Full Circle (27 page)

Even when I were little it itched at me. My sister were pretty, with hair so light brown she could’ve pretended to be one
of Acton’s folk, if we’d had the right clothes and boots. But we was Travellers, and poor, like most Travellers. My mam was
a painter — she did those patterns, friezes, around the inside walls of houses. Clever as clever, my mam. She taught me: ships
for Turvite, dolphins for Mitchen, wheat sheaves for the northern towns, flowers for Pless and leaves for Sendat, the standing
wave for Whitehaven, fish for Baluchston, pots and scales for Carlion, the moon in all its phases for Cliffhold.

I don’t think Mam were a woman of power, cause otherwise she’d’oa’ warned me not to mix ’em.

I found out first in Baluchston, after she died of the wasting fever and my ser married a tinker and I took the Road alone.
I were painting a main room for a ferryman. His wife were new to the place, from Sendat, and she wanted something as reminded
her of home, but he were Lake through and through, and he wanted fish. So I mixed ’em up for them, autumn leaves and fish,
and it felt funny as I painted, but I put that down to the lack of air in the room. The fish seemed to thrash around a bit
in the corner of my eye, and the leaves floated gently down — but when I turned around to check, there they were, safe on
the wall.

I were almost finished when the Voice come rushing in, all wheeze and pant, for she’s a big woman, Baluchston’s Voice, and
older’n stone.

“Stop!” she said. I were just about to paint the last fish, and I were cross and a bit flummoxed. What was it to her what
I painted? It weren’t her house.

“Stop,” she said again, but gentler, like. “Lass, you have danger in your hand.”

I looked down at my brush and its load of grey paint. I’d never seen anything less dangerous in my life. “Mad,” I said.

She laughed. “Aye, may be so. But mixing those two… They’ll be pulling up nets of leaves and the fish will be jumping
up in the trees by day’s end if you keep going.”

“Nah,” I said, laughing too.

“Aye,” she said, and she weren’t joking.

The Lake had sent her, and that shook me up properly, ’cause my mam had told me oft and oft about that Lake, and how never
to go against Her or Hers.

So I painted over each leaf and put fish instead — a different kind, trout instead of pike, so the design would stay balanced.
Afterwards, Vi, the Voice, took me for a meal at the inn and talked it over with me serious, like.

“Painting’s a kind of enchantment,” she said. “You call what you paint, if you paint with love. And each frieze must be a
circle.”

“Aye, they must be unbroken.” I nodded. “That’s why they have to run over the top of doors and windows.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

I thought it through, then shrugged. “I always reckoned it was just… design.”

She shook her head so hard the flesh on her arms wobbled. “Nay, lass, each circle’s a spell to bring prosperity.”

“Autumn leaves aren’t prosperous.”

“Harvest time,” she said. “Don’t mix them up, lass. Every place has its wellspring of prosperity, and it’s bad luck to mix
them.”

Well, I kept to her advice, because I were no fool, and I still remembered the way the leaves had seemed to fall out of the
corner of my eye. But I brooded over it, and brooded more when the lad I wanted, a tall, strapping cobbler I met in Gardea,
wanted nothing to do with me. He mooned after a pretty little tumbler who tumbled him and then left him behind without a backward
glance, I heard. But I was long gone by then, because I couldn’t bear to watch him watching her perform outside the inn, her
and her brer, a skinny boy who sang like a nightingale.

I thought about power a lot that summer, and calling, and how painting might be a path to power, and I wondered, wondered,
wondered, until the wondering turned into planning and the planning, finally, became decision.

To work, I needed somewhere I could paint a frieze that would be unbroken and stay undisturbed forever — or at least until
I were in the burial caves. And that thought gave me an idea. Most caves are taken for the dead, but in the Western Mountains
there are still some, high up, where no one goes but bear and wolf. Seemed to me that were a good place to set a spell down
in paint.

I Travelled that way so as I got there in the summer, when the bears were out of their caves, and I went up past Spritford
to Hidden Valley, which I’d not been to but I’d heard it had caves in the valley walls.

So it did, right enough. Oh, that’s a pretty place, Hidden Valley. I thought I’d like to go back there, someday. Maybe even
Settle.

I found me a cave was just right, with a low entrance that hollowed out into a space about the size of a room. There was old
bear scat there, but none recent, so it didn’t trouble me. The bear wouldn’t hurt the paintings — all its scratching points,
which were rubbed smooth, were below where I’d paint.

I took my gear as well as my paints up there, ’cause I knew it would take me more than a day, and I set to work as the dawn
light first channelled into the cave, grey and pale. I painted, and I painted, until the light was red with sunset, and I
left the brush still wet so that the painting would know it was not done yet, and I started before dawn the next morning,
as soon as I could see my hand in front of my face, and by dusk it was finished.

This frieze was me, and I painted it with love. Painted the way I
ought
to be, the way I
should
have looked: better than my sister, even, with two sides of my face the same, and big eyes and soft lips and the smooth,
smooth curve of skin like that tumbler had, but
me
, and I painted it around the cave until the design met above the door. But the faces weren’t all the same, and that was where
the power lay.

No, they were different, each one: side face and full face, laughing and smiling, serious and mocking, all the expressions
I could think of, except crying. Each one I finished, I could feel the power build, feel something shift inside me. And when
I put the last stroke in, the final brush mark that tied the last image to the first, the power burst out.

Ah, gods, it hurt! I fell to the ground, screaming. My face were being ripped off, it felt like, ripped and torn and seared
with vitriol. I would have scrubbed out the brushstrokes, but I couldn’t stand up. I were curled around myself in pain, spasms
rippling through me so I arched and jerked like someone with the falling sickness.

Pain like that seems eternal when you’re in it, so I don’t know how long it took. I fell asleep, or maybe unconscious, after,
and next I knew it was day. I got up, carefully, not touching my face in case a touch made the pain come back. I ached in
every bone. When I looked up at the frieze, I didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or purge myself. Each of those images
was ugly. Ugly as an unkind word.

I touched my face then. No pock scars — not one. And I felt different even down to the bone. Beautiful. Aye. I knew it in
that moment, and I were full of triumph and… I don’t know the words for that feeling, but it were good.

I walked out into the early morning and though it were a grey, wet day, it felt like sun and blue skies to me. I were weak
as a kitten, and it took me long, long months to get strong enough to Travel. I had to work in the inn there, and the nightmares
of pain came every night, but I didn’t care, because the inn had a little mirror in the stairway and I could see myself as
I went past with the chamber pots or the wood basket. I were beautiful.

When I got strong I went looking for my cobbler, thinking, hoping… and I found that Travelling on your own as a beautiful
young woman has problems of its own. But I had what I wanted, and I knew I would find him again, and he would look at me the
way he looked at that tumbler, and we would be happy. We would Settle in Hidden Valley, and I would paint our house with happiness.

I heard he was in Sendat, so there I went. My cobbler, he were there all right, gathered up with the rest of us Travellers,
there with his new wife and his new baby and though I hated him, hate him, I hope he’s all right, hope that baby’s still alive,
hope for them better than I got.

The lord picked me because of my face. That lord, that bastard, he looked at all the girls — just the girls — and he picked
the most beautiful, to make a better show for the enchanter.

So I got my throat cut because I were good-looking, and that were such a joke, don’t you think? A joke on me.

His new wife weren’t even pretty.

L
EOF, ON
duty at the gate, saw the messenger come up from the town just after dawn, sweating and gasping, “They’re coming!” A mixed
band of townsfolk followed him, the ones who had no homes, or who didn’t trust the stoutness of their doors.

“In quick as you can!” Leof told them. They needed no urging, moving as though Lady Death herself was after them — and maybe
she was.

He despatched a runner to ring the alarm bell and he made sure the gate was secured behind them.

As the bell tolled out, all of Thegan’s people, men and women alike, well-drilled over the last week, went into action. The
muster yard boiled briefly as soldiers, sergeants and civilians ran desperately to get to their posts. Sorn crossed the yard
at a quick walk, even in this emergency a centre of calm. Leof smiled involuntarily at the sight of her.

Only the Travellers stood still, until they were chivvied into the barn by a picked handful of soldiers, led by Horst. Leof,
watching to make sure they weren’t treated roughly, saw him talk briefly to a couple standing next to the boy who had flirted
with him on the road. Flax, Oak had called him. The couple nodded at Horst and moved to the back of the barn, but the youngling
shook his head and stayed put.

Leof continued watching as Horst corralled the Travellers behind the line of the open doors, and set his men on guard outside,
back and front. The Travellers, impassive, watched the activity in the yard; and Vi, Reed and the other councillors from Baluchston
took positions at the front, near the boy.

The yard was now clear again, and Leof knew that Sorn and her women would be in the big hall, ready with bandages and strong
drink and, gods help them, saws and hot pitch in case they needed to cauterise a stump. He prayed for her safety, and touched
the amulet in his pocket, then turned his attention back to the road.

They approached, rounding the bend below. Thegan had had all trees and bushes cut back from the roadside, so they had a clear
view. The enchanter was leading his army, flanked on one side by the same ghost who had almost killed Leof at Bonhill, a short
man with beaded plaits, and another stronger looking man.

And there was no sign of wind wraiths.

Leof prayed that they would stay away, but he didn’t hold out much hope. A shudder went through him at the thought, but he
kept his face calm, as an officer must.

“My lord!” Leof called, as Thegan appeared at his shoulder. Wil and Gard and some of the sergeants followed, Hodge and Alston
among them. They crowded into the observation platform above the gate and stared down the road.

Thegan’s mouth tightened as he saw the ghosts. “Get her,” he said over his shoulder to Hodge.

Hodge started towards the barn and Leof didn’t want to know who Thegan meant by “her,” but he could guess. If he were a warlord
showing a hostage to an invader, he’d pick the prettiest little thing he could find. It wasn’t sensible — an older man’s life
was just as valuable as a young girl’s — but it wasn’t sense they were dealing with.

Leof forced himself to watch. Hodge disappeared into the barn and came out dragging exactly what Leof had pictured: young,
pretty, frightened. Flax tried to block Hodge’s way, but Horst and two men forced him aside and back into the barn.

Vi’s face was unreadable, but the set of her shoulders told him what she was thinking. She spat something at Hodge, and his
face flamed bright red, but he held the girl’s arm firm.

Leof was sweating, the cold sweat of fear. He could smell it on himself. He couldn’t let Thegan just murder this girl to make
a point. He couldn’t, even if it was his warlord’s direct order. Could he?

He’d never prayed harder in his life than he prayed that the enchanter would respect the hostages’ lives and retreat. It was
their only hope.

Hodge brought the girl over to Thegan. Eighteen, maybe, and a bit like Bramble would have looked at that age. She was frightened,
sobbing. Even if she didn’t know what was happening, being dragged off by a warlord’s man to a group of soldiers was a terrifying
situation for any girl. Unlike Bramble, she wasn’t even trying to be brave.

On the faces around him, Leof recognised that mixture of pity and irritation that a weak victim so often evoked in the strong.
But Thegan’s face was completely expressionless, as he waited for the enchanter to come within earshot. He didn’t even glance
at the girl. The rising sun glinted off his hair and made a nimbus around it, so that he looked like a vision sent by the
gods.

“Enchanter! Do you hear?” Thegan shouted.

Behind him, in the yard, on the walls, in the barn, there was complete silence.

“I hear,” the enchanter 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.”

The Travellers began to shout and protest from the barn, Flax the loudest.

Let it work, Leof prayed. Gods of field and stream, gods of sky and wind, gods of earth and stone, make it work.

Thegan motioned to Hodge and the sergeant brought the girl forward.

Yes, Leof thought. Show him the girl. Make the enchanter see her face. Move his heart.

Then Thegan brought out his knife and placed its tip at the girl’s throat.

The world went very still for Leof. He was aware of a stir among the men there, but none moved. None protested. Was it fear
of the ghosts, or loyalty, that kept them silent? Or did they just not care because she wasn’t one of theirs?