Bramble

THE CEILING WAS dark green, with wooden beams. Bramble had never seen a green ceiling before. She was more tired and more hungry than she had ever felt in her life, and she was disoriented by waking in a room with a green ceiling.

Then she remembered, and her body of its own accord curled into a tight ball of misery, head on knees, trying to shut out the world. Maryrose. Maryrose was dead.

She lay and shook for a while, remembering. She had died again, only this time it was her body that had died. She remembered lying on the Well of Secret’s table, body in flames, arm hurting almost past her ability to bear it. Then she had — fainted? Died.

But instead of being in the Well of Secret’s house she had been in Maryrose’s front room, and Maryrose was lying dead, with Merrick next to her, dead, and she knew it wasn’t a dream. She had been glad she herself was dead, and she called out, “Wait for me!” to Maryrose, so they could go on together to rebirth. She was glad to be out of it all, glad to be set free of whatever destiny the gods had planned for her.

She called out again, “Wait for me, Maryrose!” in exactly the same way she had called out to her big sister when she was tiny and Maryrose walked too fast on her longer legs.

And just like then, Maryrose heard her and came back for her. She — her spirit — appeared somehow, as though she had walked in from another room through a door that wasn’t there, and stood looking at Bramble with the same loving annoyance as when they were children.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Bramble felt a moment of surprise. Ghosts weren’t supposed to be able to talk. “I’m dead,” Bramble said.

“Nonsense.”

“I am so!”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. Not yet. You’ve got work to do.” She pointed to her own body, lying limp on the floor. “You’re supposed to stop all this.”

She put out her hands and turned Bramble so that she was facing the door, although ghosts were not supposed to be able to touch anything, not even each other. “Go on, then. Get back there.”

Bramble hesitated, looking back to her. “Mam and Da? Granda?”

“They’re fine. They went back to Wooding for Widow Farli’s wedding to the smith. They missed all this.”

“Mare —”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Maryrose said, the exasperated big sister. “I’ll wait for you. We both will.” Bramble smiled and she smiled back, exasperation melting into love. “You do what you’re told and go back.”

Then Maryrose pushed her between the shoulder blades and she took two steps and was through the doorway before she had finished saying, protestingly, “Oh, Maryro-ose.” Then — nothing, until she had woken here, under this green ceiling.

She forced herself to uncurl. Maryrose was dead. Someone had killed her. It was Bramble’s job to stop whoever it was. So. If that was the destiny the gods had in mind for her, she would embrace it. She would find the murderers, and disembowel them.

She lay for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, and then lifted her left hand, gingerly, to touch her shoulder. Her mind remembered the pressure, the pain, the burning and nausea and sheer wrongness of that swollen arm. But her body didn’t. It was all gone. Cautiously, her head spinning, she sat up and examined her body. Not even a scar. She was starving, her body clamoring to replace the energy she had lost.

Suddenly, her hunger was gone, replaced by awe. What kind of person could do that, heal without leaving a scar? To heal was one thing, but to knit the flesh back to a state where it did not even remember being injured… that was tinkering with powers deeper even than the local gods.

The room had three beds, covered with green blankets matching the light color of the walls. It was like being inside a forest. She should find that comforting. She should be happy to be alive. Again. Twice she’d been pulled back from death by the power of the gods; and this time, by Maryrose.

The first time, when the roan had saved her in the wild jump across the chasm outside Wooding, she had entered a living death, her spirit split from her body, her senses dull, her heart empty except for love for the roan. It had only ended when she became the Kill Reborn, truly reborn by some power in the running of the Spring Chase.

Would she go back to that death in life again? It didn’t feel like it. All her senses were sharp. She could hear footsteps outside, climbing the stairs. She felt the bed linen under her thighs, the warmth of the late afternoon sun that slanted through high windows to fall across her shoulders. Saw each individual dust mote as it danced in the sunbeam. Each beautiful detail of the day filled her with grief and anger that Maryrose had been cut off from the world so viciously.

She was so weak she couldn’t even stand up. And she stank with old sweat. At that realization, her mouth twisted with amusement. At least the Well of Secrets couldn’t bespell that away — she stank of the last few days and was glad of it.

Martine put her head around the door and smiled at her. “Hungry?”

Bramble nodded. If she was going to live, and find out what had happened to Maryrose, she had to eat. Martine came in with a laden tray, followed by Ash who carried a basin and ewer, the water steaming from the top.

Bramble sniffed. “It’s true, I need that. One thing she couldn’t take away was the stink.”

Martine’s eyes crinkled with laughter and understanding as though she, too, found the Well of Secrets daunting and was glad to make a little joke about her.

“Food first, though,” she said, handing Bramble a warm roll dripping with butter. It disappeared in two bites.

“That was the best thing I ever tasted,” Bramble said, wondering, feeling guilty that she could enjoy food knowing that Maryrose was… she couldn’t think about that now. Her body was ravenous, demanding food, and she had to feed it. She had work to do.

“Near death lends spice to living,” Martine replied.

“Not always.”

The young man, Ash, was busying himself tidying the two other beds. Bramble realized he was trying not to look at her in her breast-bands. That was both endearing and a bit worrying. The last thing she needed was a youngling yearning after her. She pulled the sheet up to cover herself. He had, after all, saved her life. Both of them had.

“I have to thank you,” Bramble said, pausing before devouring a mug of soup. It was hard to pause, she was so hungry. She took a tiny sip. Asparagus and cream. Wonderful. “I owe you my life.”

Ash turned at that and Martine shrugged. “That’s what happens when you travel with a safeguarder,” she said, waving her hand at Ash. “People get safeguarded.”

Bramble looked at Ash with new eyes and he flushed. Under his shaggy black hair, he was a bit older than she had thought, and strong with trained muscle. He smiled at her tentatively and she realized that he was unsure of himself despite his strength and agility. She smiled back.

“Thank the gods, then, that you came at the right time.” And the Lake, she thought, that sent me there right then. She remembered leaving the Lake and being transported through time, late autumn becoming spring in a heartbeat. She shivered with remembered awe. That was true power.

“Mmm,” Ash said. “It was their fault, all right.”

Ah, Bramble thought, so it’s not just me the gods have been ordering about. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

“After you’ve washed,” Martine suggested, “we should go to see Safred. The Well of Secrets.”

“The Well of Secrets,” Bramble echoed. “Yes. I suppose we must. After I’ve seen the horses.”

Fed, washed, dressed in clean clothes and with her horses well cared for in the rooming-house stables, Bramble walked around the corner of an ordinary looking street to meet the Well of Secrets. She didn’t pause, or knock. If this Safred was a prophet, she should be expecting them.

As she pushed open the big double doors, they were met by a tall, good-looking older man.

“Ah, you’re on your feet!” he said. “Good, good.”

It was odd to meet someone who clearly knew her but of whom she had no recollection. Bramble forced a smile. “Thank you for your help.”

He waved that away and moved back from the door. “Come in, come in. I’m Cael, Safred’s uncle. They’re waiting for you.”

Sitting at a table were two women and a boy of about fifteen. The younger of the women, a girl really, had the dark, lean looks of the Traveler and the flexible body of a tumbler or dancer. She sat with her legs drawn up on the chair, one arm around a raised knee. She reminded Bramble of Osyth, though Osyth would never have sat so casually. Pless, where she had worked for Osyth’s husband Gorham the Horsespeller, seemed a very long time ago.

The boy had light brown hair and was taller, gangly with the swift growth of youth.

Then there was the other woman. Red-headed, older than her, around forty, stout but not fat. Bramble forced herself to look Safred in the eyes. Oddly, where she had expected to find something strange, something foreign, she found someone much like herself. Not an ordinary woman, but a woman nonetheless, beset by the gods and carrying a destiny unasked for. There was humor in the folds of her mouth and the lines around her intense eyes.

Bramble had no time for humor. “My sister’s dead,” she said. “Who killed her?”

Safred sat up straight, astonished. “How do you —” she began to ask.

Bramble cut across her. “Never mind how I know. Who killed her?”

Safred’s face sharpened with interest; with a kind of hunger. “Tell me how you know,” she asked again.

“Tell me who killed her.”

The Well of Secrets wasn’t used to being resisted. She swallowed and sat back in her chair, mouth tight. “His name is Saker.”

“Saker?” Martine asked. Bramble had almost forgotten she and Ash were there.

“That is his name, the enchanter, the one who raises ghosts. Saker. A bird of prey. He has a flock of falcons at his command. Last night, he loosed them onto new victims. In Carlion.”

Martine and Ash looked shocked.

“Ghosts?” Bramble asked. “Maryrose wasn’t killed by ghosts. She was almost cut in two. Ghosts can’t do that sort of thing.”

“These can.” Safred looked at Martine and Ash. “Tell her.”

Martine described the attack on Spritford. The maimings, the deaths, ordinary people cut down in their homes and on the street by ghosts who could hold a weapon and use it against the living. An unstoppable force, because they could not be killed themselves.

The young man and woman listened with appalled interest, but it was clearly old news to the big man, Cael, although he asked several questions about the ghosts and the way they had looked and spoken. Bramble was astonished that anyone could make ghosts speak. Ash looked fixedly at the table at that point, as though he were not proud of the ability.

Bramble sat for a moment after Martine finished. “What does he want?” she asked finally.

“He wants the Domains,” Safred said.

“Why?”

Safred picked up a jug of cha and began pouring out cups and handing them around. She gestured to Bramble and Martine and Ash to sit down, and they did.

“We don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “Yet. All we know is that the ghosts are those who have been dispossessed and are still angry. Perhaps they are taking back what was theirs before the invasion.”

“Do we know where he is, so I can go and kill him?” Bramble asked. There was silence. She looked around the table at the mixture of surprise and shock in the others’ faces. “What? It’s the simplest solution.”

Ash nodded agreement, and then looked unsure. He took the cup of cha and sipped, staring at the tabletop.

Safred shook her head. “The ghosts would still be there. Now they have been called up… the gods say that killing Saker will not end it. Others will learn how to call the ghosts. There are many who are angry. Now they have proof that an army can be conjured… even if Saker dies there will be others. Too many others, for too long. The Domains would be destroyed. Thousands would die.”

“Deal with the others one by one, as they arise. Stop this one now.”

“It seems to me,” the dark-haired girl said unexpectedly, her voice deep and pleasant, “that the problem is the ghosts, not the enchanter. Without them, he’s helpless.”

Safred smiled at the girl. “That is true. It is the ghosts we must dispose of.” She looked around the table and gestured to the girl and boy, introducing them. “Zel and Flax, Bramble, Martine, Ash.”

The girl nodded and the boy smiled at them. Zel and Flax, Bramble thought. So she did look like Osyth — these were Gorham’s children. Bramble had never met them, but Gorham had talked about them often enough. And Zel’s careful speech, with no trace of Traveler in it — that was Osyth’s training. Zel was trying hard to fit in here.

“When ghosts quicken, they must be laid to rest,” Safred said.

They sat for a moment, thinking that through. Bramble remembered the last quickening she had seen, the warlord’s man whom she had killed, rising three days later as ghosts did if they were not prepared for death. She had been ready to go through the ritual that would have laid him to rest, would have offered her own blood in recompense, but she had been prevented. She wondered, uneasily, if his ghost still haunted the linden tree near her home village.

Safred looked at Ash. “You have done it,” she said.

He nodded. “They need blood.”

“They need specific blood,” Martine said quietly. “The blood of their killer.”

“They need more than that,” said Safred. “The blood is just a symbol.”

“Acknowledgment,” Ash replied. “The killer must acknowledge his guilt and offer reparation.”

“These ghosts are hundreds of years old,” Cael said slowly, his deep voice doubtful. “Their killers are long dead.”

Safred nodded and placed her hands flat on the table. Ash noticed that they were not pretty hands, not the hands of a warlord’s daughter. They were sun-speckled and the nails were cut short. Safred seemed to lean on the table for support, as though even she could not believe what the gods were asking.

“Yes. A thousand years dead. Like the one responsible. The one who can acknowledge what was done.”

“One?” Cael asked. “Just one for all of them?”

Bramble went cold as she realized what Safred meant. “Acton.”

Safred nodded. “Who else?”

Acton had led the invasion of the Domains, leading his men from beyond the western mountains through Death Pass in the last days of winter, falling upon the unprepared inhabitants like a wolf pack. He was a legend, a hero to most people in the Domains, a name out of history. Hard to think of him as an actual human being who might have a ghost, just like anyone else. Bramble’s Traveler grandfather had raised her to consider him as an invading murderer, the leader of the dispossession, but even she was used to thinking of him as larger than life. More evil than anyone. Treacherous. Greedy. Filled with the lust for blood. They said he had laughed as he killed.

It was one thing to hear that an enchanter had conjured up ancient ghosts and given them bodily strength, but it was quite another to think about conjuring Acton’s ghost. For surely that was what she meant. Which was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

Bramble was abruptly aware that the sun was setting and the shadows in the corners of the room were reaching out. She shrugged off the feeling of unease and looked around the table. Each face had its own kind of uncertainty and reluctance. Except Ash’s. His was carefully blank.

“According to the song about the enchanter from Turvite who raised the ghosts,” Ash said quietly, “you need the bones of the person who was killed. Acton’s body was never found. Even if we could learn how to raise a ghost, we wouldn’t be able to find his bones.”

“Why would he offer acknowledgment and reparation anyway?” Zel asked. “He weren’t sorry for what he’d done while he were alive.”

Bramble noted Zel’s slip back into Traveler speech — it was a sign of how shaken she was by the idea of raising Acton. They all were. Ash’s hand had gone to the little pouch on his belt.

“That is true,” Safred said slowly, sitting back in her chair. “But the grave gives a different perspective.”

“And the bones?” Martine asked.

“There is a way to find the bones, if Bramble and Ash are willing.” She looked at Ash. “You have something of Acton’s.”

Ash already had it in his hand. He had been way ahead of the discussion, Bramble realized. He reached forward and placed a brooch in the center of the table. A man’s cloak brooch, ornate and beautiful. It sat in a pool of sunlight, looking pretty but ordinary.

“This belonged to Acton?” Zel asked, fascinated. She reached out as though to touch it, then pulled her hand back and stuck it in her lap. Bramble raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s not going to bite. May I?” she asked Ash, and when he nodded she reached out to pick up the brooch.

Safred stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “No. To be used, the brooch must pass from its rightful owner to the Kill Reborn in the right time and place.”

“Oh, shagging hells!” Bramble said. “Fight spells with spells, is that it?” She was very tired but sat in her chair with a straight back, determined not to show any weakness to Safred. The brooch seemed to draw her gaze. She felt a little dizzy, but that might have simply been from fighting the poisoning in her arm.

“Yes,” Safred said quietly. “This is your task, Bramble. Not to kill, but to live.”

Bramble dragged her eyes away from the brooch. “What do you mean?”

“Of all of us around this table, you are the only one with mixed blood. Cael and I are of Acton’s people, the others are pure Traveler. You bring both together — the link to the gods through your Traveler blood, the link to Acton’s people through your mother’s line. You are the only one who can do it.”

Bramble fell silent. Martine asked the question for her.

“Do what?”

“Find Acton’s place of death.”

“How, exactly?”

Safred looked uncomfortable. “I know the steps to take, but I don’t know what will happen. Will you do it? Will you let the brooch guide you?”

The others held their breath, waiting for her to respond. Bramble wanted to say, “No. No, what I will do is ride to Carlion and make sure that Maryrose is dead and my parents are all right. Then I will find Saker and gut him.” But she hunched her shoulders as she drew breath to say it and felt the smooth way the arm moved in its socket. She remembered that her arm had no scar. Remembered that yesterday she had been dying and now she was whole and healthy. Because of Safred. She let out her breath, suddenly feeling very weary.

“Can’t the gods just tell us where the bones are?” she asked instead.

Safred seemed almost embarrassed. “They don’t know.”

“I thought they knew everything.”

“They don’t pay much attention to humans, you know. Only when something big happens, or when they take a liking to someone. Acton — I don’t think they noticed much about the invasion in the early days. It was just humans fighting each other.”

Bramble understood. Humans did fight each other. Look at Lord Thegan preparing for war with the Lake People. She saw, vividly, in her mind’s eye, Maryrose’s blood on the floor; Merrick’s arm cut to the bone. A human enchanter had been responsible for that. Oh, yes, humans killed each other.

“What about the stones?”

Martine immediately pulled out her pouch and cast, then shook her head. “No. Nothing. They are not speaking to me.” She looked at Bramble. “I’m sorry. It happens, sometimes, when the gods are involved.”

Bramble stared at the tabletop. Her heart pulled her to Carlion; her instinct said to obey the gods. This kitchen was a long way from any altar, but… In her mind, as she used to do in her home village of Wooding, she asked them, Should I go to Carlion now? They replied, faintly, as they had done so often to keep her from Traveling, Not yet. Well, that was that. Safred studied her in shock, as though she had overheard the exchange. Maybe she had. Bramble returned her gaze blandly, enjoying her uncertainty.

“Will it take long?” she asked.

Safred hesitated. “I’m not sure… but we can’t do it here. We must go to the Great Forest. There is a lake there, the gods say.”

“So,” Bramble said, “let me see if I understand you. I have to go to a lake somewhere, use the brooch in some way you don’t understand to do something you don’t understand to find out the death place of the biggest bastard who ever lived, who died a thousand years ago and whose bones may be irretrievably lost and who is unlikely to want to help us anyway.”

The silence was heavy with antagonism. Bramble and Safred stared at each other.

“It’s the only way,” Safred said at last.

“Hmm,” Bramble said.

Safred looked at her. “There is a risk… some who take such journeys do not come back.”

Bramble bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m good at coming back.” And then she would go to Carlion and find the enchanter and kill him.