Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Eight
Laure stood at the window of her room in the ruined palace, scowling at the view and thinking about the future. For weeks she had gone about the disordered remains of the city like a ghost, her dirty and ragged dresses dragging through the dust that destruction had left in its wake. There were still servants around the palace – Laure knew that because every so often she saw them – but they were few and far between. There was no-one around to whom she could give orders, but then, there wasn’t anything around to give orders about. The work of construction was going on, and it was clear that Lascar would again have a palace – just a less remarkable one.
Ardan came to visit Laure every day and the queen wasn’t entirely sure if she was happy with the arrangement. Ardan, who was abundantly kind and almost worryingly patient, with something in her manner that suggested a growing affection for Laure. An affection bordering on infatuation. Laure sighed. Infatuation was of no real use to her. Passion was what she needed. Infatuation was simply too… tame to be of use. Anyone can be infatuated.
It was remarkable just how badly things had turned out. When she’d first met Calypso, Laure had heard a click, as though of the mechanics of the world working as they should. Had she been pressed for detail on the moment, it had actually occurred round about the time that Calypso had wooed her into bed and was fucking her. The latter story allowed more margin for retelling: Laure didn’t talk about her sex life to anyone.
Oh, and she missed the sex. Sex with Calypso had been unlike that with anyone else. The Gods knew, she didn’t even have to see Calypso, let alone touch her, to feel the warmth of desire. All she had to do was remember. In the sweet and dizzy time that came before the announcement and the beginning of the whole fucking mess, she had been happy. She was deceiving her mother, Jura and of course, Ashe. In a sense she was also deceiving Calypso – not very successfully as Calypso’s spies had brought her up to date on Laure’s sex life – but that had never bothered her. But what had gone so unutterably wrong? Hell: there was no justice in the world. One minute she was ruler of Lammor in her mother’s place, her new lover at her side, the next she was watching Lascar collapse.
She had subsided into a kind of daze when the queen died. It had not been the breakdown that was generally agreed to be only appropriate: people like Laure don’t break down because they don’t have the capacity. What she was reacting to was the sudden and hideously unfair cost attached to everything she’d done. Ashe had had a pretty good time of it for years, getting room and board at first, and then the finest education and then, Gods, Laure herself.
Why the fuck couldn’t the little foreigner have upped and gone quietly on her way? No: of course not. Ashe had to turn the whole fucking world upside down. It wasn’t good enough for Ashe to have companioned Laure for as long as she had. No. The queen and Jura should have known. Ashe had been an unpredictable alien quantity from the very start. But hadn’t Laure taken pity on her, accepted her as a companion in the schoolroom - where Ashe had never shown much promise that Laure could see - and then later, when they reached a suitable age, taken her on as her lover? Face it: Ashe had had a better deal by far than Laure herself. The day she’d met Calypso she’d felt not just a jolt through her cunt but also inside her ribs in an area that had to be her heart, surely? What better evidence for the suitability of their union? And then Ashe… Ashe had gone and wrecked everything. Just when Laure had met someone suitable, too.
So what if Calypso had wanted to move out into areas beyond the narrow confines of Mercia and Lammor? Change was a necessary part of life. Laure was happy for that to happen, and then when they should have been enjoying themselves, rolling about like weasels between the soft sheets of the royal bedchamber, she’d ended up with Calypso’s captain and former lover (Laure tried not to think too much about that aspect of the detail) bleeding all over the place! How much fun was that? And Calypso had seemed more interested in Alexis than she was in Laure. Oh, they’d continued to enjoy one another, but on a very infrequent basis and with far less pleasure. Occasional wild nights rather than the continuous pleasure that Laure had anticipated.
When the news that Calypso had died had reached Laure it touched her far less than the earlier bad news - that Calypso had been returned to Mercia under an armed guard with strict orders never again to contact the Lascan queen. Gods! What kind of dictatorship made that a possibility? Ashe again. Ashe had somehow popped up again, like the perennial pebble in one of Laure’s decorative slippers. Once upon a time she had watched Ashe being dragged from her bedchamber. That had been the last time she’d seen Ashe, and since then she had only seldom thought of her. She had forgotten the occasional remorse that had assailed her. She had forgotten the accelerated collapse of Lascar that had come about through Calypso’s endeavours. She thought about Ashe and wished her dead.
Laure looked down from her window and saw Ardan drawing closer, crossing the dusty courtyard with a spring in her step. Laure wondered why it had been necessary for Ardan to give up her apprentice to Rhea. Now a spy in that camp might truly have been a useful thing. The kid was clearly not bright enough to cotton on to the consideration that she might have served Laure better in her former incarnation.
The queen looked hard at the situation and wondered what mode of behaviour would work most effectively on getting Ardan back into the world of magic. How about if she fucked the young apprentice? That might do it. That would kill two birds with one stone, even if it didn’t bring both to orgasm. Laure had seen that often the most honest people could be most easily manipulated; Ashe had been a case in point. Perhaps it was into the bracket of stupid but essentially good people that Ardan belonged. Laure sat down to consider whether or not she should seduce Ardan.
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Rhea attended on Betany in the bright courtyard that lay beyond her new rooms. Betany was seated on a bench, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed to the fading heat of late summer. Rhea watched her for a moment, taking in all the details: the intensely compact nature of Betany’s figure and the radiance that emanated from her. She wondered how many other people knew that the ruler of Caer Arianrhod was pregnant.
When Betany opened her eyes to take in the details of her visitor she was momentarily blinded: she had been facing the late afternoon sun too long, trying to absorb the warmth into them both. She thus saw Rhea as very few had ever done – Ardan and Ashe included – standing with a kind of glow around her, an almost mystical being. Cairo had once seen that brightness, and had never mentioned it to anyone. Not even Ashe.
“Please sit.” Rhea sat down. She liked the clipped manners and speech of the young woman now beside her. In addition to liking the leader of Caer Arianrhod, Rhea had decided that Betany was the finest ruler she’d ever had the pleasure of meeting, Lammor’s previous queen notwithstanding. “I trust that your room is satisfactory?” That was nice, too, not leaping in with demands about her sister. In response to Betany’s civility Rhea did her the favour of cutting to the chase.
“I will be honest with you: your sister’s condition is strange to me. It grows worse not daily but in instalments. I understand that there may be periods when she is almost wholly herself, but then the next day will be nothing but an endless and exhausting series of transformations she must suffer.”
“Yes.” Betany looked at her hands. “I’ve noticed that. It’s as if she has to pay for anything like normality, no matter how temporary that might be. I’m not expecting miracles, Rhea, but is there anything that you can do?”
“There are things that I can do,” said Rhea. “Potions that I can brew that will treat – but not cure – the condition. Such potions might maintain Gowdie in a state of drugged stability. She would transform less often, and there would be less damage done to her body and her mind, but she would be drugged. To cure her there are things I must find out.” A pause and then she added, “You must understand that I might not be able to save her.”
Betany waited for a moment, envisaging a potential future. Then she said, “I understand that. You will forgive me if I don’t immediately respond. However, you said that there are things you can do. What other options are open to us?”
“There is something that I could do but that I hesitate to consider…”
“Please consider it out loud. I will not tie you to any promises.”
“Very well. I thought to maintain Gowdie in her human state with the use of magic, but I could wait until she transformed into the karg and make her maintain that form instead.”
Betany thought: oh, Gods. “You mean keep her as the karg forever? It’s not a temporary matter, is it? Why the karg and not the woman?”
“Because it’s easier,” said Rhea, simply. “The karg is – if you like to think of it this way – a presentation of the less manageable aspects of a being. It is harder to remain human than to be swayed by – no pun intended – more animal instincts. It would be less of a fight for Gowdie – and these changes are exhausting her – to remain karg.”
“Is there nothing else that you can do? I don’t want to lose my sister; to be unable to talk to her…” Betany began to rise.
Rhea put her hand on Betany’s arm and said, “No, don’t get up, and please try not to worry. You and I both know that something has fallen out of order within our world, and that what is happening to your sister is simply a symptom of that disorder. We are not without power: you are the best leader that Caer Arianrhod could possibly have, and even Alexis has turned her back on her old ways in order to support the cause.” Rhea still looked doubtful and wary whenever she mentioned Alexis’s name.
“You know that she’s gone, don’t you? She wanted to go after Ashe. I honestly believe that she wants to help her but I can’t imagine what that meeting will be like – should Alexis find her. I just hope that Ashe will forgive me when she knows that I sanctioned the idea.”
“Of course she will.” Ashe at least was not an unpredictable quality, thought Rhea. Although of course, I hadn’t guessed that she was a Guardian. That was an oversight. She broke off from her musings to add, “Ashe will appreciate your reasons as soon as she sees you.”
Betany smiled. She felt a little precarious. The pregnancy had forced her emotions out of hiding and now it took little to make her laugh or cry. She said, “I do hope so.”
“You forget. I’ve known Ashe a very long time. I think I know her well enough to anticipated her reactions.” The last was an exaggeration, but kindly meant. Alexis going after her… Ashe really might not like that. Still, Rhea mused, she will understand in time.
Betany sat down again and focussed on maintaining control of her feelings. Her emotions had of late been all over the place. She felt so kindly to Rhea for those few gentle words that she could feel herself on the verge of tears. She felt grateful out of all proportion for a few words of reassurance, which she put down to her condition. She said, “Did you know that Ashe was one of the Guardians?”
Ah, it hurt to be wholly honest, but Rhea smiled, and was. “My dear, I am ashamed to admit that I never had the slightest idea, not even in the days when I saw her almost every day. And I saw her almost every day for years! If I hadn’t already broken away from the Elders before all this came about, they would have been right to have had me bounced me down the city steps.” She paused and then added, “I thought she was a pleasant oddity, an unknown quality. I liked her from our first meeting, but I must confess, I thought she was nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed,” she added, thoughtfully, “I had thought she’d make a good apprentice, one day.”
“The idea that Ashe doesn’t know about being a Guardian,” said Betany, “is what I find hardest to understand. Out of all of us, Arkana was the only person who simply accepted the news and moved on without needing any explanation. The only change that I could see in her treatment of Ashe was a deeper appreciation. It seems so strange to me. Sometimes when I am with Ashe while she’s doing some entirely ordinary: pouring a cup of wine or lacing up her shirt, or unlacing it…” a blush and a sudden smile, “and I look at her and think: what nonsense. Ashe is no more a Guardian than I am. Then I think back to the day, when she rose up out of the water after they’d killed her… I think about that day and I know it’s true. I have as my lover one of the twelve Guardians, and I still can’t get over the fact that she doesn’t know.”
Rhea smiled. “No Guardian ever does. Well, that’s not entirely true: according to legend, a Guardian will recognise another of their number before the death of one of them. In addition to that, no Guardian can do permanent harm to another of their kind.”
Betany sighed. “The day by the river – the day that Ashe fought with Alexis and Calypso – dying in the process and then resurrecting. Later on that day –that night, when we went to bed – she tried to take off her boots without falling over… and fell over.”
“Not what you’d consider to be Guardian-like behaviour?”
“Far from it. More like someone inherently human.”
“Perhaps. Sometimes.”
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Oh! The sheer joy of feeling free again, of being out with somewhere to go and something to do. It was heady stuff. Alexis had chosen a good horse for herself and an almost equivalently good mount for Ashe.
She’d been riding for four hours and her body was beginning to remind her that the last few weeks had been pretty much those of confinement: she hadn’t had the chance to exercise like this. She inhaled the sweet scent of the pine trees up ahead and began to move her path to the left and the narrow margin of trees that covered the space between an end to civilisation and the commencement of the mountains. It was years since she’d been in the mountains.
The last time she had travelled so far from Mercia she’d been a very young captain and quite captivated with her new role. She was Calypso’s lover – clearly so – and in charge of an entire army. And she’d known practically nothing, thought Alexis, smiling ruefully.
But she’d learned quickly, and she’d never disappointed Calypso, except by – in due course – failing to be strong enough. She’d been well educated in the matter of magic, but it hadn’t been sufficient to steal Rhea’s powers without there being dire repercussions. Calypso had been, during that time, a more honest partner than at any other time. Perhaps it had been easier for her to separate up her life so neatly: two lovers in the space of the palace, one of them the new queen, one the bleeding patient in the hospital wing. She could go from one to another as easily as breathing.
The wound still ached. More precise to say that the scar left by the wound still ached. It was always there, like the weight of heavy mud on one’s boots after a long haul. But unlike mud, she could not knock it free, or take a common knife to it. This weight was going to be there forever, she reckoned. But she carried it with a degree of pride: how many people were there in the world who could steal a wise-woman’s mind and survive the process? She had never thought she could recover completely, but she reckoned to be running at about nine tenths of her old self. Rhea’s forgiveness of her in their brief meeting had soothed the pain away to almost nothing. Alexis wondered if Rhea knew what she had done by being unremarkable at their meeting, and perhaps afterwards by being kind.
She liked Betany. Betany was too humane a leader for Alexis to accept without question, but she was clearly intelligent, brave and far-sighted. Had the situation come about different, she couldn’t imagine Laure sending her off to find or rescue Calypso. Alexis frowned. Why had the word rescue come to mind? She hadn’t anticipated trouble, but it would be so nice if there was some to come. A small battle wouldn’t be unwelcome, either, but perhaps that dream was overly ambitious.
Gowdie had given Alexis a pretty good idea of where she’d parted company with Ashe, and she’d mentioned too Ashe’s interest in the Red Temple, whatever the fuck that was. Alexis had heard the words and felt a shifting sensation of unease. Then she had begun to recollect some stories she had been frightened by as a child. Her nurse had been hard pressed to control Alexis in any way, and had fallen back on winning the child over by recounting horror stories to her. This was something Alexis had grown to love, even if they did give her nightmares. But she couldn’t recall much detail to mind: something about a beast? She rode on, frowning. Yes. A beast. But was the beast in the Red Temple or outside of it? Oh, hell, whatever. She had an odd feeling that she’d learn about that one sooner rather than later.
She reckoned that making good time she might reach the point of parting in another couple of days. Maybe less: Gowdie might have imagined that she’d come further than she had. Journeys always seemed longer when you didn’t want to arrive. But journeys made out in the wide open after weeks of comparative confinement were possibly so good that it didn’t really matter how long they took. At the same time, Alexis was aware of a sense of growing unease that she could not pin down to any specific reason. She knew that if she’d decided simply to cut and run… Well, she never would have done. She’d given Betany her word – more or less – that she’d do what was wanted of her. Perhaps after she’d found Ashe and returned her to Caer Arianrhod, she might be permitted to go her own way. Betany was the sort who’d reward honesty, even if Ashe might kick and scream at the idea. No. Alexis frowned again: she could sense that she was right about Betany, but for some reason, she couldn’t imagine Ashe ever kicking or screaming.
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Not everything Rhea had done before leaving Lammor had been completed as well as it might have been. Had it been someone like Ashe involved, Rhea might have found it easier to speak her mind, but it being Ardan made their parting conversation hard. In her last moments before leaving Lammor Rhea found it impossible to warn Ardan away from the queen. She was afraid of embarrassing Ardan and of making a fool of herself. Ardan might have dismissed the advice as unnecessary, but Laure was better off for the oversight. She had thought long and hard about matters and she had decided to bring Ardan a little closer to the heart of Lascar.
It had been a long and lonely time since Calypso and Laure was tired of being lonely. Tired too of the emptiness of her room and the repeated mantra of having made a mistake and having to suffer – endlessly - for it. Ardan was very attractive, which made life much easier, and already infatuated. Indeed, Ardan was pretty much in the state that Ashe had been in, all that time ago, when she and Laure had become lovers. Laure could remember Ashe but at such a huge distance that the memory seemed more dream than reality. She could not have recalled how Ashe’s skin felt, or how her body smelled, warmed from sex and sunshine. She could not remember how Ashe had felt against her, or how Ashe’s company had sometimes served to drive away Laure’s nocturnal demons.
Laure watched Ardan as the latter approached the palace. Ardan walked with a silly but attractive bounce to her stride. Her hair shone in the sunlight and her clothes – Laure appraised them – were chosen with some degree of taste. She looked far better kempt than Ashe had ever been. Laure wondered how hard it would be to hurt Ardan, and how Ardan would react to such treatment. She remembered on the instant a night with Ashe – a million years ago or so it felt – when she had been overtaken by some kind of wild passion that did not so much caress as invade. The memory was sweet enough to be considered and recalled again if necessary. Laure wondered how Ardan would expect her to be. Should she allow Ardan to make all the running, never knowing who really held the strings? Ardan came toward her now, smiling, happy. Ripe for picking. Laure smiled to herself and then mediated the expression into a greeting fit for the unknowing Ardan.
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This really must end. Another night of useless and insistent bad dreams that leave me gasping for breath and wet with sweat. I left behind me a bed I never wanted to see again, and went about the city trying to beat down my fears by exercise and simple geography. I have a guard, of course, to accompany me. Today I felt like telling her I needed help and dragging her off to bed, just to see if companionship and sex might do something to dispel my demons. I don’t honestly know if Betany thinks I require some of Caer Arianrhod’s best soldiers to keep an eye on me, or if she does it out of niceness. I’m quite sure that she didn’t intend any of them to fuck me. I wonder if she and I will ever meet on a purely social footing. I hope not: there is nothing to be gained from that and I suspect she is equally unwilling.
Alright. I can do this. I can think beyond my situation and take in simple, salient facts. What do I have here? I have a fine city, well-built and designed on sensible lines. It will not be too hard to defend, when the time comes to defend it, and I like its generous and skilful design. It forms an old shape, one older than any other city currently in existence. I suspect that Mercia was the first established base for those who had travelled about the world seeking mild climes and good opportunities for agriculture. The city certainly feels wonderfully old and I know that a newer site would distress me on some level I am not yet fully conversant with. I go about the people and they nod and smile – those that recognise my person and my status – and go on their ways in the knowledge that they have again a ruler.
When the uprising comes, as come it must, I must ensure that everything is ready. I have put a few irons in the fire, inciting a little unrest here, a touch of dissatisfaction there, and a general air of discomfort over all. I do not need to ask my people how they feel about being occupied: I know how unhappy they are. And soon they will feel more unhappy still. Just because there is at present no war or general state of alert I sense in them still a weary rage that needs an exit.
To capture a soul and torture it is one of the many arts I read about in my time in prison. I know that my jailors thought themselves kind enough, but they were jailors all the same and have earned the same reward. For them I think a time to dream, a time to suffer and a time to wish themselves dead long before they are. I must look to my books.
I have a better knowledge of the history of this country than my unlamented sister can ever have possessed. Indeed, the more I read about Calypso the more I wonder that she ever managed to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone lead her country to victory. What a plum the association with Lammor must have seemed! How wonderful to have so much offered for such an incredibly low price. Gods, if I had to, I think I could probably offer the Lascan queen sufficient sexual pleasure to keep her entirely satiated and entirely under my control. I suppose I might try her – just the once and for the sake of nothing but satisfying my curiosity – but I have other plans for her and besides, I like to defer my pleasures. When I have the time and opportunity it will be nice to take her – and then lead her on to destroy herself. I hope that my future chroniclers will not see my actions as being motivated by nothing more than a desire for revenge: I like to fit the punishment to the crime, that is all. I have a wonderful regard for geometry: the design of a life is not so different to the design of a city or a country, or a world.
Worlds are what it’s all about. Of course, revenge is also good.
I wonder when Ashe and I will meet. I have no doubt that we will. And I can see that we’ll never be meeting as anything other than enemies. There’s more, too: I need to have established my credentials with the Lascan queen before that ever happens, and I look forward to seeing how Ashe will respond to the invitation that will ultimately await her. Sex is a funny thing. Sooner or later I think I really should like to try it. Funnily enough, it’s Alexis I think I have the most in common with, Alexis I would most like to fuck. And I just know that that’ll never happen.
Oh, so little time, so much destruction to plot. I need more hours in the day.
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It hadn’t taken a huge endeavour. The seduction of Laure by Ardan – actually of Ardan by Laure – had taken much less effort and imagination than Laure had anticipated. Always the things you plan for the most that look after themselves.
Ardan woke in the early morning to a world washed clean of everything but immediate memory and sudden and wonderful clarity. She turned carefully in the bed, trying not to disturb the prone figure beside her. Ardan was new to passion, and the previous night had been a thing of surprise and glory. Laure lay sleeping, her breath coming steadily, her hair covering the pillow. Ardan reached out to touch the corn-silk and marvelled at the electric sweetness of it. She would have liked to have buried her face in Laure’s hair, drowned herself in it if possible. The scent of their combined sleep was a perfume new to Ardan and inhaling it was like drinking wine. She was used to her own body, never thinking much of it, taking its simplicity and strength for granted. Now that she had found the reason she had been born – for surely there could be no better reason that this – Ardan wanted nothing but a continuation. She longed for the queen to awaken, and yet she knew she would have preserved the simplicity and innocence of that sleep at any price. Even dying for Laure didn’t seem out of the question. Living for her would be preferable, of course, but Ardan was easy.
Ardan had been easy. Laure lay unmoving, forcing her breathing to follow some pattern of suggested sleep that would keep Ardan convinced and at a distance. Ashe might have known better than to have remained all night beside Laure. Ashe would have done what she was told to do and been sent off with an embrace or a kind word or a simple dismissal. Ardan was different. Ardan did not know the rules, because there was no-one around to teach her. Sometimes Laure wished for a return to the simple tyranny of the past.
There were advantages to waking beside a lover. Sex, for one thing. But Laure wasn’t sure she wanted another night of Ardan’s half-timid, half-desperate embraces. Ardan might have been easy to order about - and half-desperate to please – but at that moment in time Laure would happily have exchanged her new lover for Ashe or Calypso. Even Alexis might have gotten a look-in. Ashe might have been foolish in many ways, but she had almost always known what Laure wanted. Sometimes it had taken no more than a single glimpse of Laure’s face to tell Ashe that she was wanted – there and then – and that no reason in the world would save her. Ardan was a long way from that world. Ardan thought – oh, Gods, she really did think – that Laure must love her. Laure kept her eyes closed and tried to prevent the rigidity that anger was forcing through her body. Her jaw tightened with the determination not to speak, not to order, and oh, Gods, please not to utter words of love or affection. The sensations had been nice enough and Laure’s own responses powerful enough to grant her a short respite from reality, but was it really worth the struggle?
While Ardan breathed in the scent of her lover and hoped that Laure would soon waken, Laure restrained her breathing and prayed to the gods that Ardan would just… go away. Or die. Whatever.
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That’s it. Finish. Enough. I must keep reminding myself that there is a whole world out there waiting to be conquered. I have more power at my fingertips than my poor sister ever dreamed of. But what comes between me and my sanity? Dreams. Fucking dreams. Fucking nightmares. This time I woke up crying like a child, desperate not to fall asleep again. I know what bothers me so very much: I can exert no control over the nightmares. The travelling I may do in ordinary, dreamless sleep, but I need rest and I dare not sleep without something to mute the horrors that call out to me.
Last night’s horrors – this night’s continuing horrors – were graphic enough. There I was in the middle of the desert and something was following me. It did not make itself apparent, it slid beneath the sand and I was only aware of its movements by tiny shivers beneath my feet. Then when I could go no further it reared up out of the sand before me, fanged mouth open, face monstrous and eyes… eyes human and the same colour of my own. It swallowed me whole and I was about to be crushed between tongue and upper palate when my body saved me by tipping me onto the floor. I was drenched in sweat.
It doesn’t matter how much time I spent in walking. It doesn’t matter that I drop onto my bed at night so exhausted that I can’t be bothered to wash. I fall onto the bed and am instantly asleep and as instantly as I am asleep, the dreams begin. I have not come this far to be driven out of my mind by imaginings and monsters, the like of which I have only ever read about. If I stop myself from sleeping I am the next day so far from capable that I think Laure would do a better job than I.
When I have the dreams I can feel myself changing. It isn’t a change I’d expect: it’s nothing of becoming the victim or of feeling obscenely vulnerable. I come away from the dreams feeling – just for an instant – painfully alone. In my waking hours I have no need of companionship: I didn’t have company when I was growing up and could most have benefited from it. I find that when I wake from the worst dreams there is a second in which I would give anything in the world to have someone who liked me, beside me, even if I know that that is never going to happen.