They fought fiercely, children included, but they had no hope. There was a lot of blood, and Baluch spilled his fair share of it, including a young boy who came at him with a knife. He swiped him away with the flat of his sword, but Bramble heard the boy’s neck crack. Baluch paused for a second, but the rapture of battle overtook both him and Acton and he charged villager after villager with real enjoyment, part of him relishing the image of fire against the dark sky, of sparks flying upward, of flames glinting on raised swords, of the rushing river encircling them with constant music.
Bramble fought against being caught up in the surge of emotion, but it was hard, so hard, to stay separate when Baluch’s mind was so close to hers. She pulled herself as far back as she could and made herself think of other things; and then she thought that someone should stand as witness to the slaughter, for the children if for no one else, so she made herself watch it all, and feel it all, the exhilaration and the horror mingling in her until she couldn’t split them apart, until it felt that she was drowning in fire and blood.
Was this what it had been like in Carlion, when Maryrose and Merrick had been slaughtered? Had the ghosts felt the same combination of excitement and repulsion? Or were they simply glad to kill?
She wished she could weep.
When the villagers were all dead and the fires had begun to burn down into the stone foundations of the houses, Acton called them together to count their losses. There were none. They whooped and slapped each other’s backs and cheered for Acton a few times.
A couple of them went off to look for drink in the sheds which they claimed they had carefully not set fire to, because sheds were usually where the beer was brewed. This raised a laugh and a cheer. Baluch was exhausted. He slumped on a bench under an elm tree, incongruously untouched, as though ready for a picnic.
“Women and children,” Acton growled to him. “Such great warriors we are.”
“Their choice,” Baluch said, his voice flat, his mind suddenly replaying the moment when he had killed the boy. All music emptied out of him and he hung his head between his knees, fighting nausea. Bramble felt a sour satisfaction, all the more so because there had been moments when she had been too involved with Baluch, had shared too closely with his pleasure as his sword had swung cleanly, had killed efficiently.
Baluch sat up, leaned his head back against the elm and closed his eyes.
“We’re not going to do it this way when we get to T’vit,” Acton said.
Bramble deeply wanted to hear him say it, wanted him to reject the warrior creed that he had lived his life by. She was surprised by the depth of her desire, the strength with which she silently urged him to put an end to the killing. Perhaps, just perhaps, he was changing . . .
“I don’t want any of the houses lost,” he said. “No fires. We’re going to need the houses and boatsheds, and the boats, too. Tell the others. Kill the men, leave the houses alone.”
She should have known. She hated him more in that moment than she had ever hated any warlord or warlord’s man. He was as bad as she had always known. She felt as though her chest was being sawn open with a blunt knife. Why should it hurt her so much? She had always known what he was.
Baluch kept his eyes closed as though he didn’t want to look at Acton’s face. “And the women and children?”
Acton paused. “We’ll give them the choice. Then it’s up to them.”
Bramble could have cried with thankfulness when the waters rose, gently, to carry her away in a deep and silent current.
The current washed her up, again in Baluch’s mind, looking at another village by daylight, a whole, undamaged village of about twelve houses lying in a flat bend of the river, untouched, calm, perfect. Except that there were no people.
Acton and Baluch and Asgarn waited while the men went into the houses and searched. One by one, they came out and spread their hands.
“No one. Nothing,” Red said. “They’re all gone.”
Asgarn laughed heartily. “They must have heard about River Bluff,” he said.
The men began to smile, and then to laugh, too. “They’ve heard about our lord of war!” one said. “Acton the invincible!”
Acton smiled reluctantly and Baluch grinned.
“Let’s hope they take the news to T’vit,” Acton said. “I wouldn’t mind taking the port this way!”
His men decided that was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Maybe it was relief at not having to fight. Maybe it was disappointment. But they collapsed in laughter while Acton and Baluch watched, smiling.
Except Asgarn. He smiled, but his eyes were cold.
As cold as the water that came down upon Bramble in a deluge.
Ash
ANIMAL THROATS COULD not talk, but ears could listen, and human minds could understand. Ash kept his counsel about the songs he needed until he could talk with his father in daylight, man to man, but he could at least start Flax on the road he needed to walk. He moved back from his father and pulled Flax forward.
“This is Flax, whose father Gorham was raised by his mother and never brought to the Deep. Will you teach him what he needs to know?” He hesitated, but it had to be said, or Flax would not be accepted. “He is a singer.”
The men nodded. Two of them, a deer with wide antlers and a squirrel, whose head looked odd on his large body, came forward and started to strip Flax’s clothes off. He exclaimed and looked for help to Ash. Ash grinned at him. He had already started to undress.
“In the Deep, we show our true shapes.” That was true in a way that Flax wasn’t ready for yet. But he would be, one day soon.
The badger, his father Rowan in his true guise, put a hand on Ash’s arm and led him forward to the cave — or rather, to the caves. The fire cave was only the first in a long series. It was open to all whose blood calmed the waters. Year after year, the boys were taken further in, further down, into the Deep. Ash had been told that before Acton came, each year would add a new scar to the boy’s body until he was marked formally as a man. But not now.
“Travelers must travel unnoticed. Scars show, sooner or later, and lead to questions. There must be no questions about the Deep,” he had been told.
In the old days, men wore the masks of their animal in the ceremonies, once it had been revealed to them by the water. But since Acton came, the River had granted them their true shapes, to be and then wear inside, afterward.
“This is the River’s gift. This is how Traveler men stay men,” his grandfather had told him, in the first year. “The fair-haired ones look at us with scornful eyes, and a man might come, in time, to believe that he is worthy of scorn. But we know that what they see is not what we truly are. The man who knows what he truly is, and accepts it, cannot be diminished by another’s gaze. This is the River’s gift: when they look at you with hate and disdain, you will think, ‘You do not know me; you know nothing.’ Then, though you look at the ground, pretending humility to prevent a beating, you will not feel humbled in your heart, because you know who you are.”
Ash had always felt that it was a great gift, even though, when he went to Turvite, he had forced himself to banish even a stray thought about the Deep. It had been pure superstition; he was afraid then, that he would never return, that he had been cast out of the society of Travelers, forced to Settle, because there was no place for him on the Road. He was afraid that the River would reject him if he had tried to come here without his father.
He was still afraid of that, but there were more important things than his fear. He watched his father who had joined in the testing of the new boy. The demon forms prowled around Flax, growling softly, reaching out hands curled like claws to touch his face, to poke his side, to scratch.
“If you hold still and show no fear, you won’t be harmed,” Ash said quietly. It was what he had been told by his grandfather, who had met him and his father here the year before the old man died — the first year that Ash came and had been tested as Flax was being tested now. He believed it
was true, but the demons chuckled to themselves disquietingly. Ash wondered what happened to the boys who broke and tried to run.
This was only the first test, but it lasted until dawn, until Flax was swaying with tiredness and fear had passed out of him because he was too exhausted to feel it. As the dawn broke somewhere outside the canyon, the sky lit with rose and orange glory and the demons lifted their heads and howled, a long ululation, then turned as one and jogged inside the big cave.
Ash came over to Flax and supported him to a seat on a flat rock. He brought water in a curved shell from a tiny stream flowing between two boulders, and held it so Flax could drink.
“W-why…?” Flax stuttered.
“That was the first test,” Ash said. “There’ll be others.”
“Demons. One of them was your father?”
Ash nodded. “You’ll meet him soon.”
“That’s why he’ll know the right songs? Because he’s a demon?”
“Ah, no, not exactly.”
“You could have warned me!” With his legs no longer wobbling and his thirst slaked, Flax had found enough energy to be angry.
“No, I couldn’t,” Ash said. “I’d sworn secrecy. I did warn you it was dangerous.”
“Yes, but… real demons.”
Ash laughed. “Oh, they’re not so bad when you get to know them!”
It hadn’t occurred to him that Flax would think he was demon-spawned, that he wouldn’t immediately understand who the badger-headed figure really was. He couldn’t resist letting him continue to think it. The misunderstanding wouldn’t be for long, anyway. He collected his and Flax’s clothes and they dressed, glad to escape the chill.
Flax rummaged in their bags for something to eat, but Ash moved away, waiting for the sun to come up over the lip of the canyon wall. He knelt by the stream, trailing one hand in the cold water, and wondered what was happening up north, with Bramble and the others. He missed Martine. Oakmere was a long way north of where his ancestors had lived — there were no Traveler songs about it, and right now he was glad. He was sick of songs. Heartsick.
He had held them inside all his life, although again and again they had almost burst his chest with the pressure to sing. But he had never sung, because of the look on his parents’ faces whenever he tried. Now he knew that he had sung with the voice of the dead, and his parents’ reaction was understandable. But then, when he had been three and four and five years old, all he had known was that his voice was so horrible that even his father could not bear to listen. Yet his father had taught him the songs. Taught the music, on the flute and drum. Taught the lyrics, and heard Ash recite them all until he was word perfect.
All. That was the point — that had been the point — that he had learned all that his father had to teach. That his father had entrusted the songs to him, so that someday he could teach someone else… his own son, his own daughter… and the songs would continue, as they had continued for more than a thousand years. All of them. If his father had not given him all the songs, then none of them was worth anything.
None.
He wished he could wipe his memory clean of every song he had ever known.
The breeze carried the sounds of the Deep with it; birds, beetles, small animals in the carpet of leaves, and the Hidden River rushing through its banks. He found the Deep disturbing, always, but the sounds of life lifted his spirits. Perhaps — perhaps his father did not know the songs Safred was talking about. A small sound came from behind him, a foot on pebble, and he swung around, drawing his knife as he turned.
The men were coming out of the cave, still naked but with their own faces returned to them. Ash stowed his knife hurriedly. His father came first, smiling broadly, and embraced him.
“Ash! You made it!”
Ash knew he should have left his clothes where they were, but embracing his father while they were both naked always felt bizarre, and he’d rather have to strip off again later than experience that oddity.
Flax was looking from one face to another, one body to another, and coming to a conclusion.
“They’re not demons?” he asked Ash, outraged.
“Only at night.” Rowan laughed. “When the River gives us our true faces.”
Flax opened his mouth to complain, but Ash forestalled him. “We have more important things to talk about.” He looked around the circle of faces he knew so well. Friends, an uncle of his mother’s, his father… They looked at him with welcoming eyes, but would they still look like that after he had demanded to be taught the secret songs? Or would he be cast out, never to return? Would he lose his place in the world all over again? His heart beat faster, but he had to speak.
“There are things happening in the world outside which you must know about,” he said. “And there is a thing I must ask from you.”
Martine
CAEL’S WOUND WASN’T healing. It wasn’t getting any worse, and his fever was low, but it was constant. He was losing weight. Zel and Martine had to search further in the Forest to find feverfew and comfrey.
“You have to come out to the island,” Safred said at breakfast. “I’m sure I could heal you at the altar.”
Cael looked at the lake with loathing. “I’m all right. I’ll last until we get out of the Forest.”
“You look tired,” Zel ventured.
“I’m sleeping fine. Slept like the dead last night. Every night since we’ve been here.” He sounded faintly surprised.
Safred looked thoughtful. “So have I,” she said. “What about you two?”
Martine didn’t look at Zel. “I had trouble getting to sleep last night,” she said truthfully, “but then I slept soundly.”
“Me, too,” Zel said.
“Maybe there’s something in the air,” Safred said.
Something from the gods, Martine thought. Or the fire, safeguarding us. She was warmed by the thought that even in his rage he hadn’t lifted that protection. Bramble began to move, twisting from side to side as though in pain. Martine bent over her and smoothed her hair. She tried to give Bramble water, but her mouth stayed firmly closed.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re sleeping,” Safred said sternly to Cael. “You have to be healed. Come to the altar.”
He looked resigned. “All right.”
“Safred,” Martine said, “I don’t think the gods want you to.”
From the center of the black altar, mist was rising. There had been fog on the water when they woke at dawn, but it had disappeared when the sun hit it. Now, at noon, in full warm sun, mist was pouring off the altar and spreading outward, across the lake, toward them, as it had the first night, when they had taken Bramble to the altar.
“Dung and pissmire!” Zel said.
“I don’t think now is a good time to go out there, niece,” Cael said. But the mist didn’t react to this retreat.
“Sit down around Bramble and hold hands!” Martine ordered. Zel grabbed her hand and Safred’s and they formed a circle, Cael between Safred and Martine, Bramble in the middle, lying silently, frowning a little. Cael’s hand was too hot, Martine thought. Then the mist rolled over them and they could see nothing.
Bramble
FOR ONCE, SIGHT came back first. Bright light, sun shining, reflecting off water — water moving, shifting, breaking in brilliance. The sea, Bramble realized. The eyes she looked through were straining to see out past the breaking waves to where a boat with a square sail was making for the narrow harbor entrance. Cliffs reared up on either side, sheer and menacing, making a hazardous corridor to the open ocean. On the left-hand cliff, the northern side, were men, pushing large rocks toward the edge. If the rocks fell as the boat was making its way through the corridor, it would be smashed.
She saw through a woman’s eyes. Her hand was at her throat and her heart beat fast, as though she were mortally afraid. She jiggled a baby on her left hip without looking at it. The baby chortled and patted her face with a soft hand, but although Bramble could clearly feel the touch, the
woman seemed unaware of it. Out of the corner of her eyes, Bramble could see other people watching the boat’s progress. Dark-haired people. After so long spent among the tall, burly men of Acton’s world, they seemed small to her.
The men on the cliffs had hair that shone bright gold in the sunlight. They were big, too, and strong. Although the rocks had clearly been piled up ready for any attempted invasion from the sea, they were still a fair way away from the edge, and these men trundled them across the uneven ground with ease. Bramble could see that their hair was in plaits. Acton’s men.
This must be Turvite. The battle for Turvite had been fought outside the town, up on the hills that surrounded the city, the stories said, because the men of Turvite wanted to have the advantage of the high ground. The elevation hadn’t helped them: they’d all been killed.
Bramble could just imagine Acton laughing as he swung his sword, shouting “Kill them all!” There he was, himself, unmistakable, standing tall on the cliff edge, shouting down to someone in the boat. There was a woman on the boat who was shouting up. Bramble couldn’t be sure why, but there was something about the way she stood and her long white hair that made her think of Dotta. Then Acton motioned his men back from the cliff’s edge and gestured to the boat — you can leave, the gesture said. Take the open sea. The old woman waved her thanks.
The woman with the baby gasped and began to cry. There was a mixture of joy and sorrow swirling inside her that Bramble found difficult to experience. This was a woman who felt intensely, far more so than Ragni, or the girl in the meadow. Baluch turned all his feelings into music, and somehow that contained them; Gris had kept control of his through long practice. But this woman had almost no control at all, and it was dizzying.
Next to her, another woman, older, turned and put an arm across her shoulders. “Now, now, Piper,” she scolded gently. “He’s safe now. They’ve let the boat go.”
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