Her surroundings should have filled Bramble with happiness. But underneath the surface, she could still sense — something. The sense of being listened to was very strong. Not exactly watched, the Forest had no eyes. But it was paying attention to them, and the sensation was not pleasant. Somewhat like the pressure of the gods in her mind, but far more alien. The sense of time — endless, unchanging time — was very strong, and made her feel like a mayfly, so short-lived that her life was worth nothing. She and her companions were there on sufferance, and only because she was the Kill Reborn.
The Forest respected killing and its aftermath. The flutter of birds above, the buzzing of insects, the rustle of animals in the undergrowth, these were all sounds of death as well as life. Each of those animals was hunting and being hunted. Bramble had always accepted that she was part of a great intricate web of life and death, of prey and predator, but she realized now that she had accepted it so easily because she had always been the predator.
She would stay that way, she decided. The prey fears, and she had learnt already from the hunter that, in the Forest, fear was dangerous.
Before them the track ended, in a wide circle obviously cleared so wagons could turn, although shrubs and saplings were springing up across the clearing. Beyond, there was only forest.
“Why would anyone bring a wagon all the way out here and then just turn around and go back?” Zel wondered.
“Not a wagon,” Cael answered. “A sleigh. In winter, the trappers organize for supplies to be brought out. They meet the sleigh, and then it goes back.” He spoke with a little effort, his chest wound still paining him. Safred looked concerned, but said nothing.
“So,” Bramble said. “Where to now?”
“The lake is east of north from Oakmere,” Safred said uncertainly, her eyes unfocusing as they did when she listened to the gods. Then she shook her head in disappointment. “That’s all I know.”
Bramble pointed ahead and to their right. “That’s that way.”
“That’s not east of north,” Cael objected.
“No. We’ve swung around a bit, following the trail. But it’s east of north from Oakmere.”
“How do you know?” Zel asked. The question surprised Bramble. She had thought that a good sense of direction was a gift all Travelers had. She had certainly inherited hers from her Traveler grandfather. It had only ever let her down once, in the pine forest near the Lake, and even there she had been mostly on the right heading. Explaining her certainty was curiously hard.
“I just know,” she said.
Cael shrugged. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go that way.”
Threading through the forest was much slower than riding on the track. There was more time to imagine eyes watching them. Ears listening. Noses smelling. The sense of being listened to, being observed, was getting stronger.
But at least the trees here were centuries old, and beneath them only ferns grew, and mushrooms, so the going was easy. They walked the horses under trees so tall that they were unclimbable, so densely leaved that the sun was invisible. The air grew close and hot, smothering. Bramble found herself becoming more and more tense, ready for an attack that never came.
They reached a stream where she thought they should water the horses, so she dismounted and turned to face the others as they came up. Then she saw that the attack had been going on all the time. Cael, who had been immediately behind her, was shaking with pain and weakness, his face clammy white. His shirt was stained with blood. She went to help him down, and he came heavily into her arms, leaning on her shoulder.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Safred said, helping Bramble to sit him down on the grass. Martine grabbed a cup from her saddlebag. She went to the stream to get water while Bramble eased the shirt away from the wound. It didn’t look good: red and puffy and still bleeding sluggishly from the tip.
“The Forest is keeping the wound fresh,” he said. “I can feel it. Nothing to be done.”
Martine came back with the water. “I think it’s safe,” she said. “It doesn’t smell of anything.” Cael drank it gladly and held out the cup for more.
“If Safred can’t heal him, we’d better get the Forest to do it,” Bramble said. “Wait here.”
She knew what she needed, and the edges of a stream were a good place to find them: feverfew, comfrey, heal-all, greenwort. It took her only a few minutes to find them all.
When she came back, Martine was tearing up a shirt for bandages and Safred was washing Cael’s wound, but in an unpracticed way that made Bramble’s mouth twist awry. Never had to learn simple healing, she thought. Just a moment with the gods and it all went away. Live and learn, cully.
“Make a compress of the heal-all and comfrey,” she said to Safred, handing her the leaves. Bramble picked up the cup and crushed some of the feverfew leaves into it, then filled it from the stream and set it to steep on the ground beside Cael. “It won’t be as good as a tisane, but I think we’d better not light a fire here.”
He nodded with an effort.
“It’s an odd wound,” she said. “What made it?”
Safred paused as she wrapped some linen around the plants. Listening hard.
“I cannot name them,” he said slowly. “They were big. Flying. But not birds. Not bats, either. No fur. Huge. Clawed. One almost took me as a hawk takes a chicken, but I twisted and —” He gestured to his chest. “Then I flew, for a moment!” He tried to smile, turning to Zel. “Then this little one dragged me out of there.” She reddened a little and mumbled something inaudible.
They managed to get Cael back on his horse and he seemed a little better for the feverfew. Bramble gave the rest of the herbs to Safred and told her to make him a tisane tonight from the feverfew and greenwort.
“I have willow bark,” Martine offered.
“Good. That, too, then. It will help him sleep.”
“How do you know so much about healing?” Safred asked.
Bramble laughed at her. “Safred, almost every woman in the Domains knows what I know. When you have a sick baby or an accident happens, not everyone can run to the Well of Secrets to be cured!”
Safred flushed and let her horse drop back until she rode next to Cael. Bramble thought she should have felt worse about teasing her — Safred was genuinely worried about Cael. But she didn’t. She was too caught up in wondering what would happen when they got to the lake. Surely there would be an altar?
She yearned toward it. She imagined a clearing. The black rock, the familiar presence of the gods. They would be safe there, and Cael could rest — perhaps Safred would find the strength there to heal him.
The light shifted to gold, even through the oak leaves, and the few shadows there were began to lengthen. The sun was setting. The land tilted sharply upward. They climbed a ridge and they were at the edge of the trees, as though the Forest had been cut off abruptly.
Beyond them there was water, surrounded by a ring of oak trees and then grass that sloped steeply up to the edge. After the darkness of the trees, the water shone brilliantly. Still as ice, it reflected better than any mirror, doubling the rose and pink and gold of the light, the small reddened clouds, the darkening sky. Not quite a lake but more than a pool, it was perfectly circular, and it was the strangest thing Bramble had ever seen.
At the margin, instead of mud or reeds or pebbles, a sheer edge rose up out of the ground, so that the whole lake looked like a big dish which had been almost buried and then filled with water. The edge caught the dying sun and glinted sharply.
In the very center of the water was a small island, with a black rock altar at its heart. Much larger than most altars, Bramble thought it would be at least chest high on her; perhaps higher. Colored the normal flat matte black, the rock it stood on gleamed darkly green.
Bramble swung down from Trine and patted her absently, then walked forward over close-cropped grass, down to the water. The rim around the lake was rock. Or glass. A mixture of both? She had never seen
anything like it. A green so dark it was almost black, on the western side, facing her, it reflected every bit of light from the dying sun. She went closer, carefully, and squatted down to study it.
The rim came up above her knees, and the level of water within it was higher than the grass outside, as if the lake truly was a dish. She reached out, waiting to see if the gods would warn her not to touch, but although she could just feel their familiar presence in her mind, they exerted no pressure on her. The rock was mostly smooth — smoother than river stones, as smooth as glass — but cut across with rougher streaks like the darker stripes in marble. It narrowed to a thin edge at the top. She leaned over the edge to look at the inside of the bowl, and found herself staring into water so clear that she could see her own reflection and the bottom of the bowl at the same time, so that it looked as though she were lying on the floor of the lake, looking up. Like a water sprite.
That unsettled her. She pulled back and her wrist grazed across the top of the rim. The edge was so sharp that she didn’t realize she had been cut until the blood started to drip; some on the grass, some on the rock rim, some into the water.
As the first drop hit the lake, a wind seemed to shiver across the surface, ruffling the perfect reflection. Bramble shivered, too. Whatever this place was, it was not the home of her familiar gods.
“How are we going to get out there?” Martine asked from behind her.
Bramble stood up, wiping the blood on her breeches.
“Look,” she said.
As the sun dropped lower and the reflection paled, they could see that there were rings of rock leading to the island, like the edge around the lake, just under the surface. They weren’t very thick, but they were each no more than a pace apart.
“Stepping stones?” Martine said doubtfully. “What if we fall?”
Bramble shrugged. “We get wet. And worse, maybe.”
Safred, Zel and Cael joined them. Cael was pale but looked a little better now he was out of the trees. He bent down to peer at the rock rim.
“Obsidian,” he said.
“Obsidian?” Martine repeated. “This is Obsidian Lake?”
“What’s Obsidian Lake?” Bramble asked.
“It’s where the first black rock altar fell from the sky,” she replied, her voice faltering a little. “It’s a place from Traveler legend. Not a place for people, they say. Only for the gods.”
Martine was hesitant, and that was so unlike her that Bramble frowned.
“But the gods have brought us here, right?” she asked Safred, who nodded.
“Yes. We are where we are meant to be. We must do the work set out for us.” Her certainty reassured them all, but Bramble made a face.
“You sound like my grandam.”
“I’m sure she was a very wise woman.”
“Wise enough,” Bramble said, “to know the signs of the Spring Equinox.”
“You have a good sense of time,” Safred said thoughtfully. “That may be useful. Perhaps it’s just as well you became the Kill Reborn instead of the one who was meant to.”
“The one who was meant to?” Bramble felt something tighten in her, but not unpleasantly. It was as though she were about to have a question answered that she had wondered about for a long time. She didn’t know what the question was; but the answer was important.
“The gods didn’t tell you?” Safred seemed surprised. “You were supposed to die, you know.”
“At the chasm?” She knew the answer. Of course at the chasm. She relived that moment: the men chasing her, the roan making that extraordinary, impossible jump, and halfway over, her own fall and the roan’s shift in midair to save her. Then, afterward, the death-in-life existence she had led. The stonecaster in Carlion had told her — she had died, truly, and her spirit had left her, but the roan had saved her body. She would still be dead inside, if he had not run so fast in her first Spring Chase that she overtook the Kill, snatched his banner, and became the Kill Reborn, symbol of new life. Unlike the other Kill Reborns of history, who just won a race by a big margin, she had been truly reborn.
“Yes,” Safred said. “The gods helped the roan make the jump, not you. The roan should have gone to Beck, so he could become the Kill Reborn.”
“Beck?” The face flashed before Bramble’s eyes — a thin, older man with brown hair and a small beard, the face that had led the pack which hunted her to the chasm. She remembered, too, the scars and marks on the roan’s hide that Beck had laid there. “They were going to give him to Beck?”
“He was a good rider. Good enough to be a Kill Reborn. He had mixed blood, too, and was certainly a killer. He was suitable for this task.”
Bramble was furious. “And too bad for the roan, given to a cruel master!”
“Yes,” Safred said quietly. “Too bad for the roan. But the roan loved you and saved you, to have you instead. So we are here.”
“ ‘Love breaks all fates,’ ” Cael quoted, a slight rebuke in his voice. Bramble knew he was trying to turn her anger away from Safred, and knew that he was right. This wasn’t the Well of Secrets’ fault. Nor, really, was it the gods.’ They were doing the best they could to restore balance to chaos. It was Saker’s fault, and he would pay.
She scowled, but looked out at the lake, watching as the ripple of wind died away and the surface returned to pure reflection.
“What did you mean,” Martine asked, “ ‘he was certainly a killer’?”
Safred looked at her wryly. “Haven’t you wondered why you were chosen by the gods? It is because you are all killers, and have deaths to expiate.”
Zel hung her head, but Martine met Safred’s gaze coolly.
“I have killed only where I had no choice, to protect my life or the life of another,” she said. “I have no regret and no guilt.”
Safred nodded. “That is the attitude of our enchanter,” she said. “It is good that you share it.” Martine went still for a moment. Safred looked at Zel, then covered Zel’s hand with her own. Zel’s head came up.
“I did what I had to do,” she said. “I must pay for it.” Her mouth was firm and Bramble was reminded even more of Osyth. Zel was like stone, as Osyth had been, a person who could not be turned from her course by anything.
Then Safred looked at her.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she said. “I don’t think I have reparation to make.”
Safred kept looking at her, drawing her somehow so that all she could see was the bright eyes.
“I was not talking about the warlord’s man,” she said softly. “He was not the only one who died because of you.”
Abruptly Bramble was back in the field outside Pless, the roan’s head in her lap, the stream flowing past them, guilt and grief and pain pounding her in waves. It had been her fault, and she would live with that forever. She dragged in a deep breath and pulled herself back to the present. “I have made my apologies for that,” she said angrily. “It has nothing to do with you.” She was furious that this — this woman would use her love and grief for the roan to manipulate her. Let her rot in the cold hells, she thought. She doesn’t own me.
“‘No one wilt ever tame thee,’ ” Safred whispered.
Bramble breathed in sharply in shock, then was strengthened by her anger. “Shagging right,” she said. “Get another lackey.” Then she thought about Safred’s claim that they were there because of being killers. It made some deep sense that she couldn’t quite puzzle out. If the gods needed a killer, she would be a killer indeed; and Saker would be her victim. “After I do this thing with Acton,” she said, “can I kill Saker?”
“Who knows?” Safred said wryly. “No one’s told me.”
The black rock stood glinting sharply with light, bright where before it had been dark. It beckoned to Bramble, and to the others, too, she could tell. Martine shivered whenever she looked at it, and Safred completely avoided looking at it. But it won’t go away, cully, Bramble thought. Not on your life, or on mine. Or on Maryrose’s.
/> They had only minutes before it was time to walk out to the altar, but setting up camp seemed too mundane a thing to do when the lake shimmered in front of them, reflecting the darkening sky, the first evening star.
Bramble looked after Trine, glad to have something to do to keep her mind off those sharp ridges of rock and the clear water that seemed, somehow, so threatening. Trine was perfectly happy under the trees, but she would not move out onto the short grass that ringed the lake, and Bramble did not try to persuade her. Cael had already tethered the other horses to a tree.
“I’ll set up camp while you do whatever it is you have to do,” he said.
“When I come back, I’ll try again,” Safred said to him and he nodded before gently shooing her away to join the others.
Safred, Martine and Bramble walked slowly down to the rim almost an hour after sunset, moving toward darkness, with a sky of red and gold and purple clouds behind them. The evening breeze had picked up and whipped the water into small waves. It was chilly but not cold, breezy but not windy, dim but not dark, although the pale spring moon was hidden behind the clouds.
Bramble felt her spirits rising as the night grew wilder, felt a lifting of the heart that was as familiar to her as the beginning of a chase. She went first. She thanked Gorham for making her wear tough boots as her feet would have been cut to the bone at the first step up onto the rim. She found her balance and then stepped toward the next rim of rock. If she fell, she would die. She was quite certain of that, sure beyond words or reason. The gods confirmed it: Walk carefully, they said. Come to us.
Each step was precarious, and each grew harder as the light faded away. After a handful of steps, she looked back. Safred and Martine were poised on the ridges behind her, reminding her of the Wind City legend, the Sea Woman who walked on water. Bramble shivered a little. The Sea Woman was a nasty spirit, no friend to humans. She shook off the thought and started to enjoy herself, enjoy each moment her foot found the next stepping place and the quick excitement of shifting her balance with a hop so that she moved firmly onto the ridge and still kept her balance. The water was cold in her boots, and her feet began to go numb.
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