Deep Water (10 page)

“Don’t go off the path, children,” she said wryly.

“Bramble’s right,” Zel said suddenly, not seeming to notice the wryness. “This might be a trick to get us off the path.” She
swung down from the chestnut and sat on the pine needles to take off her boots.

“Zel?” Martine said. “What are you doing?”

“I reckon I can make it across there,” Zel muttered, pulling her boots off with a strange ferocity. “This is something
I
can do.”

Bramble nodded. She’d feel like that, too, surrounded by people who can speak to ghosts and tell the future. Hells, she
did
feel like that, and she was the Kill Reborn. But although Gorham had told her that Zel was a tumbler, it was a very long
way across that stream. She said nothing. The girl knew her own business best.

Cael wasn’t so sure. He measured the stream by eye. “It’s too far!” he said. “You’ll fall halfway.”

Zel jumped to her feet and began to do some limbering exercises, swinging her arms and legs. The horses edged away, the white
of Trine’s eyes showing. Bramble went to her head and soothed her.

“We’ll see,” Zel said. “If I get over we can string up a rope and you can slide across.” She paused. “Do we have rope?”

“Aye,” Cael said, his voice deep and comforting. “We’ve got rope. But that won’t get the horses over.”

“We’ll have to leave the horses,” Safred said, her voice tight. “We have to get to the lake by sunset.”

Neither Bramble nor Zel liked that idea. Bramble didn’t want to leave Trine in a strange place with who knew what hiding in
the shadows. Zel, it was clear, had anticipated who would be left behind to look after the horses. She prepared for the jump
with her mouth set.

Bramble found it hard to believe there was any danger. She remembered jumping the chasm near Wooding.
That
had been dangerous. This was just a shallow stream which, as the sun rose above the trees, began to sparkle in the sunbeams.
But the horses wouldn’t cross it. Bramble shrugged. Nothing was ever shagging easy.

Zel backed up the path and motioned them to move out of the way. Bramble and Cael took the horses off a little; Martine and
Safred went to the other side of the track. Bramble expected Zel to run, instead, she took a couple of long paces and then
started to do flip-flops, hands to feet to hands, building up speed. At the very edge of the water she jumped high and curled
into a ball as she spun in the air, across the stream: once, twice, three times . . .

Her feet came down only a foot from the bank. She splashed heavily into the water, landing on hands and knees. The water flew
up and doused her and the smell, whatever it was, immediately grew much stronger.

Zel knelt in the water, silent. She seemed frozen. Petrified.

“Zel?” Bramble called, but she didn’t respond. Bramble edged down the stream, still holding the bridles, so she could see
her face side on, but Zel’s expression was fixed in a grimace of surprise.

“Turned to stone?” Cael wondered, voicing all their thoughts. He picked up a pinecone from the track and threw it at Zel’s
back. She twitched in response. He did it again and she scrambled up to her feet, her face changing gradually from surprise
to fear, her eyes following something to her right, her head turning as she tracked something that wasn’t there.

“Zel, keep going!” Safred called, but Zel remained still, breathing hard. Cael threw another cone, and another. Zel’s back
shrugged and involuntarily she took a half-step. Then she screamed, the scream of a child who has seen a monster. Bramble
bent and grabbed a cone and threw it, too. Then they were all throwing cones, some landing near Zel, some hitting her legs
and back, and one bouncing off her head.

“Aow!” she said, and took one more step. Enough to bring her out of the water. She stood looking down the track and shook
her head as if to clear it. Then she turned, her flexible tumbler’s body seeming heavy. Her feet fell solidly with a thwack
into the mud.

“Are you all right?” Martine called.

Zel nodded and looked around again, clearing her throat as though she hadn’t spoken for a long time.

“I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Safred asked.

Zel shrugged. “I dunno. Everything… changed. Like I were somewhere different. There was elk. I think elk, but they was
huge.
A whole herd of ’em. And the trees was different — oak, I think, maybe some elm, and grasses and… and there were this
thing,
like a giant cat, shagging enormous, chasing the elk and they was running and running and the ground were shaking and then
that thing, that big cat, it had these
teeth
down to here,” she gestured to below her shoulders, “it stopped running and it turned to me and started to come. It were
going to jump, like a wolf jumps — it were going to take out my throat, I could
smell
it. Then something hit me on the back of my head and I took a step and it — it was gone. All of it were just
gone.
”

She sat down heavily, as though talking had exhausted her.

“You were right here,” Cael reassured her. “You never left us.”

Zel bit her lip. “If that thing had landed on me, I’d be dead,” she said with certainty. “Here or not, there or not. I’d be
dead.”

“Mmm,” Safred said. “Better not to take the horses through it, then.”

“How do we get over?” Martine asked.

“We tie a rope high on one tree over this side,” Cael said, “and then throw it to Zel. She can fix it lower to a tree on the
other side and we slide down the rope. We can use one of the leading reins to hold onto.”

Safred looked doubtful. “I’m not so good at climbing trees,” she admitted. Bramble was amused to hear that the Well of Secrets
had any flaws. “There’s an easier way,” she said. “It’s simple. Just tie a rope around your middle, toss the other end to
Zel and let her drag you across. Or if she’s not strong enough, she passes it around a tree over there, throws it back and
we all haul on it. Doesn’t matter what you see or what you smell while you’re going over, you’ll be across in a moment and
back to your senses.”

“It’s a risk,” Cael said thoughtfully. “That cat thing might be waiting for the first one over.”

“I’ll go first,” Bramble said.

“No,” Safred said. “We need you. We can’t risk you.” She looked at Cael.

Silently, he took rope out of his saddlebags and prepared to throw it to Zel. Safred’s eyes clouded for a moment and then
she shook her head as if to clear it. Asking the gods? Bramble wondered. If so, she hadn’t got an answer. Her face was hard
to read. This was her uncle, after all, Bramble thought. She had to be worried, even if she didn’t show it. Or was she so
used to being controlled by the gods that she didn’t fear anything they didn’t tell her to fear?

Zel pushed herself to her feet and caught the rope Cael threw over easily, then passed it around a nearby pine at waist height
and threw both ends back. He caught them and tied one end securely around his waist. They took hold of the other end and held
the rope taut. Zel positioned herself at the tree to make sure the rope didn’t catch on anything.

Cael walked back a few paces from the stream.

“I’m going to take a run-up so I’m moving fast when I hit the water,” he said. “Ready? Pull!”

He ran at the water and they had to haul quickly on the rope to keep it tense. As his feet splashed into the stream his steps
faltered. Unlike Zel, he kept going, but he slowed down and put his arms out in front of him as though warding something off.
Bramble was closest to the stream and she hauled hard on the rope, jerking Cael forward.

“Pull!” she commanded and they pulled together, leaning into the rope and walking backward up the path. Cael was drawn forward
across the stream but he went in staggering paces, arms frantically trying to clear something from in front of him as he went.
He grunted with effort as he swept his arms from side to side. A couple of times he jerked as though he had hit something.
He stepped sideways and the rope went slack. He was only a few steps from the bank. Zel was shouting at him, waving her arms
near his face, balancing precariously on a rock at the water’s edge, all her tumbler’s agility called into play. He didn’t
react to her at all.

“Pull!” Safred shouted and they pulled more desperately, tightening the rope and dragging him facedown into the water. The
smell of the stream became much stronger, making them gag. Then he was flung up in the air, his arms flailing, by a force
none of them could see, although they felt the strength of it as the rope was jerked through their hands, burning as it pulled.
Cael was thrown up and forward, as dogs who are gored by a boar fly through the air from the boar’s tusks. He landed heavily
on the side of the stream. His shoulders were above the stream and Zel grabbed them and hauled him as they pulled the rope.
As though aware of her for the first time, he rolled to his hands and knees and shuffled himself out of the water, then collapsed
on the ground, his hands shaking as he tried to undo the rope.

There were scratches all over his face and his clothes were ripped across the chest. A long, shallow gash cut across the width
of his body. It looked much like a tusk wound, Bramble thought, widening as it went from a narrow point. He had been very
lucky.

“Are you all right?” Safred called. He nodded and touched his face. Blood was welling in a dozen scratches.

“Uncle? Can you talk?”

“I always told you to get outside and play more when you were little. You should have listened to me and climbed a few trees
while you could because, niece, I think you should climb one now.” Cael was trying hard to speak light-heartedly, but long
tremors wracked him, the aftermath of terror.

“What was it?” Martine asked, but he shook his head, shuddering at the memory.

“Tell me,” Safred said urgently, her eyes intent.

He smiled shakily at her. “At last, I have a secret that you want! But this is not the time, niece.”

“Tell me,” she said again, pleadingly.

He shook his head. “Never mind about it now. Just rig up that rope and hold on tight.”

Safred’s face was a mixture of exasperation and thwarted desire. Bramble realized that knowing things, being
told
things, was as necessary to Safred as breathing. She was called the Well of Secrets because once told, the secrets were never
spoken of again, disappearing as if into a deep well; but she drew those secrets to her more like a whirlpool than a well.
She sucked them in as though they were air to breathe. Martine was staring at Safred, too, as though comprehending the same
thing. She saw Bramble looking at her and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, “Interesting, isn’t it?”

Cael tied off the rope around the pine tree they had used as a pulley and Martine pulled the rest of it back to their side.
She looked doubtfully at the nearest tree. Bramble took the rope from her, exasperated, then took a rein from Zel’s chestnut
and tucked it into her belt.

“Don’t tell me
you
didn’t climb trees when you were a youngling either?” she said as she swung up onto the lowest branch. Fortunately, near
the stream the pine branches grew close to the ground and were relatively easy to climb.

Martine didn’t respond, but Zel answered for her.

“Travelers don’t, mostly,” she said. “You get yelled at if anyone sees you. Sometimes they throw rocks.”

Bramble sniffed. She had been yelled at more times than she could count, climbing other people’s trees, but no one had ever
thrown rocks at her. Because she wasn’t really a Traveler, just Maryrose’s wild little sister. Gods she hated that whole way
of thinking about Travelers! It stank like rotten fish. She put her anger into her climb and ignored the scratches from the
pine twigs and bark. At a point where a branch had broken away, leaving a gap they could swing through, she attached the rope
firmly to the trunk, making sure it was lodged securely on the stub of the branch. The line stretched tight right across the
stream. She would have to bring her legs up at the end, though, to stop them splashing in the water as she landed.

She balanced on the branch below and doubled the rein, then flipped the doubled length over the rope and caught it with her
other hand. She understood the theory. You were supposed to hold on to the rein and your body weight would slide you down
the rope to the other side. From here, the rope looked frayed and the rein too thin. Break your neck, or simply fall into
the stream and be ripped apart by whatever had attacked Cael. She grinned, feeling her blood fizz with the familiar excitement
of danger, and launched herself from the tree.

The rush through the air was dizzyingly fast. Bramble tried to bring her legs up in time so that they did not hit the water
on the far side of the stream, but just as she began to lift them, something invisible grabbed her ankle and yanked. She fell
into the water with a flurry and splash that blinded her.

Scrambling to her feet, she blinked the water from her eyes and found that the something was not invisible after all. It was
a man — no, a woman — no, a
something
almost human which stood, lounging, on the bank, laughing at her dishevelment and her astonishment.

Everything around her had changed, and she was caught in a surprise so profound that it left no room for other emotions.

Movement caught her gaze, and the being on the bank looked with her, still laughing. Fleeing through the trees was a herd
of brown deer, but of a kind she had never seen before, with a broad white stripe down their back and black legs. They bounded
over bushes and fallen trees, through undergrowth which masked the rest of the Forest. What had been pine trees were now elms.
There were birds singing. Thrushes. The stream was narrower, and clearer, the water less brown, the stones rougher under her
feet.

Her companion had a long knife in its hand. A stone knife, the kind that never dulls. It looked sacrificial. As she thought
it, the laughter stopped. The person on the bank looked at her and smiled a kind, terrifying smile. It was thin, and no taller
than she, and beautiful the way a hunting cat is beautiful, the way a hawk is beautiful as it hovers, waiting for the kill.
There were hawk’s feathers woven into its hair, so that she could not tell where the feathers stopped and the hair began,
and its eyes were gold and slitted like a hawk’s. Behind her, the undergrowth rustled and she wondered how many of them there
were, and why she was still alive. Astonishment gave way to acceptance. If it was her time to die, so be it.