Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBC
Chapter Fifteen
It was the awakening from the worst nightmare ever. Alexis came to with the morning sun on her face and the clear and vivid dream image of Ashe dead at her hands in her head. She’d been irritated with Ashe, certainly, and neither of them had exchanged a word all evening – something that she admitted she could have addressed, had she honestly wanted to – but even then the dreams had been beyond any extreme to which she might have aspired.
She made up her mind to break the silence and the first words of the morning were on her lips as she pushed aside her cloak and looked across to where Ashe was still sleeping.
There followed a moment of true dislocation in time as Alexis got to her feet, walked across the small bit of ground that separated them, and reached Ashe.
She must have twisted the sword as she removed it, nothing else could have done that much damage. Alexis stood stock-still in the sweet and chilly morning air and looked at the body.
There must have been agony in those last moments, for the fingers were still stuck into the soil that they had torn. But at least there was no accusing stare to freeze Alexis into place: Ashe’s face looked almost peaceful, the frown lines gone at last, and her eyes were – thankfully, thankfully – shut.
Alexis dropped to her knees with a moan so harsh that it made her cough and gag. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and with the other hand, reached for her own dagger. Her sword was missing, she knew that. Her sword was missing because it lay on the ground near Ashe’s feet. She did not look at it again, and she knew that she would never pick it up. The dagger, on the other hand, had not been tainted; that she could use. Without more than a moment’s thought she turned it in her hand so that the short blade pointed toward her. She raised her arm so that the point of the knife was directly over her heart.
Within Caer Arianrhod there had been peace of a kind Alexis had never previously known. Within the dungeons of Caer Arianrhod Gowdie – or the karg – might still be sleeping. It would be days before the news reached Gowdie – or the karg – but Alexis could not speak out loud the other name. Betany. Betany who had let Alexis go with her blessing so that she could find Ashe and bring her back to her pregnant lover.
Alexis let the dagger drop and bent until her face brushed the cool earth. She stayed there for a long time, her heart pounding. She stayed there long enough that when, her hands pressed flat on the ground as she raised herself up for a second confirmation , there followed a moment of blessed dizziness.
The night before… Hard as she tried to recollect all that had happened Alexis drew a blank on what must have happened after she settled herself down to sleep. She remembered them being silent and awkward with one another, but how had that come to pass? They’d shared a silent meal and gone to their own sides of the fireside and she thought that they must have drifted off at around the same time. Neither had talked about keeping watch: what possible need could there have been? So they’d kept no watch and now the morning sun shone on them both, dead and alive, immutable as ever. No need to watch out for enemies from without: this enemy was already within.
Alexis’s life had been a thing of structure and violence for the most part. When she’d been employed in the Mercian army she had felt for the first time at peace with herself. It did not strike her – in those early days – as ironic that she should achieve a kind of internal calm only in the midst of battle. When Calypso had first noticed her there had been a flush of triumph that ran through her veins. When she and Calypso had begun their adventurous time as lovers, she had known herself to be almost happy. Almost tame, almost happy, and then taken from her considerable status to that of sick servant. In the time that she’d lain in the hospital bed in the hospital ward she had come to know what boredom was, what monotony was, and she had hated both. The one redeeming aspect of her suffering had been Calypso’s solicitude. It had almost been worth the suffering to encounter that change of heart, after Calypso had thrown in her lot with Laure, but she knew she couldn’t face anything like that again, consolation prizes or no.
And now her life had become very simple. Sent on a quest to find Ashe she had succeeded entirely. She had saved Ashe from what looked like a potentially terminal situation at the Red Temple, and then she had killed her.
Alexis looked at her hands and saw there was blood beneath her nails, blood on her cuffs and… as she looked down at herself there seemed to be nothing but blood. How had she not seen the evidence of the slaughter? For slaughter it had been: Ashe’s sword lay some distance from her and Ashe had had no short dagger stuck in her belt: she lay as she had lain down to sleep, untidy, unwashed, and utterly vulnerable.
Alexis never cried. She’d probably boasted at some point that she could not cry, and as no-one in Mercia had ever seen her weeping, there was thought to be evidence of that assertion. So what aberration was it now that stung her eyes and marked the dirt on her face and trickled down onto her shirt?
She knelt down again, this time by Ashe’s feet, still resting in their leather boots. She looked at the remains of Ashe’s shirt and as the first fly of the day droned across the clearing, Alexis knew what she had to do.
She couldn’t take Ashe back to Caer Arianrhod, that much was wholly clear. It wasn’t just the time that it would take or the sheer physicality of the thing, but the knowledge of what state the body would be in by then. Alright: so she couldn’t take Ashe back, but she did need to… dispose of the body.
It would take the greater part of the day to dig a grave deep enough and broad enough not just to accept Ashe’s remains but also to embrace them. Or she could erect a funeral pyre, and dispose of Ashe’s remains that way: she knew that Ashe had done that much for her soldier friend and she had been impressed by the ceremony. Alright. She would do that. Besides, how deep could she have dug down into that hard ground?
The work involved in the preparation for the pyre was probably what saved Alexis – that day – from either cutting her own throat or going quietly mad. The construction of the pyre was demanding in itself, and so was the process of collecting dried branches and leaves and grass enough to fuel the fire.
By the time that evening had come around, with the sun sinking quickly, Alexis was ready.
She’d wrapped Ashe in her own cloak – Ashe’s cloak was too soaked in blood to ever burn – not even seeing the irony in that: they had come full circle. And as the sun began its final descent, Alexis lit the fire and stood back to watch it burn. She had had some incense in her bag – it was almost an essential travelling companion – and the smell of the pine logs burning combined with the attar of roses and the stronger and more clinging scent of cedar wood.
The flames seemed to reach up to the sky. Alexis watched as the wrapped figure became – for no more than an instant – obviously human. She waited, half-hoping for a passing miracle that would transcend the horror of the night: for Ashe to sit up, alive and well and ready to fight again, but nothing happened. She watched the flames dance and dive and ultimately die. It took some hours for Ashe’s body to be entirely taken by the flames, and when the pyre crackled most loudly and the construction cracked, there was suddenly nothing there but glowing wood and the impression of a memory on the retina of the eye.
Alexis stayed by the pyre all that night. There was still wood glowing and the night wasn’t very cold, but Alexis didn’t care. She sat awake all night long, the stars coming out above her, and the river calling from the distance. She had no idea of what to do next: she had failed in her task so appallingly that the knowledge of what she had done came close to making her laugh. She could hardly have failed more completely, and there didn’t seem anything left to do but sit.
Thoughts of a sensible or logical type went through her head in tandem with the little voice that reminded her, over and over, that her own knife was sharp – she was a soldier, wasn’t she? – of course her knife was sharp – and that it would take only a moment to drive home the blade, and be done with the whole damn thing. So what if her body became food for the buzzards and the wolves. Who the fuck cared? Alexis certainly didn’t.
By morning her eyes were red from sleeplessness and her head ached, but she’d made up her mind. She prepared her horse and attached the reins of Ashe’s mount to the pommel of her own saddle. She refilled her water bottle but made no concession toward food: it was three days to Caer Arianrhod, maybe four. She didn’t need to eat. Eating was what people did when they foresaw a future; Alexis could foresee none. She coaxed the horses on. They were happy to be away from the place, the still-glowing ground and the bloodstains on the earth.
*******
Rhea knew. Rhea knew from the moment of waking that something close at hand had shifted into a cold and unknown region. She dressed herself quickly and went to see if Betany was well. Caer Arianrhod’s leader was still sleeping when Rhea pushed the chamber door open with a gentle, cautious hand. Rhea backed soundlessly away and climbed the broad stone steps to the dungeons.
The karg was sleeping, too, nose to tail, breathing heavily and occasionally twitching. Rhea looked at the strange, alien, almost feline face and turned away. She made her way through the castle, and it seemed to her that it was either very early, or that some mild spell had been cast, for no-one moved. Even the soldiers on lookout duty seemed distant and vague. She passed them as she moved to the courtyard and the city’s gates.
Putting her hands up to the almost solid doors, ornate with carvings and secured with clever bolts and brackets, Rhea shut her eyes tightly and breathed out a deep and aching breath. Ardan was only a day or so away; Rhea could feel that approach. She could sense a returning figure – Alexis, surely – but that approach felt slanted and off-centre and oddly worrying.
She slipped out through the small gate in the left-hand tower and began to make her way along the dusty road. In the far distance she could see the approach of something or someone. A single figure but two horses. Rhea felt a momentary coldness, as if something or someone had crossed her grave.
When Alexis was close enough to see Rhea’s face she dismounted. Her legs were unsteady things and her mouth was dry. She had run out of water the day previous and had not even bothered to look for more. She had rejected the idea of killing herself the morning of the discovery, but with every step closer she drew to Caer Arianrhod, the more certain she was of her own death.
Rhea put up a hand to shield her eyes as Alexis began – slowly – to approach her. Everything about Alexis was changed: the armour was no longer polished and Alexis was caked with dust and dirt and mud. Her hair was unwashed and her eyes burned in the unreal colour of her skin. She had ridden into the sun for three days and she was almost blind.
When she saw that it was Rhea, Alexis gave up on hope. Facing Betany was what she dreaded the most, but seeing the wise-woman ran a close second. She pushed back her hair from her face and then dropped to her knees in the dust before Rhea. Alexis bent her head and said nothing. Rhea looked down on her and back at the horses. A layer of greyish ash still marked Alexis’s boots, where it had stuck to the leather, and on seeing that clue, Rhea suddenly understood. For days she had been unable to trace Ashe’s wanderings, but something had prevented her from seeing the complete truth. Alexis stayed where she was, head bent, silent but for the breaths that came jaggedly out of her mouth.
Rhea had a single moment of calm thought before her own emotions came into play. A single calm moment then she had seized Alexis by the hair – dusty as it was – and torn her upright. Spit gathered in the corners of Rhea’s mouth and for an instant she could not speak at all. She looked into Alexis’s ruined eyes and saw… everything. Then she shoved Alexis aside as if she was so much trash, and began to walk away. But after a dozen paces she spun around and went back, grabbed Alexis by the hair a second time as she swayed toward the city and said, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Alexis just stared blankly at her. “To Betany, of course. To Betany to tell her that – ”
“To tell her what? To tell the queen of Caer Arianrhod who’s expecting her lover’s child that said lover won’t be coming back because you fucking well killed her?” Rhea’s eyes were wide and insane.
“What else can I do?” Alexis was desperate. Common cold fear had been living in her belly since she’d woken that morning and now it was beginning to spasm through her body. “I can’t just go away. I have to – ”
She hadn’t known that Rhea was so strong. She hadn’t known that Rhea was this powerful and they both combined to shock her: Alexis’s ordinary persona had been blown to the four winds. She felt the iron bite of Rhea’s hands on her upper arms. “I’m only going to say this once, Alexis, and if you take one more step toward the city I will personally flay you. Remember that one? That’s what Calypso was planning for Ashe and she was serious then and I am serious now. Ashe is a guardian, which means she’s still out there somewhere.”
“Rhea! I burned her body. I saw it eaten by the fire. There was nothing left of her!”
Rhea actually left the ground, bouncing on the soles of her feet. Her voice was that of a harpy. “She’s a fucking Guardian, you stupid woman! She went off a cliff once and that didn’t finish her. And you and your bitch of a leader did your very best as well, and that didn’t end it. So listen and think hard: she’s still here. Her state will have changed thanks to your butchery, but somewhere she is out there still, and all this time Betany is waiting for Ashe to come back.” Rhea paused for breath. By the end of her speech she’d be quite light-headed.
“So this is what you’re going to do: you’re going to go back to where you last saw Ashe and you are going to find her even if it takes the rest of your life to do it. You will find Ashe and you will bring her back here, or I will pursue not just your body but your whole damn soul. There will be no rest for you ever, and you will walk the dusty paths with blood on your feet for all eternity if I deem that necessary. Do you understand me?”
It was an order. A set of orders. And Alexis was a soldier. She actually saluted Rhea. Then she turned around and began back down the long path she had just travelled. Rhea watched her go, ran her hands distractedly through her black hair until it stood up in spikes, and then turned in the direction of Caer Arianrhod. There were things to do.
*******
The upward path was steep and pebbles beneath her feet meant the going wasn’t easy, but the air was cool and clean and refreshing. She made her way to the ledge that overlooked the plain and settled herself down on the ground beside the newcomer. They exchanged rather wry grins and smiles but as they’d never gone beyond the slightly awkward affection of two people who could spent day after day in one another’s company without ever trying to get the other into bed, there was still that faint awkwardness. Cairo knew that the grin on her face must make her look pretty stupid, but she didn’t honestly care. It was too good to have Ashe back with her. The rest of the situation could go hang.
Ashe looked better than she had done since the day she’d decided to fuck up her life so extravagantly by leaving Betany and Caer Arianrhod. All the dreams she’d had of simple happiness had gone the way of all things, and the knowledge of her own countless errors was pretty much engraved on her heart, just as the mark of Alexis’s sword was marked on her chest. Alexis had twisted the sword in removing it: good fighting habits died hard. But at least only the scar showed. Just what Ashe needed, another scar.
Ashe lay on her stomach to look over the plain. The beauty of the place was still heady stuff for her, and the air, as Cairo had noticed, was particularly fragrant on the small plateau. Ashe said, “I can’t be here for very long, you know.”
Cairo nodded, accepting but not liking the fact. She knew that Betany was pregnant and she knew that Ashe was desperate to get back to Caer Arianrhod. But this time Ashe’s demise had been no dramatic leap into space or more vigorous resurrection from the water. No Guardian had ever been quite so vulnerable as Ashe was to the emotions of other people, and no Guardian had ever been so badly hurt so often. Ashe was setting new standards for her sisters.
The pain – when Alexis had brought down the weight of that too-heavy and too-effective sword – had taken Ashe out of one world and into another in seconds flat. Alexis was a good soldier, even if she was, so Cairo believed, a pretty worthless human being. Ashe was less damning of Alexis, but even she wasn’t about to go out and found any fan clubs in that name… Not so very surprising, really, when you came to think about it.
Ashe hadn’t seen the exchange between Rhea and Alexis; she’d been too busy finding her way across the strange valley into which she’d awoken at break of day. Cairo hadn’t missed the conversation: if there had been room for an audience there she’d have been cheering Rhea on. She decided against telling Ashe the full details of Rhea’s anger and Rhea’s speech. She had only assured Ashe that no news of her death – this death – had reached Betany. “And none will,” she told Ashe. “It’s all in hand.”
“So why am I here?” After all, this wasn’t what she would have expected, had she known what was going to happen. Sinking so quickly into this other life she had had insufficient time to accept the transformation.
Cairo had been expecting the question. She felt her own smile fade as she said, “In your case it’s mostly about the Red Temple.”
Ashe nodded. She’d been expecting something like that. “Alexis told me about Gowdie.”
“You already knew that something was wrong there. She did bite you, after all.”
“I annoy her,” said Ashe, simply. “Sometimes she annoys me. I think the relationship is comfortably irritating to us both.”
“You know that now she is nothing but the karg?” Ashe shook her head. This strange new world held a great many answers, but by no means all. “Rhea is treating her and she has sent for Ardan. Do you remember Ardan?”
Ashe thought back and in another moment recalled to mind the new apprentice, whom she had for an instant envied: Ardan’s life had looked to be rewarding and significant in the nicest of ways. Thinking of Rhea, and the tower room, and that whole way of life Ashe had wondered for an instant if she might not have been happy without ambition or the dubious renown that seemed to float about her. “Didn’t she stay in Lammor?”
“Yes. And she got pretty pally with the princess.” Cairo was never going to accord Laure her new title: there was too much bad blood between the two of them. She glanced at Ashe. “Did you know about that?”
Ashe shook her head. Toward Laure she felt nothing: no sense of loss or grief or envy or even friendship. All that the two of them had shared had gone down so hard and so fast that where Laure might have sat in Ashe’s memory, there was nothing but a void. She said, “I didn’t think that Laure was still…” she almost said, “fucking peasants” but thought better of it. Instead she ended the sentence with “getting involved with people”.
“It’s not strictly Ardan,” said Cairo. She drew a dust city on the ground below them and marked out Lammor, Mercia and the Red Temple. “Ardan’s been borrowed, for want of a better word. The new ruler of Mercia, although she’s pretty much nothing more than a name and not a power right now, has powers of a complexity that I think even Rhea would be stumped by.”
“A new ruler?” Ashe hadn’t known as much. “How did they go about selecting her?”
“It wasn’t hard. They just dug around in the shadows and the cells until they found Calypso’s sister, who just happened to have been there all along. She’s called Berrach,” she added, foreseeing Ashe’s next question. “She’s getting to be a major power in her own right, even if there are still forces from Caer Arianrhod staying around to keep an eye on things. If the situation doesn’t change very soon, and she keeps going as she is, Mercia will be starting another war. I’m pretty sure of it.”
Ashe sighed. Another war? And surely the whole process couldn’t still be blamed on Laure and Calypso falling in lust with one another? For not the most major of crimes, there seemed to her to be one fuck of a lot of punishment. Laure had wanted nothing more – a few happy fucks aside – than to bind two powers together. Calypso had seen the happy fucks as heralding in a new strength, but even she’d had her lighter moments. Before she started up the whole damn thing about flaying me, thought Ashe. I guess she lost any sympathies I might have had from that point onwards. And I really didn’t fancy becoming a fucking banner.
“The Red Temple,” she said, changing the subject. “What has that to do with all of this?”
“It’s just the old theme,” said Cairo, almost casually, although she had lost sleep in imagining what the beast might do, once awoken. “It’s a power thing, and a hunger. The temple has always been there, in one shape or another. Murah, the one who appeared to Alexis… Oh, sorry, you won’t know about that.” She went on to explain, but it wasn’t necessary; Ashe already knew. From the moment she’d set eyes on Murah, she knew they would be enemies. She’d known that things between them would never be good. She tuned in to Cairo a line or two in. “The real problem, of course, is the beast. It’s now woken.”
“My fault,” said Ashe, “I guess. But what else could I do? Murah and Janu were running a fucking abattoir, and had been for years. And, oh, Cairo, if you’d only seen what went on in that room…” She turned sick to think of it again: those little demons with the teeth and the claws. Ashe had to tear her memory free. “And so Berrach’s a power to be reckoned with?” On some level she couldn’t even begin to imagine that Berrach’s doings were anything like as bad as the beast’s. Cairo re-informed her.
“Imagine the world as a series of levels, Ashe. From the living down to the dead: we’re a companionable lot here. The beast is…” she strove for the right words, “the beast is a hunger, but it’s an informed hunger. The women who run the Red Temple are smart: they have to be. Things have been getting out of hand for a while now, and the balance is shifting. Gowdie, for one thing. That’s never happened before, you know, a changer getting stuck.”
The term was new to Ashe, but she took it in her stride. “What am I doing in…” she looked around and tried to fit a name to the world. She ended up finishing her sentence rather weakly: “Here?” she asked.
“Berrach, Calypso and their like, they’ve always been here. But the Red Temple, that’s something else.” She smiled at Ashe. “For more news there you need to meet your sisters. Well, one of them, anyway.” She looked back a distance, smiled and said, “And you get to meet her now.”
Ashe turned slowly round. The woman coming toward her was both entirely unknown to her and utterly familiar. She put out a hand and the woman took it, staring Ashe in the eyes all the time. They looked at one another, the dark, scarred figure and the powerfully-built woman who stood nearly a head taller. Cairo grinned, began to say something and then abruptly changed her mind. The situation had become too serious for her, and too intimate. She shrugged her shoulders and walked off a little way.
“Ashe.” The woman was smiling now, and there seemed to be some degree of amusement in her assessment.
“Uh, yes.” Ashe felt awkward and happy at the same time. After another pause she said, “I know you.”
“And I you. I should have known that you were a fellow Guardian.”
Ashe said, simply, “I had no idea that you were.” Then, “You rule Rath Bel. If you’re here, does that mean that you’re… dead?”
“Guardians don’t die, Ashe. And yes, at present I rule Rath Bel. And I’m here because I wanted to see you.” She smiled. “The others will all be so angry.”
“I’m sorry?” Ashe felt a bit lost. She said, “Why is it that you know me and yet I didn’t know you?” She scowled. “What am I? The least bright Guardian?”
Teinne laughed. “You’re…” she hesitated, “you’re perfectly smart. If it makes you feel any better, until I saw you about to fight, I had no idea who you were or what you were. We don’t all of us always recognise one another.”
Ashe was thinking. Things were beginning to make sense. She said, “Arkana? She was an air spirit, right? And you’re a Guardian of…?”
“Fire. Yes, Arkana is one of our sisters.” It was strange for Ashe, she’d thought herself an only child for so long. She was relieved and slightly disappointed at the knowledge of a family, even it if was a very odd and disjointed one. “And I’m a fire Guardian, Ashe, in case you were wondering.”
Ashe said after a minute, “What does that make me?”
Teinne frowned. “You’re a water Guardian, Ashe. Didn’t you know?”
No. I didn’t fucking know. Why is it that everyone else in the world knows more about me than I do? Teinne looked so pleased with herself, and Cairo seemed to be hugging half a dozen secrets to her bosom: am I doomed to spend the rest of my life feeling as though I’m one step behind everybody else? At least it explained her feeling for Calliope. For a brief and searing moment Ashe would have happily exchanged her lot for the evening she and Calliope had spent by the river. But then the image of Betany came back to mind and the need to be home again became foremost to her. Yes, Betany was home, Betany and Caer Arianrhod. Even Gowdie. She said, “What is happening to the kargs, Teinne? Why has Gowdie become stuck in one form alone?”
“It’s the age-old theme, Ashe.” Cairo had come back to them. She glanced up at the bright blue sky above them. “A struggle for power. The Guardians are rebelling.” She saw Ashe’s mouth drop open and knew what she was about to say. “Not you, idiot. Obviously.” She grinned at Ashe and added, “I’m not sure you’re smart enough to rebel.”
Ashe didn’t grin back. She didn’t think the remark funny. She looked toward Teinne for an answer to her question. Teinne said, “It’s the imbalance caused by the presence of the Guardians, Ashe. There are only ever supposed to be four Guardians in the ordinary world at any one time. Now there are more.”
“How many are rebelling?”
“So far? Five of them.”
Ashe thought: five of us, surely? “And how many are not?”
Teinne looked confused. “Well, the rest of us, obviously.”
Ashe almost said, don’t presume, sunshine, but she held her tongue. Cairo was cheerfully drawing on the ground in dust. Separate signs of the elements. Ashe thought: this is a game to her. She died during one battle; you’d think she’d be wary of signing up to fight another.
“The kargs belong under the stewardship of the element of fire. Two of the three fire Guardians are joined in rebellion. They are calling upon their children, and the kargs are their children, Ashe, from long ago.” She hesitated. “You’re friends with one, I believe, and joined with her sister.”
Yes, I am. Yes, I am. But we’re not exactly friends. Only Ashe wasn’t going to speak those words. From that moment on she was going to be just that: one of Gowdie’s friends. She said, “Has anyone refused to join in the fight?”
The two of them looked at her, open-mouthed, clearly incredulous. Ashe thought about Betany, waiting for her to come home; she thought of Alexis, either blood-happy or killing herself with guilt. She thought about Gowdie, her form dictated by the wandering machinations of the other Guardians, and she found herself not wanting to be even the smallest part in their scheme. She repeated the question, a frown line forming between her eyebrows. “Well? Has anyone?”
*******