ASH SAT IN the dark stable for more than an hour, sliding the stones through his fingers, listening as they whispered their names: Love, Chaos, Murder, Revenge, Child, Woman, Death, Evenness . . .
Each stone was different, and each fitted his fingers and his mind as if crafted especially for him. He knew that a stonecaster’s stones and his soul became entwined, and he could feel it happening, slowly, feeling the stones become his; only his. The process was both terrifying and exhilarating; scary and deeply comforting. There was nothing else that was his. He began to understand why stonecasters all seemed to have an unshakeable air of calm around them. The center of their lives was not touched by time or circumstance; their souls were as safe as stone.
Unlike Flax’s singing, the stones didn’t cut across his own mental music; rather, they seemed to harmonize with it, giving it more depth and color. He longed to use them. Flax was sitting beside him, nursing the last of his ale. He had the gift of happily doing nothing, which Ash had never mastered.
“I think I should practice before I try a paying customer,” Ash said, as nonchalantly as he could. “Do you want me to read for you?”
Flax smiled with pleasure. “Oh, yes.” He wriggled around until he was facing Ash and then spat in his left hand and held it out expectantly.
Ash put the pouch on the ground in front of him, spread out his own napkin, and spat in his own palm. They clasped hands.
“Ask your question,” he said.
“Um… will Zel ever get married?”
Ash didn’t let his surprise show, because that was also part of being a stonecaster, keeping your face blank. But he was suddenly curious about Flax; about whether he wanted the answer to be yes, or no. Was he so dependent on Zel that he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving? Or was he chafing under his big sister’s competent management?
The stones in the bag were both strange and familiar to his fingers. It was a different feeling from just touching them, as he had earlier. Some seemed to slide past his fingertips as though waxed, others clung to his hand. It was easy, the work of only a moment, to gather the five that wanted to be drawn out. Ash breathed deeply to control his astonishment. He had always thought it was just chance — well, chance controlled by the gods — which stones were chosen. He’d had no idea that the stones chose themselves. The choice was so clear. It was so easy to tell which ones to grasp and which to let go. He felt euphoria building in him. This was something he could do, after all, something respected far more than safeguarding, something that — something that could take him back on the Road. With his parents, if they wanted.
A whole bright future rolled out in his mind in the moments that his hand drew the five stones out of the bag and cast them on the napkin of undyed linen. The stones stood out clearly against the pale fabric, but Ash didn’t need the fading light to know which stones lay there. It was easy.
Then, as the stones spoke to him, it stopped being easy. He touched them, one by one, as he had seen Martine do, and they reached up into his mind and spoke, in sounds and music and images and smells. The smell of blood. The flight of an arrow. The sound of the sea.
“Time,” he said with difficulty, and was appalled at the sound. The words came out harsh, grating, the unmistakable voice of the dead.
Flax recoiled, paling, and let go of Ash’s hand. Then, slowly, he took it again, ignoring the fact that Ash was shaking.
“That’s the voice of the Well of Secrets,” he said slowly. “That’s how she heals. With that voice.”
Ash looked down at their hands, not sure what to say. Not wanting to admit to speaking with the voice of the dead. He shrugged, trying to imply that it was a surprise to him, too. But Flax had seen that already.
“You weren’t trying to use that voice?” he asked warily.
Ash shook his head, afraid to speak. Afraid, oh gods, that his normal voice had gone completely.
“Has it happened before?”
“Only when I sing.” The admission burst out before he could stop it, and it was his own voice, although a little higher than normal because he was frightened. But it was his voice. Turning back to the stones lying on the napkin was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He took a very deep breath, and touched one.
“Parting,” he said, in the voice of the dead, and as he spoke the images, like memories, washed over him, full of treachery and blood. “Woman. Change. The blank stone.”
He sat breathing heavily, glad it was over, not meeting Flax’s eyes. But Flax was a Traveler born and bred, and the Sight, whatever form it took, was a part of his world. He accepted Ash’s voice without further comment and looked at the blank stone consideringly.
“So. That means anything can happen, yes?”
Ash paused. The blank stone did mean that, but the stones were telling him something else; death, they said, murder. Yet those stones were not on the napkin. So what should he say to Flax? How much should he say? It might not be Zel’s death, he told himself, although he was sure it was. But if the death stone wasn’t there… perhaps Flax wasn’t meant to know… Ash could have screamed from frustration. This was supposed to be a practice run, not an impossible choice! Then he remembered Martine’s voice, “Answer the question. Don’t make my mistake… don’t give them more than they ask for.”
“I don’t . . .” Thank the gods, it was his own voice again. Perhaps the other voice only came when he was touching the stones, or naming them. “I don’t see a wedding,” he said and tried not to laugh hysterically at the understatement. “But there is a parting of the ways.” A big parting, but perhaps not the final one. Perhaps that was what the blank stone meant.
Flax scratched his chin, a curiously old movement. “Time,” he said.
“Yes,” Ash replied, sure of that. “Months, at least.”
Flax let go of his hand. “Months,” he said, in a tone which meant that months might as well have been years. “I thought… there was a cobbler who wanted to marry her a while back. I just wondered… but I guess not, huh?”
Ash shrugged and swept the stones up into the pouch. They were once again just pieces of rock with carvings on them. That was all. The surge of feeling, of sight and smell and what had seemed like memory, was gone. He felt empty and tired.
“You know, I don’t think your average stonecaster talks like that,” Flax said. “Might cause a bit of a stir.”
He was right. No one would want to consult a stonecaster who grated an answer like stone on stone. Like Death herself. They certainly didn’t want to attract attention while they were on their way to the Deep.
“Dung and pissmire!” Ash cursed. All his bright plans crashed around him. Even this talent was useless to him. “Go to sleep!” he snarled at Flax, as though it were all his fault. Flax grinned and rolled himself into his blanket as though nothing were wrong.
The next day, they were more circumspect on the Road, because they were closer to Gabriston. Although Flax complained, they camped that night instead of going to one of the village inns.
“We don’t need more silver. Best not to draw attention,” Ash said. “That’s the way of it, going to the Deep. Don’t draw attention.”
Or someone, sometime, would notice the trickle of Traveler men heading through Gabriston into the wilds, and ask questions. That would mean death, for someone — the questioner or the questioned. So the demons said.
They bought small amounts of food in each village they passed the day after, until their saddlebags were swollen, so they could skirt Gabriston and go onto the wilds without being noticed.
They were out of grain country now and into North Domain’s vineyards, famous from cliff to cove for their fine vintages. Flax eyed the inns with some wistfulness, but Ash was firm.
“On the way out, maybe. Maybe, if all goes well. But no sane man goes to the Deep with drink in him.”
The vines were planted on hillsides, so steep that in some places they were terraced to make more flat ground. The hills grew rougher, and the vines less abundant as they approached the wilds. Finally, they found their way to a bluff which overlooked the wilds: a network of canyons and chasms, stream-cut gorges and dead ends, all formed of the red sandstone that was quarried further downstream and sent all over the Domains. In Turvite, in rich merchants’ houses, Ash had seen intricately carved mantelpieces and balustrades in the fine stone, streaked golden and blood red in intertwining layers. The sandstone was very beautiful, but the sight of it had always made him nervous — it reminded him of the Deep, and the Spring Equinox.
The canyons of the wilds had been worn away by water over thousands of years, many more thousands than Acton’s people had been in the Domains. Every spring, his father had said, the singers and the poets had made their way here. Spring was the time for music and stories, he said, when things began to flow again. Summer was the time for those in the living trades: horse trainers and animal healers and drovers. Autumn for the dead trades: tinkers and painters and drystone wallers. Winter for the wood trades: carvers and carpenters and turners, chair-makers and basketweavers. Every craft had its time, its gods-chosen time, for the Deep. Except, Ash thought now, looking down at the stream below the bluff as it leapt and danced over the red rocks, except safeguarders. Perhaps he belonged with the shepherds. He laughed, shortly, and nudged Mud with his heels. The sun was setting. It was time for the Deep.