Full Circle (14 page)

W
HEN THEY
woke, the world had changed around them. Instead of a small cave in a long passage, they were in one of the huge caverns,
water dripping from the walls, pillars of rock forming on roof and floor, the friendly little lozenge of light nowhere to
be seen. Next to them, a dark river flowed silently, its quiet ripples threatening in the flickering candlelight. It disappeared
between a high, thin crack in the wall.

On the river’s banks were strange shapes in rock: a huge bird, wings outspread, a winter tree, perfect but only as high as
Bramble’s chest, an old woman hunched over a fire. Others looked more monstrous, like water sprites or wild boars, tusks shining.
The sound of water trickling, slapping gently at its banks, echoed constantly.

“The Weeping Caverns,” Medric said, glancing from one rock form to the next with a hint of panic in his voice. “They never
let you out.”

“Fear weakens you, lad,” Acton said. “Breathe deep.”

Medric didn’t understand the words, but the smile that went with them heartened him and he put his shoulders back and nodded.
Acton nodded approval at him, and he swelled with pride.

Men! Bramble thought. They just lined up to worship him. “This isn’t the one we were in before,” she said firmly. “We haven’t
been brought back to where we were.”

“How can you know?” Baluch asked, curiously. “We could be in a different part of the same cavern.”

Bramble shook her head stubbornly. “No. That cavern ran north and south. This one runs east and west.” She repeated it in
the old language, for Acton.

Medric didn’t believe her, but the others did.

“Can you tell where we are?” Ash asked.

“South of where we were, I think.” She concentrated. “The mine entrance is far behind us. The White River may be close. It
comes out of these caves.” She paused. “I am getting tired of being thrown around in time and space at the whim of the gods.”
She turned in to the cavern, her hand on one of the cold, slippery rock pillars, and shouted, “Tell us what you want!” Acton
came to stand beside her. Even as a ghost, he was a reassuring presence.

Just as when she had asked for help from the Lake, something came.

Along the river bank, shapes stirred. Not every one — not the water sprite, but the boar, not the tree, but the woman. They
moved, but they moved silently. The figures straightened and turned towards them in unison, blind rock eyes seeming to focus.

Bramble stood still, but Medric and Ash and Baluch all moved towards her until they were standing in a tight group. Acton
walked forward to meet the shapes. The old woman, the boar, a weasel, sinuous even in rock, a fox, brush held high, an ox.

The boar stopped in front of Acton, but the others moved around him with the same unstoppable force as delvers had. The woman
stood a little way from Bramble, mouth in a smirk. The weasel faced Ash, the fox, Baluch, the ox lumbered around to the back
of the group to confront Medric.

Bramble moved forward a little, until she was face to face with the figure of the old woman. She held up her candle so that
she could see the woman’s face. It was no one she had ever seen, in her life or in Acton’s. The kind of face a doll maker
would carve for an evil-old-woman puppet — nothing but wrinkles and spite lines.

Acton’s head flicked around, and he grinned at her, and then at Baluch. She smiled back, feeling the familiar rush of pleasure
and excitement that danger brought.

The old woman raised a finger, as if reproving her. Her face writhed, and Bramble couldn’t tell if the stone really shifted
and warped, or whether it was simply the flicker from the candle.

Behind her, Ash cleared his throat, the first sound any of them had made since the shapes moved.

“Wild!” the old woman hissed immediately. “Ungrateful, undutiful, unwomanly! Not fit for anyone. The unloved daughter. The
unwanted one.”

Bramble flinched. Her voice was like the voice of the dead, rock grating on rock, but lighter, with changing tones like water
falling. Behind her, she could hear the other figures speaking, and in front, the boar was roaring at Acton in his own language:
“Murderer! Despoiler!”

The ox lowed accusations at Medric: “Coward, unwanted son! Sold for garbage. Unmanly, weak!”

She was glad that the weasel spoke quietly, and she couldn’t hear what Ash was hearing. But her anger was building, because
she knew that Medric, in particular, would be vulnerable to this kind of attack.

“Be quiet!” Ash’s voice cut through with the resonance of power, and they were silent immediately.

“Oh, let them speak!” Acton said. “Words can’t hurt us.”

The others stared at him. Bramble saw that Medric had tears on his cheeks and Ash and Baluch both looked shaken. Acton had
his solemn face on, the one that so often preceded some explosive physical action. Like smashing the rocks to splinters.

Then the old woman put out a hand and placed it heavily on Bramble’s shoulder. She tried to move away, but her feet were stuck.
She looked down: the bottoms of her boots were encased in rock, and the rock was spreading. She glanced at the others. The
figures in front were touching each of them now, and the stone was slowly growing up their legs. They were being trapped.

The boar put a foot on Acton’s, who promptly kicked it hard, unbalancing it and sending it crashing onto its side.

Acton came to Bramble’s side, but waited to see what she would do. She glared at the woman. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Speak,” Ash said reluctantly.

“These are the Weeping Caverns. None but the worthy leave here. And you, girl, are empty inside,” the woman said. “You are
the less loved, less wanted, carrying death with her like a plague! You betray the ones who trust you. You allow your loved
ones to die like beasts!”

Bramble’s earlier exhilaration drained away, but she was not the young girl who had left her family knowing she would not
be missed. She thought of the hunter, and of Acton, and of Maryrose, who was waiting for her on the other side of death. And
of the roan, dead because she had been afraid, just once, and let fear rule her. She wasn’t going to do that again. Acton
was right. These were just words.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s right. That’s me.”

Shocked, the woman moved back. As soon as she lifted her hand away from Bramble’s shoulder, she froze back into rock. The
stone around Bramble’s boots melted into a watery slurry. She kicked it off and turned to face the others. “It’s all true,”
she said. “Everything they say to us is true. You might as well accept it.”

Baluch immediately spoke to the fox, which held his tunic in its jaws. “True,” he said. “All true.” The fox moved away and
froze in position, its paw raised, its brush low.

Medric’s shoulders were hunched and he was swaying his head from side to side, like a horse with the weaves. She went to him,
ignoring the ox, whose heavy hoof was pinning Medric’s foot down. Acton followed her and shoved the ox aside, despite its
great weight. But the stone continued growing over Medric’s feet.

“The worst of us is not the best of us,” she said gently. “You can be everything they say, and still be worthy, because of
what else you are.” He stared at the ox as if he hadn’t heard her. “Would Fursey have loved you if you weren’t worthy?” she
asked. “Would I have trusted you? Would you have bothered to help me? So your father didn’t want you! What does that matter
now?”

The ox spoke at the same time, “Coward! Weak! Always fearful!”

She stared at Medric, rubbing his shoulder, urging him to understand. Acton smiled at him and Medric blinked, turning his
head to stare at Bramble for the first time.

He seemed to take something from her — not strength, something more like love.

Slowly, he turned towards the ox. “Yes,” he said heavily. “I am.”

The ox fell silent.

Ash understood, but Bramble could see that he found it hard to say the words. He managed, eventually, to concede whatever
the weasel had said to him, but the weasel snapped, “Liar!” back at him and he flinched.

“Remember,” Acton said to him, “we are all guilty of something.” Ash stared at them.

Bramble felt her store of compassion, usually reserved for poddy calves and sick rabbits, rise like yeast. She smiled at him,
like the big sister she felt she was to him. “I’ve been many people now, Ash, and I can tell you — we all fear the same things.”

He stared at her, uncomprehending. The weasel was whispering, too quiet for her to hear, but Ash bit his lip.

“All of us,” she said. “We fear being unwanted, alone, unloved. We fear the death of those we love. We fear that no one will
miss us when we’re gone.”

She thought of all the eyes she had looked through: Ragni, old and facing her own death stoically, but distraught at the death
of Asa; Piper of Turvite, fearing for her children, mourning Salmon; Baluch, hating himself for killing children but following
Acton anywhere; Wili, letting Edwa kill herself because she understood the fear of being discovered as they were, used and
degraded, worthless… Warmth overtook her and she hugged Ash, ignoring the weasel as though it were not there. “Come on,
Ash. We need you.”

“Worthless…” the weasel hissed.

The word was the same in both languages, as words sometimes were, so Acton understood. “This one? Worthless? Hah!” he said,
evading the boar again as he spoke.

Ash blinked and turned to Baluch. “I can’t hear her,” he said.

“No,” Baluch said, smiling with reassurance. “She lets you fight your own battles.” He clapped Ash on the shoulder and perhaps
that was what he needed, a physical shock, or perhaps it was the right reassurance.

Ash stared at the weasel. “I have been unloved,” he said. “I have been useless. But not now.”

“Truth at last,” the weasel sneered, but it moved away and stiffened into rock.

The boar was shouting at Acton and trying to catch his tunic with a tusk.

“Oh, just talk to it!” Bramble said. “Or we’ll never get out of here.”

He gave her the sideways smile, but he obediently spoke to the boar: “Yes, yes, I am a killer, I am an invader. Those aren’t
secrets.”

The boar stopped and froze in place. Bramble wished she felt better about it — Acton’s tone had been so off-hand, so casual,
as though the accusations hadn’t bothered him at all.

But something else was disturbing her. All these things… had been alive once. She faced the old woman. “You’re dead.
Why haven’t you gone on to rebirth?”

“Speak,” Ash said. His voice was stronger, as if he were regaining confidence. The blind rock face stirred but only the mouth
moved. “None are reborn from the Weeping Caverns,” she said, and the eyes came alive, too, to stare despairingly at her. “None.”

“I don’t believe that,” Bramble said. “It can’t be true. The gods wouldn’t allow it.”

“The gods are young and this is not their realm, girl.” She took a step towards Bramble. “Stone is ruler here.”

“Not just stone,” Baluch said from behind her. “Water, too.”

“We can’t leave them here,” Bramble said.

“We’d never get them out,” Baluch replied, assessing the size and weight of the rocks.

“None shall leave,” the old woman said.

“The turns are turned!” the fox echoed.

“There is no way.” The weasel rose up on his hind legs and giggled. Ash reached out and pushed it off balance so that it fell
with a crash to the floor and lay there, panting and glaring.

“Then we will make a way,” Acton said.

“Acton,” Baluch said, “what are you thinking?”

“I am thinking stone can be broken.” He came to Bramble. “How close are we to the surface?”

She extended that part of her mind that told her where she was, and figured it.

“Not far, I think.” She pointed east. “That’s the way we were going before the cave changed around us.”

“If we can find a way out, perhaps our miner here can show us how to widen it enough to let these poor creatures out.”

“That might work,” Bramble said, “but not if the spell that holds them won’t let them walk. They’re too heavy to carry.”

“But we have an enchanter,” Acton said, looking at Ash. “Can you not find a way to bring them to the light?”

Ash looked at the old woman, his face full of pity. “Stone is no match for water.”

He looked up. “Let them go, and the Caverns will be safe.” His voice echoed in the dark around them, full of warning.

“Wait,” said Acton, and he turned to the woman. “Who tasked you?”

“Dotta, daughter of fire,” she said in his own language. “None shall leave but the worthy.”

“Dotta,” he repeated, the grating voice slow and considering.

“She was protecting you, Acton,” Bramble said. “She knew I’d come back for your bones, and I think she was making sure no
one too arrogant to accept their shortcomings would steal them first. But Dotta wouldn’t have stopped spirits going on to
rebirth.”

The old woman spread her hands and shrugged with one shoulder, like a fishwife bargaining in the marketplace. “That is the
Caverns. It has always been so. We have no power over it.”

“Then it is time to end the Caverns,” Ash said. Baluch came to stand beside him, to link arms. Acton watched him go with a
curious look on his face, as though realising for the first time that Baluch had had a life — a long life — which had changed
him in ways Acton didn’t understand.

The old woman stared at Ash as though not understanding, and slowly the other figures stirred into life and ranked themselves
behind her — not just the animals, but all the other figures, human and otherwise, which had lined the bank of the river.

They did not threaten. They did not speak. But Bramble saw a kind of hope in their blank eyes and slack muscles, as though
they had been tasked for too long. Then Ash looked at Baluch and together they closed their eyes and sounded a single low
note, their voices matching like one voice.

Bramble had no idea what was happening, but “water,” Ash had said, so she moved away from the river, up to a promontory of
rock that stood high. Medric and Acton followed her, but Ash and Baluch stayed still, standing in front of the stone figures,
hands splayed, eyes closed, humming and singing without words.