“How can we?”
Safred gnawed at her lip. “The gods say, her spirit is in the water now, and the water knows her blood. We can float her back.”
“Put her in the lake?” Martine shivered with a deep reluctance. “I think I’d rather wait with her here.”
Safred looked puzzled, but shook her head. “The gods say that she is not safe here. That… that she might be burnt.”
So. Martine let out a long breath. Yes. That was possible. On the night of the Spring Equinox, at a black rock altar, that was very possible. But she couldn’t explain that to Safred.
“You know what they mean,” Safred said accusingly.
“If she lies out here all day in the full sun, she will get burnt.” Not a lie, but not the truth Safred wanted. Martine went on before Safred could ask another question. “Do the gods say whether we can float back, too?”
Immediately, Safred shivered. “No. No. They say on no account. We must walk. But she will float.”
Martine untied her belt and strapped it around Bramble’s chest. She held out her hand and Safred, after a moment of confusion, took off her own belt and gave it to her. Martine tied the two together and then took Bramble’s shoulders while Safred took her legs. They slid her down the glassy rock to the edge of the water. Every bit of Sight Martine had told her that the water was dangerous, but they were here because of the gods, and it was a bit late to stop obeying them now.
“One, two, three,” she said. They slid Bramble into the water. An expression of panic came over her face, but then it cleared and she floated easily, more easily than she should have, as though the water itself was supporting her, high enough to pass over the rock ridges which lay just under the surface. Her head floated easily, her mouth well clear of the water.
Martine gestured for Safred to go before her, and then she took hold of the two belt ends and stepped onto the first rock ring. As though the movement had caused it, the moon came out from behind the clouds and the lake burst into brilliant reflected light. Martine tugged at the belt and Bramble spun slowly, moving gently until her head bumped Martine’s foot. It was as though she towed a corpse.
The journey back lived in Martine’s memory as the strangest time of her life. Bramble lay as though dead, and it seemed to Martine that she towed death itself, life itself, memory and courage and grief, all in one package. The lake was calm, the small waves caused by Martine’s steps soft against her boots. The moonlight cast long shadows so that she seemed to be a giant, striding across the face of the ocean, pacing not from rock to rock but upon some elemental power beyond her understanding. Although she had faltered and swayed on the journey out to the altar, now she walked with ease, each foot finding the perfect resting point on the next ring of rock. It seemed that the shore approached her, grew larger and wider until she lost all sense of size, until the trees seemed as big as mountains and the rim of the lake bowl was like a cliff, shivering with light under the moon.
Another sense, an older and more familiar sense, told her that it was wrong to walk away from the altar on the night of the Spring Equinox. That she still had work to do. Later, she told that voice, and on the thought everything returned to normal size, she took the final step over the knee-high rim, and brought Bramble safely to rest against the obsidian edge.
Cael was there, although she hadn’t seen him waiting. She wondered if she had seen the real lake shore or some other country, some other time, but put the thought away. Cael went to lift Bramble out, but Martine stopped him. She gave him the belt, and he used it to drag Bramble half-upright, so he could grasp her without putting his hands in the water. Then he lifted her, with a grunt of effort that made Martine remember his wound, and carried her to the camp he had set up on the slope under the trees, where Safred was already warming herself by a fire. Through it all Bramble never opened her eyes, although her body was tense and her face set.
When it was approaching midnight, by the stars, Martine checked Bramble once again and gave her some water. She drank with a faint smile on her face, though there were dark circles under her eyes. Zel and Martine had stripped off her breeches and put a cloth under her, so they could give her water regularly without fearing that she would soil her clothes. They had laid a blanket over her for modesty, but now Martine tucked it in for warmth as well.
Martine gathered her flint, handstone and tinder. Spring Equinox. She hadn’t celebrated it since Elva left; it needed at least two Traveler women, one to hold the flint and the other to strike. Three was better, but tonight they had only two, her and Zel. And a black rock altar. Perhaps tomorrow night, or the next, Bramble would be with them. She hoped so. It was good to have three women for the third night, to represent the three sisters.
She really didn’t want to walk out again on those precarious rock rings, but her Sight had been clear. The altar was waiting for the ritual, which was precise and demanding. No steel to strike fire from. Steel was too new a thing. The ritual went back far past the time humans first made steel. Fire must be made from stone and flint. The handstone must be old, the flint new, the tinder natural, not charred. That meant special tinder, because sparks from a handstone were not as hot as sparks from a firesteel. Birch tree fungus was the only tinder that caught readily. Martine, like all Traveler women, collected the fungus when she saw it, for any future need. She had gathered some in Hidden Valley, where the birch trees grew thickly on the upper slopes. She and Elva had gone out one clear winter day, saying only to Drema and Gytha that they were collecting firewood. Which they did, as well.
She went softly to where Zel was curled up in a nest of blankets, then paused. She didn’t know how devout Zel’s mother had been — perhaps Zel didn’t know the rituals. But as she hesitated Zel’s head came out of its nest, eyes bright in the starshine, and she slid to her feet without words, then reached down to pick up a small pile of kindling she had hidden under the blanket.
They walked toward the water.
“I have one new flint,” Martine said quietly.
“I only have one, too,” Zel said.
That was a problem. Each night of the ritual there must be a new flint, to call the wildfire. Three nights, two flints.
“We’ll have to go looking for another,” Martine said.
Zel nodded, but she looked anxious. “What if we don’t find one? What happens if the ritual isn’t completed?” Her voice rose with worry. It was odd to see her normally calm face twisted with concern. Zel didn’t like not being in control of things, Martine knew. Something about Zel made her feel very old and not as wise as she should be. Like the fake grandmother she was. She wondered if she’d be wiser if Elva had been a true child of her body, not just her heart.
“What if he isn’t pleased?” Zel insisted.
“Shh,” Martine said. If Safred were to wake now, she’d sniff a secret and they’d never reach the end of her questioning. What could they tell her? She had no old blood at all — she’d said so. Martine handed Zel the birch fungus tinder.
Traveler women had tried to introduce women of Acton’s blood to the fire once before, and Martine didn’t want to be part of a disaster like that. Even the Well of Secrets wouldn’t be safe from the fire. He didn’t like strangers, they all knew that.
“I don’t know,” Martine said softly. “We’ll worry about that if we need to.”
Zel swallowed hard before she took the first step onto the seemingly blank face of the water, but she had a tumbler’s balance and made the next step more easily than Martine. Martine was overwhelmed by the sense that the lake was watching. Not antagonistic, but ready to react to anything it deemed a threat.
They paced out, side-by-side as the ritual demanded, and stood at the altar. Martine stretched her senses, but the gods were not here. They were never here at the fire’s time. She always wondered why — was it fear, or respect, or had some kind of deal been done? Then she reined in her thoughts. Cynicism had no place on this night.
Zel made a small nest of the tinder and kindling o
n the smooth face of the altar and stood back. Martine placed her striking stone and the new flint side-by-side on the altar next to the tinder, and stood next to Zel.
“We are daughters of fire,” they said together, “daughters of Mim the firestealer, Mim the firelover, Mim the fire’s love. The fire must never die.”
Martine felt, as she always did in rituals, a mixture of self-consciousness and exaltation, of silliness and awe. There were tears in Zel’s eyes. Together they took a pace forward.
Zel picked up the handstone and placed it close above the nest of fungus, bark and pine needles. Martine took the flint. She had to get the angle of the stroke precisely right, which was always harder when someone else was holding the stone, and harder still because of the height of this altar. But it wasn’t the first time either of them had done this, which helped.
Zel braced herself, and nodded. Martine struck down cleanly into the shallow groove on the handstone and sparks flew down the groove straight onto the tinder. Immediately, it caught. They waited a moment for the spark to grow. It glowed in the darkness, a ring of light that gradually expanded. Zel folded the rest of the kindling over the top of it, and both of them crouched down so that their mouths were on a level with the kindling nest.
“Take our breath to speed your growth,” Zel whispered. They blew softly, very softly, into the nest, and then there was flame as well as spark. They stood up and moved back a pace, waiting.
As the fire grew, licking at the kindling, Martine felt his presence. As always, it manifested within her body, not her mind, completely different from the presence of the local gods. Heat flooded her, spreading out from her solar plexus and her loins, making her nipples tight. Zel’s head dropped back, her eyes closed and her breath quickened. It was worse — or better — when you were younger, Martine thought, but on the thought another wave of heat swept over her. Her body took control of her thoughts and filled her mind with images of fire, flames, burning gold. Each image brought a sense of touch, too, of stroke and probe, of caress and tease. She ached, deeply, for the fire’s touch. For fulfillment.
Her body began trembling. She made the final step of the ritual, the one that was always hardest for her, and surrendered to him, although, always, always, there was a small part of herself she did not give; could not give. Her eyes closed and the fire filled her mind.
And died.
Martine opened her eyes slowly, gasping with disappointment and frustration. The kindling had burned away, cleanly, leaving nothing behind. No ash, no charcoal. Nothing to show there had been a fire at all. Of course. It always did, if the ritual had gone well.
It had been quick, but this was only the first night. Foreplay, nothing more. Heat drained away from her but left some things behind. Frustration. Readiness. A sharpening of her senses, so that everything made an impression: the cool breeze from the mere, the murmur of the trees, the dense blackness of the altar in the moonlight.
Zel wiped sweat from her face and shivered.
They looked at each other to make sure the other was ready to speak, and then said, together, “The fire will never die.”
Then they turned and slowly, carefully, made their way over the water and back to camp. The campfire had flared up, as fires always did in the vicinity of the ritual. They banked it again and checked the area carefully. This close to the forest, every spark was a potential catastrophe.
Thank the gods — or the fire — that Safred was still asleep in her tent.
“After Bramble wakes up,” Zel said quietly, as they paused before going to their blankets, “we is heading back to Oakmere, right?”
Martine nodded.
Zel grinned. “Good. Lots of likely lads in Oakmere! I love the week after Equinox!”
They stifled their laughter behind their hands. Martine knew she was acting like a silly girl, but she didn’t care. That was part of the ritual, too. Zel was right. Traveler women who didn’t have their own men came from the three-night vigil with the fire ready and eager for the first good-looking man who crossed their path. It was one of the reasons they had a reputation for being free with their bodies. But it was worth carrying that reputation for the rest of the year, to have the week after Equinox.
Martine took her blankets and stretched out next to Bramble, who was moving her legs restlessly. She straightened the blanket so Bramble’s legs were covered, and checked the cloth they had laid under her. It was still dry, so she gave her more water. She had sweated a great deal already, and lack of water would kill her if they weren’t careful.
Martine found it hard to sleep. Her body thrummed still with desire and arousal. She remembered past Spring Equinoxes, especially the ones after Elva was fully grown, when she had felt free to go out looking for pleasure. She smiled into the darkness. Shagging in the week after each Equinox, when all the senses had been brought to singing life, was like nothing else. It had been a long time since Martine had let herself enjoy it, though. Too long, she thought. Too long.
Bramble
HER MOUTH WAS full of ashes. She was choking on them, smothering in them, coughing convulsively to clear her throat. She was coughing so hard that her eyes were streaming and she could see nothing, but she could hear a man shouting at her in a voice which showed he expected to be obeyed, a voice like a drum.
“The gods do not talk to children! They do not talk to half-grown boys too big for their boots! The gods talk only to the chieftain. So it is. So it will be.”
Like an echo, other voices confirmed, murmuring, “So it is, so it will be.”
The voice dropped lower, but became more menacing. “Do you understand, Baluch?”
Baluch could barely respond, his body was so wracked with coughs, but he nodded.
“A mouth full of ashes is the price for lying to your chieftain. It’s a small price. If you were a man full-grown, I would have cut off your hand.”
Baluch’s eyes cleared at last. The speaker was a balding older man, fifty or so, with a bushy gray beard and bright blue, angry eyes. He was dressed as the men at the practice fight had been dressed, in baggy leggings and rough-spun tunic, but he had a great cloak of rabbit skins slung from his shoulders. With a shock, Bramble saw that the brooch which held the cloak was a larger version of the one she had laid her hand over on the black rock altar. For a moment she wondered how long she had been traveling, washed on wave after wave of ancestral memory. What were the others doing, there by the dark mere? The image of trees, water, the rising mist flashed across her mind and was swept away by the immediate sensation of Baluch spitting and spitting again, trying to get the ashes from his mouth.
“Enough, Father,” Asa’s voice came. “He understands.”
She handed Baluch a horn of water and a basin. He grabbed at it and swilled his mouth over and over again.
“Hmmph,” the chieftain grunted. “Very well. We will start the search for the child at first light.”
He turned and walked away and only then was Bramble aware that they were in a corner of the large hall, where the shuttered windows showed a faint purple twilight. Outside, the wind whistled around the building and the walls radiated cold. The hall was packed with people, men, women and children, most of them moving uneasily, talking to each other, avoiding the central fire where a woman Asa’s age sat rocking back and forth, her hands to her face, another woman patting her on the back.
Baluch had used up the water in the horn and his mouth felt almost normal, although puckered and sour. He stared into the grimy water in the basin. Bramble felt his despair and heard a faint dark music, deep notes sonorously played — a dirge. She knew it was from Baluch’s mind, but he seemed unaware of it.
When a hand landed on his shoulder he didn’t look up, as though he knew who it was. “I know where she is,” he whispered.
The hand lifted and Acton came into view, looking about thirteen, perhaps less. “Where?”
Baluch gestured with the hand which held the drinking horn. “A cave, under a ridge. I can’t des
cribe it well enough, but I could find it.”
“Mmm,” Acton said.
Baluch raised his head. “I could. Your grandfather thinks I’m lying, but I’m not!”
“Shh,” Acton cautioned him. “If he hears you say it again you will lose a hand. The gods talk only to the chieftain.”
“But my mother had the Sight —”
“Athel was a woman, and under his control. No threat to him at all.”
“But I’m not a threat. Everyone knows you’ll be the next chieftain —”
“So,” Acton said, ignoring him, suddenly cheerful, “maybe it isn’t the gods. Maybe it’s a friendly spirit.”
“Uh, he won’t believe that.”
“No. But if we bring her back alive he’ll pretend to believe it. Come on.”
The music in Baluch’s mind died away, changed to something warmer, deep notes still but with hope at the center of them. He followed Acton dumbly, out the back of the hall to a small chamber where Asa and a couple of women waited, holding candles.
“You’ll get lost yourselves,” one of them muttered, casting a dark look at Baluch.
Acton grinned at her, and kissed her cheek. “I know these hills like my own hands, Gret. Don’t you trust me?”
She smiled despite herself. “I don’t trust the weather. It smells like a blizzard to me.”
Acton nodded, solemn, his gold hair glinting in the light of the candles.
“That’s why we have to go now. A blizzard will be the death of her.” As one, the women shivered and made a sign with their little fingers, clearly a ward against evil chance.
“Harald should —”
Acton cut her off firmly. “My grandfather is right. To go out now, not knowing where Friede is, would be foolhardy. More would be lost. But to go out knowing where she is, that is different.”
“The gods —”
“Not the gods,” Baluch said hastily. “A friendly spirit, that’s all. Only the chieftain speaks with the gods.”
Asa nodded approval. “Yes,” she said. “A friendly spirit. Good. Go find her. But . . .” her voice faltered a little and she put out a hand to smooth Acton’s hair. “Don’t take stupid chances. One life is not worth two.”
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