Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  It was as though they were not there.

  Perhaps they weren’t.

  Ember shook her head. Perhaps this was the way Elgir unsettled his visitors—a subtle discomfort which made them question their own ears and eyes.

  The wood grew deeper and thicker, with new kinds of trees appearing as they crossed streams and small standing pools: alder and willow, birch and rowan. No holly trees, and Ember thanked the gods for that. She never wanted to see a holly tree ever again.

  Deer raised their heads from grazing to stare at them, but not to run. Ash brought his bow around to the front, but then hesitated, and slung it over his shoulder again.

  “This is a test,” Ember said, jumping at how loud her voice seemed. Ash and Cedar looked at her and she saw that Cedar had understood that already. His dark eyes were bright with interest.

  “Aye,” he said. “There’s power everywhere here. Best treat as we’re being treated.”

  Ash’s hand left his bow, but he frowned. “A gentle test for a place with such a dark reputation.”

  “Just the first one,” Tern almost shouted. He was nervous, and his horse had picked it up, dancing from side to side of the trail. Cedar held back and put a calming hand on the bridle. The red roan eyed him wildly, but settled.

  “Arvid wouldn’t have sent you if he hadn’t known you could deal with anything we met,” Cedar said quietly. “Will you prove him wrong?”

  A flush climbed Tern’s face, and he let a breath out, looking down, seeming smaller and even younger with the movement. But his horse calmed further, and Cedar let go.

  “No shame in being spooked,” Ash commented. “But if that’s what he wants, let’s not give it to him.”

  Tern’s mouth firmed, and he nodded. A breeze swept around Ash and flicked up Thatch’s mane. Ash laughed, his sense of humor surging up and lighting his eyes. Ember felt her heart flame in sympathy, and smiled. He had never looked better to her, with his hair turned almost golden by the light through the beech leaves above him. She half-wished the desire that speared through her wasn’t a spell.

  “Come on!” Ash called, turning Thatch and cantering forward. “Let’s find out what’s next!”

  Ember laughed and followed him, and the others came up behind.

  It was like the best rides of her childhood, the first spring rides when the ground was firm enough after the thaw. Sun and leaves and a constant breeze which played with them, deer and birds and squirrels and pine martens, shrews in the grass, grasshoppers buzzing, bees and dragonflies and midges dancing in the air.

  No butterflies, she thought at one moment, but forgot a second later when the ground began to go down again, into a wide, wide valley. The trees were older, higher, their trunks wider and the bark cracked and gnarled. The branches started further up the trunk, forming arches above their heads. Birdsong slipped away behind them, and the wind died.

  Shade became shadow, trees giants, making Ember feel like a doll, playing someone else’s game. They could see further, between the trees, yet seemed to see less because of the gloom. But it was still clear which way was down, which way led in.

  To one side, a deep brown shape moved. Huge. It was huge. Ember caught her breath, ready to call a warning, when she recognized the shape: spreading antlers, wide and flat; an elk. A big male, watching them from beside a stream.

  He gazed steadily at them, water dripping from his muzzle. Those eyes stared in a way foreign to animals. Ash turned to make sure she had seen him and they exchanged a quick glance of concern and surmise.

  The elk turned and began to pace them, keeping well to one side but staying with them. Ember had seen wolves do that, keeping the prey in sight, letting them know they were being stalked so they would panic. But elk didn’t hunt. They were like cows, for the sake of crying!

  Yet the elk turned his head, time and again, to assess them, his long awkward-looking legs easily matching the horses’ pace, his eyes alight with something very like intelligence.

  And humor. Ember was reminded of an older friend of her father’s, prone to teasing him about all the times he’d gotten into trouble as a boy. The elk’s eyes had the same mixture of amusement and mischief.

  “It’s not funny!” she called to him. Ash wheeled Thatch to come between her and the elk, as though he feared the animal would charge. But of course he didn’t. He faced her instead, those dark eyes still laughing at her. “You took my man from me,” she said, suddenly and coldly angry. “Your warlord’s power stole my guard. And we have come to get him back. Is that a cause for laughter?”

  Tern was staring at her as though she had run mad, but Cedar looked appraisingly from her to the elk, and Ash stared at nothing but the animal, his brow concentrated, his bow ready, arrow nocked. Ember hadn’t even seen him reach for it.

  The elk tipped his head to one side, clearly considering her words. The expression in his eyes changed, but this time it was pure animal. No laughter, no intelligence. Dull, like a cow’s. He dropped his head and began to graze on the sweet grass under a hanging birch.

  “Someone was riding that animal,” Cedar said. “I Saw him leave, I think.”

  “Riding?” Tern said. “You can’t ride an elk!” His voice was full of indignation, as though the very idea was an insult.

  “Riding its mind,” Ash explained. “Using its eyes. There are old stories about that, but I always thought…”

  “Riding the bloody animal and laughing at us!” Ember said savagely. “Elgir, who else? I dislike this lord already.”

  “Early days,” Ash said. “It’s a good trick, for scouting.” His voice, she was annoyed to notice, was half admiring.

  “He’d better have prepared a welcome for us,” Ember said. She refused to consider what kind of welcome it might be. Elgir was unchancy, but he was a warlord, and not a fool. He would treat her as his equal’s daughter, with proper protocol, or the Northern Mountains Domain would be shunned by all warlords, all his trading partners. Elgir knew that. But even so, there was a cold hand around her heart. Would a lord who rode the mind of an animal care about trade the way he should?

  A month ago she would never have thought to question it.

  She went to the front, and Ash let her, as though respecting her anger. But as she passed, he said quietly, “Princess—” in a warning tone, and looked at her hair.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “You’re glowing a bit,” he said, almost apologetically. “Like you did just before—just before He came, back at the fort.”

  Anger drained out of her and was replaced by fear. Ash nodded. “That’s better,” he said approvingly. “You can’t let yourself get angry, sweetheart.”

  The endearment brought a deep warmth. Ash reached out to pat her hand, and Merry shifted her rump, bumping his bay and moving on a step, so that his hand fell short. She was glad of it—any touch from him seemed to ignite the fire within her, and that could be doubly dangerous right now.

  Ember rode on quietly, making herself watch and listen. In the mornings, in spring and autumn, she sometimes got up early and went with her mother or father to the black rock altar where they worshipped the local gods at dawn. Before the sun came up, before the birds’ chorus started, there was a pause where the world seemed to wait, breathless.

  This forest was poised permanently in that moment. Breathless. Waiting. And where were the people? They had seen only animals.

  The land leveled beneath them, so they were riding flat instead of down, and Ember began to hear water running. Rushing, leaping, splashing… lots of water. The sound lifted her spirits and Merry’s pace quickened.

  The trees changed to huge willows and alders. She had never seen alders this size, as big as oak trees. Their dense round leaves grew much lower to the ground than the beeches they had been riding through, so that the view ahead was blocked. But the sound of water grew louder.

  “Princess!” Ash called. “Best dismount.”

  Good advice. She swung down from Merry and le
d her forward, Ash coming up beside her, Cedar and Tern close behind. Merry was stepping high, almost prancing, wanting a drink. Ash pulled back a thick alder bough to let her go through, but Merry balked and Ember stopped, astonished, as cold spray hit her face and bright light her eyes.

  The alder stood with its roots half in the stream. River, not stream, she thought, as she looked out and further out, across a broad race of water which crashed against rocks and sprang high in the air to fall and shoot away again. The land rose sharply to their right, a long climb to a ridge that was almost a mountain, and the river surged down it in a series of cascades, white and almost green where it poured smoothly, a coruscation of rainbows and spray and flashes of reflected sunlight.

  The light was glaring after the gloom under the trees. Squinting, she peered across the river, aware of Ash looking over her shoulder, his body warm against hers. She wanted to lean back against him, but she took a half step forward instead. Fire would get no help from her in setting them both aflame. Across the river, the land was different. Copses instead of forest, open glades with long grasses buzzing with insects, alive with meadow flowers, poppies and cornflowers and amaranth and, everywhere, the blue of cranesbill.

  There were animals to be seen—deer and elk grazing, a couple of wild cattle, their auburn coats still shaggy from winter, some ponies, small and sturdy, but looking as wild as the deer. And the birds! Swallows in a frenzy, swooping on the midges and flies, swifts darting over the water and back across the meadow, a mother pheasant strutting in the grass, followed by her tiny striped babies… a plover stalked along the opposite bank, eyes on the mud at its feet, a family of ducks sheltered in a quiet pool formed by a fallen tree. If the forest had been waiting, this place was waiting for no one and nothing. It was alive and purposeful, brilliant with color and movement. She looked up at Ash and smiled, seeing his eyes crinkle in that way he had that made her half-sad, it clutched so hard at her heart. Oh, gods, she thought, remembering Osfrid smiling at her once, and how she had felt fluttery right through to her backbone. This was nothing like that, which proved it wasn’t love. It was just Fire, tormenting her.

  She looked back across the river. The individual trees in the copses—were they carved?

  “How do we get across?” Tern asked, his voice high with excitement.

  The horses shouldered Ember aside to get to the water, and she moved back to let them drink. There didn’t seem to be a ford or a bridge anywhere. Below them, to their left, the river curved around in a long arc. In the distance, it was hard to see which part of the forest was on their side of the river and which was on the other.

  “I think there is a bridge,” Cedar said. His voice was odd; there was suppressed excitement there.

  “What can you See?” Ember said, but he shook his head.

  “More a feeling,” he replied, pointing downriver. “There. See it? I think that crosses over.”

  About a league downstream there was a bump on the river bank. It was one of those spots where Ember struggled to make out the separate banks. The trees were so large, and their branches reached out so far across the stream…

  “No!” she said in astonishment.

  “He’s grown himself a bridge?” Ash asked, voice alive with amusement again. “Now that’s a trick we could use back home. I’d like to meet this warlord!”

  “So would I,” Cedar said, but he wasn’t joking. “Come on.”

  He led the way back under the trees purposefully, and they followed him without question. The undergrowth cleared not far from the bank and they followed its broad curve along the bank, keeping the sound of the water as close as they could. It was tantalizing, hearing that sound and knowing the bright, busy world lay just beyond, while they trudged through gloom and dead leaves. A baby in the womb must feel like this, Ember thought, hearing the voices of the greater world but unable to join them.

  They came to a wider space where there was evidence of tracks—not humans, but all the animals they had seen earlier. And others.

  “Wolf,” Tern said, down on one knee, examining the soft ground. “Definitely wolf, here.”

  “And bear,” Ash said.

  Ember shivered. Bears were unpredictable things, and a bear’s claw could disembowel a human as easily as the stroke of a sword.

  They followed the tracks to a great willow tree, leaning down over the stream, its enormous roots stretching so far back into the forest that she lost sight of them. The closest was so thick it stood higher than her head. Tentatively, she put out a hand to touch the crinkled brown bark. It felt like every other willow tree she had known, and its catkins had already given way to the slender yellow-green leaves of spring. Its familiarity made her uneasy. No willow tree grew to this size naturally, no matter how old it was.

  There were ways to climb up—broad pathways of roots, as wide as the watchtower walk around her father’s fort, where four men could stride abreast. The tracks led to these.

  “Elk,” Ash said, pointing to where tracks climbed a rootway. “Where elk can go, so can horses.”

  Cedar wasn’t waiting. He led Snail up onto the broadest root, where the elk had gone, and she went willingly. Cedar glanced back. “Come on!” he said. His enthusiasm worried her—it was so unlike his normal cool head.

  “Wait—” she said, but he had already moved on. Ash came to stand next to her, dusting his hands off on his trews. A leaf fragment, dry and brown, clung to his boot.

  “We don’t have to take the obvious route,” he said.

  “Come on!” Cedar called, waiting for them at the top of the rootway, just before the tree arched out over the stream.

  “Can you even see the other side from there?” Ember asked.

  “There’s another tree,” he said confidently. “They intertwine. It’ll be all right.”

  That was all the reassurance Tern needed. He and his red roan scrambled up easily and went after Cedar.

  “You first,” Ash said. “I’ll keep the rear.”

  So she took Merry and Ash followed. Merry wasn’t sure about climbing the tree. Her ears went back and her eyes showed white. Ember tried to reassure her, but maybe her own fears came through, because it didn’t help. The other horses had gone willingly enough, but Merry didn’t like the drop to the ground below, or the sound her hooves made on the living wood; she flinched with each hoof-fall and finally pulled up short, quivering.

  “She’s always had a problem with bridges,” Ember said, exasperated. Now she’d made the decision to cross, she just wanted to do it. Ash wrapped his jacket around Merry’s head and began to lead her.

  “You take Thatch,” he said. Without sight and with her hearing muffled, Merry let herself be led up. Ember followed, astonished at how broad and strong the tree seemed to be.

  There were several branches reaching out, as well as the main trunk, and further on they grew together as if a giant girl had plaited them untidily into a braid, the thicker central trunk bulging through.

  Tern and Cedar were waiting for them there. Cedar grinned at them and led Snail out over the water.

  A huge slab of sound hit them without any warning, the sound of a full thaw flood down a narrow gully; thundering, deafening. The river was rising up against them.

  It reared back against its own flow, sending waves from both sides to crash against and over the bridge. Great gouts of water, thumps and slaps and blows of water that tried to sweep Cedar and Snail into the torrent. Tern pulled back just in time to the shelter of the overhanging boughs.

  Snail’s hooves scrabbled for purchase on the wet wood, the other horses milling, neighing and whickering in alarm. Merry’s reins were torn from Ash’s hands as the mare bolted down the rootway, crowding past Ember and sending her flying to the wood. She rolled and clung as waves pounded into her. Ash hunched over her, trying to protect her.

  Another wave hit Cedar and he fell to his knees, Snail’s reins looped around his wrist. He kept down and crawled, Snail sliding and slipping, then finding
her feet and overtaking him, pushing him to the side, dragging him until his grip on the reins gave way and he began to slide back.

  Ash lunged forward, grabbing his hands, both of them lying full length, with Cedar’s feet dangling over the raging water. The waves continued, rising higher still, higher than their heads, higher than the tops of the trees, falling like avalanches, the water hitting like rocks.

  Ash strained to bring Cedar higher, but he began to slide forward too, and Ember realized that the water was sucking at Cedar’s legs. She grabbed Ash’s ankles and they lay for a moment, panting. The wind rose as they lay there, whirling the waves from side to side, the air rushing through and against the water as it crashed. It gave them a moment’s clear sight.

  “Both of your hands on my wrist!” Ash shouted to Cedar above the crash and buffet of the waves. What was he doing? Ember wanted to yell at him, to tell him to pull harder. But Cedar moved his grip so that he was hanging from Ash’s left wrist. The strain on their shoulders must be terrible.

  Then Ash fumbled at his belt for his knife. What is he doing? Ember thought with frustration. He couldn’t quite reach it, so she wriggled up beside him and got it out, lying as far over him as she could to give him ballast. Their wet clothes might as well not have been there—it was like they were naked, skin to skin. Ember flushed with shame and desire. Why was Fire tormenting her like this when her life could be at stake? She was filled with anger, and that helped push down the heat in her loins. Ash took the knife without looking at her but with a nod of acknowledgment.

  “I am Ash, son of Elva,” he said, as though reciting a lesson learned by heart. “Whose blood has calmed the waters.”

  He took a breath and brought the knife across his palm in a long bloody gash. Ember gasped with horror, all thought of desire leaving her. Ash let the blood drip into the water.

  Instantly the river settled into its bank, calm and serene.

  The sudden quiet was like another blow.

  Ash pulled Cedar up and he came to his hands and knees, and then they both stood up, Ash inspecting the wound on his hand. Tern was behind them, having run to catch the horses before they could dash off. That was good thinking.