Deep Water (64 page)

Then he smiled at her, that crooked sideways smile he used for courting, and she realized that she had seen this happen before,
through Red’s eyes — that she was already a part of this time, this history. Relief hit her, but it wasn’t relief that made
her smile back. It was him. His glance seemed to invite her to share joy in the day, the trees, the crispness of the air.
It was a look full of celebration and invitation, and she could not resist it. Any more than any other woman ever resisted
it, she scolded herself, and schooled her face into composure. But he had seen that first, irrepressible reaction, and he
winked at her.

She wanted to pull him down from the horse and shake some sense into him; to take him by those broad shoulders and drag him
away from the path he was riding; to drag him to safety. He was so reckless! To go riding off to who knew where without even
Baluch at his back. She was reckless herself, and she understood why he took risks; had gloried in them with him. But this
time, just
this
time, she desperately wanted him to be careful… If only he had been careful!

He smiled wider at the frown on her face and raised a hand in farewell, then rode on. There was something in the gesture that
implied, “I’ll see you some other time.” The movement cut to her heart and reminded her where he was riding to. She regretted
frowning. The last woman’s face he saw should have smiled at him.

“Are you done?” the hunter asked.

Bramble watched Acton ride into the apron of trees; watched Red leave his position and follow; and watched them both disappear
behind evergreen. She thought of the burial ceremonies of her youth: the pine sprigs placed between the fingers, the Wooding
Voice saying, “In your hands is evergreen; may our memories of you be evergreen.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked
them away.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m done.”

“I must touch you,” the hunter said. She realized that it wanted her to know that it wasn’t attacking her and understood that
it must rarely touch. She reached out a hand, and it took it, its palm dry and rough, like a dog’s paw. They had been through
the shift in time often enough for her to know what to do: she took a step.

Instantly the world shifted and tilted around her. The earth under her feet moved; instead of a slope, she was standing on
level ground. Trees vanished. Buildings appeared. Men, turning, shouting, “Ghosts! The ghosts have come!” They raised weapons
to their shoulders and one ran in and swung straight at Bramble.

“No!” the hunter cried. It leapt in front of her and the weapon — a pickaxe, the end wickedly sharp — pierced its body. It
fell.

“Stop!” Bramble yelled, pushing and shoving the man away. She didn’t even have time to find her knife. She was defenseless.
But the attackers jumped back, as though she had stung them.

“They’re talking! They’re talking! Ghosts don’t talk!” The men started to babble, the one with the pickaxe looking sick. He
sank to his knees, the handle loose in his grasp.

“Gods of cave and dark,” he whispered. “I’ve killed him.”

The hunter was spouting blood from the big vein under the heart. Nothing could stop it, Bramble knew. Except perhaps enchantment,
or the power of the Forest. She looked around wildly, but there were no trees here. They were in a place of gray stone and
nothing else: stone buildings, flagstones, a great gash cut into the side of the hill. A mine. That’s why the men had the
pickaxes ready. They weren’t an army, just men coming home from a shift in the pit.

Bramble gathered up the hunter, supporting its head. “I thought you lived forever,” she whispered.

“In the Forest. As a true hunter. Me, neither, now,” it gasped. It looked at the man who had killed it. “I fear,” it said.
“You must taste the fear and be cleansed.” It dipped one finger in its own blood and held it out to the miner, who stared
at it in confusion.

“That’s not how we do it,” Bramble said.

“No… I remember.” The hunter’s words were coming harder now, and weaker. It coughed; there was blood on its lips. “I
remember… Forgive. I forgive . . .” Its head drooped but it turned its face to the miner. Its voice was hardly audible.
“I forgive and… and release from reparation.”

Bramble was crying. The tears she had held back all these weeks in case they had made her seem afraid were pouring down her
cheeks and dropping onto its face, its hawk-feathered hair, its body.

“Why did you save me?” she said.

“You are
my
prey.” Its voice became stronger for that one sentence, then faded away. “No one but me should kill you.”

“In our next life,” she said, trying not to laugh, because surely there was nothing to laugh at. “I promise. In our next life
you can kill me.”

“Too late,” it said, smiling with an echo of its old joy. The slitted pupil in the hawk eyes narrowed and disappeared until
the eye was entirely golden. Then its flesh grew insubstantial in her hold and vanished away like a water sprite pulled out
of water. The wind blew away only a mist, a scent of pines, a whisper. Bramble bowed her head over her empty hands and wept.

L
EOF TURNED
A
RROW
to the road and trotted sedately into Bonhill like any normal traveler. It wasn’t a large village, but it had an inn. He
called up the ostler and handed Arrow over to her with strict instructions about water, feed and grooming. Before he let her
be led away he patted her and told her how marvelous she was. She knew it — tired as she was, she tossed her head and flirted
with him.

Then he found the innkeeper and ordered a message be sent to… He hesitated for a moment. The enchanter had moved in a
serpentine route. Although finding him had taken many hard riding hours, they were not that far from Carlion. Sendat was further,
but he was sure that Thegan would not want to take the garrison out of Carlion. Two messages, then, one to Sendat and one
to Thegan. While the best horses the inn had — sturdy little cobs which usually pulled the wagon — were being saddled, he
wrote quick notes to Thegan and Sorn.

This was the first time he had written to her, and he reflected that he should take a lesson from the circumstances — the
only communication between them should be like this, an officer’s note to the warlord’s wife. He signed it formally: “Thy
willing servant, Leof son of Eric.” He wrote with truth that he would be her servant, if nothing else.

Sendat was a day’s march away, and they couldn’t wait for the foot soldiers to catch up. He asked her to send the mounted
troops, and to double each trooper with a pikeman. Hard on the horses, but it wouldn’t be a long campaign and the roads were
good.

Thegan had put a lot of silver into repairing roads when he first came to power in Central Domain, as he had done in Cliff
Domain, and for the same reason. The people thought it was to improve trade and connection between towns, but Leof knew it
was in preparation for moments like this, when he needed to move large numbers of men quickly.

Once he had sent the messages and checked on Arrow, he grabbed a piece of cold roast chicken from the flustered cook in the
kitchen and went out the back way, taking a threaded, concealed path to where he had seen the wraiths hover.

Farmland wasn’t ideal for stalking, but Leof had been well trained in scouting and by the time he had finished the chicken
he had managed to worm his way to the side of the hill near the enchanter. He kept well back, away from the circle the wind
wraiths were endlessly tracing above the rise.

He had been half-expecting Thegan to be right: to see the white-haired man from the pool. In any event, he was expecting such
a powerful enchanter to be old. Perhaps very old. But the man who was digging and sorting out the bones he unearthed was around
the same age as Leof: twenty-five, twenty-eight, no older than thirty.

Leof was tempted to simply kill him before he could raise more ghosts. He didn’t look like a warrior — he was tall but had
no muscle, and his mannerisms were nervous. Leof suspected that confronted unexpectedly with a sword, the enchanter would
have no defense.

Two things stopped him. If he failed — if the enchanter had protective spells of some kind, or if the wind wraiths protected
him — Thegan would have lost any chance of surprise. And the other thing: he just didn’t know enough about the spell on the
ghosts. Maybe the enchanter kept them under some kind of control, and if that control disappeared… Leof shuddered at
the thought of the Carlion ghosts let loose on the rest of the Domains.

So he just watched. The enchanter was afraid of the wraiths. Leof had assumed that the wraiths were his servants. But judging
by the looks he cast over his shoulder as he worked, he didn’t trust them anymore than Leof did. They were circling and calling
to each other in a language he had never heard; half wind noise and half speech. Occasionally, they darted at the enchanter
and laughed when he flinched. But they seemed to respect his right to work, and they were interested in what he was doing.

He worked without pause, following a strict routine. He dug a new section, taking the turf off in squares with a sharp spade
and laying it aside, then digging deeper until he found bones. Then he put the spade aside and took up a spoon, loosening
each bone carefully and laying out skeletons. From each skeleton, he took a bone — a fingerbone, usually. He bent his head
over this bone for a moment. Sometimes it was a long moment, sometimes short. After this, he either put the bone and its skeleton
carefully back in the earth and buried it, or he put the bone even more carefully into a sack, and then buried the rest of
the bones. The work was painstaking, and for a while he seemed to become unaware of the wind wraiths.

After a couple of hours, Leof realized that he urgently needed to piss. He eased back from his vantage point, losing sight
of the enchanter, and retraced his path step by careful step until he was hidden in a dense coppice of willow trees and it
was safe to relieve himself. He stood in the green shadow for a while, trying to decide what to do. The enchanter was so caught
up in his work and, from the size of the hill, had a lot more digging to do. Leof decided he was better off going to meet
Thegan and guide him to the spot.

So he left the willows and made for Bonhill, not sure whether he was deserting his post. The wind had risen as the sun began
to lower; every gust or wuther made him look behind him, in case the wind wraiths were following.

T
HERE WERE FAR
too many questions and too much exclaiming and explaining by the miners, particularly explanations to the mine boss, a middle-aged
man named Sami whose brown eyes trusted no one. Sami insisted on knowing who she was and how she had got into the mine.

Bramble was sick of talking, and disconcerted by the appearance of a group of young boys who poked their way in to the center
of the circle and listened, their eyes wide. She bit back a curse as she met the eyes of a pale child surely not more than
nine or ten.

“Enchantment, all right?” she snarled at Sami.

He took a step back and then recovered his authority. “You’ve got no right here.”

“You’ve heard about the ghosts?”

“One of our buyers told us,” Sami confirmed. “The news is all over the Domains.”

Bramble wondered how long it had been in this time since the attack on Carlion; since Maryrose’s death. “How long ago did
it happen?” she asked.

Sami shrugged. “Three, four days. We haven’t heard anything else yet.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have the time
or
patience. “My sister was killed there.”

There was silence. Bramble used the moment of shock to take charge. “I need to find the animal cave,” she said, gesturing
to the mine. “There’s something in there that we need to defeat the enchanter who set the ghosts on Carlion.”

“Are you an enchanter, too?” The miner who had killed the hunter stepped forward, his pickaxe still in his hand. She could
see that he wanted to feel justified; to not be guilty of murder. He didn’t look like a murderer: he was strong enough, but
his face was gentle and his voice quiet. She felt sorry for him. If she had heard the stories about Carlion and then had seen
two figures appear out of nowhere, what would she have done?

She shook her head. “No, it was the hunter who had the power, not me. I’m just ordinary.”

They looked skeptical, and she supposed she didn’t blame them. But she was wound up with tension and grief and purpose, and
she couldn’t baby them.

“I need the animal cave,” she said again. “Then we might be able to stop the bastard who raised the ghosts.”

“Why should we trust you?” Sami asked.

“Oh, shag it, I haven’t got time for this.” Bramble drew her belt knife, grabbed Sami by the collar and put the knife to his
throat. She was faster than she had been, she thought. Hunting every day had made her more dangerous. She grinned at his frantic
eyes, pretending to enjoy his fear. Her stomach roiled in disgust.

“Because I could kill you right now. But I won’t.” She let him go, and only then thought of the right thing to say. “Because
the Well of Secrets sent me.”

These were truly powerful words. Each man there relaxed, as though everything had been explained.

“What animal cave?” the miner asked.

“The cave with the animal drawings on the wall, from the very old times,” Bramble explained. “The aurochs, and the elk and
deer.”

The miners exchanged glances and shook their heads.

“Never seen ought like that,” one said. “What about you, Medric?”

The miner pushed out his lip and shook his head, too. “No,” he said. “I don’t know it.”

Bramble felt her guts cramp. The cave
had
to be there. She had been sure the miners would have found it.

“There’s another cave,” she said. “I could find my way from there . . .” She looked up at the mountainside, trying fruitlessly
to spot any familiar landmarks. She had seen this mountainside only a few moments ago, as Acton rode up. Surely she could
remember? That big peak, yes, but that was miles away… a thousand years of mining had altered the side of the mountain
beyond recognition. The area where Dotta’s cave had been — that was where the entrance to the mine was. Inside were not caves
but tunnels, wide enough for carts to be pushed up and down.