Full Circle (38 page)

“And this is
our
city, isn’t it?” Martine asked. “Do you want to find a new home in a countryside ruled by ghosts? I doubt they need castings
very often!” She tried for a laugh, and got a few chuckles.

Wila, who cast mostly for the whores down by the harbour, cleared her throat. “My spell is for walls and door,” she said.
“I don’t think it would work for streets. Or squares. Not empty space, see?”

Martine looked over their heads to Ranny. “Can we get barricades built across the outer streets? If we can make a ring of
bespelled houses and barricades…”

Ranny nodded, shortly, and jumped down. “I’ll get it organised. You assign them districts. Don’t forget the harbour.”

Fortunately, most stonecasters lived in the poorer parts of town — near the harbour and on the outskirts. The middle of the
city, on its hill, was the preserve of the respectable. Martine found a clerk to fetch a map of Turvite and allocated an area
for each stonecaster to cover, the area nearest to their own home whenever possible.

One of them was a stranger to her, after all — he had come with Thegan from Sendat, an odd-looking bald man without any eyebrows.
Otter, his name was. He studied the map with intensity and spoke of the enchanter with real hatred.

“The others are afraid of the enchanter,” Martine said to him. “But you hate him.”

Otter’s mouth thinned. “I’m from Carlion.” He stared unseeing at the map of the city. “For twenty years I’ve been working
towards equality for Travellers. Me and others, some Traveller, some not. We were getting close to having the laws repealed
in Carlion. We had the ear of the town clerk, a few other councillors. We were so
close
! Twenty years… and that blood-hungry bastard destroyed it all in a night. We’ll never recover from this.”

He turned abruptly and walked out with the others, as though he were sorry he had said so much. He was strong, Martine thought,
feeling regret for the future he had been working for, and slightly ashamed that it had never occurred to her to do so. She
hoped he could cast a good spell — and the others. But she knew it would only buy them time.

Where was Ash? And Bramble, where was she?

*   *   *

Since Martine had no home in Turvite now, she took a part of the city that no stonecaster had a stake in — around the road
to Sanctuary. It was the route into the city the ghosts were most likely to take; and she might see Ash. She stood at a barricade
made of carts and barrels and boards, stretched across the road.

“Why don’t stonecasters do more spells, if you can?” Sorn had asked her, back at the inn.

“There aren’t many to cast,” she had told her. “Only a handful, and most of those backfire on you — cast a love spell, someone
ends up hating you; give the evil eye, your eye sees only ugliness afterwards.”

“Balance,” Sorn mused.

“Something like that. The spell to keep ghosts away is different, somehow. Maybe because it doesn’t try to change anyone,
just preserve what is — your privacy.”

So here she was, trying to preserve a whole city’s privacy.

The stonecasters had agreed that the spell might be stronger if they all cast it at the same time — at sunset. It wasn’t a
difficult spell, but to do it on this scale required all their strength, and sunset or sunrise were the easiest times to cast
a spell. Martine didn’t know why, but dusk and dawn seemed to enhance Sight and other gifts.

She waited, conscious of the Turviters who had built the barricade, and others who lived nearby, watching her critically,
hopefully, nervously.

It had been three years since she’d cast this spell. It was usually done alone, inside your own home. She had never performed
any public enchantments before. She took a deep breath, feeling like the butterflies in her stomach were as big as sparrows.
She looked around to embed the area in her mind and saw Arvid, standing beside one of the houses, a few steps away. He smiled
at her. She was flooded with warmth; she hadn’t expected him to be there. The nerves retreated as though they had never existed,
and she spread out her hands on top of the barricade, feeling the timber warm from the afternoon sun, slightly rough under
her fingertips.

She had loved living in Turvite. This
was
her city; these were her people. She knew them inside and out — their fears, their hopes, their loves and hates, their greed
and generosity. They had brought all of themselves to her and she had cast the future for them, for good or ill.

Take that feeling, she thought, and weave it into the spell.

“I am Martine, of Turvite,” she said aloud, “and this is my home. Spirit without living body, come not within my home; spirit
without living body, be barred from my home; spirit without living body, enter not my door.”

The usual spell — “Spirit without body, enter not my door unless I set it ajar for you” — left two big holes for the ghost
army. They would have needed only one sympathiser within the city to undo the protection; and who knew if the ghosts had an
actual body rather than merely having bodily strength?

The rest of the spell wasn’t in words, but in feeling — the desire to protect, the desire to make whole, the desire to be
safe. Martine’s Sight could sense the other spells reverberating on either side of her.

She could feel her energy flowing out with the spell, and she gave all she had; the others were doing the same. She had to
push the spell from the barricades to the walls of the houses on either side, and then further. She thanked the gods that
Turviters didn’t like trees or shady yards; their houses abutted each other. But each house needed a spell in itself, and
pushing the protection from one house to the next took more energy than she had expected. She pushed sideways and out to the
limit of the barricades and houses, to the space that was neither city nor countryside. The edge of Turvite.

Her head was light and empty now, her legs shaking; but they weren’t finished yet, they hadn’t joined. She wished Ash were
here, to give her strength in the way he had given it to Safred once, but she was alone. She swayed, fighting dizziness, and
felt Arvid’s hands come under her elbows, to support her. He wasn’t Ash; he didn’t have the ability to channel strength to
her. But his presence, his warm body behind her, his concern, steadied her.

She reached out as best she could, ensuring that her protection reached the casters’ on either side, closing the gaps. Her
Sight took her around the spell, which now stretched all the way around the city. It was like a protective girdle shaped like
a crescent, because it took a curve in at the harbour. But there, at the point where the crescent curved inwards, there was
a weak spot. A lack of feeling, a lack of desire. She knew who it was. Otter, from Carlion. He didn’t feel strongly enough
about the city to protect it properly.

She sent her own love, her own strength, to that part of the spell, and felt it firm up, like a rope pulled taut. It was a
maternal kind of love, she realised, as though the city and its people were her child. She could sense other weak spots being
shored up by the stronger stonecasters.

The words of spells were taught when a stonecaster took an apprentice. But only the words — you couldn’t teach the feeling.
How could you teach the searching out, the recognising, that Sight allowed?

The protection grew, and grew, and then stopped. The rope was taut, all around the city. It
felt
all right. But whether it would keep out solid ghosts, she had no idea.

She had just enough strength left to end the spell, tying it off as one tied embroidery thread when a design was done, and
as it ended her legs gave way and she fell.

Arvid caught her.

“I’m all right,” she whispered. She was not all right. She could barely feel her legs and hands. Every bone in her spine hurt.
But she was breathing, and the spell was tight and full.

I
N EVERY
town he passed through, Leof told of the success of the Wooding Travellers. To the Travellers left alive, to the village
voices, to any warlord’s man he found. Most Travellers were too scared, or too angry, to do anything; but a few began to band
together to protect those of Acton’s people who had been good to them.

There were at least some of these: people who had given Travellers shelter when scared mobs came for them, or those who had
hidden Travellers in barns or haylofts or in their own bedchambers, and denied all knowledge of them. Sometimes there were
family bonds to explain their actions — but sometimes, as far as Leof could tell, they had acted out of sympathy, and abhorrence
of murder.

But there were fewer of those stories than of Travellers massacred, or imprisoned, or sent to the warlord.

When he told one voice about the Wooding group, the woman said, “Why would they protect us?” Leof couldn’t fault her logic:
why, indeed?

As he neared the outskirts of Turvite, his two horses tired but still sound, Leof remembered his last visit to the city, two
years ago, to ride in a Spring Chase. It had been after he had met Bramble, but before he had recognised his love for Sorn.
Before Thegan had actively planned war. Before the enchanter, before the Lake, before he had been anything but an enthusiastic
officer who liked chasing and idolised his warlord.

He had been a child.

Coming up the hill to Turvite he saw the entrances to the city were barricaded. Flimsy constructions of boards and carts that
wouldn’t keep an army of children out, let alone the ghosts. Surely the Turviters weren’t relying on these inadequate defences?

When he reached the barricade he found some of the Moot staff, with what looked like hastily recruited deputies, allowing
people in and out of a small gate.

One of the staff, an older man, was instructing a young deputy. “You
must
close the gate after each person,” he said. “The stonecasters say the spell will only work if we keep a wall around the whole
city, like the walls of a house, see? So people can go in and out of a house, but to keep the house safe you have to close
the door.”

The younger man, a tanner by the smell of his clothes, nodded earnestly. “Aye,” he said. He looked up at Leof, clearly preparing
to put his training into practice. “Are you blooded?” he demanded.

“What?”

“Show us your blood,” the older man said.

Leof frowned. “How?”

“You may,” said the young man, parroting, “pull down your eyelid and let us see the red; cut your hand and bleed; or punch
yourself on the arm and show us the reddening.”

“Isn’t it obvious that I’m alive?” Leof demanded, both amused and affronted.

“It will be when you show us,” the older man said stolidly.

Chuckling, Leof dismounted and pulled down an eyelid. The young man inspected him solemnly and then opened the gate, closing
it again carefully once Leof had led the horses through.

“The stonecasters?” Leof queried.

“They’re casting a spell to keep these ghosts out,” the older man said happily. “We’ll be safe in Turvite!”

“There are a lot of people hoping you’re right, and they’re all on the way here,” Leof warned him.

He rode to the Moot Hall first. He had considered his options all the way to the city, and had decided that Turvite’s council
needed warning of the countryfolk fleeing to their city, and to learn of the success at Wooding, although he doubted
any
argument would convince the enchanter to turn away from Turvite. He would have to risk meeting Thegan.

At the door of the Moot Hall he was inspected again for blood, and then passed from clerk to clerk until he was in a small
room with a thin, blonde woman.

He hesitated on the threshold, but she waved him to a seat. “I’m Ranny of Highmark,” she said.

He’d heard of the Highmark family. They had a breeding farm which produced wonderful piebald chasers. “Leof, originally of
Cliff Domain,” he said. He’d thought quite a bit about how to present himself. “Former officer to Lord Thegan.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, but let it go. “You have news?”

“Thegan is in the city?” he countered.

She paused, weighing whether it was valuable information, but he could have found out from anyone at the hall. “Aye,” she
said. “He came straight here.”

“So he would not know, I suspect, that the whole countryside is following his example. Half of Central Domain is on its way
here, hoping for shelter.”

“We can’t take them all in,” she snapped.

“Best be prepared, then, to send them elsewhere. There may be alternatives.” He explained the situation in Wooding, where
the Travellers had protected their village. “I’ve been encouraging other towns to do the same,” he said. “I’m hopeful at least
some areas will remain untouched.”

“Interesting,” she mused. “We have quite a few Travellers here. Settled for generations, some of them. We might call a muster…” She stood up and bowed. “Thank you for your assistance, Lord Leof. Perhaps, since you are no longer on Thegan’s staff,
we can call on you for advice about our defences?”

“I’ll give you some advice right now — the enchanter has acquired human allies. Travellers who were attacked by our people
and who see him as their saviour. Your barricades may stand against the ghosts, but the humans will demolish them in a single
charge.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Archers at high points and behind the barricades, pikemen in front, and a good solid group of soldiers set in ambush behind
them. The humans will be at the back, I think, when they attack, and if you surprise them you could cut them down easily enough
with a trained force, particularly if you have enough archers. They are not trained fighters, you understand.”

Part of him sorrowed as he said it — there were women in that group, and children, too. Perhaps they would not fight, and
might be saved.

“We would prefer not to call in assistance from warlords.”

“Set the ambush on Merroc’s soil — then you won’t need to let his men into the city.” Merroc was the warlord of Far South
Domain, which surrounded Turvite.