Shunting the weight sideways, she slipped between two stone columns and entered the dark airless labyrinth of the foundation space, the bottommost level in the roundhouse. It was surprisingly warm and some kind of rain was falling—the ceiling must be saturated with groundwater. The safelamp began to hiss and Raina brought it close to her body for protection. Bending at the waist, she cleared the entrance tunnel and followed the passage as it led down.
It wasn't long before oily water started flooding over the tops of her boots. Awkwardly, she hiked up her sodden skirts and tucked them under her belt. As she worked, the safelamp swung lazily in her free hand, sending an egg-shaped beam of light rocking across the walls.
A fuzz of blue-black mold covered the stone. In the corner where the sandstone walls braced the ceiling, moths had laid their eggs. Thousand of white maggots fed on the mold. Some had pupated into pod-shaped cocoons that hung suspended from the ceiling by dusty threads of silk. When a breeze came they clicked together, making a noise like rustling leaves. Raina averted her eyes and resumed walking.
Built solely as a buffer between the roundhouse and the cold earth, the foundation space had not been designed for walking. Raina reckoned the ceiling height was under five feet, and looking ahead she could see it was dropping. The strange thing was she wasn't as afraid of this place as she had been in the past. Old fears were felling away. Fear of rats and other small things now seemed like a silly luxury, like wearing a lace bonnet on a windy day. Vain too, a demonstration of delicacy, an announcement that one has managed to steer clear of the hardships of everyday life. Same with spiders and darkness and thunderstorms: girlish fears for girls who did not know the real things they should fear. Raina could tell them. Sometimes she would like to yell them out loud just to get them off her chest.
Spying a T-junction ahead, Raina took a moment to rest the weight and run over the directions in her head. She did not want to make a wrong turn. Effie Sevrance had shown her this place. That girl knew the roundhouse like the back of her hand. Strongrooms, crypts, wet cells, mole holes, clay pits, ice pits, well heads, dungeons: Effie knew all the dark and secret spaces beneath the roundhouse. She would go missing for entire days and no one, not even her brothers, could find her. When she finally emerged, blinking and baffled at all the fuss, she would say simply, "Sorry. I forgot." Raina had come down hard on her after the time she'd gone missing for three whole days. "You will stay here in my chambers, within my sight, for the next ten days. And you'll spend that time composing apologies for all those you have worried and inconvenienced." Poor Effie had done just that.
Raina became aware of the water in her boots, lukewarm and turgid, congealing like jelly. Effie was alive; she had to be. Raina was sure she would know if it wasn't true. A messenger had come from Dregg only two days ago, and the word was still the same: no sign of the cart containing Effie Sevrance, Clewis Reed, and Druss Ganlow. Raina understood that something must have happened on their journey—a detour, a mishap, a mistake—but it didn't mean that Effie was dead. Just waylaid.
Breathing heavily Raina took the turn. How am I going to tell Drey? She had put off sending a message to Effie's brother three times now. Between his responsibilities defending the Crab Gate and his heartache over his brother's treason, Drey Sevrance had enough on his shoulder. Besides, she owed it to him to deliver the news in person, to look into his eyes and accept the blame. I was the one who thought Effie would be better off at Dregg.
Besides, Drey was gone now, called to war. It was not a good time to give a Hailsman bad news. The rumors from Ganmiddich were wor-rying: whispers of city-men armies on the march from the south whilst Bludd forces were cracking down from the north. Hailsmen would die. Drey might die. If the gods truly loved her Mace Blackhail would die.
Raina shivered at her own coldness. Her clan was marching south to defend the Crab Gate, and here she was wishing that some steel-plated city man would thrust his blade through her husband's heart. What was it Bessie Flapp always said? Be careful with wishes. Once in a blue moon a god will grant them and show us just how selfish we are.
Bessie was right. The clan would not benefit from losing its chief. Not now, with wars against Dhoone and Bludd to be fought. It wasn't even certain that she, Raina Blackhail, would benefit from her husband's death. If Mace were to die in battle his tide would be up for grabs. She had told exactly two people of her plans to be chief—Orwin Shank and Anwyn Bird—and their support, while gratifying, was hardly enough to claim the prize. Anyone with enough jaw could step ahead of her.
Shaking her head in frustration, Raina set the matter aside. She could not afford to be distracted. Her destination was drawing close and if she wasn't alert she would miss the entrance.
After Effie's three-day disappearing act, Raina had forced the girl to show her the paths she took below the roundhouse. That way, if Effie ever went missing again, Raina would know exactly where to find her. Effie had frowned and tutted and looked critically at Raina, before finally saying, "It will ruin your dress."
A ruined dress was a small price to pay for an education. Effie moved around the roundhouse like a mole in a set, diving beneath footstones and through holes in the walls, and scurrying between cracks. Raina had been afraid to blink lest she loose sight of her. She had still been afraid of rats back then, and remembered getting cross and a little bit shaky and commanding Effie to Slow down. Still, it had been worth it. Blackhail was the oldest clan in the North and it had the oldest roundhouse, yet most of the time when you were aboveground you didn't see its age and its history. Belowground was different. There were no plastered panels or tapestries concealing the rough stone walls, no wooden boards laid over floors. No chief, dissatisfied with what he saw, had ordered its halls to be knocked down and rebuilt. The under-levels of the roundhouse had been left alone and disregarded. Oh some clansmen stubbornly maintained cells here and the great open space of the cattlefold was still in use, but mostly his was dead space. Rats swam in the standing pools. Bats nested overhead between the ceiling groins. History lived here, quiet as dripping water.
If she had taken a left turn instead of a right one at the T-junction Raina knew that she would have ended up in a room full of grave holes. Nearly two hundred people had been interred in the dome-shaped chamber, their bodies inserted head first into narrow, deeply dug holes. Stones so heavy Raina wondered how they had been transported here capped every grave, and if you walked into the room with good lighting you could discern a pattern in their placement. The stones formed a map of Bannen's clanhold.
Fifteen hundred years ago the great Bann chief Hector Bannen had launched a surprise assault on the Hailhold. Blackhail was in decline and infighting had left it vulnerable; Hector had seen an opportunity and seized it. That wasn't his sin though, and no one judged him for it. No, what Hector had done to deserve being buried on his head along with his two hundred best warriors was break his oath to Blackhail. Only five years earlier Hector had sworn allegiance to the Hail chief Dowerish Blackhail. Dowerish was still chief at the time of the assault—though his younger brother Eagon was pursuing that position for himself—and with a cleverly staged mock-surrender Dowerish had lured Hector's front line into the roundhouse, cut them off, and then cut them down.
It had not been a proud moment for either clan, and most current histories did not include it. But the stones did not lie. Raina had stood and watched as Effie Sevrance skipped between them, attempting to locate the stone under which Hector Bannen had lain for fifteen hundred years.