Deep Water (60 page)

In the next field, Arrow soared over the post and rail fence, took long low jumps over three streams that divided the field,
cantered for a moment to catch her breath, then gathered speed again across the pasture, scattering ewes and lambs as she
went. Leof stood in the stirrups to ease her back for a while.

The wraiths were following a winding route among villages and small towns. They had stopped twice to investigate something,
the second time for so long that Leof had a chance to spell Arrow. Without that respite, she would have foundered. He might
have been able to catch them, but that wasn’t his task. He had to let them lead him to the enchanter.

He would very much have liked to see what had interested them so. They had swooped close to the ground, over and over, and
seemed to be
smelling
it. But they had taken off so fast afterward that he had no time to look. He had to take the straight line after them. He
noted the locations and left them for another day. Right now, all he had to do was chase.

It was a glorious chase: over walls and streams, under shade trees and around coppices, over logs and through new hay that
brushed his boots and smelt of summer. He felt vaguely guilty about enjoying it so much, when the safety of the Domains was
at stake.

By the time the sun was overhead, out of his eyes, Arrow was tiring badly. He cast about for somewhere where he might get
a change of horse, but the last village had been tiny and would have no messenger horses stabled there. He eased Arrow to
a walk, watching the wraiths streak ahead of them, knowing he had probably failed, but clinging to the hope that they would
keep going in that straight line and he would be able to find them again.

Then they stopped, in midair, hovering like hawks before a kill. And like hawks they stooped, shrieking. Leof wasn’t close
enough to see exactly what they had found. They were over a small grassy hill just outside the next village — Bonhill, that
was it — and when they stooped they disappeared behind the hill.

He dismounted and walked Arrow slowly toward them, hoping that they would give her time to recover before speeding off again.
Then he got close enough to hear a man’s voice, speaking to them, and realized he had found the enchanter.

R
OWAN
’
S SONGS HAD
been so precise. Saker gave thanks for the musician who had taught him all the old songs, the invasion songs which told how
many of the old blood were killed in each place, and where they were buried. He wondered, briefly, where Rowan was now, and
Swallow his wife, and Cedar their drummer. He had Traveled with them for months, learning the songs, and it had been the happiest
time of his life.

Until now. Saker smiled as he turned over the ground and the spade revealed the graves. They had been shallow when made, but
the centuries had covered them with layer after layer of dirt. He had had to dig deep. These bones were not in such good condition
as others he had found. They were much browner, and soft, crumbling as he touched them. It was the damp. Water was a great
destroyer of bones. The grave here was in a hollow which must have collected rainwater for untold years, making a lush patch
in an otherwise scrubby field. Fed by the blood of his ancestors, Saker thought, and watered by the friendly rains of their
home.

This was the fourth site he had excavated since Carlion, and it was almost routine. He sorted through the bones until he had
taken fingerbones from each skeleton. Sometimes it was hard to decide which bone belonged to which body, and then he took
extras just to be sure. After he had the fingerbones he laid them out on a piece of cloth and called to them, going over his
litany of names. When he felt the twitch in his mind that told him the spirit had not gone on to rebirth, he placed that bone
into the sack with the rest of his collection, and made a note of the name on his scroll. He had amassed quite a collection
of names, now. He felt both triumphant and sad to read them over. So many, ready to fight. So many lost to Acton’s greed.

He had sorted through almost two-thirds of the bones from this site and had gathered another dozen names when he heard the
shrieking. He froze, immediately remembering the sound from terrible nights with Freite, the enchantress who had trained him.
Wind wraiths. He began to shake with fear, as though he were still a child.

She had used the horrible spirits to cow him into obedience — had threatened to give him to them to be eaten, or worse. She
never said what the worse was, but she didn’t have to. The sight of them, their long, clawed fingers, their sharp teeth and,
most frightening of all, their hungry eyes, filled him with terror. He had given up his strength to her, holding nothing back,
rather than be delivered into their hands. She had lived so many extra years because of that, but he had been much older when
he had discovered what she was doing with his power.

They came over the hill and swooped down into the pasture, crying out, crying triumph. He had never seen them in daylight
before. They were barely visible, merely a suggestion of movement in the sky, like a ripple in water. But their harsh voices
were as strong as ever, and he shook at the sound.

Then he set his mouth. No. He was not a child to be terrorized anymore. Never again. He was an adult, and more powerful than
any sorcerer had ever been, even Freite. He had seen her tame them. He could do the same.

Except that Freite had tamed them with music, with whistling and fluting, and Saker was as deaf to music as he was indifferent
to dancing. He could not use her spell, the five repeating notes. But if he could find the right words, the right sounds,
that would work as well. He thought frantically, quicker than he had ever thought in his life, while they swooped and jeered
above his head.

“Feed us, enchanter!” they screamed. “Feed us flesh and spirit!”

Saker paused. Feed them? That was what they had asked of Freite, and she had fed them, he knew, on vagrants and unwanted children.
He had been excluded from those ceremonies as part of her obsessive desire to keep her secrets safe, but he could guess what
had happened there. Perhaps he did not need to fear them after all.

She had told him, once, that they could not take what was not given. “At least, it’s so in the settled lands,” she had said.
“A prohibition was put on them by an enchantress. My tradition says it was done by a woman named Tern, but where she lived
and how long ago I don’t know.” She had smiled, the smile that she used to terrify him. “They cannot take, but they can be
fed. Beware, child.”

He shook off the unease of memory.

“Not yet,” he answered the wraiths.

“When? Whennnn?” they screeched.

“Soon,” he said, “soon.”

He was disturbed, and unsure. Flesh he could give them in abundance. They could have all they could eat of Acton’s people’s
flesh. But spirit? Now he realized what the “worse” was that Freite had threatened. To have the spirit eaten . . .

Should he set them loose on the warlord’s men? Should even justice go so far? He did not know. He did not know how to decide.

But if he wanted to restrain them, he had better find a spell that would work. Or they would turn on him and his ghosts, too.
The ghosts’ bodies might be unassailable, but what of their spirits? It might be that they were even more vulnerable to the
wind wraiths than the living. He could not risk it. The warlord’s men would have to lose their chance at rebirth as well as
their lives. Unless he could find the right spell.

T
HEY LEFT THE
Valuer’s Plantation early. Apple rousted them out of bed before dawn and they set off as soon as they had eaten breakfast.

Travel with a warlord was easy, Martine discovered. No one looked sideways at a dark-haired woman in the warlord’s party.
Food just appeared out of inns as they stopped to water the horses; carts pulled to the side of the road to let them go past.
Even with Arvid, who was probably as good as warlords got, there was still the forelock-tugging and the curtseys and the obsequiousness
that all sensible people show to anyone who travels with a party of armed guards. She got angrier as the day went on, and
noticed Zel felt the same.

Martine maneuvered her horse next to Zel’s chestnut, and they dropped back a little so they could talk. Trine came up next
to them, still on a leading rein, but to Martine’s surprise she didn’t try to bite or kick. Perhaps she was beginning to accept
Zel.

“It puts a bad taste in my mouth,” Zel said, nodding to where a goose girl was bending double, she was curtseying so hard.
Martine discovered a desire in herself to defend Arvid. Which was ridiculous. She had to change the course of this conversation.
“The Valuers want to do away with warlords,” Martine said. “Will you join them?”

That silenced her. Zel wasn’t a joiner by nature, that was clear. She leaned over to pat Trine, perhaps taking as well as
giving reassurance. Trine snorted at the touch, but didn’t bite. It might do her good to be with Zel, someone else she could
learn to trust. Martine thought they were all having a lesson in trust, herself included.

It was two long days’ ride to Foreverfroze, so they stopped overnight at an inn which did nothing but service the traffic
to the port. There was barely a village surrounding it, and the countryside around was pure forest. The road here was only
a cart’s width, although the ground on either side had been cleared for a bow-shot by Arvid’s orders to prevent bandits ambushing
trading parties.

They ate in the inn parlour. Martine sat as far from Arvid as she could, but the fire was still disturbing her, still churning
at her every time she looked at him, every time she heard his voice. Her hand shook with desire as she poured cider into her
cup, and she put the jug down abruptly to conceal it. This was worse than her infatuation with Cob, when she’d had the excuse
of youth. The fire was taking a difficult revenge. She went to her room early, ignoring Arvid’s attempt to catch her eye.

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.