Ember and Ash Page 2

  “Done!” Martine said with relief. Osfrid’s mother, Sigurd, smiled at her with a hint of reproof. Sigurd was so much a warlord’s lady that Ember was a little in awe of her. Not beautiful, but stately, reserved, calm. Yet she smiled with real affection as she tied the sash around Ember’s waist and stood back to let Martine tuck the ends in at the back.

  “There,” Martine said. “You’re ready.” Her expression was a mixture of pride, love and anxiety—and anxiety was so alien to her mother that Ember felt a flash of fear.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Have you Seen something? Have you cast the stones for me?”

  Although her mother was one of the best stonecasters in the Domains, seeing the future in the choosing and fall of the stones in her pouch, she had never before been able to see Ember’s future in the stones, but perhaps now—Martine shook her head.

  “The stones won’t speak to me of you, you know that. I—I’m just unsure about all this,” she murmured, flicking a glance at Sigurd who was chatting with a couple of officers’ wives at the door to Ember’s chamber. “It feels wrong to me.”

  Ember sighed.

  “Mam. You just don’t want me to be a warlord’s wife!”

  Martine’s mouth twisted wryly.

  “Perhaps I don’t,” she admitted. She tucked a strand of Ember’s hair up into the elaborate knot on the top of her head. “It’s not an easy life.”

  Thank the gods she herself had been bred to the job, Ember thought, instead of having it forced on her as it had been forced on her mother when she had fallen in love with her father. Where was Arvid? Ember looked out and yes, there her father was with Osfrid and his father, Lord Merroc, supervising the fire, laughing and chatting, at ease as he always was, in any company. The Springtree had been raised behind them, its branches adorned with long ribbons, ready for the dance which would follow the wedding. The dance she and Osfrid would lead.

  “It’s time to go down,” she said. She couldn’t help beaming at her mother. “It will suit me, Mam, you know it will.”

  Martine laughed.

  “Aye, it will that,” she said, a catch in her voice. “You’re perfect for it, and may the gods bless you both.”

  For a moment, Ember was conscious of the gray in Martine’s black hair, of the lines around her green eyes, and of her own maturity. She might soon be a mother herself; would she feel the same anxiety when her child married? No doubt she would.

  They went down to the men as they should, the bride arm in arm with her mother and future mother-in-law. As they came out of the hall Osfrid turned and saw her and his face lit up. How lucky she was that her father had let her choose her husband—out of the six young warlords’ sons who had come to woo her, Osfrid was by far the handsomest, with fine broad shoulders and chest and long, lean legs. Her heart fluttered with excitement. Tonight was her wedding night. They had kissed and touched a little, but of course that was all. She was a warlord’s daughter, and her worth lay in her husband’s surety of her loyalty. One man, and one man only, so that the bloodlines would be secure.

  Her mother had tried to talk her out of that.

  “Try him out before you buy him,” she’d advised coolly, when Ember had first chosen Osfrid. “You learn a lot about a man in bed.”

  Ember had wanted to retort that she wasn’t a Traveler whore, lying down with anyone who took her fancy, but of course she didn’t. Not when her mother was Traveler born and bred.

  She knew her duty, and Osfrid knew his. He hadn’t even tried to seduce her. Not once.

  Besides, she thought now, pushing aside that slight disappointment, her mother didn’t understand the—the beauty of coming to a man as a virgin, offering him everything she was, for the rest of her life. How could Martine understand?

  Outside the door the people of the fort were gathered, and the guests, all dressed in their best finery, all smiling, nodding, laughing. Somewhere music was playing: flute and harp and drum, a light tingling sort of melody. A few people cheered when she appeared.

  Ember went forward. It struck her that she was arm in arm with the two cultures, the two peoples, of the Domains: Acton’s people and Travelers, Sigurd and Martine, new blood and old, and she herself in between like a bridge.

  Osfrid moved to meet her, arm in arm with her father and his, smiling as though his heart would burst.

  The two mothers took her hands, the two fathers took his, and they were joined together and stood for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes. Ember had never been so happy.

  Arvid, as the warlord of this domain, performed the ceremony. He produced the red string that symbolized heart’s blood, and bound her right hand to Osfrid’s left. She would take it after, and keep it safe, and the midwife would use it to tie the cords when her babies were born.

  “Heart to heart, blood to blood, family to family,” he said solemnly, his eyes suspiciously bright. He would miss her, she knew. “Long life, long love, and death far distant.”

  He stood back and gestured to where the fire had burned down to glowing coals.

  “Be purified by this fire; be reborn into a new life together.”

  Handfasted, they smiled at each other, and together took two steps toward the fire. They were in perfect unison. A good omen, Ember thought, as she bent her legs and leaped as he leaped, over the coals.

  As they reached the highest point, buoyed up by happiness, Ember felt the air change around her. It was suddenly hot; impossibly hot. Osfrid began to turn his face toward her questioningly. He seemed to move slowly, so slowly.

  A roar hit her ears like high wind, like someone enormous shouting.

  The sleeping fire reared up, flames huge and impossibly high. She was surrounded by flames, a column of fire around her; the heat on her skin was unbearable but she wasn’t burning.

  Panic struck at her and she clutched Osfrid’s hand and screamed in pain. It was alight—he was alight, Osfrid, Osfrid… The flames licked around her wrist, consuming the red cord, cutting her free of him and she fell, tumbling, on the other side of the fire, alone, with the flames towering over her, so loud, gold and orange and red and white-hot at the center.

  Osfrid was suspended in the fire, his body turning black, skin cracking open, blood, oh gods, his blood was boiling, his mouth opened in a scream he had no time to voice, his beautiful blond hair a halo of flame.

  Then the fire flared even more, covering him in a sheath of white. There was nothing but flame.

  There was a face.

  A man’s face in the fire. Not Osfrid. Not human. The face of the fire itself, wild and sulky and unpredictable and full of desire. For her. Despite her shock, she felt heat run through her like hot mead.

  “You are mine,” the fire said, a voice half honey and half rough wood. “Your mother should have known that. And you will come to me.”

  The flames disappeared. The fire was coals again, just coals, and Osfrid had gone as if he’d never been. There weren’t even any bones. Just ash. Ember knelt, cradling her burned wrist, staring numbly at the ashes and only then heard the shouts and cries and Osfrid’s mother, screaming.

  “A judgment on us,” Sigurd moaned, later, in Martine’s room, lying on the bed with her waiting women in close attendance. “A judgment on us for marrying our son to a Traveler’s whelp!”

  Martine, passing a cold cloth to one of the women, didn’t even flinch. She’d warned Ember before the betrothal that those in the south didn’t think the same about Travelers; that there would be some in Merroc’s court who would look down on her because her mother had dark hair, but she’d laughed it away. Times had changed, she’d said. People didn’t think like that anymore.

  “When times are good,” Martine had said, smoothing back a strand of Ember’s unruly hair, “people are happy. But when things go bad, they look for someone to blame. Usually that’s Travelers.”

  So. There was Sigurd, who this morning had been so kind, so happy, now calling her a Traveler’s whelp for all to hear. Her
world was fragmenting around her. Everything she had relied on was falling apart. Everything she had planned was smashed beyond repair. She felt numb and cold, but underneath there was anger, and she knew that sooner or later the anger would warm her enough to let her speak. But she didn’t know what she would say.

  Ember got up from the chair where she had been huddled, and went downstairs. Martine followed her.

  Her father and Merroc were standing by the fireplace in the hall, but the fire was out for the first time in Ember’s memory. It had been put out, she saw, with a bucket of water, and smelled of wet ash, acrid and unpleasant. The men were drinking applejack. Merroc, ten years older than her father, looked double that, the long lines of his face dragged into furrows and his skin pale against his still-red hair. His hand shook as he raised his mug.

  Another man was with them—the tall, slender man who had come in the gate with her cousin Ash. Ash himself, she noticed, was sitting quietly in the corner, with his brother Cedar. They nodded at her, but didn’t smile, and she was grateful. She couldn’t pretend to be all right.

  The men turned as they came in and her father put out his arms to her. She walked into them but as they closed around her she felt none of the usual safety, nothing of her habitual comfort from his presence. She returned his embrace for his sake, not for hers.

  She pulled herself away and turned to Merroc, hesitating. His eyes searched hers.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did it happen?”

  She had to find enough voice to answer him, but it was hard, as though she had forgotten how to speak.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. Tears started in her eyes, hot and burning as the fire had been on her wrist. They rose and fell, rose and fell, and she could do nothing but stand there and let them, because she couldn’t say what she felt. The tears would have to speak for her.

  “I know you loved him,” Merroc said, as though trying to puzzle it out. “So why? And how?” With the last word, his free hand smacked into his thigh. “Some enchanter. Has to be. Some enchanter with a grudge against us…”

  He turned and looked at Martine, and at the other man with dark hair. His thoughts were plain. Enchanters tended to be of the old blood. The last enchanter who had caused trouble for the Domains had been a Traveler. The odds were that if an enchanter had cast a fire spell, he would be a Traveler too.

  Ember could see, in that moment, all the gains of the Resettlement being lost, vanishing like autumn mist at noon. No matter what, she couldn’t let Merroc believe that. It was clear he hadn’t seen what she had—the face in the fire.

  “Not an enchanter,” she said, forcing the words out, having to form them carefully as though she spoke in another language. “The fire spoke to me. That was no spell.”

  Merroc and Arvid exclaimed, but her mother and the other man drew in their breaths, as though she had confirmed their fears. She turned to her mother.

  “It said—He said, that I belonged to Him. That you should have known that.”

  Martine began to sink to the ground, her legs shaking, and the other man went to support her. She turned to him gratefully and the two dark heads together sparked a memory in Ember, of being very young and seeing this man laughing with her mother. Fifteen years ago? At least. He had been visiting from the south. “You may call him the Prowman,” Martine had said. “Or Uncle Ash, whichever you prefer.” The man had laughed. “Are you sure you want to saddle her with an uncle like me?” he’d asked. That was all she remembered, but now, as an adult, she realized that this was Ash the Songmaker, the Prowman of the Lake, the great hero of the Resettlement.

  She would think about that later.

  “Mam? What did it—He—mean?”

  Martine stood straighter and faced the Prowman, not her.

  “He’s shown Himself,” she said to him. “You knew about Him?”

  “I knew some,” he said. His voice was mellow and rich, comforting. “I knew He existed.”

  “Do you think I can talk about Him now?”

  “I think you have to,” the Prowman said. “Or there will be retribution on the old blood across the Domains, and we know what that looks like.”

  Her mother shuddered and finally turned to look Ember in the eye.

  “There are… powers,” she said. “Call them gods, if you like. We know of five, at least, but there are probably more. Fire is one.”

  “But why Osfrid? Why me?”

  Inside, she was raging. No, no, no! She didn’t want anything to do with powers or gods or anything unchancy. She wanted a simple, happy life with her husband and her children and the duties of a warlord’s lady.

  Merroc took a step forward.

  “Yes,” he said. “Why Osfrid?”

  “Fire was there when you were born,” Martine said to her. “That’s why I called you Ember. He was in the grate, looking at you, the moment after you were born, and He used up all the fuel so only a breath later all that was left was embers. It was only a heartbeat. I wasn’t even sure if I’d imagined it…”

  But there was a story here her mother wasn’t telling, and the anger inside her swelled larger.

  “Why?” she demanded. The words were coming more easily now. “Why me?”

  “I angered Him, once,” Martine said, very softly. “I… supported someone He wanted, and she refused Him.”

  “So He wants me instead?” Her voice was shrill, she could hear it climbing into hysteria, but she didn’t care. “Because you made Him angry? That’s not fair!”

  “My son died because you angered a god,” Merroc said, almost thoughtfully, as though weighing an argument in council.

  Arvid gestured and then drew his hand back, as if afraid of making things worse.

  “The Powers of this land do as they please, and they always have,” the Prowman said. “Believe me, I know. There is no predicting them, and no stopping them. Martine is not to blame.”

  Merroc turned on him. “Then who is?” he demanded. “On whom do I take revenge?”

  “Will you turn against the land itself?” the Prowman asked.

  “If I have to!” Merroc snarled, and flung out of the room, up the stairs to his wife.

  Feeling her legs shake, Ember moved to a chair and sat down.

  “He said I belonged to Him,” she whispered. “That I would come to Him.”

  “Come to Him?” Martine asked, her voice sharp.

  “ ‘You are mine’,” Ember quoted. “ ‘Your mother should have known that. And you will come to me.’ ”

  “That’s not… right,” Ash said. “That’s not how it works. The lover has to choose.”

  “The lover?” Ember tried to keep her voice from shaking. “He wants me—” She couldn’t finish. Her mother was shaking her head, over and over.

  “That’s not how He is. It’s not!”

  “Martine?” Arvid said, his voice hard. “You have never mentioned this to me.”

  The Prowman put a hand on his arm. “It’s forbidden for women to talk about it to men,” he said.

  “But you knew,” Arvid said, his eyes still stone.

  “Because I—” the Prowman looked at Martine as if for guidance, and then stood for a moment, eyes unfocused, as Ember had seen her mother stand when the Sight hit her. He shivered a little, and shrugged. “I am the Prowman of the Lake, which is one of the faces of Water, another of the Powers of this land. I have some little knowledge of the others.”

  “Five, Martine said.” Arvid’s voice held the warlord’s tone of command, the voice he used when training his officers.

  Oh gods, this was about more than her! Ember thought. This changed everything they thought they knew about the world.

  The Prowman nodded.

  “Five we are sure of: Fire, Water, Earth, Air and the Great Forest. There may be others. We know very little of the Sea, for example. The Foreverfroze people talk of the Sealmother. And in the deserts, the Hungry Wind is spoken of.”

  Arvid waved that aside. His eyes were fixed on
Martine.

  “So for all the time we have been together, you have known of these powers and not told me?” His voice was full of betrayal, and Ember shared that feeling.

  “You should have told me,” she said. “I’m a woman.”

  Martine spread her hands, which shook.

  “I was trying to keep you safe from Him,” she said. “I never took you to the fire altar. I thought, if you didn’t go to Him, He couldn’t hurt you—He’s never done anything like this before!” Her voice was a cry, and it shook Ember. Her mother had always kept calm, no matter what, before.

  “Yes, He has,” Ash said. “Once before, at least, He took a woman from her own home because she had neglected Him. One of the Bynum girls.”

  The anger that had been building inside Ember was too great to contain anymore. Its heat was overwhelming. She clenched her fists against the soft silk of her wedding skirt and cried, “I will not be owned! I will not be commanded! Lady Death will take me to the cold hells before I will bow to Him.” She meant it as a shout, but it came out flat and cold and even.

  For the first time, her cousin Ash came forward and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Shagging right,” he said. He looked at the Prowman, and something passed between them. “We don’t belong to any old gods. Times have changed.”

  The Prowman and Martine looked at them with identical expressions of love and concern and exasperation.

  “Could be you’ll have some trouble explaining that to Him,” the Prowman said.

  “I will not be owned!” Ember shouted, the rage turning hot.

  The cold, wet, dead fire in the grate sprang to life. Ember felt her breath catch in her throat; saw the others suspended in movement as they all turned to the hearth; and in that moment, her sister Elva came through the doorway from her father’s workroom, her white hair and pale skin seeming to shine in the dimness. Something in the way she walked made a shiver run down Ember’s spine. When she opened her mouth, it was not Elva’s gentle voice which came out: it was deep, dark, rough, as though another being spoke through her.