Full Circle (26 page)

The fog crept back slowly over them, so that Martine gradually lost feeling in her toes, her feet, her legs.

“
Now
, child,” Cael said, in the voice of a father.

Safred closed her eyes, and the fog enveloped her. She screamed; it sounded like a toddler’s tantrum, but then it changed
and Martine could hear real pain in it, searing distress.

Tears ran down Cael’s face. The fog around her head darkened, became more like smoke, formed curls and wisps. Complex patterns
emerged, like watermarks in silk, and Martine realised that it was, in its own way, beautiful. And her Sight told her that
it was satisfied after all.

The screaming softened to a whimper, and Safred slumped to the deck. Cael gathered her into his arms, wincing as his own wound
pained him. They were now only vaguely shrouded by the swirling patterns of light and dark.

Then they were not — the fog was gone, speeding across the water towards the open sea. It looked darker, but still pale, still
formless.

Martine crouched beside Safred and took her hand.

“All gone,” Safred moaned, laying her head on Cael’s shoulder. “All of them, gone.”

The steersman stumbled forward, and it was clear from his face that he had indeed been the one weeping.

The captain embraced him. “What did it take?” she asked.

“My childhood, I think,” he said. “I can’t remember anything before I was twelve, when I came on board ship the first time.”

The captain breathed out a sigh of thankfulness. “That’s all right,” she said, smiling and hugging him. “You had a bastard
of a childhood anyway!”

She waved at the crew and they cheered.

“Saf? What can you remember, sweetheart?” Martine asked coaxingly.

“They took the secrets,” Safred said, without opening her eyes. “Only that. So much.” She was exhausted.

“Your own memories?” Cael asked.

“I don’t think so. Some small ones, perhaps.” She sat up. “I can’t remember the first time I healed someone,” she said.

“Your childhood?” Cael prompted.

“I remember you, and Sage, and Nim and March,” she said slowly. “So I think they left me that.”

“They?” Arvid said. “The captain said
it
.”

Safred shook her head. “They,” she said definitely. “Like a swarm, like a hive of wasps feeding off a beehive. Parasites.”

She shivered then leant over and vomited. They helped her up and Martine and Zel supported her towards the companionway, passing
the steersman. They stared at one another with pity and comradeship.

“It was a bastard of a childhood,” he said. “But now all I have is — emptiness.”

She nodded, shivering still. “A great emptiness,” she said. “It will never be filled.”

A
LL DAY
Saker wondered when he should raise his army. What if his new spell didn’t work? What if they attacked the fort and then
the ghosts faded, leaving him helpless?

He decided to cast the spell just before dawn, and wait until sun-up. If they faded, no harm done. If they didn’t — on to
the fort.

After they had retrieved the axes they needed from the fort, they would turn back and go through the town. He smiled to himself.
It was a good plan.

He ate dinner with Lefric and enjoyed it, the first meal he had really enjoyed for weeks. The old man made dumplings and treacle
for dessert, something he’d had only rarely — inns hardly ever cooked them, and Freite had never cooked, unless it was for
a spell.

He licked the sweetness from his fingers and smiled at Lefric. When they went through the town, he would make sure this one
was saved. The decision made him feel powerful and magnanimous; life and death were in his hands, but he would use it wisely.

The sky was still black. He had mapped out his route that afternoon, but finding it again, now, just before dawn was proving
difficult. He hadn’t brought a lantern; it was too dangerous to show a light. So he fumbled his way along the street, grateful
for the chinks of light that came from an inn door, from an upstairs chamber where someone was getting ready to go to work,
or making love, or sitting up at a sickbed.

As he stumbled past the locked houses, each one with its own occupants, each its own world, Saker felt completely alone. He
was always alone, but having to go past each house and know he had no place there, no family, no role to play, tonight it
seemed more difficult. He felt like a ghost himself, forever excluded from human company, human love. He touched wall after
wall to keep himself walking straight, and each touch was another place he didn’t belong, each house another rejection. His
breath came loud in his ears, ragged and sobbing.

He was almost running by the time he reached the last house, along a laneway that he had earlier calculated wouldn’t be guarded.
Just as well he’d been right — he hadn’t thought to go slowly, carefully. He simply needed to get away from those houses,
from all the things he would never have.

But after Acton’s people were gone, surely then he could think about a place of his own, even a family… His steps slowed
and his breathing returned to normal.

It was no lighter, but the clouds were lifting and soon there would be starlight to see by. The wind seemed to blow the loneliness
away — being alone out here was different from being alone in a town. He walked briskly along the lane, which curled in a
wide loop before it came back to the coppice.

When he reached the pool, with its overhanging branches, something made him hesitate. It wasn’t a strong feeling, like Sight,
but… He turned and walked towards the coppice instead.

There was a small clearing where the charcoal burners worked, but in early summer they were long gone, leaving only the smell
of charred wood behind. Here he made his preparations, laying out the bones on a linen cloth, bringing his father’s and Owl’s
skulls out last and placing them in the front row. His father would be impressed by their army, Saker was sure. He looked
up. The sky was beginning to lighten to that clear grey that meant it would be a sunny day.

Saker waited for as long as he dared. He couldn’t risk the ghosts being seen if they were going to fade at sun-up. But the
remaining clouds were turning pink. It was time.

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

The strength of the spell lay in memories, and finally he understood that, could draw on them and on the memories that had
been buried with these bones: phrases of music, a particular scent, a scream. It was harder than he had expected, to draw
on the memories in the bones as well as his own. It meant he had to experience their despair. And their anger. Yes. Their
anger would feed his own righteous rage, giving him enough strength to call them again.

“Arise Alder and Owl and all your comrades, know my blood as your own, seek only the blood of strangers…”

He heard something, and paused — something high and disquieting, like bat calls, a sound so high he almost felt it rather
than heard it. It ran along his veins like ice water. He looked around quickly, but there was nothing to be seen except the
trees and the lightening sky. Perhaps it was the souls of his army, keening to be brought back from death. He raised his knife
and brought it down, despite his unease.

When the blood spattered on the pale bones, his father and Owl rose up first, by a heartbeat, before the blood had stopped
spouting from his palm, and were followed by the others. The sound at the edge of his hearing grew as they appeared until
he could barely hear anything else.

Then he said the final words in the old tongue, the new part of the spell: “Blood and memory raised you. Blood and memory
feed you. Blood and memory keep you.”

The sound in Saker’s ears vanished. At least his father would understand him easily. No need for the few words of the old
tongue he had to use with Owl and the others.

“We are outside Sendat, a large town with a warlord’s fort at the top of the hill. Inside the fort are weapons — axes, halberds,
tools we can use to get
inside
the houses.”

Alder nodded enthusiastically.

“This is our second big raid — we took Carlion.” Saker was both proud and a bit worried that Alder would be angry he had been
excluded. “I wanted to make sure we were ready for this,” he added as Alder frowned. “This is the important one, the one that
will allow us to take Turvite back.”

Alder looked like he wanted to argue it, but Owl clapped him on the back and urged him out of the coppice.

“No!” Saker ordered. “Wait!” He held up a hand to them all to mime “Stop.” “Wait until the sun is up.” He pointed to where
the sun was beginning to show above the hills.

“Blood and memory!” he said in the old tongue. “Remember your losses.”

Each person there, man and woman, turned solemnly to face the sun, grief and anger on their faces. The light crept across
the landscape and finally came to them, there in the hollow, last of all.

They did not fade.

Saker felt himself shaking inside. He had not really believed it would work… “Now!” he said to his father, buoyed by
relief and triumph. “Let us take the fort!”

The ghosts understood. They raised a silent chant of triumph and shook their weapons in the air. When they stamped their feet,
the ground shook.

His father stepped forward and embraced him, his face glowing with pride. Saker leant into him and laid his head on his father’s
icy shoulder. Just a moment, that was all, to fortify him for the task ahead. He stepped back and took a breath.

A shepherd out early saw their approach and raced ahead to raise the alarm. Saker let him go. Let the townsfolk shut themselves
up in their houses. It cleared the way for the real fight.

By the time they reached the first houses, in full sunlight, there was nothing but silence and children crying behind closed
doors. Signs of work just begun and hastily abandoned were everywhere — a spindle unravelling its new thread, a butter churn
spilling cream onto a doorstep, a last with a shoe half-stitched overturned outside the cobbler’s shop. Every door was barred,
every window shuttered.

He and his men passed them without a glance. The road to the fort led clear and easy, right up to the first gate and palisade.

Over the main gate was an observation post, a roofed platform raised above the line of the wall. Saker could see officers
gathered there, watching. The warlord’s men lined the walls, weapons ready. The new sun glinted on their armour, their weapons.

The might of the warlords, ranged against them. Every other time, Acton’s people had won. Every other time, this concentration
of weaponry and trained men had smashed his people’s defences, and each defeat had ended in a massacre. There would surely
be a defeat, today, but it would not be his people slaughtered. Not this time.

Saker stood outside the gate, out of bow range, and motioned Owl forward. He was expecting arrows, shouts, spears from the
waiting men, but there was nothing. Then a handsome blond man standing at the observation post cupped his hands and shouted,
“Enchanter! Do you hear?”

Saker exchanged glances with his father and Owl. What would he do if this warlord simply surrendered? His father’s eyes were
hard. Saker knew what he would say — exactly what Acton had said:
Kill them all
.

“I hear,” he shouted back.

“Behind these walls I have one hundred and thirty-six Travellers,” the warlord said. “Leave Sendat now, and they live. Attack,
and they die.”

Rage overwhelmed him. Treacherous, murderous bastards! Come and live in my fort, I will give you protection, he’d told them.
And they’d come, because the rest of their people were being slaughtered in their beds. He knew his people would have come
with trust, and faith, and hope. And now they were to be turned into cattle for the slaughter. Goods to be bargained with.

The warlord motioned behind him and a young woman was brought forward — black-haired. He put a knife to her throat, and seemed
to spit words in response to another man, an officer, standing behind him. That man was dragged away by soldiers.

Saker looked around — his ghosts were staring at him. They hadn’t understood the first exchange, but the girl was clearly
one of them, and the threat was one they understood.

She was crying, sobbing, pleading for her life. Saker swallowed hard. He couldn’t condemn her. Not one of his own people.
His head lowered until he stared at the stones of the road.

Alder pushed him hard, to make him look up. Saker stared into his father’s face, a face from childhood, the one that made
even the strongest men of the two villages back down.

Owl, behind him, raised his scythe, and the ghosts around him followed his lead.

Saker looked at them, not understanding how they could demand to go on. Then he realised. This was the moment. If they backed
down now, every warlord, every town, would hold their people hostage. Prisoners, forever. Instead of bringing people of the
old blood freedom, he would have brought them slavery.

One hundred and thirty-six sacrifices to buy freedom forever.

He closed his ears to the girl’s sobbing, and stared up at the warlord. “Each of their names will be remembered. They will
be honoured for the freedom their deaths have bought.” Saker saw approval in his father’s eyes.

“Did you think I would not do it?” the warlord shouted, and dragged his knife across the girl’s throat, blood spurting out
and falling in a shining red cascade over the wall.

Owl howled silent anguish, then leapt forward onto the gate. Alder boosted him up and over, where the warlord’s men slashed
and hacked at him in vain, then ran.

Saker stood, watching, as his men and women climbed and scrambled, hit and killed. He heard the screams of Acton’s people
as the old blood took their revenge.

But the girl on the hill was silent.

I
WERE UGLY
, ugly as an unkind word, my gran used to say. I’d had pox when I were just walking, and the scars’d stretched into ridges
and holes. Bad to look on. She were kind, but she spoke as she saw, my gran, and so when my mam said, “Oh, don’t listen to
her, you’re beautiful,” I didn’t believe it. Travellers don’t have mirrors, much. Too expensive, too breakable. But I looked
in still pools and I saw that my gran were right. My body were all right, but my face were ugly as an unkind word.