Blood Ties (38 page)

Ash

D
AWN BROKE
in a prodigal outpouring of rose and gold across the pale blue sky and the tops of the far mountains lit like beacons. The mountain air coaxed the first faint tendrils of scent from the scrubby herbs and flowers: thyme, sage, gorse. Underneath the scent was the smell of dry earth, and the dawn wind brought a thread of cold air from the west. Skeins of snow geese took off from a long, narrow lake as the sun rose, wing after wing of white birds with black wing-tips lifting into the wind and turning south, away from the autumn chill. Their calling deafened Ash, and the wind from their wing beats buffeted his face. He and Martine stood still to watch them go out of sight, although their calls drifted back for some time after they had disappeared.

Back to the south on the back of the wind

At home in the uplands of the air

Wild as the seal that springs from the ice

Are autumn birds free from care.

“I don’t know that one,” Martine said.

“It’s from Foreverfroze. A song from the Seal Mother’s people,” Ash said. “That’s a loose translation.”

“Nothing is truly free from care,” Martine said. “Not on this side of death.”

“Or on the other. Those ghosts. They wanted
revenge
. A thousand years later! How can the need for revenge last that long?”

“‘Old revenge tastes sweeter,’” Martine quoted.

“That’s an Ice People saying. Not one of ours. How was it that
none
of those from the landtaken were reborn?” He prayed that she would have an answer. Because if none of the ghosts of the landtaken had been reborn, that would mean — surely — that rebirth was only a story, a hope for the hopeless in the dark times.

“Perhaps some were. Do you know any songs about the taking of Spritford? About how many were killed?”

Ash thought for a few moments. Fragments of songs played in his head, about the taking of the Sharp River settlements, and working west toward the mountains. But these songs were only a few hundred years old, he realized by their phrasing, as this part of the land had been taken late in the invasion.

“Well, it wasn’t a thousand years ago,” he said, almost reluctantly. “There is a song.” He paused, remembering, saying the words under his breath. “Seven and forty, the enemy fallen,” he said at last.

“Forty-seven?”

Ash nodded.

“But there were only nine ghosts. Only nine had enough hate in them to resist rebirth, to turn away from it in search of revenge. The others were reborn — count on it,” Martine said.

He felt cheered by that, but underneath the lift in his spirits was terror: the oldest terror, the fear of the dead, of the dark beyond the grave, of something out there.

Something was out there.

“Is there anyone we can warn?” Ash asked.

“Spritford will send messages out.”

“We know more.”

“We’re Travelers.”

Ash nodded. Travelers were automatically suspect, automatically disregarded. Even stonecasters. Try to tell the local warlord about talking ghosts and evil enchanters and they’d be lucky to escape a beating. Or the warlord would decide
they
were causing all the trouble and a quick solution would be a couple of garrotings.

They rested for a few hours. Ash slept fitfully. The voices of the dead echoed through his dreams and brought him awake, time after time, repeating invitations in the old tongue: “Revenge! Join us and revenge yourself! Take back what was yours!” He couldn’t remember anything else, just the sound of the dead speaking to him, only to him, and the cold and dry feeling as though ghost after ghost had passed through him.

Then he fell into a deeper sleep and was caught in a dream that seemed infinitely worse, for the ghosts here were his parents. They looked like they had when he had last seen them, but pale, dead pale, and they came to him in his room at Doronit’s, the only real home he had known, and laid solid, dead hands against his chest and on his cheek and whispered, “Join us.” And although he knew, in the dream, that they were dead, still he reached out for them as if still a little child, and laid his head on his mother’s cold breast and sobbed.

He woke with wet cheeks and stared at the ground for a long time before he rolled over to face Martine, knowing she would have heard him crying. She was sitting with her back to a rock, casting the stones on their cloth.

“I dreamed my parents were dead,” he said. “Maybe they are. Maybe the ghosts have risen everywhere at once. Will you cast for me?”

She nodded and held out her hand. He spat into his palm and took it. “Are my parents dead?” he asked, then waited while she cast.

All the stones were faceup, except one.

“Life,” Martine said immediately, finger on one stone. “They live. Work, or a task to be done. Travel. Music. So, all as usual, no? And the hidden stone . . .” She turned it over. “Responsibility. Hidden responsibility. That may be you. I’m sorry, Ash, this is a true reading, but the stones are not speaking to me. Perhaps I care too much what the answer is, for your sake. The stones do not like the caster to care too much.”

He smiled, so relieved by the first stone that he had hardly heard the others. “It doesn’t matter — they’re alive. We should go.”

They started off again through the thyme-scented scrub and the goat-browsed heather. They turned from the main road around noon and headed north by east, climbing with aching legs toward a high ridge, which stood back from the cliffs that now began to rim the horizon. The cliffs looked closer than they were, taller than seemed possible, and got taller slowly, very slowly, as they climbed.

It took them two full days of walking to reach the top of the ridge. Below was a valley the likes of which Ash, for all his wandering, had never seen before. The Hidden Valley lay in a deep, wide cleft in the hills, protected from the mountain cold by the steep-sided ridges on either side.

They stood still on the chill ridge, Martine smiling at Ash’s astonishment, and saw, far below them, deer in still green glades, squirrels bounding from branch to branch, and even, farther off, an elk dipping antlers to drink at a stream. As the valley moved into shadow, birds settled, quarreling, into their roosts. Farther down, where the hillsides were terraced, cows and goats threaded their way along to be milked; and a group of women, seeming tiny at this distance, balanced jars of water on their hips as they climbed up steps set into the bank of the river, which ran through the center of the valley.

It was the most beautiful place Ash had ever seen. The dying light, gold and purple, seemed heartbreaking, as though the precious valley were slipping away from them, sliding beyond reach into the dark.

“Let’s get down before nightfall,” was all he said, but his voice wavered.

They climbed down into shadow and sunset. Darkness fell before they were halfway to the village, but it was a night of clear skies and blazing stars, so they could see just enough to follow the road.

Martine stopped at a field by the side of the road, with a small hut next to a black rock. Mist was rising from the stone and Ash felt the itch under his skin that meant this was the place of the local gods. But unlike the altar stone in Turvite, no one here was calling his name. These gods were satisfied by their worshippers.

A girl was sitting by the rock. She rose as they came nearer and ran across the field to them, despite being heavily pregnant.

“Careful, love!” Martine scolded, running to meet her. “Not so fast!”

“Mam!” the girl cried.

They embraced.

So this was Elva. Ash felt his stomach clench in disappointment, and then found grace to laugh at himself. So much for his fantasies! She
was
beautiful, her eyes darkened by the night and the starlight picking out the fine bones of her face. And she was
huge
with child. Martine wasn’t surprised by it. She might have mentioned it, he thought, annoyed, then shook his head at his absurd expectations, and moved to greet Elva.

“This is Ash,” Martine said, not looking away from Elva’s face, one hand on the great curve of her belly, the other stroking Elva’s cheek.

Ash found he had to look away from them. It was disturbing to see Martine’s face naked with love.

“Welcome, Ash.” Her voice was light and high, a soprano, but without much range, he judged.

“Blessings be,” he answered.

“So. Come, come along in. I told Mabry you’d be here tonight, so they’ve got dinner going, and the girls are excited. They want you to cast the stones for them.”

A prophet?
Ash wondered. Or was she a stonecaster like Martine and the stones had told her? Or perhaps — a shiver ran across his skin and he knew this was the right answer — the gods had told her.

They followed her across the field and down a steep track to a homestead solidly planted on a terraced outcrop. There was light coming in stripes from behind the shutters, smoke rising straight from the chimney in the still air, a yap of dogs from a shed, which quieted as Elva shushed them, the soft sound of rustling wings as they walked past the dovecote. It was, as the valley had seemed from the ridge, a picture of peace and plenty. Ash thought of the blood on the ghost’s scythe, and shuddered.

The door opened as they walked across the yard. A tall man stood there, as tall as Ash and more solid, curly brown hair haloed by the light inside.

“Elva? About time, love.” He gathered her into the warm room with an arm around her waist, nodding to Martine as he did so. “Come away in and get warm. Gytha, shield the light.”

Gytha — a tall woman some years older than Ash, with curly hair like Mabry’s pulled back into a plait — had already moved to put small embroidered screens in front of the candles. Elva smiled at her and Gytha smiled back.

“Drema made the screens for me,” Elva said to Martine. She turned to Ash. “To shield my eyes from the light.” He nodded, astonished at how the strangeness of her pale skin, white hair and pink eyes shrouded the beauty he had seen so clearly by starlight.

Drema was sitting by the fire, embroidering a tiny felt coat clearly intended for the new baby. She was older and had a sterner face than her sister, Gytha. She got up and pushed Elva down into the chair.

“Sit you down, we’ll manage, just you sit.” She turned to Martine. “She does too much, outruns her strength. Maybe you’ll be able to get her to slow down.”

Martine smiled. “I doubt it. She always was a stubborn little lass.”

Drema and Martine considered each other for a moment, and then both nodded slightly, confirming something, before they turned away, Drema to the fire where something was simmering, Martine to put her pack down by the stairs. Ash put his next to it. They smiled at each other, a mere softening of the eyes, acknowledging their success in making it here, then moved back to the fire and sat on a settle cushioned with a thick felt mat.

Sometimes, out on the Road with his parents, huddling in a tent while the wind howled outside, or picking leeches off his legs when they went through the swamps outside Pless, Ash had dreamed about a place like this. It was nothing fancy, just solid, strong walls and a rainproof roof, a warm fire, meat roasting on a spit, bread baking in an oven in the ashes, friends and family gathered around talking, laughing, sharing news. Of course, in his imagination there had been music, too; intricate but lively music from flute and pipe and drum, a melody he’d never heard except in this particular daydream.

Well, he could have the music in his head, at least. He stretched out his legs to the fire and listened to Martine and Elva talk, about the coming baby, mostly, about women’s matters. The music ran underneath their words, filling in spaces and lifting his spirits even further.

Ash gathered from the conversation that Elva and Mabry had been married no more than a year, and before that she had lived in the little hut near the black stone altar. Mabry had been village voice then, and had been urged by the villagers to move her on, get her out of the gods’ field.

“That was when we met,” Mabry said. “I guess that was when I started to fall in love with her.”

“You were just too soft to kick her out,” Drema said. “But maybe that’s why
she
started to fall in love with
you
.”

“Has to be,” Gytha teased him. “He hasn’t got anything else to offer, now he’s not village voice anymore.”

“Now Mam’s dead, I leave that to someone who really wants to do it,” Mabry said comfortably.

Elva touched his hand, lightly. “Your mam is proud of you. They tell me so.”

“They” were the gods, Ash realized. He wondered how it would be, to have the gods in and out of your head all day and night. Uncomfortable, he figured, but Elva seemed happy enough and Mabry was the most satisfied-looking man he had ever seen.

They ate at a big table in the corner. Ash was sorry to leave the fire, but glad for the food: roast kid and baked vegetables, gravy and spinach. He looked longingly at the new bread, fresh from the oven, but Gytha shook her head at him.

“You’d be awake with stomach pains all the night, if you ate it as fresh as that! Wait until breakfast.”

It was like having older siblings suddenly, for that was how Mabry’s two sisters treated him. And Mabry, after a few moments weighing him up, had done the same. He felt enveloped, welcomed, taken inside, where he had always been on the outside, and it overwhelmed him. He blinked back tears and concentrated on the fine, meaty texture of the goat. Travelers didn’t develop many friendships with the settled; his parents had actively discouraged it. So this was his first experience of generous hospitality. But he was sure there was more to their welcome than hospitality. Martine was Elva’s mam, more or less, so they were family.

He thought again of the blood on the ghost’s scythe and grew cold, and then hot with determination. He would not let those ominous figures hurt this family. Never. No matter what it cost him.

“Hullo! Are you with us, Ash?”

Gytha waved her hand in front of his face and he started, recalled to the present suddenly. They all laughed at him.