Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Thirteen
The Word of the Red Temple stood seemingly unchanged by the recent demise of its two priestesses: Ashe didn’t want to look back, as they made their way down from the mountain, but she couldn’t help reining in her horse and circling to take in a single last glimpse. She was wondering what would happen when the death of Murah was found out. Alexis was horribly curious about the whole thing: Ashe’s initial interest, and her eventual encounters. She said, “Life’s never simple with you around, is it? Just what the fuck were you doing there? Killing the high priestess. I mean… Uh, that was the high priestess, right?”
“No,” said Ashe. She seemed almost embarrassed. “That was Murah. I killed the high priestess last night.” She didn’t bother to add that Janu’s death had been accidental.
Alexis, riding more easily than Ashe, was impressed and a little amused. “There’s much more to you than I first thought,” she said. “When we first met I thought you were nothing more than a servant with ambition.”
Any warmth Ashe might have felt toward Alexis evaporated on the spot. She gave her rescuer a quick, cold smile. “Oh? When we first met I thought you were simply an assassin.”
Alexis didn’t care for the response. She said, “Betany seems a really good woman. No wonder Caer Arianrhod is so well thought of.”
Ashe ignored the remark and stayed on the former track: “Let’s get one thing clear, Alexis. You and I aren’t friends. The last time we met you did your best to kill me.”
“Is that what you remember most of all? I seem to recollect that the first time we met, I saved your life.”
“Oh, yes. You did that.” She grinned humourlessly. The memories she had of that day were still clouded: dying had apparently erased more than simply her life. “I’m afraid that doesn’t cut much ice with me. Just for the record: the life you saved is already gone.”
“Meaning what?”
“You were good enough to save my life and I appreciated that. I still do. But the life you saved ended not long after. All this means that I don’t owe you anything in this incarnation. If you really want to apportion blame or achievement, I remember not killing you when I had the choice.”
“Uh, before you get carried away on a tide of philanthropic thought, Ashe, remember that you left me half-crippled and powerless. Was that generosity of spirit? I don’t think so. I’m thinking it’s possible that you weren’t strong enough to kill me. But you had your revenge all the same: you as good as broke me.” Now Alexis was equally angry. “Fuck you, Ashe. You’re nothing but a servant made good. Not all that good at that. And a servant made good is all you’ll ever be. By some quirk of fate you got a second chance. I don’t know how that happened: I’d be guessing at best.” Her breathing was erratic, and her heart was pounding.
“Go back to Caer Arianrhod and do your best. You’ll never save any of them.” She was so angry that there were tears in her eyes. “Betany deserves someone better than you, servant girl. Someone much better.”
Ashe reached out a hand and grabbed Alexis by the throat. No mean feat, and a grip that Alexis couldn’t shake. “Believe it or not, I really don’t care what you think of me, assassin. Caer Arianrhod can manage just fine without your services. You said that you’d find me and you’ve done that. Finish. So get out of my view: you’re no longer wanted.”
Every last aspect of Alexis wanted to beat Ashe to death, there and then. Even her liking for Betany and her growing affection for Gowdie had been eclipsed - for a moment - by the anger she felt towards Ashe. But she had been a captain in Calypso’s army and a lover in that bed, and the two had taught Alexis how to control her emotions. She said, tightly and steadily, “Let me go.” Ashe did so, but as she shoved Alexis free of the grip the strength in her arm became almost profound: almost without meaning to, she knocked Alexis off her horse. She had scrambled to her feet by the time Ashe leapt, with surprising agility, from her own mount. They faced one another, Alexis’s face reddened, Ashe’s going pale. Her eyes seemed to burn as she stared Alexis down.
Alexis thought, suddenly: how impossibly unexpected; she’s going to kill me. All this time and the things that have passed and it looks like my epitaph will be that I fell in love with a shape-shifter, and while on a quest on behalf of her sister I was hacked to death by a former servant of the Lammoran court. I wonder who’ll find my bones. I wonder if anyone will. It was supremely apparent to her that if they fought now, Ashe would win.
The news ran through Ashe’s head. Betany was pregnant. Alexis had been sent by Betany to find her. What could the leader of Caer Arianrhod have been thinking? For a second Ashe wondered if it was all a trap and then dismissed the idea as ridiculous and unworthy. Alexis was watching her, uneasy and on edge, waiting for the violence she guessed was coming. Ashe took a deep breath, held for a moment then let it go. She said, “Anything else that I should know? If there is, now is the time to tell me. Any more surprises sprung on me down the road and I’m going to lose it.”
Alexis blurted out: “There seems to be something developing between Gowdie and I.” She saw a wealth of reactions cross Ashe’s face: disbelief, horror, confusion. “Of course,” she added, “it might come to nothing. But I know there’s something between us. I really like her, Ashe.”
Ashe had been holding her sword in a preparatory grip since dismounting from her horse. With this latest truth she relaxed the hold and returned it to her side. Alexis watched her very carefully. She said, “You don’t want to fight?”
Ashe said, “What’s the point?” She looked away from Alexis and regarded instead the valley into which they had been riding, the patches of blue sky and the nice autumnal smell that had replaced the antiseptic touch of the mountains.
Then she remounted and said, simply, “We should get going.”
Alexis said, “Ashe, I do understand. What if once we’ve dealt with everything else, if it’s still what you want, we have our own duel? A very private fight and to the death, if you so choose. Alright?”
Ashe, tired beyond reason and sick of the sensation, nodded. She put out a hand and Alexis shook it. She didn’t even object to Alexis helping her back onto her horse. She said, as they started off again, “Alright. Deal.”
Alexis shrugged her shoulders. But she couldn’t honestly take offence at the response: she’d given Ashe the choice and Ashe had taken it. In another time wouldn’t she have done the same? She dug in her heels and urged her horse on.
*******
The good people of Mercia. My people…. My people are becoming discontented. In the weeks that followed the incredibly damaging and pointless battle, most of the Mercians viewed the Caer Arianrhodian resident army with no real dislike. But as time passes, the Mercians perceive the continued residence as less a peace-keeping exercise and more an occupation. I must admit: few of them were as discontented as they are now before I began working through dreams. Oh, it’s so frustrating to have to do things this way! The power that I have, the power that I worked on during all those endless days and nights of emptiness is growing steadily. At first I felt as if I was treading some narrow path, the leaving of which would finish me, but now I understand that the power grows with use. It feeds on discontent, alienation, tiredness, exhaustion and lack of hope. To be honest, it also feeds those qualities, like a wonderful snake in perpetual pursuit of its own tail. But I wish that there was someone other than me who could look upon what I’m doing and admit how incredible it all is. If I could only divide myself up into two, then there might be a chance.
I have fed my own people dreams of domination and reduction. I am beginning to feed to Betany’s still-kindly guard images of persecution and mistrust. As the Caer Arianrhod guard grows uncomfortable and off-hand with the Mercians, so the Mercians read in that the casual and dismissive manner in which they are held. Give me a month and I shall have open rebellion, and blood running down the streets.
There is something behind my feelings that I do not understand: there seems to be woven through my plans a thread of ennui, of carelessness. At one and the same time I see myself as both the leader of a people and as nothing more than a casual thought, a name to be forgotten. As the pieces of my plans fall into place I seem to witness my situation from miles and miles away, as small and insignificant as breathing. This makes no sense to me. I appreciate that the years of solitude and deprivation will have exacted a toll: how could they not have done? But I’ve always believed in a central purpose, an end to which I was always working, conscious of it or not. Is it honestly the case that without the desire for revenge - revenge on what, for what? - I would be nothing?
The Word of the Red Temple: I have only recently begun to hear of it, and now that I do hear, I grow uneasy. It is apparent that the division of power throughout this world - never in stasis - must be shifting. There is a beast beneath the temple: I’ve always known that. A beast with a blind and endless appetite. Is there some chance that there is a kind of connection between the beast and me? I don’t see how this could be possible: the beast has been nothing but a vast and aching hunger since its birth, and it is a beast. I’ve had glimpses of it in dreams. Nightmares, I should say.
Nightmares. This is the area that disturbs me the most. I am dreaming, night after night, and I do not understand the motivations of my mind in presenting the images that it does. And what is worst about all this? What is worst is that when I wake up I wish for an instant that I was not alone.
Perhaps all I need is someone’s touch. Perhaps working through Ardan in her now confident courtship of the Lammoran queen is no longer sufficient for me. What if I found someone to stand between me and the unending dreams? What if I found someone who was nothing to do with the Lammoran queen or the little apprentice?
Perhaps I need a bed-companion.
Perhaps.
I don’t even know how to start.
*******
Betany paused. She had been talking to her baby, telling her about Ashe, but when she’d reached the part of the story where Ashe hadn’t wanted to stay by her side or in her bed, and had instead gone off into the great unknown in the company of a woman she didn’t really like, there had seemed no point in continuing.
She didn’t show - wouldn’t show very much for some time - and that suited her. Knowing a bit about people she had already imagined how hurt Ashe would be when Alexis broke the news, and Ashe realised that she really, really hadn’t been the first to know. Well, that was alright. Ashe would get over it and besides, there was some small corner of Betany that minded very much Ashe’s going away, that ache intensified by her failure to return when Gowdie did. She hadn’t even been too concerned by the news that Gowdie had bitten Ashe (Gowdie had bitten various people over the years, none of them very badly) until she’d understood that Gowdie was losing control over her transformations from woman to karg. Gowdie had a lousy temper: Betany had always known that. And Ashe could be annoying. The two of them had been bound to meet at loggerheads sooner or later. But it had been sooner, and it had been more serious than she had at first guessed.
The baby… Betany knew that this baby was going to matter very much. Not simply in terms of being next in line - after Gowdie - but in some other fashion. Betany had no evidence beyond her own steady convictions. And there was something else: she’d been talking to Calliope.
If ever a child could have three parents, this child would. The physical commitment and the emotional commitment had woven and become a single thread. Betany knew how deeply Calliope had loved Ashe, but both she and the water spirit had known that their affections met at some half-way point, where they came together - how could they not? - as absolute equals. Betany hoped that when Ashe got back - she had to get back, sooner or later - she would have grown into their relationship. She loved Ashe very much, fancied her very badly, and quite liked the idea of growing old with her. It was this last that was causing her concerns: just what became of the Guardians in due course? Did they age? Oh, come on, Ashe had aged, even in the time they’d had together: maybe because of the time they’d had together… She grinned. Alright, so Guardians aged. But did they die? She’d seen Ashe’s lifeless body in the water, face-down and cold once, which made it once too often. She’d realised very quickly that she couldn’t live with a Guardian if they weren’t wholly human first, if that could possibly make sense… And Arkana had told her that the Guardians did not know themselves. That was a hard one. Surely if Ashe was told what she was, as opposed to who she was… But then she thought about Ashe and knew that she never would believe her antecedents.
Betany continued to muse. She was tired: it had been a very long day, not helped by seeing Gowdie looking so drawn and inhuman. Rhea had said that the new medicine - it was brewing near to the window in Rhea’s room so that the utterly noxious smell had an exit - would make a real difference, and Betany didn’t know if Rhea was trying to kid herself, the leader of Caer Arianrhod or just poor Gowdie, lying on the floor in her cell. Maybe all three of them. If so, all power to her: Betany wasn’t objecting.
Betany looked - a shade resentfully - at the cup that stood beside her bed. Rhea had assured her that this brew - a million miles from the new medicine for Gowdie - would not only help the baby but also make the eventual delivery easier. It was a pleasant enough drink and sweet-tasting, and about as far from mulled wine as Ashe was from court.
Betany had a moment of something like regret for the past. Too much had happened too quickly. She thought about the dream in which she’d first met Ashe; she thought about the night that she and Ashe and Calliope had first hit the sack together. She was sure there must be half a dozen more poetic ways to describe that night, and wanted none of them. She was a queen with a country with a people to take care of: she was allowed the occasional lingual lapse. Oh, how much she’d like a cup of mulled wine. Two cups. Maybe even half a dozen. Well, what the fuck: here she was, pregnant, with a country to run, an absent lover and a sister behind bars.
Betany never had been a victim to self-pity. The accumulated images were just too much. She started laughing and could not stop. After a few minutes she was breathless, but still the laughing didn’t stop. The humour went out of the moment entirely and she began to be afraid. The curtains suddenly shook as though a high wind had risen outside. The logs still burning in the hearth crackled loudly, and sent sparks rising up the chimney. The flames of the fire should have warmed the room but they did not. As Betany regained control over herself a figure, shadowy and almost transparent, appeared in the room before the fire: the flames were still visible to Betany’s stunned gaze.
The figure was both entirely strange and oddly familiar. Betany’s laughter was cold and dead; she watched as the figure attained a slightly greater degree of stability and tried to speak. But its words, creeping as they did, serpent-like, were almost soundless. Betany, trying to listen and trying not to cry out to the guard Rhea had insisted stood outside the royal bedchamber, noticed that the image had only one hand. She noticed too that it held its head at an odd, oblique and distressing angle.
The door to the room blew open. Betany had never seen Rhea in action before and the sight was as impressive as it was salutary. The words that the wise-woman snapped out caused the image to flinch and then to depart. Another moment and the room began to warm up again. Rhea put another log - factually and without magic - onto the fire before she turned to look at Betany. The guards appeared too, at the doorway, clearly a little intimidated by Rhea’s actions. Betany was glad that she could dismiss them with a smile and a kindly word. Only when the door was again closed was she able to let go her fear just enough to accept the hug that Rhea was only too willing to give.
“What?” Betany let go her hold on Rhea and regained her control. “What was that, Rhea? Who was that?”
Rhea sat down in a chair by the bed and stretched out her feet. This had been the first time since her recovery - to be honest - that she’d been able to test out her powers. It was refreshing and decidedly cheering to find that they had been polished up by their long rest. She smiled with satisfaction and then said, “Is that mulled wine in the jug there, my dear?”
It was almost with satisfaction that Betany said: “No. It’s the special mixture you said was good for the baby.” She couldn’t imagine Rhea wanted to partake of that - it really was a million miles from mulled wine - though she would happily have watched her drink it.
Rhea shook her head, sighed, and then drew from inside her cloak a sealed flask. She loosened the lid and filled two cups with the steaming liquid. “Try this instead. A little won’t hurt you.”
Betany arranged her cloak around her shoulders and then took the cup from Rhea. The scent of the drink was quite wonderful: deep and warm in the way that sunlight was. She took a deep draught, swallowed and smiled. Rhea did the same. For at least five minutes they sat in easy silence, and when Betany looked back on the night it never failed to strike her that that calm had been as close to perfect as she’d ever known. It was with regret that she said, “Rhea, what was that? And how did you know about it?”
Rhea looked at Betany and decided that thought it would be easier to be honest, she didn’t want to be. She said, “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Alright. Yes, I am. That was Murah, formerly second priestess to the Word of the Red Temple.”
Betany frowned. “Why was she here?”
“I don’t know,” said Rhea. “I know that it wasn’t a friendly visitation, but it was I think her first attempt at a visitation, so she wasn’t exactly skilled. Did she say anything to you?”
Betany shook her head. “I think she wanted to,” she said, “but then you came in. How did you know her name? Have you ever seen her before?”
“I see her in dreams and meditations,” said Rhea. “I don’t think I’ve ever known her.”
“You said that she used to be a priestess. When did that finish? And why was she standing in that odd fashion? And why was one of her hands missing?”
Rhea’s next words removed every last scrap of Betany’s mild anger at Ashe’s going off into the great unknown. She said, “I think that she met with and fought Ashe. Ashe cut off her hand. I suspect too that it was Ashe who killed her. She wouldn’t have had any choice: it would have been one of them or the other. Ashe will be thinking that Murah’s power is done with, but it clearly is not. The Word of the Red Temple: no wonder I’ve been having trouble when I try to visualise Ashe’s current position in the world.”
*******
Rhea’s drugs are astonishing things. She promised me that under the influence of this latest mixture that I’d sleep properly and dreamlessly. She was right and wrong: I slept wonderfully, feeling the day slip away from me the instant I’d replaced the cup on the floor outside this cell. I pushed it clear of the bars and lay down and curled up. But that was all. The moment I was asleep, the dreams came rushing in.
There’s a world I inhabit in my dreams that has nothing to do with my other life. Other lives, I should say: there’s me, there’s the karg and there’s the dream-self. And the dream self has a whole world to live in. Well, a country, at least.
The city is white and is situated at the edge of a desert. When I stroll down the long white roads I can see tumbleweed blowing out into the great space out there. The desert goes on for ever, and the white road ends in nothing but sand. The grains have been blown in and as time goes by more and more of the road gets eaten up. I first came here when I was just a kid, and I have noticed and marked the changes. For one thing, the buildings are now almost entirely desolate. A funny thing, for a karg to be guilty of anthropomorphising simple buildings, endowing them with the opportunity to feel loss for the inhabitants they once possessed.
Yes, this city was once inhabited. A part of me always feels at home there. I can break my stride and step inside the tallest building, where sand creeps over the threshold. The staircase faces me and I make my way up those stairs. I put out a hand to the rail that runs up the staircase at waist-height. And at the top I open the door before me. As the wood shifts uncomfortably on the shifted sand I feel the warmth before I see it. As the door opens fully I see that I am looking directly into the sun.
The warmth is like nothing I have felt before. I feel it reaching inside of me, touching my heart, my lungs, my soul, even. I feel… transparent. If I could see myself from a distance I know that I would be able to watch my organs floating about inside this carapace. But I never take that step. The only action I take, have been taking since the first time I climbed those stairs and opened this door, is to shut the door up again. The warmth that was a caress is suddenly entirely gone, and the cold that replaces it bites at me with sharpened teeth.
Then I wake. The cold wakes me and I find that I am back on the floor again, my body shaking, the transformation becoming steadily more fierce. Once upon a time I could impose some degree of will over my body’s change, but not any more. These days a small part of my brain looks on while the remainder does nothing more than allow itself to be rent and clawed. I shake my head as my skull changes shape and the motion that was once so easy has become a kind of possession. I am shaken by the change and dumped back on the ground as Rhea’s potion does its work.
I remember never feeling that I’d drawn the short straw. When Betany and I were growing up there was no sense of either of us having done better than the other. The differences were - of course - as much intellectual as physical. It would have been seen as cheating if - in the centre of one of our frequent fights - I had allowed myself to transform. As a result, it was something I only occasionally did. I never ever pretended to be a saint.
*******
Deep beneath the Red Temple, the beast lay dreaming. Its dreams sometimes lasted a hundred years. This dream was unsettling, shifting, and the beast twitched and turned in unconsciousness. Somewhere in the distance it was aware of a threat and a reason for waking. The beast let free its thoughts up through the floors of the temple. It breathed in the death of its priestesses and sensed the existence of an enemy. The beast stretched out its thoughts and like a fish on a line, reeled in an image.
Ashe.