Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  He sat breathing heavily, glad it was over, not meeting Flax’s eyes. But Flax was a Traveler born and bred, and the Sight, whatever form it took, was a part of his world. He accepted Ash’s voice without further comment and looked at the blank stone consideringly.

  “So. That means anything can happen, yes?”

  Ash paused. The blank stone did mean that, but the stones were telling him something else; death, they said, murder. Yet those stones were not on the napkin. So what should he say to Flax? How much should he say? It might not be Zel’s death, he told himself, although he was sure it was. But if the death stone wasn’t there… perhaps Flax wasn’t meant to know… Ash could have screamed from frustration. This was supposed to be a practice run, not an impossible choice! Then he remembered Martine’s voice, “Answer the question. Don’t make my mistake… don’t give them more than they ask for.”

  “I don’t . . .” Thank the gods, it was his own voice again. Perhaps the other voice only came when he was touching the stones, or naming them. “I don’t see a wedding,” he said and tried not to laugh hysterically at the understatement. “But there is a parting of the ways.” A big parting, but perhaps not the final one. Perhaps that was what the blank stone meant.

  Flax scratched his chin, a curiously old movement. “Time,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ash replied, sure of that. “Months, at least.”

  Flax let go of his hand. “Months,” he said, in a tone which meant that months might as well have been years. “I thought… there was a cobbler who wanted to marry her a while back. I just wondered… but I guess not, huh?”

  Ash shrugged and swept the stones up into the pouch. They were once again just pieces of rock with carvings on them. That was all. The surge of feeling, of sight and smell and what had seemed like memory, was gone. He felt empty and tired.

  “You know, I don’t think your average stonecaster talks like that,” Flax said. “Might cause a bit of a stir.”

  He was right. No one would want to consult a stonecaster who grated an answer like stone on stone. Like Death herself. They certainly didn’t want to attract attention while they were on their way to the Deep.

  “Dung and pissmire!” Ash cursed. All his bright plans crashed around him. Even this talent was useless to him. “Go to sleep!” he snarled at Flax, as though it were all his fault. Flax grinned and rolled himself into his blanket as though nothing were wrong.

  The next day, they were more circumspect on the Road, because they were closer to Gabriston. Although Flax complained, they camped that night instead of going to one of the village inns.

  “We don’t need more silver. Best not to draw attention,” Ash said. “That’s the way of it, going to the Deep. Don’t draw attention.”

  Or someone, sometime, would notice the trickle of Traveler men heading through Gabriston into the wilds, and ask questions. That would mean death, for someone — the questioner or the questioned. So the demons said.

  They bought small amounts of food in each village they passed the day after, until their saddlebags were swollen, so they could skirt Gabriston and go onto the wilds without being noticed.

  They were out of grain country now and into North Domain’s vineyards, famous from cliff to cove for their fine vintages. Flax eyed the inns with some wistfulness, but Ash was firm.

  “On the way out, maybe. Maybe, if all goes well. But no sane man goes to the Deep with drink in him.”

  The vines were planted on hillsides, so steep that in some places they were terraced to make more flat ground. The hills grew rougher, and the vines less abundant as they approached the wilds. Finally, they found their way to a bluff which overlooked the wilds: a network of canyons and chasms, stream-cut gorges and dead ends, all formed of the red sandstone that was quarried further downstream and sent all over the Domains. In Turvite, in rich merchants’ houses, Ash had seen intricately carved mantelpieces and balustrades in the fine stone, streaked golden and blood red in intertwining layers. The sandstone was very beautiful, but the sight of it had always made him nervous — it reminded him of the Deep, and the Spring Equinox.

  The canyons of the wilds had been worn away by water over thousands of years, many more thousands than Acton’s people had been in the Domains. Every spring, his father had said, the singers and the poets had made their way here. Spring was the time for music and stories, he said, when things began to flow again. Summer was the time for those in the living trades: horse trainers and animal healers and drovers. Autumn for the dead trades: tinkers and painters and drystone wallers. Winter for the wood trades: carvers and carpenters and turners, chair-makers and basketweavers. Every craft had its time, its gods-chosen time, for the Deep. Except, Ash thought now, looking down at the stream below the bluff as it leapt and danced over the red rocks, except safeguarders. Perhaps he belonged with the shepherds. He laughed, shortly, and nudged Mud with his heels. The sun was setting. It was time for the Deep.

  Saker

  SAKER HAD DECIDED to get well away from Carlion before he searched for more bones. Yet no matter where he went, people were afraid. They gathered in inns, talking agitatedly, calling each other over to confirm some part of the story, worrying, fretting. Or else they shut themselves up in their houses.

  Whenever he passed a black rock altar there were people making sacrifices to the gods, praying hard. Useless, he wanted to tell them. The gods have sent me. Once, there was a Traveler family at the altar, and he wanted to stop and say, “You don’t need to worry. If you stay out of the way, you won’t be hurt.” But of course he couldn’t, without revealing himself.

  In each village he passed, men and women were out nailing shutters firmly to the windows, or installing bars for the doors. Carpenters had notices pinned to their workshop doors: Too busy!

  Smiths were making weapons instead of horseshoes. The local officers, who held large sections of the land in the warlord’s name, had sent their sergeants out to collect their oath men, and hauled them away, complaining, from barricading their cottages.

  All the activity should have made him feel triumphant. He had done this. He, Saker, had scared all these people. Part of him wished his father could be here to witness it. But… he didn’t want it to be like this. The anxiety — oddly, he’d never imagined his actions leading to worry. Terror, yes. Terror in the night, death cleanly delivered a moment afterward, he had been expecting that. The killing was necessary, to retrieve the land from its usurpers. But worry, even this extraordinary worry, he hadn’t expected that, and it felt wrong.

  He knew what his father would say: you just didn’t think it through, boy! He’d said it often to Saker in his childhood, when Saker rushed impetuously into some scheme. Like the time he’d wanted to raise snails to eat, as he’d heard the Wind Cities people did, and the box overturned. The snails got into the vegetable garden and ate all his father’s plants. He winced at the memory of that beating, and of his father’s voice saying, “You just didn’t think it through, did you, boy? Well, think this through!” Down came the cane.

  When he stopped for the night at an inn where he had been once before in his wanderings, he was besieged for castings. But he shook his head.

  “Even the gods do not know the outcome,” he said portentously. The innkeeper’s wife burst into tears and his son paled, but the man himself sniffed.

  “Good. You remember that, boy. Our fate is in our own hands.”

  Saker disliked him intensely in that moment, and it was only later that he realized the man reminded him of his father. But he didn’t think about that. By that time he was occupied in finding bones.

  Leof

  THE NEXT FEW days were a whirl of messages and reports. Leof sent recruiting parties to towns in the Domain furthest from Carlion. There was no use trying to get masons in closer towns to go to Carlion; refugees from the slaughter had already spread the story of the ghosts and the nearest towns were busy fortifying themselves.

  The stories reached Sendat. Hodge came to Leof in the
officers’ workroom, where he was sorting through reports from two recruiting parties who had managed to scrape up some apprentice masons eager for adventure and a couple of older men who didn’t work much these days but were prepared to take a trip to the coast at the warlord’s expense. There was no door to the officers’ workroom — it was an annex between the room where Thegan held his meetings and Thegan’s workroom. Hodge stood a little uncomfortably in the doorway and cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” Leof said, looking up. “Oh, it’s you, Hodge. What’s the problem?”

  “We’ve got some people from Carlion come to town, my lord. Paying for their drinks at the inn with stories.”

  Leof put down the papers he had been reading. “Well, it had to come sometime. Call a muster and send to the town to say I’ll address everyone in the square an hour before sunset.”

  Hodge nodded and left. A moment later Leof heard the bell that called the men to muster. He went out of the barracks building and stood in front of the hall. Should he tell Sorn? Hodge was waiting by the muster point.

  “Sergeant, go and tell the Lady Sorn that she and her ladies and the rest of the household are invited to this muster. And get me a halberd.”

  Sorn had been waiting for this moment, it was clear. The maids had probably brought back the news from the town as well — maybe that was how Hodge had found out. She swept out of the hall with her ladies and maids in tow, Fortune hiding in her skirts, and behind them came the cooks and the kitchen boys and the fire tender; and from around the side of the hall came the gardeners and the dairymaid and the woodman and the lads who looked after the chickens and the ducks and the pigs. The brewer came out from her oast-house, the cheese-maker from her loft, the carpenter from his workshop. Leof hadn’t reflected before on how big and complex the staff was that Sorn managed.

  They waited to the side of the assembled troops. Knowing that it was bound to come, Leof had worried over what to say in this moment. But it was a lovely day, spring edging into summer, and all their own people were safe for the moment. His natural optimism asserted itself so that he smiled at the assembly with real reassurance.

  “You’ve all heard the stories,” he said simply. “Evil bloodsucking ghosts rising from the dead to slaughter us, yes?” Men in the ranks nodded, a little shamefacedly, expecting to be told none of it was true, that they were fools for listening to fireside tales. They shuffled their feet, a soft susurration in the dust.

  “As far as we know, they don’t suck blood.” As they realized what he meant, they stood still and silence fell. “There are ghosts, raised by an enchanter. They do have bodily strength. They cannot be killed again.”

  Murmurs rose from both the men and from Sorn’s household. One girl was giggling wildly, another gasping with fright and looking around as though expecting the ghosts to jump on them immediately.

  “But . . .” Leof shouted, and they quieted. “But, the spell is of limited time. In Carlion, they faded as the sun came up. They have no more strength than they had when they were alive. Although they cannot be killed, they can be stopped. They cannot enter a barred door or a shuttered window, anymore than a man can.” He held out his hand and Hodge put the halberd into it. He brought it round in a wide, hissing swipe and smacked the pole into his other hand. All eyes followed its sweep. “If you cut off their arms, they will do no more damage.”

  A few men in the ranks began to smile. Leof nodded to them.

  “Yes. That is why we have been practicing with battleaxes and halberds these last days. That is why you will all learn to use boar spear, because if you impale one of these ghosts on one, he will be easy prey for the man with the battleaxe. Do you understand?”

  “Aye, my lord,” a few enthusiastic ones shouted.

  “Do all of you understand?” Leof called.

  “Aye, my lord,” they shouted back.

  He nodded to them and smiled again. “They are an unusual enemy, my friends. But they are not unstoppable. So far they have taken on unarmed townsfolk, who have never before even seen an enemy. I think they will get a surprise when they come up against us.”

  He tossed the halberd in the air so that it gleamed in the sun and caught it again with a flourish and they cheered. Then he turned to the household and bowed to Sorn. “My lady, you and your people should be in no fear. Sendat is well protected and well armed against this enemy. You are in no danger.”

  She smiled at the halberd in his hand with real humor. “So I see, my lord.”

  The cook laughed at that and, when Sorn smiled in response, the others laughed, too. Sorn and Leof bowed to each other and she went back in to the hall, calm as ever. Leof watched her go with a half-smile on his face. She made everything so easy.

  Hodge dismissed the men and Leof went down to the town to make the same speech, with a few small variations, to the townsfolk. To them he emphasized the fact that barred doors and good shutters would keep out the ghosts, and that the fort was being rebuilt so that, in an emergency, it would safely hold all the people from the town.

  “Not that we’ll need that,” he said cheerily. “My men are training now to make sure that, if these ghosts turn up anywhere near here, they’ll have their arms and legs cut off and be squirming on the grass like fat white worms before they know what’s hit them!”

  They laughed a little, but were not so easily reassured as the soldiers had been. Leof sobered.

  “Remember, my friends, these ghosts have not been seen again since Carlion. It may be that this was a spell which could only be used there.”

  “What about Spritford?” someone at the back yelled.

  “You, come forward,” Leof said. He thought quickly as the older woman struggled toward the bench on which he stood. If there had been another incident, it would be best if news didn’t get out about it now. He leapt down from the bench and waited for her to reach him.

  The woman was middle-aged and truculent, in no mind to take orders from a young man, even a warlord’s officer.

  “Spritford?” Leof said quietly. “When was that?”

  “Last autumn,” she said. “My sister’s man was killed there, and she came to live with me.”

  “So,” he said, raising his voice, “nothing has happened since Carlion?”

  She shook her head, and the people around her relaxed.

  “Wait here for a moment,” he said to the woman and climbed back on the bench. “My friends, you know the truth now. Go home and prepare, as we have been preparing for you. Remember that your warlord ordered you to secure your homes many months ago, so that no matter what enemy faced us, you would be safe. Remember that he lent you his own carpenters and smiths to help fortify your homes.”

  “That’s true,” he heard someone mutter. “We’re in good shape.”

  “Go home and give thanks to the gods for our safety and pray to them for the warlord’s well-being.”

  They drifted away, some to their houses but more to the road that led outside town to the black rock altar near the stream. The woman waited stolidly.

  “Can you bring your sister to the fort?” Leof asked. She nodded and turned away.

  Leof wondered if he should go with her and see the woman straightaway; but he wanted Sorn to be part of this meeting. She will be better at talking to women, he told himself. Particularly a grieving widow.

  He went back to the fort and found Sorn in the kitchens, discussing the evening meal with the cook. She looked up and smiled as he came in.

  “Roast kid for supper, my lord?” she asked.

  “Always good,” Leof said half-heartedly, his mind on Spritford and ghosts.

  She mistook his lack of enthusiasm. “Something different tomorrow perhaps, then, Ael. An ash-baked dish, perhaps. Lamb with onions and wild greens and parsnips in some stock with lemon and rosemary, I think.”

  The cook shrugged, resigned. “Too late to start that tonight, my lady.”

  “Which is why I said ‘tomorrow,’ ” Sorn said gently. The cook flushed and
shifted his feet. “Tonight you will take the roast kid and fry it with brown ale and onions and thyme and some of the olives from the Wind Cities. You will cook the carrots with honey and serve a bitter salad of dandelion greens and wilted spinach in lemon juice, to aid digestion. There will also be dessert.”

  “Yes, my lady. What kind of dessert?”

  It amused Leof to see how thoroughly Sorn had cowed the cook, who was a big man and known to be free with his fists after he’d had a few drinks. Sorn smiled graciously at him and turned to Leof.

  “My lord? Do you have a favorite dessert?”

  “Strawberries?” Leof suggested.

  “Griddle cakes served with strawberries and the first skimming of cream,” Sorn instructed.

  “Yes, my lady,” the cook said, looking at his feet.

  Leof’s lips twitched and a dimple showed briefly in Sorn’s cheek but was banished immediately. She patted the cook on the arm.

  “The bacon and barley soup was excellent this noon, Ael,” she said.

  The cook looked up, met her smile and smiled back. “Thank you, my lady,” he said.

  Fortune was waiting resignedly outside the kitchen door, and jumped up, barking softly, as Sorn appeared. Leof clicked his fingers and the dog danced up to him and licked his thumb. Sorn smiled. They strolled back to the hall together.

  “You have a big household,” he commented.

  “It was enlarged considerably when I was married,” she said. “My father did not care for home comforts in the same way that my lord Thegan does.”

  Leof had never thought of Thegan as caring about comfort in any way.

  Sorn caught his expression and smiled, a little grimly. “My lord appreciates good food and good service,” she said. “Such things do not happen by chance.”

  Leof nodded. “Anything of excellence is the product of hard work,” he agreed. He led Sorn over to her customary chair and seated her with the appropriate bow. Fortune gave a sigh as he realized they were not going for a walk, and sat down. “Your household is exemplary and I am interested in how you organize it. Unfortunately, there is another matter to deal with at this time. A woman in the town reported an earlier uprising of ghosts in a town called Spritford.”