ASHE
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18
Chapter Five
Carnage
When Ashe struck the rocks at the edge of the river, at the bottom of the ravine, there was a bright instant of agony. Then there was nothing.
*******
Jura had sat up all night. When Laure came to the royal bedchamber the next morning, Jura was still watching over the queen. “Jura, is my mother… Is the queen… alright?”
Jura glanced briefly at the city’s new co-ruler and then looked away. “She’s better than she was,” she replied. “I… Laure, I thought you would have come to see her before.”
Laure wouldn’t meet Jura’s gaze. Laure said nothing.
“But of course I understand: you had such important things to do. Far more important things to attend to than the Queen.” Jura’s anger had been circling her since the announcement, and although she tried to be understanding with her ward, it was hard not to take Laure by the shoulders and shake her for an hour or so. Her anger was so very close to pain that she could hardly form the words she used. A pain not unlike Leanna’s seemed to have taken up possession of her heart and lungs.
Laure still would not look at Jura. When she replied, her words were directed more toward the open windows than the woman before her. “Jura, I knew that the queen was in good hands. She had you. And Rhea was here. I didn’t want to make things more complicated.”
Jura said, “More complicated? More complicated, Laure? How could visiting the Queen have made things more complicated? Did you perhaps think there was a risk that she would ask you what in the name of all the Gods you were doing? Laure! What kind of demon has possessed you? Or was it that you were just too embarrassed to come here, or were you too blinded by Calypso and lust to think about anyone or anything else?”
“Jura… a moment of your time.” Calypso had appeared at the door. She was not smiling as broadly as before and her tone was barbed. “Perhaps it would be in… all our interests if no-one begins to be offensive. Laure did nothing neglectful, Jura. She knew – as I did, as I do - that the queen would be getting all the care she needed. You were here, so was the wise-woman. And both of you could always have sent for Laure if she was needed.”
Jura looked at Calypso. Then she walked over to the bed and stood with one had on the queen’s wrist, holding it gently, feeling the disturbingly reduced and erratic pulse. And afterwards, when she thought back, it seemed to Laure that that it was at that moment that things began to go wrong; not from the night before, when the queen had collapsed, but then, when an invisible wall went up between the two factions.
“Come on, Laure,” Calypso’s tone had lightened. “Let’s leave Jura alone with the queen. I need some breakfast. I can’t think why I feel so hungry.” She embraced Laure with her most lustful grin and taking her by the hand, she led her from the room.
*******
Rhea sat in her tower and stared across the sweep of land that led away to the mountains. She had spent the better part of the night with Jura and the queen and now she was tired, bone-achingly, sickening tired. Her magic had been almost drained; she would have to recharge her powers if they were to do the queen any more good that day. Rhea knew that she should not have spent so much time and attention on bones the night before: she had known what was happening and instead of accepting the facts, she had tried to deny them. She had done what she could, but she knew that she would have to do much more. And she felt old. For the first time in life, Rhea felt old.
She had never fought the passing years; they had all brought with them compensations. She had broadened her knowledge, she had sought to find a suitable pupil to whom she could teach her magic. For a time she had thought that Cairo might be do, but she had meant what she said to Ashe: Cairo was not the right emotional type. And Ashe… She had never understood why the bones had told her that she would not have the opportunity to teach Ashe. No, until the previous day she had not understood. Now she knew all too well.
She might have told her apprentice – Ashe or someone else – that part of the power of magic lies in an ability to accept that some situations are beyond help or change. Magic is not a finite power but it can only work where that work is not forced. She knew that there was much that she could do for the queen, and yet she felt a hopelessness about even that, as if her magic had already failed her. But it had not. Foolishness to pursue that line of thought. Better to brew yarrow tea and drink it and rest.
But when she closed her eyes all that she could see was the augury of disaster that she had witnessed on her walk back to the tower. She had been just outside her home when she heard the call of birds and saw, outside the city gates, two ravens flying overhead. And she saw the hawk dive between them, breaking the back of one and sending it plummeting to earth. The other raven took fright and flew away to the east. The dying raven struck the ground. A few feathers rose into the air.
Rhea had shuddered at the sight and looked up into the sky and said, foolishly, it had seemed then – and now - “Gods, that was hardly necessary. I need no more omens. I know what has happened.”
She waited for Cairo, knowing that Cairo would come. Perhaps when she woke again, Cairo would be there, smiling helplessly and wanting to do something constructive.
Rhea was very tired. She opened her eyes again to the comfortable, well-set-up little room. Her fingers held the bag of bones and she fidgeted over them. Pointless to do so; had they not told her the same story? Had it not been one of her strictures always that there was nothing to be gained in denying the truth? She turned her hand to the Tarot, looked at the image of the burning tower, and then put the cards aside. What good was a wise-woman, any wise-woman, when the world had turned upside down? No wonder the tower was burning. Laure had never had much time for her, and she knew that Calypso was hardly likely to consult with her: there was one of the ones who needed neither cards nor bones to advise her.
She closed her eyes again, and dreamed. She dreamed that she was alone in her room, drinking yarrow tea, thinking on the events of the day past and the new day to come. She heard footsteps on the steps outside. She glanced around and saw… Calypso, and her companion from the night before.
In her dream Rhea looked down at the bones and at last - a little late - appreciated the full extent of their warning. She rose to her feet as Calypso and her companion moved further inside the room. Rhea recognised the bond between the two, and wondered if Laure already knew it.
Alexis pushed shut the door behind them, and Rhea saw, without grief, without surprise, without anger, even, that whenever Cairo did come, it would be too late.
She did not attempt to move away from them, but she remained curious. How could she have failed to understand the omens, the dying raven? She had thought the bird had represented Ashe. Now she knew that she’d been wrong. She said, “It was a very clever magic that you practised last night, in the great hall.”
Alexis smiled modestly, and bowed. “Praise indeed. I have had very good teachers,” she said. “Few quite so clever or powerful as you, of course, but good all the same.”
“My power could not have overwhelmed the Elders, as you did last night. To my shame, I have only ever managed to shock the Elders, but you bewitched them. I doubt that any of them will ever be the same again. You stole the will from them.”
“Practice… and the virtue of a strong will.”
Rhea shook her head. “In the reading I did, I thought that the high priestess represented one of the Elders. Now I see that it was you.”
“I know what you will say in response to this,” said Calypso. She looked bored with the talk of magic. “But all the same, Rhea, I wanted to give you the opportunity. Will you - ”
Rhea interrupted her. “You know that I won’t. I simply… can’t.”
“I didn’t think so,” said Alexis. She looked disappointed but accepting. “I am sorry. I could have learned a lot from you.”
“I don’t think that there is anything else you need to know,” said Rhea. “But I do have a question for you. Your brand of magic, it isn’t mine. I’ve only heard of it. Are you…” The words faded away.
Calypso said, understanding. “Grant the woman a final wish, Alexis, will you? She wants to see you. Do you mind...?”
Alexis shrugged her shoulders and, easy as breathing, stripped to the waist.
Rhea drew in her breath. Every inch of Alexis’s skin, from the beginning of her wrists to her collarbones was etched with magical signs. Some of the scars were years old: they had stretched with time. Others were still bleeding a little. All the designs glittered, as if from an inner fire. Rhea looked up to Alexis’s face, which looked oddly young and smooth after the scarification of her body. “Very ornate,” she said, quietly. “Very fine.”
Calypso said, “Put your clothes back on, Alexis.” Alexis began re-buttoning her shirt. Her cloak was new. Calypso looked at Rhea. “You know what we want, of course.”
“Of course.” Now that she knew, Rhea found she was unprepared.
“It would be easier - that is to say - we could make things easier for you if you were to tell me where Ashe is. Alexis cannot trace any impression of her. But you have been close to her: you could help us. For my own part, I suspect that she’s already dead.”
Rhea looked at Alexis and felt Alexis’s voice inside her own mind. The voice said, “I know that’s she’s gone and so do you. We can neither of us find her, is that not so?” Rhea felt suddenly very old, and painfully tremulous. She did not want Alexis’s voice inside her head, even if the voice was not unkindly: she felt the intrusion like a rape. This was not how she had thought to end her days. Looking about her, she saw that Catkin was no longer sitting before the burned-out fire. Apparently her cat had better powers of divination than she. How very… salutary. She shook her head.
Calypso said, “Alexis, close the shutters. There’s no reason to make this any more public than necessary.”
Rhea said, slowly, “If I said that I would rather… you killed me, would you do so?”
Alexis didn’t look up. Calypso appeared to consider the question. Then she shook her head, and said, with a bright, unsuitable smile, “Sorry, Rhea. No can do.”
The tower room grew dark. Rhea sent up a small private prayer that she would not beg. She raised her eyes to Alexis, did not look toward Calypso’s slight, mocking smile.
*******
The body lay broken and empty on the rocks at the foot of the ravine, near to the river. A curious rabbit left the safety of scrubland and went toward the shape. It smelled blood and dived back into its burrow. Blood was what it was all about, after all.
Ashe’s life-blood seeped across the ground until it reached the river. Once it had touched the water it was carried out into the current. The river tasted the blood and the spirits within it rushed forward to cradle the remains of one of their distant kin. Watery hands like ribbon-weed reached out for the body and by slow and patient stages pulled it first into the shallows, and then out into the fast-flowing heart of the river. Water lapped the place of death: soon the rocks were clean and white again.
The river spirits mourned Ashe’s pain and death. They had never expected to find their cousin again, for Ashe had never seen the river that fed Lascar. The river had run beneath the city, and she had never seen it, let alone swum in the cold clear depths. Ashe had been content to swim in the limited stretch of the bath-house pool. She had never been near to a river.
Now river spirits encircled the body, tasting the blood, reclaiming their young. They would have wept over the broken bones but tears were denied them. Instead they went to work, wrapping the body round, washing the wounds, smoothing the broken skin over the exposed bones, weaving new muscles from their own undulating limbs, darkening the hair, and imparting a golden warmth to the dead-white skin. They turned the grey eyes black, and they put an edge on the already sharp white teeth. They spun new veins and arteries. They took the tangled mess that made up the woman’s inner demons and memories, and tucked them, along with most of her other memories, within the mute cage of her ribs. They eased away the ragged clothes and dressed the body afresh.
Some of the younger spirits had gone back for the sword and the cloak, and carried them downstream, playing with them as they went, puzzled by them. They took Ashe and her belongings deep into the heart of the river and far away from the place of death, away from the mountains and the cold. At last they found a place where the sunlight was warm on the ground, and there were shallows in which they might leave the body. Their last action was to waken the empty lungs. Then they floated Ashe’s body out of the current and into the shallows, face-up, so that she might wake in the early morning sunshine, draw breath and live again.
*******
Cairo, back in Lascar, approached Rhea’s tower. She ascended the winding stairs, filled with a growing sense of foreboding. She’d awoken with the worst hangover in history – she’d drunk solidly the night through after learning that Ashe had gone and Calypso really was in her place – and the knowledge that she had to see Rhea before she did anything else. As she reached the top steps she found that her pace was slowing. Her head spun, her pulse thumped. There would be nothing wrong – she was jumpy because her nerves were shot – that was all. The door was ajar and Cairo very slowly put up her hand to push open it all the way.
“Rhea?” Cairo’s voice sounded awkward and hesitant. Against her will she found herself to be oddly afraid. “Rhea? Are you there?”
The door to Rhea’s room was ajar. Cairo cautiously pushed it fully open, and stepped inside. The shutters were closed, and she opened them, letting in the bright morning light.
She stepped back into the centre of the room, and then she saw Rhea.
In the street outside, Rhea’s cat was howling.