Blood Ties (34 page)

“Take her down,” he ordered the archer, who was standing nearby, mesmerized by the spectacle.

The archer couldn’t believe it at first, but he looked at my lord’s face and then nocked his bow and swung it up to take aim. He pulled back the bowstring. My heart was huge in my throat. Blasphemy! Rank blasphemy to kill the chosen of the gods! I couldn’t believe it.

“Leof!” my lady said urgently.

My lord Leof, one of the lord’s lieutenants, sprang forward and knocked the bow out of the archer’s hands.

Thegan rounded on him. “I gave an order!”

“My lord, think!” Leof said. “To shoot the Kill Reborn! The luck would leave you. I acted to save you, my lord.”

My lady moved forward. “Not in front of everyone, Thegan.”

Thegan stilled, control returning like water flowing into a jug. “Leof. You will find her and bring her back. You will send out men and recapture the horses. All of them. Do it now.”

“Yes, my lord.”

My lord Leof bowed and made his leave and my lady and I turned to go inside. I could hear the horses charging down the hill and I said a prayer for the Kill Reborn’s safety on that slippery road. I stayed, for a moment, just inside the door, to touch the amulet at my breast and say the prayer.

And I heard Thegan beckon the archer.

“Horst.”

“My lord.”

“You’re my man, I know.”

“On my life, my lord.”

“Follow Lord Leof. If he finds the girl, kill her. If he doesn’t find her — she’ll probably head north. I sent couriers north yesterday to Lord Arvid in the Last Domain. I will instruct Lord Leof to send you after them if he doesn’t find the girl. You can catch up if you ride fast. Tell the Lord Arvid that I would take it as a mark of friendship to have the girl returned to me.”

I stood for a moment, and then ran inside as though the Lady of Death herself was behind me. I knew that if he caught me there, having heard what I had heard, I was dead. And still, when I think of it, it was not the order to kill that shocked me the most. It was the way he talked about her. “The girl,” he called her, as though she were nothing. No man with any belief in the gods could talk about the Kill Reborn like that. I realized he was without belief: the worst of all men, because there can be no redemption. Even the evil can be reborn if they repent to the gods in time. But to seek the gods’ forgiveness you must first believe.

It was like the world had darkened to winter in the middle of spring: my days shortened, my skies clouded. It had been a golden time since they married, since the old warlord died and the reins came into Thegan’s hands. He had brought so much joy and hope and energy to the Domain. He seemed to glow like the sun and we warmed ourselves from him. Now I felt cold. And older. Much, much older.

My lady was right. I prayed to the gods to give me the words to reveal the truth to Alston. I prayed to the gods for help, for comfort, for succor. Only they can guide us.

Ash

I
N THE LATE
afternoon light, the ghosts stood out surprisingly well, white against the rushing water of the stream, against the dull sage green of the bushes by the track.

“They’re strong!” Martine exclaimed.

“As strong as in Turvite,” Ash agreed. He felt light-headed, relieved. This was all the warning had meant. A group of ghosts! Then, as he and Martine neared the ford, he realized that these were not like any ghosts he had ever seen.

They were a mixture of men and women, but they all had the same look: an antique look, with strange clothes, dirty and disheveled. They were shorter than most people, with the tallest coming shoulder-high. The men were in knee-length skirts, bare chested, the women in long gowns that fell straight from shoulder to hip to ground without a break. Some of them had tears in their gowns; two of the men had the marks of wounds showing dark across their chests.

They had shawls over their shoulders, both men and women, and all wore long braids: the women, one down their backs, the men a series of shorter braids around their heads, tied down with a headband that crossed their foreheads. There were beads and feathers tied to the ends of the braids. Ash could tell that the braids were dark, and so were their eyes.

Each of them, men and women, clutched a tool, or maybe a weapon: sickles, knives, scythes, wooden rakes. Even ghost-pale, Ash could tell that the metal of the tools wasn’t iron. Something about the way the light moved over the surface. Bronze, maybe? The ghosts held them in front of their chests as though unfamiliar with using them that way.

They were terrified — and angry. They stood absolutely still as Ash and Martine approached them, but poised, as though ready to run. Martine held out her hands in a gesture of peace. Their heads turned to follow the gesture, and the beads on the ends of their braids rattled.

Ash felt the blood drain from his head, it seemed from his whole body. That was not possible. Even on Ghost Begone Night — when he had set the ghosts of Turvite free to speak — they could make no other sound, not a clapping of hands, nor rustling of cloth as they ran, nothing. It
was not possible
for the beads on the head of a ghost to clink together.

“Ask them to speak, Ash,” Martine said calmly.

He saw that there were drops of sweat starting out along her brow. She had heard it too. That was reassuring, in a way.

“Speak,” Ash said gently, not wanting to startle them.

They looked at him, uncomprehending. The man in front, the tallest and brawniest, raised his scythe and made to move forward. There was a stain on the blade of the scythe, like blood. Ash swallowed against the stone in his throat. If the beads could rattle, could the scythe slice through flesh? He thought hard, and fast.

“Viven,”
he said, in the old tongue.

Relief flashed across all the ghosts’ faces and they began to speak in a rush, gabbling the old language together. The man in the front waved them impatiently to silence, and spoke urgently, quickly, then waited for an answer to his question.

Ash could understand only one or two words in every six. The grating voice of the dead made it even harder to understand.

“Keiss,”
he said.

The man repeated his question.

Ash caught the words for invaders, yet where? He shook his head, dredging his memory for phrases from old songs. There was one, a lament . . .

“Sive keiss fardassane, loll parlan marl,”
Ash said. Go slowly from the battlefield, the invaders have gone.

“Loll?”
the man said, eagerly.

Ash bit his lip. Shook his head. Swept his arm out in a circle that took in the whole country.
“Nurl loll,”
he said.
“Fessarna.”
Gone everywhere. Conquered.

The group set up a wail, the same sound the ghosts from Turvite had made, a keening, echoing wail that set every nerve grating.

The sun touched the horizon and, as one, the ghosts turned to look at it, to raise their hands in gestures of homage and farewell.

“Wait!” Ash said, as they started to fade. “Who called you? Why?
Viven! Jli vivel? Se?
”

“Carse,”
said the man, straining to stay a moment longer. He reached out and touched Ash’s sleeve, gripped his arm with a strong and healthy hand. The edge of the scythe came nearer and Ash could smell the blood on its blade. Fresh blood.
“Carse. Sarat.”

Then they faded.

“What did he say?” Martine demanded. “Who called them?”

“A carse is like an enchanter — but more than that. Someone who guides the tribe, a seer. Like the Well of Secrets.”

“And
sarat?
”

“Revenge,” Ash said blankly, with the smell of blood still in his nostrils, filling his head. “It means ‘revenge.’”

They stood at the ford, reluctant to cross to the village.

“It would be more sensible to go around and find the road on the other side,” Martine said.

“There was fresh blood on the scythe,” Ash said. “We have to find out what happened.”

“Why? Why us?”

“Because they spoke to us.” Until he said it, he had not realized how strongly he felt about it. It was as though the ghost’s words had put a yoke on him, a leash that pulled him to the village, to further knowledge, perhaps to greater responsibility. He didn’t like the feeling. It was too much like walking past the black rock and oak tree in the center of Turvite and hearing the local gods call his name. Like watching the sheen and gleam of Martine’s hair and knowing that if he just
concentrated,
he would see more . . . He shivered in the dusk, looking at the stream gurgling happily through the shallow rocks. But he could not turn away.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Martine said.

He stared at her. Her face had closed in, like the carvings of the dead the southern villagers sometimes did at the mouths of burial caves.

“I have seen enough blood,” she said.

“What if this is the same thing that’s threatening Elva?”

She shook her head, not in denial but as though to clear her thoughts. “You’re right,” she said. “It would be . . . that’s the way the gods work.”

So they crossed the ford and went up the slope to the village.

It was not a large place — a crossroads with some outlying streets that petered out into the woods on the far side. It had two inns, though, and a livery stable, and a couple of the houses on the ford side had notices on their front doors, drawings of a pillow and a plate, the standard sign for lodgings. Ash noticed that the drawings were done beautifully, elegantly sketched by brush rather than scrawled with charcoal, as they had been in other villages.

Every door was barred. There were some signs of disturbance: an overturned water barrel had made the dusty street mud halfway up, and there were broken windows with boards hastily nailed across them. From one cottage came the high, wailing sound of grief, rhythmically, as though whoever cried rocked to and fro in time to her keening. The shadows of evening seemed to lengthen in response.

Martine knocked on the door of the biggest inn. There was no answer, but a scuffling inside betrayed listeners behind the door.

“They’ve gone,” Martine called. “They’ve gone.”

“Who says so?” A voice came from behind the door.

“Flesh and blood.”

“Stand by the window where we can see you.”

They moved to the window. Between a crack in the shutters an eye stared out at them.

“Prove you’re flesh and blood, then,” a high voice said.

Martine shrugged, drew out her knife and pricked her thumb with the tip. A rich drop of blood welled up. The door opened cautiously.

“They’re shagging Travelers!” Ash heard a voice say. “They probably brought the — the others . . .”

“Maybe not,” the high voice said. “There’s only two of them.”

The woman in the inn door was bandaged across her cheek and around her head, and her arm was in a sling. She was thin, with lank blond hair, and had small hectic patches of red high on her pale cheeks.

“What do you want?” she asked, holding the door ready to close.

“To help,” Martine said. “To find out what happened.”

“We’ll help our own,” she said. “What do you think’s happened?”

“We saw the ghosts, by the ford,” Ash said. “What happened?”

“You
saw
them? They didn’t attack you?” Her voice had sharpened into suspicion.

Behind her, a crowd of men and women shifted weapons more firmly into their grasp. Ash felt the hairs rise on his neck.

“They were going to,” he assured her.

“But then they faded,” Martine cut in, “as the sun set.”

The crowd relaxed a little. Ash bit back his explanation of talking to the ghosts. Martine had more experience of people than he did; he would take her lead and ask questions later.

“Then they might be back in the morning,” the woman said thoughtfully.

“Who knows. What did they do?” Martine asked.

The woman moved out of the doorway and indicated the room beyond. “Look for yourself.”

Ash and Martine moved into the taproom. There were the normal long tables set up, but no one was sitting at them. Four shrouded bodies lay on them instead, the shrouds faintly marked with blood from the wounds underneath them. One of the bodies was a child. A woman sat by it, head on her arms in exhausted sleep, one hand still clutching a fold of the shroud.

Martine shuddered. The woman nodded, as though Martine had passed a test, and allowed them farther in. Ash found himself holding his breath. He didn’t know what he was feeling.

“They came at noon,” an old man said suddenly. “Right on noon, out of nowhere.”

“Out of the forest,” a woman said. “I was taking the vealer to butcher and they came out of the forest. I saw them in time and I hid in the stable.”

“You couldn’t stop them!” said a young man with deep cuts down his bare shoulders. “I had my hayfork and I got one right through the chest, but it didn’t stop him!” He hesitated. “I — I ran,” he admitted, and began to weep. “If I’d stayed . . .” He turned aside.

“They’re dead already,” the innkeeper said. “What could you have done? All that stops them is solid wood and stone. They couldn’t get through the doors.” She looked at the biggest of the shrouded bodies. “My brother tried to stop them.
He
should have run.” She moved toward the table slowly, until she stood by the corpse.
“Why didn’t you run?”
She hit her brother’s body with a closed fist, and began to sob.

Friends closed around her and a young man, patting shoulders, proffered hot drinks. Ash and Martine withdrew to a corner and sat down on a couple of stools.

“We need to know if there have been any strangers here,” Martine said softly.

“The enchanter?”

She nodded. “It’s a risk to ask, but we have to know. And then I think we leave these people to their sorrow. Before they turn on us.”

She rose and moved to the innkeeper, who was calmer than the others.

“I think my friend and I will not trespass on your hospitality in these circumstances,” she said gently. “You will not want strangers here now.”

“Strangers, no . . .” The woman’s face was suddenly stricken. “The stonecaster! Oh, gods, he was going to the forest yesterday and he hasn’t come back! They must have found him . . .” She wept anew, although more quietly.

“A stranger?”

“No, no, he’s been coming through here for years, now and then. Saker, his name is. He’d have no chance, he’s only a thin little thing.”

“We’ll keep a lookout for him,” Martine said, nodding to Ash.

They moved to the door and the young man with the wounded shoulder glared at them suspiciously. “You’re going out into the night? With them out there?”

“We saw them fade as the sun went down. To tell the truth, my plan is to travel all night and be well away from here when the sun comes up. Just in case.”

There was a murmur around the room.

“Good idea!” an old woman muttered. She turned to a younger woman by her side. “You go, too, Edi. Be away from here before daylight.”

“Oh, no, Mam! I couldn’t leave you. Besides, what if they’re everywhere?”

Martine and Ash slipped through the door and it closed behind them as the argument went on.

“Why would they be everywhere?” the old woman said. “They were
our
ghosts!”

“Wait,” Martine breathed. “Listen.”

They stood in the full dark outside the door and listened.

“Other places have their own ghosts, Mam,” the daughter replied. “They’ll be just as bad as ours.”

“How do you know they were Spritford ghosts, Mardie?” the innkeeper asked.

“Oh, lass, didn’t you see the way they looked when they came into the town? The way they were dressed, the way they acted? Pointing at everything, looking up at the mountains to get their bearings and then looking at our buildings like they couldn’t believe their eyes? They were ours, all right, from the old days. From Acton’s time. Come back to take their revenge.”

“But why have they come back
now?
” wailed the daughter.

“We’ll go to the gods tomorrow,” said the innkeeper, “and ask.”

“Let’s go,” Martine said.