Then she sat up, regaining her confidence, turning to speak to Ash. “After Bramble finds Acton’s death place, you and she can go to find the bones together.”
“Did the gods say that, too?”
“No, but isn’t it obvious?” Safred was becoming annoyed. She wasn’t used to people questioning her.
Ash shook his head. “No. I have to go somewhere else first.”
“Where?”
He just stared at her. “Set a meeting point,” he said. “I’ll join you later.”
“You must be at the lake, to give the brooch to Bramble at the right time!” Safred insisted.
Ash wondered why Safred didn’t simply take the brooch from the table.
Safred flushed. “To be used, the brooch must pass from its rightful owner to the Kill Reborn in the right time and place,” she insisted.
Ash nodded, picked up the brooch and weighed it in his hand for a moment. Then he held it out to Martine. Her lips twitched, but she took it respectfully enough.
“I give you this brooch,” Ash said. “You are now the rightful owner.”
Martine nodded and slipped the brooch in her pocket. Safred frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, but Ash forestalled her, as though everything had been settled.
“If I’m Traveling alone… I don’t really know how to look after a horse,” he said to Bramble.
“Take Flax or Zel,” she said. “They’ll know more than I do. They’re Gorham’s children.”
Ash had no idea who Gorham was, but the dark-haired girl’s head came up.
“Flax stays with me,” she said. “We’ll both go.”
There it was, a flat statement leaving no opening for discussion. Stone. But Ash was stone, too. He had to be.
“No. You can’t come. I’ll go alone.”
Safred looked curiously at Ash, her eyes unfocused. Ash suspected she was listening to the gods. If so, they didn’t tell her anything she wanted to hear. Her face tensed.
But she put her hand over Zel’s.
“We have need of Flax. He should go with Ash.”
“I look after him.” Zel’s voice was almost pleading.
“Yes,” Safred said. “Perhaps it is time to share that privilege.”
Zel’s eyes were dark with internal struggle. Safred patted her hand gently.
“You have done enough.” Again, there was a layer of meaning that Zel seemed to understand.
“I’m a safeguarder,” Ash reminded them. “He can look after the horses, and I’ll look after him.”
Zel stared at him intently, trying to read his soul. “Do you promise to look after him? As though he were your own brer?”
Ash nodded. “I promise.”
Zel let out a long breath. “All right then. He can go.”
“Anybody planning to ask Flax what he thinks?” Ash asked.
Safred looked startled, which was satisfying. Ash was tired already of people who arranged other people’s lives as though they were gods themselves.
But Zel laughed bitterly. “Oh, he wants to go,” she said.
It was true. Flax’s eyes were alight. No surprise, Ash thought. What boy wouldn’t rather travel with another young man than with his sister?
“We must decide where to meet,” Safred said. “But I think, not now. Tomorrow, at the altar for the dawn prayers. Let the gods guide us.”
Ash felt a little uncomfortable at the thought, remembering two black rock altars — the one in Turvite, where the gods had called to him, and the one at Hidden Valley, where they had commanded him to come here, at this time. Or perhaps they had set the time so he could save Bramble’s life by killing the warlord’s man, Sully. The thought of Sully pierced him with regret. He hadn’t meant to kill; his training had taken over. He hadn’t been able to stay, as he should have, and attend the quickening of Sully’s ghost. He should have been there, three days later, waiting, ready with his knife, to admit his guilt, cut his own flesh and offer blood to Sully’s ghost as reparation for his death. He sat for a moment at the table as the others got up. To lay one ghost to rest, that he understood. That was personal, immediate, necessary. But to lay an army of ghosts, who had died perhaps a thousand years before… he shook his head and pushed back from the table, following the others toward the door. He couldn’t imagine how that might work.
Flax was cock-a-hoop as Bramble led him and Ash to the stables so that she could check on the horses and introduce him to Cam and Mud. She wouldn’t dare lend Ash Trine, she said. Besides, she liked the cross-grained animal the best.
Flax chattered happily about getting back on the Road. “I can’t stand it in towns,” he said. “They close in around me.”
“Me too,” Bramble said. “You’ve always Traveled?”
He nodded. “When our mam and da Settled, Zel and I took the Road together. Six years ago now.”
Ash revised his estimate of Flax’s age upward. He had to be at least seventeen, although he talked like a much younger boy.
Flax knew horses, all right, and he soothed them with his voice. Bramble relaxed about letting her precious horses go to someone else. After he had finished grooming them, Flax left with a cheerful “Wind at your back!”
After that, Bramble spent some time with Mud and Cam, teaching Ash about their grooming and feeding, telling the horses that she was sure they would meet again. Of course they would. They nuzzled her and whickered gently as though trying to comfort her against the coming separation — until Trine got jealous and nipped them away from her. She laughed, and dusted her hands off. She seemed revived by her contact with the animals, but she still looked very tired.
“Enough for one day,” she said. She turned to Ash and raised her eyebrows. “Have you wondered, if we’re going to lay all these ghosts to rest, who’s going to give the blood the ritual needs?”
He had wondered. To set a murdered ghost to rest, the killer had to acknowledge guilt and then offer his own blood to the ghost. Ash shivered, remembering the touch of ghostly tongues on his own flesh, when he had offered his blood as reparation to two men he had killed — men, he reminded himself, who had been trying to kill Martine. No need to feel sorry for those two. But the ritual was specific. Each ghost needed blood. Although, he remembered, those ghosts had refused blood from Martine. “Blood’s just a symbol,” they had said. “Didn’t you know?”
There was too much they didn’t know, he thought, and that might be the death of them all.
After dinner at Heron’s, he went out to the garden behind the house for a breath of air, then stayed, sitting on a bench, looking up at the clear sky. A big lilac bush shed its petals over him as the night breeze stirred its branches. The scent reminded him of another night, camping by an abandoned house whose garden was full of lilacs. His father had taught him the love counting song that night:
There are ten white flowers my lover gave to me
Here are the petals of those sweet sweet peas:
Honesty
That’s one!
Verity
That’s two!
Poetry
That’s three!
And Lo-o-ove
Ch: Love can’t be counted
Love can’t be caught
Love must be given
Never sold or bought
It was a sugary, sentimental song and he’d never liked it, but his father, Rowan, had enjoyed playing it on the flute, giving it lots of trills and flourishes. Ash didn’t want to think about his father, so he concentrated on identifying the northern stars he had heard about but never seen before. There was the white bear, there was the salmon… a noise behind him made him spin around, knife springing from his boot to his hand as if it had a life of its own.
Martine stood there, holding a cup of cha, her pale face showing clearly in the moonlight but her eyes unreadable. She raised an eyebrow at the knife.
“If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d have been dead long since,” she said.
He flushed. He was so on edge that he
’d almost welcome a good fight. “Sorry. But… I don’t like it here much.”
“Mmm. It’s not a comfortable time, I’ll give you that.” She smiled suddenly. “Have a cup of cha, lad.”
He took the cup with as good grace as he could and Martine sat down beside him, bringing her feet up to sit cross-legged.
“Do you want to tell me where you’re going?” she asked.
He paused, not entirely sure what to say. “To find my father,” he said finally.
“Do you know how to find him?”
He looked down at the cha and nodded. “I know where he’ll be at this time of year.”
“You’re going to Gabriston?” Martine asked carefully.
His head whipped up in astonishment. She should not know. No woman should know.
“How . . .?”
Martine shrugged. “I’m a stonecaster. We get to know lots of things we shouldn’t.”
He relaxed a little, but he was worried, all the same. He didn’t know how much she knew, and so couldn’t risk talking about any of it. He thought, instead, of the fact that his father had not taught him all the songs. Not all.
After so long away from his parents, after so much doubt and betrayal with Doronit, after taking on responsibility from the gods, who would have thought two words could hurt so much? They knifed into Ash’s stomach, into his heart. It had been the one certainty of his life, that his father had trusted him with all the songs, all the songs, so they could be preserved as they should be, voice to voice.
How could he go back and ask? If his father had wanted him to know — had trusted him — he would have taught him the songs already.
“How are you planning to pay your way?” Martine asked.
He’d been worried about that, too. He had nothing — and the only thing he owned of value, the brooch, had been commandeered.
“I thought, Cael might . . .”
“I’m not sure they have much to spare themselves,” she said thoughtfully. “I think you might need these.”
She pulled a pouch out of her pocket. For a wild moment, he thought she was giving him her own pouch of stones, but then he saw it was the stones she had taken from the stonecaster’s son last autumn. It seemed like years ago that they had helped the stonecaster’s ghost to find rest. He had made the new pouch for these stones himself last winter, sitting by the fire at Elva and Mabry’s, the month before their baby was born. Just the thought of little Ash warmed him. Having a namesake who was being raised Settled, a loving family around him, strong walls to protect him, made Ash feel stronger himself. Older and more competent. Not enough to make him take the stones, though.
“You’ll know them,” Martine reassured him. “They speak loudly, at first. They want to be known. And remember, just answer whatever question you’re asked. Don’t make my mistake and tell people more than they ask for.”
“I’m not a caster,” he said hastily.
“You could be. You have the Sight. You know it.”
He didn’t know. Just suspected. He didn’t want to know. He was strange enough already; able to see ghosts, to compel them to speak, speaking himself with the voice of the dead. Having the Sight would just make him even odder.
“Stonecasters aren’t thought of as freaks, you know,” Martine said, seeming to read his thoughts as she so often did. “We’re just part of the furniture of the world, really.”
He laughed unwillingly. It was true, stonecasters were accepted everywhere. When she offered him the pouch, his hand seemed to rise of its own accord to take it.
The heavy softness of the leather, the stones within it, fit into his palm as though he had held it a thousand times before.
“So,” Martine said. “So.” She sounded disappointed, and reached to take the pouch back.
“What?” Ash said, startled. His fingers tightened on the pouch. Martine paused.
“They are not in harmony,” she said.
He had no idea what she was talking about. She was surprised in turn.
“You can’t hear them?”
Ash shook his head. Martine’s face was unreadable, as it had been the first time he met her. It was as though she had withdrawn from him. As though he had failed her.
“The stones sing. Well, not exactly. Not like humans. But when they do not have a caster, they sing constantly, out of tune, out of rhythm. It’s unpleasant. That’s why I rolled this pouch up in a blanket. So I wouldn’t have to listen to them.”
“And?”
Martine hesitated. “When they find their caster, and he or she takes them in their hand, they come into tune.”
Ash stared down at the pouch, which seemed as silent as the grave to him. “I can’t even hear them,” he said. “So I suppose they didn’t come into tune.”
“No,” she said gently, resting her hand on his shoulder. “I was sure you were a caster. I even cast the stones about it, and they said yes, definitely. I don’t understand —”
“What’s to understand?” he shot back, suddenly angry. He tossed the pouch into her lap. “I can’t do it. Just like I can’t sing. Or play the flute. Or anything to do with music.”
“That may be,” Martine said slowly. “But my casting was quite clear. I’ve never known the stones to be completely wrong. I’ll cast again.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I still won’t be able to hear them.”
He strode off and walked the streets of the silent town until the salmon star had swum its way below the horizon. Then he went back to the lodging house and lay in the green-ceilinged room, trying not to think of all the things he was useless at — all the people he had failed. Perhaps his father had been right not to trust him. The only thing he seemed to be good at was killing.
Bramble
FIRST LIGHT WAS early so far north, even in spring, and they were all yawning and shivering as they met outside Safred’s house and followed her through the alleys and streets of the town to a small wooded area on its outskirts. A score or so of townsfolk came with them, and they greeted one another with nods and yawning half-smiles so simply that Bramble knew they took the walk to the gods’ wood every morning.
The wood was surrounded by fields and some houses, and it was clear that the town had expanded around the altar, but had left enough space to keep the gods happy. They didn’t like being crowded, it was said.
Bramble could feel them, lightly, in her mind. It was not the uncomfortable pressure they used when they wanted her to do something. This was almost companionable. It was the first time she had felt this way, going to greet them. At home, in Wooding, she had hated the dawn prayers, surrounded by those afraid of the gods, or of life, by the pious and by those who wanted to be thought pious, like the Widow Farli. But here, she sensed nothing from these people but simple devotion. No doubt it was harder to pretend to be pious with the Well of Secret’s eyes on you.
The rock was in a clearing, surrounded by old beech trees, huge and knotted and twisting overhead so that their branches met and the altar seemed to be at the center of a domed room. Moss and young grass covered the ground and Bramble could hear the trickle of a stream which the gods always liked to have nearby. Although they were close to the town, she felt as though she were deep in a forest, perhaps even the Great Forest that she had dreamed about so often. The hairs on the back of her neck raised, and she knew that the gods had turned their attention to all of their followers, not just her.
They came to the altar in the silver light just before dawn, and knelt together, in silence, as the winds of dawn began to blow. Safred bowed her head; Martine and Ash looked down at their hands, which was not quite the same thing. Zel was praying, her mouth moving silently, her hand clasping Flax’s. His face was blank. Surprisingly, Cael was also praying fervently, hands clenched against his chest.
Bramble’s mind was empty of prayers. All she could do was feel: grief for Maryrose and a dark scouring of blame and anger for the gods, because they hadn’t protected her sister. They gave her no reply in
words, but she had a strong sense of their regret. It wasn’t enough to ease her grief, but her anger cooled a little, and turned toward Saker. I will kill him, she thought. The pressure on her mind increased with the thought, but for the first time ever, she had the sense that the gods were undecided. Should I kill him? she asked them, but she heard no answer except, Not yet.
As the first light touched the tops of the trees, throwing shadows down onto the altar, the other townsfolk stirred and got up, backing away respectfully until they were beyond the circle of trees. But Safred motioned to their group to come closer. She laid a hand on the altar.
“Today we part. But we’ll meet again, to bring the parts of the answer together.”
“Aye,” Cael said. “But where, and when?”
They looked at Safred, who hesitated. Bramble could tell there was no answer from the gods.
It was Martine who answered. “Turvite,” she said.
“The stones?” Safred asked. “The stones say so?”
“Common sense says so, which is worth more,” Martine replied briskly. “It was Acton’s last big battle. It’s the biggest city in the Domains. Sooner or later this Saker will go there, and he will bring his army.”
“Oh, yes,” Bramble said, feeling Martine’s words ring true. “He’ll want Turvite. He’ll want to succeed where the old enchanter failed.”
“Yes. He will want to surpass her,” Safred said slowly.
“So,” Cael said. “Turvite.”
Ash flinched, just a little, as though Cael’s voice had been a prod to his memory. “Um… Turvite might not be so healthy a place for Martine and me,” he said.
Martine laughed. “True,” she said. “Perhaps we should meet just outside Turvite. There’s a village a few miles up the river, called Sanctuary. We could meet there.”
“As soon as we can,” Safred said reluctantly, and it was an irritant to her, they could all see, that she did not know the time and date.
“Where will you go to find the songs?” she asked Ash.
His face closed down. “South,” he said.
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