The cragsman looked at him with some surprise showing in his gray eyes. "It never closes, not wholly. North of Bludd it narrows so that men can cross it, but it's always there, a black crack running through the forests between here and the Night Sea."
Raif reached for his lore. Holding the hard piece of raven in his fist He continued east with Addie Gunn.
THIRTY-TWO A Lock of Hair
"Cut me a lock of your hair," Lan Fallstar said to her. " I would keep it. For luck."
Ash knelt by the lake, cupped its cold and green water in her palms, and splashed it against her face. The shock made her shiver and she scrubbed her cheeks, nose and forehead to warm them up. Briefly, she considered stripping off her clothes and tum-bling into the water. She recalled that every winter in Mask Fortress a handful of aging grangelords would break through the ice in the Fountain of Bastard Lords and frolic—there was no other word for it-in the freezing water. She and Katia had watched them one year, giggling uncontrollably at their flabby, yet somehow slack, naked bodies. Katia had called them "insane old coots" and Ash had agreed, thinking it a fine assessment. Now she thought she understood the impulse. There was a kind of wild freedom to be had in being naked in defiance of winter. And it would certainly get some kind of reaction from the Far Rider.
"Your hair," he said again to her, his voice light but insistent. "If you will permit, I will cut it for you."
Ash turned to face him. The bodies of her dress and the hair around her face were damp and cleaved to her skin.The snow was deep here and her booted feet were sunk into wells. It wasn't snowing yet, but the air had that tingle to it and the sun had been missing for hours. They stood within a woodland of giant white spruce feather with club-moss, and cold cedars with corklike trunks. Swordfers and licorice ferns poked through the snow, brown and wiry after the long winter.
Moss and silvery lichen grew on the rocks around the lake and on the north and west faces of the trees. The lake itself was small and darkly green. Much of its water was open, and Ash wondered if it was stirred by underground springs.
She did not know what to make of Lan's request. Part of her felt flattered. It seemed the kind of thing that warriors in epic poems would beg from their secret loves before heading off into battle and getting themselves horribly and unexpectedly killed. Ash remembered reading such poems to Katia, and them both agreeing it was all a bit silly. Then they'd go ahead and re-enact them anyway. Because as well as being silly the poems were also dreamily appealing. What was never in doubt was the fact that a lady should count herself lucky to be asked for such a token. Yet it didn't quite fit. Lan Fallstar never acknowledged what happened between them in the tent at night, not by day, and he had not proclaimed his everlasting love for her. She was still not sure he even liked her. Even now, as his gaze lighted on the pink swell of her breasts revealed by the damp fabric of her dress, he looked disapproving as well as interested. She had a notion that Lan Fallstar thought Ash March was beneath him. And the only time that changed, or seemed to change, was during their lovemaking in the tent.
Perhaps things were changing for him. Perhaps his request revealed a growing, but reluctant, regard. The Far Rider's gaze was level, his eyes inhumanly bright as they refracted light from the snow.
Ash drew the mercy blade from her belt. Lan watched her intently as she separated a lock of hair from the damp sections surrounding her face. Drawing the blade close to her scalp she cut it off. The lock was two feet in length and about as wide as her little finger, and she wondered how many separate silver-blond hairs were within it She knotted it, not gently, and handed it to him.
He took it with a deeply formal bow, and for a moment she was reminded of the time when Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer had greeted her outside the Ice Trapper village. They had lain facedown in the snow, prostrating themselves before the Reach. Uneasy, she awaited the Far Rider's response.
Lan Fallstar touched the knot of hair to his lips. "A toll must be paid on such a gift." The words seemed genuine, and Ash found herself relieved. Carefully he wound the hair around itself and tucked it into his weapon pouch. She was surprised when he unsheathed his letting knife; she had thought the words a gallantry.
The knife was-plain but beautifully made, as all Sull letting knives were. Handle and blade were formed from a single bar of alloy. The blade had been case-hardened with carbon and was darker than the handle. It had a single edge, and inky green and blue rings shimmered beneath its surface. Lan used the same arm that he had burned the first night they met, making a cut an inch below the black and crusted scar. Blood welled in a short line, and the Far Rider pumped his fist until the redness rolled down his arm and dripped into the snow. This was the first time she had watched him let blood, and Ash wondered why he hadn't done the same that night by the Flow. Why burn himself so badly that even now, over ten days later, the skin still split open and wept watery blood? Did the birch way require that high a toll?
Ash lifted her great lynx-fur cloak from the lakeshore and shook it free of snow. The temperature was dropping and her wet bits were getting cold. She could not watch Lan's bare arm anymore; the sight of it was too confusing. Just visualizing his hand between her legs made her skin flush with heat. She had never imagined that a single finger sliding against wet skin could bring such pleasure. Every night as they made camp she felt filled with reckless need. Part of her knew that it wasn't a wise thing to do, that she did not know Lan Fallstar and was not even sure that she trusted him, but her body ignored her doubts. She became intensely self-aware whenever he drew close to her to perform small tasks like help her mount or dismount her horse, or offer a hand as she jumped over logs and streams. Her body teased, in anticipation of the slightest and most casual touch. She found herself disappointed if the imagined contact did not come, and fired up and dissatisfied if it did. Lan had to be aware of her heightened and confused state, yet he treated her coolly, and did not acknowledge in any way what they might have done the night before. Was he ashamed of their lovemaking? Should she be? It was all incredibly bewildering. And just when she thought she at least understood that he meant to keep their travels by day separate from their nights in the wolfskin tent, he went and asked her for a lock of hair. In daylight, with still an hour or two to go before sunset.
Ash frowned with force, pushing her lips against her teeth and driving her eyebrows together. On impulse she decided to leave the Far Rider there with the horses and take a walk around the lake. As she walked she became aware of a pleasant soreness between her legs. She frowned harder.
Raft of transparent ice floated across the lake's surface in no dis-cernible pattern. Some spun slowly, turning on their axes like wheels, while others sailed right by. One triangular-shaped raft floated blithely in the opposite direction. On the other side of the lake she could see a great blue heron holding itself very still, and somewhere deep within the woods a hawk owl was screeching. The trees surrounding the shoreline looked as if they'd been thinned, for the spruces and cedars were well spaced and animal paths and thin rills of snowmelt led between them. Ash didn't think she had ever been in a more unearthly place. The spruces were so big they looked as if they belonged in a different, larger world. Did they mean she was close to the Heart of Sull?