Deep Water (3 page)

Ash flinched slightly at Doronit’s name. She had trained him as a safeguarder, and he had planned to make his living that
way since those were the only skills he had mastered, but now he had to ask, what was he? A healer? An enchanter? Or just
someone with a bit of Sight that the Well of Secrets could use?

Martine reminded him, “The Well of Secrets said you had to eat.”

“But why?” His voice rose like a young boy’s and he flushed. Any message from Safred sounded portentous, threatening who knew
what.

“I think just because she foresaw that you would be… overset a little, and wanted you to settle down.”

“Does that mean she saw what I’d do?”

Martine shook her head. “No. I’m sure of that. She was surprised when you stepped forward. I don’t think she’s used to getting
help, especially strong help.”

He reddened and bent to fumble at his bootstrap to conceal it.

“Come downstairs and eat,” Martine said as though she hadn’t noticed.

The smell of fish frying was coming up from the kitchen. Saliva flooded into his mouth and he was suddenly hungry.

“I’m ravenous. Come and eat,” she said again, and this time he came.

It was full dark as they sat down to the table in the kitchen below, and the other lodgers had eaten long ago. But the woman
of the house served them, a young, squint-eyed red-head called Heron, wearing the brooch that widows in the Last Domain were
given a year after their husband’s death.

Heron sat down with them after she served their meals, with a cup of cha warming her hands. Ash ate without paying attention,
food to mouth without looking and without tasting.

“Heron,” Martine said. “That’s an unusual name for a red-head. And we met a blond Vole earlier.” Ash was curious about that,
too, but he hoped the woman wouldn’t take offense.

“A lot of us in the Last Domain have Traveler names now,” Heron said easily. “I was named Freyt, but my parents learned Valuing
a good twenty years ago and they renamed me.”

Martine showed her surprise.

“You didn’t know?” Heron said, surprised in turn. “We’re most of us Valuers hereabouts. It’s why she’s safe here. She’s one
of us, you know. Raised as a Valuer, for all her father was a warlord.”

They nodded. All the Domains knew that the father of the Well of Secrets had been a warlord, although rumor varied about who,
exactly. More than one warlord had smiled when he was asked. None of them wanted to deny it, even those who were reputedly
happily married at the requisite time.

Ash realized this explained the strange normality of Oakmere. Only in a Valuer town would the extraordinary powers of a Well
of Secrets be housed in an ordinary house. Only in a Valuer town would a true prophet have to pay to have her cleaning done.
Because in Valuer philosophy no one person was fundamentally more important than another. All lives Valued equally. Even Travelers.
To show they believed it, Valuers took Traveler names. In a Valuer town, charlatans and treasure-seekers would find little
to pick over, because Valuers were rarely rich. The rich had no time for a way of thinking that meant they were no better
than the nightsoil collector. What was the point of being rich, if that were so?

Martine was smiling and gestured at her bag of stones to thank Heron for her explanation. “I could cast for you, if you like.”

Heron shook her head. “Safred will tell me if there’s anything I really need to know. But I give you thanks for the offer.”
She collected the empty plates and went out to the scullery, leaving them to contemplate life in a town where their only valuable
skill was considered worthless.

Martine shrugged and smiled at Ash. “Maybe I’ll have to learn to cook at last,” she said to him.

He looked at her blankly, realizing that he had heard the conversation, but had immediately forgotten it. His mind was still
full of the ebb and flow of strange powers; he wondered if he would ever feel such strength again.

Martine sighed. “Come on, then. Time for bed.”

Ash lay in bed, looking up at the dark ceiling, and went over the healing again in his mind. He had done nothing, he realized.
He had just stood there and let his strength be used. Just like he had let Doronit use him. It was why he had left her, because
all she wanted to do was use his strength for death and destruction. But she had used him easily before that, because he had
felt he had nowhere else to go, nothing to offer the world. She had used him again and again, and he had let her, out of fear
and desire and a terror of being cast out into the world on his own. It wasn’t like his parents had wanted him. A singer who
couldn’t sing, a musician who couldn’t play — what use was he to his parents, who were consummate performers? That was an
old grief, and he forced it away by thinking of that moment when strength had flowed out of him to Safred.

Was that all he was good for? Giving his strength away to others — to women? The thought profoundly disturbed him, but he
couldn’t find an answer. He tried to feel again the power Safred had so easily drawn from him, but had no sense of it within
him. Perhaps she had drawn it all away. Or perhaps she had emptied him temporarily and when he was recovered, he would be
able to find it again.

He slept uneasily and dreamt of a tall red-headed woman standing in a doorway, nodding encouragingly at him.

O
H, IT WAS
so easy! There were so many bones here, and not buried, just thrust into the cave like garbage, and the stone rolled across
the cave mouth to keep down the smell. No laying out, no ceremony. There had been no sprigs of pine between these fingers,
no rosemary under their tongues. Hundreds of bones, hundreds of skulls. So many names responding to his call.

He had an image, suddenly, of massacre sites like this one, scattered the length and breadth of the Domains. It had taken
a thousand years, but Acton’s people had killed, and killed, and killed again, until they owned the whole of the country,
from cliff to cove, from sand to snow. His own village had been the last to live freely in the old way, and the last to be
slaughtered. No doubt the invaders had thought themselves safe, then, thinking they had killed the last of the pure old blood.
But they had overlooked him, and now he would bring about their ruin.

Saker looked greedily at the bones before him. Here was an army indeed, if even a fraction of those slaughtered by the invaders
had stayed in the dark beyond the grave, yearning for revenge. He would give it to them, full measure and spilling over. They
would take back their birthright and the land would flourish under its rightful owners. The people of the old blood — 
his
blood — would live in freedom again, and he would be responsible.

To raise the ghosts of the dead, he needed to know their names. He had brought the skull of the man Owl from Spritford in
case he could not See the names of the dead here, but that was not necessary. He could feel the presence of spirits already,
and he was sure he would be able to sense them respond as he called a litany of Traveler names.

He placed Owl’s skull at the entrance to the cave anyway. The man deserved to be recalled from death, and he was a good leader.
Saker tolled the names with glee: “I seek justice for Owl, Juniper, Maize (he thought briefly of his Aunty Maize, cut down
by the warlord’s man), Oak, Sand, Cliff, Tern, Eagle, Cormorant . . .” So close to the sea there were lots of seabird names,
and even fish: Dolphin, Cod, Herring . . .

At almost every name there came the
flick
in his mind which meant that someone of that name was buried here, and in one out of ten a picture came to his head: men,
women, grammers, granfers, all ages and conditions, with nothing in common but the fact that they were here, and angry. All
of them, angry, and here in spirit, ready to take revenge for their deaths. It was the dark of the moon and he had used no
light; they would be invisible to the inhabitants of the town below them. The brick houses of the harbor town looked more
formidable than they really were. They would be upon the sleeping usurpers before they realized what was happening.

“I seek justice for Oak and Sand and Herring and all their comrades.”

Saker paused. He could feel their anger, the desire for revenge, building beneath him, here on the hillside overlooking the
harbor. It was dangerous, that anger, to him as well as to the invaders. He remembered when the ghosts of Spritford had met
two Travelers at the river. For a moment, there, he had feared that they would strike down the Travelers, not recognizing
their own. They had not. But because this was a night attack, when Traveler and invader would look alike, sound alike in the
dark, he had made precautions. He entered the new part of the spell.

“I seek recompense for murder unjust, for theft of land, for theft of life; revenge against the invaders, against the evil
which has come of Acton’s hand… let no Traveler blood be spilled, let no brother or sister fall by our hands. Listen
to me, Owl and Oak and Sand and Herring and all your comrades. Taste my blood and recognize it: leave unharmed those who share
it with me and with you.”

The spirits of the dead were listening. The rest of the spell wasn’t in words, but images in his mind, complex and distressing.
Colors, phrases of music, the memory of a particular scent, the sound of a scream… When he had gathered them all he looked
down at the skulls. He pressed the knife to his palm then drew it down hard. The blood surged out in time with his heart and
splashed in gouts on the bones. He flung his arm wide so that the blood touched as many bones as possible.

“Arise, Oak and Sand and Herring and all your comrades,” he commanded. “Take your revenge.”

This time, he had a sword ready to give Owl, symbolically making him the leader. The other ghosts accepted it. They looked
to Owl immediately, and he pointed with his sword toward the sleeping town, his face alight with anticipation. Then he began
to run toward the houses, and the others raced after him, each of them holding whatever weapon they had died with: scythe,
hoe, knife, sickle. Not soldiers’ weapons, but deadly enough.

Saker watched, smiling, as they streamed down the hill, toward Carlion, and then he went to follow.

L
EOF WAITED IN
the cold before dawn for the signal to attack, hidden in the trees, calming his horse with a pat now and then. The still
water of the Lake hid nothing, as Lord Thegan had said. Leof was sure that his lord must be right. The tales were nothing
more than Lake people subterfuge.

“Perhaps there is a tricksy spirit,” Thegan had told his men the night before. “Or perhaps the Lake People have some slight
enchantment to call up illusions to frighten the cowardly. But remember, it is no more than illusion. It cannot be that the
Lake has any real power.”

He was reassured remembering those words, spoken with the confidence which inspired others. It was no wonder his men had followed
Thegan here to the Lake so willingly. They believed everything Thegan said: that the people of Baluchston were strangling
trade between the Domains by charging exorbitant prices for ferrying goods and people across. And there was no real reason
a bridge couldn’t be built, that Baluchston was just using old stories about the Lake so it could keep its monopoly. Old stories,
and their mysterious alliance with the Lake People. An alliance which needed to be broken, so Baluchston could be taught a
lesson.

The fact that, if Thegan took over Baluchston — a free town, for Swith’s sake! — he would hold the entire center of the Domains,
from Cliff to Carlion’s borders, was never mentioned, but the men weren’t fools. They knew and they approved. Their lord
should
be the most powerful in the Domains. They were sure he deserved it, and so did they. His power would be their power, and
they would swagger and bask in it.

Leof checked the horizon again, but there were only whispering reeds and, far off, the sky starting to pale as dawn approached.

Thistle moved restlessly and Leof murmured softly to her. A good horse, Thistle, though not a chaser. He had left his chaser
mare, Arrow, back at the fort.

Thoughts of Arrow inevitably made him think about Bramble; about their first race against each other, he and Arrow against
her and her roan gelding; about the night that followed in his bed at the inn. That led him to memories of losing her, and
losing her twice, when he had set her free to find her own way out of Thegan’s territory, against the express orders of his
lord. His unease over his disloyalty made Thistle shift beneath him, and he thought again of Arrow, burying memories of Bramble
as deeply as he could.

When foot soldiers went against horsemen, they aimed to bring the horse down first, then deal with the rider. He had no mind
to lose Arrow to a stray arrow or a spear thrust. His lord had scolded him about leaving her behind, but in that friendly,
jovial way that meant he should not take it seriously. Leof had almost brought her, even so. Anything to show Thegan that
he was loyal.

As though the thought had triggered it, the signal to advance rang out, a long horn call that echoed strangely through the
pine trees. Leof urged Thistle forward, followed by the small squad of horsemen and the much larger group of archers and pikemen
that Thegan had put under his command. Their task was simple: the horsemen were to secure the shore of the Lake so that the
archers could shoot flaming arrows into the reeds. Then the whole troop would protect the area until the reeds had burned
down to the waterline and the Lake was exposed. Thegan had placed bands all around the perimeter of the Lake, in both Central
and Cliff Domains. His aim was to lay bare the secret lairs of the Lake People, the hidden islands where they were protected
from attack. With the reed beds empty, Thegan would be able to see right across the Lake, into the heart of its mystery.

Leof gave his men hand signals, but they weren’t really needed. These were experienced men, at least half of them from the
Cliff Domain, most of whom had fought with him on past campaigns. Thegan had mixed the Cliff men up with the Centralites,
putting battle-hardened men side-by-side with those who had never fought, “to make sure no one panics when the arrows start
flying,” he said, and Leof had nodded. That had been the moment when Thegan had forgiven him and started treating him again
as a trusted officer. Thegan had smiled at him for the first time since he had stopped Thegan’s archer from shooting Bramble
in the back as she escaped from Sendat and said, “Just as well I have experienced officers, too,” and clapped him on the back.
The relief had been enormous.