Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  The girl watched him, emotion he could not understand rippling over her foreign face. She wiped a tear as it spilled from moist eyes, but he decided her shoulders were strong, her back straight. She would overcome; she would survive.

  Ruka moved to another girl and asked her similar questions. Then he told Folvar to fetch jars and cups, water and any herbs the matrons had. He told the women they must keep drinking, and to boil their water over the fire first, then showed them what he meant. He mixed a potion his mother had taught him, then added a few things he had learned in Pyu, hopefully to help with the vomiting. When he had made enough for all the almost two hundred women, he stretched and glanced at the open hall doors, and saw a womanly figure leaning against the wood.

  The sun hovered behind her and lit her silhouette. Ruka blinked his light-sensitive eyes, for a moment paralyzed as he swore he saw his mother before him, blondeish hair sparkling in the afternoon sun. The woman smiled.

  “Smith, shaman, sailor, warrior, herbalist, scout. Is there anything you can’t do, Bukayag?”

  Ruka blinked until his mother vanished, replaced by a young girl in a shack full of dead orphans. This image too blurred with the memory of a High Priestess of Galdra dressed in matron’s clothes. Dala had come.

  “Priestess.” Ruka stepped forward with a menace he hadn’t intended. He listened for footsteps, or for the clanging of iron or wood or the scrape of leather scabbard as the Order’s servants leapt inside to kill him. But he heard nothing.

  “I am alone,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I’ve come, as promised. And I’m pleased to see you alive, truth be told.”

  Ruka stepped forward until he stood an arm’s length from his ‘ally’. He looked out from the hall and saw no sign of men, though of course they could be hiding behind houses and fences. Ruka felt his brother’s urge to draw cold steel from nothing and hack her down. Dala met his stare and did not flinch, or shrink away.

  “Truth be told,” he echoed, collecting himself. “An odd expression for a priestess.”

  She snorted and stepped past him. “So. These are women from paradise?” Her eyes went over the islanders’ skin and hair, and she frowned. “I thought they’d be taller. You and your men have been treating them with the proper respect, I trust? Do they speak our language?”

  Ruka frowned, reminding himself his people were ignorant of the world, and could have no concept of the many tongues and their difference.

  “They do not. But I can speak to them.”

  Dala’s eyes narrowed, which gave Ruka the urge to smile. He waited, wondering if her pride would stop her from asking how, or if it was just that she believed he’d lie anyway. She eventually shrugged.

  “I’m pleased you’re caring for them. But we will need more.”

  Ruka blinked, surprised and uneasy at the woman’s words and manner as usual.

  “More what, priestess?”

  “More matrons. You are hopelessly outnumbered. I assume you realize that.”

  He did, of course, though her saying it so plainly annoyed him. He had his plans, but for the moment they were weak and vulnerable. If Orhus came soon, and in force, he could not stop them.

  “I have no method of winning matrons,” he said, and shrugged. “I am not popular with women.”

  Ruka had considered what he might do or say to convince the matrons of Orhus. But with the exception of threatening their mates, fathers and sons with death, he couldn’t think of much. He glanced back at Dala and found a look of unconcealed humor.

  “No,” she said, laughing openly, “no I imagine not.”

  Ruka almost snarled at her open contempt. That she should mock him so plainly risked his brother rising like some demon out of hell and choking the life from her throat. He stepped out to fresh air that didn’t smell of human waste to control himself.

  “Bukayag!”

  He turned to find Dala had chased him. Her hand moved to his arm.

  “I’ve offended you.” He nearly recoiled at her touch, but stilled when he saw regret and perhaps sympathy in her eyes. “I hadn’t meant…” she sighed, “I thought you spoke in humor. If the women of ash don’t see your value, than they are fools. It is they who I blame. You will take their children to paradise, shaman, I truly believe that. I admire you.”

  Ruka watched her eyes for deception. His brother’s accusing stare searched her for the lie, expecting, perhaps even hoping for any sign of false praise or mockery. He found none, and did not know what to say.

  “The problem remains,” said the priestess, as if unaware or unconcerned with his inspection. She sighed, and a few strands of golden hair blew in the wind, sparkling in the fading sun. “Without powerful matrons and their land and families, we will only ever attract the fringes to our cause.”

  “You have a suggestion,” Ruka said dryly.

  Dala smiled, and he could no longer pretend not to see the beauty in it. “The Matriarch has a cousin, Valda—the most powerful matron in the world. She despises the order and always has. If we can convince her, then, perhaps, others will follow.”

  Ruka turned back towards the ditch to hide his sneer. That a powerful matron should despise the matriarch perhaps should not have surprised him, but it did. For all their words of sisterhood, peace and unity, Ruka supposed power was not so easily shared. Trying to convince Valda in particular appealed less than digging in dirt.

  “Do you agree?” Dala called. “If so, we should leave at once. On horseback we could be in Orhus before morning.”

  Ruka kept walking and wanted to say no. He wanted the power to ignore these women and their politics and words and scheming favor. But he knew he couldn’t. You must learn to hold men’s minds with your piety, and sway them with your devotion, Beyla had told him.

  She had meant devotion to the old gods, the gods of men—gods of darkness and terror, blood and iron and deed. She said nothing of Galdra’s God. Beyla had never taught him how to sway women’s minds, perhaps because she’d assumed he had no chance. No doubt she was right. She usually was.

  “If you wish it, priestess, we will go. But I do not expect to succeed. As much as Valda might despise the Order, their world maintains her power and wealth. We offer risk and disruption to an old woman.” He ground his teeth. “It will be no more welcome than the disfigured son of a fallen grand-daughter.”

  He stopped and turned to see Dala’s confusion, and sighed. “We have met before, briefly. Long enough for an old, rich woman to destroy a boy’s hope of safety or comfort. I was only a child then, with no one in this world.” Ruka re-called the image of the old woman’s face. The idea that he’d need to ask her for help again was enough to make him wish the world burned instead. He saw Dala’s stubborn curiosity and knew she wouldn’t leave it alone.

  “Valda is my kin, priestess, my great grandmother. She rejected me at birth, again when my mother died. Now she will do it for a third time.”

  Dala still said nothing, though it was clear she listened intently. Ruka was impressed she could wait in silence, letting him rise and fall on his own without words. So few seemed able.

  Perhaps because of this he found himself wishing to tell her more—tell her how it felt, what he did after, and the many details of his life from then until now. But Bukayag was impatient and perhaps wise not to trust. Instead he turned to their trench.

  Chapter 61

  Valda, daughter of Valdaya, rolled her rheumy eyes at her great grand-daughter’s tears. It seemed sometimes she had endured a lifetime of women’s tears. No, two lifetimes, she thought. And Galdra’s tits if she’d endure any more.

  “Sasha.” The girl’s head snapped up at Valda’s tone. “Wipe your face and sit straight. You will collect yourself in my presence.”

  Sasha snuffled and tried to do as commanded, breathing sharply to control her sobs. “Yes, Greatmother,” she said, when her voice was useful.

  Valda shifted on her pillow. “So. You’ve lost another child. Always a tragedy. It will be hard fo
r Chief Oda with the boy so close to his name-day, and hard for the boy’s brother to be alone. But that is why we have twins. I have outlived ten children, Sasha, and fourteen grandchildren. I have buried hundreds of kin. Do you know what I’ve learned?”

  “Please tell me grandmother.” The girl was wracked by a renewed choking sob, and Valda grasped her hand.

  “I endure. That is matronhood. It is our duty to look to our other children, to our kin, to survive death and tragedy so as to keep our families going. Now comes the only test that matters. Can you bear it? That is what your mothers and grandmothers whisper, their faces stained black with tears and the ash of their children’s bones. Can you bear this life, descendant? Can you earn your place with us?”

  The girl sat transfixed at the words and the tone, but returned to her weeping. Valda hunched forward and seized her chin hard in a skeletal hand.

  “Well?”

  “Yes, greatmother, I will bear it,” the girl sobbed. Valda watched her eyes until she believed it might be true.

  “Good. You are Valdaya, and Vishan, and we more than any other carry this responsibility. In public you must be without tears. You must go lie with your mate and smile and tell him of all the other children you will make together to ease his mind that these things happen and are expected. You will stand straight in your home and hall and in the streets of Orhus until other women look on you and think ‘By God, how can she be so strong?’ When you notice this you will smile as if it is nothing. Not for you. Not for a grand-daughter of Valda. And then privately, very privately, in the company of your sisters, you may weep. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, greatmother.”

  “Good girl.”

  Valda blessed her descendant with the mark of Bray, Goddess of life and beauty, and Edda, goddess of words, for the Valdaya had long held to the old ways even as they embraced the new. “Now collect yourself. Go to your mother, and your children.” She took a milk-sweet from her tray. “And give this to Mina. Tell her she’s my favorite.”

  Sasha spasmed with a broken laugh. “I will tell her, but she already knows.”

  Valda smiled. “That’s why she’s my favorite.”

  Her great-grand-daughter rose with grace and shook off her obvious sorrow in less time than Valda feared. She bowed with respect and courage as she walked tall to the door, squaring her fine shoulders as she stepped out of the bedroom.

  Valda hoped it had been enough. She wished the girl’s mother had as much sense and spine and the wisdom to teach such lessons herself. But nevermind, that was the function of kin. Some would always be stronger than others and in different moments. After Valda died Sasha would perhaps be a great matron and first mother herself, and she would do admirably enough.

  Valda waved a hand at her great-great grand-daughter and attendant. She wasn’t as sharp as the girl taken by the god-cursed Order, but she would do, and Valda could bear the loss as she could bear anything. She lay back and closed her eyes before the next girl came with her tears and her ‘problems’.

  The closer to death she got the less patience she had. But a nap always helped.

  * * *

  Valda woke to a chill and licked the drool from her chin. She hugged her shawl to her shoulders and glanced at the open window wondering who would be so foolish in these cool evenings. It reminded her still of the Time of Troubles—of death and murder in the night and every man and woman of Orhus afraid of the dark. Even her powerful kin had been affected. She had lost grandsons in duels, distant relations butchered in the streets. And one Vishan family had been almost entirely slaughtered, even the women and babes killed in their home.

  Valda maintained guards ever since, even at night. The events had troubled her far more than the Order. The priestesses seemed to pass it off as just chief’s taking their quarrels too far, or maybe some outcasts seeking revenge. Valda knew different.

  Some of the greatest chiefs in Orhus whispered of war. They knew the Order was weak and unable to solve the growing problems of the North. Valda saw the power of the priestesses slipping as their rules seemed more elaborate and arcane and useless every year.

  The crops of the ring were worsening, that was a fact; the fishermen’s catches shrunk every season, the South grumbled of rebellion and even the old horse tribes hid their numbers, no doubt simply waiting for a single man or strong tribe to unite them.

  It was Valda’s sons and men like them who dealt with it all—it was they who fed and housed the Ascom, protected it from the cold and the savages, from flood and wind and snow. Men ran Valda’s world, that was the truth, they just couldn’t agree how to rule it. Thus the Order had a purpose.

  But for those trumped up figureheads to forget this purpose and believe themselves responsible for the world was to believe their own stupid lies. They played their role, just as the chiefs and the matrons did. Somehow they had begun to believe themselves the architect. The damn fools. While the people had food in their bellies they might be thankful, but the day they didn’t, they would know exactly who to blame.

  Valda shivered and reached for the bell that summoned her attendant, then realized it wasn’t there. She stared, confused, for despite her age her memory had always been very sharp and clear, and she knew she’d left it on the table.

  “I thought it best if we spoke alone.”

  Valda froze.

  A huge, dark figure stepped from the shadow of a corner and spoke in a deep, sonorous voice. He wore a black, hooded cloak over his towering frame, and stooped until his face was level with Valda’s. His bright eyes shone in the gloom, sharp and active and faded gold like the sun behind a mist. They were the eyes of a little boy born to a once promising child.

  “You’re Beyla’s son,” Valda said after a long pause, fighting to keep her voice controlled. “So you are this ‘Bukayag’. I thought perhaps you might be.”

  Valda watched the surprise wrinkle across the man’s Noss-groped face, and felt at least some measure of control. She settled into her chair. “Come to kill me, have you?” She snorted. “I’ll go soon enough without your help.”

  Her great-grandson’s hands moved to his knees as he stooped to his haunches. He smiled, and his strange, golden eyes sparkled in the dim hearthlight. He said nothing, and Valda’s opinion of him rose.

  “Your mother taught you patience, then. Very good.”

  “If I were you,” he said, his smile vanishing. “I wouldn’t speak of my mother again.”

  Valda opened her mouth to snap at that but saw the raw, wounded look on the boy. She closed her mouth, and nodded. Perhaps he had earned her silence on the topic.

  “What do you want?” she said instead. “An apology? We’re all prisoners of the same rules. I played my part. You played yours. Words are meaningless.”

  She felt slightly resigned as she said this, expecting him to do whatever he came to do. The thought of torture brought a stab of fear, but she would scream with her old lungs and men would come running, and he’d be forced to kill her quickly. If that was her fate, then so be it.

  Beyla’s son leaned forward and smiled with sharp teeth. “There we agree. But for all our sake, let us hope we are wrong.”

  She met his eyes and felt as if she stared into the hungry gaze of a well-trained wolf—as if all he wished were to butcher her with his bare hands, but held himself at bay. A knock at the door startled her, and her attendant whispered through the oak.

  “Greatmother, there is a woman here to see you. She is dressed like a matron, but says she is a priestess from the South. Shall I let her in?”

  Ruka nodded, and stepped back into the darkness.

  “Yes, but leave us.”

  “Yes, Greatmother.”

  Valda felt the real pull of interest and surprise now. Success and tragedy had a way of becoming routine when you were as old as she. But, still, her curved spine felt a tingle.

  Boots clattered on the floorboards, and a curvy woman in the plain brown of a poor matron entered Valda’s room. She
bowed low with respect, then pulled back her hood to reveal a pretty, youthful face, wind-burnt and touched by the sun. She closed the door behind her and sat in the chair set out for guests.

  “My name is Dala, High Priestess of the Southern Prefect. I come with an offer, and for your help. You’ve met my ally.”

  Valda recognized the girl. It was the apprentice who had carried a bag of heads to the spring festival and slopped them beneath the matriarch’s feet. Valda would have liked her just for that, but she had also come boldly proclaiming rebellion and terror and called for men to stop Bukayag and his outlaws. In an afternoon, she had rallied more men than the Order in a generation.

  Valda looked from the priestess to the outlaw she had promised to stop, wondering exactly how and when they had arranged their plotting and collusion. She supposed it didn’t matter.

  “Well done, girl.” Valda laughed, which brought on a small coughing fit. “Oh very well done,” she said more quietly when it was over. “But I don’t care about your Order or who rules it. You’ve made a mistake coming here.”

  The girl smiled politely, her hands resting at ease on her lap.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “The Order is only a stepping stone.” She gestured towards ‘Bukayag’. “Your grandson has sailed North, across the endless sea, and found land. It is a new world of wealth beyond imagining. We intend to create a new future for our people. But the task will be hard. We will require help. Practical help.”

  Valda watched the girl’s eyes for trickery or madness and couldn’t be sure. She had of course heard reports already of the strange ships off the North coast of the peninsula. Her sons had already asked their builders if such a thing could be done, and long before this she had smiths studying the incredible, rune-covered weapons being fought and dueled over all across the Ascom. None of it meant a new world, of course, but it seemed Beyla’s son was clever, very clever. Could he have tricked this High Priestess? Could the ships and the weapons be entirely his own?