Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  “Yes,” she said. “Be even more careful than on a raid. You may not mean to attack, but they don’t know that.”

  Someone sniffed loudly, with disapproval.

  “Trading!” a voice said over Halda’s shoulder. “Like weaklings or southerners. It wasn’t so in my day.”

  It was Gytta, the oldest woman in Mountainside, standing just inside the entrance to the main tunnel, where the sun would not get in her eyes. Halda could only spare her a glance—her eyes were fixed on Nyr’s golden head as he rode at the front of the trading party. He rode without a hat. The snow was only fetlock high on their horses, and the sun was clear on the eastern horizon. A fine spring day. She hoped it was a good omen.

  “Our men should take what we need, like their fathers and grandfathers did,” Gytta went on.

  Ari rode next to Nyr; he would leave them at the plateau’s edge and return home, and he would be in no mood to hear criticism of his decision.

  “The Ice King agreed,” Halda said firmly. But Gytta was past the age of being intimidated by anyone, even the queen.

  “The king said he didn’t care either way. It was that boy of yours that convinced the Hárugur King.” Her tone rang with disdain. “You’d think he didn’t want to fight.”

  Even age didn’t excuse that. Halda turned to look Gytta right in the eyes.

  “Nyr, as you know, is a fine and courageous warrior,” she said, her voice as sharp as an icicle. “As for trading—tell me, Gytta, how many sons and grandsons have you mourned when they did not return from a raid?”

  Gytta met her eyes defiantly for a moment, but as memory overwhelmed her she turned away, looking at the granite doorstep beneath their feet.

  “Ae, it was too many, too many, I’ll grant you that.” She looked after the trading party wistfully. “Your boy had better keep my youngest safe.”

  Bren, Gytta’s youngest, was older than the king. Ari had insisted that his trusted adviser accompany Nyr, and Halda was glad of it. Bren had a canny mind and a smooth tongue. It made her feel better, remembering he was there to shepherd Nyr through this unprecedented journey. Halda smiled and took Gytta’s arm, leading her back in. She had too much to do to stand around wasting time. “I’m sure he will,” she said.

  But instead of organizing the cleaning out of the caves, ready for their spring exodus, Halda went to the women’s altar. It was a small cave. The women came in twos and threes, when they could slip away, unlike the men, who worshipped together at sunset, to welcome the night cold, the Child of the Ice.

  It was just a simple space with benches around the walls and a small hot pool, gift of the king, to warm it. Like the other women, Halda loved this quiet nest. This was a space where she felt protected, cherished. Loved, even. It was as though the face the king showed the women was a different face altogether to the one he showed the men. But that was not spoken of; women’s worship was private.

  She sat and prayed for Nyr’s safety and the success of the venture. The pool of hot rock flared suddenly, and she took it for a good omen from the king and was comforted. Then, for a blessed moment, she just sat, her thoughts wandering to her own first venture away from home, when she had come from her tribute tribe, the High Fjord People, to become Ari’s wife.

  It was a great honor, and it was what she had been born and bred for, but she had been frightened none the less, as all girls were who were sent off to marry strangers for the good of the tribe.

  When she had seen Mountainside, its forbidding cliffs rearing up above the plateau, she had gasped with awe. For the first time she had believed the stories, that the Mountainside people, the Hárugur King’s people, were specially chosen by the Ice King.

  It wasn’t until after her marriage to Ari, in the dark early days when she still hated him, that the older women had taken her to this place, to the altar, and explained why He had chosen them, and had sung the Song of the Sacrifice to her.

  Ari’s mother, Asi, had begun the story:

  “Once, there was a brave warrior called Sebbi, from the peoples of the far south,” she began. “And it was in his time that the Ice King woke, and being freshly woken was hungry, as hungry as a wolverine, and He came from the north, and ate everything, and left nothing behind.”

  This was a version of the same story her own people told, about the coming of the king.

  “But Sebbi was braver than all others, and he offered himself as a sacrifice to the king,” Asi said.

  Then the women started to sing the Song of the Sacrifice.

  I was there and I saw it

  I was there and I smelled it

  Sebbi’s bright blood sprayed out on the ice

  In her mind’s eye, Halda could see it even now: the small valley being eaten by the king, Sebbi offering himself, the hunters chasing the prey with prayer and desperation, the women rending their garments and wailing afterward as they scattered the flesh and bones before the king.

  It had not bought their valley safety; the king had eaten it anyway. But He had communed with the first Hárugur King, and told him of a way through to the middle of the mountains, to safety, to Mountainside. He had granted them Mountainside as a sanctuary, when he had pushed all the other tribes far south. He had made the Hárugur King his mouthpiece to the tribes.

  They were blessed. The hot pools, the eternal fire, the strong stalwart walls of the mountain—these were the gifts of the king, and they meant that the king’s tribe was the only one not to fear the dread claws of winter.

  So Sebbi had not died in vain.

  Halda wondered how old he had been. Young, she thought. The young are always eager to trade death for glory.

  She pushed down the thought that she would rather spend her winters shivering in the women’s longhouse, as she had done all her childhood, than be caged under a mountain of rock for months on end. Without the warmth and brightness of the fire she would go mad, she thought, and sent a prayer of thanks to the king. The fire flared again as if in answer, and she smiled.

  Time to get the caverns ready; although the end of winter was a ceaseless round of work, she welcomed it, both because it meant spring was coming, and because it would stop her worrying about Nyr. She said another prayer, for her son Andur’s soul, feasting somewhere in the King’s Hall. No doubt the fire there was warmer still.

  The Great Forest

  They camped again that night on a hilltop at the western edge of the marshes, in the best defensible position Holly could find, uneasily aware of how much smaller their group now was. None of them slept well, and they were up early, eager to be free of the marsh smell, which reminded them all, Ember thought, of death.

  By mid-morning, they had come to a ridge which was the last high ground before the foothills. To their left, the road wound south to parallel the river that led to Starkling, the summer fort town of Northern Mountains Domain. Before them, a much narrower track led down into a vast bowl of land filled by the Great Forest.

  All northern children were raised on tales of the Great Forest, in the same way the children of the south heard stories of the Weeping Caverns, the home of Lady Death. The Forest was vast, stretching over the two Domains, and once it had reached from cliff to cove in the south, too, right down to the desert which separated the Domains from the Wind Cities. But people had come and settled and farmed, and cut down the trees in great swathes, and slowly, over hundreds of years, it seemed that the Forest became aware of the depredations.

  “Time in the Great Forest does not run as time runs for us,” her mother had told her, a note in her voice which meant that this was knowledge personally won, at high cost. “But it has learned, at last, not to welcome humans.”

  For that reason it was dangerous to go into the Forest alone. No one in her right mind would cut down a living tree here. No one would light a fire. No one would leave the path.

  “Each one who ventures under Its trees finds a different Forest,” Martine had said, eyes distant, remembering. “And there are places there where the
wall between this world and the next is easily breached.”

  The compact which forbade wind wraiths and water spirits to attack humans in settled areas did not run in the Forest, but at least the Power here kept wind wraiths and water spirits away as well.

  The Forest was still full of morning fog, and they looked across the tops of high black spruces spearing through a milky cloud, and beyond that to the shimmering heights of the Eye Teeth Mountains. In the south of the range, they could just make out the perfect cone of Fire Mountain, wreathed with clouds—or smoke.

  The day seemed to pause as they looked, although Ember could hear birdsong below them, in the Forest.

  “A long way to go,” Holly said.

  “We’re at the border,” Ember replied. “From here, we’re in the Northern Mountains Domain.”

  They looked at each other, Holly with compressed lips, Tern with eyes wide. Curlew shrugged.

  “It’s no different from the Last Domain,” he said. “The rest is children’s tales.”

  “The power in the Great Forest is not a tale,” Cedar said softly. His hand went to his belt as though expecting to find something there, but came away empty.

  Holly pointed north a little.

  “The Power isn’t always against us,” she said. “I was born not far from here. The way my mam tells it, I was born under the shade of the Forest itself, when she got took short gathering berries. She reckons It welcomed her. We played a lot on the edges, when we were little. Saw some strange things, but nothing ever hurt us.”

  There was a note of nostalgia in her voice, which surprised them all. Holly was usually so matter of fact.

  “They say if you treat the Forest with respect,” Ash volunteered, “you will be—well, not safe, perhaps, but not attacked.”

  He smiled reassuringly at Ember as he spoke, and she bit her lip with chagrin. Did she look so frightened? Of course she was, but she didn’t want to show it so clearly.

  “The sooner we start, the sooner we’re there,” she said, and kicked Merry into a quick walk down the rough track and into the mist, the dogs breaking away and joining her in exuberant chase.

  “My lady! Wait!” Holly called, exasperated. Ember drew rein and twisted to look back, guiltily aware of having broken protocol—a protocol which existed for her safety. Grip and Holdfast shot past her and then circled back, tails waving happily.

  The others were riding willy-nilly down the trail, through the waist-high saplings and low bushes which bordered the tall trees of the forest. Someone had cut the bordering trees down a few years back, it looked like, to leave a clear division between their land and the forest. But Forest was reclaiming Its territory, and the farmer, whoever it was, was nowhere to be seen. Ember shivered. There wasn’t even any sign of grazing animals. She wondered what had happened, when Forest had realized the trees were gone.

  As Ash and Holly cantered down toward her, there was a flicker of light, like sun through leaves, and behind them, around her, were no longer saplings, but huge and towering trees. Ember blinked, shook her head, feeling that if only she could shake it just the right way her addled mind would go back to normal and she’d stop seeing impossible things…

  Cedar and Tern and Curlew came into view, the sun flickered again, and it was a cloudy, dull day and the trees were gone, replaced by a kind of fern which grew higher than her head. The sounds were different, too—no birds calling, none… The horses laid their ears back, neighing with fear and their eyes showed white.

  “Dragon’s fart!” Tern said. They were all looking around, frightened, alert for danger. “Where have the others gone?”

  Most of their rearguard group had simply vanished. Ember prayed that they’d not entered the Forest at all—that they had seen the first group disappear and held back.

  “The dogs aren’t here either,” Ash said, worry deep in his voice.

  “Stay together,” Holly said.

  Ember found some reassurance in the others’ closeness, the horses’ animal warmth. She bent to pat Merry on the neck, calming her. When she looked up, the forest had changed again. Trees, but softer and greener than any she had known. These were southern trees, surely, with luxuriant wide-leaved undergrowth… and the air was balmy, summer-warm and moist, although she could see the sun and it was still at spring height in the sky.

  The horses began to calm down. Thatch even bent his head to crop at the grass.

  “No!” Ember called. Ash had already pulled Thatch’s head up. They all knew the stories. If you ate in the other world, you had to stay there. All the old stories said so, and stories were all they had to guide them.

  “We’re adrift in Time,” Cedar said.

  “But not in place,” Ash added. He pointed to a big rock outcrop halfway up the hill. “That’s shifted, but it was there in our—before, when we arrived.”

  “Forest holds all of Time in Its palm,” Holly said. Her eyes were looking past Ember to the deep forest beyond. “Death is nothing to It. Everything lives, and goes on living, within Its grasp.”

  “But can we get back?” Ember asked. Someone had to be practical. She nudged Merry to take a few steps back up the trail, but the trail had disappeared. The hill was covered with rocks that would break a horse’s leg with one misstep. Reluctantly, she turned her head to stare down—the trail was clear enough, here, though it was no more than a deer’s track. At least the birdsong had come back.

  Uncertain, Ember looked at Ash and Holly.

  The world flickered again and the ancient huge trees were back, but not the same ones… a different species, some kind of conifer that Ember had never seen before. And this time, the rock outcrop was much, much smaller than it had been.

  She began to shake. She couldn’t think. It was like the moment when Fire had first appeared… when a Power displayed Its strength, humans were left adrift and confused.

  “We are seeing the history of the world,” Cedar said in wonder. Annoyance flared in Ember. As if that was a good thing! With the anger, the shaking stopped and she could begin to consider what they should do.

  “This is a message,” Holly said. “Forest wants to remind us of Its power. And of our weakness. Humans may cut a few trees down, but It exists forever, and It will reclaim what has been taken, in time.”

  “As it should,” Cedar said. Ash glanced at him, and Ember realized it had been an odd thing for a farmer’s son to say. Cedar’s dark eyes seemed larger when he looked at the Forest, as though they reflected a world rather than a scene. But she wasn’t about to argue the limits of Forest’s power here.

  “We have to go on,” Ember said. The only way to get through the Forest was to go through the Forest.

  Ash was nodding. Tern and Curlew looked appalled. Cedar stared off into the darkening trees with surmise.

  It was up to Holly.

  “Aye, my lady,” Holly said. Ember almost fell off Merry in astonishment. That was the first time Holly had ever taken any notice of her opinion. She realized belatedly that she herself was of highest rank in this party; not that Holly would pay attention to that if it were a matter of her safety.

  Ember licked dry lips. She’d planned to do this when they reached the first of the big trees, but she’d clearly left it too late. Worth trying, still.

  “By your leave, Great Forest, we seek permission to travel through your borders, doing no harm, seeking only safe passage.”

  There was no response. Which could have been good.

  Holly nodded at her, then went forward, taking point, and Ash, then Cedar, followed her. Ember went next, Tern and Curlew behind.

  At least the horses didn’t seem afraid. Holly clicked her tongue at her mare and they went forward at a walk.

  The sky flickered.

  Saplings were only waist high. The air was cooler, the rock outcrop the right size. The trees ahead… they were black spruce and larch, as they should be. With a bound of her heart, Ember saw the dogs, waiting at the edge of the trees. They barked a welcome and dashed
back to the horses, then away again, into the woods.

  “Don’t stop!” Cedar called, and Ember could hear Sight speaking through him, so she nudged Merry with her heels and kept on, into the Great Forest, into what she hoped was the Forest of her own time.

  As the shade of the trees fell on her, she felt Merry twitch all over, but that was all. No terrifying shapes swooping from the branches above, no strange sounds. No malignant thorns reaching for her soft flesh. The sky stayed still, as it should. Just trees, and a deepening mist, thickening as they descended into the valley.

  Unlike the pine forests nearer to her home, there was enough light filtering through the branches to allow mosses to grow beneath them. The curving light green of feathermoss, the bright tiny stars of sphagnum moss shoots, even some red fireweed lining the edge of the track, its flowerstalks reaching high but the bells not yet open. There were other trees occasionally, too—aspen, birch, balsam fir, each bringing its different green to the whispering patchwork of boughs. They emerged from the fog and slipped away again as Ember rode past, Merry’s hoof-falls muted by the damp.

  “We’re being watched,” Ash said, bringing his bay up beside her. He was right. Ember could feel eyes on them from beyond the screen of mist. The horses were happy enough, though, their ears pricked forward, their steps light but unhesitating. Holdfast and Grip padded before them, alert but not growling. Surely they would sense danger before the humans?

  As they rode along the path, the horses’ hooves splashing in the boggy ground, shifting sunlight began to pierce the cloud around them. But Ember could hear something, feel something, see something flicker at the corners of her vision which was never there when she turned her head.

  It seemed that Forest was allowing them to pass, and allowing them to stay in their own time. Nothing barred their way except small, fast-running streams and the occasional sapling fallen across the path, which the horses stepped over easily. Spruce had shallow roots and were prone to being wind-blown, but most of the fallen trees were aspen, and she wondered if the black spruce guarded their territory. Anything seemed possible.