Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Nine
Ardan had never fallen in love before. It was no good that Rhea should have spoken but ducked the issue; not warning her one-time apprentice about the princess – sorry, the queen, Rhea could not get that one straight in her head – was going to have serious consequences. At the very least it was driving Laure out of her skull.
Ardan had been too useful, that was the problem. Ardan had come to think of herself as essential to Lammor’s queen and Laure had begun to rely on the young woman, more and more. After all, she had done a lot for Laure, attending upon her, discussing plans with her, bringing her food, as good as worshipping at her feet. Ashe might have been able to put her right on that one: Ashe had more experience. She’d had Ruth to deal with. Laure, too.
Laure washed and dressed and still Ardan stuck with her. Ardan lay in the bed watching and smiling until Laure thought she was going to lose her mind. It was a difficult decision; Ardan had been very useful, and Laure didn’t have anyone else to look after her, but still… She wasn’t sure she could withstand Ardan’s new confidence, born, as it was, of the embraces of a single night. She knew she didn’t want to even consider Ardan’s expectations, let alone her love: after all, she didn’t care about Ardan’s expectations and she didn’t need her love. Laure drew herself up to her full height and Ardan chose that opportunity to run up behind the queen, bringing up her hands to cup Laure’s breasts. It was this last – unasked and grossly familiar - gesture that snapped the thread of the Lammoran queen’s famously limited patience.
Laure spun around, her face white with fury. Her eyes burned. Ardan began to step back, started to speak, began to think that she might have gone slightly beyond her brief, but it was just that much too late. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Laure… I’m sorry…” Ardan was lost. She tried for another embrace, but this time Laure didn’t just turn away, she lashed out. It wasn’t the hardest blow, and it only caught Ardan’s shoulder, not her cheek, but the intention was clear. “Sweetheart…? What have I done?” She had never used the word sweetheart before, never imagined how it would sound. She stared at Laure, desperate to put right whatever had just gone wrong between them.
Laure’s voice was steady and cold and remorseless. She said, “Call me by my name and not my title one more time, Ardan, and I will have your head to display on a spike outside the city walls. You have not the faintest grasp of court etiquette.” She bit off her words one by one, and they all hurt. “I am the queen of Lammor. You are a servant. You have been useful and I appreciated that.” Laure paused and added, “You have outstayed your welcome, you have misunderstood your role in my court and you have really, really pissed me off.” Ardan’s mouth was open. Laure reached over and snapped it shut. “Believe me, Ardan, that if ever again I require the services of an incompetent and unskilled lover I’ll be in touch. Otherwise, stay the hell away from me.” Ardan still stood, her eyes wide. She looked vulnerable and hurt and the sight sickened Laure. She turned her back on Ardan and addressed her closing comment to the wall. “Get away from me, now. Get out.”
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Gowdie was sleeping badly. Early in the evening she had again transformed, and Rhea had worked to keep her there, even if the whimpering sounds made by the karg were even more painful than those uttered by the woman. Memories and dreams were beginning to become entangled within her head. Nightmares filled her dreams. Betany, watching her, saw that the silver and black fur was becoming coarse and unkempt. Above them both the moon rose high and white. After a day of wind and rain the sky had suddenly – blissfully – cleared. There were still scraps of cloud around, but the wind was blowing them about the sky and even when they passed over the stars it was only a temporary cover. Betany sat outside Gowdie’s cell, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Rhea had brought the blanket. She’d seen Betany’s vigil and worried for her. Rhea was relieved that Alexis had gone off in search of Ashe; that day she’d cast the runes and she wasn’t happy with the end results. Somewhere someone close to her was not doing well. Had she seen Ashe right then, face-to-face with Janu and hearing the news about the beast, she would never have thought to question how her one-time apprentice was doing.
Betany pressed her cheek against the rough embrace of the blanket and smiled her thanks at Rhea. The wise woman produced from somewhere inside her many layers of clothing a flask of perle. “I promise you, it won’t hurt the baby,” she said, handing it to Betany. Betany raised an eyebrow, smiled and swallowed. “In fact, it might even help her grow.”
“That’s what I need,” said Betany. “A baby born with a liking for an utterly illegal drink.”
“Really? It was illegal in Lammor but I didn’t know you have the same laws. I thought that Caer Arianrhod gave perle a few dispensations.”
“It’s an official open secret, Rhea. Everyone knows that everyone drinks it but no-one admits the fact. To tell you the truth, when we were kids Gowdie found an old still and started brewing the stuff herself. I helped her out, and by the time it had cleared and we’d racked it off, Gods, it was strong! One glass and Gowdie just keeled over.”
“I imagine you’ve got a stronger stomach.”
“Then, maybe. Now, certainly not. My mornings aren’t exactly pleasurable.”
“I think that I can give you something that’ll help. I’m sorry. I should have thought of it before.”
“That’d be nice.” Betany glanced at the karg again. “Just about anything would be. Rhea, how is Gowdie doing?”
“I’ll be honest with you, it’s not easy. She’s strong-willed, which is both a help and a hindrance. She can withstand a lot, but she can’t fight it forever.”
“Thank you.” Betany turned to Rhea. “Look, this is selfish, I know, but for a moment, can you just tell me about Ashe? I… I miss her so much and I can’t talk to anyone about her.”
“Not even your sister?”
“If feels cruel to talk to Gowdie. I got the woman I loved. All Gowdie got was a painful goodbye and a broken heart.” Rhea smiled. “Of course, the woman I love is currently somewhere out there…” She gestured in the direction of the great unknown. “It’s not easy.”
“Alexis will find her.”
“I don’t doubt it. Rhea, is it very hard for you to see Alexis again? I wasn’t there when she took your powers – Ashe told me all about it – and I know it must be bordering on impossible to – “
“It’s not as hard as all that. It was so nightmarish but now it’s half a world away. I didn’t believe it at first – her being willing to help our side – but somehow it seems entirely appropriate that she’s here now. Well, not here, just riding about the countryside looking for Ashe.”
“Things are going to get very difficult, aren’t they?” Betany was watching over her sister again. “I mean… It’s not just Gowdie; the whole world feels like it’s shifting in the wrong direction. I think that that was why Ashe went off in the first place. After everything that happened, she knew that she’d be a target for reprisals and I think that on some level she must have known about the baby.”
Rhea shook her head. “Yes and no,” she said. “I think you’re right about Ashe being a potential target: I’m sure she is, I’m sure she will be. But she doesn’t know about the baby. I’m certain of that.”
Betany looked at her. “Why so sure? ”
“Ashe didn’t know about the baby or she’d never have left your side. That’s all.”
The blanket was warm, even if it was a little abrasive. And it didn’t do a bad job of absorbing tears.
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Ardan stood very still inside Rhea’s tower. It had been a hard climb up the steep shallow steps, the sun being out and shining down. Harder too because of the tears that were jerking their way out of her. The girl had fought to contain them and had managed to cross the city and reach the first step before her control began to break. Laure’s words had followed Ardan all the way, and Laure’s image stuck in Ardan’s brain with an intensity that hurt. By the time she was pushing open the door and collapsing onto the truckle bed, the tears were in full flood, and Ardan shook with their intensity. She pummelled the bed with her fists, sobbed and gasped.
The atmosphere of the tower would always contain a healing component; it was part of the magic that Rhea wrought, but this time even that magic would be insufficient; all it could do was to make Ardan sink into a sudden and unexpected sleep. Rhea might have advised against rest at that time, and after her encounter with the queen: when Ardan woke – as she would wake – it would be to the immediate recollection of Laure’s rejection of her. The tower might be a healing place but it had absorbed its fair share of negative emotions: Alexis and Calypso had left their own invisible impression on the walls and ceiling. Their magic in taking Rhea’s power from her had worked its way into the cracks in the masonry. The memory of Rhea’s madness had been in part absorbed, and Ashe’s misery had scarred the construct, too. The tower was more than the sum of its parts and it was perhaps regrettable that it hadn’t crumbled when Lammor did. Regrettable too Rhea’s failure to warn Ardan of the queen’s rather passing and fickle affections. The tower room stood lofty and knowledgeable in its way with the action of recent months: pithy and ready, too, with potential or good, or ill. The intensity of power contained within the tower roiled inside the hollows in the stone walls and bubbled through the heavy wooden beams when touched by Ardan’s fury and Ardan’s loss.
Rhea had been right in her decision to accept Ardan as an apprentice: the girl had potential, and it wasn’t Rhea alone who’d noticed that.
Perhaps everyone had underestimated Ardan. Ashe and she had never happened to meet in the old days of Lammoran rule, but they might have become friends if they had. Ashe was good at faces, bad at names, and would undoubtedly have remembered Ardan’s good, likeable features. She would certainly have been good to talk to on the day that followed Laure’s rejection of Ardan: Ashe had been there before.
Ashe had never stopped feeling out of keeping with the handsome, light colourings of the Lascan people, and Laure – it must be said – had done quite a lot to reinforce Ashe’s paranoia. Bearing this in mind, and knowing how entirely expendable she had finally become to the young princess, Ashe might have been surprised to know – a considerable time after her enforced exile from Lascar – that Laure almost missed her. It was not a passionate sense of loss: Laure was angry and irritated and almost mute with unsecured intolerance. She had driven Ardan from the palace but that wasn’t enough. Laure didn’t want Ardan sorry, she wanted Ardan hurt. It was painful and humiliating to find that someone so far beneath her – socially, not physically – should have been so fucking hard to get rid of. And what had given the girl the gall to turn upon Laure a face of such horror and revulsion? So they’d fucked. So what? Laure’s appetite was no less than anyone else’s and surely she had the right to satisfy that appetite when someone was so clearly desperate to fall into her bed. Was that not the case? And once appetite was satisfied, the world moved on. Would that Ardan had had sense enough to move on with it.
Laure sat in the remains of the palace and thought about the world. Her thoughts ran around inside her head like children playing a too-loud and too-adult game. And not just that: the city was producing enough noise to drive anyone half mad, with the sounds of builders all around, shouted orders and questions rising up like the crackling of vultures around a fresh corpse.
Laure sank her head into her hands. She felt annoyed, disappointed – why did none of them ever understand the extent and shelf-life of her desire? – and suddenly lonely. If she could only clear her mind she could welcome back Jura and her mother. But she could not force her thoughts into any kind of order and besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted the opinion of her old mentors on her recent behaviour. After Ashe had been inducted into Laure’s life and been proved of suitable material to make a companion, neither Jura nor the queen had done much to examine Ashe’s happiness. As a result of their distancing themselves from the situation, much of what went to make up Ashe was burned up on one sacrificial altar or another. Pride and dignity were the first to go; later offerings would include modesty and hope. Trust was a very early victim: hence Ashe’s unwillingness to believe in the security of any room after the door had been once opened.
The day that she and Ashe had first been together had been an oddity. Laure had had other lovers, and would continue to have other lovers throughout her time with Ashe. Laure had not considered Ashe as suitable lover material, and even when they first slept together it was the differences between them that Laure would remember. Ashe was an oddity; her skin was different and her dark eyes were a direct contrast to the light shadings of blue and green that shone throughout Lammor. Laure never fell in love with Ashe, but she did grow to find her necessary. Necessary enough to last out any other attachments but not important enough to become a fixture after Calypso appeared on the scene.
When Laure and Calypso had met, the time was ripe for the Lascan princess to find someone new. She had been happy to set off with the queen, leaving Jura behind to watch over the country, and Ashe to do whatever Ashe did when she had some free time and no commitments. Some time after leaving the city she could not even remember if she had said goodbye to her companion.
When had she begun to treat Ashe with genuine harshness? When she thought about it, Laure could not remember the first time that she’d either struck out at Ashe, or used her in some way that left Ashe either hurt, confused or resentful. Not that Ashe ever let resentment show: she had been too well trained. Laure could make demands of Ashe and that was all very well, but there were times when she wanted Ashe to be equally demanding of her, albeit it without her actually explaining or even indicating what she wanted. Ashe’s failure to read Laure’s mind had resulted in more than a few scars, but not even Jura and the queen knew about that. The only other observer to Laure’s cruelty toward Ashe had been Ruth, and Ruth had been an excellent confidante. For one thing, she hated Ashe, and for another, she worshipped Laure. Ruth had felt in common with the princess that Ashe was not equal to either of them in terms of status or ancestry. It didn’t help the situation that Ashe could have run intellectual rings around Ruth, had she ever had the chance to demonstrate.
Ruth had obtained for Laure a whip, such as those used in the old days for the punishment of slaves. It was something of an antique, treasured by Ruth’s family, to whom to use of slavery had been of central value. What secret pleasure Ruth had experienced when she handed over that package to the princess, Ashe could never have guessed at. It was then that Laure’s character had taken up its chosen path. Ashe had been a reluctant observer to the new rule, and she had tried to fight it. She had tried to reason with Laure, and that had gotten her nowhere. There were days when Ashe could do nothing right for the princess, and those were the days that ended hardest, and left the most scars. Ardan knew nothing of the kind of past that had existed between Laure and Ashe: it might have helped her a little to know that she was not the first to be flung unceremoniously from the royal quarters, or it might just have hurt her all the more.
Ruth had been useful, sycophantic of course, but useful, up to the day that Calypso had decided that Ruth would best serve the good of Lammor by acting as blood donor to Alexis. From that day on, Ruth had been little more than a shell. She wandered the streets of Lammor like a ghost, and Laure could hardly bear to look at her. Ruth was another by-product of Laure’s liaison with Calypso, and in consequence one thing too many to think about. Ruth’s family had had considerable standing in Lammor, as a result of which Laure had not been allowed to either forget or ignore what she had – just about – sanctioned. The connection between Ruth’s family and Laure’s had been long-standing and complex. Leanna had known that Ruth’s family hoped that their relation would one day join with her own. They had been disappointed on two counts: firstly thanks to Ashe, and later thanks to Calypso. Laure had no visible family left to watch over her, but Ruth’s family were reminded, endlessly, of exactly what had become of their daughter. They discussed among themselves the shortfalls of the royal family, and day by day their unhappiness ripened.
Ardan woke into memory and sat on her bed with her favourite robe in her hands, ripping it into shreds. Moons and constellations soon littered the floor. When her fingers proved unequal to the task she used her teeth to make the first incision. When Ardan had finished with the robe she sat for a long time in silence, cross-legged on her bed still, the day growing old around her. She ran her hands through her hair until it stuck up in spikes and rubbed her lips until they burned and chapped. Then, cold and sick and shaking, Ardan lit the fire and watched the flames climb.
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Rhea looked at the bones, collected them up and replaced them in the little bag. She was not looking for answers, only keeping her hand in. Caer Arianrhod had its own Elders, and they seemed much more skilled than those that Rhea had happily turned her back upon.
The bones she’d scattered had spelled out change. Well, that was common enough and unremarkable. They spelled out a whole range of things that were far from desirable. Rhea had the sense of some bad thing that was getting close. Yesterday it had been miles away and today, today it might be right outside the city’s gates. Tomorrow… Rhea didn’t want to think too hard about tomorrow; she had enough to do looking after Gowdie, and Betany, too. Ashe: you’re needed at home, she thought.
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The fire in Rhea’s tower room kept the room from utter darkness. Ardan had shifted the bed so that she could look out of the window and onto the stars. She had cried for so long that not crying felt alien. The comparatively innocent, unpractised love she had known for such an appallingly short time had been – she felt quite sure – burned out of her, or so she thought. It was like the recovery from a painful and severe fever.
She had made a variety of vows, most of them bloody, all of them binding: never again would she love anyone; never again would she trust anyone. Never again would anyone treat her the way that Laure had. Laure. The Lammoran queen. Another vow involved never speaking that name again, let alone even thinking it.
In her pain was a kind of desperation that might have been overcome, even then, if Laure had come up to the tower room with a mouth full of apologies and her arms outstretched to take Ardan in. The situation would have been in some ways worse had Rhea been round – the embarrassment Ardan would have felt underlined that – and at the same time Ardan might have been saved, had there been someone present who might hold her, comfort her, and remind her that Laure would not be the beginning and the end. Ardan fell head-first into a grief so profound that it could have moved mountains. She had been unaware of her own self until that night. Her hands and her body still smelled of Laure and she could feel – like brands – where Laure had touched her. Impossible to have been so close to someone and to have been so easily pushed away.
With the thought and the olfactory memory, the crying began again, and this time it was more like an animal’s keening. Ardan began to rock to and fro on the bed, her knees hugged into close to her chest and her tears beginning to wet her skin. Every time the burning grief allowed itself to become suspended, another memory would come crashing in, and there would be another howl, and the rocking would continue.
It was very late indeed when Ardan slept. Her face – young as it was – would be scarred by the night’s work; her eyelids were already swollen and her eyes would look red the next day. But that wouldn’t matter because Ardan wasn’t going to leave the tower again until she had to. She would barricade the door and drink only from the water that collected in the little pool set into the tower roof. She knew that there was only sufficient food for three or four days in the larder, but that didn’t matter. She would eke out what she had, and if she could drink, well, wasn’t that enough?
Laure had used Ardan even more casually than she had used Ashe. But Ashe had lasted for a number of years, Laure’s sex life being enhanced throughout that time by the other lovers who had drifted in and out of her life, and Ardan had only lasted a single night. Ardan, who had thought herself to be worthy of a queen’s love, slept at last on her back, and the tears that could not stop flowing slid over her skull and damped her hair. Laure had made enemies enough in her time, but none would prove quite to vehement, or so true.
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Rhea had sent Betany back to bed. She told the leader of Caer Arianrhod that she would maintain a watch over Gowdie and administer more doses of the various potions as and when required. Betany had thanked her for that, and then the two of them had sat talking for another hour, and had then let silence eat up as much again. Betany was curious about Ashe’s life before they had met, and Rhea was only too willing to share what she remembered of Ashe’s younger days. It was only when she approached the subject of Ashe and Laure that Rhea hesitated. She said at last, “Ashe was not so much in love with the princess,” Laure would never be thought of as a queen by the wise-woman, “as she was drawn to affection. I think that she believed – as others have done – that Laure is capable of love.”
“And you don’t think she is?”
Rhea frowned. She wanted to say that she though the princess had some positively psychopathic tendencies, so unwilling was she to accept that anyone but she had feelings that mattered. Her response might have been coloured by the distant knowledge that somewhere in the cosmos, Laure had just fucked over someone else. At length she said, “No. I don’t think she is. I think that perhaps it’s something that comes with that degree of beauty. She is very lovely to look at, although it’s always struck me as a very cold and remote kind of attractiveness. I’m biased, of course, my dear. I saw Ashe’s face when she knew that she’d been rejected, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t forgive the princess on that account.”
“I almost hope I never get to meet her,” said Betany. Rhea smiled. “I think I could manage to be courteous enough, but I couldn’t swear to that.”
“I think that it would be better if you never did meet her. You would see straight through her, I think, and there would be nothing to be gained from the meeting. And besides, I think that Ashe would hate it if you did meet.”
Betany didn’t argue. She thought that Rhea was probably right, and besides, she didn’t want to meet someone who’d treated Ashe so badly. There might be a moment when Gowdie’s cage might slide open, just as Laure walked past and… Betany shook her head at the fantasy, bloody as it was, and said nothing.
“I think,” went on Rhea, “that Laure is what Lascar itself has become; something so lovely to look at that one does not at first recognise that the life within it has become hollow. I take my fair share of the blame: I saw what was happening to the Elders long before I left their ranks. What I should have done was to have forced them to consider their role within the country. And I didn’t. I pulled a comic face at them, like a badly-behaved child, and I ran off to my life in the tower. And I’ve been happy there, and a great degree of that happiness comes from the fact that I’ve removed myself from the everyday struggles. I should have known what was coming and I didn’t. And now,…” her voice trailed off and for a moment she looked worried. “And now I sense that I have again omitted to do something for Lascar, but I have no idea what that is.”
Rhea told Betany that she should sleep, that she looked tired and should try to worry less. Betany was happy enough to go. She knew that Gowdie was in good hands and she was aware that her condition was tiring her. More than ever she wished for Ashe’s company.
Betany’s room was warm: her servant had been in not long ago to refresh the fire, and there had been left for her – as usual – a flask of mulled wine. It had been placed near to the fire and would still be warm. She poured herself a glass – Rhea had said it would not harm the baby – and drank it. Then she climbed into bed and rested her head against the cool linen of the sheets and pillows.
At this point in her day – when the city’s business had been completed and approved – Betany allowed herself the luxury of thinking about her lover. It was enjoyable to recall to mind the image of Ashe as she had been at the time of their first meeting, which had been magical rather than practical. The image made her smile. She thought of Calliope, too, as she did every day. She thought about Ashe’s embrace of the two of them and smiled. She had never stopped to wonder if one day she might resent sharing Ashe. As things had worked out, it wasn’t a situation that she’d had to endure, but somehow she could have imagined the three of them staying together through the years. She didn’t honestly care if she was right about that or not: but she hoped that Calliope knew – somehow – about the baby, and knew too that she had never been forgotten for a moment.
Rhea kept watch over Gowdie all that night. She let her mind reach out to address all that was concerning her. She had added a hint of mahar root to Betany’s mulled wine. That would fight the morning sickness that the leader of Caer Arianrhod would otherwise suffer. She had added a touch of something else to help Betany to sleep, and something still further to colour her dreams. Betany was sufficiently alert and aware to know that something in the world was going wrong, but it was not necessary to let her experience nightmares on a regular basis. Sufficient unto the day… Betany would be prepared when the monsters came out into the light.
Rhea wondered again what monsters there would be. She had overseen – at a suitable distance – the last readings done by the Elders there and had been horrified at the results. Fortunately she’d bitten her tongue rather than screaming out to the entire city that things would shortly become very, very bad. Panic wouldn’t help the situation, although for half an hour or so it might be very cathartic.
She thought about Ashe. She thought about Alexis and wondered if the soldier really would try to find and bring back Betany’s lover. Rhea thought that probably Alexis would. Alexis liked having a structure to her life and a concrete goal. Now she had both for a time. Much as she would once have liked to have seen Alexis’ head on a stake, Rhea swallowed her feelings, bowed to the occasion and silently wished the captain well.
Something monstrous was coming. It was not yet in the world although its birth cry might be heard in the cold dead hours of the morning. Rhea had never thought about the end of the world, let alone wondered if she was likely to see it. She hoped that nothing had changed in that respect, then she stood up and walked over to the bars to see how Gowdie was doing. The drugs Rhea had supplied and applied had taken the karg into sleep so deep it was not far removed from death.
Betany woke at four in the morning, when the air had an edge to it, and went silently through the palace to the prison wing. She saw Rhea – from a distance – watching over Gowdie, her expression calm and strong. The sight was enough to let Betany retrace her steps, return to her still-warm bed and sleep. The last thought she had before closing her eyes and cuddling down beneath the covers was of Ashe.
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Oh, the joy of a peaceful uninterrupted night’s sleep. For once I had no nightmares. For once I had only dreams. And those dreams were themselves pleasurable. I have the sense of change slipping closer and closer. This night I did as I have done before, and taken several drops of the dream enhancer. Almost immediately I had the sense of flight. The world I visited had changed little, but the one alteration was a thing of immense worth: the little sparrow has had her wings clipped and torn. Exhaustion or exhausted hope meant that she made no move to back away as I drew closer. Despair or conflict, I thought. I was so happy.
I had had every intention of killing the little sparrow, if we ever met again, but of course, things don’t always work out in accordance with our plans. I had thought her to be a happy little bird but when I looked in upon her in the night I found her to be brimming over with emotions, love and hate blurring and confusing their limits. I must admit, I wondered for a moment if fate was trying to make reparation for all the years that I had no birthdays.
Her name is Ardan and she is bitterly unhappy. She had been Laure’s lover for a single night. Since then – I gather – she has been curtly banished from the royal presence and the royal bed. Do you know, I think that I wouldn’t mind spending an hour or two in that royal presence and that royal bed. I’m not sure exactly what I’d do, but I’m sure I’d enjoy doing it.
Birthdays. Yes. It did feel that good and unreal, to be given a tool when I need one. In all those years that I spent in prison, no-one really acknowledged my existence, let alone allowed me room or reason for celebration. I think that this slant has coloured my imagination because I now see Ardan – in my mind’s eye – wrapped in a mess of coloured ribbons, as opposed to seeing her lying curled up on her bed, her face stained with tears and anger, and her eyes full of hate. Coloured ribbons are very nice indeed, but tears and anger have so much more value in the long term!
I slipped into her thoughts without difficulty, and she made no attempt at running away. Her mind was red with anger and green with pain and she was not wholly sane, which possibly accounted for her acceptance of my presence. I think that perhaps she expected me. When her gaze met mine she spoke, and her tone was not what I had expected. There was no petulance, there was only anger and hatred. This was an adult hurt, not a childish thing, and as such it has use for me. I think that she would not have withstood the night of new loss had she not had me. It is strange that I did not even need time to consider my next actions: I simply took her up into my arms, and told her that I loved her and I told her that I would never let her down. The fact that it was so intensely easy to speak the words and to speak them with such certainty leads me to believe that she will become important to me. I think that she would have accepted compassion from anyone, stained and rejected as she was, but with me she has a chance to fulfil her potential, as soon as I discover what that is. I wonder if I will have the chance to use against Laure. Well, that would be suitable but not wholly satisfying. For that I will need Ashe.
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Alexis had spent another day riding, another night sleeping under the stars and was still so happy that she felt stupid with it. Like the facial expression of first love, no doubt she was going about with a broad grin on her face. Alexis tried to serious herself down. Even though she hadn’t known what she would find at the end of her journey to Caer Arianrhod, it had still been an immensely pleasurable time.
There was something up ahead in the snow. Alexis checked her surroundings and then eased herself out of the saddle and onto the ground. A body. A dead body, and not so long dead, judging by the partial face that still remained. Soon the ravens and the wolves would begin their advance and when spring came – if spring came to such a benighted spot as that – there would be nothing left but the bones.
Alexis was curious as to the means of death. The body had a few secrets still to give up: there were defensive wounds on the hands and when she turned the body over she found an arrow – the cause of death – poking out from the dead woman’s shoulder. The arrow had been angled so as to catch the heart: there was nothing much left to do if that befell you, except fall face-first on the snow and bleed to death.
Alexis’s handling of the body was businesslike but not dismissive. The cause of death determined, there was nothing further that she could do, so she simply stood up again, and spoke the short prayer for the dead that is the first lesson learned by all Mercian soldiers.
She rode on, care weighing down on her for the first time since she’d begun her journey. For the first time in many years, Alexis found herself thinking about her own death. In the weeks she’d lain in the hospital ward death had not been – oddly enough – been much of a consideration: she’d been too blind with pain to think about dying.
Alexis had been badly wounded in battle maybe a dozen times, of which dozen only two episodes had done sufficient damage to make her believe she might be dying. She had a high pain threshold, which helped, but what mattered more was her simple acceptance of the belief that she would never achieve old age. That didn’t bother Alexis in any way. Better by far to die in combat, than to becoming faltering, and then to fail. Now she found herself considering – for some reason she could not quantify – the knowledge that joining forces with the women of Caer Arianrhod might kill her.
The magic she’d inherited and the magical skills that she had learned over time had meant less to Alexis than her status as captain to Calypso’s army and lover of the woman herself. Alexis had mourned Calypso not as she was at the end of her life, weakened and helpless and half-mad, but as she had been in the days before she’d heard of Laure, let alone fucked her…
She could accept that what she was doing was entirely bizarre: out in the wilds, looking for someone she’d tried very hard to kill, someone who’d half-crippled her and whose power had ripped Calypso apart. But Ashe had employed a kind of mercy Alexis hadn’t understood and could not understand. Ashe was a part of something that ran deeper into the body of the world than Alexis did, living on the surface with nothing concealed and no surprises. Alexis wanted to find Ashe, wanted to get her back to Caer Arianrhod. That was the other surprise, the other aspect to her current life that she could not understand: despite it being the home of her enemies, Alexis had fallen in love with Caer Arianrhod the moment she’d seen it. The place felt like home; it was just that simple. It would be good to settle there, if she lived long enough to do so. Alexis whispered to her horse as they climbed higher, the air getting colder with every step. But Alexis knew how to dress for the mountains, and the cold didn’t touch her.
In a sense it was good to be free of Mercia. Free of Calypso, too… Alexis’s appreciation of her lover had taken time to develop and coalesce into something really important. Then of course there had come Laure and the blow that Calypso had inflicted that had marked the beginning of the end. Of course, things had swung back in Alexis’s favour, and all the time that she’d lain bleeding, Calypso had moved mountains to help her. Had she come to realise that Laure’s affections were not worth her while? Gowdie – if she was still woman and not karg – had thought that she and Alexis might have a future together, and this reflection felt good, and as sustaining as a hot meal.
Alexis dismounted: the snow was thick and deep and she wanted to keep both horses healthy. She hoped that Ashe could ride: the sooner they got back to Caer Arianrhod the better. Something dangerous was moving forward by slow and patient stages, and like a really dire electric storm, Alexis knew that it would scar everywhere it touched.
The Red Temple… When Alexis saw it for the first time goose bumps rose up on her arms and the hair at the back of her neck bristled beneath the hood she wore. Alexis pushed back the fabric and stared.
It was all wrong: the very lines of the Temple were like an insult to the earth that supported it and the sky it stood beneath. How the fuck had anyone managed to build up there, and why the hell would they have wanted to? A godforsaken fortress in the mountains, with not even trees around to suggest a connection – however tenuous – to nature. Staring up at her next port of call, Alexis decided that she liked nothing about it: not the colour, nor the shape, not the heady air of threat that hung about the high windows. Even the air about Alexis now seemed scented with something rank. She fell back on preparation to blot out the host of negative impressions. Weapons hidden and ready, easily accessible, mind clear and focussed. What could possibly have drawn Ashe to such a place? Clearly it drew enthusiastic numbers – there had been little fresh snow and Alexis could easily read the footprints left on the approach road – Ashe’s distinctive tread among them.
Alexis thought: I’m really not going to like this place. Hell, Ashe. What have you drawn me to?”