Deep Water (37 page)

“What are you?” I whispered, and the stone sang back. Evenness, it said. Balance on the scales.

I’d never heard of that stone, and I felt sick. To bring a new stone into the world was to change the world itself… it
were still too big for me. I didn’t know what to do. I wished that my mam were still alive.

I left the stream and the complaining house owner and walked back to the cottage where we was staying, renting a room from
a Settled Traveler. As I went through the cottage gate I heard a song from a little further down the road. A song I knew.
The blank stone. It were just lying there in the middle of the track, plain and simple, as though it had been waiting for
me to notice it. Gray, with silver streaks. Nothing special. I’d seen blank stones like this one a dozen times. It meant the
set was complete.

I sat at my work table and looked at the stone, then took out the flint I used to make a mark on one side of each stone in
the pouch, except the blank stone. Some stones tell you which side to make the mark on. Others don’t care. But as I brought
the flint closer to the black stone, it shrilled a warning. No mark, it sang. We are the same, both sides. That is the point.

My stomach churned. I went to my chest and got out the pouch, the set that just needed a blank stone — the set that I had
been making my whole life. I put the blank stone in the pouch but kept the other tight in my fist. When a set is made complete,
the cries of the stones change. Just a little. But not this time. The blank stone made no difference. I loosed my hold on
the other stone and put it in the pouch.

The stones began to sing. Just like they had for the apprentice, just like they had for other stonecasters I had given pouches
to.

They sang for me.

I shoulda been happy. At last, they was singing. But I were afraid, and a moment later I knew that though the set were singing,
it weren’t singing for me. They was calling their stonecaster. Calling like the goatherds in the Western Mountains yodel the
flock home. The calls became notes, deep and high. Under them all I could hear the new note, the call of the black stone.
The sound of the world changing.

T
HE MEN CAME
marching through the next afternoon, after what had clearly been a short night’s rest. They looked ragged with exhaustion,
even the officers on their mounts. Thegan kept them marching, allowing family and friends to walk alongside and hand over
extra food or comforts, snatch a kiss or two, as long as they didn’t slow the pace.

“Who knows what difference an hour may make?” he said to Leof, who came to ride alongside him through the town.

“We have thirty-seven axes of various kinds ready, my lord,” Leof reported. “I have loaded them into a cart so that the men
will not tire from carrying them. Also, a quantity of boar spear.” That thought had come to him late the night before and
he had rousted out every huntsman in Sendat to find the spears. Boar spears had a crosspiece about halfway up, intended to
stop a boar simply running up the length of the spear to gore the spearsman, which they were prone to do. Too stubborn to
know when they were dead, boars. Like the ghosts.

Thegan nodded approval. “You have done a great deal in a very short time.”

“Otter came through here trying to find you, my lord. The Lady Sorn ordered the axes made ready.”

Thegan raised an eyebrow, amused. “She is very martial of a sudden!”

“She acts to protect you and your men,” Leof said.

Thegan nodded. “She’s a warlord’s daughter, after all. I suppose she’s learned something of warfare, living in a fort all
her life.” He dismissed the thought and turned to other matters. “The fort —”

“Aye.” Leof nodded. “The fortifications won’t stop the ghosts. They’ll need to be rebuilt, and more axes, more boar spears
made. The call has gone out to the oath men this morning.”

“Good. I’ll leave you Alston for their training; he’s reliable. Tell him the truth. And the men will need reprovisioning.
We don’t know what we will find in Carlion.”

“At least ghosts don’t eat much,” Leof said dryly. “They won’t strip the land bare as a living enemy might.”

“Who knows what these ghosts will do. If they have flesh, perhaps they eat.” Thegan paused, choosing his words carefully.
“I know you would rather be with me in battle, but I need someone I can trust here. Supply lines, provisioning, they are the
heart of warfare, no matter what the songs say. Men will not fight for glory on an empty stomach, with empty hands.” They
had reached the end of town, and Thegan gestured to the townsfolk to fall back and let the men proceed.

“I will do the best I can, my lord,” Leof said formally, and saluted. Thegan returned the salute gravely, hand over heart,
and then smiled.

“Keep my fort safe, boy,” he said, spurring the chestnut gelding he rode to a canter, taking the lead, his banner rider following
close behind so that the gold and brown banner floated out behind him — sword and spear crossed, glittering in the sunlight.
The Lady Sorn had sewn that banner, Leof remembered, all of last winter.

He returned to the fort and only on the way up the hill realized that Thegan had left no word for his lady, hadn’t even thought
about visiting her, however briefly. When he came into the hall, hesitantly, she was waiting for him again in the shaft of
sunlight. She saw his face, and smiled reassuringly.

“My lord does
not
send to say that he thinks of me?” she said, laughter in her voice. “I did not expect that he would, my lord. When a warlord
goes to war, he thinks of nothing else.”

He smiled back, relieved to find her so reasonable. Other women, he reflected, might well have taken offense. His mother,
for one, would have had his father’s ears pinned to the black rock altar if he’d slighted her so. Thank the gods Sorn was
different. Later, though, he wondered why a great lady expected so little attention to be paid to her.

The oath men — farmers, laborers, tax bondsmen — came straggling in reluctantly the next day. Alston, the sergeant Thegan
had detached for training duty, was younger than most sergeants and less annoyed than most would have been to miss the fighting,
due to him being body and soul in love with the Lady Sorn’s maid, Faina. Being around her made him cheerful and energetic,
both qualities that were needed in turning the raggle-taggle mass of men into a fighting force. A force that could hew off
arms and legs.

Alston was one of those sensible, stalwart men that every officer dreamed of having as a sergeant. He was tall and had light
brown hair, a physique big enough to impress young recruits and a hand hard enough to impress the old campaigners. He brooked
no nonsense, but he wasn’t cruel and he didn’t seek out power. He just did his job.

Fortunately, none of the oath men had given service before, so they didn’t question the training methods Leof and Alston had
devised, which were certainly not standard. They taught the men to work in pairs — one to engage the enemy and keep him at
a distance, the other to come in from the side and hack off the arm. It occurred to Leof that outnumbering the enemy wasn’t
a bad approach to normal opponents, either. That cheered him somewhat, although he worried a lot about what would happen if
the ghosts outnumbered them.

More and more, Leof blessed his experience in fortification and long defensive campaigns in the Cliff Domain. The Centralites
had no real idea what war could be like. Moreover, since the rumors about why the men had marched to Carlion were even more
unlikely than the truth, no one took the preparations all that seriously, no matter how hard Leof drove them. They were the
strongest Domain of the Eleven; they had Lord Thegan leading them; why should they worry about attack? Only a fool would attack
Sendat.

That was the general belief, and it made getting masons and carpenters to work all the hours of daylight difficult. They grumbled,
they moaned, and they frequently slipped away to do some “little job” in the town. The blacksmiths were even worse. In the
end, Leof decided that he had to confide something — not everything — to Affo and the head mason, Gris.

He took them and Alston into the tack room of the stables, where he had some strong brown ale ready, and served them himself.
That alone put them on the alert. He chuckled as he saw their faces.

“No, no, lads, I’m not going to ask you to work through the night, don’t worry.” They smiled back and relaxed a little, but
remained wary. “But I do need your help,” he continued, growing serious. “I can’t tell you everything… my lord has given
strict instructions. But I can tell you that we were attacked by the Lake.”

They nodded. Old news. The list of the dead had gone around; the families had been personally informed by the Lady Sorn, who
had been generous — astonishingly generous — for those left without support.

“What you do not know,” Leof paused, milking the moment for all the suspense he could. They leaned forward. “What you do not
know, is that my lord believes it was
not
the Lake who attacked us.”

They sat up at that, the two of them. He had their full attention now.

“My lord has found out that there is an enchanter working against the people of the Domains. That is what we prepare against.”

“Swith the Strong!” Gris exclaimed. “He’s good enough to control the Lake?”

“So it seems,” Leof said, hoping the gods would forgive the lie, not sure if it were a lie. “This information is secret,”
he cautioned. “Only those in this room know it. If it comes to be talked about abroad, I will know who to blame, and I will
dispense my lord’s justice swiftly.”

Affo and Gris nodded in unison, like twins, and he fought down a smile. One day his sense of humor would get him into trouble.
His mother had always said so.

“You see why I need you to push your men. We don’t know when this enchanter may strike again.”

“He’s attacked Carlion?” Affo asked. “That’s where the troops have gone, isn’t it?”

Leof assumed an air of great solemnity. “I can tell you no more,” he said, “without betraying my lord.” That was the simple
truth. “Will you help us?”

They nodded again, and this time he let himself smile, a friendly smile that had them smiling back.

“Good. Drink up, then, and back to work.”

He and Alston watched them go, talking animatedly to each other.

“They’ll tell their wives,” Alston said gloomily, “and then it’ll be all over town.”

“Have you told Faina?” Leof asked.

Alston blushed and shook his head. “She’d never ask,” he said simply. “She belongs to the gods, that one, and can’t do a dishonorable
thing.”

Leof clapped him on the back and sent him back to the muster yard, where the last batch of oath men were laboring to swing
the weighted poles they practiced with. Affo’s men were working to make spears and axes for them in time. But in time for
what? Leof wondered. They were expecting word from Carlion any moment; the messenger horses were fast and surely there had
been time by now to get a message back?

He went into supper as the sun dipped below the western hills, and found Lady Sorn and the two junior officers Thegan had
left at the fort already eating at the glass table. It was called that because those who sat there had their wine served to
them in clear glass goblets instead of pottery ones, and it was a pretty sight, the flames of the candles reflecting in the
curved glass. He had always enjoyed it at Cliff Domain, watching Thegan and his father and the other lords draining their
glasses so that the fire winked from the bases like stars. Now he was nominal lord here. He felt a poor substitute for his
father, and wondered what Cliff Domain was doing to prepare. Thegan would have sent word there and to the other warlords.

Sorn and the officers rose and bowed as he approached. He bowed back, apologizing as he did so. “I seem to be always tardy
these days, my lady,” he said. Sorn smiled and sat again, gesturing for her maid, Faina, to serve him. He watched Faina curiously.
Not all that pretty, but with big blue eyes that looked on the world as cleanly as a child, yet with a woman’s intelligence.
He could see why Alston, a man of clear thoughts and absolute loyalty, would be attracted. But then, he thought ruefully,
I can always see why a woman is attractive. He wondered how long it had been since he had lain with anyone. It felt like months
since that waitress in Connay, when he went there for the chases, but surely it couldn’t be that long? After Bramble, he had
pursued women obsessively for almost a year, trying to prove that she had been nothing special, and when that hadn’t worked
he’d let the women pursue him, when they chose, which was often enough to keep him satisfied. But it had been a while.

He smiled his thanks at Faina for the roast kid and vegetables she served, then poured more wine for the Lady Sorn.

“How goes it, Lord Leof?” she asked, the question she asked every evening.

He outlined the day’s work and she listened and nodded and gave compliments, as she always did. He was never sure how much
she understood of the technical aspects of what he told her, but he suspected it was more than she showed. He suspected that
Sorn always knew and felt much more than she showed.

He was deep in an outline of the need to requisition more stone from the blue stone quarry in Springhill, a nearby town, when
there was a disturbance at the door and Hodge entered the hall. Sorn and Leof both rose and moved to meet him.

He was dusty from the road and tired, but he bowed formally to them both and then looked from one to the other, not sure to
whom he should report.

“If your news is private, sergeant, the Lord Leof can take you to my setting room.”

Leof nodded, but motioned her to join them. “My lord said to keep you informed,” he told her, and saw her flush, delicately,
as though she had not expected that. Fortune came prancing up to Sorn as they went into the setting room, but Sorn shushed
him and he went back to his accustomed place by the fire, head up, watching the flames and Sorn alternately.