Ash Rising

by Katya Lebeque

  Sure enough, Vanita was in bed, breathing hard but trying not to. When she saw Ash, her face brightened into a smile all the same, despite having been condemned to death by her own mother less than half an hour ago.

  “Vee, how are you feeling?”

  Vanita arched an eyebrow and smiled. “I’m going to pretend you mean my chest. It feels strained, like there’s a ton of pressure on it.”

  “Are we still talking about your chest, or just you?”

  At this, Vanita laughed. How was it that she could always laugh and so easily? Then, more quietly, she added: “Ash, did she mean it?”

  Silence filled the room. “Your mother loves you, Vanita,” Ash said at last and turned to leave.

  As she did, she felt the small delicate hand on her wrist.

  “Tell me a story, please Ash.”

  “A story?” Ash blinked at her in surprise. The last thing she was thinking about right now was stories. “What about? I don’t really do stories.”

  “Anything, anything that comes into your head. Please, just to take my mind off myself. My chest is hurting.”

  “Well,” sighed Ash, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I can tell you a memory, perhaps.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Once upon a time, there was a marketplace. I was a girl of thirteen, you see, and I had renounced my titles to Rhodopalais the month before. Your mother had informed me that I would have no dowry for marriage, but that wasn’t really the reason. I wanted to become a cook, like Old Merta, when I grew up. So, I went to work for her in the kitchens. You should have seen her face when I arrived, silk gown and all… Anyway, things were tense in the house for weeks after that, Stepmother not speaking to me and me to her. We made everyone miserable, do you remember? You were so young. Anyway, Old Merta decided it would do me good to get out of the house and so she took me with her on market day. I had never seen so many people in one place, especially commoners. It was intoxicating. I smiled until my face hurt.

  “Almost exactly two years later, to the day, I was at market again when I saw my first Project vegetable. You see, the Expansion Project hadn’t been heralded by a town crier or written in decrees on stuck on trees. The vegetables had just seemed bigger and more luscious than usual for a few seasons, before they started really getting freakish.

  That day, the marketplace was ablaze with conversation. Everyone was circling around one table with produce and talking instead of buying. I was old enough by then to go alone, but I often had Tansy accompany me to help with the carrying. So, we pushed in for a look. It was an enormous corn ear as yellow as a sun and almost as long as my arm. We both grabbed onto each other and just stared. What was it? “Some new thing from the palace,” we were told. “Expansion,” the peasants had whispered, feeling the abundance of syllable rolling around in their mouths.

  “One year later, the corn was double that size and we had to bring Derrick or one of the other grooms along to heave the vegetables into a cart. It was now common knowledge how the king and the royal scientists all talked about the fact that we could boost our economy by doing what we had always done – farming – but with larger produce. They had ensured through something-or-other that humans did not grow from eating it and were not poisoned by the food. But they didn’t check the ground.

  “I remember each market day after that. Most of the vegetables were still big, but on the whole food was less and cost more. It was bitter in our mouths, we had thought the Project a miracle that would ensure a bright future for all, no one to ever go hungry again in this little province. But now more were going hungry, bizarre with the huge vegetables about. Bloodier and bloodier fights were starting over the giant produce that remained. Still, the food supplies to the market kept dwindling, until there was nothing left. The last market I ever went to, there were some dried apples that someone was trying to sell their horse for and nothing else.

  “That was the day I saw my first carrior. They were less bold then, but they were getting bolder. I had heard rumours, but we all had and for a couple of weeks life hadn’t changed, so how were we to know? I saw a dark shape against the sky for just a second, but thought I’d imagined it. I clutched my basket and carried on. Then, right there as I was watching, a crow the size of a dog crashed down out of the sky and grabbed a small child only four years old. Not much older than… anyway. I turned and I ran and ran, just like everyone else. I never went to the market again.”

  Ash patted Vanita’s knees and got up. “There. There’s your story.”

  To her surprise, Vanita looked like she was suppressing a smile.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that, when someone asks for a story, you’re supposed to tell them something happy.”

  “You never asked for a happy story!”

  “It’s implied. How am I supposed to go to sleep now?” Vanita giggled, a bright sound in the dusty gloom. Laughing, again, somehow. It was Vanita’s gift, to be able to keep sweet in the midst of ugliness. Ash shrugged, mystified and gave her leg a squeeze and turned to leave the room.

  “Ash?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry this happened. You would’ve made a fine cook.”

  Ash smiled. “Thank you, Miss.”

  Chapter Six

  The Problem

  He awoke by moonlight now.

  Always the same dream, every detail exact. Rize bolted into sitting position before he was quite awake, the last silvery fingers of night still playing on his bed. Instead of thinking about it, he looked down at his bare torso, still pale but certainly less pale than it had ever been in his life inside castle walls. He had never had these muscles either, contours that made his own flesh look like some unknown country he did not want to claim. He stared at them now, these newly wiry arms and toughened hands, trying to keep his mind away from where it could not help but go. There would plenty of time, in the hours of slow greying as the world turned to dawn, wringing the darkness out of the night in bits and pieces. He would have ample time to lie there and go over every detail, yet again.

  Always the same, the dream a malicious memory that seemed near perfect in its recording. The only things that ever changed were the words at the end.

  He was halfway through his sixteenth year; and thought himself faced with the biggest problem ever to face: his own cousin had already bedded two girls and he had none. He could not, could not, let Lorin bed a third before his first. A respite had come in the form of an explosion of excitement washing over the palace recently when the first Expansion Project vegetables had successfully ripened. He had forgotten about his problem facing the sheer joy of a tomato the size of his head, knowing that their people would never grow hungry again. But a few weeks in to the first Expansion harvest, his thoughts had turned to The Problem once more.

  Merrick had always been a kindly man, a guard often positioned in the outer perimeter of the courtyard gardens or the bailey green – two of the most dangerous posts. The king had laughed like a crow when Rize had announced at five that he would grow up to be Merrick. But he was a man himself now, or near enough one and he still found the man wise and true. Rize was known to walk with Merrick around the perimeter occasionally and no one would think it amiss if he went now. Merrick certainly would not tell anyone that Rize had asked him how to sweeten a girl to your advances all the way into the bedchamber and what to do once you got there.

  He was coming around to the right words when it happened. Merrick was nodding and listening silently, the patina of a normal day all over his face. There was no sound, nothing. And it wasn’t as if Merrick was sickly, old or weak. Rize turned to look at him, just as Merrick’s eyes rounded in surprise. As claws, the biggest claws he had ever seen, rested like a hag’s old fingers over Merrick’s shoulders. Corpse-grey and scaled, there was something prehistoric about them and Rize could not look away. Then they dug in and Merrick was gone, borne up into the air and out of sight before Rize could even blink. He was just there one moment a
nd gone the next.

  Red splashed down on Rize’s face as he looked up to the sky for an answer. Yet still he saw nothing. The day was suddenly empty. No one else had been there to see. The ear-piercing shriek of a bird close by told him an explanation he could not believe. And there the memory that had become a dream ended.

  All that ever changed was that, unlike it had happened in truth, Merrick always wheezed out a few last words as he disappeared into those claws and the sky above. Words from various others that day which had impacted his mind, he supposed.

  Today, those words were telling. “She is to be the prince’s bride… I may say the new king…” Merrick had intoned as he was lifted, sad-faced, towards his death by the claws.

  Married. The very thought was ridiculous. It would probably have been less ridiculous and more useful if the pathfinder had said ‘the prince must stand on his head while singing the anthem to save the kingdom’. At least it would have been good for a laugh. But in a time of doubt and hunger and fear in the gut all the time, what good was a royal wedding? Or any wedding for that matter?

  He sighed. It wouldn’t do to think ill of the dead. Much as he had disliked that one, the pathfinders had been loyal servants of his family for years, decades longer than they had been symbols of a new religion of zealots. And now she was one of the dead, so he would not think badly on her now.

  Besides, he had better get dressed to go out and see his men and lead them all out into whatever desolate part of the nearby countryside held the most carriors. Today was the day.

  ***

  The wastes were shining with an almost angelic purity two hours later. Ochre miles upon miles with not a tree, not a shrub or soul in sight. The heat was like a living thing here – pressing itself upon Rize, whispering down his neck.

  The general approached. In the bareness of the surroundings the blue and red uniform made him look like a storybook character that had wondered into the wrong plot.

  “We’re ready your Highness.”

  “Let’s go.”

  It was a bigger team than Rize would have liked – the general, two infantrymen that had volunteered, a handler for the horses and two of Rize’s own men. And of course the prisoners. It made Rize wish that he could simply send the birds an ultimatum – ‘you against me’. He could just walk out into the stark wastes and be done with it. He would die, or they would, or both. It sounded simple. Unlike this fussing with blue and red uniforms and experiments and men.

  If only there were a tree to stand under, some form of shade. Shelter. But there was nothing. Just the dehydration pumping a dull ache into his temples and prisoners’ grating cries, hanging in the still, hot air.

  “Please, sir! Please!”

  “Lemme out here!”

  “Oy haven’t done nothing…”

  “Please!”

  Two years ago, he would never have thought he would be using prisoners like this. What he thought was moral and right had been like tidy, inviolable fences that divided up the land. But now he had seen fences trampled over, smashed to pieces, as the firewood they were. Barriers didn’t exist anymore. Only the birds did.

  “Everyone in position?”

  “Yes Highness.”

  “Right. My lord father, in his wisdom, has decided that I must be with Sound. But I will be within running distance, to assist Sight if things go bad.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The general turned and walked to his position. He was the only one alone, manning the second Smell station. Rize had both his two men with him, but that was because he had a hunch. Quickly, he backed over to where they were and raised his hand ready to signal the general’s infantry couple, standing nervously in two drab cloaks next to the prisoner cart and the horses.

  Rize splayed his fingers out up high where everyone could see them. Ready?

  He waited two beats, then brought the hand down.

  Immediately, the infantrymen threw off their cloaks to reveal the gold and silver-embroidered clothes they had very reluctantly put on out of Rize’s own closet. The handler led the horses silently in a slow walk around the prisoners’ cart. Holding mirrors, the infantrymen shone beams of light this way and that, walking around themselves. Each was completely, stonily silent – they had to be. The tension of it made Rize want to cackle with laughter, seeing these military men in his ridiculous finery swanning about in silence. Then a wave of nausea came. He squatted low, his eyes never leaving his men and waited.

  The general was freely using his pocket watch now that Sight was on show. He timed precisely ten minutes. Then looked up. Yards to his right, the two gold and silver-clothed men looked up too. Nothing. They put their drab cloaks on again without a word and sat down.

  It was the general’s turn. He opened the sack on the ground nearly soundlessly and the overwhelming stench of horse guts and fresh blood rose up. Even at his distance, Rize gagged. Smell was the least pleasant one. Next to the dark, muddy colour the blood was turning, the guts looked too clean and pink – almost innocent, like a baby. Rize watched them with horrid fascination until the ten minutes were up.

  Stony-faced the general covered the remains in sand, using the little water they’d brought to wash the blood away. They all looked up into the empty sky. Rize felt his stomach coil with excitement. It was his turn.

  The king had insisted Rize be on Team Sound because it had received the least reaction last time. But that had been when Sound was first of the three. If Rize was right, he’d be seeing a lot more action today.

  At the General’s signal, Rize and his men began shouting at one another. The handler came over too and had the horses neigh while trotting in circles. Rize picked up a helmet he had taken from the armoury and bashed it hard into the ground repeatedly, looking and looking at the sky for any sign.

  Come on. Come on…

  There. A black mark on the sky the size of a hand, winging its way towards them. Rize’s men had spotted it too. They were looking up with a curious mixture of triumph and failure on their faces.

  “Come on boys, keep going! Let’s see what the catch of the day is.”

  So, then, Rize had been right. It wasn’t sight that attracted the smarter carriors, nor was it sound or smell. It was all three – or, rather, the time it took to get all three. It was interest. The carriors wanted to see what was happening and were attracted to commotion more than a specific sense.

  The thing was close to landing now. Rize felt the knot of nausea in his throat as he saw what it was. Crow. He knew without looking to the right or left that the men were all swallowing down the same fear. There were few ways out of an encounter with a crow. Most of them involved dying. Rize breathed out slowly until the sick feeling passed, only speaking when he was sure it wouldn’t come out in a boyish whisper.

  “Everyone, begin crow protocol… Now!”

  The triangle widened as the great flapping thing landed. For a split second Rize was reminded of the Pathfinder and felt a pang of sympathy for the woman. Perhaps the only fond thought he’d ever had for her. But now was no time to think of corpses – the bird was swinging its ugly head around at his men.

  It was a raven, he could see now. Slightly different in size to crows, perhaps less intelligent, though very similar in both looks and mind. Rize held his hand out for a bow and sighed. The General nodded to Rize and they came from their two angles with bows raised. Here goes nothing, he thought and aimed.

  The General loosed his arrows first. Rize’s heart sank as the first glanced off, the second only landing superficially above the now-annoyed raven’s left eye. It was the same every time. The once-powerful arrows made by the finest royal smiths were like kindling to these giant beasts. They just didn’t penetrate enough.

  Luckily, harpoons did – although ravens and crows alike needed to be distracted well enough to not see the harpoon being readied. Rize began to yell and let off arrows as he saw the men from sound getting ready with what would actually work.

  Then something happene
d which surprised everyone.

  The carrior studied Rize with its black eyes for a moment, then abruptly turned around and lumbered in the opposite direction. At first, Rize thought it had seen the harpoon and was moving to attack Sound – but it simply ignored them too. It had its eyes on the prisoners. Specifically, it had its eyes on the flashes of movement as the prisoners stuck their arms out between the bars, shaking impotently at their makeshift prison.

  The raven turned its head, intelligent black eyes taking in Rize, his men and all their little arrows and sticks. Then it turned scornfully away, back to the juicy problem of the wiggling arms behind bars.

  “… Don’t you see?” Rize said excitedly a few hours later. The moon was near high in the sky and still he was repeating each and every detail of the day to a rather bored duke cousin. “It wasn’t Team Sight or Team Sound or even Smell, it was the problem to solve that interested it! This could be huge. We understand more about how the smarter carriors think. It’s interest that attracts that, but what keeps them going is a problem – some kind of puzzle or obstacle with humans inside rather than a simple snack. They follow the path of the most resistance because they like the challenge!”

  “Yes, yes. Fascinating,” said his cousin drily. “What happened to the prisoners?”

  “Oh, we let them go, like we said we would. Didn’t see what happened after that. The bird saw the harpoon anyway and flew off, so I think they’re fine. But the carrior – now that’s interesting -”

  “… Not to interrupt this riveting tale, but can we talk about something of vague interest to my life? Like, what on earth are you going to do about what that Pathfinder said? Throw a party?”

  “It seems that way. My lord father is determined to follow her instructions. When I tried pointing out that she didn’t exactly finish her mouthing off orders, or that she is quite, quite dead and probably won’t care if we don’t follow them anyway, he just shakes his head. Just shakes it and says nothing.”