Deep Water (2 page)

“Come on, come on, you’re her only hope! Come
on
!” he shouted.

Astonishingly, they responded, letting the momentum of the slope carry them, getting their legs under them by sheer luck and
will, almost falling down the hillside. They left Martine behind.

Then the lights were around him, and people — people leading them to a house and saying things like, “The Well of Secrets
wants you to take the sick lass straight to her!” and “Don’t worry now, she’ll fix her!” and “Someone get Mullet!”

It was disorienting, loud, deeply reassuring. All his senses had come abruptly alive, so that everything registered sharply:
the golden lights and the night chill, the shining eyes of the people milling in a group behind the horses. His own tiredness
washed away in a surge of relief and warmth.

Then there was a house, with wide double doors lit by oil lamps, and an old man waiting for them, so old his back was bent
half over and his eyes were milky with rheum. He helped Ash dismount painfully, who then set to loosen the cloth under Bramble’s
armpits.

“I’m Mullet. She sent me to take care of the horses,” the old man said, and reached for Cam’s leading rein with the assurance
of an ostler. Cam neighed in alarm and threw up her head. Ash couldn’t believe it, but Bramble roused at that and looked at
Mullet closely. He met her eyes and grinned, showing one tooth top and bottom on different sides of his mouth. “She’ll be
right with me, lass,” he said. Bramble nodded and fell off the horse.

Before Ash could move to help, another man was there to catch her and cradle her. Ash assessed him. Tall, very strong, about
fifty, with olive coloring and bright blue eyes, a neat beard that left his cheeks bare. Not a Traveler. He had come out silently,
leaving the door wide open behind him, and now he simply turned and walked back inside with Bramble.

Martine arrived, scrambled off her horse and gave the reins to the grinning old man, who grinned even wider as he saw her
limping. The man carrying Bramble didn’t look back. Ash was annoyed that he and Martine were being ignored, but he reserved
judgment. Saving Bramble’s life was the important thing.

He stayed behind Martine as they went into the house. As they passed the threshold he shuddered, feeling suddenly edgy and
dangerous with it.

“Remember, no killing the Well of Secrets,” Martine said in a whisper, reading his mood as she so often did. “If she’s really
irritating, you can do it later.”

He grinned involuntarily and relaxed a little as they went through the doorway into a room that took up the whole ground floor.
The kitchen hearth was at the back, fire blazing, with a table and chairs before it, and a door near the hearth led to a yard
he could see through a window. There were lamps alight everywhere, making the room as bright as day. At the front was a big
open space with another table covered with a mattress and coverlet. An ordinary mattress, not a featherbed, and a coverlet
of homespun wool dyed dark orange. He had had a coverlet of the same color in his room at Doronit’s, when she first started
training him to be a safeguarder. He was looking at the bed and thinking about coverlets because something in him did not
want to look at the woman who stood on the other side of the table. To speak to her, to deal with her, would change life forever.

Every ounce of Sight in him had reared up and screamed the moment he had walked into the room. It was the first time he admitted
how strong his Sight had become. If it were Sight. He didn’t know if life would be changed for the better or worse. Just that
it would be changed profoundly, irreversibly. The Well of Secrets caught the thought, Ash realized. He had
Seen
her catch it, seen the oddly bright green eyes smile a little, the head tilt up just a fraction, the short sandy eyelashes
flicker.

“Nothing lasts forever, not even change,” the Well of Secrets said directly to him, then she turned to the table where the
man had already laid Bramble. She took a small knife from her belt and cut Bramble’s shirt off, revealing the arm, so swollen
and red that it looked like it didn’t belong to her pale body. The original wound from the wolf claw had almost disappeared
into the swelling. Bramble roused a little and whispered, “If I die, tell my sister. Maryrose. Carlion.”

The Well of Secrets nodded matter-of-factly, and Bramble fainted.

She was deeply unconscious, alarmingly pale, and still beautiful, her upper body covered only by breastbands. Martine glanced
at Ash, clearly wondering how susceptible he would be to this display of female flesh. That annoyed him. He was keeping watch
on both doors and on the big man who had carried Bramble in. He glanced at the Well of Secrets, but turned away immediately.
He couldn’t spare any attention for Bramble. In a strange place, even one that had welcomed them, his safeguarder training
took over. He had to mind their backs. He would think about Bramble being beautiful later — if she lived.

The Well of Secrets took hold of Bramble’s arm and began to sing softly, in the harsh, grating voice of the dead, but modulated
by a living body.
His
voice. Ash whipped around and took a step forward, but the big man put out an arm to bar his way. Ash didn’t notice. All
his attention was on the Well of Secrets, his guts churning with disbelief and a wild hope that, somehow, he was about to
find the answer to his own strange voice. She sang a chant from the burial caves, a lament from beyond the grave, horrible,
spine-chilling, nauseating. As she sang, the flesh on Bramble’s arm cooled, paled. The red streaks, which had stretched threatening
claws up to her shoulder, now shrank back and disappeared.

A part of him almost,
almost,
understood what she was chanting. Stray fragments whipped past him before he could fully grasp their meaning. Something about
coolness, and wholeness… but he couldn’t really understand. What he could feel was the ebb and flow of power. He closed
his eyes, and it was plainer, like water flowing into a stream and being turned back by a strong current. The water flow increased,
but it made no headway. The current was too strong. Ash could feel the sweat break out on his back and forehead. So much power
being poured out. So much that the vessel itself might be emptied, and they would be left with two corpses. Because it wasn’t
working.

Bramble’s breathing stopped.

The Well of Secrets turned sheet-white and staggered. She grabbed on to the edge of the table to stop herself falling. The
man sprang forward to support her. While she stood, breathing fast and weak, the red marks began to creep up Bramble’s arm
again, but the girl lay still as stone.

The healer released herself from the man. She faced the table with determination and placed her hands again on Bramble’s shoulder.

Ash moved forward and stood next to her, and put his own hand over hers. He didn’t quite know why, but he was sure that he
had to do it, sure with Sight and with something more familiar to him than Sight, a fighter’s instinct, solidarity.

This time the Well of Secrets’ song was stronger, like a call to arms. Sweat stood out on her forehead and her hands began
to shake, but she kept singing. The song rose in pitch and loudness until it was painful to hear. Ash began to tremble and
feel weak, but he didn’t know if it were just the noise, or if power was being taken from him.

He closed his eyes and saw that both were true, that it was the song itself that siphoned strength from him. He could feel
himself getting weaker, but he knew that it wasn’t going to work. That Bramble was dead.

The Well of Secrets stopped singing.

Ash almost fainted as the power drained away, and he thought he might topple backward, but then he felt someone giving him
a push in the back to steady him and he stood upright, firm on his feet. A surge of strength went through him and into the
Well of Secrets. She began singing again, louder than before.

Bramble coughed and began to breathe again. Her eyes stayed closed, but she said, “Oh Maryro-ose!” in the voice of a young
girl complaining about having to do something she didn’t want to do — clean up her room, perhaps.

The Well of Secrets began to sing again, her voice dropping suddenly to a whisper, a plea. The wound disgorged a great gout
of pus and then began to close, weeks of healing before their eyes. But it was greater than healing, because the wound itself
disappeared. Then the chant died away and there was no mark on Bramble’s arm, not even a scar to show where she had been wounded.

“She’ll sleep the night through and wake hungry,” the Well of Secrets said, her words blurred with exhaustion. She patted
Ash’s arm in acknowledgment and he almost fell. The big man guided her away, up the stairs. She only came up to his armpit.
Not a tall woman, not beautiful, not commanding or elegant or motherly or any of the things that gave women power of various
kinds in the world. Ordinary, except for those eyes. But there, thought Ash, lay Bramble whole and unmarked. And he himself
was still trembling.

As they reached the bend in the stairs Martine found her voice. “Thank you,” she said, her face showing that she knew the
words were inadequate. The Well of Secrets smiled at her wryly, acknowledging the thought as well as the thanks, and continued
up. The man stayed on the landing, watching until they heard a door close upstairs.

“Most people don’t find their tongue so fast,” he said. “She doesn’t get many thanks.” It was not clear whether he thought
this was a good or bad thing. He came back down the stairs and turned to Ash. “She’s not so good at giving them, either.”

“It wasn’t me,” Ash said. “Something else helped.”

The man looked at him skeptically and shrugged. “I’m Cael,” he said. “You’d be Ash and Martine, yes?”

They nodded. Ash was uncomfortable and wondered instantly what else Cael knew about him. Martine’s mouth was set. She didn’t
like it either. She sniffed, and then motioned to the pool of pus on the coverlet. “I’ll clean that up, if you tell me where
to find water.”

He smiled with his eyes. “Most people don’t think of that, either. Expect it to disappear by enchantment. Don’t worry. There’s
someone paid to clean.” He looked at Bramble. “Do you have another shirt for her?”

“Her pack is on her horse,” Martine answered.

“I’ll get it,” Ash said, and he made for the open door, glad of the excuse to get out of the room, but still having trouble
controlling his legs. Halfway to the door he had to sit down on a bench.

There was a crowd standing just outside. They had clearly been listening and matching. They looked at him with interest and
his cheeks reddened.

“You, Little Vole, go and get the girl’s pack from Mullet,” Cael ordered a young blond boy. The boy ran off and Cael closed
the doors. Ash let himself sit for a moment to recover. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

“They were expecting us to arrive,” Martine remarked.

“She told them to keep the street clear so the horses could get through. She said there was no time to waste.” Cael’s voice
held a slight disapproval.

“We came as fast as the horses could bear,” Martine said. She shifted uncomfortably, aware abruptly of her own chafing and
sore muscles. “And that was a good deal faster than I found comfortable, I can tell you!”

He laughed, a booming laugh as big as the rest of him, and Martine smiled, but she wasn’t as easily distracted as that.

“Are we allowed to know who you are?” she asked.

“I’m uncle to the Well of Secrets.” He used the honorific sarcastically. “Her real name’s Safred. She told me to tell you.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Fools need the mystery. Those who have mysteries of their own need the truth.”

“Did she say that?”

He regarded her quizzically, head on one side and eyes bright.

“Nay. She’s not one for turning phrases. She said other things, though. Like to find you lodgings somewhere cheap but clean,
and look after the horses, and make sure the young lad eats well.”

Martine laughed. “No fear there. He has the appetite of a wolverine.”

The door banged open and the boy, Little Vole, ran in with Bramble’s saddlebags. The men left it to Martine to dress Bramble
in her clean shirt, and when she was ready, Cael picked her up and led the Travelers to their lodging house, around the corner
in the marketplace.

Oakmere was not what Ash had expected. Although there were more inns and lodging houses than you would normally find in a
town of middling size, there were no shanties on the edges, no crowds of beggars targeting new arrivals, no one selling souvenirs
on the street, no one offering to guide them or cure them or sell them an underage daughter, guaranteed a virgin.

Ash walked behind, still guarding their backs. Oakmere had a thriving market, judging by the number of shuttered stalls and
tents. As in Turvite, in Sator Square, the marketplace was alive at night, with eating houses and a few stalls still open.

Two Travelers and a third being carried attracted some attention, but not the black looks he had been braced for, the type
Travelers normally endured in small towns. Here, there was curiosity but no hatred. A couple of stallholders and diners even
smiled at him. It unsettled him more than open hostility would have. He wasn’t used to a world where Travelers were welcomed.

There was a large inn on the southern side of the marketplace, but Cael turned into a much smaller lodging house near it.

Despite Safred’s advice Ash wasn’t interested in finding dinner. They had settled into their room and Bramble was sleeping
deeply on a bed in the corner.

“You heard. She sang with — with the voice of the dead.” He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, his hands hanging.

Martine looked at him with affection and some concern. “Well, she’s a real healer, a prophet, a conduit for the gods.”

“But the voice of the dead! That’s
my
voice, the voice I sing in! Could — could I be a healer, too? She took my strength, she used it.”

“I think you would know by now if you had that gift,” she said gently. “Apart from anything else, I think Doronit would have
found it out.”