Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  Immediately, they moved in to set up the tripod and cauldron and load it with food and water. They set a few smaller pots around the edge. Supper would be late tonight, but at least the babies would get their porridge.

  Sigurd ignored the cooks and the pots, watching only the flames. They reflected more and more clearly in her pale blue eyes as the night came down.

  Arvid stayed with Merroc, taking turns at sitting with Sigurd while the other walked up and down, staying warm. After the night deepened, Martine brought hot bricks for Sigurd’s feet.

  “Take them away!” Sigurd screamed. “I will have nothing from that accursed fire! Do you seek to curse me, too, Traveler whore?”

  Martine said nothing, merely removed the bricks and handed them to a woman with several children, who accepted them thankfully and chivvied her children off to bed.

  Merroc sent Arvid an apologetic glance. Arvid knew he should support his own wife, should object to Sigurd’s insults, but in the face of such naked grief he could not.

  It was second watch before Sigurd finally slumped in her chair, asleep. Merroc gathered her up and carried her to their chamber.

  The fort was so quiet as Arvid went up to his chamber that he fancied he was the only one left awake, except the cook watching tomorrow’s breakfast soup. Each creak of the wooden stair was like a reminder of his own mortality, a whisper of death in the night.

  Martine was waiting at the door to her room and his heart leaped. Perhaps now, when they could be alone, she would come to him and explain, apologize, weep for her betrayal…

  “I have cast the stones again,” she said, like a sergeant reporting to an officer, “and I definitely see danger approaching from the north.”

  “The Ice King’s men?” he made himself ask, suppressing the sharp pain of disappointment with duty.

  “No,” she said, frowning. “Not them. Weather. Deep cold and storm.”

  “In summer?”

  She shrugged, face wiped clean of emotion again.

  “I tell you what the stones tell me, my lord,” she said, and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

  Just once, he would like to forget the duty he owed his people to appear sane and responsible, and kick the shagging door in.

  The next day Arvid spent an hour going over the Prowman’s report. It was too short. It contained little that Arvid hadn’t already heard. Five known Powers, and the possibility of more unknown, which made his blood run cold. Would the moon itself turn out to be a Power? Or the worms which writhed in the soil?

  Women, the report said, encountered Fire at the Spring Equinox when they were young, and the Autumn Equinox when old. Men were introduced to the Water Power at adolescence.

  Earth was slow to act and rarely concerned with humans.

  Air was distant from humans, but interacted at times. She was hard to predict, hard to contact, impossible to constrain, even by the other Powers.

  And the Great Forest…“You know the forms that Power takes,” the Prowman had written, and so he did. In the Forest, anything could happen. He had been trying all day to keep his thoughts away from Ember, but reading that simple sentence brought back all his fears, swamping thought with simple terror of what might happen to her. He should have gone with her.

  Sitting in his workroom, he was astonished that he hadn’t gone with her. What had he been thinking? At the time, in the moment, it hadn’t even occurred to him. Was that because his domain meant more to him than his own child? Was his duty so overwhelming that he could ignore the promptings of his fatherly heart? It didn’t feel so, now. He wanted to be with her, and bedamned to the domain.

  But… when the boys had said, “We’ll go with her,” it had seemed so simple. Straightforward. As though it was right that the younger ones should take the danger and he and Martine should stay to protect their people.

  Was he just getting old?

  Or had something manipulated him in that moment? Fire. Twisting his mind? Twisting his heart askew?

  His anger rose again at the thought, and at the realization that it could have been any Power, from Fire to the local gods, even to Elva herself. Without Sight he was fumbling in the dark and as lost as a baby in the Forest. His only guide was Martine…

  No. He would not go cap in hand to her. If she wanted to help him, she would offer. If the daylight world was all he had, he would use it as best he could to protect the people who depended on him. And to the cold hells with everything else.

  He kept reading. The report said absolutely nothing about the Lake. How was that possible?

  Page in hand, he found Martine in the kitchen, discussing the flavoring of the salted meat.

  “Juniper berries, wild garlic, pepper if we’ve got it, onions, sage,” Martine said, the cook nodding his head as he ticked them off his fingers. “Anything else?”

  “Brandy?” the cook said doubtfully.

  “If we must. Tell the butchers not to kill the spring lambs. The meat’s too fatty for brining. Let them grow some more first.”

  How long would this last? Arvid wondered. Gods help them all, it had better be over by Snowfall.

  Martine turned to find him in the doorway and her face became calm again. Part of him wanted to grab her and shake her or kiss her or anything to get that look off her face—to make her see him again. He gestured her to go before him into the empty hall, and offered the Prowman’s page.

  “He does not mention the Lake.”

  “Not specifically. The Lake is Water.”

  As if that should mean something to him.

  “So?” he was forced to ask.

  She was surprised. The first emotion he’d evoked from her, and it was surprise at his stupidity.

  “All water, lakes, streams, rivers, pools—any running water is Her. The Lake is merely a strong seat of Her power, because the Lake People have never ceased their worship of Her. But Her influence reaches wherever water flows.”

  Just as Fire was in every hearth. And Air in every breath he took. And Earth, he supposed, beneath his every step. The scope of it was too terrifying to confront. At least one could avoid the Forest. But they had been surrounded by enemies, all unknowing, all their lives. Everywhere.

  Arvid stared at Martine blankly.

  “The local gods,” he said. “Have they no power at all?”

  “They have great power,” she replied gently. “Power over life and death, and the responsibility to keep the door between the two closed. But they do not try to control the Greater Powers, and I doubt they could. It is as though…” she searched for words…“it is as though their strengths are so different that there is no overlap. Like—like dry and wet, or day and night. The local gods care very little about individual humans, you know, but the Powers like to have more… personal relationships with us.”

  Her voice shook, at last, and he knew that she was thinking about Ember. Worried about her. A tear slid down her cheek and she dashed it away impatiently.

  “In the story of the Bynum girls, and in the moment I witnessed, He waited for the woman to come to him,” she said. “To embrace Him. She won’t do that.”

  “He killed Osfrid.”

  “A man,” she said. “And one of Acton’s people.” As though that made it all right.

  “My daughter is one of Acton’s people.”

  Quietly, very quietly, she said, “My daughter has the old blood in her.”

  Although the sun was setting, he left immediately and inspected the fire where they were cooking dinner in a huge cauldron slung over the hot ashes in Moss’s shelter, and the new huts for the women and babies, and all the work that had been done that day, before he returned to the now crowded hall for the evening meal and was told that Martine had taken her food to her chamber to leave more room for their guests. Merroc and Sigurd were eating in the parlor.

  The hall was almost dark, and he was glad of the long northern twilight. Days were shorter without fire. He ate soup because he needed food and it was his duty to st
ay strong, and then he went to his own chamber. Martine had always insisted on a bed of her own because he snored. Now he wondered if there had been another reason. A desire to think her own thoughts, away from him, was the most innocuous of the reasons he could imagine, and that was bad enough.

  He slept in brief naps, worry about Ember fighting with anger at Martine and the desire, stupid, stupid, to go to her chamber and beg forgiveness. She was the one who should be at his door begging. But he would not forgive treason. Not without better cause than she had given him so far.

  In a small part of his mind he knew that he must never say the word “treason” in front of others, or things would happen which he could not control.

  But here, he dwelt on it. Treason. Betrayal. Deception. A whole life, lived on a series of lies.

  If he had been a woman, he would have wept.

  The Road to Foreverfroze

  Elva felt a bit sorry for the guard Arvid had sent with her. Bass clearly didn’t like traveling at night, particularly when the moon was just a sliver. He understood that her white skin and hair, her oddly pink eyes, meant that she couldn’t travel in sunlight without pain. He just wished that Arvid had picked someone else to go with her. But the poor man hadn’t dared refuse the “honor”—not when she was both his lady’s daughter and the mouthpiece of the gods.

  It was Martine’s idea that she be the one to take the news to Foreverfroze, the distant harbor town which provided most of the Last Domain’s fish. She had no idea why, but it didn’t worry her. The first time the gods had spoken to her, she had been little more than a baby, and she had grown up accepting their will as her own. She knew that her husband, Mabry, sometimes found her amused acceptance irritating. She wished Mabry was here, instead of at home with their youngest son, Gorse, busy with the spring sowing. Spring wasn’t a time a farmer could leave his fields, even one who mostly ran goats. It had been a real sacrifice for him to let the other children come to Ember’s wedding, and part of her wished that they hadn’t.

  Then maybe the gods wouldn’t have sent Ash and Cedar to Fire Mountain. That had been the hardest thing the gods had ever asked of her, to risk her sons. But it was the boys’ choice, not hers. Fire Mountain. The volcano in the middle of the Eye Teeth Mountains, its perfect cone contrasting with the sharp irregular peaks around it. Mam and she had seen it once, from a long way off.

  Her horse stumbled over something in the road and she was jerked back to the present. Pretty, her mare, recovered and they went on, with Bass muttering under his breath about laming the horses beyond repair. She ignored him, as he clearly wanted her to do.

  They were riding through the scrubby trees just south of the Great Forest, a place Elva had no desire to go. The trees were mostly alder and spruce, with patches of open ground between. Catchfly bushes grew close to the trail so they rode through a cloud of scent. The white flowers seemed to glow in the moonlight.

  Sometimes she wished she could see the world with all its color ablaze, but the night was beautiful in its own way.

  The wind began to rise, blowing from the north, bringing chill and the scent of snow. Elva turned to Bass.

  “Do you normally get a north wind this time of year?”

  “No, my lady,” he said, looking worried. “It’s unseasonable all right.”

  They stopped to put on their coats, hats and gloves.

  “We might as well eat now, my lady,” Bass said.

  “I’m not a lady, Bass,” she replied, laughing. “My name’s Elva. I’m a Valuer, you know.”

  That seemed to relax him. Gave them common ground, perhaps.

  “Me too,” he said. They sat on stones by the side of the track and ate the bread and cheese that Mam had given them. It was good cheese, even if it was from cows instead of goats.

  “Wonder when we’ll get bread again,” Bass said gloomily. That was a sobering thought.

  “Will we get to the Valuers’ Plantation by dawn?” Elva asked. He shook his head.

  “Sorry, my lady, but it’s much further. We’ll get to Oakmere, though. There’s an inn there my lord uses.”

  “Longer than I thought. I’ve walked most of the domains in my time, but I’ve never been to Foreverfroze.”

  “It’s a strange place,” Bass said, but that was all.

  They passed Oakmere’s black rock altar before they got to the town, and Elva sent a polite hello to the local gods.

  Honored ones, I greet you, she thought and felt them stream from the altar to surround her, slide into her mind to taste it, riffle through her memories of the last few days and then out again.

  The world is changing, they said in their silent multi-layered voices. The balance is shifting.

  How are my sons? she asked. The only thing she wanted to know.

  There was a pause as they considered the question.

  Alive, they answered. In the Forest.

  The gods dealt with life and death, and cared about little else. But they loved her and her husband, and she thought sometimes that they cared somewhat about her children. At least, about Ash and Cedar and Poppy. The others they scarcely seemed to notice. It was often so, she’d realized. The quiet ones, the ones whose eyes saw beauty even if they didn’t create it, those were the minds that the gods liked. Saffron was carelessly beautiful and as flamboyant as Poppy was painstaking, but it was Poppy to whom the gods flowed when the girls went to the altar. And Gorse at fifteen was loud and strong and bull-like with a soft heart. He’d make a fine farmer and a wonderful Village Voice, she thought, when his time came, but the gods were less interested in him than in Ash, whose spirit was light as air even though he seemed so solid and dependable. Cedar, of course, was the most like her, gifted with Sight and learning to use it. His journey would stretch those gifts to their limit, she feared.

  But she’d been on the Road herself from when she was two to twenty-two, and traveling itself held few fears for her. Her boys would be all right as far as that went. It was Fire who could not be predicted. Not around men.

  Oakmere had a Town Council so she went to the Moot Hall and dutifully reported all she knew to a Mayor and Council who hadn’t even tried to go to bed, then found Arvid’s inn as the dawn was breaking, cold as contempt.

  She’d never liked towns much, but even the daybreak bustle of the markets below couldn’t stop her sleeping. As she drifted off, she felt the gods in her mind, gently, saying You must speak to Sealmother, and that led her into a dream of a dark cave, and cold water, and laughing green eyes which reminded her of her mam.

  They left Oakmere in a sunset haze of gold which should have felt warm but which chilled instead. That night was colder; every breath steamed and they couldn’t let the horses rest for too long.

  An hour before dawn they came to a small inn that Bass had had good reports of. The innkeeper and her husband woke readily enough but were profuse in apologies for the lack of fire. They had thought it was a local problem. Hearing Elva’s news made them thoughtful.

  The innkeeper brought them a meal of sliced ham and early greens, with fresh milk as the only drink.

  “I’d kill for a mug of cha,” Bass said with deep feeling, and Elva agreed.

  “How long were you thinking of staying?” the woman asked. She had a southern accent, Carlion maybe or a bit further down.

  “Just today,” Elva replied. “We will sleep today and be on the road again at sunset.”

  The woman eyed her pale skin and odd eyes but said nothing. Most of the Last Domain had heard stories about their lady’s unchancy daughter.

  “Fair dealing,” the innkeeper said. “We’ll be off, too.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “We’ll take the childer down to my family in Carlion, till this is over, one way or another, and then we’ll decide whether we come back.” She looked around the pleasant room, her eyes wistful. “We’ve worked hard for this place… but it’s a fool that can’t see when it’s time to leave.”

  That was a Traveler’s saying.
It had another part: “and a fool is soon a dead man.” Elva wondered how many people would be left in the Last Domain by autumn, if Ember did not return.

  • • •

  That night’s journey was colder yet, and Elva wondered if it was because they were now heading north, or if something else was happening.

  The Valuers’ Plantation was like a lord’s large estate, except that here the workers owned the fields in common.

  The Plantation had been started hundreds of years ago. Some said that it was the first settlement ever made in the Last Domain, as a refuge for those who fled the warlords. Whoever picked the spot had known what they were doing, Elva thought. It was flat water meadows and gentle woods, surrounded by a long curve of the Two Scarf River, with the houses and hall set on a rise which would have a good view of the countryside. A defensible position, Elva thought. And the hall, the oldest building, was built like a lord’s garrison, with arrow slits instead of windows and archers’ positions built into the roof line. Whoever founded this place had been a warrior.

  Now, it was a place for farmers and crafters and merchants, its population the size of a town.

  Lamb, the head of the Plantation Council, was already on the way to Palisade, but Elva explained the situation to the rest of the council after a hasty breakfast of soaked meal and raisins.

  She and Bass retired exhausted to guest rooms off the main hall, which smelled sweetly of the apples that had been dried in the rafters and had left their scent behind them.

  Elva was woken just before dusk by a gawky blond youth who reminded her a little of Gorse, although Gorse was much sturdier and far less shy.

  “’m Thyme,” he mumbled, and handed her a tray of bread and thin-sliced bacon and early strawberries, then ducked away again. Elva looked after him, speechless. Not because of his awkwardness—she’d mothered three boys through the awkward stage, after all. But because the gods had streamed around his head with joy, and he didn’t even seem aware of it. Some weren’t, she knew. The Lady Sorn, who was ruler of the Central Domain, was the darling of the gods yet completely unable to sense them. But this boy… this boy carried Sight with him like a heavy rock, a burden he was trying to ignore.