Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBC
Chapter Three
The unfortunate messenger freshly arrived from Mercia would happily have exchanged employment with anyone in the city of Caer Arianrhod. Digging sewers, preparing funeral pyres or trapping rats would have been preferable to standing before the pale and unsmiling Betany and telling her that Calypso was dead and had possibly been murdered.
*******
How strange. I had not expected my actions to shock my new ministers. I had assumed that the reason for my first trip from prison into a bright and new world had the tacit if unspoken support of them all. If you look into the sun all day and every day, you will go blind. This is a simple truth and it is not negotiable. It was not a sun that I perceived on that narrow bed, merely a dead star. If I was to take on the rule of Mercia then there could be no space left for ex-leaders. And yet I had shocked them; that much was clear. Perhaps they had expected me to take immediate steps to wash the blood off my hands.
*******
Ashe woke up from a night of such appalling dreams that she seriously wondered if she would ever risk sleeping again. She had obviously made some kind of sound, because when she sat bolt upright, Gowdie was already waiting for her, kneeling beside her. Ashe said, “Gods! There was a room, and hands and blood…” She shook all over. Gowdie, the strong, resolute and unshockable, took Ashe into a quick and reassuring hug that didn’t hide – even for a moment – that the same dreams had shocked her into waking, scared as a child in an unknown darkness.
*******
Betany woke, her hands going immediately, protectively to the side of the bed where Ashe should had been. She stared into the darkness, frightened.
*******
Rhea sat up in bed and said to Ardan, who lay only feet away, on a truckle bed against the wall, “Today we shall overhaul the spells of protection. I shall need you to run a great many errands. There will be a great deal of work to do.”
Ardan thought: is this how it feels when the world begins come undone?
*******
Alexis – who had hardly slept, who hardly ever slept any more – woke in her cell on the far side of Mercia with her heart pounding. Even though her magic had been taken, she had still maintained a kind of connection with Calypso. Had they been able to communicate in any way, that connection might have faded away; as they had not, the light touch that they’d shared had not worn out entirely. Waking from a half hour of sleep and a brilliant and visceral minute of dreaming, Alexis knew enough to understand that a massive change was about to sweep the country. The combined forces of Rath Bel, Caer Arianrhod and Lammor were as nothing compared to the new energy that had been loosed into the world.
Then she went to the window. It was still very early: hardly anyone was around. She poured herself a cup of water and began – for the first time in months – to examine her own future. She was a prisoner, of course, but her jailors were never harsh or cruel: Betany and Arkana, Ashe and the others never harsh or arbitrary. What was gone would not be constantly represented to her: that much had been evident from the peace talks that had begun as soon as the field had been entirely cleared of the dead. For the sake of all the Gods, they had not even demanded financial reparation! Sufficient that the uprising had been quashed. For a moment, feeling within herself a pretty sure knowledge of what lay ahead for them all, she was tempted to seek out Betany – not Ashe, never Ashe – and ask if some kind of truce might be possible? The thought was fleeting but entirely honest. She paced restlessly for another hour. Then she called for the young soldier who maintained a fixed and very civil guard outside her rooms and asked for ink and paper. She would have to grieve at a later date: there were things she had to do first.
*******
The Red Temple stood on the top of one of the tallest mountains. Ashe had never heard of it, but when she and Gowdie reached the precarious path that had called to them both, she caught sight of the distant architecture and thought immediately: I know that. Close on that thought had been the simple: why? Gowdie, slumping down onto the hard earth and reaching for her water bottle was less curious and less cheerful. The dreams of the night before had not faded from her mind, as every other dream – good and bad – had done within hours of the experience, and the fact bothered her and made her short-tempered. Gowdie resented being at the beck and call of her imaginings. Ashe, who had dreamed along very similar lines, had already decided that imagination had nothing to do with the sense of unrest and threat the dreams had imparted. Something bad was coming, and it would be better for all concerned if she and Gowdie changed direction and headed for Caer Arianrhod. It was with this thought in the back of her mind that she had swung their course around. “Gowdie, do you see that?”
Gowdie clambered to her feet. She was scowling. She stared at the distant form and blinked in surprise at the colour of the temple. “What in the name of all the Gods is that?”
“I have no idea. I’ve seen it before – I think – but I have no idea of what it is.” She accepted the water flask and drank deeply. Soon they would have snow to replace the water they drank. Ashe could only hope that it would melt – day by day the weather was getting colder – by the time they needed to drink it. At least they had flints with which to start their nightly fires. “Gowdie,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the distance, “I think we should head back home.”
Gowdie’s scowl intensified, but she was hiding a smile when she said, “I thought you had further to go, Ashe.”
Ashe looked at her. “I do have further to go,” she said. “But something tells me that this isn’t the time to do more travelling.”
“We’re on the lower slope of a fucking mountain, Ashe! Couldn’t you have thought of that before dragging me up here?”
Ashe’s smile faded. “I didn’t drag you, Gowdie,” she said. “I rather think you dragged me. Didn’t you drop into karg form and go running on ahead? Or was it me? I tell you what: let’s go back and check the prints we left behind us. I think they should confirm the facts.”
Gowdie’s teeth met. She growled. Ashe stared at her, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She said, “You know, transforming into the karg as a means of avoiding unwanted topics of conversation isn’t your most admirable trait.”
The form of the karg began to climb over Gowdie’s face and features. Ashe just watched. For a moment she saw what few people have ever witnessed: the slide of change from one form to another that flashed through Gowdie’s eyes before it ever translated itself to her body. For a moment Gowdie’s already dark eyes became almost opaque, and in them Ashe saw for a moment reflected all the hurt and confusion that the loss of Sam had brought about. She was instantly sorry; she’d been thoughtless and pedantic. She put out a conciliatory hand: “Gowdie, forgive me. I didn’t mean – ”
Gowdie bit that conciliatory hand. Teeth half hers and half karg closed on tensed flesh and blood burst up, spilling onto the ground. Ashe stood, all colour fading from her face, staring.
Gowdie was gone. There was a flurry of snow and fur and then the karg faced Ashe before backing away, growling fiercely. Ashe held her injured hand to her chest. Pain had already cracked the shell of shock, and for an instant Ashe wasn’t sure what appealed most: throwing up or passing out. She dropped to her knees; passing out seemed to be on the cards. Ashe had never been good with blood. She stared at the karg, which continued to growl.
Staring into the animal’s eyes Ashe saw herself as it saw her. Until that moment she had never honestly feared the karg: she had found Gowdie hard to deal with, from time to time, but the karg had always been the easiest part of the equation to her. Not now.
*******
Betany finished writing and sealed the message. The young soldier before her looked less traumatised: bringing the news of Calypso’s death couldn’t have been easy, Betany reflected, as she imparted a short verbal message and for a moment laid her hand on the young soldier’s shoulder. “It’s alright,” she said. “We don’t kill the bearers of bad news, you know. I believe that it’s only a myth that the Mercians do so.” She smiled a goodbye and watched slim figure march out of the council room and away. Once upon a time she might have invested a little more time in an examination of the young soldier’s looks. Now that she had Ashe – not that Ashe was in any useful way present – she seemed to have become less simply lustful. It was an odd sensation and unaccustomed, but not unpleasant.
*******
The council are afraid of me! I had thought the people of Mercia to have possessed more in the way of backbone, but I was wrong. Though none of them would have admitted out loud what was needed to take the first step in the recovery of Mercia, they all knew what was necessary. I cannot come to terms with this weakness: there will no room for it in my rule, once I begin to rule. There are going to be many changes: the old rule has been weakened and undermined. I will have to be careful in the early stages: aren’t we at present a country under the sanctions of other powers, after all? I wonder what the council would say if they knew my plans?
*******
Gods! I bit her. I don’t believe it. She wasn’t even being that annoying! I hadn’t even changed and I bit her. There was that moment of satisfaction in closing my jaws on living flesh and then a flood of images and fucking horror! I bit her hand. I tasted her blood in my mouth and it was sweet. I had to run: another moment and I’d have taken out her throat and drunk down the rest of that sweet mixture. What is happening to me? No matter what bizarre connections Ashe might have had, I don’t think even the water spirits could have put her back together when I’d finished with her.
I had no choice. I had to run. I was going to eat her. So I ran. What else could I have done?
I’ve never known anything like it before: there’s never been anything but ease about the transformation; it’s like slipping on a fresh shirt, or sliding into bed. But when I looked at Ashe being her occasionally annoying self it was as if a gate came down in my head that shut off one part from another. That never happens! What the fuck is going on? I could have talked to Sam about it?, but oh, Gods, is it better that this happened after she’d gone? What would I done with myself if I’d hurt Sam? Ashe I will eventually be able to face again: I know how she feels about the karg. But it wasn’t the karg that bit her; not really.
It was me.
*******
Ardan had done as she was told: the burnished bowl had been wiped out with sage leaves to purify the metal. Then Rhea had crumbled into the bowl henbane – the grand hallucinogen – roots, leaves and stem, the seeds taken from the bright blue flowers that bloomed for a day only, oil extracted from apricot kernels – a rare and expensive item – and a touch of something else she “omitted” to name in Ardan’s presence. Ardan made no objection, spoken or thought: she’d already figured out the missing ingredient. It struck her that Rhea must have regained a considerable part of her confidence if she was beginning to conceal things from someone who – in the ordinary way of things – would one day take on Rhea’s mantle and her profession.
The fire was burning brightly. The day was done with. Rhea would rather have exercised the spell in daylight, but this time there was to be nothing light-hearted or half-hearted about the questions she needed to ask, and only full darkness would do.
She ground the mixture until it became a thick paste. She paused for a moment and reached for the two pieces of day-old bread that she had sent Ardan out for earlier in the day. She dripped ordinary olive oil onto both pieces, and then applied a thin coating of the paste to each. She scraped the remainder from the blade into the bowl. She retained the larger piece of bread, giving the other to Ardan. Rhea did not feel entirely good about engaging Ardan on an enterprise with so much risk attached, but needs must. She said, “Once you’ve bitten into this you will feel very strange for a while, but I promise you, I will let no harm come to you. I will be with you at every point in the journey. All that I ask is that you agree to trust me. Without trust we may as well not take the first step.” She sighed. “And at all times I want you to obey me, no matter what I ask of you, no matter how strange my orders may be. Do you understand?”
Ardan was almost desperate for the spell to wrap itself around them. She nodded in answer to Rhea’s question, and accepted the bread. Her mouth felt dry, and her pulse was racing.
Rhea said, “Sit down opposite me.” It was easier for Ardan to drop to the ground: Rhea lowered herself more carefully into place: her bones were older and the last months had been more of a strain than she had anticipated. Life had not returned to some easy swagger since the battle and Calypso’s vanquishment. Life had continued to offer up a host of demands.
Rhea put the bread to her mouth, looked across the fire to where Ardan watched her. She smiled. “It won’t taste good. Indeed, it’ll taste foul. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Ardan tasted the paste with which the bread was spread and felt a cold and horrible tremor run through her. Her hand was unsteady. The taste in her mouth was like nothing she had ever – she grimaced and her stomach twisted and threatened to rebel – eaten before. Even after she had taken a bite, chewed and swallowed, the shaking had not subsided. She had to work hard to overcome that instinctive gag reflex.
Ardan felt a sudden and absolute chill pass through her body. She could no longer see the now-familiar outlines of the tower room. She was no longer sure about where her body was and where it was not. A cold tingling sensation began at her fingertips and moved inward, toward her heart. Ardan felt each inhalation as an entire process, not a continuing one. She heard Rhea speak her name and she tried to force her head up so that she might see the wise-woman. But the dark was absolute and her head was heavy and cumbersome, and she was unable to pick out the details of Rhea’s face. After days of feeling both confident of and restrained by Rhea’s teachings, frustratedly awaiting a full initiation, Ardan became aware that she was no longer so happy to embrace the new world she was about to meet. She realised how very little she knew. The thought chilled her still further. She tried to express something of how she felt, but the words just wouldn’t come. Her tongue wouldn’t shift inside her mouth, and the words got lost somewhere between thought and execution.
*******
The karg had gone. The wounds in her hand were expelling blood as if her body had lost all need for it. Ashe was still on her knees. She tried to maintain a calm she no longer possessed – how could this have happened? – by taking deep breaths and applying pressure to the holes in her hand. Her left hand was unusable: her right hand, cupped beneath it, was already brimming over. She staggered to her feet, grabbed a handful of snow that seemed to burn her, and pressed it tightly into her palm. There was a moment of agony, and then the furious cold of the snow began to have an anaesthetising effect.
Ashe began thinking more clearly and more cleanly. She made a crude and clumsy bandage, took a few deep swallows of the perle she had hidden in a flask inside her jacket, and began to feel more human. She sat down on a patch of grass just long enough to regain some degree of control, and then she started calling after Gowdie. Surely the karg couldn’t have gone that far?
Climbing down – had the path really been so rough and demanding on the ascent? – Ashe kept calling for the karg. As the lower slopes were untouched by snow it was almost impossible to find a trail of any sort. Ashe was unaware of the fact that blood was dripping gently from her unsuccessful bandaging: a trail of red on the rocky ground.
*******
Why is it that people spend so much time agonising over decisions when it is patently obvious which path they must take? Gods! Why hesitate when there is something you want so much – or something you are so desperate to do. I don’t understand why no-one went ahead and just quietly ended Calypso’s miserable life before I came along. She was no use as she was: she served no purpose, useful or otherwise. I suppose that if we could have stood her up – chained to a post maybe like a dancing bear – and paraded her around the streets of Mercia to show just what the little freak was capable of. That might have goaded even the most jaded and dull of Mercians to want a revenge against the freak, against Caer Arianrhod, against the empty-headed Laure, who chose Calypso and then let her go without the slightest word of farewell or explanation. One of these days I am going to make sure that Caer Arianrhod and Mercia, and Lammor, too, see just what a truly determined leader is capable of. I wonder if I will find it satisfying to bring them to their knees? Only time will tell.
*******
Ashe had been used by Rhea – in the nicest way possible – as a co-worker on several of the most complicated and demanding spells. On every occasion Rhea had begun to offer Ashe an apprenticeship, and had only stopped herself from framing the words by literally biting her tongue. In those days she had not the excuse of knowing that Ashe was intended for use elsewhere. Now that she was about to work with Ardan, Rhea hoped that the young woman would at least equal Ashe’s competence. Easy enough to say that Ardan would be safe if she remained by Rhea’s side in whatever new world they travelled, but how safe was Rhea herself? This was a dark and unsettled world into which they had gone. They broke out of the tower room and found themselves on a dark moor, with only pale and occasional moonlight above them and lightning splitting the clouds. A strong wind blew against them: for an instant Rhea stumbled and lost her hold on Ardan’s hand.
Just long enough.
*******
Ashe woke from nightmarish dreams. Her head ached, and her hand burned. Now it seemed that her arm too had become involved in the fever: Ashe tried to clench her fingers and could not. She tried to make more secure the makeshift bandage and made a poor job of it. She wondered how Gowdie was, and if she had yet reached Caer Arianrhod. She felt old and bitterly cold. For the second time in her life she was in the mountains. She had thought that a second visit – and to a separate range – would surely be less traumatic than her first. She had evidently been misguided in that belief. She drank some water and chewed a little stale bread, but she really wasn’t hungry.
She had stumbled on and on, and by the time she found Gowdie, she was about fit to drop. Their reunion had been very brief, and Ashe had done nearly all the talking. Gowdie had been restricted to the almost-silent, head-shaking side of the debate. When she’d stumbled away from Ashe, she’d returned to karg-form. Ashe watched the karg go, bound by a promise, and had then started walking. Why was nothing ever easy?
The land about her was tundra-like and covered with snow. Huge boulders lay about in random patterns. Ashe could remember enough from her education to recognise that a glacier had once carved out the valley through which she walked. On either side thin pine trees rose up, their spiky shapes almost black against the snow. Ashe walked on, her feet sinking into the unwanted purity of snow.
She was heading toward the Red Temple, whatever that might be. A simple clarity of thought directed her, and her pace was as steady as weariness and incipient blood-poisoning would allow it to be. She could not bring herself to look at the wound again: she had told Gowdie that she was forgiven, and she had meant every word. It was just a shame that the jagged tears were not as easy to push from her mind. There was nothing wrong with the bite of a karg – but there were risks from a human bite – and the fact that there was something painfully wrong with the entire situation had not escaped Ashe. It was the shock of Gowdie’s attack that concerned her.
Clearly something wrong in the world. How wrong, Ashe wasn’t sure. She was hot: the sweat was apparent on her forehead, and she must have looked pretty rough, because when she encountered a group of travellers, they eyed her with concern and the suggestion of fear. But her diffident smile was impossibly far from frightening.
********
Betany smiled briefly at the castle’s physician and then began to dress herself. There was an easy silence between the two of them. Betany had had her questions all answered by that first simple affirmation. All remaining questions would have to wait. She looked out of the window onto the sunlit fields. Ashe would be out there somewhere. Were she and Gowdie getting along? She hoped so. She wished they’d come back.
She walked into the castle courtyard and sat down on the low wall that encircled the fountain. A marvellously-carved stone dragon sprang from the depths of the fountain basin, and the water splashed forth from the dragon’s mouth. The sounds made by the splashing water never failed to ease Betany’s mood. She touched the tips of her fingers to the clear, clean water and wondered if a message might be carried by some kind of osmosis to Calliope. That would be only appropriate, Betany thought, rather wistfully.
*******
Ardan felt the touch of Rhea’s hand for an instant. Just that. Then the contact was broken and she was falling, tugged about by the wind in the strange world that they had travelled to. They had flown – it had truly felt as though Ardan had wings – and landed in this strange and unforgiving wilderness.
She felt utterly alone, her mouth dry with fear, her fingers clenched around nothing.
She stood up – no easy matter with the wind howling down across the plain – and spun around, looking for Rhea. But there was no sight of the wise-woman, and Ardan understood, suddenly, utterly, that she was alone. Whichever place it was that they had been heading for, only she had found her way there.
If there existed a land of the dead, then this had to be it. A world of black and purple with a wind blowing constantly, and nothing growing. There were piles of stone here and there, as if small buildings had been constructed and then destroyed, or simply decayed. Ardan knew that she was the only person in the world, and a wash of loneliness so brutal that it would scar. An immersion in a cold and alien sea would have been less of a shock.
She knew that she was alone, and yet… And yet she was not alone, was she? Walking toward her, walking steadily and confidently, was a figure. She had no doubt that this stranger was coming to meet her, and she began to move toward her. The distance between them kept closing up and opening out, like a sheet being shaken, and when they came within clear view, she understood that it would be better to be alone. Better by far. And so she tried to cut and run, but her legs would not carry her. Dissatisfied – Ardan thought – by simply stopping her, the stranger’s next gesture caused her legs to crumple beneath her. Ardan could no longer walk. She hit the ground like a sack of flour and the breath was knocked out of her. There were small sharp stones on the ground and they cut into her palms. The figure kept moving and suddenly stood over Ardan, looking down at her with an expression that was part curiosity, part disdain.
The voice came like a tool chipping at stone, curt and inhuman and incisive. “And who might you be?” Ardan knew that no answer was expected of her, and that no answer could be forthcoming: fear and confusion had bound her tongue. “And how strange to find you here. Oh, I understand. You aren’t here by your own power, are you? You belong to the wise-woman. Of course.” And a hand reached out and gripped Ardan by her shirt, the fabric tearing as the pull continued and Ardan was tugged closer and closer to the stranger’s face. “You’re a little sparrow, is all. A little sparrow whose wings have stopped working. I suppose that means you’re destined to remain here forever.”
Ardan thought: I suppose she might be thought lovely, but she doesn’t look at all lovely to me. The very light skin and the very dark hair, and the dark eyes in the middle of which a cold green fire leapt and flickered. The stranger’s breath touched Ardan’s cheek, and it was like ice.
Ardan’s silence was becoming a burning mass within her lungs and she understood that the stranger was slowly draining her of life. She felt a red heaviness in her head and a pang in the region of her heart. She thought: but I was only just beginning to learn… when a second voice broke the silence, a voice that was not familiar because Ardan had never heard it so full of anger, so full of contempt. It was Rhea’s voice, and Ardan realised in the instant that she must remember to give the wise-woman her due: she was much more powerful than Ardan had ever suspected.
The voice said, “How strange to find you here. Are you not content with your more humane powers?” Rhea came up behind Ardan and touched a hand to the girl’s shoulder. And as the touch became a warm glow that beat back the chill of terror that had been in Ardan’s blood, Ardan understood that she was being drawn back. There was a sensation of wings again, and a kind of blindness that was not at all unwelcome.
“Ah, the owner of the little bird. I expect we’ll meet again.”
“Not here, I trust,” said Rhea. Her voice was not old at all, but strong and young and absolutely fixed. “Surely even you would not wish to possess this world. But you might be better advised to remain here. Here at least there is no-one to threaten you.”
“Go, wise-woman, and take the little bird with you before I crack its head beneath my shoe.” Ardan felt energy from Rhea’s hand flowing into her shoulder, the strong fingers pressing into her skin, tightening into a grip and then tugging her backwards, out of the black and purple world and returning her to the tower room, where she dropped to the floor, shaking and trembling, Rhea’s arms around her.
*******
It’s not just Mercia, of course. There are other issues that require my attention. Laure, for one. I wonder what was going on in her head. After the battle, was she not even a little surprised that Calypso was not returned to her? I can’t believe that lust alone formed the bond between them. It sounds as though she’s lost her mind almost as completely as my sister lost hers. No matter. The Lammoran will know me when I need her to.