Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Eleven
No fucking handholds, huh? And no way out of Janu’s room? Necessity certainly was a magical thing, the goddess bless it. Ashe was very cold and fairly frightened and trying her hardest not to look down. Climbing had never been her forte. Falling: now that was an art she’d conquered long ago, but climbing was a bugger, especially on a night so cold the rope around which her fingers were clenched felt like an icicle. The ground had seemed impossibly far away when she’d first looked down from Janu’s window, but now it had become a million times worse. Of course, that first glimpse had been coloured by logic and good sense, whereas her current opinion was tinted only with desperation. Now that she was dealing with a simple fact: it was an awfully long way to the ground.
She wondered how long it would be before Janu’s body was discovered. So far there had been no shouts or alarms, and surely they’d break up the sky with noise once it was found that the leader of the Red Temple was lying on the floor of her room as stiff as a plank and as cold as the night outside. Ashe didn’t dare try to breathe on her hands to warm them; even that little moisture in the air would cause the ice to form. She clung on desperately and tried to keep moving. The longer she took over the climb, the more painful it was going to be. As it was, when her feet finally hit the ground her legs were so shaky that they would not support her at all.
The sky was very dark. The moon – visible not long before – had entered into a life of calm and seclusion and the courtyard into which Ashe now stepped was as dull as death. The Red Temple itself seemed to loom over her, its windows now eyes and its main door a black mouth through which one went to enter the world Ashe had never wanted to consider. There was nothing compelling or attractive or welcoming about the place and perhaps it was that combination thought that took Ashe toward the main door. When she put her hand out to it, the handle turned and the door swung gently open. Ashe drew a deep breath and slipped inside. No-one followed, no-one spoke, and yet it felt to Ashe as if something had slipped inside with her. An invisible companion or a mood so heartfelt it was nearly tangible. Not a good sensation.
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The hall in which Ashe stood was almost completely dark. She took small breaths, tried not to panic, tried not to make any unnecessary noise. She smelled a variety of scents: wood smoke, incense, rich wine and something else that she didn’t even want to think about. She thought about Hero and hoped like hell that that comment had just been Janu fucking with Ashe’s head.
Then for the first time she heard voices outside. Voices that shouted orders and voices that sounded harsh and threatening. So they’d found Janu. Either that or they knew they had a fashion critic in their midst. Ashe smiled wryly: probably Janu. She wondered what Coll would make of the news, if indeed the group from Plethe would be allowed to share it. Coll would be unsurprised; Fallon would be shocked. Ashe decided to quit the contemplation. She looked around for a potential hideout: no point in trying to get beyond the gate when the courtyard was full of guards doubtless desirous of Ashe’s skin. Ugh. She thought again of the cloak and felt another fit of retching trying to take hold of her. She felt tears in her eyes and her throat burned. She ran a hand through her hair and wondered what she should do. Eventually she felt her way along the wall to a cupboard of sorts. Reaching in she felt nothing but shelves. Ashe sighed and climbed inside, pulling the door closed after her as far as it would go. She had been very cold and now she was beginning to thaw again. The first rush of fear had gone and left in its wake an exhaustion so sweeping that she could not fight it. Ashe closed her eyes and was immediately asleep.
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While Betany thought about Calliope and Ashe, and Rhea watched over Gowdie, and Alexis continued to cut her way through the countryside, Ashe slept inside her cupboard. Her last thought before sleep had won her over had been to wonder what madness had drawn her to the Red Temple. How very much easier life had been before she’d bumped into Fallon, and Coll, and… she didn’t want to think the word but it leaped forward into her brain anyway: Hero. Please let Janu have been lying about that. That had made her wonder just how much Coll and Fallon knew about their new home and the roles that had been cut out for them.
She had awoken, stiff and cramped but a little rested. She had listened intently but could hear no hint of human habitation, and so she’d slid out of her uncomfortable bed into the body of the temple proper. Ashe’s senses were fiercely alert.
The hall in which she stood was narrow but high; the windows through which the sun now poured were fifty feet above her. Pillars supported the weight of the curved roof and marked out the dimensions of the hall into equal measures. The walls were red; either stone or paint had made them so, and the pillars were red. The floor was black, a very unimpressive modification. The red itself was an ugly, inhuman shade. It suggested raw meat, too far gone for eating, or never fit for eating in the first place. It would have turned any karg vegetarian, but Ashe tried not to think about kargs: every time she did, she ended up wiping fastidious fingers on her trousers. The sensation of touching that cloak still floated around inside her head, unwanted and nightmarish.
Ashe could hear distant voices coming from distant rooms. She reached a very high door and surveyed it without trust. No way of hauling back those timbers unobserved, she went first right and then left, eventually finding a small door, that rose only as far as her hips and which was held fastened with a fine silver chain. Ashe sighed and applied her short knife to the task. Eventually she had broken the chain, blunted the knife and eased open the door. She picked up the remaining chain and slid it inside a pocket. Then she knelt down and crawled through the opening.
Ashe rose to her feet very slowly. This was the hall proper, she was sure. Pillars again, but this time patterned and carved pillars, not the long straight lines that had illustrated those in the previous room. Ashe took in the details of the designs and felt her stomach lurch. The sound of voices grew near and Ashe hid herself beneath a bench, one of the many that described the curvature of the walls. Each bench was covered with hangings that reached down just far enough to touch the floor. Ashe lay down flat and watched through the tassels of the hangings the first speakers to approach.
These were temple attendants. Ashe was sure of that. She’d seen a few of them around, and noticed other attendants who apparently dealt with the day-to-day issues of cooking, cleaning and running the laundry. Ashe wondered if these attendants had also come in as apprentices. If they had, they must be feeling pretty fucking let down, she thought. They wore robes like the one Janu had modelled, back before she threw in her hand and threw back her head. Ashe didn’t want to think about that. The voices came closer and closer, their sound still muted and confusing until they stood only ten feet or so from where Ashe was lying. Two voices, both comparatively young, and the tone of both was tinged with annoyance. One said, “No. I didn’t agree. And Murah didn’t even listen to me. She was too fucking busy melting down. I’ve never seen her like that. Sometimes I think she’s not wholly human.”
“I’m afraid she is, despite all suggestions to the contrary.” Ashe watched the two sets of feet – all that was visible of the speakers – and wondered if there was any point in trying to approach them with words of moderation or appeal. She decided against that one, decided too against taking them both on. There might only be two of them now but in a moment there could be twenty and besides: she wanted to know what was going on.
“It’s so stupid. It’d be better by far for them to just interrogate the new arrivals. And then to move outside the compound, just in case. I mean… surely it’d be more sensible to broaden the search?”
“Yes, but, you know… This is the day of Temptation all the same, and they never ever shift from procedure.”
“Procedure, hell. Our precious leader’s just bought the farm and you’re talking about procedure. Anyway, I don’t even understand why they must go through the halls of Temptation. They all end up the same.”
“Nearly all of them, not all of them. You should watch your mouth: if Murah hears you saying that, she’ll have you beaten. Oh, and I’m not the one talking about procedure. Fuck procedure.”
“Fuck Murah, more like. Unhealthy-looking like fiend. Well, it’s pretty much one and the same. Goddess! Have you ever seen her down there amongst her things? She’s got everything in fucking great boxes and I saw her once, walking about in the clothes she’d taken, with a fur cloak on and all the jewels she could manage to pin about her scrawny body. She was prancing about like she was some kind of royalty. She’s a fucking monster. Socially speaking, intellectually speaking, she’s no better than you or I. In fact, I’d go further on that one. She’s downright perverted. You’ve heard some of the stories, haven’t you?”
“Heard the stories, saw the marks, believe it utterly. She has power, that’s the problem. She’s powerful and she’s downright deranged. We’d be a lot better off if you and I ran the Red Temple. It makes me wonder how they ever came to select Murah in the first place. Why not you or I?”
A solid little pause followed that one. Ashe could almost hear the two girls thinking.
“Alright,” at last. “It’d be good, I don’t deny that for a minute. But it’s not our way, is it? After all, power is fickle and nothing can guarantee a single aspect of our lives. For instance, take Janu: one day the leader of the Red Temple, the next a body resting in a hole in the ground. Her capacities for cruelty were legion, but her skull was no stronger than anyone else’s.”
“I used to think they were somehow two halves of the same being. I mean, they were superficially different, but there was some kind of connection apart from the obvious. Janu up there in the high priestess’s room, and Murah snarling about round the basement. Frankly, if anyone’s skull was going to go, I wish it had been Murah’s. She’s always been the one who frightened me. I had this image of her sneaking about in the dark of the cellars, chewing on a bone.”
A short silence followed. Ashe’s digestive system twisted and she felt sick. Apparently the remark had done much the same to the two speakers.
“You know, you’ve got too active an imagination. Now I’ll be thinking up that image before I go to sleep. That’ll really make for sweet dreams. Thanks.”
“Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it? I’ve heard them say that she even picks the jewels from their ears when they’re safely dead. Imagine that? Picking over the bodies like some kind of ghoul.”
“Oh, do shut up, please. We’re meant to be getting things ready.”
The second speaker went on without comment on preparations. She said, “Murah’s really stuck now. She’ll have to find someone to replace Janu pretty fucking fast. She’s smart but she can’t fulfil both roles. She’ll need someone who knows the ropes.”
“Oh, I know where you’re going with this. Listen to me: it’ll never happen. They don’t pick people like you or me, which is why we get to be the poor bastards who do all the donkey work.”
“You’re right. Fuck it. And yes, I suppose could have it worse.”
“You know we could. And besides, at least we’re not among the poor bastards who are about to get tested, initiated, renamed, robbed and then sacrificed. We get a small settlement and what is more: we get to live. Count your blessings.”
“Oh, right.” The tone was deeply ironic. “I feel so fucking blessed.”
So the knowledge about the Red Temple wasn’t confined to Janu and Murah. Ashe wasn’t sure if that would make her life easier or more difficult. Sacrificed to the beast… What a way to go.
The feet were moving about: apparently the two girls were doing something out there. They didn’t work in silence for very long. Soon after Ashe heard more of what she wanted to hear. “The ceremony of Temptation. I know it’s stacked, so to speak, but does anyone ever make it out the other side?”
Laughter. “You must be fucking kidding. Everyone loses themselves in there. It isn’t designed to be passed. It’s designed to make them fail. You must know that by now.”
“Yes.” The tone was a little tart. “I’m not stupid, you know. But I wish that…”
“You wish that what?”
“I wish that the people of my village had never heard of the Red Temple. I wish I’d never heard the title and begun to dream about it. I wish that I was back there in blissful ignorance. Bored and dispiriting as life was then; it was better than this.”
“Are you sure? It’s easy enough to say it, but have you ever been really tempted?”
“I am tempted, tempted to go back, if I only could. Right now, on a day like this, if someone could transport me back in time, so that I was still a green kid, I’d take them up on it. Maybe that’s what would have tempted me, had I made it to the ceremony of Temptation. Not gold or jewels or lovers in abundance: just a simple desire to go home and never remember anything.”
Ashe found herself thinking that she might have gotten on with the two speakers. They neither of them seemed too entranced by the processes of the Red Temple. However, she wasn’t going to made their acquaintance unless she had to, and then they’d undoubtedly try to kill her.
“It’s getting on. It’s really getting on. They should be coming in here any moment now. Look sharp or Murah’ll be after you.”
“Fuck Murah.”
“Not if you paid me.”
Laughter. Lying stiff and still within her hiding place, Ashe grinned.
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Omens. Fucking omens. Sometime I feel myself getting sick of them. Rhea was telling me that some great change is coming and I want to tell her that I know it is. But I’m Gowdie for so short a time now and I don’t get the chance to say anything much. Oddly, it feels as if my trying to use any human gift is actually setting me further back. I’m endlessly tired and I don’t know what’s going to happen.
I used to wonder why it was me and not Betany who could change. I thought that because she was older than me, it should have been her right. But I don’t think she’s ever envied me for a minute, and I know that I’ve never envied her. It’s partly the responsibility thing, of course. I suppose I could run Caer Arianrhod if I really had to, and I used to think about that whenever we went into battle. I used to send up my own personal prayers to the Goddess, and ask to fight well, to fight bravely, and that if it came down to a choice of which of us should survive, that it would be Betany. There was never anything giving or magnanimous about the request: I knew she’d be better than me at ruling the country. Having to take on all the stuff of leadership. It’s not me. I can handle myself on the battlefield, and oh, when I think about all of us changing, all us kargs, in a diagonal line across the massed troops: it makes my mouth go dry and my cunt go wet. Hell… what kind of a lunatic am I? It’s not the fighting and it’s not the force: it’s the simple beauty of the transformation. It feels good when it happens, and to see it happen. Oh, that has to be the best thing of all.
I like Rhea. She’s a strictly no bullshit person. She never lies to me and sometimes the potions that she tells me will taste abominable aren’t quite as bad as she makes them out to be. I know that there’s something she’s not telling me and I think I know what it is. Sooner or later – probably sooner, the way things are going – I will have to choose one form. But it won’t even be that straightforward: when I change I am less and less aware that part of the time I’m human. Something is eating away at the balance within me and I don’t know how it’s happening.
Last night I managed to talk – no, not to talk – I managed to listen – to Rhea. She’s picked up on the weaknesses inherent in me. She told me about some of the battles that had been fought, and about Lascar and of being one of the Elders. And from talk about the Elders she moved on to talk of omens and signs. It seems there’s one fuck of a lot of both of them around right now.
Rhea reads bones. Oh, she uses cards to investigate the future too but she’s best with bones. She carries them about in a little bag and when she wants to ask something she holds the bones in both hands, thinks hard about the question she wants answered and tries to let her mind go empty. This, she tells me, is the most dangerous moment. When she lets go the control she exercises over herself there is a moment when anything – anything – could step inside her mind. Consequently, she gives a lot of consideration to any potential reading. I suppose it’s much the same as going into battle. You know the risks are there but you still have to do it.
She talks a bit – and only to me – about what Alexis did to her. This in itself is a bit odd: I mean, she knows that Alexis and I are beginning to like one another and Alexis is the one who just about did for her. I suppose I should be grateful: she treats me like someone who has an idea of what is going on in the world. I admit it: I am grateful to her for that. She doesn’t question my liking for Alexis, but what I think she’s doing is trying to find if Alexis has the capacity to be a normal and fairly good person.
I wonder how Alexis would feel if I got stuck as the karg and never came back? I don’t suppose that’s a question I can ask, should I ever see her again. I think that on some level Rhea hates Alexis – and why wouldn’t she? – but that she knows she can’t allow herself to act upon the feeling. Right now we need Alexis. Goddess: I need Alexis.
I think that when Alexis was with Calypso she was a different person. I know that she’s an excellent soldier because I’ve seen her in action. If there was a role she was born to, it’s that of captain to an army. I wonder if Betany would use her in ours.
I didn’t realise how strong Alexis’s magic is. It’s not something she’s talked to me about, but after what happened in Lascar, she couldn’t very well. Rhea is clearly wary of it, but then, isn’t she bound to be, after what happened? Calypso was the instigator, I suspect, but Alexis was stronger than her leader. And of course, now there is the news of a new leader for Mercia. Mercia is still under the control of Caer Arianrhod, but I know that that’s not what Betany wants, long term. As a race we’re like that: we have high standards and we fight like weasels but we never want to possess anything that does not want to be possessed by us. Like Mercia, for instance. The sooner we can let go there, the better.
I’ve begun writing down how I feel, because that means of communication doesn’t seem to make me change to karg as quickly or as finally. It’s a journal of sorts and it isn’t really for me. It’s for Betany and it’s for Alexis, should she ever get back. It’s the last evidence that there will be of me if I do change, once and for all, and Gowdie is gone for good.
And the thought is humiliating because it makes me cry.
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Laure sat on the palace steps in the warm morning light. She’d slept well, there had been some breakfast left out for her on the remains of the great table in the main hall: fresh bread and some figs, water and honey. The servants were beginning to behave in the fashion of their calling. Slowly and methodically she had dipped the bread into the honey. Droplets had spilled and sat on the wooden surface like tiny amber worlds. Or amber tears.
Whether or not she had expected to see Ardan again was something Laure was not certain about. She’d certainly sent the young woman off with as little kindness or courtesy as she could muster. Had she still had guards, she might have requested two of them to drag Ardan from the palace.
Yes. Her rule was returning, albeit slowly. Day by day more of the palace’s servants had come creeping back – mouse-like – to take up their old situations. As the palace grew again, layer upon layer, there was of course more space for the servants and even though Lascar had fallen about as finally and messily as any city could, the core of it still seemed to emanate some semblance of stability. Laure had found some more old dresses that had survived most of Lascar’s collapse. The improved breakfast before which she’d seated herself was a very good sign. How nice not to have to fend for herself in all respects! And then of course there had been Ardan.
Laure had – almost completely but not unknowingly – sapped Ardan’s strength. The single night of sex had finalised the process and as Ardan staggered on her way to the tower, exhausted and confused and trying hard not to cry, Laure felt more like a queen again. She had regained some of her poise and Ardan’s exit had marked the beginning of a new era. Now it didn’t matter if Ardan turned up or not: her work had been done. Ardan’s contribution to the rebuilding of Lascar had been entirely intimate. Laure felt confidence run through her body with her blood, and oh, it was such a good feeling. It was like closing her eyes and putting up her face up to the sun and feeling that fine solid warmth embrace her.
Now it didn’t matter if Ardan turned up or not. It was of no interest to the Lascan queen.
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“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Murah was not happy. She sat in her cellar and cursed.
In less than a hour the newcomers would present themselves to the Red Temple proper and begin the sacred rites. No matter that by night the majority of them would be dead; the ceremony was essential and must go ahead. Janu had once – in a moment of laziness and no caution – suggested that she and Murah save time by skipping the ceremony of Temptation. Murah did not often lose her temper, but that time it had broken half the pottery in the room and Janu had been forced – embarrassing, that – to cut and run. Murah had understood, even if Janu had not, that the process of ceremony was at least a third of the beast. How could the body assimilate blood and souls if it had no infrastructure? The ceremony allowed tendons and nerves and arteries and veins to be knitted. There was no way it could ever be forgotten. The ceremony was bedrock, and Murah understood a lot about the subject.
Janu had fought to be free of village life, but Murah had enjoyed her time within the walls of a small community. Her village had been perhaps more cerebral than Janu’s own. As villages went, it had lasted for thousands of years and had it been situated in a warmer and less demanding plain, it might have grown from a village into a town or even a city, complete with Elders, laws and an understanding of obligation. Murah had been in no hurry to leave her home.
The news of the Red Temple, the existence of the Red Temple, had been clear in the minds of her fellow villagers since its inception. Possibly her own village had been constructed and peopled long before the Red Temple was built. The time of that construction and its belief had never been ascertained. There were written records within the offices of the Red Temple, but they had never offered up much information. Perhaps – and Murah had been of one accord with the thought – honest records might have posed too great a risk. Honest records written down and stolen from the Temple would have brought about its downfall and so could not be risked.
It had been Murah’s grandmother who had first introduced the subject. Murah had sat, captivated, listening to the story of an isolated place where education was the norm, not the exception. Murah’s grandmother had been an edgy, awkward, nearly passionate woman who had never found a proper means of expression of her own powers. She’d had precious little time for her own daughter, but her granddaughter was at a sufficient distance from her to be considered acceptable. So Murah had grown up with the image of the Red Temple at the back of her mind, and as the years went by, the image became more and more desirable.
When they came of age it was standard in Murah’s community for the young women to leave the village for at least three months. In that time they were to travel and learn, from a world they hardly knew existed, what they were and what they wanted. It had taken Murah over a year to trace the Red Temple and arrive at its doors and the woman whose role she had later taken on had seen the fanatical light that shone in Murah’s eyes and known almost immediately that she had found her own apprentice.
Perhaps if she had not been chosen for the role of cellar keeper, the one who took away the bodies for burning or burial, and had seen so comparatively little of the light, she might have turned out differently. When she had seen Ashe the previous day, on one of her rare trips above ground, she had known instinctively that Ashe was trouble. She acknowledged in retrospect that she had been far too extreme and that all trouble might have been avoided had she simply chosen not to work a few nasty tricks on Ashe. Not only had Ashe not been vanquished, Janu was dead and Murah had a broken nose. The situation was about as far from satisfactory as one could be.
Now she stood up and began to pace to and fro, the three deeply-etched lines that scored her forehead grew deeper still and the bruising across her nose and elsewhere – she hadn’t realised that two black eyes would accompany the wreckage of her nose – made her look more like an actor in exaggerated greasepaint than the co-ruler of the Word of the Red Temple. She had seen expressions that ranged from shock and surprise to bright satisfaction as she’d crossed the courtyard that morning.
She was not a handsome woman, but Janu had been. Murah’s height was fine enough, but as a child she had caught more than her fair share of illnesses – the amount of time she’d spent in bed correlated to the number of stories her grandmother had foist upon her – and some of them had scarred her skin. Her hair – no matter how much care she might take of it – hung like rat tails down to her shoulders. Her thoughts had become little and bitter and thin beneath the ground and she was terribly angry.
About Janu’s death she was not very concerned. They had got along well enough though the friendship between them was really nothing more than an extension of the roles they jointly played. She would miss Janu because Janu had been good at her job and so had made Murah’s easier. The real problem, and the issue that was making her pace to and fro, was two-fold. On the one hand she had to ensure that the day’s ceremonies went ahead smoothly, and with no suggestion that all hell had been let loose within the wings. On the other she needed to find Ashe, torture and kill her.
Oh, it was going to be a very busy day.
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The morning passed and became afternoon and still Ardan sat still on the end of her bed.
She had finally slept but the rest had not refreshed her. The dreams she had experienced had left her confused and a little frightened. More than anything in the world she wished that Rhea was back. Rhea might have understood what was going on, while Ardan herself could not.
Into her dreams had come an entity of sorts. It had been not monstrous but it had somehow suggested monstrosity. Its voice had been soothing and its touch – for the dream had been almost entirely sexual – had been almost overwhelming. The entity had had a strange voice that was somehow less than human, but it had comforted Ardan, and it seemed to understand her. Because it spoke to her and was kind, Ardan had told the entity about Laure, and how much she had loved her, and how wrecked she felt now that she’d been dismissed.
What Rhea would have known and could have told her former apprentice, had she been there to speak, was the fact that the fury of Ardan’s reaction to being cast out had been extreme enough to bruise her psychic walls. Ardan had unwittingly created a psychic door through which the entity could stroll.
Ardan had thought that she and Laure had been about as passionate as was possible within their capability. True, she had no means of comparison, but she had believed that they had done almost everything that could be done. The entity had shown her otherwise. The entity’s seduction of Ardan had been wholly complete, extending possession to the soul as well as the body. Getting to her feet Ardan felt heavy and grazed and unreal. Even if Rhea had arrived back in Lascar in time for supper she would probably have come too late to save Ardan.
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The journal goes on. It’s strange to see the words before me, the ink marks black and clear where a moment before there was no mark at all. I find that I write best curled up and on my side. I write as the karg lies. My handwriting skills were always poor: there has been no falling off in terms of standard, just a further trot down a well-known path. I stare at the paper and think of nothing and then ink marks begin again. I think that my grip on what matters is beginning to loosen. I think that if Alexis does not come back quite soon we won’t have a chance of being together. I wonder if she knows that. I hope that that played no part in her reason for leaving Caer Arianrhod, and me.
I never used to be a victim to self-pity.
What I said about Alexis was wrong. I know better than that in my heart. She left because she’s a soldier like me and cannot bear to be doing nothing. And Betany needs to have Ashe back. She can cope with Ashe and live without her; I know that. But her life is better with Ashe around and I would never want to deny her anything. Besides, there is nothing that Alexis could have done – here – except to watch the accelerating progress of my decline.
My dreams have taken on the oddest aspect. Before these days when I dreamed of hunting, I was always the hunter. Now – and it frightens me to accept the shift in power – I have become the prey.
I want to sleep. I want to shut my eyes and empty my head of thought. I am tired of the changes that rack me. Enough. I think that soon it will be enough. Betany wants me back as I was, the two-headed monster, so to speak, although she’d laugh to hear me use that term. Rhea thinks she can preserve me as the karg. And how about me? What do I want? Oh, that’s easy enough: I think that if I cannot be all of what I was, I would sooner be nothing. I could find a way to end this. It would be painful and messy, I know, but even here, without much in the way of means of harm, I think it could be done. I am a soldier, after all.