Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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Chapter Twenty-Three
In Ashe’s dream she woke in a white room, awoke alone and in a world so fixed and tranquil that her own breathing – even and steady as it was – rang in her ears. She pushed back the covers – white, too – and slid out of bed. Going to the window she looked out and saw that the view gave out over the edge of a small town and into the desert.
She made her way downstairs, crossed a narrow entrance hall and reached the street, which was broad and uneven. Every step she took sent up little white dust clouds. She looked about her for the slightest suggestion of life but found none. The sun was high overhead, a white-hot pupil of some monstrous blind eye that burned everything within sight. The buildings all around Ashe were not just empty but hollow, and her footsteps, like her breathing, sounded far too loud.
Whatever city it was, Ashe neither knew it nor liked it. It made her uneasy. She was afraid of the bleakness and solitude all around her. She followed the broad street until it reached the desert, where the white sand had eaten up the road. Turning back toward the town she found herself looking at Rhea, a Rhea come out of nowhere, like a djinn. “Ah, Ashe,” said the wise-woman, carelessly enough. As Ashe watched, Rhea paused to remove first one boot and then the other, in order to tip out the white sand. After a moment the wise-woman continued to address Ashe. “I thought that sooner or later I would find you here.
“Rhea?” Ashe was too surprised to provide any more of an intellectual response.
“Long time, no see.” Apparently the wise-woman was similarly strapped for intelligent conversation.
Ashe asked the only question that made sense to her: “Uh, is… is Betany here?”
“Of course not, Ashe.” Rhea’s tone was reproving, almost disapproving, and unfriendly. “What on earth would Betany be doing here?”
“Alexis?” If she was going to go for stupid, she might as well aim for gold. Rhea laughed at the question.
“That one? No, of course not.”
“Gowdie, then?”
“Gowdie? In what form do you expect her to be here, Ashe? Woman or beast? It helps if you are specific.”
Ashe was becoming irritated. “Who cares? In any shape, Rhea. Have you managed to treat her?”
Rhea looked toward the desert. She took off her left boot for the second time and tipped out a remarkable amount of fresh sand. “Oh, this is the dustiest place.” She leaned on Ashe for support as she slid her boot back on.
Ashe waited another moment and then tried again. “Rhea? We were talking about Gowdie…?”
“Oh, forget about Gowdie, Ashe.” Rhea was now re-arranging rearranging - one word her hair. Ashe had never seen her so intent on her own grooming; normally Rhea embraced the fashion of easy carelessness, but in the dream-world it seemed that her priorities had shifted.
It should not have surprised Ashe - though of course it did - when Rhea took out from within her cloak a selection of face-paints, and began to apply them. Within moments the wise-woman resembled nothing so much as a whore disguised as a clown, or a clown trying to pass for a rather obvious whore. Ashe could not stop watching her. In a kind of cold dismay she heard the woman ramble on.
“ Beast or woman, she means nothing. Gowdie lacks the essential inner walls of self-control and besides, she has no faith in me. With such obstacles I am sure that you will appreciate the simple truth that I cannot treat her.” Her face-painting complete, Rhea moved onto to straightening her robes of office. She then looked hard at Ashe, and said in a belligerent tone, “I still find it strange that you should be a Guardian. Do you know, I never even suspected it of you. Never once, in all the time that I knew you did I understand your true self. A mystery. A complete mystery, nothing more.” From her tone it was evident that she believed Ashe to have deliberately pursued a path of secrecy.
“You weren't the only one who didn’t know, Rhea. But could we discuss it some other time? Right now all I want to know is how Gowdie is, and Betany.”
Rhea wasn‘t interested in Ashe’s input, or in Ashe’s desires. She simply continued. “I never once guessed at it, not once, even in the days when I saw you jangling and dancing on the strings the princess tugged upon. Princess Laure’s little puppet. You were playing a part, I suppose. Simply playing a part. Acting.” She gave Ashe a particularly dirty look.
“Rhea, you’ve made your point.“ Ashe had had enough. The old, cold anger that she had felt whenever anyone took it upon themselves to lecture her was insinuating itself into her head. That same anger entering her veins mad her shiver, and her voice, when it next sounded, was equally chilled. “Rhea, enough. No parts. No acting. How could I have hidden something when I had no idea of there being something to hide?” She pulled her cloak about her: for all the sunlight, the city was cold. “Oh, and by the way, Rhea,” she delivered the words as calmly as she could. “I’d appreciate your not using ever again the word puppet to describe me. I’m sure you don’t mean to be blindly offensive, time and time again, but that’s the effect you have.”
Rhea waved aside the request, giving an excellent impression of a woman not even slightly interested in what Ashe had to say. She chattered on, her words falling fast. Ashe watched her, no longer listening with any degree of intentness. Another chasm, she thought, opening up between us. Rhea had not stopped, and Ashe forced herself to attend. The rant was still going: “Then why did I not see it? Why did something so very obvious pass me by? Not a single clue, not a single suggestion. Not so much as a word!”
There came a time when Ashe grew tired of standing there with her arms folded, the white dust blowing about her feet. She said, “You didn’t give me an answer to my question. Rhea, how is Gowdie? Is she coping? And Betany. Is she alright?”
“Oh, very neat. You say, forget the past and then run into the next subject as if the two weren’t integrally linked. Gowdie! In my opinion she might be better off staying karg for the remainder of her life. There are other, better, more significant issues at stake. Besides, with her there never was much that separated the two states. She‘ll get used to it in time.”
“Rhea?” Ashe watched the dust that rose up from around the wise-woman’s feet as she made little shuffling motions, as if working out the steps for a dance now that she had dressed her face and stopped toying with her clothes. “What is the matter with you? Why are you talking like this? I thought you wanted to help Gowdie. I thought you could.”
“I can’t help her!” Rhea’s voice was scratchy and unpleasant. She threw out her hands and glared at Ashe. “Don’t you understand, mighty Guardian?” Sarcasm dripped from her sentences and made Ashe flinch. “Don’t you see? I should have thought you could see. I can’t help anyone. Even the potion I mixed for Betany she didn’t trust. She didn’t take it but the once. And she’d asked it of me, too.”
“A potion?” Ashe was frowning. Tired of being confused and very irritated, now she was growing worried, too. She had lost all faith in Rhea. “What potion did you mix for Betany, wise-woman?”
“A love potion, of sorts. A visitation potion, I suppose you could say. But it doesn’t matter; she only used it once. Not much of a visit, really. Perhaps she was unimpressed with what she found. Now she seems content to remain in the present. She has no imagination, that one. No imagination at all. All the time asking me what you were like before you became this… Guardian thing. What were you like when you were younger? What were you like in bed, more like. I knew what she really wanted to know, what she really wanted to see.”
Ashe almost hit her. She shoved her hands into her pockets and clenched her fists tight. She said, “Rhea, I’ve known you a long time, and we used to get along. But if you mention Betany in that tone one more time, I’m probably going to kill you. Do you understand? Say nothing about her if you can’t say anything good..”
“Good! Oh, good. Well, she’s that, all right, and a fine ruler and all those things… But she doesn’t trust me now: I can see it in her eyes. When I look into her eyes I can see her thinking: why can’t the wise-woman aid Gowdie? Why can’t she stop the transformations? Why can’t she keep my sister human?”
“So why can’t you?” Ashe was becoming angry. “Oh, don’t bother answering. Sufficient that you can’t.”
“It was the girl.” Rhea’s expression became cunning and charged. Ashe backed off a step in simple repugnance. “I knew she was not to be trusted. If you can’t find reliable staff, what can you do?”
Ashe was lost. “The girl? What girl?” Then the answer came to her out of nowhere: “Rhea, are you talking about Ardan? Is it Ardan you’re so angry about?”
“She thinks I let her down, Ashe.” Ashe spun around again; she was growing tired of surprises and here was another. Ardan stood close at hand. She was dressed in tattered clothes and her face was devoid of colour. Her eyes, which looked to be full of tears, seemed more grey than green; their pupils huge. Her hair hung down over her shoulders in tangles and confusion. “I thought I wanted so badly to be her apprentice. I was sure that that was all that I wanted, but I was wrong. After she took me flying, … took me to that other world…” her voice, already tremulous, didn’t need to dip much to become inaudible. “I was not intended to fly. The potion she made me drink tasted bitter.” In one hand she held an ornate cup, the emerald dregs of which provided the setting with the only touch of bright colour.
Ashe stared at her, stared at the cup. She said, “Ardan, after you… flew…” She searched for the right words and couldn’t find them. “Did you come to some kind of harm?”
“Please don’t encourage her, Ashe,” said Rhea. Her voice sounded cold and clipped and she looked past them both, fixing her attention on some distant horizon. Her tone was becoming less human with every word. “She thinks she’ll impress you with what she’s done, but we both know she’s wasting her time. There’s nothing impressive about suicide.”
“You killed yourself? Oh, Ardan…” Ashe wanted nothing more than to offer the girl some kind of comfort. She reached out her hands and Ardan took a tremulous hold. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Ashe.” Tears flowed down Ardan’s cheeks.
“Oh, thank you, Ashe.” The venom in Rhea’s voice was overwhelming. Ashe glared at her. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Guardian. She was never any use and now she’s dead, which fact isn’t going to make the slightest difference to anything.”
Ashe ignored Rhea entirely. “Ardan. Is there anything that I can do? You look so… lost. Is there anything that you need to be have done to set you free?”
“I am free, Ashe,” said the girl. “And happier now than I ever was. I only wake when someone dreams of me, as you have done, as you do now. You know, Ashe,” she added, “When we last met, when I saw you leaving Lammor, I thought myself so superior to you. I thought you the last person ever to be a Guardian, let alone lover to Caer Arianrhod’s queen.”
No-one in Ashe’s dream seemed to be too impressed with her. No-one in her waking life, either, come to think of it. Ashe was tired; she didn’t want to seem hurt but she was hurt. She said, “That seems to be pretty much the established opinion.”
Ardan’s expression changed entirely. She shook her head. “No. You should be a Guardian. You are right to be what you are.” She paused and added. “Your… Betany was very kind to me when I went to Caer Arianrhod.”
Ashe said, hoping the response to her question would be a simple denial. “Ardan… Whatever you did - to yourself, I mean - was it at Caer Arianrhod?”
The girl nodded, while Rhea pulled a disparaging face. Ashe sighed very hard and wished that Ardan’s death hadn’t taken place at Betany’s door. I must get home, she thought. I must get home soon.
Then she was awake, or waking, and Alexis, flushed and triumphant, was shaking her by the shoulders. “Amazing, Ashe. Fucking amazing. How the hell did you know?”
Ashe, still sleep-logged, sprawled on the soft green Downland, looked past Alexis to where the chasm had either closed up or had ceased to be.
“I thought you were out of your skull,” Alexis’s voice ran on. “I thought you’d lost the plot entirely, and when we left the ground behind us I thought that…” her voice trailed off. “Well, I thought you were committing suicide for both of us.” She paused and said, “Ashe? Ashe, are you alright?”
Ashe rubbed her eyes. “I was asleep? I… I think I was dreaming.”
“Something like that. We hit the ground running and after a dozen yards you dropped like a stone onto the turf. But you know the really crazy thing? When I looked back over my shoulder there was nothing left, just as it is now. What was it, some kind of hallucination? And how did you know? I wonder what caused it in the first place.”
Ashe thought: I know what caused it: Murah. Murah, the woman I’m going to have to track down, sooner rather than later. She got clumsily to her feet, and her head spun. It was a moment before she could see straight, let alone think straight. The leap of faith – or whatever it had been – had been something she had done without the slightest thought, and now that it was done, she was exhausted. Even her bones hurt. She put up a hand to her forehead and found it damp.
Alexis said, “I don’t think you’re wholly… well, Ashe. Your hand… When I took your hand, earlier, your skin was burning.”
“We need to get moving.”
She turned too quickly and the world dipped. Alexis put out a hand to steady her, saying as she did so, “Ashe, we can wait a little time, if that’s what you need.” She looked honestly worried.
Ashe shook her head. “I have been fucking about the known world long enough. I want to get back to Betany.” And I want to know what happened to the little apprentice, she thought, shocked to know that Ardan was dead. Dream or vision, it didn’t matter what she had experienced: she knew in her heart it had been an absolute truth.
*****
Sex is an extraordinary thing. An extraordinarily good thing. I keep finding myself surprised at the current state of affairs. I keep remembering the events of the night before, and when I do, my blood sings and my cunt throbs. The Gods help me, I blush, too. My step is uncertain, when I remember all that I did, all that we’ve done. No matter how business-like I must appear to my court, no matter how cleverly I talk, and map out Mercia’s future, I’m thinking all the time that tonight she will be – should I wish it, and I do wish it, I wish it very much indeed – in my bed again. All the time I feel that strange warmth that flowed through my veins, hotter and more useful than blood, the first time I threw back the covers and saw her lying there, waiting for me.
Waiting for me.
Of course, sooner or later she’ll have to go the way of all things; there is no position – to use the first term that comes to mind – that she can usefully fill in the future state of Mercia. But for the moment she has a role to fulfil, and a bed and a body to warm. More and more I think that my old dream – that of bedding Alexis – will never come to be. No matter: I am surprisingly happy with my present lot. I… am… very happy.
I used to believe that happiness was over-rated, the domain of fools. I know that I’m not skilled in the field of expressed sexuality, (how could it be otherwise?) so there must be a reason for her happy acknowledgement of my talents, and for the really generous employment of her own. Her skills are bright and fine and considerable, but I do see that I can’t lie in bed forever. But…
She makes no demands of me. If I want her company, all I have to do is tell her than I do, inform her of the fact. And then she’s with me again and warm and immediate and her touch is so visceral to me that I sometimes look at my skin afterwards for signs of scarring. I can carry the memory of her touch with me all day.
I say again, she makes no demands of me, and I could see this relationship continuing if it were not for the intervention of Murah. She might have the capacity to read minds, and that would be disastrous. I must find out more about her. As the situation currently stands I could see myself choosing my current companion to be my consort, and leading my country to some kind of positive ends. This is not what I have planned for, and besides, Murah will be back. At present I sense that she is visiting Ashe, in some way or other, and I know that it cannot be a pleasant encounter for them both. What was the line? “I wish you all joy of the worm.” Yes. And a double-edged comment if ever there was one. I should read more; it was such a life-saver in the days gone by and now I neglect it for the pursuit of other pleasures.
Pleasure… It was in one of my less-pleasant dreams that I saw the one-handed demon was setting off in search of Ashe again. Yes, Murah is a force to be reckoned with, but I will not agree to any kind of alliance with her. For the moment I shall maintain the semblance of support - I know how dangerous she is. If she has gone to see Ashe – I feel almost sorry for Ashe, which amazes me – then I understand better why I presently feel so very liberated. Murah’s powers are evidently finite, it seems, which relieves me. I wonder in what form she will appear to Ashe. I wonder what it is of the Guardian that she desires.
Apart from wanting her dead, obviously.
*****
In the cells in Caer Arianrhod, Gowdie had regained for a while her human form. She was thin and weak, and alternately ravenous and nauseated by the idea of food. The palace staff were working round the clock to try and find something that was essentially nutritious and ultimately palatable, and Betany spent nearly all her free time with her sister.
Betany had been used – all her life – to the ideal of balance. From the moment Gowdie had struggled into the world it had been clear that shape-shifting had not missed a generation. Betany could remember the small body, wrapped in the softest sheep’s wool, and the tiny growl that was all Gowdie could at first produce by way of conversation. But Gowdie’s first word had startled everyone, even their mother, who might have been slightly aggrieved that it was not her name but that of her first daughter that the court heard spoken.
Betany smiled, albeit sadly, and settled her back more squarely against the cool sandstone wall. She sang as she waited, a song that had soothed both sisters when they were very young, and sleepless, or too tired for sleep. She sang the words so softly that one might have thought Gowdie never heard them, but for the smile that showed on her sleeping face.
The song was a thing of reassurance and hope, and Betany sang it for herself as well, and for Ashe, and for the child to be. More than ever, she wanted Ashe back. She ached to think of Ardan, her body returned to Lammor as she had wanted. She had failed Ardan, she couldn’t help Gowdie, and Ashe was - possibly - a hundred miles away. Betany took a deep breath and began the song again.
*****
The new walls of the Lammoran palace shone in the morning sunlight. It was right that they should shine. It was a day of festival - one of the fire festivals that took place as the year became so much shorter, and the light so much less - and so no building work was being done. No work of any sort was being done: it was a proper Lammoran holiday, and it delighted Laure. For the first time she would have what she had come to dream of: an empty palace and a desolated city, with everyone off to experience the various delights on offer in the brightly-coloured tents that embroidered the soft fields beyond the city gates. Only the infirm, the sleeping and the dead refrained from joining the migrating crowds.
Laure’s attendance at the festival was anticipated and expected, but the queen had better things to do. With the palace - almost - gloriously empty, Laure walked the lines of her world and noted the delicate symmetry. When she was tired of walking she began to arrange the magical trail that would stretch through the building from top to bottom. She placed on steps and on floors a long train of candles - yellow and red and white candles - that had been scented with honey and vanilla and sweet cherry, building around each a little heap of broken sticks. Then she began to work on the sticks that had been used to provide extra security for the smaller stacking stones. Eventually she made up paths of sticks that lead back to the heavier timbers sheltering within the new walls. She took up a particularly long taper and allowed its wax to drip over the dry wood, making paths in yellow and white and red that threw up dust from the floors.
Once the epic patterns of wood and stick and wax were completed, Laure went in search of Ruth, her only other companion within the palace. Ruth whose mind Alexis and Calypso had pretty well destroyed.
Approaching Ruth’s sleeping body, Laure meditated a little on their shared history. They had been friends from childhood in the established way of custom and rank. In a sense, they inherited one another. Ruth’s family was almost as well-established as Laure‘s own, and they had played together as children in the knowledge of their respective political and social standing. Then Ashe had entered the mix, Ashe with no standing of any sort, and an outsider to boot. No wonder that Ashe and Ruth had never been friends. How could they have been? Ruth had always seen Laure’s companion as - at a grudging best - a necessary evil. It was easier for her to imagine Ashe had been chosen for her skills in bed than for any other kind of achievement. Although the idea of a marriage between Ruth’s family and Laure’s had never been discussed, there had run through Ruth’s mind from adolescence onwards, the hope that one day she might become Laure’s lover. A million miles from the dream of being the queen’s lover, Ruth seemed to have settled for the role as royal pet.
Something had gone in Ruth, something that belonged to the expectations of the old days, when the world ran smoothly, and there were places into which people could fit. Alexis and Calypso had done much of that work, and Ashe had managed a little contribution of her own. Laure’s occasional ramblings had probably done nothing to discourage Ruth’s new and strange behaviour. Approaching Ruth that day Laure wondered if she could ever have helped the girl.
Ruth lay sleeping in one of the warmer parts of the palace proper, in a patch of sunlight, her hair long and immensely tangled, her clothes past all hope of help. The only part of her that had not become so very unkempt was her face: the two vertical lines that had stood between her eyebrows had almost faded away; in sleep she looked very innocent and a little simple. Laure watched her sleep, watched her twitch and moan and shiver. Ruth’s dream life was apparently as unsatisfactory as her waking world.
The wax trails reached as far as that floor. Laure stared at them, evidence of her only decisive action in weeks and weeks, and at the sheltered light coming from the only candle still burning. All she had needed was what she had - the palace empty of all but the two of them, the disenfranchised queen and her former friend. Laure took a last candle and held it so that the melting wax spelled out words. Laure’s own name was there, and that of her mother, and of Jura, of Calypso and even Ruth. She began to spell out a final word, but as the A and S and H appeared on the ground, a little breeze rose up and took the life of the candle. If it had been - and so Laure thought for an instant it might have been - her former lover’s last-ditch attempt at a rescue mission, it was too weak and too fleeting an attempt.
Laure settled herself down on a step behind Ruth, who immediately woke, her immediate expression sharp and senseless. On seeing who had woken her, and whose hands were now upon her, Ruth relaxed entirely. Laure stroked the girl’s tangled hair and heard the whisper of a deep heart-sigh. The girl’s eyes closed and her smile became beatific; had she been a cat, Ruth would have purred. Laure’s left hand continued to stroke the soft and unwashed throat while her right hand went to the short-bladed dagger she had worn at her belt that day.
Laure tightened her hold on Ruth, the girl leaning back into her, eyes still closed, her skin warm. For an instant Laure hesitated: there was still a world out there, and there was still a future, potential or otherwise. But her mother was gone and Jura was gone, Calypso, too. Gods! Did the list have to drag on for ever? No. Enough was enough and Laure was - she admitted the fact to herself as she sat enjoying the first human contact she had allowed herself in weeks - so tired that sleep itself could not longer refresh her. She allowed herself to hug the girl to her, allowing Ruth - though Laure did not know it - a moment as close to happiness as Ruth had ever attained. As she leaned her head back against Laure’s knees, her hair wild and matted, happiness lapping at her like a warm sea, Laure cut Ruth’s throat.
There was a kind of sound that Laure had never dreamed of, followed by a silence so weighty it made her spine bow. If nothing else, the killing had been carried out almost perfectly, and - her loneliness sudden total - Lammor’s queen held on fiercely, her own eyes open but blind, full of the tears that were falling onto Ruth’s skin.
The body felt heavy and infinite against her own. Laure reached out a hand and let the candle fall, the flame embracing the path that she had made for it. She closed her eyes and wondered if the smoke would be kind enough to draw her in before the flames reached her.
Laure sat in silence, watching.
In an hour the palace had become a single flare, a star that burned cold, not hot, and which snaked up into the sky over and over again before failing, falling, and dying in the grey dust that remained. The blaze was visible for miles.