ASHE
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Chapter Ten
Alexis lay face-down on the narrow bed and enjoyed, as best she could, the sensation of cool, fresh linen. Her dressing had been changed not long before, and one of the Elders had given her a drink that eased her pain and confused her thoughts, although it had done nothing to stem the bleeding. It felt strange to be conscious at all: she had existed in a dream state for three days.
“How are you doing?” It was Laure who spoke the words. She sat down on a chair beside Alexis’s bed.
Alexis managed a soft, “I’ve been better.”
“What happened to you, Alexis? Calypso is going to take this city down to the ground – or so she says – if you...” She hesitated but Alexis completed the sentence for her.
“If I die? It’s alright, your highness: I know that situation. But there’s no point in her doing that.”
“Do you know who did this to you?”
“I suppose I did,” said Alexis. She felt tired and hollow but suddenly easier within herself. “At least, I was the catalyst for it. If I’d been given this wound during a battle, it would have been at least more honourable.”
Laure waited, but Alexis was quiet again. Minutes passed in an oddly comfortable silence. Laure looked around her at the mass of unused beds, all with their covers neatly folded. It was a long time since the hospital had been used. Now the servants were quietly going about placing basins by the side of each bed, shaking the blankets and spreading them across the thin pallets.
“How is Calypso?” Alexis’s voice showed how tired she was.
“She’s fine,” said Laure. “She’s preparing for war.”
“I thought she might be. You and Mercia, is it, against the whole world?”
“I’m hoping it won’t happen.”
“But you must know it’s likely, your highness. You must have always known that.”
“There’s something I have to ask you.”
“Oh, yes?”
“What happened to Ashe?”
Alexis turned very slightly so that she could see Laure’s face when she responded. “Do you really want to know?”
“I think I deserve to know.”
A strange noise touched the room: Alexis was laughing. The laughter sounded much more vibrant and alive than her speaking voice.
“Your highness, you last saw Ashe when I dragged her out of your room. You did nothing to prevent me. You didn’t even ask me to stop. Then two of Calypso’s servants took Ashe down to the dungeons. Why do you think they took her there? To chat her up? Your highness, you don’t deserve to know. You had a long-term ally in the little foreigner and yet you let Calypso’s servants drag her away like so much driftwood.”
The expression was alien to Laure: she had never seen a beach, let alone a sea. But she gathered the significance of the term in Alexis’s disdainful tones.
“Did you kill her? Did you have her killed?”
“Your highness, you don’t deserve to know.”
Laure stood up and walked toward the door. Outside again she leaned back against the heavy door and thought: she’s right. I don’t deserve to know.
In the corridor outside she leant against the wall for an instant. Her head was pounding. Her eyes burned. Then she spun around and went back into the hospital. Alexis had closed her eyes. Laure hesitated for an instant and then put out a hand and touched Alexis lightly on the cheek. She drew back her hand almost instantly: Alexis’s skin was hot and hard: it didn’t feel at all like human skin. Laure stared down at Alexis’s shoulder, from which the sheet had slipped. For the first time she saw what had shocked Rhea and horrified the Elders: the living language of Alexis’s magic. Almost unwillingly Laure pulled back the sheet in order to reveal the marks that extended to Alexis’s waist. She drew in a sharp breath.
Alexis’s eyes were still closed, but she said, alertly enough, “Don’t worry, your highness. People are always thrown when they see it. Not that many ever have.”
“What is it all? Some tribal thing?” Alexis laughed at that, and the laugh brought on a truly horrible cough. “A punishment?”
“I always saw it as a map, you know, the sort they produce every so often. Some mix of green-painted forests, an illusion of the sea and the sky. Of course, I can’t see it all. But that doesn’t matter. If I can’t see what I need to know, I can simply think it. It works like a kind of osmosis. And no, it’s not a punishment, although it did hurt, believe me. It was a life-choice Written evidence of the power of magic.”
“Magic? Was your skin like this before you took Rhea’s power?”
“Gods!” Alexis’s eyes opened wide: for a moment she was sincerely shocked. “Calypso told you about Rhea? Voluntarily?”
“I wasn’t holding a knife to her throat.”
“You surprise me.”
*******
Caer Arianrhod. “How on earth do you always know so much?” Betany grinned at Cirrus. “And how do you manage always to be one step ahead of me?”
Cirrus gave her a half-smile. “Usually I have to think about what you’d want of me, and then I have to fulfil that.”
“You’re a good counsellor. But how did you know who to send?”
“I had no choice in the matter. It would be more accurate to say that my emissary gave me no choice.”
“Will she be safe? Can you tell me that?”
“Is she ever safe? She’s the living image of your mother, and she has all the confidence of our race. Even when she’s been hurt or beaten, she’s never stopped, or stayed safely here. But I know that if she reaches Ashe, she will be safe.”
“Have your spies brought back any new information?”
“Yes, but it’s all confused, or confusing. Lammor is being steadily over-run by Calypso’s Mercian troops. As yet she has not called for her civilians, and the speed with which the Mercians took to the roads leads me to suspect that they knew well in advance that Calypso wanted them.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that they must have left Mercia only days after Calypso did.” Cirrus shook her head. “Meaning that Calypso has always intended on war…”
“Or that she’s just guarding her back. Such very sensible decisions and movements… so long as it’s war she wants.”
“There is more news. The Lammoran queen is desperately ill. The queen’s companion is not quite herself…”
“Another one ill?”
“From what I’ve heard I’d say that she was heart-sick. With such changes, wouldn’t you be?”
*******
Jura sat at the queen’s bedside. Had it not been for the attentions of her servants she would have stopped changing her clothes, stopped washing or eating. Ashe would have recognised the signs of despair: it had formed a big enough role in her life. Jura was carefully and progressively cutting free of all her ties save the one to Leanna. No-one else mattered to Jura any more. She had travelled a long way, made a multitude of changes to her life and now she was giving up everything that she had attained, everything that she might once have considered important.
Jura knew the truth about the queen’s situation long before the Elders had admitted it to themselves. It was not surprising that they were a little slow in assimilating information, for the Elders were in demand. On the one hand they had the queen to minister to, and on the other, they had the new consort’s captain, not to mention the divinations demanded of them by the people on a daily basis, and the stricken Rhea to care for. Jura’s life was much simpler: life can be, once one has given up on sleep, food and drink, and hope. She simply sat with the queen, talking gently of ordinary life, and all the time holding the queen’s cold hands in her own. Her outlook, which had always been broad and generous, was by circumstance narrowed down to the queen and the confines of the chamber they still shared.
Laure, standing in the doorway of the royal chamber, watched Jura for a long time without speaking. She had never known a life without Jura, but now it struck Laure that the two of them had nothing in common but the queen. What would happen to Jura if the queen died? Laure was possibly the last to know the facts as whispered to Jura by the steadiest of the Elders: there was no if, there was only when. Calypso, sitting back beside her captain, knew the facts; the news was drifting through the palace like thistledown.
The queen opened her eyes and looked at Jura. There was infinite trust in her expression, and a sadness so great it rocked even Jura’s reserve. Her grip on the cold hands tightened. The queen’s voice was faint and uneven. “Help Laure if she will let you.” Jura smiled through a mist of unshed tears. “Don’t let Lammor be drawn into a war: there has been peace for so long that we have forgotten the horrors involved. Laure does not realise what it will mean.”
Laure approached the bed, alerted by the intimation of speech. She stood dumbly beside Jura. The queen looked in Laure’s direction, but her eyes were blind. “Your decision will change this country’s history, Laure. You must promise me to do what you can to keep our people safe. Rule well and take care of your people.” Jura put out a trembling hand and touched the cold cheek. Laure was aware of a sense of finality that she had never before acknowledged.
The covers of the bed had been dyed with the pale blue of the winter iris. The pillows against which the queen lay were the purest white of new snow. The rugs that covered the marble floor were decorated in violet and purple. Laure looked at the colours surrounding them, and the pallor of the queen’s cheeks, which seemed carved in marble to fit the design all around her. Blue, purple and violet. In summer there would be flowers of all colours strewn casually across the plains. Jura remembered her own land and knew in an instant that she would not see it again.
The queen’s voice came again, but neither of them could catch at the words, try as they might. And though both Jura and Laure were entirely aware of the faintness of the voice and the pulse, when both stopped together, neither knew the instant in which it happened.
Jura bent over the queen’s body and kissed the cold cheek. She then walked across the room to stand at the window that ran from floor to ceiling, and through which blew the fresh spring air from the plains. Laure bent her head over the cold hands that Jura had so recently released and kissed them. She stepped back, the knowledge of death slowly informing all her senses. Laure felt as though her last safeguard had been taken from her, and for a moment there rushed through her the desire to kick and scream and shout against the total immutability of death.
Jura looked at the distant mountains and then at the empty courtyard that lay six floors beneath them. Without glancing back, she stepped out of the room for ever. Laure hadn’t even had time to turn around when the distant thud reached her. Laure spun round, and said, stupidly, “Jura?”
*******“
They made an odd party, Ashe thought, as the four of them continued across the plain. Two water spirits, a former court companion, recently raised from the dead, and a karg, which was trailing some little distance behind them. It seemed to Ashe that there was a balance in the blend: air, water and earth. All we need now, Ashe thought, is a sentient bonfire, and then we have all the elements represented.
She was happier than she had been in ages. She’d had too many years of feeling slightly wrong, and now she had the beginnings of a family: she’d have to be careful that it didn’t all go to her head. She thought she had discarded most of the pain she’d felt on leaving Lascar (and Laure) when she’d let go her hold on the tree root. She didn’t know that that pain had been alleviated by the depth at which bad memories had been embedded in her. Neither Sam nor Calliope had thought to tell Ashe just how inaccessible the river spirits had made her past. In all probability they didn’t know.
At some point Ashe said, “We set off in the same direction of a morning. I have absolutely no idea of where exactly we are going and I feel as if I’m in the minority. Sam? Calliope? Any ideas? I swear it’s your lead that I’m following.”
“North, of course,” said Sam.
Ashe blinked. “Clearly the person I should have asked to lead us. Why of course?”
“Because north is where the white mountains are,” said Calliope.
Ashe blinked again. “The white mountains? I’ve never even heard of any white mountains. Why exactly are we headed for them?”
Sam and Calliope looked at one another. Neither spoke. It seemed that neither of them knew.
“Well, I can hardly ask the karg,” said Ashe, cheerfully. “So I guess I’ll have to ask you. Why are we headed - ”
“Because that’s where your allies are. We’re headed for Caer Arianrhod.” The voice came from slightly behind them.
Ashe said, “And what is at Caer- ” breaking off when from the same direction there came a noise like cloth being ripped. Sam and Calliope jumped.
The karg’s former silver-and-black coat seemed to have been shed. Now it hung loosely from the shoulders of a tall, smiling young woman who was clearly amused by the shock on the three faces. “Sorry, all. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you.”
Ashe, stepped back, stumbled on a small rock and sat down hard. She swore in colourful Lammoran. Sam grinned at Ashe’s language, and then put her hand up to her face to stop herself from laughing. Calliope just stared.
The former karg put out a hand to Ashe and effortlessly tugged her upright again. “Hallo, Ashe, Calliope, Sam. I’m Gowdie.”
Ashe shook herself free of dust from the ground and then took Gowdie’s hand in hers. She said, “Never do that again without warning us first, alright?”
“Will do.”