Those spaces played on his mind. Rumor had it that histories were kept there; secrets about the clanholds and the Sull that had been hidden for hundreds of years. Bram had worked out the location of one of the secret chambers—it was located behind the west stairwell and adjacent to the women's solar—but a sense of honor kept him from searching for the entrance. Still, he would dearly have liked to see what lay inside it. And sometimes he thought that honor was a sham.

Realizing that he was hungry and late for his work in the guide-house, Bram glanced toward the kitchen. Breakfast had been fried apples and veined cheese, but that had been half a day ago. He could smell baking, and frying—Castlemilk's cook worked frequently with boiling oil—and decided not to resist. Limping at full speed, he made his way through the roundhouse and out the other side.

The kitchen was bustling. The benches were filled with women, children, seasoned warriors and old-timers taking their noonday meal The noise was close to deafening. Cook and his helpers were clanging pots and trivets, pitchforking sides of venison from vats of sizzling fat and stoking the ovens with giant pokers. Heat and steam and cooking smells combined to form a force that pushed through the air like wind. Bram hurried to the food tables, glad to see that no full-sworn warriors were waiting to be served. Men with lifetime oaths to their clans were always fed first. Pol waved a greeting from the back, and the head dairyman, little crotchety Millard Flag, shouted something about the skimming needing to be redone by the end of the day. Bram nodded an acknowledgment. There was no fooling Millard: do a hasty job and he knew it. Grabbing a fried pastie filled with lamb and onions, Bram tucked his head low and prayed to make it to the guidehouse without anyone stopping him to give orders.

The pastie was hot and juicy and it burned his tongue when he bit into it. Once he'd made his way through kitchen's east door and outside, he scooped a handful of snow from the ground and packed it into his mouth. His numbed toes were just beginning to come alive in his boot and they felt grossly swollen, like they could split the leather. His limp got worse and he had to slow down to manage the short climb up the embankment to the guidehouse.

Castlemilk's guidestone was housed in a separate building two hundred feet east of the roundhouse situated on a raised bank above the Milk. It was a large timber-framed structure that looked like a barn, and had the same double — size two-story doors as most barns. And a door within the door. A brick chimney had been built against the north-facing wall and Bram could see black smoke rising above the tarred wood roof. A single set of footsteps stamped lightly into the snow led from the roundhouse to the guidehouse. None led back. Finishing off the last of his pastie, Bram followed the footsteps like a path.

The door set within the door was closed but unlocked, and Bram lifted the polished pewter latch and entered. Dimness and smokiness enveloped him. It was like entering a building after a fire. The smell of charring seedpods and river weed was sharp and throat constricting, and Bram had to fight the impulse to cough. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he marked the red glows of smokefires placed at regular intervals around the perimeter of the room. This was the stone chamber, yet he could not yet see the stone.

"You are late." Drouse Ogmore, clan guide of Castlemilk, stepped from behind a wall of smoke. Dressed in unfinished pigskins with the hairs still attached and the worm rings and slaughter scars visible, he looked like a member of the wild clans. Short and powerfully built, with black hair and dark skin, he was holding a shovel as if he meant to harm someone with it.

'Take it," he said to Bram, thrusting it toward him. "Clear the area outside the door."

"The small door?"

Drouse Ogmore answered this question with a single, withering look.

Both big barn doors then. As Bram's hand closed around the handle of the shovel and began to move back, Drouse Ogmore pulled in the opposite direction. "The past two days you have been late. You will respect this stone. You will not be late again."

Bram nodded, and Ogmore released his grip on the shovel.

"Come and see me when you're done."

As he moved toward the door, Bram saw two green eyes watching him from the shadow of the guidestone. Nathaniel Shayrac, Drouse Ogmore's assistant, and the one who had made the footsteps in the snow, stepped forward and opened the door for Bram. And then shut it hard against his back.

Bram frowned at the snow. He felt bad about what Drouse Ogmore had said and wished he hadn't stopped at the kitchen for food. Ogmore had taken his oath and offered him occupation in the guide-house. "When your brother wins hack Dhoone come and see me. The future might not he as dire as you think." Those were the words Ogmore had said to him all those weeks ago on the Milkshore when had they laid Iago Sake to rest in the manner of the Old Clans. Ogmore had acted as guide for Dhoone that day, floating the oil and igniting it, incinerating Sake's corpse. Bram had not spared the meeting a thought while he was at Dhoone, but the Castlemilk guide had not forgotten him.

Eight days ago after Bram had spoken First Oath, Ogmore had invited him back to the guidehouse. "Come view the stone," he had said, "and I will prepare your yearman's portion."

Bram had only ever seen one guidestone before and that was Dhoone's. The Dhoonestone was less than forty years old and its edges were quarry-sharp. Vaylo Bludd had stolen the old stone, and Sumner Dhoone, the Dhoone chief, had moved swiftly to replace it. Bram had not known what an old stone looked like, the scars, the cavities, the oil and mineral stains, the fissures, and cutting faces, and molds. The Milkstone was an ugly chunk of skarn mottled with iron pyrites and flawed with chalk. It was not level and its west face was braced with a scaffold made from bloodwood logs. Bram had stood and looked at it, astonished that a stone could look so … used.

"Approach it," Ogmore had said. "You've earned that right"

By speaking the oath? Bram wondered. He had stepped toward it, immediately feeling the coolness it cast on the surrounding air. Up close he could see the rasp marks and drill holes and he had the sense that this was a living, working stone. The Dhoonestone lay like a fossil in the guidehouse; ill regarded and barely viewed. It was the shame of it, he believed. No Dhoonesman could look upon it without knowing they'd been bested by a seventeen-year-old boy from Bludd. The Milkstone was different, proud and aging, no longer steady on its feet but still useful, still aware.

Bram had been unsure whether or not to touch it This is my guide-stone, he told himself, forcing his hand up. When his fingers were a pin's length from the stone he felt a force, like a magnet attracting metal, pull them in. Sucking in his breath he made a small, astonished sound, and watched as his hand homed to the stone.

It showed him things, flooding them into his thoughts in waves that hit in quick succession. A river fork. A man in a bearskin hat. Wrayan Castlemilk bouncing his swearstone in her hand. Robbie smiling and saying, Do it Bram saw a dense forest of trees and something rippling through them. Waterf? he questioned uneasily, before the stone snatched the vision away. After that he could not keep up with the flood of images, they crashed against him and fled. Parchment unrolling. A room cased in lead. A second river forking …

His hand snapped back, jolted and released, and his arm whiplashed with the shock. Exhaling in a great push he realized he had been holding his breath. For a minute he just stood there, breathing and staring at the palm of his hand, as the jolt the guidestone had given him dissipated through muscle and bone.