Full Circle (46 page)

“He’s a good man,” she said defensively. “A Valuer.”

Of course he was a Valuer. A warlord Valuer. That made perfect sense. Ash snorted his disbelief.

They walked up the hill in silence, towards the waiting death, danger, stone and water.

Safred came back to join them. She gave a brief outline of the attack on the city and how the ghosts and their human allies
had been repulsed. “There was panic, though, and people stormed the ships in port,” she said. “I healed the ones I could,
but many of the sailors died. Zel’s aunty, for one.”

Zel’s aunty? He’d never even heard of Zel’s aunty. He didn’t know what to say.

“Ash… are you all right?”

He shrugged. What could he say? Yes? No? Both were lies.

“You killed Doronit?”

“Broke her neck,” he said harshly, glad in a way to make her wince. It may be he
was
dangerous. “She would have broken the barricade and joined the enchanter, else.”

Safred nodded sadly. It infuriated him, as though this was all her fault.

“Well, you wanted a killer, didn’t you? You needed someone who could do whatever needed to be done.
Didn’t you?
”

“Yes,” she said. Her green eyes were bright with tears, but she didn’t cry.

The fury drained out of him. At the same moment the gods cried out. He and Safred and Martine all jerked to a stop.
Help us!
the many-layered voices cried into their minds.

They all forgot the parley and turned to run downhill, towards the old part of the city where the black rock altar stood under
its canopy of oak leaves. Martine called back: “Sorn, the gods need us!” Sorn ran after them.

As they came towards the open space where the great oak tree grew, Ash could hear the local gods shouting,
No! NO!

A shudder went through them all and the ground shifted under their feet. Ash was thrown to the ground. He didn’t know what
was happening. Part of him felt a strong urge to run, run to the headland. Another part wanted to run as far from there as
he could.

“His spell of calling is ending,” Safred said, her voice shaking. “He has called all the ghosts. All the angry dispossessed
of the Eleven Domains. All of them are here, now.”

The pressure of the spell increased before it tapered off, but underneath it Ash could feel something else — something being
pushed, stretched, bent past breaking point. Another spell, old, old, deep in the ground… it was cracking under Saker’s
power, as a weir will crack in a flood. The water doesn’t care. Doesn’t even notice the weir. But the cracks widen…

“The compact!” Safred gasped. She was white with terror. “The spell is breaking apart the compact. Breaking into pieces!”

Ash dragged himself up and they ran on. In quick flashes, Ash remembered: water spirits lying in wait in the Sharp River;
wind wraiths above the cliffs of Turvite, long claws reaching for his throat; wraiths in the uplands of Golden Valley, slashing
at Horst, harrying him for sport. Only the compact stopped that happening, all over the Domains.

They could hear screams coming from the harbour. He looked involuntarily down a side street, and saw the topmost masts above
the nearby houses. As he watched, balls of yellow light descended on them and they burst into flame. He had never seen a fire
wraith before, and his whole body went cold. The protective spell might keep them from the city, but for how long?

At last, they reached the open space where the altar was. The ground around the altar was churning, in a wide circle that
matched the oak tree’s shade.

“Delvers!” Safred gasped.

In the circle of broken earth there were boulders moving, seeming to wade through the ground, pushing cobblestones aside in
waves. They advanced slowly, but inexorably, towards the altar. Their circle grew smaller.

Ash hesitated. Delvers: no one knew their weaknesses; they did not vanish in air, they could not be hurt by sword or spear
or fire or water or any human strength. He gathered his courage and ran towards the altar, leaping over the circle of delvers
and turning to face the nearest ones, his back to the altar.

Safred and Martine gathered their skirts up around their knees and leapt, too, crowding as close to the altar as they could.
Safred spoke out in the voice of the dead, the healing language transmuted into a challenge. Ash had the impression that they
had turned their backs as if uninterested, although the shapes didn’t actually turn. They moved towards the altar with purpose,
and all Ash and the others could do was stand and watch.

“We have to strengthen the compact!” he said to Safred.

“I don’t know how!” she wailed.

“It’s hurt.” He shook her shoulders. “Heal it!”

“I’m empty! Ever since the ship… I am empty!”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, but they had to act, or it would be too late. He put his hand on her shoulder and
willed his strength to her, as he had done when Bramble was dying.

“I’m full,” he said. “Use me. You’ve done it before.”

She put her hands flat on the altar and closed her eyes, Ash’s hands on her shoulders from behind. Ash closed his own eyes,
and straight away he could sense the cracks in the old spell. Beyond them was chaos. Safred began to sing, her harsh voice
cutting through the air.

Ash reached for the River, to see if She could lend her strength, but She was distant. He could feel a strange ambivalence
from Her, and realised, with a shock, that the water sprites were Her creatures, after all, born of Her, living only within
Her. He would think about that later. Now he turned his attention to Safred and poured whatever strength he could find to
her. There was a curious emptiness about her, a hollowness in the centre of her presence, but it was surrounded by power and
strength, and he guided her to that, drew on it himself and fed it back to her.

He might be a killer, but he could also help heal.

Safred’s song wound itself down into the altar, into the spell itself, but it was as though it was as insubstantial as the
air she used to make it. It did nothing, merely seeped between the cracks and dissipated.

She stopped singing and looked at Ash in despair. The delvers had slowed, but they were still advancing, and they were closer
than before, inside the circle of oak tree shadow.

Martine joined hands with Safred. “Let’s try again.”

They closed their eyes and Safred started to sing again. This time, as the song went down, Martine’s strength was there. She
was speaking.

“It’s like the other spell, to keep the ghosts out,” she whispered. The words were like a shout in Ash’s ear. “Safred, it
goes like this: ‘Spirits, come not within my home; spirits, be barred from my home; spirits, enter not my door.’ ”

Astonished, Ash realised that she was singing the same five notes that Doronit had taught him, to send away the wind wraiths.

Safred sang the same tune, but the cracks kept growing. Safred worked harder, her voice hoarse with effort. There were layers
to the compact spell, Ash realised. It was like a cloth with four layers, and the bottom layer was unravelling. That was why
the delvers could come right inside the city while the fire and wind spirits were still kept outside. But to get to that layer,
to repair it, Safred had to go through the top layers, and it was only where the cracks were deepest that she could do it
without causing more damage.

“The spell’s not right!” Ash said. “There are four layers. There has to be four — something.”

They paused for a moment; Safred’s song stopped. They could feel the old spell breaking further apart every moment, and the
noise of the delvers grinding through the earth was louder each moment.

What would happen when they reached the altar? Ash wondered. Would they simply grind it into pieces, the compact destroyed,
the gods made homeless?

“Wind, water, stone…” Martine hesitated. “Fire, too, I suppose. Try this, Safred: ‘Spirits of wind, come not within my
home, spirits of water, come not within my home, spirits of fire, come not within my home, spirits of air, come not within
my home.’ ”

“No,” Safred said. “Didn’t you see what was happening? Ash’s strength went to the third layer, yours went to the second, and
mine to the top. We can repair one layer each, I think, but I don’t know why.”

Ash knew. Of course, now he thought about it.

“The third layer is water,” he said.

Martine looked down at her hands, as if admitting something embarrassing. “The second is fire,” she said. “I think the top
one must be air.”

“We sing to our strengths?” Safred said doubtfully, but they had no time to debate it. “We have no one for earth, then.”

“Use me,” Cael said. He had limped into the square after them without Ash noticing and was being supported by Lady Sorn.

“Cael is earth,” Martine said. “Anyone can see that.”

Cael looked at Safred, and smiled slightly.

“No choice, niece,” he said.

Safred bit her lip and held out her hand.

He gauged the height of the delvers — barely past his knees, but he shook his head. Sorn lent him her arm for balance and
he simply walked over the top of one, putting his boot down on it firmly and thrusting off. The delver made a crashing noise
that almost split Ash’s head in two but Cael was unaffected, although the effort of stepping down opened his wound again —
Ash could see lines of blood and pus seeping through his shirt.

Cael leant thankfully on the altar. They joined hands again and all began to sing the words Martine had suggested, each taking
one element.

“Spirit of water, come not within my home,” Ash sang, in the voice of the dead, feeling like a traitor to the River, knowing
there would be a reckoning with Her, one day, for this, but also feeling that it was one way to make up for sending the wind
wraiths south.

“Spirit of fire, come not within my home,” Martine sang, and the words felt sad, as if she were relinquishing something valuable.

“Spirit of air, come not within my home,” Safred sang, in the voice of the dead.

“Spirit of earth, come not within my home,” Cael sang, his voice gravelly and low.

This time the cracks started joining, supporting, reforming.

Cael had no power of Sight or healing, yet his voice resonated somehow with the lowest layer and at first they were hopeful,
as they saw the cracks slow in their progress. Ash marvelled at the size and complexity of the compact spell. Whoever had
done it had been a great enchanter, with a mind as complicated as — Ash didn’t know what to compare it to.

But the lowest one was the hardest to reach, and the one that had cracked most, and it resisted every effort he made. After
the three top layers were mostly healed, they tried to help him, all singing “Spirits of stone, come not…”, until they
were all exhausted, propped up on the altar stone like drunks against an inn table, but it did no good. Cael was not strong
enough. His song was barely reaching the top part of the lowest layer. Caught in the middle of the spell, Ash could sense
how weak he was. How near death.

They paused, just for a moment. The three top layers stayed firm and steady, but the lower one began to fragment further immediately.

“Don’t try to heal me, niece,” Cael said, and took a deep breath.

“No, don’t!” Safred cried, but it was too late. Cael let out the breath in a last, long, passionate song.

“Spirits of stone, come not within my home,” he sang, and poured out all the strength he had down into the lowest layer of
the spell. All his love. All his devotion to Safred. All his decent, kind, cheerful life. The life of someone without gifts,
without power, without anything except circumstance to make him special. The life of someone who had wanted to be an ordinary
husband and father, until those things were ripped away from him. Ash felt it go; honoured him; envied him. It wouldn’t have
been enough. Ash could See that it wouldn’t have been enough; but as his life poured out, something else went, too — the remnant
power of the Forest, which had been keeping his wound fresh, which had been killing him slowly. That power went down deep,
deeper even than the River, and as Cael died that power left him, spearing into the earth, returning home by a route deeper
even than the fourth layer. That spear of power took Cael’s strength with it, down deep enough, strongly enough, to reach
the cracks.

Then Cael was dead, and his body fell against Ash’s shoulder. But the cracks in the lowest layer had stopped growing.

And the delvers had disappeared. Ash sighed with relief. He took a deep breath and stepped back, well away from the altar.
Martine rolled her shoulders and shook her head like a dog coming out of water.

Safred rubbed at her eyes, her face white. “It’s not fully healed,” she said with difficulty. Trying to stay intent on their
task. Ash wanted to pat her on the shoulder, but guessed that would take away the last of her self-control. “That lower layer
is beginning to fray again.”

The ground burst open beneath their feet.

Ash staggered, tripping and falling on his back, rolling as he had been taught and coming to his feet with his knife in his
hand — but of course there was no human enemy to face. Safred had fallen on her side. He hauled her up and away from the altar.
Martine backed away on the other side of the altar.

“They’re coming!” Safred cried.

The ground was roiling around the black rock, heaving and splitting, cobblestones spinning away, mounds rising and falling.
Then some of the mounds shook themselves and became the dark shapes of delvers, hard to see in the bright sunlight. They had
moved slowly before, but now they were much faster, as though they were running out of time.

The gods were silent. The delvers crowded around the altar and it began to sink into the ground, as a foundering ship sinks
into the sea.

“No!” the lady Sorn cried out, as though her heart was being ripped away.

It was so quick, Ash didn’t have time to move. The altar, Cael’s body still on it, was sucked into the dirt and disappeared
in a few heartbeats, and the delvers followed it, leaving the ground beneath the oak tree looking like it had been dug over
for planting.