern of Black Ice

  A Fortress of Grey Ice

  A Sword from Red Ice

  Watcher of the Dead

  The Barbed Coil

  Watcher of the Dead

  J. V. JONES

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by J. V. Jones

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without

  the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

  in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition including this condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those

  clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 2094 9

  This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  To Jim Frenkel,

  Who makes the books better

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Alan Rubsam, the good people at Tor who turned this manuscript into a book, cover and all, and to Paul for keeping the home fires burning.

  The Northern Territories

  The Story So Far

  WHEN HE WAS seventeen, Raif Sevrance of Clan Blackhail developed the ability to heart-kill game. One morning while he was hunting in the Badlands with his brother Drey, his father and chief were slain back at camp. When he and his brother returned to Blackhail they found that Mace Blackhail, the chief’s foster son, had declared himself head of the clan. Mace blamed the murders on Vaylo Bludd, chief of a rival clan. When Bludd sacked the Dhoonehouse of rival clan Dhoone a week later, Mace’s story of Bludd aggression gained credibility. Raif found himself isolated. He alone believed that Mace Blackhail was a liar and a chief-killer.

  War against clan Bludd followed, as Hailsmen sought to avenge their chief’s death. When Mace received word that a caravan of Bluddsmen were on the road, heading west to occupy the Dhoonehouse, he ordered an attack. Raif rode with the ambush party. When he discovered the caravan contained women and children, not warriors, he refused to participate in the slaughter. For disobeying an order on the field and deserting his fellow clansmen in battle, Raif was branded a traitor to his clan. Four days later, Raif left Blackhail in the company of his uncle Angus Lok. His oath to protect Blackhail was now broken, even while he had sought to act with faith and loyalty.

  The two men headed south. Upon arrival at Duff’s stovehouse, they learned news of the massacre on the Bluddroad had preceded them. When challenged by a group of Bludd warriors, Raif admitted to being present during the slaughter. He told no one that he took no part in the massacre; loyalty to his clan prevented him from defending himself at their expense. With this admission, however, Raif forever damned himself in the eyes of Bluddsmen. He was the only Hailsmen they knew for a certainty who was present during the slaughter.

  When Angus and Raif arrived at the city Spire Vanis they rescued a young woman named Ash March who was being hunted down by the city’s Protector General, Marafice Eye. Angus had a strong reaction when he saw the girl and immediately put himself in danger to save her. Raif’s skill with a bow proved invaluable. He single-handedly rescued the girl by shooting arrows through her pursuers’ hearts.

  As Raif, Ash and Angus headed north to the city of Ille Glaive, Raif learned that Ash was the foster daughter of the Surlord of Spire Vanis. She had run away when she learned that her foster father intended to imprison her in the city’s citadel, the Inverted Spire. Heritas Cant, a friend of Angus Lok’s, provided the explanation for the Surlord’s behavior. Cant told Ash she was the first Reach to be born in a thousand years. She alone possessed the ability to unlock the Blind, the prison without a key that contained the destructive might of the immortal Endlords. Cant warned Ash she must discharge her Reach-power or die.

  Raif and Angus agreed to accompany Ash to the Cavern of Black Ice, the one place where she could discharge her power without tearing a hole in the Blindwall that holds back the Endlords. As soon as their small party reentered the clanholds they were captured by Bluddsmen. The Bludd chief had lost seventeen grandchildren on the Bluddroad, and he was determined to make Raif Sevrance pay for those losses. After days of torture, Raif developed a fever and began to fail. Yet when Death came to take him she changed her mind. “Perhaps I won’t take you yet,” she told him. “You fight in my image and live in my shadow, and if I leave you where you are you’ll provide much fresh meat for my children. Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance. Any less and I just might call you back.”

  The next day Raif was saved by a group of Hailish warriors led by his brother Drey. “We part here. For always,” Drey said as he let his younger brother, the traitor, slip away.

  Later that day Raif met up with Ash, who had escaped from Marafice Eye by using her Reach-power. The Dog Lord had handed her over to Eye in repayment for a debt. Penthero Iss, the Surlord of Spire Vanis, had aided Vaylo’s taking of the Dhoonehouse, and Vaylo had come to regret Iss’ sorcerous help. Ash March was payment in full.

  Ash’s he
alth deteriorated during the journey to the cavern. When she collapsed in the snow, Raif drew a guide circle and called on the Stone Gods for help. Two members of the ancient Sull people, Far Riders named Mal Naysayer and Ark Veinsplitter, heard this call, and rode to Ash’s aid. Upon seeing her, they suspected that Ash was the Reach. They also suspected that Raif was Mor Drakka, Watcher of the Dead; the one predicted to destroy the Sull.

  The Far Riders took Ash and Raif to a frozen river that led to the Cavern of Black Ice and then departed. Ash discharged her power, but it was already too late. By blasting Marafice Eye’s men in the Bitter Hills, she had caused a rent in the Blindwall. Back in her home city of Spire Vanis, a nameless sorcerer who had been enslaved by her foster father was already working to open the breach. “Push and we will give you your name,” the Endlords promised him. Bound by chains, broken and tortured, the sorcerer accepted the deal. “Baralis,” the Endlords named the sorcerer as he broke open the wall.

  Meanwhile the clan wars were escalating. Blackhail waged war on Bludd to avenge the killing of the Hail chief; Bludd fought Blackhail for the slaying of its women and children; and Dhoone, dispossessed of its roundhouse by Bludd, fought to regain its territory. With the help of his half-brother Bram, Robbie Dun Dhoone claimed the Dhoone chiefship and retook Dhoone from the Dog Lord. Due to the desertion of his second son, Pengo, the Dog Lord had been holding the Dhoonehouse with a skeleton force. He, his remaining two grandchildren and his lady Nan escaped and headed north toward an old hillfort where his fostered son, Cluff Drybannock, was stationed with two hundred men.

  In order to secure sufficient manpower to retake Dhoone, Robbie sold his brother to the Milk chief, Wrayan Castlemilk, forcing Bram to leave his clan. Bram was made welcome at Castlemilk, but his taste for intrigue—acquired in negotiations with Skinner Dhoone and the Dog Lord—made him break his oath and join the Phage, a shadowy brotherhood that aimed to defend the world against the Endlords.

  Blackhail took possession of Ganmiddich, but lost it when an army led by Marafice Eye broke the Crab Gate that protected it. When news of Penthero Iss’ death reached the battlefield, half of Eye’s forces fled the field to rush back to Spire Vanis and vie for power, leaving Eye at the mercy of a newly-arrived army led by Pengo Bludd. Bludd took Ganmiddich. Marafice Eye led his injured army—plus four hostages taken from Blackhail—home to Spire Vanis where his father-in-law Roland Stornoway was holding power on his behalf. With Stornoway’s support, Eye became surlord.

  Back at Blackhail, the slain chief’s widow, Raina Blackhail, struggled to come to terms with her new life. Like Raif, she suspected that Mace, her foster son, was responsible for her husband’s murder, and she did not support his chiefship. After her husband’s murder, Mace raped her in the Oldwood and then told clansmen it was consensual. Raina married him rather than risk her reputation and status, becoming chief’s wife for the second time. While Mace was away at war with Bludd and Dhoone, Raina quietly began to claim power. When Stannig Beade arrived from Scarpe to replace Blackhail’s guide who had been killed in the explosion of the Hailstone, Raina suspected he had been sent to watch her. Tension ran high as Beade began acting as chief. When Anwyn Bird, Raina’s oldest friend, was assassinated in cold blood it was the final straw. Guessing that Anwyn had been murdered to silence dissension, and fearing for her own life, Raina Blackhail did the only thing she could to protect her clan. She entered the chief’s chamber one night and killed Stannig Beade.

  After departing Blackhail, Angus Lok returned to his home east of Ille Glaive. Upon arrival he found his worst nightmare had come to life: His house had been burned down. His three daughters and his wife were gone. Dead. Angus was a ranger, a member of the Phage. He blamed himself for leading evil to his door.

  Ash and Raif, once they left the Cavern of Black Ice, headed north into Ice Trapper territory. Ash left Raif while he slept, departing in the company of Mal Naysayer and Ark Veinsplitter. She chose to have her blood drained, a ritual cleansing that would allow her to become Sull. When she and the Far Riders were attacked by Unmade forces at Floating Bridge, Veinsplitter was killed and Ash became separated from the Naysayer. As she traveled alone in Sull territory she met a stranger named Lan Fallstar who told her he would take her to the Heart of the Sull. They became lovers, but he betrayed her, leading her into a trap. Knowing that she was a Reach, Fallstar wanted only to harness the power of her body to kill the Unmade. The Naysayer found Ash just in time to save her from Fallstar’s assassins, and together they headed south to the Heart of the Sull.

  Raif joined the Maimed Men, an outlaw clan who lived in the cliffs above the Rift—the deep cleft in the earth’s crust through which the Unmade sometimes escaped to attack mortal men. Traggis Mole, the leader of the Maimed Men, sent Raif to raid Blackhail as a test of Raif’s loyalty to the Maimed Men. As the raid party left the mine known as Black Hole, Raif was challenged by his old friend and clansmen Bitty Shank. Raif killed Bitty to escape, and then fled into the Great Want, the waste at the center of the continent. He was lost for a time.

  Meanwhile, Effie Sevrance, Raif’s nine-year-old sister, had been forced to leave her clan. Effie had been born to the stone lore and was able to tell when bad things were about to happen. She was an unwitting witness when Raina was raped by Mace, and Raina feared this knowledge made Effie vulnerable. Seeking to remove the girl from Mace’s sights, Raina sent Effie to Clan Dregg. Effie never made it. She was kidnapped by boatmen from cursed Clan Gray. On the journey to Clan Gray she met Chedd Limehouse, who had also been kidnapped, and fell into the Wolf River, where a pike snapped the stone lore from around her throat.

  Raif was found in the Great Want by the lamb brothers, who were there searching for the souls of their undead. They told Raif about a battle thousands of years earlier where their people and many others had died. One warrior had turned the course of the battle, a man known only as Raven Lord, who wielded the sword named Loss. Legend held that after the battle, the field was flooded and all the dead, including Raven Lord, were frozen beneath the ice. When Traggis Mole was attacked by Unmade and lay dying, he forced Raif to speak an oath to protect the Maimed Men. Soon after, Raif left the Rift to search for the frozen battlefield and the sword. Strikes by the Unmade were becoming more frequent and powerful and there were some creatures in the Blind that could only be slain by the Raven Lord’s sword.

  Raif found the sword, and a moment later an old injury to his chest stopped his heart. His old friend, Addie Gunn, and the lamb brothers saved him. He awoke several days later to find himself in possession of the sword named Loss.

  PROLOGUE

  White Bear

  EVEN THOUGH THE temperature had not risen above freezing in nine months, the bear carcass was not frozen. When Sadaluk, the Listener of the Ice Trappers, poked it with the narwhal tusk he used as a walking stick, the flesh rippled beneath the coarse white pelt. It was a full-grown male, past its prime, with battle scars denting its snout and a ragged strip of cartilage in place of its left ear. Dead for at least thirty days, Sadaluk decided, squatting by the creature’s head. The eyes and soft tissue around the muzzle had mummified in the dry air, and drift snow had compacted in the Y of its splayed rear legs.

  You did not need to be a listener to know it for an ill omen.

  It was Nolo who had found the bear. Nolo’s dogs had sniffed out the carcass—most unluckily for Nolo as they were leashed to his sled at the time. In their excitement, the dogs capsized the sled and scattered Nolo’s load of willow cords and blocks of frozen whale oil. Nolo was thrown from the runner, landing hard on the river ice. By the time he got to his feet, the dogs and the empty sled had reached the carcass a quarter league downstream. Straightaway Nolo knew something was wrong. Hungry dogs didn’t stand three feet away from a potential meal and howl like half-crazed wolves. Hungry dogs ate. Nolo was young and still distracted by the pleasures of his new wife, but even he knew that.

  Glancing at the rising sun, Sadaluk drew himself upright. His el
bow joints creaked—a recent development that both bothered and delighted him. Age was his stock-in-trade, and it did not hurt a listener to have a body that snapped as it moved. Reminding the young of their youth was one of his tasks. Still, it did not mean that he liked lying within his sleeping skins every morning, waiting for his body to start acting like something that might actually take his weight.

  Sadaluk drilled his stick into the snow, cleaning. Behind him he was aware that Nolo and the other five hunters were waiting for him to speak. As was proper, they stood in a half circle facing into the sun. All knew better than to cast a shadow on a dead bear.

  When he was ready Sadaluk turned to look at them. The river’s slip-stream riffled their caribou pelts and auk feathers, and blew their exhaled breath against their faces. All were winter-lean and strong-bodied. Kill notches on their spears told of varying degrees of bravery and luck. Nolo was the youngest, but none of the six were over thirty. Their faces were still, but Sadaluk could see through the holes in their eyes to the fear that slid between their thoughts.

  “Nolo. Retrieve your dog whip.” Sadaluk pointed to the strip of salt-cured sealskin that lay curled in the hackled ice at the river shore. It had been left behind yesterday in the excitement of finding the bear.

  Crouching to control the length of his shadow, Nolo shuffled upriver. For some reason he was wearing his formal dance coat, sewn from thin late-summer hides. Sadaluk could see the tooth marks around the cuffs where Nolo’s wife had chewed the hide into softness. As the young hunter knelt to retrieve the dog whip, the Listener addressed the remaining five men.