Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Seven
The next day they reached the Red Temple. Ashe was relieved and nervous in tandem. She was also almost insanely relieved that Coll and Fallon were behaving as normal, and not as they had in her dreams of the night before. That morning the group had brewed the usual saffron tea, and eaten little: Hero had been keen for them to move on. The Temple – she said – was only hours away. Something of Hero’s fervour informed the others.
It was mid-afternoon when Ashe, walking fast and setting a pace the others were pushed to maintain (she was desperately avoiding Coll and Fallon), climbed a jagged path, crested a snow-packed rise and stopped dead. The sky was the colour of Lascan poppies and the clouds were countries-huge, vast and solid and holding back the blue. Far beneath her – and miles and miles away – was the solid green of the fir-trees and the off-white skeletons of the young birch. Suddenly visible up close and ahead of her, another mile or two away and high on the mountain, stood the Red Temple. The world became suddenly very uncomplicated.
For an instant – or a lifetime – on first seeing the Temple, Ashe had been blasted out of her usual life and taken somewhere far away, somewhere either up in the clouds or down in the centre of the earth. She felt half sick and slightly dizzy, scared and excited and hopeful all at once. It was as if someone had come up out the Temple to greet Ashe and welcome her home. Someone like Betany, perhaps, though this figure had no recognisable features. Someone strong and fine and utterly without ambiguity of any sort. For a moment Ashe would have happily have died, had she been able to maintain that sensation up to her final breath. She was free and she was floating and she was….
..suddenly hauled back to earth as the others came crowding up, pointing and shouting excitedly. Coll and Fallon pinned Ashe down as finely as if they’d crucified her. Coll was on her right, a hand on Ashe’s shoulder (it was painfully easy to slip on the hard-packed snow) and Fallon was reaching for and grabbing tight hold of Ashe’s right hand (it was all so exciting). It was like being wakened from the finest dream whilst spending one’s final night in a damp cell, and Ashe burned at the loss of it. Forget Gowdie’s bite: for an instant Ashe felt herself capable of ripping out the throats on either side of her. Forget the visit, forget the dreams of the group: Ashe wanted the Temple to herself.
For a second she felt not quite human.
Shaking herself like a cat fresh in from the pouring rain, Ashe freed herself of her young jailors and reached down for a double handful of snow. Then she pressed her face into that bitter cold, the first moment of which was numbness, the second, pain. The snow spat out its poison and Ashe was free again, cold and dizzy and confused. Her head was spinning and her stomach was churning. Her limbs felt heavy and awkward and as the others jolted forward she tried to stick still. Not possible… Coll and Fallon took her hands and pulled her on. Ashe looked again at the Temple and this time she saw it stripped of its coat, saw it for the exoskeleton of the vast beast that it was; a vast red and black beast that stood on four raw feet with its vast bloody head thrown back as if swallowing something. Or preparing to eat. Ashe looked helplessly at the others, searching for some proof that she wasn’t the only poor bastard to have seen the Temple for what it was. The faces of them all were lit with smiles of excitement, of anticipation or delight. Sunlight caught the distant windows and brought them into vivid relief. To Ashe those windows were just the fiercely burning eyes of the monster.
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When I was very young I went mad. It wasn’t an overnight thing; it took just over a week, and it all began because I could not sleep. This comes to mind now because I’ve been back on that same treadmill. The good news is, I’ve suddenly realised what to do with Calypso’s one-time lover. She’ll serve a purpose both gratifying and intensely useful. The answer to that conundrum only struck me last night, and it was a very prosaic awakening. Well, it does not seem that way to me, but I’m fresh from a release of my own private hell – a seemingly endless week in which I could not, did not, sleep. I can’t say that I was beginning to lose my mind: I lost that long ago.
Simple insomnia first struck me down when I was just a kid. Then the experience sent me mad. To suffer from it again, and for as long as a week, has been a very… profound lesson. I had forgotten how bad it could be. I don’t understand where it came from, or why, but it began just over a week ago. It had been a commonplace day, namely one in which I spent time doing as much as was within my remit, my power, doing all that was allowed me (just as I have done since my very existence was acknowledged to the world), learning all that I could, making what preparations are currently within my remit, and stoking the furnaces of anger, resentment and potential change within the hearts of my people.
By the time I retired to this room I was tired to the point of exhaustion, and I fell onto my bed and drew the covers over me like someone rejoining a lover. Not that I’d know, obviously, but the parallel still worked – I do have an imagination, after all – but I could not sleep. The instant I rolled onto my back, settled my head comfortably onto the pillow and drew the covers up to my chin (it had suddenly grown much colder: I think autumn is on its way), it was not sleep that washed over me but formic acid that flowed into me, insinuating itself into my blood stream and commencing the process of driving me out of my mind.
Thoughts came in and ran round and round inside my head until I could not bear it, until I tore up the covers of the bed as I twisted and turned. Unforgiving, unrelenting and unloving hands came at me and dragged me to and fro. I struggled like a fish out of water. It would not let me go. The muscles in my legs tightened and tightened until I was forced out of bed to pace back and forth until my strength failed me and I dropped down onto the uncompromisingly cold and unyielding ground. No wonder that sleep deprivation works so well as a method of torture, I saw: truly that way madness lay.
When I was a kid, and this happened to me, I was on the verge of suicide (I had no idea of how, just that I must), when something just… happened. Something I did not expect, and I had taught myself to expect everything. All that time ago, when I first began to realise that not everyone lived as I had to, trapped in a world without freedom, sunlight or human touch, I had sworn to myself that I would steel myself to live without the limiting and belittling emotions that seem to run everyone else ragged. If I had to live out my life as a prisoner, then that prison would exist only in the minds of my jailors. The world in which I lived would be the world I had chosen, one from which all others – great and small – would be excluded. I worked and polished my world until it shone like gold, and the wealth and variety of said world equalled and excelled everything that lay beyond the walls of solid stone. Using books and parchments I set the boundaries of my kingdom. I peopled it with my thoughts. What faith I had forced up temples in my own honour; the rivers that flowed through the land would eventually ease through me. I would be their source and their attainable desire.
That was when I began to use my mind. Like someone who had lived out a sloth-like existence, going from bed to couch and back again, taking dinner on a tray, letting the cobwebs grow around me, I saw that I had become sluggish and dull. The first day that I saw that the walls that held me in were of my own making, I set my mind to pace, each day moving further and further out. I put up my hands to the walls of my thoughts and pushed. I remember that day well: I remember dropping into bed, exhausted, and so excited by the day that I could not wait for the next to ensue. On waking I was as fulfilled as a child who has slept with a newly-given present beside them, placed so that it might be the first image of the day. I was in a room with barred windows and no-one knew my name, and I was so… happy.
It was clear to me from very early on that I had a real talent for power, and once I had learned how to channel it, I progressed – steadily – until the day that my sister died, and I came into my inheritance. Like a drowned woman I lay on the narrow bed until they needed me, and came to breathe fresh air into my lungs. They did not know that by then I did not need air.
I know what I am going to do. Oh, this certainty feels like fresh rain falling after drought. I have a million other plans, but I have at last decided what I intend doing to the Lascan princess. It’s not a matter of revenge, certainly: Calypso made her own bed – so to speak – and lay in it until booted out by circumstance and stupidity. Appropriate. Neat. Yes. I can almost envisage the scene. I can’t wait to see the look on Ashe’s face.
It seems ridiculous that I can have come this far, and done so much, without any sexual life at all. Oh, there have been nights when I’ve woken from dreams so full and vital that they had me waking, breathless, hungry, wanting, but I’ve always been able to get past them. And that’s what I told myself over and over again. Until last night, when I could not sleep. Until last night, when again I could not sleep, I sent for my servants and I told them: bring somebody to me. Someone young. Attractive. Powerless.
And they did. Such is power.
Tonight I think that I will be able to sleep.
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The main gate described a semicircle and let them in. Ashe saw that the courtyard – which was extensive – stretched much further than she had expected. Standing with her back to the gate she looked toward the Temple proper, which was flanked by two shorter, squatter towers. The windows and the doors of the three structures were keyhole all.
The construction of the place must have taken years and years, thought Ashe, looking around. Her head was aching and her throat burned, but she had her reaction to the Temple more or less under control. There was no apparent (visible) reason for the almost blinding reaction that she’d felt on first seeing the fucking thing. From a distance the place had seemed palatial; now it seemed only mildly grand. All around her Ashe saw the usual marks of age and hard usage that marked – for example – Caer Arianrhod. No castle, palace or stronghold that had stood for that long could be free of stain; it was not expected. And Ashe noted the simplicity of life within the high walls (why were they so high?), and the plainness of the clothes worn by the Temple inmates. Their address was equally unimpressive but they were (so far) friendly and welcoming enough. Ashe had no earthly reason for the chills that had settled over her the moment she stepped into the courtyard, but they would not lose their hold. The sensation was not unfamiliar: she’d first encountered it – all those years ago – when she had first entered Lascar. Ashe frowned.
So what the hell was bothering her so much? Ashe watched as a sturdy (plump) acolyte went toward Coll and Fallen, her hands held up and open in simple (guileless?) greeting. There were more of the acolytes around: they were for the main part, unremarkable. These were not aesthetes, monsters or madwomen, but young red-clad acolytes who seemed honestly pleased to meet the party of travellers, even Ashe, who should not have been part of the party at all.
The greater part of Ashe – the spiritual aspect, at least – had not entered at the gate. The greater part had taken on board the image of the Temple as a giant, skinless, devouring thing, spun around and run like hell for Caer Arianrhod. The remainder of Ashe – in part that which had come to have a kind of compassion toward Fallon and Coll – had walked on, mechanically, with the rest of the party. Said mechanical progress then held her back as the others were greeted. The discomfort she felt was almost an old friend: through the years as Laure’s companion Ashe had become used to being overlooked, if not downright ignored. Visitors would take Ashe at Laure’s estimation, and if Laure thought Ashe well worth ignoring, then so did they. This gave the young companion a great deal of freedom, whilst condemning her to feel like a second-rate citizen most of the time.
Laure’s education of Ashe had pretty much fucked up the young woman’s sense of worth; it was going to take more than a couple of resurrections to put that to rest. Now Ashe could not force herself forward, could not smile and nod and exchange easy comments as all the others could. Even Coll, who could have won awards for churlishness, glowed pretty well in the mid-morning light of the Red Temple.
Even Hero, who might have helped Ashe integrate, seemed to have forgotten their newish companion, so fascinated was she by the Temple.
Ashe was beginning to lose the qualities she had emerged with after meeting Calypso and Alexis in battle. With each passing day – and a growing distance from Betany – Ashe was slipping back into her old persona, losing what ground she’d gained. Some part of her felt unequal to the demands of the Red Temple, but it was too late to leave: the gates had been closed and bolted behind them and the guards on duty eyed Ashe with a sardonic indifference. There was nothing else for it: she was in for the night.
She attempted to conceal her feelings of awkwardness by examining the designs and stories that had been carved onto boards and then hung within the walls. These, she soon saw, were both educational and decorative, for they illustrated the story of the world’s creation, when the twelve Guardians had emerged – fully grown and knowledgeable – from the first drop of rain to fall to earth. The Guardians had then divided up between themselves the elements and the seasons, the night and day.
Ashe looked at the representations of the four elements and felt an easing of her worries. She put out a hand to the depictions of water, drawing her fingertips along the outline of the waves. Perhaps she was mistaken: perhaps life within the Temple really was life-affirming, rather than the stuff of nightmares. The reflection drew her back to thoughts of the previous night’s dream, and she began to puzzle over them again. She certainly hadn’t wanted to respond to either Fallon or Coll (why had she detected something familiar in Coll’s demeanour in the dream?), whereas if Betany and Calliope had been there… But Ashe was never going to see Calliope again, she was painfully sure of that. And Betany – oh, Ashe was missing her more and more. She wanted to be back in Betany’s company. In her arms and in her bed, too, but that was a secondary consideration. Ashe mused for a moment, thinking of her lover. The secondary consideration floated through her body as well as her head and she grinned for the first time that day. Oh, Gods, how she missed Betany. She almost missed Gowdie, and for a while she wondered why Gowdie hadn’t stayed with her. Even looking at her hand didn’t bring back that memory straight away. Then she remembered, and was almost frightened at having forgotten, if only for the shortest period of time.
The carving really was very well done. Ashe stepped back a pace or two to take in more of the whole picture and as she did so, bumped into one of the Temple women. This one was different; her robes were black, not red, and there was something different in her demeanour, too. She woman looked appraisingly at Ashe then said, coolly, “You seem to have mislaid your companions.”
“Not exactly.” Ashe shook her head. “I met up with Hero and the others on the road, but I’m not actually with them. I’m not here to become an apprentice. I’m too old, for one thing.” The woman nodded to the dirty bandage the traveller still wore. Ashe nodded. “That was why they suggested I come with them. They said that this was a place of excellent healers.
“The gates are closed until tomorrow. You can sleep in the stables.” The woman looked hard at Ashe, then beckoned to a very thin and badly dressed young girl who ran across to them like a kite recoiled from the sky. “She’ll deal with your hand and show you the way to the stables. You won’t need this, I think.” At that she flicked the dirty bandage loose, making the wound smart and bringing fresh blood to the surface. “This I’ll burn. I think it’s served its purpose.” She nodded curtly and walked away.
Ashe stared after her. So this was the celebrated hospitality of the Red Temple? She glanced down at the little figure beside her. This child was either mute or very shy, and Ashe was easy with either. She said, “It doesn’t need much doing. Just another clean rag would…” She broke off and drew in a sharp breath as she felt the tight, sharp suggestion of a headache embed itself inside her skull and behind her left eye. Ashe had never outgrown the headaches that had on occasion half-blinded her (something had irritated Laure to excess), and it felt as if this would be a particularly bad one. She put up a hand to her head to press a knuckle against the pain when a second jolt of white agony sliced through her and she dropped to her knees on the ground. Apparently someone had just set off a firework inside her head, at the same time that they looped a chain around her forehead and began to tighten it. Involuntary tears filled her eyes, and when she blinked them away and the pain struck again, she saw, by the main gate, the woman who had first spoken to her. This woman held in her hands a short piece of fabric – Ashe’s old bandage that the woman had said she’d burn – which she was twisting into a tensed and misshapen rope. With each movement of her hands her lips moved in some kind of incantation, the substance of which Ashe could easily guess at, seeing as each manoeuvre sent a new jolt of pain through her head.
No. Enough. Pain cleared Ashe’s general fogginess. She reeled across the courtyard like a woman drunk or dying, and grabbed her attacker’s wrists at the same time as she brought her forehead down across the bridge of the woman’s nose. It hurt: of course it did, but it hurt less than the headache and besides, it really did hurt the other woman more. The grip broken, the pain stopped instantly.
The woman screamed. Blood burst from her nose. When she next lunged forward, Ashe was ready for her, deflecting the rush and tripping her.
“Murah!” A new voice cut across the debate and the courtyard. There was a sound from behind Ashe and she spun around, one hand resting on the top of her sword. Odd that it should have taken pain to wake up the inner Ashe, but pain had brought much-needed clarity and Ashe had shifted into fighting mode, deciding that the Word of the Red Temple had to be fucking rudeness, because that was all she’d met with so far.
Someone came running up, another woman in black, her robe tied with a silver belt, a woman of about Ashe’s own age, with hair so blond it was almost white, and strange, grey-flecked green eyes. She evidently possessed a high degree of authority because at her approach Murah stopped dead, her face white with fury except for where red patches of shame stood out on either cheek. But just before the newcomer came in close enough to touch, the woman made one last effort to have Ashe. She came in fast and dirty, her fingers outstretched and her nails potential claws. Ashe sidestepped, twisted and threw an arm-lock around Murah’s throat. The Word of the Red Temple, huh? Some word. Some fucking Temple. Murah tried to kick back against her captor’s shins and the new pain made Ashe tighten her grip. She was beginning to choke her enemy, and that suited Ashe just fine.
“Please don’t hurt her.” That was something Ashe hadn’t expected to hear. Next moment there was a hand on her shoulder, its grip firm but in no way aggressive. “I beg your forgiveness. This should never have happened to a visitor to the Word of the Red Temple. Murah may be well-known for her inhospitable manner but even she does not usually take matters this far. I’m Janu, it is my job to oversee the treatment of the new arrivals.”
Murah’s body was growing rigid: Ashe’s arm was locked and would not flex. “Please,” said the other, again. “I think you’re about to kill her.”
That might have been Ashe’s idea, but all the same, she relaxed her hold. Murah dropped to the ground, coughing, one hand to her throat. She tried to spit some last insult toward Ashe, but could not form either saliva or words. Only a growl issued forth. Ashe said, “One more… any fucking thing from you, and I take your head off.”
“I cannot believe that you would treat one of our guests in such a manner.”
Ashe looked toward Janu and said, “I’ve been offered a night’s accommodation in the stables and generous as that clearly is, I’d rather take my chances with the beasts of the mountains. Would you be good enough to open the gate and let me out?”
“A night in the stables? Murah, I thought that you had learned to temper your natural manner with something approaching humility, but I see that I was wrong.” Again to Ashe, “Please: accept a meal and a night’s stay with us to make up for Murah’s behaviour.”
“No, thanks.” Ashe was beginning to remember herself. How salutary that she’d needed pain to clear her mind again. “Just tell my friends goodbye, and thank them for their help and company. They were in such a hurry to reach the Temple proper that I didn’t get the chance to speak before.”
Janu was clearly distressed. She said, “It would be a considerable disgrace to us if you were to leave the Word of the Red Temple believing that Murah is… typical of our order.”
Ashe noticed, in a corner of the courtyard, half-hidden by shadows, the girl who had been ordered to treat the injured hand. It seemed to Ashe that the girl was nodding, a finger pressed to her lips, as if to silence Ashe’s demurral and encourage her to stay, but Ashe didn’t want to oblige. She said, “Thanks, but I’d rather just be on my way.”
Murah was not enjoying Ashe’s continued presence within the Temple grounds. Back on her feet, dusty and dishevelled, the expression on her face was poisonous. Ashe thought: Gods, even bloated toads don’t look that ugly. She felt tiredness invade her senses. She didn’t want to go on walking but she honestly didn’t want to stay: forget about being tired and dirty and fed up with incomprehensible women and lunatics.
“Murah?” Janu stared grimly at the other woman. “You have brought the honour of the Red Temple low. You know what is expected of you.”
With a face so contorted with hatred, it looked as if she had been struck down by lockjaw, Murah knelt on the ground and began to scoop up dust. Ashe stared, not understanding, until Murah began filling her mouth with the stuff. Ashe couldn’t believe it. “Oh, please!” she said, horrified, grabbing Murah and forcing her upright. Dust was coating Murah’s teeth and lips.
Ashe saw Fallon and Coll coming toward her, and Janu made good use of the moment. “These must be your friends. Please, tonight you will all be my honoured guests. First the bathing house and then the hall, where you will sit with me at the top table. I will take no refusal.”
Oh, gods, not more demonstrations of power. Ashe wanted to say, “This is fucking ridiculous,” but she was just too tired. Besides, some ambassador she’d prove to have been, if Betany ever got to hear about this one. “Alright,” she said. “A bath would be very nice. A meal, too, I guess. Thank you.”
“Good.” Janu beamed at the three of them.
Ashe sent Coll and Fallon on ahead. She glanced up at the sky. The day was well-advanced: a new moon was up, a fingernail paring in a blue-velvet sky. She made a quiet and private vow: to be home before the next full moon. Ashe suddenly realised that she was hungry, and wondered what they’d have for supper. Hopefully not Murah.
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When Alexis and Rhea met by accident just inside the gateway to Caer Arianrhod it would have been hard to say who felt the most unsettled. The last time they’d met had been after Calypso and Alexis stole Rhea’s magic from her, leaving her unable to talk, dress herself or feed herself. Things had changed since then: Rhea had come to see that her belief in her own powers had been inappropriate. Since returning to her normal state Rhea had been taking nothing for granted. She had worked hard on establishing her own defences, at home in the tower or out of it. She did not want – ever – to feel so powerless again. Better an immediate death than that.
Alexis felt a sense of embarrassment and anger when she walked into the wise- woman at the gates of Caer Arianrhod. Later she thought that she should have been better prepared for the encounter: ever since the appeal for help had gone from Gowdie to the wise-woman of Lascar, Alexis had wondered if Rhea would come, and wondered how things would stand between them if she did.
As it turned out, face to face with Rhea, Alexis felt painfully reduced by time and circumstance. When they had last met it had been Alexis who had possessed the greater power. Now the balance had shifted, and Rhea was in control. She was so solidly reinforced against another such attack that Alexis felt useless and weak.
Betany had ordered for half a dozen of her force to accompany Rhea to Caer Arianrhod, but when the troop had arrived at the foot of Rhea’s tower on the day of departure she had protested that a single companion was enough. Once upon a time she would have been content to travel without an armed guard, in the company of none but her apprentice. But Ardan’s attentions had wandered from the tower and the magic within it. It had been the night of dreams that had made her question her own resolve: Ardan had been badly frightened. And since then she had spent more and more time with Laure, until it seemed that she could not bear to leave the young queen alone for more than half an hour. It seemed to Rhea that Ardan’s protectiveness was becoming a positive hazard. In fact, if Rhea hadn’t known Ardan’s attentions for what they were, she would have sworn that the girl was falling in love with the new queen. That would have been disastrous.
“It was good of you to come.” A moment of silence. “You are very welcome to Caer Arianrhod.” Alexis felt she had to say it. The words fell clumsily from her lips. She had no idea of how to follow up that very short speech.
“Thank you.” Rhea observed that Alexis had lost some of that rather brutal self-confidence. A good thing, too. She wondered if Alexis had lost anything else. Magic, perhaps? When she put out a hand and when Alexis – a little unsettled – accepted it, Rhea could feel nothing but the hot rush of emotions within. Had it been that final fight with Ashe? Rhea hoped that it had been that fight with Ashe. That would not only make Rhea safe, it would mean that Ashe had absorbed some of that vital force.
Thinking of Ashe brought the words to her lips. Hadn’t she expected to be greeted by her former friend? Alexis seemed to have expected that question. She said, “Ashe is not here at present or she would have come to greet you.” She didn’t know what else to say, but Rhea seemed content. A short pause and she began to lead Rhea toward the castle proper. Alexis said, “Ashe has been gone some time. She and Gowdie…” she hesitated. She and Gowdie what? Oh, fuck it, thought Alexis. I’m sure I don’t know. “It might be better if Betany explains the situation. May I take you to her?” When Rhea hesitated, Alexis said, a little stiffly, “I know that you must think I’m some kind of monster…”
“I did,” said Rhea, cheerfully. “But I don’t presently. I hope I will meet with no cause to change that opinion. Other monsters are apparent, now...” She looked hard at the young woman, and the bright centres of her eyes seemed to glitter. “Like you, Alexis, I have changed my conceptions. Something extremely powerful and utterly without weakness approaches us. Your worst depredations will look like leaves in a storm before this blast.”
Alexis said nothing. Truly there was nothing to say. She felt a little better, but a little sad, too. “If it makes you feel any easier, I also see you as the woman Ashe defeated,” added Rhea. She smiled happily at Alexis and added, “That was definitely one of my better days.”
Alexis grinned. She couldn’t help herself. And Rhea grinned back, and a kind of balance was achieved between them.
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The bathing house had been nice enough. Coll and Fallon didn’t ask questions about Ashe’s assault upon a member of the Red Temple’s staff, for which Ashe was grateful.
It had felt wonderful to immerse herself in hot water, and get properly clean for the first time in… Ashe didn’t want to think about how much time had elapsed since her last bath. It was one of the drawbacks to wandering: you had to travel light if you weren’t riding, and even then you could hardly harness a full travelling wardrobe to your mount. The only advantage to travelling with someone else was that they’d smell as bad, and not be in any position to criticise. After a few days of hard walking/riding, you’d both be pretty pungent. Gowdie, on account of the karg aspect, always carried about her a strong odour of musk. Ashe had first found the smell overwhelming but had by slow degrees become accustomed to it.
They’d been met and escorted in to dinner. Coll and Fallon were in immediate awe of their host, who treated Ashe with a degree of courtesy that made her uncomfortable. Though the hall in which they sat to eat was pleasant enough, Ashe couldn’t relax. She didn’t know if it was the excessive subservience with which they had been greeted, or the gastronomic decadence of the meal. It might perhaps have been the single glimpse she’d caught of Murah, whose replying stare had burned like ice. At least, Ashe observed, Murah had washed her face clear of dirt. Ashe drank a couple of cups of wine but her appetite had vanished. She made her way through a single hunk of bread, and then took an apple from the dish in the centre of the table. Coll and Fallon, on the other hand, drank far more than they should have done.
Janu didn’t seem to notice that Ashe’s appetite had gone west, mostly – Ashe thought – because of her desire to explain to them, at tedious and extended length, her role as the current leader of the Word of the Red Temple. After the first hour Ashe could feel her smile of polite interest stretched to snapping point: she was clearly not cut out to be anyone’s ambassador. By the end of the meal she would have welcomed death as an alternative to hearing another word on the subject of the Word.
Ashe let her mind wander, and although her gaze remained more or less fixed upon that of her hostess, she was no longer involved in the evening’s entertainment. She was surprised at the singular gloriousness of Janu’s dress: the woman’s robes were heavy with gold thread and what looked like – but could not be – rich jewels. Surely such personal decadence was at odds with what she’d heard about the Red Temple. That polite smile still painted on her face Ashe watched Janu speak though she did not hear a single word.
Looking back on that evening, at a later date, Ashe wondered how she could have failed to see all that was wrong within the Red Temple. When she looked to Coll and Fallon and saw their interest reflected and increased by Janu’s speeches, she wondered what contrary part of her found nothing even faintly worth listening to.
The smell of burning incense, the heat from the fire and the endless voices blended together and served to sicken Ashe, who got suddenly to her feet and left the room in the very real fear that she was about to be ill. Outside, however, plunging her face into a barrel of water, she managed to allay the sense of nausea. Her heart, which had been beating too hard and too fast, eased into its ordinary rhythm. She regarded the clean bright blaze of the stars. They at least were untouched by the appetites inside the hall, and Ashe could see in them no message at all. But then, they’d kept their secrets and their courses, careless and uninvolved, the night that she’d left Lascar for ever. They were hardly likely to change.
Ashe leaned back against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the cold, hard ground. She had closed her eyes and for a moment was drifting when a hand reached up out of the ground to touch her.
Returning from the orbit into which the touch had scared her, Ashe stared in disbelief at the little face that now appeared in the darkness beneath her. The girl who had been ordered to treat her was there, a finger pressed to her lips. She beckoned to Ashe, and Ashe, curious to the last, obeyed the direction.
A flight of narrow stone stairs led down to a hugely long, low room that was lit by a dozen lanterns. All along the wall were placed vast wooden crates, their lids jammed down. In the darkest corner of the room lay a pile of rags to which her small companion retired. This, evidently, was her bed. It seemed rather a comedown after the decadent delights of the great hall, and Janu’s endless speeches.
Ashe sat down on the floor beside the girl and the rag bed. She was confused. She said, “This is where you live?” A nod. Ashe thought: oh, fuck this. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You’re down here in the half-light and they’re all… up there, enjoying themselves. How does that come to be?” She noticed a plate nearby and added, “Looks like the feast you had ran to bread and milk. Would that be right?”
Another nod, and now a shy smile, too. Ashe ran her hands through her hair. “It would be,” she said. Banished from Laure’s company too often to remember, Ashe had eaten the same supper in the palace kitchen. She took one of the lanterns up to a crate. Holding the lantern in one hand she used the other hand to lift the lid. Light reflected on a pile of jewels so deep and so opulent that they made her gasp. In the next crate she found splendid robes. The next held more jewels. Ashe closed the lids, raked back her fringe from her face and sat down on the floor beside the child. The crates ran along the side of the long, low room until they disappeared into the shadows.
“What the fuck is all this?” asked Ashe, stupidly.
The small girl was growing more confident. She put out a small hand toward Ashe and tugged her toward one of the crates crammed with jewels. She reached – with difficulty – inside, and offered a wonderful bracelet, diamonds, emeralds and rubies mixed, to Ashe.
“No,” said Ashe gently. The girl frowned. “It’s very pretty, but I don’t… want anything, thanks.” She took the bracelet from the girl and replaced it in the crate. The girl gestured toward the other containers and Ashe smiled and shook her head. “What the hell is all this?”
The girl turned away and was soon rifling through another crate. Ashe drew a deep breath and waited. This time the girl reached in and drew out a sword. It was a thing of beauty, nicely balanced and with a single bright jewel set into the hilt. She offered it, handle-first, to Ashe, who took it, admired it, and handed it back. She looked into another crate and saw inside it stacks of clothes, mostly capes and cloaks. The girl held out to Ashe a cloak with a fur trim. Ashe shook her head and put her hands behind her back. Still the child came forward, until Ashe had her back to the wall. She put out her hands in a gesture of denial and for a single moment the fur touched her fingers. Ashe shuddered and flung herself away. The girl looked at Ashe again, her expression a blend of anger and surprise. Then she took a deep breath, glanced down at her feet and grew much taller. Another moment and Murah faced Ashe again. “You don’t like the touch of karg fur?” she asked, nastily.
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Rhea sat inside the cell with Gowdie. For some time Alexis had hung about outside, getting in the way of the guards, generally screwing up the detail. Betany took pity on her after a while and took her out a cup of wine. The two sat – oddly – quite close together on one of the stone benches outside the prison. Alexis said, “I have to congratulate you. Caer Arianrhod houses the best prison I’ve ever been in.”
Betany raised her eyebrows. “As a connoisseur of prisons or as a convict?” Alexis laughed out loud. “Well, it was the obvious question to ask.”
“I know it was. Forgive me, it was just funny. I meant… as a prison, seen from the viewpoint of a prisoner.”
“Then or now?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Then, I guess. I mean, I have been held prisoner before.” Betany shrugged her shoulders. “This is the best in terms of construction and humanity, I’d say.”
“Humanity?”
“You’ve had constructed a place to contain people without depriving them of light or warmth or hope. It might be a cage, is what I’m saying, but you can see past the bars.”
Betany looked at Alexis. Alexis had closed her eyes, letting the sun turn her vision to red. “Were you a prisoner for very long?”
“Once or twice it was almost a year. The first time I escaped. The second time Calypso… Calypso bought my freedom.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like. Not just to be a prisoner but to be dependent on someone else for an eventual freedom.”
“Oh, I paid her in skin,” said Alexis. “Ours wasn’t always a reciprocal relationship.”
Now she had Betany’s attention: the leader of Caer Arianrhod had a curiosity about love lives, perhaps because her own had always been so very rich and varied, until more recently, when she had reached the point of not wanting anyone but Ashe. “No?” she asked, trying to keep her tone off-hand.
She needn’t have bothered to play games: Alexis was far from recognising them and besides, she was in a vaguely garrulous mood. Tension was more likely to make Alexis forthcoming than torture. “She had noticed me before I’d ever noticed her. It wasn’t until the second time I was released that I understood. She’d called me to her room that day and I was so fucking scared I could hardly walk straight. I thought she was going to have me executed for costing the royal coffers so much – and more than once – and then she came on to me instead.” Betany tried to imagine the scene – she had after all met Calypso – but it wasn’t possible. “The next morning I went back to my billet – not walking straight for other reasons – in a complete daze. I thought maybe it had been a one off. I remember how uncertain I was: part of me thinking that it would be easier if it never happened again; the rest of me wanting nothing but to be with her.”
Betany smiled. Alexis gave her an embarrassed grin. “That was back in the days before I became a name to be reckoned with. The only thing that changed over time was that every so often I’d find her in bed with someone else.”
Betany said, “That must have been very hard to bear.”
“It’s funny: I was so easy-going about lovers before I had one, but you’re right: it was hard to bear. Of course, if your lover is also the leader of your country you can’t scream at them or try to beat the shit out of them if they go with someone else. Not that I never tried,” she added. “And that time I ended up in the Mercian prison. Believe me, yours really is a million times nicer.”
Alexis fell silent, turning round and glancing in the direction of Gowdie’s cell. Betany found herself wondering what the Mercian captain was like in bed. Alexis said, “I had assumed when she took up with Laure that it would be a temporary thing, but when I think back now I’m not sure. I don’t know if Calypso was what Laure thought she wanted, but they did have something going for themselves. If Laure had joined us on campaign it might have been different. If I hadn’t been sick for so long in Lascar, it might have been different. In retrospect I really don’t know. But there is one certainty…”
Betany waited. After a moment Alexis said, “Ashe was better off with you. Is better off with you. Why do you think she wouldn’t come back with Gowdie?”
The leader of Caer Arianrhod shook her head. “I think that Ashe had either found something she needed to learn more about or… Oh, Gods, I don’t know.”
“You really miss her.” Not a question, a statement.
“More than life.”
A flash of inspiration struck Alexis with such force and immediacy that she nearly fell over. “Let me go and find her.” Betany stared at her. “I know that I came to help out but there’s nothing I can do right now and I’m going half-crazy because of it. Please! Let me find out from Gowdie where Ashe was headed for and I’ll go and find her, and bring her back, make sure she’s alright, stuff like that.” Alexis – now decided on a course of action – looked brighter and more determined than she had in weeks. Betany stared at her, a little awed. “Betany. We both know that I’m here on sufferance only. I can’t bear the waiting. Give me a sword and your consent.”
“You have both.” Betany had made her decision as quickly and as certainly as Alexis had made her offer of help. She dismissed from her immediate thoughts the issue of how Ashe might feel if Alexis – of all the people in the world – turned up to accompany her home. Once upon a time she wouldn’t have considered the suggestion for even a moment, but that was before. Everything had changed. “Go to the armourer’s and get yourself what weapons you need. Take a horse. A good, fast horse. No, perhaps you had better take two. Oh, and take this.” This was the royal signet ring that Betany used to seal her messages. “Otherwise they won’t believe you’re not just stealing the damn horse.” Alexis was already on her feet. “One last thing, Alexis, before you go: talk to Gowdie.”
Alexis was so happy she was almost dancing. Betany had to restrain a smile. Then Alexis said, “Don’t worry: I know what message to give Ashe. Trust me.” Then she was gone, running hard in the direction of Gowdie’s cell. The silence that descended directly afterwards was almost impossible to bear. Betany sighed and turned her face up to the sun.
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Ardan and Laure were looking over the new plans for Lascar. The walls needed better fortification than they were currently receiving and there was much work still to be done to the city itself. At first they had met each day outside their first meeting place, but common sense had quickly dictated a more sensible and less public haunt, and so Ardan made her way – day after day – to what remained of the palace. The hours they spent together almost every day were becoming everything to Ardan. It seemed to her that she spent her time in being with Laure, or remembering having been with her, or anticipating their next meeting. As Rhea would have said, Ardan had it badly; and she was growing sicker day by day.
Ardan was so acutely aware of every aspect of Laure that she could hardly bear it. Her gaze would move from the queen’s very slim fingers as they picked out the outline of some building, marked as it was on the plans, to the fine, soft hair that fell, usually untied and flowing, over Laure’s shoulders. Ardan tried not to look at Laure’s face too often, because her attention was too severely caught by the outlines of Laure’s full mouth. Some part of Ardan’s mind would follow Laure’s speeches about architecture and the life of the spirit world, and she tried very hard to keep her mind on walls and sandstone when all she really wanted to do was to run her tongue gently round the contours of the queen’s mouth. It was a huge relief to her that Rhea had answered the call of Caer Arianrhod: Ardan was entirely sure that the wise woman would neither approve of nor accept her infatuation. And she would have laughed. Ardan was sure of that. Laughed and laughed and then reminded Ardan that Laure was a queen. Not a queen with a country or a completely sane turn of mind, perhaps, let alone a flourishing city, but a queen all the same, and as such a million miles out of Ardan’s league.
It might have relieved Ardan’s feelings a little had she known how similarly Alexis had once felt about Calypso.
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Alexis put on her cloak, stuck her sword into the scabbard at her side and went to Gowdie’s cell. Her steps rang out on the cold stone. She walked briskly, ready to face anger or recrimination, but only honestly afraid of disappointment. But Gowdie didn’t express that. When Alexis approached the cell – Rhea brushed past her in the corridor, either otherwise engaged or just plain tactful – she heard Gowdie’s greeting from a little distance off. “It’s alright. I think I know what you’re off to do.”
Alexis stood at the door that stood heavy wood to waist-height and barred beyond it. Gowdie said, “It’s alright. I asked Rhea to lock it behind her. We both know that I’m getting worse; getting to be more of a risk. If she hadn’t agreed to lock the door I’d have done it myself somehow.”
“Is she going to be able to help you?” Alexis put out her hands to the bars and gripped two of them tightly. The metal felt horribly and finally cold to her touch. “Does she understand what’s going on?”
“She knows something of what’s behind it. It’s the same thing that you feared, or noticed: the reason that you came here. The world has somehow shifted: things are going wrong. Things will go wrong. And there’s nothing that you can do here except maybe get smacked around a little.” Gowdie forced a smile and it looked painful. Alexis sighed.
“I’m going to find Ashe. But you say that you already know that.”
“I don’t know how. Maybe I’m getting a bit more perceptive as the rest of my control disappears. You should go after Ashe. I shouldn’t have agreed to leave her. I don’t know if she’s in trouble already, but I know that sooner of later she will be. Bring her back for Betany, Alexis, please. Bring her back and when you find her, please tell her that I’m sorry about what happened.”
Gowdie came up to the bars. She wore a heavy chain around her waist that went back to the wall, into which it was secured by a vast metal staple. It sickened Alexis to see it. She said, “Is that really necessary?”
“Not yet, perhaps, but soon. It wasn’t Rhea, before you go and beat her up. It was my idea. I get these moments of something like perfect clarity, and then for the shortest time I honestly understand what’s going on. Then they fade. They fade very quickly, Alexis, and they’re coming less and less.” Tears were showing in her eyes and she was too tired to blink them away.
Alexis loosed her grip on the bars and extended a hand into the cell. “Maybe things will be different by the time I get back,” she said. “Maybe you and I…” she broke off. “Do you think it’s possible? With or without the chains: I’m easy.”
Gowdie managed her first smile in days. She said, “I think it would be good.” Then a spasm shook her and she writhed against the drag of the chain. She croaked out, “Please… go… now.” The sound of Alexis’s boots ringing out their departure was the last thing she heard before the next transformation had forced itself upon her. The karg dropped to the floor, growling, snarling, tearing at the chain that held it.