Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  Copyright © 2008 by Pamela Freeman

  Excerpt from Black Ships copyright © 2008 by Jo Wyrick

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the

  U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or

  by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: November 2008

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-07343-1

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  The Well of Secrets

  Ash

  Saker

  Leof

  Bramble

  Zel’s Story

  Leof

  Saker

  Ash

  Bramble

  The Hunter’s Story

  Leof

  Saker

  Bramble

  Leof

  Ash

  Flax’s Story

  Bramble

  Saker

  Martine

  Bramble

  Asa’s Story

  Ash

  Martine

  Leof

  Bramble

  Ash

  Bramble

  Leof

  Ash

  Bramble

  Martine

  Bramble

  Dotta’s Story

  Ash

  Auroch’s Story

  Leof

  Bramble

  Martine

  Ash

  Saker

  Leof

  Ash

  Bramble

  Uen’s Story

  Leof

  Bramble

  Ash

  Martine

  Bramble

  Leof

  Bramble

  Martine

  Leof

  Ash

  Bramble

  Martine

  Apple’s Story

  Leof

  Ash

  Leof

  Saker

  Martine

  Bramble

  Martine

  Ash

  Bramble

  Leof

  Bramble

  Medric’s Story

  Martine

  Ash

  Leof

  Bramble

  Saker

  meet the author

  A Preview of Black Ships

  “So,” Bramble said, “let me see if I understand you.

  I have to go to a lake somewhere, use the brooch in some way you don’t understand to do something you don’t understand to find out the death place of the biggest bastard who ever lived, who died a thousand years ago and whose bones may be irretrievably lost and who is unlikely to want to help us anyway.”

  The silence was heavy with antagonism. Bramble and Safred stared at each other.

  “It’s the only way,” Safred said at last.

  “Hmm,” Bramble said.

  Safred looked at her. “There is a risk… some who take such journeys do not come back.”

  Bramble bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m good at coming back.” And then she would go to Carlion and find the enchanter and kill him.

  Praise for Blood Ties

  “Freeman shies away from simplistic morality, building elegantly well-rounded characters.” — Publishers Weekly

  “Freeman has crafted a rich and magical world where insurgency is definitely brewing.” — Romantic Times

  BY PAMELA FREEMAN

  The Castings Trilogy

  Blood Ties

  Deep Water

  Full Circle (2009)

  To Stephen and Robert

  The Well of Secrets

  “THE DESIRE TO know the future gnaws at our bones,” said Safred, the Well of Secrets. “Or so a stonecaster told me.”

  Her uncle Cael grunted and kept cutting up the carrots. Carrots, beets, onion and garlic, lemon juice and oil. Delicious.

  “Are you going to bake that?” Safred said hopefully. She wasn’t fond of salad, but Cael loved it.

  Cael grinned at her. “The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones.”

  She laughed, then sighed.

  “They’re coming. Send out the word. The girl is badly hurt.” She paused. “They may not get here in time. It will be difficult.”

  “Don’t tire yourself out.”

  “You’d rather I let her die? Besides, you’ll like her, this Bramble. She’s contrary.”

  He grimaced at her but went out to the street to spread the word, as she had instructed. The Well of Secrets sat for a few moments more, wondering if she had the strength to bring the Kill Reborn back from her second death. The gods were silent on the matter, although she had asked them, a thing she rarely did. Prophecy was all very well, but sometimes things came to a tipping point, where the future could go either way, or they came to a person who held the future in her hand, and this was such a time and Bramble such a person. If the Kill Reborn lived… if the girl Bramble survived… which was more important? Safred thought that not even the gods knew. What would happen in the next day would shape the future of the Domains, perhaps of the world, and Safred was as blind to it as — as Cael was.

  “Gnaws like a rat,” she said, and laughed so that she would not cry.

  Ash

  “ASH! CATCH HER!” Martine shouted.

  Ash moved by instinct, kicking his horse toward Bramble’s as she swayed and slid sideways, her eyelids fluttering. He grabbed her awkwardly, her shoulder hitting his and almost pushing him out of his saddle. He gripped with his knees, but that was a mistake, because the horse — what was its name? Cam? — took that as a signal to go faster. They started to pull away from Bramble’s horse, with Bramble still half out of the saddle and Ash’s reins caught up underneath her back. She was not quite a dead weight, and she struggled weakly, as though she thought Ash was trying to pull her off the horse. Her skin was as hot as though he were holding a cup of fresh cha.

  Bramble’s horse blew out through her nose in disgust and stopped dead, and Ash’s horse stopped with her. They were still badly aligned, but now he could hoist Bramble back onto her seat. He brushed her wounded arm as he steadied her, and she made a sound halfway between a moan and a scream, and fainted truly.

  He managed to push her so that she fell forward, over her horse’s neck. The arm that the wolves had savaged dropped and hung straight, and Ash could see for the first time just how swollen it was. The sleeve of her shirt, even pulled back as it was, cut deep into the puffy red flesh.

  The wound, made by a wolf’s claw, was starting to smell, the unmistakable sweet smell of decay.

  Martine smelt it too. “The Well of Secrets is her only hope of keeping that arm,” she said. “We’ll have to ride faster.”

  They used a shift of Martine’s to lash Bramble to the neck of her horse. Ash was nervous as he did it, because Trine had already tried to take a few bites out of him, but this time she waited patiently, occasionally turning her head to nose at Bramble’s good shoulder.

  Then they rode.

  They had sighted Oakmere, where the Well of Secrets lived, from the top of the Golden Valley mountain pass just before sunset, and the town had seemed only an hour or so riding away. Ash had th
ought they would have plenty of time to reach it before the northern twilight ended. But as they went down into the valley, and then up the hill and down into the next valley, and the next, they realized that they had been deceived. They had stopped to rest the horses at a stream that flowed icy cold down from the mountains, but they didn’t dare take Bramble off Trine in case they couldn’t put her on again. They managed to get her to drink a little water, and Martine made a cold compress for the arm, but it was clearly useless.

  “I don’t know how fast we can go without risking the horses,” Ash said with frustration.

  “The horses can be sacrificed if necessary,” Martine replied.

  Ash’s mouth twisted wryly. “As long as you tell her it was your decision!” he said. He had met Bramble only that morning, but he knew already that her horses were like gold to her — no, not gold, but something more precious. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her one of them was dead.

  Martine returned the half smile. “That’s fair. Let’s go.”

  Even tied on, Bramble swayed in the saddle. By sunset, she was delirious, muttering about guilt and death and someone called Leof who had let her go from somewhere, against orders. “Shagging pine trees!” she said suddenly, clearly, then moaned. Ash felt embarrassed and guilty, as he had when Doronit had made him listen to the secrets of the dead, back in Turvite. He tried not to listen, but his horse worked best with Trine, so he rode next to Bramble, supporting her, and he felt every word as well as hearing it.

  Martine took their reins and led them both, to leave Ash’s hands free. He trusted her to find the road and set the pace. All his attention spiraled down to Bramble. He was determined to save her. He had killed a warlord’s man to protect her, back in the Golden Valley, and he didn’t want that death to be for nothing. If Bramble lived, he would feel better about killing the man Sully. If she died — he didn’t want to think about the waste of two lives, so he rode and rode and supported Bramble and prayed to the local gods.

  The ride turned into a rhythm of canter and rest and canter. He was blind to the spring beauty of the mountains; deaf to the wind and the birds and the constant, rushing sound of the streams. All he knew was Bramble’s back under his hands, his own back screaming in protest at the unnatural pose, his breath and the horses’ drowning out hers. She was breathing in feeble gasps, as though each breath hurt.

  Every hill forced her back in the saddle until she was supported only by the cloth under her armpits and by Ash’s hands. Every downslope sent her sliding toward Trine’s head, rubbing the inflamed arm and shoulder and making her cry out. She roused sometimes and blinked vaguely at Ash. He got her to drink whenever he could, but finally she didn’t even react when her arm hit the saddlebow.

  Ash raised his head and stared at Martine in despair. “She’s dying,” he said.

  He became aware that it was growing dark. They had ridden through the long hours of twilight and into the night. The horses were laboring up another slope, a zigzag path that led to a high ridge. They were exhausted. Ash became abruptly conscious of the pain in his legs and back. His own tiredness almost overwhelmed him.

  “It can’t be far now,” Martine said, but her tone was doubtful. She looked pale and her face showed more lines than usual. She eased her backside in the saddle and winced. “Let’s hope she can cure saddle sores as well,” she said.

  It was a good try at a joke, but Ash was too tired to laugh. They plodded up the rise, sure that there would be nothing but another empty valley in front of them.

  There were lights. Below them in the valley, there were lights beginning to shine. One by one they sparked up, flaring gold and white and yellow until the valley seemed carpeted with stars.

  Ash tried to say something, but his mind refused to work.

  Bramble breathed more harshly.

  “That’s the beginning of the death breathing. It will get louder, and then the rattle will start,” Martine said, her voice tight. “Go! Go! There’s still a chance!”

  They set the horses at the downslope as fast as they dared. Then, Ash gritted his teeth, took the reins back from Martine, and urged Cam and Trine even faster. If the horses broke a leg, so be it. Bramble’s breathing was coming slower and louder. He put his head down and pushed the tired horses to their fastest pace. They couldn’t do it for long, but he spoke to them, as he had heard Bramble doing back in Golden Valley.

  “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 hea
d 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.