A Haven in Ash

by Robert J. Crane

  A Haven in Ash

  Ashes of Luukessia, Volume One

  Robert J. Crane

  with Michael Winstone

  A Haven in Ash

  Ashes of Luukessia, Volume One

  Robert J. Crane

  with Michael Winstone

  Copyright © 2017 Ostiagard Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email cyrusdavidon@gmail.com.

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Author’s Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  1

  Alixa Weltan watched the sky from a mossy boulder.

  Behind her, Jasen Rabinn crept up. The breeze kissed his skin softly, not strong enough to cover his steps. It sighed through the mountains, cooling him in spite of the growing heat. Midday had come, not that you’d know from the blanket of grey spread out overhead, and the day was getting warmer.

  He slunk, quiet as a mouse … and then drummed his fingers on the top of her head.

  She flinched, as he’d intended. He only did this to annoy her.

  “Cousin,” she greeted him, tone flat. “Stop it.” And she batted at his hands, ducking out from below his fingers. A curl of hazel hair twisted out from behind an ear. Gracelessly, she pushed it back into place with her palm.

  “Why do I always find you with your head in the clouds?” Jasen asked.

  “I was greeting the sun,” she retorted.

  “What sun?”

  She cast him a disdainful look. “It was here until you arrived. Likely your ugly face scared it off.”

  Jasen shook his head and sat down beside her. “You’re so charming, cousin.”

  She turned up her nose and made a disgusted sort of noise low in her throat, but said no more.

  Their village, Terreas, lay behind them. It was the sort of place the elder villagers tended to describe as “quaint,” a word Jasen thought implied more charm than the little town actually possessed. It was small and uninteresting, notable only in that it lay sprawled at the foot of the mountains. The nearest one towered above the little town, high and close enough that on wintry mornings the low sun would draw a vast shadow across the village that seemed never to end.

  Jasen and Alixa had parked themselves at the edge of the Weltan farmland, itself toward Terreas’s southern boundary. A vineyard, Alixa’s mother’s, lay behind them. Nestled in the earth beside the farmland was a boulder that grew a thin carpet of green moss every spring. The moss provided a soft cushion for them to perch upon and watch the mountains.

  The closest mountain coughed a thin plume skyward, barely visible against the cloud-carpeted sky.

  Jasen pointed. “The mountain breathes again this morning.”

  “You’re too concerned with that rock,” Alixa muttered. “I hope one day it takes notice of your attention, stands up, and eats you whole.” She was teasing, of course, though it was hard to tell by the dryness of her voice.

  Jasen tilted his head back, running his hands down the moss at his side. He squinted.

  In spite of the heat, an ethereal cloud of fog had condensed around the base of the small mountain range. Jasen’s eyes roved across it, searching for dark shapes moving within.

  Finding none, he turned a scrutinizing eye on his cousin. “The mountain will come eat me? Not the scourge?”

  She paled, not even able to sputter at his casual mention. Though the scourge hadn’t ever visited Terreas, the pallid beasts were known to take refuge in the fog, in packs that wandered close to the village borders.

  Alixa shook her head. A curtain of hair slipped over her shoulder, masking one side of her face. She pushed it back, brushing at it distractedly. “Don’t...” Her composure returned. “You need not mention those things.”

  “Did you weave?” Jasen asked, feeling a breath of contrition run down the back of his neck. “With Sidyera?”

  “Aunt Sidyera, and yes.”

  “She’s not my aunt.”

  Alixa frowned. “My fingers ache.”

  “Do you want to take the rest of the morning off? Go looking for scourge tracks?”

  He did not expect a no, unless Alixa were being awkward. She knew well his desire for adventure, but she was in a surlier mood than usual today, or perhaps a little more bitter, no doubt from the endless lectures Sidyera delivered while Alixa wove at her side.

  She closed her eyes; this time she did not pale at the mention of the scourge. She seemed to draw a long breath, and finally, for the first time that she broke into a smile. “Let’s go,” she said, giving a very earnest nod and clambering to her feet.

  Jasen leapt up, not quite believing it but not willing to question his luck. Falling into step—she was half a head shorter, at fifteen years to his sixteen, and slighter, though he too was slim, yet to fill out like his father kept saying he would—he pointed ahead. “Let’s walk by the boundary. Might be tracks on the other side.”

  Alixa looked uncomfortable. “Really?”

  “We’ve done it before.”

  “Yes, but … my shoes aren’t appropriate.”

  It was an excuse. Jasen raised his eyebrows skeptically in response.

  “Fine,” she conceded begrudgingly. “Wait here.” And she backtracked, half-running in the direction of the vineyard and the house beyond it.

  Jasen dawdled, eyeing the range, and fiddled at his neck. A flat amulet of polished stone hung there, just below his shirt. He lifted it free and considered it. A morose twinge clenched his stomach, and with a huff he stowed it, then swiveled and put on a burst of speed to catch up with Alixa on her way to the house.

  The Weltan cottage was well-kept, sturdy, and covered in moss at the rear, which rounded into view first from the direction Alixa and Jasen approached. It managed to squeeze a bigger family into it than Jasen’s would’ve—but then, it had to: Alixa had three brothers and her parents, not to mention Aunt Sidyera, who seemed to take up a disproportionate amount of space and fill much of the rest of the building with hot air. Jasen thanked the ancestors daily that she was not his aunt, too—because after his mother passed, he would have surely ended up with her, listening to lectures for hours and hours on end as she spun that awful creaky wheel.

  There were also a multitude of scents vying for attention. The smell of grapes in the vineyard was quickly muted by the herb garden’s many smells, all
vying for dominance. The fresh smell of upturned earth lingered in the air too: a harvested patch needed repurposing, the soil turned in preparation for new seedlings.

  Alixa made her way to the back entry. She kept her “roughing” boots there, as she called them, repurposed from a pair of riding boots.

  She shoved through the back door, letting it swing heavily, and quickly swapped shoes. She gripped Jasen for leverage as she yanked at one heel.

  “You could’ve just used the step,” he said. “Or actually gone in.”

  “Then we might run into someone who’d keep us,” she murmured back.

  She certainly meant Aunt Sidyera, the crone.

  Straightening her skirt and her blouse, she stepped back out, shutting the door behind far more carefully than she had opened it—again, avoiding the attention of her aunt. Then Jasen fell in alongside her, heading for the trail toward the mountains.

  The dirt pathway had been created as a result of hundreds of footsteps trampling it down over time. It skirted up to the boundary and then beyond, splitting off into goat trails that snaked the lower portions of the mountains. Today, Jasen could not pick them out; the mist obscured too much.

  “What do you say we climb up the unfinished mountain?” he asked. “We might finally see the little cottage that’s nestled inside.” Smoke regularly puffed from the dip at the mountain’s peak, and Jasen and Alixa often joked that someone had built a cottage there, and the smoke was from their chimney stack.

  Alixa directed him a look from the corner of her eye. It was a sidelong glance Jasen knew well. It said that she worried about his brains and the sorry state of them.

  Sorry in her mind, of course; they were perfectly acceptable brains as far as Jasen was concerned.

  “Jasen, scourge are out there. We aren’t going to search for danger.”

  Jasen pouted, tilting his head down. Copper curls drooped over his eyes. He sullenly ignored them.

  Alixa prodded him. “We’ll go up there eventually,” she said. “When we have one or two days free …” Her tone lacked conviction.

  “And the nerve for it,” Jasen murmured.

  Alixa glared at him, cheeks blossoming scarlet. “I have plenty of nerve.”

  “Fine,” said Jasen. “We’ll spend the afternoon by the boundary then, shall we? Perhaps if we call loud enough, one of the scourge will come right up to us.”

  Alixa’s glare pivoted into a semblance of dismayed pity. “That’s it. It’s finally happened. You have lost your mind.”

  “What’s the problem?” Jasen pushed. “No scourge have ever crossed the boundary. A hundred of them could come to my shouts, and still the boundary would protect us.”

  “So let’s challenge that by putting ourselves out like bait, hm? Summoning them like dogs?”

  Jasen didn’t respond, just looked at her with raised eyebrows. So Alixa huffed a breath. “Fine. Let’s go then.” And she stomped ahead, ignoring Jasen’s victorious grin.

  The boundary was a stone wall, about as high as Jasen’s waist. It clutched Terreas in a semi-circle, cupping it where the mountains left off. Blooming with moss, stones uneven and in places fallen away, it served as a warning more than anything. The scourge, which ruled the rest of the lands of Luukessia as far as anyone in the village knew, had never dared to cross it. Instead the wall warned the village’s youngest residents: Do not pass this line.

  Or perhaps...Death waits beyond.

  Jasen avoided a shudder at the grim thought, but only barely.

  Alixa’s smile had long vanished. Now her mouth was a thin line, downturned at one end. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, working nails against her palms—Jasen could see the knuckles whiting, and many times had seen the crescents she dug in.

  “You’re getting twitchy,” he observed.

  “You’re projecting your fears onto me,” she shot back, but she immediately ceased her nervous movements.

  “Please,” Jasen said. “You’ll run the moment we see so much as a scourge toe print.”

  Alixa rolled her eyes at him. “Watch me.” And she strode the last short distance to the boundary, stuck out a hand—did he see it quiver?—and laid it across the top of the wall.

  “There,” she said defiantly. “How’s that for twitchy?”

  “You wouldn’t cross it,” Jasen challenged.

  Alixa hesitated. She was a determined girl who didn’t like to back down from a challenge—but crossing the boundary? That was, perhaps, a challenge too far for Alixa.

  Truth be told, would it not have been a challenge too far for him too? He had considered it, of course, thought about it plenty: what it would be like in the world out there, how it might feel, where he might go … but to actually vault it, as he was daring Alixa?

  “I have no reason to cross,” she said. “And neither do you,” she added, more fiercely.

  Jasen looked out. Fields took up root on the other side of the boundary, open and softly waving in the breeze. This was rye. The heads were just coming in, green and frail. As the summer stretched, those heads would grow, turn fat and golden, blanketing for miles to see—the carpet stretched well beyond Terreas on either side, disappearing over hills.

  No sign of the scourge. No mist, and though the rye had grown taller just this past week alone, the scourge would struggle to sneak through it, unless they pressed low and slunk. And they didn’t have the brains to conceal themselves … did they?

  “Let’s walk,” Jasen said and directed Alixa along the boundary.

  They went in silence, Jasen looking out, Alixa not so much. She’d positioned herself farther from the wall than he, and as his gaze swept the rye field, and out over the hillocks extending beyond Terreas, he thought he could feel her gaze move over him. Keeping an eye on him, probably, lest he do anything rash. Well, he wouldn’t.

  Not today, anyway.

  Sometimes, he and Alixa chattered about what might be out there. Today, Jasen mulled that over to himself, the only sound between them their feet on the earth and grass.

  Alixa’s father, Jasen’s uncle, had told stories when they were little of what lay beyond—before the scourge had come to Luukessia and taken its land for themselves. Somewhere lay ocean, a vast body of water that extended a hundred, or a thousand, times farther than the rye field Jasen’s eyes wandered over now. He’d tried so hard to picture it, many, many times, frowning so hard his face almost folded in on itself, and still he couldn’t.

  Maybe he never would.

  Alixa broke their silence. “Quiet as ever.” She was solemn, yet sounded pleased.

  The wind gusted, changing direction and blowing hard all at once. A rancid smell came with it, like rot.

  Alixa turned her nose up. “Ugh. I hate when the wind shifts like that.”

  Jasen’s face had twisted in disgust too—but he paused. The wind had brought vile scents, yes, but it had also carried …

  “Do you hear that?” he asked, squinting the way it had come.

  Alixa stared at him in bewilderment then followed his gaze over the fields.

  The rye swung, bobbing with momentum from the wind—

  Where it parted, a small figure, its arm raised skyward—

  And nearby, something shifted, unnatural … wrong.

  Jasen spotted it at the same moment Alixa did.

  He broke into a sprint.

  “Jasen!”

  He barely heard. All his focus had drawn in on the space where he’d seen that person—a child, he was sure, in the part of his brain still actively processing for him where the rest worked on pumping his arms and legs. Without thinking he flew for the boundary, gripping it with one hand, and swinging over—

  Another cry from Alixa, lost to him.

  Then he was hurtling through rye.

  The grasses weren’t at their full height, but the earth was rich with minerals that the mountains had disgorged over time. The rye was thick and tall, right up to Jasen’s shoulder already. Sprinting through it was more like wad
ing, and for a moment Jasen thought that this was what being in water was like—only the grasses fought against him, stinging, and one particularly sharp barb whipped at his neck. He grunted against the bite of pain—then he was past and it was gone, not clinging like thorns but simply giving up—

  The wind gusted again, from another direction this time. The stink of rot assailed him, and it seemed somehow stronger, as though it came from the very fields themselves, whickering, whickering—

  A flurry, and the rye parted—

  Jasen almost slammed into the boy, avoiding a hard collision at the last second.

  The boy gasped, eyes wide with fright. Pale skin gone blotchy from tears, he’d been fighting his way through the rye with his hands out in front of him. Blonde hair had gone awry, like the grasses had mussed it for him.

  Jasen came to a jerky halt. “Tery?” He groped for the surname, suddenly lost into mists like the scourge stalking the mountains’ base. Malori? That was it. Son of the village butcher.

  Tery grasped onto Jasen’s middle and bawled. “I g-got lost!”

  “Why are—?” Jasen began then cut himself off. Questions could come later. For now, they needed to get back to the boundary. Gripping Tery’s shoulder with a firm hand, Jasen steered him around, swiveling to find the wall. Just barely visible, cut off by the expanse of rye behind, Alixa stared in horror.

  “Jasen!” she yelled.

  “I’ve got him,” he called back. To Tery: “Come on. It’s this way.”

  “Th-thank you,” the boy sniffed.

  The wind blasted again. The stench of decay hit Jasen hard like a slap to the face. He recoiled from it, gagging.

  It was so close.

  Muffled by the gusting air came another noise. It wasn’t the rye, bending to the wind’s whims … but something moving through it.

  Something close.

  Jasen gripped Tery’s shoulder tighter. Hurting him, probably, but he had to keep hold.

  “Can you run?” he asked the boy.

  “I don’t know,” Tery whimpered. “Why do we need to—?”

  Then the question was answered. From behind, back the way they’d come, the rye parted as though the very earth had exploded beneath it.