Bramble

THERE WERE FAR too many questions and too much exclaiming and explaining by the miners, particularly explanations to the mine boss, a middle-aged man named Sami whose brown eyes trusted no one. Sami insisted on knowing who she was and how she had got into the mine.

Bramble was sick of talking, and disconcerted by the appearance of a group of young boys who poked their way in to the center of the circle and listened, their eyes wide. She bit back a curse as she met the eyes of a pale child surely not more than nine or ten.

“Enchantment, all right?” she snarled at Sami.

He took a step back and then recovered his authority. “You’ve got no right here.”

“You’ve heard about the ghosts?”

“One of our buyers told us,” Sami confirmed. “The news is all over the Domains.”

Bramble wondered how long it had been in this time since the attack on Carlion; since Maryrose’s death. “How long ago did it happen?” she asked.

Sami shrugged. “Three, four days. We haven’t heard anything else yet.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have the time or patience. “My sister was killed there.”

There was silence. Bramble used the moment of shock to take charge. “I need to find the animal cave,” she said, gesturing to the mine. “There’s something in there that we need to defeat the enchanter who set the ghosts on Carlion.”

“Are you an enchanter, too?” The miner who had killed the hunter stepped forward, his pickaxe still in his hand. She could see that he wanted to feel justified; to not be guilty of murder. He didn’t look like a murderer: he was strong enough, but his face was gentle and his voice quiet. She felt sorry for him. If she had heard the stories about Carlion and then had seen two figures appear out of nowhere, what would she have done?

She shook her head. “No, it was the hunter who had the power, not me. I’m just ordinary.”

They looked skeptical, and she supposed she didn’t blame them. But she was wound up with tension and grief and purpose, and she couldn’t baby them.

“I need the animal cave,” she said again. “Then we might be able to stop the bastard who raised the ghosts.”

“Why should we trust you?” Sami asked.

“Oh, shag it, I haven’t got time for this.” Bramble drew her belt knife, grabbed Sami by the collar and put the knife to his throat. She was faster than she had been, she thought. Hunting every day had made her more dangerous. She grinned at his frantic eyes, pretending to enjoy his fear. Her stomach roiled in disgust.

“Because I could kill you right now. But I won’t.” She let him go, and only then thought of the right thing to say. “Because the Well of Secrets sent me.”

These were truly powerful words. Each man there relaxed, as though everything had been explained.

“What animal cave?” the miner asked.

“The cave with the animal drawings on the wall, from the very old times,” Bramble explained. “The aurochs, and the elk and deer.”

The miners exchanged glances and shook their heads.

“Never seen ought like that,” one said. “What about you, Medric?”

The miner pushed out his lip and shook his head, too. “No,” he said. “I don’t know it.”

Bramble felt her guts cramp. The cave had to be there. She had been sure the miners would have found it.

“There’s another cave,” she said. “I could find my way from there . . .” She looked up at the mountainside, trying fruitlessly to spot any familiar landmarks. She had seen this mountainside only a few moments ago, as Acton rode up. Surely she could remember? That big peak, yes, but that was miles away… a thousand years of mining had altered the side of the mountain beyond recognition. The area where Dotta’s cave had been — that was where the entrance to the mine was. Inside were not caves but tunnels, wide enough for carts to be pushed up and down.

Despair began to creep over her, but she pushed it down. “Who knows the caves best?” she asked.

There was silence, but everyone looked at Medric. He rested his pickaxe on the ground and stared at it, as if unwilling to meet their gaze.

Sami cleared his throat. “Think you’ll be able to find him, Medric?”

Medric took a breath, and let it out again as if unsure what to say. He shrugged. “If I call him, he might come,” he said eventually, in a voice that gave nothing away.

“Who?” Bramble asked.

“A friend. Fursey. He, uh… he lives in there.” Medric indicated the mountain with a jerk of his head.

“Human?” Bramble asked.

A couple of the men looked at the ground as though unsure of the answer. One shorter man grinned and said, “Well, we’ve had our doubts,” and then shut up as Medric glared at him.

“Human,” Medric confirmed.

She was glad of that confirmation as she followed Medric and his lantern down the tunnel and felt the weight of the earth above her, encountered the absolute darkness of underground for the first time with her own body. The dark hadn’t seemed as bad when she was looking through Gris’s eyes.

He led her down a long way, through tunnels that sometimes required her to crawl, and sometimes took them through caverns where the roof echoed high above her head. They stopped, finally, in a small cave — no, a tunnel. She saw the marks of pickaxes and chisels on the rock walls. This was the bottom of the mine, but there were fissures in the rock, passages like the ones Dotta had shown her, leading further down. Medric put down the lantern and stood for a moment, as if gathering courage.

“Fursey,” he called softly. “Fursey! I’ve come back!”

He waited a few moments, and then called again, and then again.

There was silence. The earth seemed to grow heavier above them. Medric checked the candle in the lantern — it was more than half gone. He tightened his lips and sighed. “Fursey,” he called again, but this time reluctantly. “I need your help.”

Nothing.

He raised his voice in frustration. “There are people dying, Furse, and I need your help!” Echoes rang along the tunnel walls, so that the whole mine seemed to be whispering, “help, help, help . . .”

Medric turned to Bramble and shrugged. “If he doesn’t want to help . . .”

Behind him, from the thinnest of the fissures, a slight figure appeared. A man. Yes, human, Bramble was sure, although there was something about the way he moved that reminded her of the hunter. He stood staring at Medric for a moment as someone might stare at a picture of devastation. Then Medric realized where Bramble’s eyes were staring and whirled around.

“Fursey!” He took a step forward and clasped the man to him, but the slight figure slipped out of his grasp and stood looking at him, head to one side.

“I thought,” he said in a soft voice, “that if you came back, you would come alone. Is this your wife?” There was venom in his voice.

Medric flinched. “Of course not. I only just met her. She needs help, and you’re the only one . . .”

“So you came back for her, not for me? How was your family?”

The question threw Medric. “They were fine. Da’s dead. Mam’s remarried. My sisters’re fine. So I came back to find you.”

Somehow, the words took the tension out of the cave. “But you hate the mine,” Fursey said.

“Yes,” Medric confirmed. “I hate the mine.”

“Then you should not have come back.”

Medric bent his head, as he had after he had killed the hunter, and stared at the floor of the tunnel.

Bramble had had enough of all this melodrama. “I need to find the animal cave, the one with the paintings on the wall,” she said directly to Fursey. “Will you help?”

“That’s a sacred place,” Fursey said.

“I know.” This man might have been human, but he was strange. Well, she had dealt with stranger things than him. “I need to find some bones,” she said.

“Are they calling you?” he asked.

Very strange. But in a way, they were.

“Yes,” she said. “They have called me for a thousand years.”

He nodded. “Then I will take you.”