Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Five
Fallon watched as another pair of ravens flew overhead. Thinking the sight might interest Coll, who had long since been something of an ornithologist, she turned to look for her. But Coll was some little way off, scowling at an otherwise-occupied Hero. Fallon sighed and let the ravens go on their way, unmolested.
Coll’s increasingly hostile attitude toward Hero was becoming impossible to ignore. Fallon knew that it couldn’t be long before Hero noticed and took action. Then, of course, Coll would be turned around and sent home so fast her head would spin. If she could Fallon was determined to save her friend that embarrassment. It seemed to her that with each passing day Coll drifted further from the path her family had put her on. Fallon was still surprised at Coll’s being on the journey to the Word of the Red Temple. Fallon’s attendance had never been open to doubt: she’d known from the age of seven that to enter the Temple was her destiny. But the same was not true of Coll. Until the day before they’d left Plethe, Fallon had had no idea that Coll would be beside her on the trip.
Should Fallon be accepted by the elders of the Word of the Red Temple she would remain there as an apprentice and never see Plethe, or her family, again. She would miss both – she was well aware of that fact – but to be chosen to serve would prove to be a more than equal pleasure and achievement. Fallon’s family were proud of her destiny. Coll’s family… Fallon couldn’t imagine how they felt about it, unless they were just relieved to see Coll go. No matter that apprenticeships had formed a continuous thread in the history of Fallon’s family, the girl was continually trying to shore herself up against rejection and the pain it would bring. The other would-be apprentices shared that sense, but Coll alone of all of them seemed unmoved by excitement or fear. At times a grimly ironic light shone from her blue eyes.
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The key turned in the lock. Everything became intensely magnified. Betany was willing to concentrate her attention upon anything, no matter how insignificant it might be, provided it took her thoughts away from the situation before her. She watched as the door was pulled open. The guard performing the bizarre ritual was clearly reluctant to draw back and Betany instinctively found herself wondering if this was due to a concern born of Betany’s altered state. No. She shook her head. No-one could know the fact of her condition, her physician would die rather than betray that trust. Betany shook herself and said, “I’ll be fine in there alone. You go and wait outside until I call for you.”
Gowdie had heard the words. She called out, “Don’t come too close, Betany, I beg you. These chains weren’t meant to hold kargs.” Gods, what a thing to hear from anybody, especially from one’s own sister. Betany fought to prevent the shock she still felt from showing. Unreal to be so afraid, unfair to keep Gowdie in restraints.
Face to face, Betany saw the change that had overtaken Gowdie. The woman who had always been confident, lazy and flirtatious was gone. This was someone else.
Betany said, sincerely, painfully, “Gowdie, this is so wrong. This is monstrous.” She immediately regretted the use of that particular adjective. She said, “Oh, Gods. I am so sorry.”
Gowdie shook her head. “Don’t apologise for the choice of words, Betany. You’re entirely right: this is monstrous. Or at least, I am. I have no control over changing; none at all.” As if to underline that lost capacity, her body shifted and rippled and for an instant she was entirely karg. Then Gowdie was back again, pale and shaking. There were tears in her eyes.
Betany threw safety and good sense to the four winds, knelt down and put her arms around Gowdie. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister cry. And as they clutched one another, Gowdie shaking from her attempts to control herself, Betany wished that Ashe had come back at the same time. A moment later and Gowdie was gently pushing her away. “I want you to keep on holding me,” she said, “it’s comforting and it’s nice and Gods help me, I can’t claim you’re wholly safe. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“As if you’d wish something like this on yourself..”
“No. No, I mean, I wouldn’t wish this. I was apologising about Ashe.”
“You wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone,” said Betany. “While the two of you don’t always get along, I know that there’s no bad blood between you.” She drew in her breath painfully, and gave an equally painful laugh.
“Forget it,” said Gowdie. “All the wrong things come out at times like this.” She hesitated and then said, “I didn’t mean to hurt Ashe. She was alright, Betany, really. She forgave me.”
“Why did she send you back on your own?”
“I don’t know. I thought at first it was because she was angry, and then I saw that it wasn’t that. She really was worried about you, and she wanted you to have as much protection as possible.”
Betany had to ask: “Gowdie, why didn’t she come back with you?”
It was so hard to find the right words. Gowdie visualised the two of them there on the slopes, Ashe all bloody, a makeshift bandage round her hand, saying something. Something… “She said that there was something she had to do.”
“Not unusual for Ashe to come out with something like that. What did she have to do?”
“She said that…” Gowdie tried to remember the shape of Ashe’s words. She let her mind go blank for a moment, tried to think of nothing but snow. Snow falling on the higher ground, snow falling all around them and hearing the sound it made. A sound like no other. A sound like thoughts falling from an orderly brain. “Ashe said that what had happened so far was as nothing, and that one day we’d wish that it was only Alexis and Calypso we had to fight. She said that the prisoner had gained her freedom and would break the back of the world. She said she wanted to make the world safe if she could.”
For a single moment Betany could hear Ashe’s voice as clearly as if Ashe stood beside her, or lay beside her, holding her gently, holding her close. She could smell Ashe, that nice combination of citrus fruits and soft leather that seemed to define something in her lover. And the words came from Gowdie in Ashe’s nice, low voice. “She said she wanted to make the world safe for the two of you. I admit, I didn’t know what that meant…” Her voice trailed off. She looked up at Betany. “How long have you known?”
“A couple of days.” Betany couldn’t help smiling. Gowdie’s gaze travelled to where Betany was already gently pressing a protective hand.
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No matter how far they walked – and they seemed to be walking forever – it seemed to Ashe that they got no closer to their destination. She had hesitated before asking Fallon for details about the Word of the Red Temple because she hadn’t wanted to seem too curious. She didn’t mind looking ignorant. She hoped that if she waited and said nothing, Fallon would be bound to tell her. That school of thought was out to lunch. Ashe sighed: she didn’t like pressing people for information but soon she would have to, or she’d turn up outside the big red door – if the temple had a big red door – not knowing what the fuck she was doing there.
Had she had Fallon’s company she would have asked questions, but in some odd way she had ended up walking with Coll. Coll looked sulky and unwilling – her usual mode of behaviour – and Ashe was unwilling to ask her anything apart from whether she’d been pulling that face the day the wind changed. Hero was for some reason short-tempered and aloof, and Ashe decided that she’d been given Coll to keep the kid out of Hero’s way. She kept her opinion to herself, but after walking beside Ashe for over an hour, Coll broke the silence with: “Fallon said that I should apologise to you.” Ashe waited, staring at the path before them. Coll hawked up the words: “Sorry about what I said.” It was as gracious an apology as Ashe was likely to receive from her..
“Forget about it. I have.” They walked on, and Ashe wiped the fever sweat from her forehead. She wished she was in a cool, comfortable bed somewhere. Pretty soon she was going to have to stop and let the party go on without her.
Coll reached into a pocket and drew out some curiously-shaped, sun-dried leaves. She offered one to Ashe. “Chew them as long as you can. They taste bitter but they’ll help. Whatever else you do, don’t swallow them. Spit them out when you’re done.”
Ashe warily put one of the leaves into her mouth. Its texture was strangely slippery and not very pleasant, but it was a gesture of peace and she accepted it as such. It did taste bitter, as Coll had warned, but it did bring about a new clarity: the path became a little less exacting, and the pain little less sharp. Ashe walked on more easily.
A short stop for lunch, and then on again. In a drug-tempered state, Ashe was beginning to wonder if the whole thing was just a dream. Then the sun came out, blasting through the clouds, and for the first time that day Ashe saw the famous red temple. From a distance it seemed a simple impossibility, or the toy of a child. There was an exotic shape to the place, and Ashe thought its colour changed as the sun touched it. She saw the hundreds of steps that led up to the temple and grinned resignedly. “There’s no way I’m going to make that climb, leaves or no leaves.”
“You must,” said Coll, oddly. Her voice sounded changed to Ashe’s ears. “You have no choice.”
“I have no choice?” Ashe stared at the girl beside her and felt a ripple of disquiet. This was not Coll. The ocean blue that Ashe had earlier noted and admired shone now like rubies, and Coll’s expression had been invested with a hard confidence and a bright glitter far from its usual state.
Fallon had hung back to wait for them. When she saw the odd expression on Ashe’s face she put up a hand to her mouth. She too looked at Coll’s darkly sunburned face, in which the red eyes gleamed.
Fallon put out a hand and Ashe took it. For a moment they stood in perfect, silent accord. When Coll spoke it was clear that even her own sulky growl had been usurped; the voice the others heard was hardly human, and it came crawling out of Coll’s mouth. “Wondering what would have happened if you’d gone home with Gowdie like a good girl, Ashe? Now you’ve made it necessary for me to use this petulant and frightened little shape to communicate with you. When I have finished with her, shall I rip out her liver and her lungs? She’s so full of self-hate that there scarcely seems reason for her continuation. I suppose you’d want me to let her go unharmed, but where’s the fun in that? What should I do?”
Had Ashe’s free hand not been so firmly held in Fallon’s, she would have struck out then; even knowing that Coll had played no intentional part in the rather horrible borrowing was not sufficient to hold Ashe back. She didn’t understand the meaning of the words, but the venom with which they were delivered shocked her to the core.
Coll began to laugh in the same borrowed tones, and Ashe’s control snapped. Perhaps she could physically reach whatever entity had taken the kid over. She seized Coll by the collar and lifted her off the ground, shaking her, slamming her up against a solitary tree trunk hard enough to stun, no easy matter when all violence had to be administered single-handed. Holding her fixed there, Ashe shouted: “Who are you? What in the name of the Gods are you? You aren’t Coll. She’s just a kid with a chip on her shoulder. Who are you? Are you too fucking scared to show yourself?”
Fallon grabbed at Ashe, but it was useless - Ashe’s forearm, holding Coll against the tree, was like iron. Fallon broke off the attempt anyway when Coll began speaking again. The voice was like… Fallon could not bear it. It was like biting into rotten fruit and hearing one’s teeth meet on the rotten and crumbling stone within; not spitting out the mouthful quickly enough and feeling that same rot slide down your throat. Her stomach roiled.
“You’re such a little animal, Ashe, for all that’s happened to you. Look at you now: staggering about the mountainside with a fever that’s burning you from the inside, out. I have a message for you, Ashe, something for you to think about: your only real weakness lies in your love. You have loved ones, and that makes for the best and neatest of targets. I have no loved ones. How much simpler that makes life.
“I know you have some small role to play in all of this, but I can’t think what that role might be. Maybe it’s just to die…”
Coll leapt forward, breaking free of Ashe’s hold, and going for her throat. She got a good grip and for a moment Ashe couldn’t breathe. Fallon screamed. She tried to grab Coll’s arm and as she did so, Ashe, now a little light-headed, punched Coll as hard as she could.
The girl dropped like a stone to the ground, her eyelids fluttering. Ashe and Fallon knelt down on either side of her. Hero’s attention, thank the Gods, was otherwise occupied.
*******
Being imprisoned, being restrained. Oh, cold new world. If I had been sent here, put here, hidden here, I would by now have torn the place apart. I am totally fucked. There is just no doubt about that. I’d bang my head against the wall in sheer frustration, but I’m saving that treat for later in the day, when I run out of other exciting things to do. First of all I plan to count the bricks that make up the walls of this self-appointed prison, and then I’ll count the planks that make up the floor, and the bars that slice up my view of the sky.
Oh, I can have things to do, should I want them: proper things. Books, food. But reading’s no good: I don’t want to read and I don’t want to eat, even though I’m constantly hungry. Why not eat? Simple: I don’t crave the standards, and another tray of bread, cheese, and olives, with a separate jar of oil and vinegar mixed with which to anoint my bread is going to get sent straight against the wall. What I crave is meat. Hot meat, and I don’t mean fresh from the castle kitchens.
I believe that it is not simply a karg that I am turning into. It is something else.
I don’t think I have ever felt so lonely or so helpless. When I realised that Betany was pregnant I wanted to shout the news from the rooftops. I wanted to go find Ashe and haul her back here, so that she doesn’t miss out on a single moment. And I don’t even know where she is.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad as when Ashe sent me back here. I doubt if she knows it, but she was hardly herself at the time. The words that broke from her were her own, but the information was someone else’s. But she was right, wasn’t she? Betany does need me. Or rather, Betany could use me in half a dozen useful ways if I hadn’t become less than myself. Or more. I think that whatever it is that I am is part of a larger plan. Why else would Alexis be here? I know that Calypso’s dead – no bad thing, in my view – but what would bring Alexis here to the home of her enemies? I know that the story is that Alexis has lost her magic, so what was it that brought her here? Guesswork?
I sit on the floor because it’s cold and the cold keeps me thinking clearly. And all the time I’m thinking there is the chance that I might hit on some explanation for all this.
I shall ask Betany to send for Rhea. Maybe she can help me. As yet there are no reports of other kargs biting the hand that feeds them.
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Ardan walked through Lascar toward the new palace. The walls were going up, slowly but well, and one day there would again stand a building of worth and beauty. It would never be even a fraction of the size of the previous palace but that, many said, was only appropriate: the new queen was only a faint reflection of the one who had preceded her. Of course, the previous queen had been sane, those same voices added in a reluctant chorus.
Ardan did not see the lines of the new building, she didn’t see the children playing in the streets or the strange vacancy that had once been home to the monthly slave markets. She didn’t see the dust-coloured cat nursing dust-coloured kittens in the shade of the only pillar still standing.
She had fulfilled her errand, whatever that had been. She could hardly remember, and she didn’t much care. Ardan sat down on dusty bench outside one of the few remaining inns. It was more tent than inn, and a torn and much-mended tent at that, but it suited her well enough. She sat with a cup of wine before her that she could not remember ordering. She wondered – absently – if she had sufficient money in her pockets to meet the bill. She ran her mind over the situation and decided that in more ways than one, she wondered if she had enough to meet the bill, whatever shape it might take.
She drank. Sunlight fell on her, sinking into her bones. Late summer sunlight, solid and reliable as breathing. No. Ardan could no longer think of breathing as being something on which one could rely. The previous night had been enough to prove that to her.
Ardan didn’t know who the woman had been, but she was far too strong to have been anything other than a straightforward representation of a very real entity. Whatever she was, whoever she was, she was real.
While she sat, her head full of memories, she heard footsteps approaching. Ardan glanced up and saw the new queen. Laure. Ardan stood up and made a slight bow. Laure smiled at her. “May I join you?”
Ardan almost fell over in her eagerness to make Lammor’s queen feel welcome. The innkeeper brought out more wine, plates of cheese, bread, figs and olives, and a proper chair. It wasn’t the world’s finest chair, but it was clearly the finest in the possession of the innkeeper, and Ardan smiled her thanks. She thought: Laure may be nuts but she still commands some authority.
“Please. Sit,” she said, wondering how she could have forgotten to reply to the original question. Laure sat down on the chair. She rested her hands in her lap, rather like a child.
For a moment they sat in silence. Seeing the queen again, Ardan felt a pang of sorrow and anger mixed. Sorrow at Laure’s weakened state. Anger for – perhaps – the same reason. She looked at Laure and saw that the months had taken their toll. She wondered if Laure still had someone to look after her. The slaves might have been freed – albeit by an act of the Twelve Guardians – but there were still servants willing to attend the queen, surely?
Laure sipped her wine, but ate eagerly. Ardan wondered if the queen was getting regular meals, and began to blame herself for having not taken steps to keep an eye on Laure. She had been in such a hurry to get back to Rhea, her head full of the possibilities of what the wise-woman might teach her, that she had pushed Laure to the back of her mind, like the memory of a brief and rather unsatisfactory affair.
Now that first rush of enthusiasm was muted by experience and it was pity that moved her. Ardan watched Laure and thought: I should have taken more care of her. A second thought took her further forward and further back. Suddenly she could see herself in another world not of Rhea’s direction. The little sparrow was wary of taking to the air again.
At last, satiated and smiling, Laure finished her wine and Ardan refilled both their cups. She was very aware of the warmth of the wood where it had stood in the sunshine. It was good to be so far away from anything that recalled to mind the horrors of the night before. Laure said, “I think general opinion is that I’ve lost my mind. No-one else seems to see what I see.”
Ardan swallowed her wine the wrong way and coughed. Her eyes red, she said, “What do you think no-one else sees?” It seemed an appropriate question.
“Mother. Jura.”
“Are they here with us now?” There was absolutely no sarcasm in Ardan’s voice, and Laure responded in kind.
“They are over there, sitting in the sun. They watch over me. They keep me safe.”
Ardan stared in the direction to which Laure was pointing. She let her mind go entirely empty, fending off questions, avoiding comparisons. There was nothing in her mind but the image Laure described.
“Mother wears a white robe. There are red flowers in her hand. Jura sits beside her, collected, unsmiling. She wears flowing robes that end in the dust of the road. Both of them have bare feet. They have no need of shoes now.”
Ardan let the reference to the next – or any other – world, slide past her. A white robe and a dark robe. She stared at the whitewashed wall, newly-painted and still fresh and bright. She saw a swallow feeding its third brood of the season – it had been a good season for the swallows, even if so many of their old homes had come down when Lascar did.
They were not there. Nothing was there. Ardan looked at Laure and saw that her expression had remained entirely serious. There was an instant in which she was forced to decide for which camp she would be voting and then threw in her lot with Laure. If Laure said that she saw Jura and the former queen then she would too. She forced her imagination to summon them up. She sketched their faces against the whiteness of the wall behind them. She forced the queen to smile gently but Jura’s shade was less easy to shape: her expression remained uneasy and almost sombre.
Ardan forced the vision still further, until she could see every petal of the red flowers that the queen was holding. She said out loud, “I can see the thick green stem and the yellow stamens of the red flowers that your mother is holding. I can see a red-tipped bumblebee alight on them. It dusts itself with pollen and flies away again, staggering a little under the effect of the intoxicating scent.” If Ardan was going to do this, she intended to do it properly. She was working so hard that she herself could almost smell the perfume. “The flowers are tall and solid. They have each a compound head made up of perhaps a hundred separate parts, each with its black markings and yellow pollen. And I can see the stitches that embroider both their robes.” She turned to Laure, nodding, smiling.
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Ashe knelt beside Coll where she lay in the snow. The girl’s eyes had resumed their usual shade of ocean blue and Ashe was horribly grateful for that. If Hero had gotten to see the ruby glitter and heard the rotten-fruit voice, Coll’s journey – and possibly her life – would have ended there and then.
Ashe looked at the welt now rising on the girl’s cheekbone and scowled. She should not have hit her at all, let alone as hard as she had done, but that voice and those eyes… They had sickened Ashe and made her loathe Coll for an instant. Now Ashe raked her uninjured hand through her hair until it stuck up in spikes. Her throat ached fiercely. She felt tired and heartsick. Why hadn’t she gone back to Caer Arianrhod with Gowdie? They wouldn’t have had to travel close to one another: they could have kept a good visual mile between them and still gone on together. Had it been the desire – or the need – to visit the Word of the Red Temple that had kept her from going home? Or was there something inside herself that didn’t honestly believe she had the right to a home, let alone a life with Betany? Laure had done too good a job for far too long on Ashe, and something in Ashe had been knocked down too many times. She straightened up, unconsciously she wiped her hands on her jacket. Whatever had possessed the kid had left what felt like physical evidence and Ashe’s hand, where she had punched Coll, felt sticky and poisoned. Ashe would have paid good money for a bath, a change of clothes, and to be back in Caer Arianrhod.
What happened to Ashe then lasted only seconds that felt like a small eternity. Afterwards she realised that she had almost blacked out, but at the time she was aware only of a shift in the world and then of massive change. What followed was something like a nightmare and something like a vision. Either way it left Ashe feeling sick and sorry, as if there was nothing good left in the world. All ordinary images were gone from her: Coll, putting up a shaking hand to the bruise rising on her cheekbone, Hero in the middle distance, probably frowning, officious and determined; Fallon, pale and shocked. Instead of the ordinary, what Ashe saw was something that came close to blotting out the sun.
Above the whitened ground and the dark shadows of the fir trees loomed a shape so vast and so dense that it blocked out nearly all the light. A vast, fat shape, like a seated figure, arms crossed, face creased with a smile so bereft of humour that it made Ashe sick to see. The shape was as wide as a dozen trees, and twice as high. The face was vastly fat and the eyes glinted slyly from between the folds of flesh. The eyes shone on Ashe and their hue was the same red that had briefly occupied Coll’s sockets. The rest of the creature had no colour; it merely wore an absence of light. Ashe saw the lips, wide and bulbous, open to reveal jagged yellowed teeth. Something in Ashe’s stomach shifted. Then the tongue, as long as a tree, its end forked, dipped down past the lower lip. Two or three drops of saliva dropped onto the ground and sent up a hiss of steam as it touched the snow. The few blades of grass that were briefly uncovered by this process promptly withered and died, turning black as Ashe watched.
The tongue withdrew; Ashe’s stomach roiled. The little eyes peering at her were empty of compassion or intelligence. Then the mouth opened and the creature gave a vast and unholy belch. Ashe saw for an instant down the creature’s throat into its stomach. Beyond that tunnel of a throat and the uneven lake of a stomach Ashe saw, drowning and rotting in bile, a hundred souls or more.
Ashe thought, oh, Gods… Not all of those she saw were dead.
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Alexis stood outside Gowdie’s cell, watching her. She had dropped into sleep as the karg, and as the karg slept and dreamed, its shape shifted repeatedly from woman to beast and back again. This unconscious behaviour fascinated Alexis, and it made her realise just how great a magic – because surely it had to be a magic of some kind – was holding sway over Gowdie.
It had been up to Betany, whether Alexis was to be chained, or not. It was Alexis who had suggested the action: wasn’t it true that Betany still saw her as a potential threat to the peace and quiet of Caer Arianrhod? Betany considered and then rejected that prospect. Bad enough that Gowdie was in chains. Anyone else going about the court in bondage and people would start to talk. “I am going to trust you,” Betany told Alexis. “But should you do anything – big or small – to threaten any part of the population of Caer Arianrhod, I will have your head. Alright?”
Alexis had surprised herself by believing Betany’s words, and by being a little awed by the concrete will she sensed behind them. She said: “What if I tread on a spider of Caer Arianrhod, or a mouse? Does your threat extend even to their continued existence?”
Betany said, “I should think so.”
“You value vermin and insects above me?”
“Spiders are the familiars of an aspect of the goddess, Alexis. And mice? Well, if it came to a choice between …” She looked hard at Alexis. “Any time you want to test out our agreement, you just go ahead and try. I brought you into this court because I believe that Ashe would agree to it, but you remain here in my name. My people come first, Alexis, always. Any time you want to go back to prison in Lascar, you just let me know.”
The conversation had ended there. Alexis had managed a smile and would have gone for a light-hearted closing comment had it not been evident that Betany’s temper was on the verge of being lost for all time. Alexis was free to wander the prison tower and the room that had been put aside for her. She could also walk in the castle grounds, but there the guards eyed here with such evident distrust that even Alexis could only tolerate the atmosphere for the shortest time. As a result she’d ended up spending time with Caer Arianrhod’s only other captive.
For the first days of her confinement, Gowdie hadn’t talked to anyone. She took a vow of silence and stuck by it. She found it hardest of all to face Betany, mostly on account of what she’d done to Ashe. When Gowdie did start talking again it was to confirm what Alexis already believed – that Ashe would have seconded her coming to Caer Arianrhod. After that exchange Gowdie drew up her personal gates, but Alexis gradually wore her down. It was for no altruistic motive: Alexis didn’t much care whether Gowdie felt good, bad or plain suicidal, but she herself was lonely. An embittered shape-shifter, even one that sometimes bit its own tail in anger and frustration, was better company than none, thought Alexis as she sat on a bench outside Gowdie’s cell.
Gowdie shifted again in her sleep, transformed, turned back and fell off her narrow bed. She hit the ground with a cry. Alexis bit her tongue so as not to laugh, and she managed to say in an almost kindly tone, “That sounded as if it really hurt, Gowdie. Are you alright?”
A scuffling noise and Betany’s sister rose to her feet. Her clothes were a mess: Betany kept bringing fresh clothes as well as books and the best food the castle had to offer, but Gowdie had rejected them all. Alone with Gowdie Alexis said, “What is the point in punishing yourself, Gowdie? Why not change that shirt? It looks as if you’ve lived and died in it. You must have been wearing it for at least a week.”
Coming back through the bars, that low voice growled the words: “If I have, it’s no fucking business of yours.” A pause and then, “Two fucking weeks, if you really want to know.”
Alexis grinned at the furious voice. “Two weeks, then. I thought it smelled a bit rank. Can’t you contain your self-reproaches for the sake of the rest of us? It’s hardly what I aspire to: sitting here, thinking that you smell a bit - ” She didn’t get any further. Gowdie had hit the bars so very fast and so very hard, and Alexis just hadn’t been sitting far enough back. Gowdie had Alexis by the collar of her own quite respectably fresh linen shirt and was hauling her toward the bars before Alexis had had time to consider that her last remark had been a little self-indulgent.
“How strange, when you smell like sweet fucking flowers to me, friend.” The words came out awkwardly and without grace. Then Alexis felt the grip Gowdie had on her intensify beyond anything human: Gowdie had again transformed. Alexis was hauled upwards, as the karg balanced on its hind feet, and then was sent flying backwards. Alexis bounced off the corridor wall and grunted as she slid down onto the unforgiving embrace of the stone floor. Five days on and her bruises were still spectacular. Ever since then she had been more cautious in her dealings with Gowdie.
“Where was Ashe headed when the two of you parted company?”
Gowdie scowled. “I don’t know. Somewhere near to the mountains.”
“I’d have thought that Ashe would steer clear of mountains, bearing in mind what happened to her the last time.” Gowdie made a sound that was half laugh, half growl. Alexis noted it and hesitated before speaking again.
“And I’d have thought that you’d stay clear of Caer Arianrhod, seeing as how the person who knocked the shit out of you is now promised to its ruler.”
“Oh, yes.” Alexis was thinking. “But that’s not been announced, has it? I mean, I know that everyone understands the relationship, but it hasn’t been formalised, surely.”
Gowdie came up close to the bars. Alexis maintained her distance. “Who the fuck needs formalising, Mercian? They love one another, can’t you see that?”
“Oh, right. And what a loyal way Ashe has of demonstrating her affection for your sister: running off with you into the woods. It would make anyone wonder just what the two of you got up to in - ” But she did not get the opportunity to finish the thought: sweat broke out across Gowdie’s brow and she shook and twisted in another transformation. Alexis let the words go: it was becoming evident that the constant changes Gowdie’s body was undergoing was doing physical damage. There was no fun, oddly enough, in goading the young woman. Alexis drew a mental line between them and swore – to herself – not to overstep it until Gowdie had control of herself again. Sincerely – and surprising herself with the fact – said: “Gowdie, I’m sorry. I was just trying to wind you up”
The karg ran around the cell, almost bouncing off the walls. The strong claws were beginning to crack as they struck the unyielding stone. Alexis saw this and felt a moment of sickened resolution. “No more goading…” For the first time she was seeing real damage, and as the karg’s fury refused to dissipate, seemed instead to deepen and intensity, Alexis threw caution to the winds. Her own tactics: repeated jokes at Gowdie’s expense, and as many subtle and less-than-subtle insinuations regarding Gowdie and Ashe, now sickened her. This was worse than taking Rhea’s power.
Alexis tugged back the heavy bolt that held locked the door to Gowdie’s cell and stepped inside, pushing the door closed behind her. If the karg wanted to fight, Alexis would oblige her. Wrestling had always been one of her strong points. She waited until the karg lunged and then went down on one knee, meeting the force of its action and absorbing the power. She felt the karg deliberately not use its claws, but all the same, she was entirely outmatched. Alexis was still wondering if she’d lost her mind when her head connected with the edge of Gowdie’s bed and she blacked out. Had she lost her mind? It seemed likely.
***************************************************************
Ashe looked at the blackened grass, which was all the evidence left of a vision she was never going to relate to anybody, living or dead. She felt nausea and hopelessness. Alexis and Calypso had been figures she could meet and fight, but that shape… How the fuck was she going to deal with something that vast, even if she did get to face it some day? What was she to do next?
Fallon had got Coll up and standing. Coll looked empty and dull, as if the entity that had briefly possessed her had taken her strength as it departed. If it had departed. Ashe hoped it had. She had never before encountered anything that filled her with such a sense of revulsion and despair. The revulsion she could understand easily enough, but the despair aspect of the equation was new.
Coll, quiet and a little unsteady on her feet, went with some of the others to collect firewood. Ashe and Fallon soundlessly watched her walk away.
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Betany sat at her desk in the castle office and wondered if stress was making her hallucinate. Going to visit Gowdie in her cell and hour or so before supper would be served, to see whether there was anything – anything in the wide world – that Gowdie might like to eat, she had found the cell door was ajar. For one awful moment Betany thought that Gowdie had broken out. Then she had looked inside the cell and seen the two of them sitting on the floor, arm-wrestling. Alexis had a rather stained bandage tied loosely round her head and looked less ebullient than usual, and Gowdie – for the first time in days – was smiling. As Betany stared wordlessly at them, the two glanced up at her and nodded in a manner that was both cheerful and dismissive. Ah, fuck it, thought Betany. Let someone else sort it out. She turned about and went off to do something less challenging: levitating, maybe, or summoning demons…
Anything else, really…
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All that evening Ashe kept a careful watch on Coll. It had not been hard to persuade Coll to accept her own warm cloak as a covering – the night was very cold and Coll looked half-starved with it - but it was a matter of hardship for Ashe to give up another of Betany’s presents to her, even on a temporary basis. Ashe was missing Betany’s embrace more with each passing day, and the cloak smelled of her lover’s scent; it was a real pleasure to curl up beneath it each night. But Coll needed a little comfort, and it was the best that Ashe could offer. Had she understood the sacrifice involved, Coll might have accepted with a little more grace. As it was she only grunted something and turned over so that she faced away from Ashe. It was a very clear and utterly unsubtle dismissal and for a single moment Ashe thought about removing the cloak and throwing the kid out into the snow. Then she thought again, took a deep breath and retired to her own bed, some little way off, feeling cold and irritable.
Fallon sat for some time, watching Ashe. She didn’t know about the saga of the cloak, but she was good at recognising kindness. After long personal debate she had decided that Ashe was alright. She might be odd - she was pretty weird – but she was alright. Fallon waited until the others were asleep before creeping over to Ashe’s side.
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How odd that I should end up in here with her. I thought I’d hate her; she is my enemy, after all, and did the Gods alone know what damage to that wise-woman of Ashe’s, and yet I don’t hate her. For the first week I was in here, after her arrival, she drove me half mad. When we did finally come to blows I had the advantage and I knew it. But we’re alike in some ways; I know that Ashe felt there to be some kind of parallel between the two of them, but Alexis and I have points in common. For one thing, we’re both fighters, bred to that and little else besides. But Betany has always treated me as an equal, and I don’t think Calypso ever did with Alexis.
Alexis has only just begun talking about Calypso. I hadn’t realised just how long they’d been together, or that she had thought – in common with Ashe with Laure – that she would be her own lover’s final choice. I wonder what Laure is like. Ashe was with her for years, and Calypso evidently found her good enough company to want to bed her as part of a merger between their two countries. Alexis is so irritable on the subject that I suspect Laure to be very desirable. Ashe never mentioned her, and nor did I, even when I was trying to wind her up. Ashe and I will always fight: together or against each other. I don’t envy Betany her new companion, but it makes me burn to see them together.
When Betany and I were growing up, I remember someone asked me if I minded being born second. Funnily enough, it was something for which I was fucking grateful, believe me. I couldn’t take all the fucking responsibility, let alone the whole court thing, and trying to look after a country… I would have made a crap leader and I know it. Good leaders don’t beat the shit out of the first person who annoys them, for one thing. Alexis has begun hinting at something I don’t think I’ve ever heard about… It sounds strange to me; in our country there is nothing strange in two children being born to a mother, and there’s no stigma attached to that. But in Mercia, it seems, that is not the case.
I beat Alexis at arm-wrestling three times out of four. She claims exhaustion. Maybe I should be generous, and let her win half the time at least.
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“May I talk to you?” Fallon had dragged over her bedroll to Ashe’s side.
“Sure.” Ashe propped herself up on one elbow. She was only half awake and her head was far from clear. Rather vaguely she asked, “What did you want to talk about?”
“Coll.”
“Oh.” Ashe heaved a sigh. She’d had more than enough of Coll, but she was nothing if not civil. “Right. Coll. Wake me up if I start to drift. And before you start asking questions, you should know that as I’ve never seen anyone possessed before. I probably know less than you.”
“I don’t understand why it happened to her,” said Fallon. “She’s just not that important. Her family are well-off and well-to-do, but that’s as far as it goes. Why would someone – something – do that to her? No. It’s clear as anything: someone just used Coll to try and communicate with you, Ashe. What are you that you’d have enemies that powerful?”
What am I? Who am I? Ashe sighed. My enemies? No-one, really. Well, half a dozen and they’re all dead. Well, injured, anyway. She said only, “I don’t even have a well-to-do family. Indeed, until recently I haven’t had any family at all, to speak of. As to my most recent past, I fought in a battle and now I live in Caer Arianrhod. That’s all there is to me.”
“I’ve heard about Caer Arianrhod, but I’ve never seen it. Is it a fine place?”
Ashe had had a momentary vision of Caer Arianrhod as it had been on the day that they’d left, with sunlight sparking off the edge of the million or so flints from which the castle had been built. The bright and almost unreal green of the private garden just below the tallest tower, where Betany often sat to consider matters of court and government. The dark wood of the benches that were set into the wall just beneath the mullioned windows, and the polish that a thousand years of sitting had brought about. The explosion of fan-tailed doves that walked about the turrets, billing and cooing. The fine rooms that were packed with supplies for the castle and the city: and the good smells that climbed into the air from the kitchen chimneys. For a moment Ashe would have given the world to be back there, sitting on the opposite side of a fine fire to Betany, or walking with her. Or just plain lying next to her in the fine broad wooden bed that had come to feel like a island in a very dark sea. She drew a deep breath and said, “Yes. It is. Perhaps one day you’ll see it.”
Fallon looked at Ashe with an expression that was a little like pity; Ashe the rather slow pupil, struggling to keep up with the day’s lesson. “You must know that I can’t, Ashe. Not if I’m taken in to learn the Word of the Red Temple. You must know their rules: I’ll never spend another night under a roof after I’ve completed their training and gone back into the wider world. Unless of course, I’m not accepted. Then I suppose I might.”
Ashe said, “What’s the big thing about the temple? I mean, I know that you’re all headed there, and I understand that it’s something of a privilege to be accepted as an apprentice there, but I don’t get why going there means you won’t ever get to see Caer Arianrhod, or indeed, why you can’t ever sleep under a roof again. What does the temple demand of you? Total faith? Complete devotion? Blind obedience?” Toward the end of the list Ashe’s tone was becoming barbed. Fallon gave her a another humouring smile.
“You know nothing about it? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t sound so surprised. It’s just that I’ve never been with anyone who hasn’t built their whole life around the teachings of the - ”
Ashe shook her head violently. “No! Please! Forgive me the impatience but please don’t give it the whole title again. If you do I think something inside my skull is going to give. Just call it the temple.”
Fallon said, “We cannot. None of us can.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Ah, look, Ashe, if you were trained in the field of healing, if you worked on someone who had had an arrow shot halfway through their arm, would you amputate that arm to enable you to remove the arrow? That is how it is with us and the Word of the Red Temple.” Ashe was fighting a losing battle to keep her patience. Since the earlier vision she had been feeling more and more certain that she was not going to like the temple if and when she finally reached it. The strange, almost formless figure she had seen might just have been made of bricks. If a temple could be made animate, it might have looked like that vast and hungry being. But only Ashe had experienced the vision. She looked at Fallon, and the girl said, “You could not be expected to understand. It is only that I thought you must be in possession of some kind of power… ”
“That what?”
“I can’t understand why someone of your age should be so ignorant of such a thing. How can it be that you have never heard of it? Hero accepted you into our party. You must have power or she would never have done so. I admit that… I admit that I am not sure what power it is that you possess: I haven’t seen any evidence of it. But it must be there. Are you a seer, perhaps?” Seeing the look on Ashe’s face and the one elevated eyebrow she quickly added, “or if not a seer, something similar? Perhaps you are gifted with medicines. Although…”
“Although if I was gifted in medical issues, I’d hardly need Coll half-drugging me to keep me going. And what are those leaves, by the way? I’ve been walking round all day as if I’d drunk perle. Fallon, I don’t possess any kind of power. Sorry.”
Fallon was clearly confused, as much as the dim light from the fire let show. “Then why did Hero ask you to join us?”
“Maybe she just has impeccable manners,” Ashe muttered. Loud enough for Fallon to hear she said, “Maybe she sees something in me that isn’t really there.”
“What position do you hold in Caer Arianrhod?” Fallon asked the question so very seriously that Ashe had to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning from ear to ear: all that she could think of was Betany and Calliope and their first very wild and intensely happy shared nights together. “Some sort of wandering ambassador?”
Ashe considered this last. “I don’t have a title,” she said. “But I guess if I had one, that doesn’t sound so unsuitable. Mind you: I hardly represent Caer Arianrhod. It’s my home, now. I suppose you could say that I’ve been adopted by it, and its leader.”
“So what are you doing so far from home?” Ashe wondered the same thing. Should she just say: because I’m clearly nuts? She sighed. Fallon heard the sigh and misinterpreted it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be very tired.”
“A little,” Ashe admitted. She wanted to know more about the temple, but it was clearly not the time. To her surprise, Fallon suddenly rolled over and came to rest against Ashe’s side. Fallon wriggled herself into a comfortable position, resting her head on Ashe’s arm, and went straight to sleep. It was a little like being pinned down by a kitten, and Ashe was helpless. Fallon’s head was pillowed on her good arm, and her injured hand was never going to be able to support her if she struggled to lift Fallon clear. Bemused and a little sad, Ashe lay back. She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to clear her thoughts and lighten her mood. She did not want to dream of that earlier vision. Something told her that it would not be a dreamless sleep that awaited her. She only hoped it might be.
***************************************************************
It did not long for the message to be taken to Rhea. Betany had thought to word it herself, but Gowdie insisted that it was her job, and that she could better explain the situation. Betany didn’t argue: she was just glad that Gowdie had something to do.
But it was a strange and painful image, Gowdie sitting at a table in her room, her chains clanking gently as she wrote. She had refused to have her metal constraints replaced with ones of rope. “Rope I could bite through,” she said. “But I’ll think about it, once Rhea has come.”
It wasn’t the only message to be carried from Caer Arianrhod that day. Betany had sent messages to Arkana and to Teinne, of Rath Bel, asking if they had witnessed any negative or inexplicable changes within their own country She asked them to watch out for any changes and suggested – without being too definite – that something less than good was possibly creeping through the world.
She wanted Ashe back. Betany could accept that Ashe needed to be somewhere else, but from a personal viewpoint, she just wanted Ashe home. She handed the newly-written scrolls to her messengers and went back to see how Gowdie was getting on with Alexis. Hopefully Gowdie hadn’t killed and eaten her. That really would be bad.