Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  What was she doing here? Martine wondered. She stood in the inn chamber and stared at her empty bed, too restless to go to sleep.

  When she and Ash had left Turvite, she had meant to go to the Hidden Valley, to visit Elva and Mabry. She had done that, and the winter she had spent with them and the new baby had been a golden time, despite the shadow of the ghosts hanging over them. But since leaving the valley — since the gods had told her to leave — she had just moved from one place to another without a plan, without any idea of what she was supposed to be doing. Finding Bramble, bringing her to the Well of Secrets, the journey into the Great Forest, sending Bramble on her mysterious journey, even taking horse for Foreverfroze, had seemed to make sense because she felt some responsibility for Ash, and then for Bramble.

  But now, with Ash gone to the Deep and Bramble gone gods knew where, what was she doing here? Her gifts weren’t needed — Safred could do all the future sensing anyone could ask, and more. Any part she might play in this gods’-driven attempt to stop Saker was probably over when she gave Acton’s brooch to Bramble.

  Martine was used to being in control of her own life. Now she felt adrift, and she didn’t like it. She sat down on the side of the bed and took off her right boot, then noticed the sole. All around the edge it had been nibbled away, as though rats had got to it, and the bottom was pitted with holes that went almost all the way through the thick leather. She stared at it in puzzlement, then suddenly understood. She had walked in these boots out on Obsidian Lake, not once but six times, and the water of the lake had done this. Eaten tanned leather, hard leather, like vitriol did. She shivered, remembering the sting of the waters as she and Zel had cowered away from the fire. If the fire hadn’t burnt off the water so quickly, she and Zel might look like this boot, or worse.

  Martine felt a sudden desire to go home, back to Hidden Valley, and protect her daughter and grandson. But she had promised to meet Ash, and she would keep that promise.

  They rode on the next day into increasing cold. Although it was summer, the Foreverfroze peninsula was swept by winds that blew across the never-melting northern ice. Yet the country teemed with life under the horses’ hooves. As they turned north and began the journey up the peninsula, the trees grew sparser and more crooked, bent like old women toting loads of kindling home. Under the trees, though, there was lush grass and blazing wildflowers, and a constant scurrying of small animals making paths through the long stems. In the distance they saw elk and deer browsing. Birds were everywhere, and ignored them as if they had never seen humans. Terns, swallows, herons in the hundreds of low-lying pools, hawks high above in the vaulting pale blue sky, flocks of geese and ducks, waders and moorhens and cranes, even an albatross sailed above them and went on, riding the wind further out to sea.

  The wind made Martine glad of the felt coat Drema had made for her in Hidden Valley. It seemed a long time ago, although it was less than a month since they had left. She spent a while wondering how little Ash was and how Elva was coping with motherhood. She realized with amusement that she had turned into a grandmother… at least in her thoughts.

  With some determination, she forced herself to think about the present place and time. At least the wind kept the insects at bay. She was sure that in the lee the midges would attack furiously.

  As though he had been waiting for her to finish her thoughts, Arvid brought his horse next to hers and smiled at her. The smile seemed to split her mind in two. One part was full of the suspicion of a lifetime: what would a warlord want with a Traveler woman? That had an easy answer! The other part came from deeper down, the part that had been brought back to singing life by the fire. The easy answer was the answer it wanted. The fire inside her urged her to simply drag him from his horse and take him there, on the ground, in front of everyone. No, the fire’s voice seemed to whisper to her, it would be better in private, where he would not be distracted. She was increasingly sure that this was her punishment from the fire — to be tormented by desire that could never be fulfilled.

  His smile was tentative and he looked like a boy of sixteen approaching his first Springtree dance partner. There was a sweetness in that smile that disarmed her. Sweetness wasn’t a quality she associated with warlords.

  But he was also an experienced negotiator, and he was too canny to begin with anything personal.

  “Safred is still upset with your friend who has gone,” he said, a trace of the smile lingering at the corner of his mouth.

  She smiled involuntarily. “Bramble’s hard to predict,” she said.

  “You know her well?”

  Martine considered. “I’ve not known her long,” she said. “But I have some understanding of her, I think.”

  “Safred has told me about your undertaking,” Arvid said, his face completely serious.

  Martine was shocked, and then wondered why she should be. They would need all the help they could get — this was a problem for the whole of the Domains. They were not spies, on a secret quest for their lord! Of course Safred had told him. No doubt all the warlords would know soon enough anyway. They kept each other informed of any threats to the Domains.

  “Do you think Bramble is committed to her task?” Arvid asked.

  That was the warlord talking, and Martine resented it. “Oh, no, I think she’s gone off on a holiday,” she said.

  He winced. “She is young, and perhaps afraid,” he suggested.

  “Hah! That one’s never been afraid of anything in her life,” Martine retorted. “She says she’s found a quicker way. She’ll meet us in Sanctuary. Well then, we should go to Sanctuary.”

  “‘We’?” Arvid asked delicately.

  “Safred and Zel and Cael and I,” Martine said. She didn’t look at him. Would he offer to come with them? It was unheard of for a warlord to enter another warlord’s territory without formal invitation: an act of war. He could come as far as Turvite, but after that . . .

  “And Trine?” he asked with a smile, then paused. “I could come as far as Turvite, if you think it would be helpful.”

  She paused, struggling with herself. The two halves of her mind were in conflict. One wanted nothing to do with him. The other craved his company. Then her Sight reared up and swept all personal feelings aside. It was one of the strongest sensings she had ever had. Her hands shook with the power of it and the chestnut she was riding skittered a little. She clutched at the reins, still unsure on horseback.

  “Yes,” she said, eyes staring blindly at the stream they were passing. “Yes, we will have need of you in Turvite. Great need.”

  He nodded silently, but then let his horse fall back as though unsettled by her. She felt a flash of an old bitterness. She had lost her first love because he couldn’t accept her gifts. Elva’s father, Cob, had turned to Elva’s mother instead, but fathered a babe far stranger than Martine. It was so long ago that most of the time she rarely thought of Elva as anything but her own child, but their relationship was the result of a man rejecting the uncanny twice over, in her and in his own flesh. With no excuse, because he was of the old blood. The oldest blood.

  She shook her head free of the thoughts. Time she accepted that no man wanted to lie next to a seer, in case she could see into his soul and perceive the small, grimy secrets that lie in the center of all human hearts. Well, that rejection had given her a daughter, and now a grandson, so she should thank Cob instead of resenting him.

  But when they stopped for lunch and to water the horses, she kept a distance from Arvid, all the same. There was no use inviting hurt. Or thwarted desire.

  In mid-afternoon they passed a long train of ox-carts lumbering along the track, piled with high, canvas-covered loads. This was the merchandise the Last Domain was shipping to Mitchen, no doubt. A party of Arvid’s guards protected them, although what bandits would attack them out here Martine couldn’t imagine.

  “Go on,” Arvid said. “I’ll just have a word.”

  They rode around the carts, raising their hands to the dr
ivers who sat hunched against the wind and who occasionally lifted a whip to their oxen. The drivers nodded back, staring at Safred, whom they clearly recognized. Martine wondered how often Safred had visited Arvid at his fort, and why. Well, no doubt the gods had given her reasons, but consorting with warlords still seemed strange to her. It was disconcerting, after so many years spent avoiding warlords and their men, to be riding with them, part of their group, as safe as if she were among friends.

  Arvid consulted briefly with the group’s leader and then cantered up to rejoin them. “They’ll be in Foreverfroze tomorrow, maybe the day after if the wagons get bogged down again. It happens a lot in this season. Easier on sledges in winter, really, but then the harbor is ice-locked.”

  He spoke absently, as though mentally computing the oxen’s speed and endurance against a private timetable.

  “Do all warlords concern themselves with trade?” Martine asked him, trying for a normal conversation with him.

  He grimaced. “They don’t have to. They have the free towns to organize trade for them.”

  “And you have no free towns?” Despite her intentions, the comment came out accusingly.

  He glanced shrewdly at her, and smiled a little. “All our towns are free towns,” he said. Martine shut her mouth firmly. Enough talk. No matter what she said, he would twist it. That was what warlords did. But Arvid went on. “Unfortunately, there are not enough people living in them to take all the goods that we produce. The things worth the most, the furs and the sapphires and the timber, those are worth more in the southern Domains, so it pays us to ship them down, but no one town is big enough to hire a ship for itself. So I do it.”

  “And take a cut!” Safred said.

  Arvid laughed. “Of course! I have to support my people, after all, and that takes silver. Better a tax on exports than on grain, or cattle, or houses. This way, only the people that can afford it pay.”

  Safred sniffed. “You don’t need so many guards.”

  “Tell that to the people on the borders of the Ice King’s land. We have repelled two attacks this year already.”

  “Why aren’t you there, then?” Martine asked. It struck her as odd that a warlord would leave a battlefield. It went against their whole code.

  “Because,” Arvid said, provoked at last and glaring at Safred, “someone told me the gods forbade it. So my men have to face the enemy alone and I am here, counting wagons like a merchant, instead of leading them as I should.”

  Ah, Martine thought. There’s the warlord. He’s been hiding, but he’s there. The thought gave her some satisfaction, but also brought pain, as though a needle had slid into her heart.

  Safred shrugged. “Complain to the gods,” she said. “It’s not my fault.”

  Involuntarily, Martine exchanged a glance with Arvid, both of them amused at Safred. It was hard not to smile back. She had never thought of blue eyes as being warm before.

  To distract herself from the heat spearing through her, she said a prayer for Elva and Mabry and the baby. The gods don’t pay much attention to humans, she thought, but sometimes they do; sometimes they take a liking, and they liked both Elva and Mabry. Loved them, even. So perhaps the prayer would work. She said none for Ash or Bramble. They were already in the hands of the gods, and no prayers of hers would change the outcome.

  Bramble

  WALKING WITH THE hunter was like stalking deer. Bramble had to move stealthily but also quickly. The hunter was entirely silent; no footfall, no rustle of grass or branches. Bramble had roamed the woods all her life, but still, inevitably, she brushed aside grass stems which sighed, or occasionally placed her foot on a twig which groaned under her. Each time, the hunter flicked her a look that was impossible to decipher. Scorn? Disbelief? Astonishment?

  They moved through the darkening Forest so fast they were almost running. Her skills came back to her, but she would never equal the hunter in stealth. It seemed to realize this and slowed its pace, just a little.

  Bramble knew they were traveling further north, but she asked no questions. She had taken the leap and was in midair; she just hoped there was firm footing on the other side.

  As the night grew darker, the hunter realized that Bramble was having more trouble following it. “Soon,” it promised, and went more slowly. They came, after a while, to a space where a huge tree grew. Some kind of conifer, that was all she could tell in the darkness, but enormous, its trunk larger around than Gorham’s house in Pless. Much larger. The tree looked almost as wide as the Pless Moot Hall, and its upper branches disappeared into the stars. As they ducked down to pass under its branches the faint light disappeared altogether. Bramble stood still, her head just below its lowest limbs, lost in a sighing black that moved around her as the wind soughed.

  She wanted to ask where they were, but knew it was a foolish question. They were in the Forest, they were underneath an old tree. Any other answer was a human answer, one the hunter would not know.

  “Come,” it said. It took her by the arm and led her to the trunk of the tree, a journey that took some minutes.

  They stood between huge writhing roots and the hunter said, “Do you remember where you want to go?”

  “Um . . .” Bramble thought about it. She had to be very clear about this. “I remember it in the past.”

  “Soooo,” the hunter said, and listened to the Forest. “Do you remember it clearly? Tell it to the Forest.”

  “It’s a cave,” Bramble said. “In the Western Mountains. A cave with drawings on the wall from long, long ago.”

  The hunter sniffed. “All times are long ago,” it said. “But we cannot go to a cave. That is the domain of the stone-eaters. I cannot take you there.”

  “But —”

  It ignored her interruption. “Do you remember outside the cave?”

  The memory flooded back: being in Red’s body, watching Acton ride up the slope toward the cave. Watching him disappear into the trees. Into what had been the Forest, in those days when the Forest had covered the whole country. The hunter hissed with satisfaction.

  “So. You remember. The Forest remembers. It will take you there. The journey will take much time and no time.”

  “How?”

  “The Forest remembers. We will go to your memory and then come back to your moment, this moment you are tied to so strongly.”

  Bramble half understood, but only half. I’m still in midair, she thought. She felt, immediately, the exhilaration of the chase. The hunter smiled, showing sharp teeth, as though it too felt the surge of excitement.

  “Put your hand on the tree, prey,” it said. “Its roots go back far. Very far.”

  Bramble reached out and placed her palm on the crinkled bark. Just as before starting a chase, all her senses seemed more alert. She felt the faint breeze on her cheek, heard owls and, high above, a flock of smaller birds. The small songbirds were migrating to their summer breeding grounds. They always flew at night, to avoid the hawks: black caps, warblers, swallows. Their wings flurried the night air, there were so many of them. Bramble could feel the tiny shiver along the tree as the owl launched itself from the upper branches in pursuit of the flock. Was it possible that she had really felt that? The night shifted and seethed around her, full of life. She could smell something: cedar? A strong, heady scent that dizzied her.

  “Take a step forward,” said the hunter. She did, and it was broad day.

  She stared at the hunter. It leaned casually against the tree, its elegant bones jutting in the wrong places. She had been right, it was a kind of cedar tree, although a type she had never seen before. Her instinct told her never to show weakness to the hunter, so she disguised her disorientation.

  “I thought cedars needed warm places to grow,” she said.

  The hunter shrugged. “Not this one.”

  They stepped away from the trunk. More than the light had changed. The tree seemed much smaller. It was, surely, only a young tree. Even allowing for the magnifying effects of night, Bramble w
as sure it had been huge before.

  “We’re in the past,” she said.

  “Not in your past yet,” the hunter said reprovingly, as though she had been stupid. “There are more steps to that memory. Come.”

  It set off through the Forest at a slower pace than the night before. Almost strolling. “No hurry now,” it said.

  “Why not?” Bramble was concerned that the question might sound like a weakness, but she had to know. The whole point of this was that she didn’t have any time to waste.

  It listened to the Forest, and lost the disdainful look on its face, as though it had been chastised. “We travel in the past,” it said as though explaining to a child. “So no time is lost in your moment. Then we return to your moment. I told you.”

  Bramble wondered how far back they had come. A hundred years? Five hundred? She felt light-hearted and light-headed. There was no task waiting for her here, and no grief. Maryrose was not yet dead. There was no one being slaughtered — at least, not more than there had always been, as the warlords extended their territory. The thought sobered her. She had seen too much death recently to be flippant about it, even five hundred years in the past.

  The hunter slipped through the Forest and Bramble took off her boots and followed it, barefoot as it was barefoot, treading where it trod, trying to see with its eyes. There was no difference between this Forest and the one they had been in last night. It renewed itself eternally and time, to it, Bramble realized, was a matter of concentration, of where it put its attention. There was no present, no past, perhaps no future. Just the Forest.

  The sense of timelessness was a gift from the Forest, she thought, as keeping the mosquitoes away had been a gift from the Lake. A gift to the Kill Reborn. Bramble wondered fleetingly if they would have done as much for Beck, if he had made the same journey. Then she thought, with a little satisfaction: the hunter would have killed Beck. She knew that she had been saved from fear because she had already been dead, had experienced the death-in-life for so long before becoming the Kill Reborn. Beck would not have had that toughening, and he would have feared, and died. It was all the roan’s doing.