Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  She was there, just inside a passage on the other side, under the paintings, and she came out to signal them as soon as she saw them, then slipped back into the darkness to wait.

  Ash had his knife in his hand, although he couldn’t remember drawing it. The walk across the hall seemed endless. Behind him, Tern and Cedar moved quietly. They had passed the central hearth and left its brief warmth behind when a man moved out of the shadows by the far wall. Bren.

  He had a battleaxe, and merely by holding it he became their enemy—the traditional enemy, the Ice King’s man, raider, marauder, the stuff of nightmares. Without the bow, without Tern’s sword, they had no hope against an axe. Ash slowed but Bren moved sideways, across the entrance to the passageway where Ember waited. Ash’s hand tightened on his knife. Had Bren seen her? He didn’t even glance into the passageway—it might be they’d been lucky. Whatever happened would happen to them and Ember could get away unscathed. He hoped she was moving already, heading for the horses. She was all that counted.

  “You can’t go,” Bren said simply. “The Ice King must be obeyed.”

  He said it as another man might have said, “The sun must shine.”

  Time to take a desperate chance.

  “The Ice King doesn’t keep you alive here,” Ash said. “The fire, the bathing caves, they are all gifts from Fire Mountain.”

  The axeblade flashed as Bren twitched in reaction.

  “Blasphemy!” he hissed. “I give you one chance—turn around and go back. I will say nothing to the Hárugur King. I would rather not kill you; Nyr is right, trade is our future. But I will kill you rather than disobey the king.”

  He raised the axe across his chest, blade facing them—the classic attack stance. Tern and Cedar spread out so he could not come at them all at once. Ash raised his knife, hoping he could duck fast enough—knowing his injuries made that unlikely. Bren shuffled backward into the beginning of the passage, wanting the protection of the walls on his flanks.

  “One chance,” he said. Ash shrugged as if agreeing, half turned away, and then came back fast, ducking down and knife coming up, hoping to get under Bren’s guard.

  But as he turned back and felt Tern and Cedar move in from either side, Bren gasped and slumped to the floor, his axe hitting his boot and slicing off the toe.

  Behind him, Ember stood, bloody knife in hand, tears flooding down her cheeks. She looked down at Bren, hiccuping a little.

  Ash stood frozen for a long moment.

  “He has a daughter, Iina, and a son, Siggi,” she whispered. That pierced his astonishment. He moved, grabbing her by the elbows, bending to pick up her pack, hustling her down the passageway as quietly as he could, while she walked as if in a dream, quietly enough, but with the tears still streaming down her face. The trip down the dim corridor was eerily easy.

  There was fresh air on their faces. Ash hefted the knife in his hand. There would be a guard, surely, at the entrance?

  He held Ember back and she stopped obediently. Cedar came forward, and motioned that he would go ahead. Ember pulled his head toward her.

  “No more killing,” she breathed.

  He shrugged. If he could, he meant. But he reversed his knife in his hand. That was a trick their father had taught them, to hit an opponent’s temple with the pommel of the dagger, but Ash had never quite mastered it.

  Cedar crept along the wall and the three of them tried to breathe like ghosts, to sink into the dark. His silhouette showed briefly against the slightly paler sky outside, and then there was a grunt, a shuffle, a groan. Ash pushed Ember back and went out, finding Cedar kneeling over a man, unknown in the darkness.

  “Gag him,” Ash said quietly, but Cedar said, “No need, I’m afraid.” His voice was flat, the voice he used when he was trying not to cry. For a moment, he envied Ember, who could kill and then cry without shame.

  Another death.

  Then they came out into the starlit night. Free.

  Not quite. Merely out from under the suffocation of earth. Ember crouched by the guard and came up with an expressionless face. She put a sympathetic hand on Cedar’s arm, and Ash was ashamed that he envied Cedar that comfort. He craved any touch from her, even a sisterly pat.

  The horses were hobbled nearby and they found them easily enough, not even having to whistle them up, their own horses towering over the sturdy little ponies and whickering to them eagerly.

  They bridled and unhobbled their own horses and then, after some hesitation, unhobbled the others. Not stealing, but letting loose to make pursuit more difficult. Ember led them to a stone stable where they lit a candle, found their saddles and saddlebags, and got the horses ready, filling the feed bags from the bins.

  Ember asked him for her kerchief of coins and put a gold coin on the bin. Far more than this feed was worth in their country, but who knew how valuable grain was here?

  She eyed him a little shamefacedly, but he nodded approval as he tucked the kerchief away again. No need to do more harm than they had to.

  With the candle doused, the night seemed doubly dark as they led the horses through the narrow opening to the wider plateau. They weren’t out of danger yet. There were stone houses and workshops all over this area. Their safest bet was to head straight for the edge of the plateau, where there were fewer buildings.

  And hope they would realize the edge was there before they went over it.

  He boosted Ember into the saddle and mounted Blackie, feeling his bruises twinge and the cuts hurt sharply for a moment until he settled into the saddle. At least Bren’s blows hadn’t reached his buttocks. He could sit comfortably enough. Holding the reins might prove a problem, later.

  He took the lead, going slowly. They came out from the shadow of the cliff into the moonlight. The moon was going down, but they’d have a couple of hours’ light before it grew too dark to ride. They had to make the best speed they could. Ash left the ponies behind, not wanting to risk them out on the plateau.

  Passing the tanner’s workshop gave him a sense of where they were. The path down was to their right, about a league. Should they take that path, which surely Nyr would expect them to head for, or should they just keep going south, toward the mountain? Arvid’s maps hadn’t reached this far. He had no guide but common sense.

  These people had no dogs, thank the gods, or they would have been discovered by now. Why did they have no dogs? He didn’t want to think about that, about dogs being eaten, maybe, in a hard winter. Just as well Grip and Holdfast had stayed with Elgir.

  The air swirled around his head, intoxicatingly sweet and cool. This breeze was in their favor, carrying the horses’ hoofbeats north, away from the houses. None showed a candle, but the moon lit their painted roofs brightly, and it was easy to imagine someone looking out of a window and, seeing them, raising the alarm. Except these houses had no windows, only solid doors. He kept coming up against differences in the smallest things, and every difference emphasized how narrow a life Ari’s people lived.

  He had grown up in a small mountain valley himself, but he had known what these people would think of as luxury: food aplenty, pottery ware to eat from, bread and honey every day, dogs, comfortable beds, long soft summer days. Apples, he thought. I haven’t seen a single apple. Not even dried. Wine. Silk—it was rare enough, but a warlord’s lady had it in plenty. Even Grammer Martine wore it for feasts. The Lady Halda had worn wool last night, just like everyone else. Ari the king had worn a golden armband, but otherwise he had been dressed as the other men were.

  Gabra, Acton’s son, had closed Death Pass, the only way known through the mountains, a generation after the invasion. Had decided, guided by his mentor Asgarn, that there were enough people in the Domains. They had deliberately triggered a rockfall which choked the Pass, trapping the people on the other side, in the cold.

  Over the centuries, the Ice King’s men had found other ways over. Although none allowed a full-scale invasion such as Acton had undertaken, they were enough for raiding parties
to sneak through. There were too many small valleys snaking between the peaks to guard them all, which was why stonecasters were valued so highly in the Western Mountains and the Last Domain. And someone like Grammer Martine, who was so accurate, was worth any price for the lives she saved.

  Since the Resettlement, every warlord had a stonecaster permanently in their household, and the Ice King’s attacks had been repulsed all along the border. Which was why, no doubt, Nyr had been able to convince his father to try trade. Ash wished him well.

  The grass grew close along the path and goats moved nearby, their wooden neck plates clacking like frogs in a marsh. A shape rose up from the darkness and Ash drew his knife—not tall, a boy, he couldn’t kill a boy—

  “Kalla!” the shape said, interested but not alarmed. He asked a question too quickly for Ash to follow even the sounds.

  “Kalla!” Ember replied before Ash could speak or move. Then she giggled. Actually giggled.

  The boy laughed.

  “Finn nott!” he said cheerfully, with a hint of teasing.

  “Finn nott!” Ember agreed, sounding tipsy. “Vertu.”

  “Vertu!” the boy said.

  She rode on in apparent unconcern and Ash followed her, heart pumping hard, wondering what in the cold hells she had said. He was aware, again, of every part of him that hurt, as though the shock of the boy’s appearance had opened each cut afresh. But he could ignore that. It wasn’t too bad.

  They rode for a while and then she reined Merry in so he could come up beside her and said, “He thought we were going home after the feast.”

  She was so quick witted! Admiration warmed him but he made himself simply nod and ride ahead. Pay attention to the track, he thought. Or we all die.

  The moon was sliding down behind the cliff, cutting their visibility moment by moment. Ash strained to see ahead, trying to find the edge before the light disappeared, but it was too dark, a wall of darkness.

  He slowed Blackie even further, but it was a balancing act—they would be found gone by dawn, and then the pursuit would be fast. They couldn’t afford to go too slowly.

  Wind buffeted him and a swirl of flying shapes streamed up into the air, curving and swerving on the breeze. Blackie shied and propped, throwing her head up, and behind him he could hear the other horses neighing and shuffling.

  Bats. Bats coming up from the cliff. They were right at the edge and the bats had saved them. He dismounted and quieted Blackie, then led her a few paces back. The others did the same with their horses, and they stood in a small circle.

  “Do we try to find the path down?” Ash asked.

  His eyes had adjusted to the starlight, but he could see very little.

  “No,” Ember said. “Not in the dark, do you think?”

  “Too dangerous,” Cedar agreed. “They’ll look for us there.”

  “So, south,” Ash concluded.

  “Aye,” Tern agreed, his voice lighter and nervous, as though he wasn’t sure he had a vote, but he wanted to be heard anyway. Cedar patted him on the shoulder.

  “Aye,” he confirmed, and Ember simply mounted Merry and waited impatiently.

  “We have to move,” she said. “We’ve wasted enough time here. Who knows what’s happening at home by now?”

  They moved back from the edge and began to ride, perforce keeping to a walk but pushing the horses as fast as possible. Dawn wasn’t far away, and light would help them, but it would help their pursuers as well. Ash was sure Ari would come after them. Blasphemy, Bren had called it, and Bren’s death alone would push Ari to find and punish them. His shoulders twitched in memory of Bren’s stick. It wouldn’t be a stick this time, it would be a blade or a noose or some other barbarian way of execution. Beheading, perhaps, the way they often killed in battle.

  At least that would be quick. But he would not, not ever, let that happen to Ember. He’d call up Fire himself and let Him consume this entire people before he would allow that.

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  About twenty minutes after her mother had gone out to meet the warlord, Elva felt the gods relax, and knew that Martine and Arvid had resolved their coldness.

  She didn’t want to think about how they’d resolved it; Martine was her mother, after all, and imagining her and Arvid together was just plain wrong. She smiled at herself. She was always annoyed when her own children complained about her kissing their father in front of them, but here she was, feeling just the same about Martine.

  We are all alike, under the surface, she thought, and that similarity may be what saves us now.

  Ash joined her at the glass table, looking no older than one of her own sons. She sent a prayer for Ash and Cedar’s safety out into the darkness, and the gods hushed her fears, but without giving her any solid news. Nothing beyond, They are alive and traveling.

  “All’s well, then,” Ash said, as if the gods kept him informed too. She raised her eyebrows at him and he touched the stonecaster’s pouch at his side to show the source of his knowledge.

  Stones. People thought she herself was extraordinary because the gods spoke through her, but that was straightforward compared to the stones. Everyone believed that the gods gave knowledge through the stones, but she had lived with the gods for her whole life and not once had they ever mentioned casting. And surely, if they were giving knowledge away like that, she should be able to cast? But stones were just stones to her; they told her nothing.

  She wished Mabry were here. He’d stand at her back and lend her all the strength she would soon need. The eyes and hands of an artist, and the heart and hands of a farmer, that was her husband. Kind, gentle, strong… she sighed. Also stubborn, shy, and sometimes aggravating. But she missed him with a physical pain under her heart.

  Outside, the wind increased. The windows had been shuttered as though it were mid-winter, but through a couple of narrow cracks she could see that the moon had risen. It was almost full, and looked enormous, golden and full of promise. But she looked at it through a fern-pattern of frost on the horn windowpane, which distorted and smeared its light.

  Not for long.

  Elva had had a good life. Oh, yes, her parents and family had been massacred by warlord’s men, but she had been so young that she didn’t even remember them. Mam was the only family she’d known, and together they’d traveled and laughed all the way from cliff to cove and back again. And then she’d taken the Road on her own and met Mabry, fallen in love, married, borne six children, and each and every one of them had lived to adulthood, which she thought was the greatest gift the gods had given her. Prophecy, which came to her as easy as breathing, had never seemed as important as her children’s laughter and tears.

  She knew, though, that she’d had that life because Martine, among others, had risked life and soul for the Domains.

  Now it was her turn, so that her children could have a safe life, as she had done. And if she died in the doing, as she might well, that would be all right; but she wished she could kiss Mabry goodbye.

  The others: women, children, men, old and young and in between, were mostly sleeping, curled up in family groups to keep warm. The cold was growing worse, even here with the human fug deepening each minute. Outside, she could hear the flick-flick of ice hitting the walls.

  “Time to wake them,” Ash said.

  “Aye,” she answered reluctantly. She didn’t think she was a coward, but she knew all the power they raised this morning would funnel through her, like water through a millrace, and she had no idea what the consequences would be. She might end up a drooling idiot, like Widow Cowslip’s daughter in the Valley. She might drop dead.

  “I hate getting up early,” she sighed, and Ash laughed. It reminded her of the morning her own Ash had been born, and this boy had peeked through her window holding a potted cedar tree, because Mabry wanted to make sure the baby would be named something “decent”—not Slug or Snail or, worse yet, Violet! So he’d tried to control what the first living thing she saw outside the
birthing room would be; and like all attempts to control destiny, he had failed, because the first thing she had seen was Ash, not the cedar tree, and the baby was named after him. He had laughed then, too. It was a good name, she’d thought at the time, and she knew it had made the older Ash very happy. He’d gone red and quiet that morning and had smiled for months every time anyone said the baby’s name. Then he had gone, and apart from a couple of flying visits when the childer were little, she had barely seen him again. But the winter he and Mam had stayed with them, after little Ash was born, had turned him into the brother she’d never had, and that bond was strong yet.

  He put down a hand and pulled her to her feet. Her back creaked audibly and Ash bit back a comment.

  “Easy for you to laugh,” Elva said sourly. “You’re escaping old age, seems to me.”

  He sobered and shook his head. “Not escaping. I’ll get old—and when I do, I’ll be among strangers, somewhere far in the future. I’d rather age here with the people I care about.”

  That was sad. She patted his hand as though he’d been Gorse, her youngest. “You can find people to love everywhere, if you try,” she said in her best mother’s voice. He recognized it, and smiled.

  “Aye, Mam,” he said. She cuffed him lightly on the ear and they laughed gently, but underneath was the tension of knowing what they had to do next.

  “It’s time to wake up,” Ash said, pitching his singer’s voice to the back wall.

  People started to rouse, childer chirping questions, wailing, trying to climb on tables and being pulled back, fathers wiping noses and mothers trying to get their childer to the room set aside for chamber pots before they wet themselves, grammers and granfers querulous or soothing, some unsure of where they were or why they were here. People. Just ordinary people. All they had to set against one of the Great Powers.