Deep Water (13 page)

But at least the trees here were centuries old, and beneath them only ferns grew, and mushrooms, so the going was easy. They
walked the horses under trees so tall that they were unclimbable, so densely leaved that the sun was invisible. The air grew
close and hot, smothering. Bramble found herself becoming more and more tense, ready for an attack that never came.

They reached a stream where she thought they should water the horses, so she dismounted and turned to face the others as they
came up. Then she saw that the attack had been going on all the time. Cael, who had been immediately behind her, was shaking
with pain and weakness, his face clammy white. His shirt was stained with blood. She went to help him down, and he came heavily
into her arms, leaning on her shoulder.

“Why didn’t you
say
anything?” Safred said, helping Bramble to sit him down on the grass. Martine grabbed a cup from her saddlebag. She went
to the stream to get water while Bramble eased the shirt away from the wound. It didn’t look good: red and puffy and still
bleeding sluggishly from the tip.

“The Forest is keeping the wound fresh,” he said. “I can feel it. Nothing to be done.”

Martine came back with the water. “I think it’s safe,” she said. “It doesn’t smell of anything.” Cael drank it gladly and
held out the cup for more.

“If Safred can’t heal him, we’d better get the Forest to do it,” Bramble said. “Wait here.”

She knew what she needed, and the edges of a stream were a good place to find them: feverfew, comfrey, heal-all, greenwort.
It took her only a few minutes to find them all.

When she came back, Martine was tearing up a shirt for bandages and Safred was washing Cael’s wound, but in an unpracticed
way that made Bramble’s mouth twist awry. Never had to learn simple healing, she thought. Just a moment with the gods and
it all went away. Live and learn, cully.

“Make a compress of the heal-all and comfrey,” she said to Safred, handing her the leaves. Bramble picked up the cup and crushed
some of the feverfew leaves into it, then filled it from the stream and set it to steep on the ground beside Cael. “It won’t
be as good as a tisane, but I think we’d better not light a fire here.”

He nodded with an effort.

“It’s an odd wound,” she said. “What made it?”

Safred paused as she wrapped some linen around the plants. Listening hard.

“I cannot name them,” he said slowly. “They were big. Flying. But not birds. Not bats, either. No fur. Huge. Clawed. One almost
took me as a hawk takes a chicken, but I twisted and —” He gestured to his chest. “Then
I
flew, for a moment!” He tried to smile, turning to Zel. “Then this little one dragged me out of there.” She reddened a little
and mumbled something inaudible.

They managed to get Cael back on his horse and he seemed a little better for the feverfew. Bramble gave the rest of the herbs
to Safred and told her to make him a tisane tonight from the feverfew and greenwort.

“I have willow bark,” Martine offered.

“Good. That, too, then. It will help him sleep.”

“How do you know so much about healing?” Safred asked.

Bramble laughed at her. “Safred, almost every woman in the Domains knows what I know. When you have a sick baby or an accident
happens, not everyone can run to the Well of Secrets to be cured!”

Safred flushed and let her horse drop back until she rode next to Cael. Bramble thought she should have felt worse about teasing
her — Safred was genuinely worried about Cael. But she didn’t. She was too caught up in wondering what would happen when they
got to the lake. Surely there would be an altar?

She yearned toward it. She imagined a clearing. The black rock, the familiar presence of the gods. They would be safe there,
and Cael could rest — perhaps Safred would find the strength there to heal him.

The light shifted to gold, even through the oak leaves, and the few shadows there were began to lengthen. The sun was setting.
The land tilted sharply upward. They climbed a ridge and they were at the edge of the trees, as though the Forest had been
cut off abruptly.

Beyond them there was water, surrounded by a ring of oak trees and then grass that sloped steeply up to the edge. After the
darkness of the trees, the water shone brilliantly. Still as ice, it reflected better than any mirror, doubling the rose and
pink and gold of the light, the small reddened clouds, the darkening sky. Not quite a lake but more than a pool, it was perfectly
circular, and it was the strangest thing Bramble had ever seen.

At the margin, instead of mud or reeds or pebbles, a sheer edge rose up out of the ground, so that the whole lake looked like
a big dish which had been almost buried and then filled with water. The edge caught the dying sun and glinted sharply.

In the very center of the water was a small island, with a black rock altar at its heart. Much larger than most altars, Bramble
thought it would be at least chest high on her; perhaps higher. Colored the normal flat matte black, the rock it stood on
gleamed darkly green.

Bramble swung down from Trine and patted her absently, then walked forward over close-cropped grass, down to the water. The
rim around the lake was rock. Or glass. A mixture of both? She had never seen anything like it. A green so dark it was almost
black, on the western side, facing her, it reflected every bit of light from the dying sun. She went closer, carefully, and
squatted down to study it.

The rim came up above her knees, and the level of water within it was higher than the grass outside, as if the lake truly
was a dish. She reached out, waiting to see if the gods would warn her not to touch, but although she could just feel their
familiar presence in her mind, they exerted no pressure on her. The rock was mostly smooth — smoother than river stones, as
smooth as glass — but cut across with rougher streaks like the darker stripes in marble. It narrowed to a thin edge at the
top. She leaned over the edge to look at the inside of the bowl, and found herself staring into water so clear that she could
see her own reflection and the bottom of the bowl at the same time, so that it looked as though she were lying on the floor
of the lake, looking up. Like a water sprite.

That unsettled her. She pulled back and her wrist grazed across the top of the rim. The edge was so sharp that she didn’t
realize she had been cut until the blood started to drip; some on the grass, some on the rock rim, some into the water.

As the first drop hit the lake, a wind seemed to shiver across the surface, ruffling the perfect reflection. Bramble shivered,
too. Whatever this place was, it was not the home of her familiar gods.

“How are we going to get out there?” Martine asked from behind her.

Bramble stood up, wiping the blood on her breeches.

“Look,” she said.

As the sun dropped lower and the reflection paled, they could see that there were rings of rock leading to the island, like
the edge around the lake, just under the surface. They weren’t very thick, but they were each no more than a pace apart.

“Stepping stones?” Martine said doubtfully. “What if we fall?”

Bramble shrugged. “We get wet. And worse, maybe.”

Safred, Zel and Cael joined them. Cael was pale but looked a little better now he was out of the trees. He bent down to peer
at the rock rim.

“Obsidian,” he said.

“Obsidian?” Martine repeated. “This is
Obsidian Lake
?”

“What’s Obsidian Lake?” Bramble asked.

“It’s where the first black rock altar fell from the sky,” she replied, her voice faltering a little. “It’s a place from Traveler
legend. Not a place for people, they say. Only for the gods.”

Martine was hesitant, and that was so unlike her that Bramble frowned.

“But the gods have brought us here, right?” she asked Safred, who nodded.

“Yes. We are where we are meant to be. We must do the work set out for us.” Her certainty reassured them all, but Bramble
made a face.

“You sound like my grandam.”

“I’m sure she was a very wise woman.”

“Wise enough,” Bramble said, “to know the signs of the Spring Equinox.”

“You have a good sense of time,” Safred said thoughtfully. “That may be useful. Perhaps it’s just as well you became the Kill
Reborn instead of the one who was meant to.”

“The one who was meant to?” Bramble felt something tighten in her, but not unpleasantly. It was as though she were about to
have a question answered that she had wondered about for a long time. She didn’t know what the question was; but the answer
was important.

“The gods didn’t tell you?” Safred seemed surprised. “You were supposed to die, you know.”

“At the chasm?” She knew the answer. Of course at the chasm. She relived that moment: the men chasing her, the roan making
that extraordinary, impossible jump, and halfway over, her own fall and the roan’s shift in midair to save her. Then, afterward,
the death-in-life existence she had led. The stonecaster in Carlion had told her — she had died, truly, and her spirit had
left her, but the roan had saved her body. She would still be dead inside, if he had not run so fast in her first Spring Chase
that she overtook the Kill, snatched his banner, and became the Kill Reborn, symbol of new life. Unlike the other Kill Reborns
of history, who just won a race by a big margin, she had been truly reborn.

“Yes,” Safred said. “The gods helped the roan make the jump, not you. The roan should have gone to Beck, so he could become
the Kill Reborn.”

“
Beck
?” The face flashed before Bramble’s eyes — a thin, older man with brown hair and a small beard, the face that had led the
pack which hunted her to the chasm. She remembered, too, the scars and marks on the roan’s hide that Beck had laid there.
“They were going to give him to
Beck
?”

“He was a good rider. Good enough to be a Kill Reborn. He had mixed blood, too, and was certainly a killer. He was suitable
for this task.”

Bramble was furious. “And too bad for the roan, given to a cruel master!”

“Yes,” Safred said quietly. “Too bad for the roan. But the roan loved you and saved you, to have you instead. So we are here.”

“ ‘Love breaks all fates,’ ” Cael quoted, a slight rebuke in his voice. Bramble knew he was trying to turn her anger away
from Safred, and knew that he was right. This wasn’t the Well of Secrets’ fault. Nor, really, was it the gods.’ They were
doing the best they could to restore balance to chaos. It was Saker’s fault, and he would pay.

She scowled, but looked out at the lake, watching as the ripple of wind died away and the surface returned to pure reflection.

“What did you mean,” Martine asked, “ ‘he was certainly a killer’?”

Safred looked at her wryly. “Haven’t you wondered why you were chosen by the gods? It is because you are all killers, and
have deaths to expiate.”

Zel hung her head, but Martine met Safred’s gaze coolly.

“I have killed only where I had no choice, to protect my life or the life of another,” she said. “I have no regret and no
guilt.”

Safred nodded. “That is the attitude of our enchanter,” she said. “It is good that you share it.” Martine went still for a
moment. Safred looked at Zel, then covered Zel’s hand with her own. Zel’s head came up.

“I did what I had to do,” she said. “I must pay for it.” Her mouth was firm and Bramble was reminded even more of Osyth. Zel
was like stone, as Osyth had been, a person who could not be turned from her course by anything.

Then Safred looked at her.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she said. “I don’t think I have reparation to make.”

Safred kept looking at her, drawing her somehow so that all she could see was the bright eyes.

“I was not talking about the warlord’s man,” she said softly. “He was not the only one who died because of you.”

Abruptly Bramble was back in the field outside Pless, the roan’s head in her lap, the stream flowing past them, guilt and
grief and pain pounding her in waves. It had been her fault, and she would live with that forever. She dragged in a deep breath
and pulled herself back to the present. “I have made my apologies for that,” she said angrily. “It has
nothing
to do with you.” She was furious that this — this
woman
would use her love and grief for the roan to manipulate her. Let her rot in the cold hells, she thought. She doesn’t own
me.

“‘No one wilt ever tame thee,’ ” Safred whispered.

Bramble breathed in sharply in shock, then was strengthened by her anger. “Shagging right,” she said. “Get another lackey.”
Then she thought about Safred’s claim that they were there because of being killers. It made some deep sense that she couldn’t
quite puzzle out. If the gods needed a killer, she would be a killer indeed; and Saker would be her victim. “After I do this
thing with Acton,” she said, “can I kill Saker?”

“Who knows?” Safred said wryly. “No one’s told me.”

The black rock stood glinting sharply with light, bright where before it had been dark. It beckoned to Bramble, and to the
others, too, she could tell. Martine shivered whenever she looked at it, and Safred completely avoided looking at it. But
it won’t go away, cully, Bramble thought. Not on your life, or on mine. Or on Maryrose’s.

They had only minutes before it was time to walk out to the altar, but setting up camp seemed too mundane a thing to do when
the lake shimmered in front of them, reflecting the darkening sky, the first evening star.

Bramble looked after Trine, glad to have something to do to keep her mind off those sharp ridges of rock and the clear water
that seemed, somehow, so threatening. Trine was perfectly happy under the trees, but she would not move out onto the short
grass that ringed the lake, and Bramble did not try to persuade her. Cael had already tethered the other horses to a tree.

“I’ll set up camp while you do whatever it is you have to do,” he said.

“When I come back, I’ll try again,” Safred said to him and he nodded before gently shooing her away to join the others.