Deep Water (61 page)

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 drivers 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.

W
ALKING 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 was 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.