Blood Ties

To Stephen

The Stonecaster’s Story

T
HE DESIRE TO KNOW
the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.

I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flick over and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people — half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets of stones that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like “You reap what you sow” and “Victory is not the same as satisfaction.”

Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising, perhaps, that our stones reflect our history.

So. I cast the stones again, wondering. How much of our future do we call to ourselves through this scrying? How much of it do we make happen because the stones give us a pattern to fulfill?

I have seen the stones cast too many times to doubt them. When I see Murder in the stones, I know someone will die. But would they have died without my foretelling? Perhaps merely saying the word, even in a whisper, brings the thought to the surface of a mind, allows the mind to shape it, give it substance, when otherwise it might have remained nothing more than vague murmurings, easily ignored.

Death recurred again and again in my castings that night. I did not ask whose. Perhaps it was mine, perhaps not. I had no one left to lose, and therefore did not fear to lose myself.

There was someone at the door, breathing heavily outside, afraid to come in. But he did, as they always do, driven by love or fear or greed or pain, or simple curiosity, a desire to giggle with friends.

This one came in shyly: young, eighteen or nine-teen, brown hair, green trousers and blue boots. He squatted across the cloth from me with the ease of near-childhood. I held out my left hand, searching his face. He had hazel eyes, but the shape of his face showed he had old blood, from the people who lived in this land before the landtaken, the invasion. There was old pain, too, old anger stoked up high.

He knew what to do. He spat in his own palm, a palm crisscrossed by scars, as though it had been cut many times, and clapped it to mine. I held him tightly and reached for the pouch with my right hand. He was strong enough to stay silent as I dug in the pouch for five stones and threw them across the cloth between us. He was even strong enough not to follow their fall with his eyes, to hold my gaze until I nodded at him and looked down.

He saw it in my face.

“Bad?”

I nodded. One by one I touched the stones lying faceup. “Death. Bereavement. Chaos. This is the surface. This is what all will see.” Delicately I turned the other two stones over. “Revenge and Rejoicing. This is what is hidden.” An odd mixture, one I had never before seen.

He brooded over them, not asking anything more. The stones did not speak to me as they often do; all I could tell him were their names. It seemed to be enough for him.

“You know what this refers to?” I asked.

He nodded, absently, staring at Rejoicing. He let go of my hand and slid smoothly to his feet, then tugged some coins out of a pocket and let them fall on the rug.

“My thanks, stonecaster.” Then he was gone.

Who was I to set Death on the march? I know my stones by their feel, even in the darkness of the pouch. I could have fumbled and selected him a happy dream: Love Requited, Troubles Over, Patience. I could have soothed the anger in his eyes, the pain in his heart.

But who am I to cheat the stones?

After he left, I cast them again. This time, Death did not appear. She had gone out the door with the young one and his scars.

Saker

S
AKER REMEMBERED
the first time he had tried to raise the dead. It was the night after Freite, the enchanter, had finally died. By then he had been her apprentice for thirteen long years, but only in the last two had she shared any real secrets with him, and only then because he had threatened to leave her if she withheld.

Freite had wept for her great age and his refusal to any longer give his power for her extended life. She had no more to offer him. He had learned everything she had to teach of her Wind City magic, and it had not included pity, or generosity. So he refused to touch her in her extremity, knowing she would drain the power out of him to give herself another day, another week, a month if she was lucky . . . She had died cursing him, but he was cursed already, so he disregarded it.

After she was buried, the Voice of Whitehaven had pronounced Freite’s bequests and he had found that her house had passed into his hands, along with her savings, which were much greater than he had imagined. So there he was, rich but without a plan. He had gone to the stonecaster to find out what the gods wanted him to do next. And the stonecaster had sent him out the door with Revenge and Rejoicing awaiting him.

That first time, he hadn’t even known he needed the actual bones for the spell to work. The enchanter had told him half-truths, half-spells, trying to hoard her knowledge as though it could ward off death. Saker knew, certain sure, nothing kept Death away for good. That Lady tapped everyone on the shoulder, sooner or later. But sometimes, just sometimes, she could be tricked.

He raised the black stone knife level with his palm, forcing his hand not to shake.
This must work
. Now, finally, he had the means, seven years since the stonecaster had set him on his path . . .

“I am Saker, son of Alder and Linnet of the village of Cliffhaven. I seek justice.”

He began to shake with memory, with yearning, sorrow, righteous rage. There lay the strength of his spell. He touched the never-closing wound in his mind, drew on the pain and set it to work. The rest of the spell wasn’t in words, but in memories, complex and distressing: colors, phrases of music, a particular scent, the sound of a scream . . .

When he had gathered them all he looked down at his father’s bones on the table, his father’s skull staring emptily. He pressed the knife to his palm then drew it down hard. The blood surged out in time with his heart and splashed in gouts on the chalk-white bones.

“Alder,” he said. “Arise.”

Bramble

T
HE BLOOD TRAIL
was plain. Every few steps a splotch showed brilliantly red. There were tracks, too. In summer it would have been harder, but in this earliest part of spring the grasses and ferns were thin on the ground, and the ground was soft enough to show the wolf’s spoor.

Even the warlord’s man would have been able to track this much blood; for Bramble it was like following a clearly marked highway, through new fern fronds and old leaf mold, down past the granite rocks, through the stand of mountain ash, blood marking the trail at every step, so fresh she could smell it. The prints on the right were lighter; it was favoring the wounded side.

It wasn’t sensible to go after a hurt wolf with just a boot knife in her hand. She’d be lucky to get home without serious injury. She’d be lucky to get home at all. But she couldn’t leave a wounded animal to die in pain, even if she hadn’t shot it.

The brown wolf had limped across the far end of the clearing where she had been collecting early spring sorrel at the edge of a small stream, too intent on its own pain to even notice Bramble.

The forest had seemed to hush the moment she saw the arrow, the wolf, the blood dripping from its side. The glade glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Rich and heady, the smell of awakening earth, that special smell that came after the snow-melt was over, rose in drifts around her. She heard chats quarreling far overhead. The trickle of the stream. A squirrel leaping from branch to branch of an elm, rattling the still-bare twigs. It paused. The wolf stopped and looked back over his shoulder, seeing her for the first time. She waited, barely breathing, feeling as if the whole forest waited with her.

“There he is! See him? Don’t lose him!”

“Quiet, idiot!”

The voices broke the moment. The wolf slipped into the shadow of some pine trees. The squirrel, scolding, skipped from elm to willow to alder and was gone. Bramble looked around quickly. The warlord’s men were close. Nowhere to hide except up a tree. She dropped the sorrel and sprang for the lowest branch of a yew. Its dark branches would hide her, unlike the easier-to-climb willow next to it whose branches were still showing catkins, but no leaves.

She climbed fast, without worrying about scratches, so she was bleeding in a dozen places by the time she had reached a safe perch. She grabbed some of the yew leaves and crushed them in her hands, wringing them to release the bitter-smelling sap, then rubbed it on the trunk as far down as she could reach, to confuse the scent in case they had hounds, who would sniff out the blood for sure and certain.

She wondered who they were chasing. An actual criminal? Or just someone who’d looked at them the wrong way? Someone old Ceouf, the warlord, had taken against, maybe, or someone who had complained? Bramble smiled wryly. At least it wasn’t a woman. Everyone knew what happened to a woman found alone by the warlord’s men.

It angered her, as it always did. More than that, it enraged her. The warlords claimed that they protected the people in their Domain, from other warlords, of course, and in earlier days from invaders. Perhaps they had, once. But a couple of generations ago the warlords of the Eleven Domains had made peace, and there hadn’t been more than a border skirmish since. The warlord’s men weren’t soldiers anymore, just thugs and bullies. You stayed out of their way, didn’t draw their attention, and spat in the dust of their footprints after they’d gone.

It’s not meant to be like this
, she thought.
No one should have to hide in fear of the people who are supposed to protect them.

Today she had been happy, happier than she had been for months, since her sister had married and moved away to Carlion, the nearest free town. She had been out in her forest again, rejoicing in the returning spring, giving thanks for new life. And they had brought death and fear with them, as they did everywhere. Her chest burned with resentment. Some part of her had always refused to be sensible about it, as her parents demanded. “The world’s not going to change just because you don’t like it,” they’d said, time after time. She knew they were right. Of course she knew it, she wasn’t a child or a fool. And yet, some part of her insisted,
It’s not meant to be like this.

“This way!”

The voice came again. Bramble parted the needles in front of her until she could see the clearing below. There were two men, one blond, one red-haired, in warlord’s gear, with a blue crest on their shoulders to show their allegiance to this, the South Domain. They were young, about her age. Their horses were tethered near the trail that led into the clearing. One was a thin dark bay, the other a well-muscled roan. The trail ended there, she knew, and the forest, even in early spring, was too dense from here in for mounted men to ride.

“I know I got it,” the blond said. “I winged it, at least.”

“If you want to finish it off, you’ll have to go on foot,” the redhead said. They looked at the undergrowth consideringly, and then the blond looked down at his shiny riding boots.

“I just bought these,” he complained. He had a sharp voice, as though it were the other man’s fault that his boots were new.

“Leave it,” the redhead said, clearly bored now.

“I wanted the skin. I’ve always wanted a wolf skin.” The blond frowned, then shrugged. “Another day.”

They turned and went back to their horses, mounted, and rode away without a backward glance.

Bramble sat appalled and even angrier. He had left a wounded animal to die in agony so he wouldn’t get scratches on his boots!
Oh, isn’t that typical!
she thought.
They’re the animals, the greedy, heedless, bloody shagging bastards!

She waited until she was sure they weren’t coming back, then swung down from the tree, pulled her knife from her boot, and went to look for the wolf.

She followed the blood trail until it disappeared into the big holly thicket. She skirted the sharp leaves and picked up the trail on the other side. It finally came to an end near the stream in the center of the forest.

The wolf had staggered down to drink and stood, legs shaking, near the water’s edge. Then it saw Bramble, and froze with fear. But it was foaming at the mouth, desperate for water, and she stayed very still, as still as a wild creature in the presence of humans, until it took the last few steps to the water and drank. The black-fletched arrow, a warlord’s man’s arrow, stuck out from its side.

After drinking, it collapsed on the muddy edge of the stream and panted in pain, looking up at her with great brown eyes, pleading wordlessly.

Bramble came to it gently, making no sudden move that might startle it. “There now, there now, everything’s all right now . . .” she crooned, as she did to the orphan kids she raised, or the nannies she helped give birth. She lowered her hand slowly, softly onto its forehead and the wolf whined like a pup. “Not long now, not long,” she said softly, stroking back to grip its ears. She gazed into its eyes steadily until it looked away, as all wild animals will look away from the gaze of anything they do not wish to fight, and then she cut its throat, as quickly and painlessly as she could.

Bramble sat waiting, her hand still on its head, ignoring the tears on her cheeks, while the blood pulsed out into the stream, swirling red. There wasn’t much blood. It had bled a lot already. Her fingers gentled its ears as though it could still feel, then she stood up.

She hesitated, looking at the caked blood on its side, then stripped off her jacket, shirt, skirt and leggings, so she wouldn’t stain them. She had to hope that the warlord’s men wouldn’t change their minds and come back. She could just imagine
that
scene.

Her knife was only sharp enough to slit through the hide. She had to heave the carcass over to peel the skin off and it was much heavier than she thought. There was blood all over her. She wrinkled her nose, but kept going. It was a good, winter-thick pelt and besides, taking it gave the death of the wolf some purpose, instead of it being a complete waste of life. She cut the pelt off at the base of the skull. It was worth more with head attached, but Bramble had always felt that tanning the head of the animal was a kind of insult.

She would have left the carcass for the crows and the foxes, but she didn’t want the warlord’s men to find it, if they came looking for the hide later. Let him think that he had missed. She dragged it up the hill to a rock outcropping, and piled stones on it. At least it would make a meal for the ants and the worms.

She washed the blood off both her and the hide, put her clothes back on, tied up the hide and hoisted it over her shoulder. It weighed her down heavily, but she could manage it easily enough. She set off home.

The way was through the black elm and pine forest, and normally she would have lingered to admire the spring-green leaves that were beginning to bud, and listen to the white-backed woodpeckers frantically drilling for food after their long migration. She had been observing a red-breasted flycatcher pair build their nest, but today she passed it by without noticing, although she stopped to collect some wild thyme and sallet greens, and to empty one of her snares. She found a rabbit, thin after winter but good enough for a stew, and the pelt still winter-lush. Her hands did the work of resetting the snare but her mind was elsewhere.

The forest was ostensibly the warlord’s domain, but was traditionally the hunting or grazing ground for a range of people, from foragers like Bramble to charcoal burners, coppicers, chair makers, withiers, pig farmers and woodcutters. It was a rare day that Bramble didn’t meet someone in the forest; depending on the season, sometimes she saw as many people there as in the village street. It was just her bad luck that today she had seen the warlord’s men.

She came out of the forest near the crossroads just outside Wooding and realized that it hadn’t been just bad luck. There had been an execution today.

Her village of Wooding saw a lot of executions, because it was on the direct road from Carlion to the warlord’s fort at Thornhill. For centuries the South Domain warlords had used the crossroads just outside Wooding as the site for their punishments. There was a scaffold set up for when the warlord felt merciful. And for when he wasn’t there was the rock press, a sturdy wooden box the size of a coffin, but deeper, where the condemned were piled with heavy stones until their bones broke and they suffocated, slowly.

Today they had used the rock press. There was blood seeping out of the box at the corners. The condemned often bled from the nose and mouth in the final stages of pressing. Bramble slowed as she walked past the punishment site. Did she want to know who they had killed this time? What was the point?

She went over to the box and looked in. No one she knew, thank the gods. Some stranger — the Domain was large, and criminals were brought to the warlord from miles away. Then she looked closer. A stranger, but just a boy. Fourteen, perhaps. A baby. Probably accused of something like “disrespect to the warlord.” Her heart burned again, as it had in the woods. Anger, indignation, pity. She would have to make sure she was nowhere near the village the next morning, when the warlord’s men rounded up the villagers to see the boy’s corpse removed from the box and placed in the gibbet. She doubted she could applaud and cheer for the warlord over this execution, as the villagers were expected to do.

Some did so gladly. There were always a few who enjoyed a killing, like the crows that nested in the tree next to the scaffold and descended on the corpses with real enthusiasm. But the rest of the villagers had seen too many people die who looked just like them. Ordinary people. People who couldn’t pay their taxes, or hadn’t bowed low enough to the warlord. Or who had objected to their daughter being dragged away to the fort by the warlord’s men. It was important to attend the executions, and to cheer loudly. The warlord’s men were always watching. Bramble had cheered as loudly as anyone, in the past, and had been sick later, every time.

So the warlord’s men would have done their job today and gone home as soon as the boy stopped breathing. The blond had probably taken the shortcut through the woods and had seen the wolf by accident. He couldn’t resist tracking it a little way. Couldn’t resist killing again.

A hunter who didn’t care if the animal he shot suffered deserved nothing but contempt. He certainly didn’t deserve the hide of the animal he had abandoned to pain and slow death.

But the
sensible
thing to do would be to take the skin to the warlord’s fort, say it had one of the warlord’s arrows in it when she found it, and let the blond claim it. Let him have his prize for killing.

Bramble looked at the boy in the box, whose face was still contorted in pain. “Well, no one ever said I was sensible,” she said.

She skirted the village and came to the back of her parents’ house, through the alders that fringed the stream. She dumped the wolf skin behind the privy, then went the whole way back so she would be seen to come home through the main street with nothing in her hands but rabbit and greens.

Bramble passed the inn and ignored the stares of the old men who sat on the bench outside the door, tankards in hand, until one of them called out, “Got your nose stuck in the air, I see! Too high and mighty to tell us how that sister of yours is doing off in Carlion!”

It was Swith, the leatherworker’s father, both hands cramped around his mug. He was a terrible gossip, but that wasn’t why he had called Bramble over. He wanted her to notice his hands. The arthritis that kept him sitting here in the mild sun had swelled his knuckles up like a goat’s full udder.

“She’s well, she says,” Bramble replied. “They’re building a new house, on the lot next to his parents’.”

“Ah, she’s done well for herself, that Maryrose!” cackled Swith’s crony, old Aden, the most lecherous man in the village in his day, and still not to be trusted within arm’s reach. “She wasn’t an eye-catcher like you, lass. But he got a good hot bed to go to, I’ll say that, her town clerk’s son!”

The other men frowned. Maryrose had been liked by everyone in the village, and she was certainly no light-skirt.