Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  Stupid as new-hatched chicks, the lot of us! she thought, but she was cheered by the bustle of normality, none the less.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, yet,” Ash said to her quietly. “The fires have gone out across all the other Domains.”

  “You think the gods don’t know that?” she said. “No need to spread panic, though.”

  He nodded, relaxing a little.

  “Let’s get them organized,” he said, and clapped his hands for attention.

  Slowly, with much shushing, the people in the hall and on the stairs sat and looked at him. When there was enough quiet and everyone was watching, Ash became the Prowman. Elva saw him do it—saw him straighten up, deepen his voice, act like a stronger, wiser, braver version of himself. Or maybe this was the truth, and the other a jacket he put on to hide what he was.

  His voice went out to the furthest corner of the rooms, up the stairs, through the open doorways, clear and compelling.

  “My friends, you are welcome here. Together, we are going to defeat more than cold, tonight. We will defeat the Ice King himself, and send him reeling!”

  There was no cheering, only listening so intent it almost hissed in Elva’s ears.

  “And this is what each one of you must do,” he said. “Listen carefully.”

  The ice was knocking sharper against the wooden walls by the time her mam and Arvid came back, looking tired and relaxed and happy. By then Ash had organized everyone into groups, sitting comfortably.

  “Make sure you’ve been to the privy and are well set where you are, because once we start we can’t stop, not for anything,” he had warned them.

  After the scurry to the chamberpot room that caused, they had sat and set and begun to hum in unison, as the Sealmother had directed her. She had reached out through the gods and found the minds of the other leaders, spread throughout the Last Domain: her own two girls, Poppy and Saffron, whose minds were so much richer than she could have imagined, the boy at the Valuers’ Plantation, and others, old and young, in big towns and tiny villages, at altars and in mines, huddled in animal barns, in shops, in houses.

  Humming.

  The Sealmother, no doubt, could pull all her people’s minds together and hold them as She held a seal pup in the arms of a gentle spring swell. It was much, much harder for a human.

  This was not the five-note safety spell which every Traveler girl learned. It was an undulation, like that gentle spring swell, which spoke of moderation and calmness and kindness and smooth, rolling motion. Movement, the enemy of Ice, who wanted to fix and freeze things in place, who desired permanence, eternity, instead of the slow drip of spring thaw, the yearly theft of His power, the inevitable cycle back to summer heat. That was what drove Him, Elva knew, although the gods had not told her so. Ice desired perfection which never changed, the purity of stillness, the calm grandeur of eternal stability. Death to a human.

  So they countered it with motion. Opening her eyes, Elva saw that many in the crowd were swaying to the tune as it lifted and fell. She shut them again and reached out for the others, gathering them like strands for lacemaking, or weaving, neither of which she’d ever been good at. Another image, then: braiding her girls’ hair in the morning, ready for a party. Intricate braids made with love, under and over and under again, coming together with patience and delight into a beautiful design.

  The Ice King’s Country

  Dawn crept up quietly; the cliff became a visible edge in the distance against a pale gray sky; then the edge to their left became clear, to Ash’s relief, and when he looked back the others showed silhouettes instead of a moving shadow. Birds were nesting in the grass all around. As the sky lightened they could be heard, calling, singing, chirping to each other, to their nestlings. Then, as the eastern horizon flooded clouds with rose, gold, carnelian, crimson, the thrushes began to welcome the sun, the lapwings rose on the morning breeze, a pair of swallows flicked themselves up over the edge and arced through the sky.

  High above, very high, geese were flying north in formation, heading for some far lake to breed. There was an eagle below them, circling the grassland, waiting for hare to leave its couch, or rockdove to launch from its nest on the cliffs. There were no signs of humans at all.

  For a long moment Ash simply enjoyed the peace. Then, with a sigh, he turned to the others.

  “We spell the horses at the next stream, and then ride as hard as they can take us,” he said. Ember nodded.

  “They’re not fully rested,” she said. “They’re better than they were, but that grazing wasn’t enough for them. We should feed them too.”

  “Aye.”

  There were streams enough, snaking across the grass and emptying down into the valley below. At the next scurrying rill they loosened the girths and gave the horses time to drink and eat, and ate a little of what they had scavenged from the feast the night before. Tern had brought back the most. He shrugged.

  “Everyone expects a lad my age to eat a lot.”

  Ember hugged him with one arm and he flushed, but he didn’t duck his head as he would have done at the beginning of this journey. He’d grown taller, too, it seemed, and his voice didn’t waver as much.

  “How far do we have to go?” Tern asked.

  The Fire Mountain wasn’t visible from here; it was hidden behind the long line of cliffs. But Ash could see the plateau curving to an end, the land sloping down to a narrow valley which wriggled its way south.

  “A day, two days?” he shrugged. “We have to get over that range.” He pointed to the cliffs. “The valley might take us through.”

  “Might need a few castings to find our way,” Tern said, looking at Cedar.

  “As many as we need,” he confirmed cheerfully.

  There was something uncomfortable about all this, and it was Ember. Apart from that hug for Tern, she had been distant since they left.

  Since she had knifed Bren.

  Ash moved across to where she was petting Merry, her back to them.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. She didn’t look at him, her head bent.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice thin.

  “You saved us,” Ash said. “But you could have left it to us to kill him.”

  She turned at that, eyes full of tears but angry, too. “My father says a warlord has to be prepared to defend his people, even to death. I’m not a lord, but you are my people. I can’t expect you to kill for my sake if I can’t do the same.”

  “You ask too much of yourself,” he said, exasperation and admiration mixing. “You haven’t been trained the way your father has, to fight and kill. Not like Holly.”

  “But my duty is the same, whether I’ve been trained to it or not.”

  “Duty! You and your bloody duty! If you hadn’t been following your duty instead of your heart none of this would have happened!” He’d raised his voice and the others were watching, but he didn’t care.

  “I wanted to marry Osfrid,” she protested, but there was a waver in her voice.

  “He was the best of them,” Ash said, low and fierce, “but he wasn’t your heart’s desire, was he?”

  She looked up at him in astonishment and he saw his own longing reflected in her eyes. His heart began to thud in hard, desperate beats. Admit it, he thought. Please. Admit it. Tell me the truth, let it be the truth I need to hear.

  “No,” she said finally, red mounting in her cheeks and her breath coming faster. “No. He wasn’t.”

  All he wanted was to hold her, snake his hand into her hair and pull her head back, feel her body soften and curve against his, taste her… if she just made a small movement toward him, he would do it, he would drag her into his arms and bedamned to her father and her rank and her inheritance… she straightened and raised her head proudly.

  “But I would have had a good life with him, and I would have strengthened the ties between our domains, and—” she faltered, “I would never have realized what I did not have.”

  It was
a challenge and an admission.

  “But now you do,” he stated.

  “Yes,” she said. “Now I realize what I will never have.”

  He closed his eyes so she wouldn’t see his pain. Never. So. That was that.

  Ash turned away and began to tighten Merry’s girth. Never. There was no room for him in a warlord’s daughter’s life. Never. Merry, sensing his emotion, shifted uneasily, but he finished and went to Blackie. Cedar and Tern followed his lead. Ember was still standing where he had left her, looking away again.

  He hoped she felt as bad as he did, but he doubted it.

  The horses were not too tired, so they moved into a canter, hoping to avoid burrows and hidden holes, not daring to go slower. The plateau wound down gradually at this end and Ash hoped they would be able to simply ride into the valley, but the long slope finished in a small cliff and it took them more than an hour to find a narrow goat path down. They led the horses. Blackie didn’t like heights, Ash found, so he went last.

  “You first,” he said to Ember, not meeting her eyes. She slid past him without a word and led Merry down carefully. Tern followed her, and then Cedar, who gazed at him questioningly, but he ignored the look. No need to spill his heart out, not even to Cedar. Ash realized that he had started to think of Cedar as someone who was leaving, pulling away, instead of the constant companion he had always been. Perhaps that had begun even when the Prowman had taken him to the Deep, but not Cedar, because “it wasn’t the right time of year” for Cedar. He had to go when the stonecasters gathered, Ash thought, and wondered for the first time what Cedar would do when the Prowman offered to show him his true nature. If he ever went. If he ever came back from Starkling.

  To calm Blackie, Ash needed to walk on the outside, which put him uncomfortably close to the sheer drop. Lower than the high edge near Ari’s caves, but high enough to break his neck if he fell.

  They sidled along carefully, each slow movement making him more impatient. They had to get out of sight into the valley before Ari’s people found them. Surely that couldn’t be long…

  As Ember reached the valley floor—a long winding strip of gravel on either side of a rocky stream—shouts came from above. Ari and his men, shaking spears and axes.

  Ari’s people were coming down the goat path behind them, Ember was certain. Their own horses were faster, she thought as they scrambled down the remaining path and made it to the valley floor, but they were tired from their long trek through the forest. Elgir had helped them but—

  Her thoughts were cut off by a shower of rocks—slingshots from above, aimed at the horses’ heads.

  Were they trying to kill Merry or spook her? It misfired for them—Merry bounded away as soon as her feet were on solid ground, racing with ears flat back in terror. The others followed, just as fast.

  Her father bred his messenger horses from chasers, and they all had the racing instinct—when one ran, all ran. Ember risked a look behind, the wind whipping her hair across her eyes. Cedar’s cheek was bleeding, Tern was nursing an arm, but Ash, thank the gods, was unscathed, and the horses all seemed fine.

  Blackie was overtaking her. She’d always been the fastest. How Curlew had loved her! She shook all thought from her mind apart from speed.

  Ari’s people were coming down the goat path, she was certain, the sure-footed little ponies no doubt taking it in their stride. They had to get as big a head start as they could.

  Merry’s hooves pounded and breath whistled. Ember’s teeth were rattling in her head; how could anyone enjoy doing this? She would never understand the chase-riders, but she would respect them more from now on.

  Was Ash all right? She checked again and found him almost at her side, his face set with purpose. If she were killed, would Fire let him take the flame back to the Last Domain? It was her duty to sacrifice him if she needed to, but she couldn’t. Better for them both to die, and then maybe Fire would forgo His revenge.

  Ash called, “Faster, princess!” and the familiar name lifted her spirits and gave her energy to urge Merry on.

  The valley floor turned like a snake, heading west, which was good. They had to get over the next ridge before they would be able to see the Fire Mountain. Perhaps they could lose Ari—an arrow slid past her, almost silent, and flicked down to be cracked under Merry’s hoof, the sharp sound making her lose her rhythm.

  “Come on, Merry!” Ember cried. The mare took breath and went on, but she was laboring now in the thin air, slowing, and the others were slowing with her. One more turn, then they would be out of sight, out of aim.

  They turned with the winding ground into a wall of cold. The horses shied and reared. Tern fell off.

  There was no valley. No valley at all. It was filled with ice. Huge, blue-green, a wall of ice, a river of ice, cracked and melting at the edges, feeding the little stream that ran back down the valley…

  “This is the Ice King’s work,” she said aloud.

  Backing up a little, she looked west and there it was—Fire Mountain, perfect, even, wreathed with clouds. Surrounded by ice.

  By Ice.

  They would have to cross the ice to get to Him. Damn Him to the cold hells where His fire would go out forever! Ember thought.

  Was there a path up? Behind them, they could hear the hoofbeats of Ari and his men. She exchanged a single, simple look with Ash, and then they both went forward, looking for a way up. There was no path fit for horses; they would have to climb.

  Without speaking, working as one, she and Ash pulled their winter gear out of their packs, found the ice poles, found the ropes to link them, the hatchets and spikes for ice work, dressed and roped up with the speed of desperation, Cedar moving as swiftly as they were.

  Tern wasn’t. Ember went to him to help, but he put up a hand, looking all of a sudden much older.

  “You’ll need someone to guard your backs,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”

  He was collecting stones as he spoke, and pulled a slingshot out of his pocket. “This was in the stable. I learned to use it as a boy, keeping the birds off my family’s plot. Give them a bit of their own in return.”

  She had to accept this gift. That was the hard part of being a ruler, she thought. You had to accept it when your people sacrificed themselves for you. If only Valuers had settled all the Domains, so that she would be worth nothing more than anyone else. Or would she? Did Fire want her because she was a warlord’s daughter, or because she was a seer’s?

  She kissed Tern on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said, then went back to rope herself to Ash. He looked at her queerly.

  “You’re sure, lad?” he said to Tern.

  “I don’t much like the cold,” Tern joked. “’S’why I left home in the first place.”

  Ash nodded and tossed him his own quiver of arrows.

  “May not help, but it might,” he said.

  The hooves were nearer.

  “Come on,” Ash said to her. He was in front, Cedar roped behind. They took their little hatchets in one gloved hand and a spike in the other, and approached the cold wall.

  She put her foot on the small ridge where Ash had stepped, pulled herself up by the spike he had set, and began to climb the ice.

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The gods had helped Elva communicate with her daughters and the others, but they had not committed themselves to lending their strength in the fight ahead. Elva still wasn’t sure what they would do when the sticking point was reached. But she didn’t say that to Arvid. Time enough to worry if it happened.

  She began. Poppy first, in the mine at Salt. She was standing, as she should be, in front of the people of the Town, humming the long undulating note the Sealmother had taught them. As with the gods, Elva could feel what she felt, hear what she heard. Poppy’s hand was tight gripped by that big girl guard, Larch, and Elva felt the strength that Poppy drew from the clasp. Strength and joy. Tears pricked Elva’s eyes. So often, it happened so often, that love grew out
of danger. She was happy that her daughter had found someone she could lean on; Poppy needed that.

  She gathered her daughter’s mind in, and with it Larch’s strength and the growing power of the people of Salt.

  Saffron next. A very different mind, quick and flickering and simple. But oh, so determined. Saffron was in a town hall, and her musical ear was being tortured by the townsfolk’s inability to hold a tune. A whole family was off key.

  Tell them to hum quieter, Elva instructed Saffron, and mind to mind she felt Saffie’s quick amusement, translated instantly into action.

  The boy at the Valuers’ Plantation, Thyme, was next, and he and the Valuers were ready and powerful.

  One by one she gathered them in. It was tiring, but she drew no strength from her mother, not yet. She would need it all later.

  As she took them in and wove them, braid by braid, she understood what they knew, saw what they had seen.

  When she reached the northernmost person with Sight, Atos, an old, old man in the little village of Purple Lights, she cried out at what she Saw. Wraiths attacking the flimsy cottage, wraiths made of ice and malice, claw and sleet.

  Atos stood by a small window whose shutters hung askew, torn off their hinges by the ice wraiths. He swung an axe at the long clawed hand that reached through the gap, and as the metal blade touched the blue flesh it shattered, made brittle by the cold. A woman came from behind Atos with a broom and poked it right into the wraith’s face. It screamed and backed away, leaving Atos panting and his protector in tears, which froze to her cheeks before they could roll down.

  “He comes!” Elva cried. “He is here! Gather in and sing! Together!”

  Elva sent all the strength she could to Atos, in Purple Lights, but the old man was physically weak and not practiced at the kind of concentration she was asking of him.

  And he was frightened. Behind him, in the cottage, his whole village cowered away from the windows and doors where ice wraiths were shrieking and scratching. Only his wife, as old as he was, had enough courage to face them.