Ember and Ash Read online

  Timbertop, the Last Domain

  The stonecaster saw what I told you, and you can make up your own mind about why she’s not here to tell you herself,” Poppy said, loud and certain, to the people of Timbertop.

  “Jelica doesn’t leave that cabin,” an old woman said. “You want her, you go to her.”

  There were mumblings of discontent and uncertainty.

  Poppy stilled her face with an effort. No use telling these people what had happened to Jelica. It had been her own choice, but would they believe that? Her job was simply to get them and others like them to the mine in Salt.

  At least she didn’t feel too young for the job. Watching Jelica surrender to Him had aged her in a moment.

  “You can stay here and die, or you can come to Salt and live. That’s the choice, and it’s the only one you’ve got,” she said. They are afraid, she thought. I must remember that they are as afraid as I am. Larch stood at her shoulder, silent but strong. “The gods speak to my mother, you all know that.” They nodded, muttered a few words to each other, looked back at her. She took a deep breath. Time to claim her inheritance. She’d never said the words aloud before, not even to her mam. The whisperings in her head had been so slight, so soft, that she had even wondered if they were real.

  “They speak to me, too.”

  The villagers exclaimed at that. Half of them cheered up, and the other half looked sour. But they listened.

  “We must go to Salt.”

  “We?” the Village Voice asked. “You’re going, too?”

  “I need to collect the people from the other villages. But then, yes, I will be there.”

  For some reason, this decided them and the group broke up to pack. Larch smiled at her puzzled face.

  “Why should they trust someone unless that person is risking the same thing they are?” she asked.

  “We’re all at risk, no matter where we are,” Poppy said.

  “But they will have a darling of the gods to protect them.”

  That was more terrifying than anything else she could have said.

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  In the evening before the Summer Solstice they began to gather: the women and children, the people of Two Springs, the fort guard and all the other workers who kept the fort running, complete with kin. Everyone from the dairymaid to the gardener to the boy who watched the geese. They filled the hall by an hour before sunset and then each room of the residence, one by one. Except the guest chamber and Martine’s parlor, where Sigurd kept her vigil, undeterred by darkness or weariness.

  Very few of them had washed much in the last two weeks, and the smell began to mount as people crowded in together. At least it was warmer that way.

  At sunset, they said the evening prayers, led by the Voice of Two Springs, and Elva was there at the glass table, white head bowed as she sent their wishes and hopes and fears to the gods. They spoke back, to Arvid’s relief, in that odd, deep voice so different to Elva’s normal light tones.

  “Be strong, be bound together in trust and love, and Ice will quail before you,” they said.

  It was what they all needed to hear, but Arvid hoped that it wasn’t one of those tricksy messages the gods sent, where there was a darker meaning underneath. If they were not bound together, what would happen?

  After the prayers, concealing his fears, Arvid stood on the dais he used to pronounce judgment and spoke to his people, conscious of each trusting or fearful or cynical eye on him. He’d planned a long and reassuring speech, but he realized it wouldn’t work. They deserved his honesty, not manipulation.

  “The gods and Sealmother have given us a way to defend ourselves,” he said. “You all know what must be done at dawn.” They nodded, looked briefly at each other, looked back at him. “We are one people. Man, woman, Traveler, blondie—” there were some grins and some shocked looks at his using that word, “—guard or blacksmith or farmer or maid—or warlord—we are all Last Domainers first and forever!”

  They cheered at that and he grinned at them, feeling for the first time that they might succeed. It was like this in battle, when you had your men behind you, trusting you, following you. He had forgotten, with all the enchantment and tricks, that this was a battle; and battle was a thing he understood. He said so.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s the Ice King’s men or the Ice King himself!” he declared. “We know how to fight the bastard, and we’ll win, the way we always win!”

  They were on their feet, now, shouting his name, calling out the battle cry of the Last Domain: “North! North! North!”

  He saluted them and they cheered more, then he leaped down from the dais and went around the room, as he went around a camp the night before a battle, talking to each of them, putting a hand on a shoulder here, giving a clap on the back there. As always, it uplifted him and sobered him at the same time. They were his strength, but also his weakness; he would feel their injuries as his own.

  He was conscious that Martine and Elva watched him from the glass table. The Prowman was standing propped against the wall by his workroom, arms folded. His face was unreadable. Arvid would have given a great deal to know what he was thinking. He made his way over to the wall, chatting and laughing and encouraging as he went.

  Ash nodded at him and they moved into a small space in the corner.

  “Your defenses, my lord, are incomplete,” the Prowman said soberly. That reined him in with a jolt.

  “Where is the weakness?” Arvid demanded. The Prowman put out one long finger and touched Arvid’s forehead.

  “Here,” he said. He moved the finger down to Arvid’s chest. “And here.”

  Anger spiked through Arvid, but he kept it in check.

  “Explain.”

  “Did you not hear the gods? We must be bound together in trust and love. All of us.”

  Involuntarily, Arvid glanced over at Martine, and saw that she was staring out across the hall but not seeing; her eyes were abstracted with Sight. As though she felt his gaze—perhaps she did—she turned her head to stare him right in the eyes. His stomach lurched. It was the first time she had looked at him properly in days. There was pain in her eyes, and something he had never seen before, except when she was worrying about Ember. Martine was afraid.

  Twenty years of married life allowed him to read her face, now that she was not shutting him out. She was afraid that he would not listen to the Prowman. They had been talking about him to each other. A hand squeezed his heart, but his mind overrode the surge of jealousy and pain and said, She is afraid. Martine, who feared nothing.

  “Bring her to the fire,” he said, and turned away from that look on her face with relief.

  He left the protection of the hall in his full winter gear, and he needed it. The storm was rising, wind in gusts of chill that slit through his coats like needles, snow whirling around in circles of intense cold, a high keening piercing his ears. And yet the stars shone brightly above—the snow wasn’t really snow, but flakes of ice blown off walls and ground. He followed one of the blizzard ropes (already frozen stiff) to the fire, which he could barely see in the distance. Closer, it seemed pitifully small to withstand the blown snow and ice, but it burned valiantly. There was a team feeding it, led by Lily.

  “Good thing you ordered the woodstack filled, my lord!” he shouted cheerily against the howl of the wind. Arvid grinned and nodded. This had been a mistake. He and Martine couldn’t talk here—but he should have thought to come out and encourage these men anyway, so it wasn’t wasted effort. He spoke to each of the four, and by that time Martine had joined him with a pot of cha they could warm at the fire. They thanked her profusely, especially when she handed over a small flask of apple brandy.

  “Ah, we’re lucky to have you, my lady,” Lily said, taking a swig.

  She smiled with genuine amusement, the first real smile Arvid had seen from her since Osfrid’s death.

  “Save it for the cha,” she advised. “It’ll last longer and do more g
ood that way.”

  “Aye, my lady,” Lily said, saluting her.

  “Come to the barn,” Arvid said, and waited until she had found the right rope, then followed her across the yard to the solid bulk of the barn. They were in the lee, here, and it was a relief. The big doors were barred, but Arvid lifted the latch on the small door and held it open for her to slip inside, then went in too. Closing it behind him was a mistake—he had forgotten, again, that there was no light to be had after sunset.

  Even the meager starlight of the yard would have helped, but they were standing in velvet darkness, the wind distant, unable to know anything but each other’s breathing. The animals had all been housed in the smaller barns; with all the people in the hall, this one was empty, although it smelled faintly of goats and more strongly of hay. They were alone for the first time in days. It was intimate; her breath in the darkness reminded him of so many nights, winter and summer, when the darkness had been a prelude to desire, to joy, to laughter…

  “Ash says,” he started, but she said at the same time, “This is my fault.”

  At last! he thought. At last.

  “We would not be in this situation if I had done what I should,” Martine continued. Her voice shook a little. It was as though he heard that voice for the first time. It was like mead, dark and golden and mellow, but with a strength at the center you didn’t get from honey water. He was shaken with something more complex than desire; need, he thought. I need her. Her strength, the tenderness that she only shows to me and Ember, her desire for me, her competence and her vigor and her laughter, her understanding of people which somehow never made her too cynical, her compassion… her wisdom.

  “I was wrong,” she said, slowly. “And this is hard to say…” Her voice faltered, and he took a step toward the sound, his hand reaching out. She never gave up her pride, ever; admitting her mistake would be hard. “I should not have married you.”

  Arvid stopped dead. He could feel blood draining from his face, cramping in his guts, leaving him cold and astonished. Not even angry. Simply frozen. This is what He wants, he thought, to freeze us all like this forever.

  “I loved you,” she said. “Oh, gods, I loved you so much.” She paused. “I still do; you know that, yes?”

  He didn’t answer. What could he say? The Ice King’s cold hand was around his heart. How could she love him and say that she shouldn’t have married him?

  “So. As soon as I knew I was pregnant I should have left you. Gone to Hidden Valley with Elva, raised Ember there… but I loved you too much, and you needed an heir…” her voice was troubled by a mixture of shame and longing. He could read that voice so well, but had he ever understood her? “I let my child be taken and used as a warlord’s catspaw.”

  “No!” he burst out. “Never!”

  “Oh, you can’t even see what you did to her!” Martine said. “It was all so normal for you. But I knew better. I should have raised her as a farmer’s girl and let her choose her own life and her own love. And if I had, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I never made her a catspaw,” he insisted. “I love her.”

  “If she had come home, as you did, with a penniless Traveler, and said, ‘Da, this is the man I want to marry’, what would you have done?”

  He was silent for a long moment. It had never even occurred to him that such a thing might happen. He wanted to claim that he would have been happy, but that would be a lie.

  “I don’t know,” he said eventually. He rallied. “I let her choose her own husband!”

  “From a carefully picked bunch!” she retorted. He heard a rustle, as though she had raised her hands to her face. “Oh, it doesn’t matter! But I sacrificed her because I loved you so much, and that’s the truth.”

  It was the truth. He could hear it.

  “Then why did you lie to me?”

  Her voice was cold. “I have never lied to you. I do not lie.”

  Stonecasters were renowned for telling the truth. The stones, they said, wouldn’t stay with a liar, and Martine was so accurate a caster that it was a joke around the fort that she must be Truth’s own daughter.

  He struggled with the memory of clasping her hand, time after time, as she cast for him, telling him truths plumbed from the gods and from time itself. The Prowman’s words in the cavern came back to him, “Would you have told your wife?”

  “You left me in ignorance,” he said quietly, and it was the first time since Osfrid’s death that he had spoken to her in a normal tone, without accusation, without defense.

  “Yes,” she agreed, her voice quieter, warmer, too. “I left you in ignorance. Partly because I had sworn to do so. Partly because I thought you were safer without that knowledge. Partly—” she stumbled over the word, and then recovered. “Partly because I still don’t know enough about how a warlord thinks, and I didn’t know if you would feel honor-bound to share the knowledge with the other warlords. I knew the consequences of that would be bad.”

  “So you didn’t trust me,” he said, with difficulty.

  “I knew you would act with integrity,” she said slowly. In the darkness, each word dropped clear and heavy. “But I did not know what form that integrity would take. And I trust the other warlords not at all.”

  She was right not to trust them—Sigurd’s reaction to her was evidence enough of how southerners still thought of Travelers, deep down. If warlords had known that Travelers were meeting in secret… would he have told them? The truth was, he didn’t know. Couldn’t know, now, how that younger Arvid would have reacted.

  “I cast a couple of times,” she said, surprisingly, “to see what I should do. But someone who casts for herself has a fool for a client.” It was an old saying, and it meant that stonecasters never Saw clear about their own worries.

  Somehow, the fact that she had turned to the stones for guidance—that she had, at least, considered telling him—mattered. It meant that she hadn’t reduced him to the status of a child, not fit for grown-up secrets.

  “I never went to the Fire from the time I met you,” she said, in a much smaller voice. “Never worshipped Him, or came from Him to you.”

  And that mattered, too.

  He took another step toward that strong, intoxicating voice, hand reaching out blindly to find her. It touched her shoulder, and he felt the deep shiver that went through her at his touch.

  “I loved you too much,” she whispered again. There were tears in her voice; Martine never cried, never…

  “No,” he said quietly, standing next to her, breathing her in, the musky jasmine of her hair, the clear female scent that jolted his whole body into abrupt need. He forced himself to breathe slowly, but his breath was ragged. They were much the same height, he and his wife. He leaned forward until his cheek brushed her hair, so he could whisper into her ear. She swayed toward him. “You cannot love me too much. Nor I you.”

  Her head turned, her wet cheek sliding across his until their mouths found each other, clung desperately, kissed and clung again, bodies turning and pressing, trying to get closer, to cleave together, muscle and bone and sinew all with the same desire; to reunite.

  There was clean straw under them, but he didn’t think about that until much, much later, when she stirred in his arms and said, “It’s almost dawn. Elva will need us.”

  The word “us” brought a flood of happiness as great as the passion that had gone before.

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  Ash was grateful that they could pack openly, pretending to be getting ready for the next day. It didn’t take long, once Cedar brought the news back from Ember.

  Being beaten by Bren had made the other men more friendly toward him, as though they’d all been through the same thing—as they probably had. One of the younger ones had even brought him some soup at lunchtime; then they had all disappeared outside, leaving the three of them to clean tack, with only one of Ari’s men, Pib, sitting by the small fire, whittling a cup out of a sheep’s horn. P
ib spoke their language—his mother had been a thrall, taken, he said, from further south than Hidden Valley. She’d died a few years ago. Ash suspected that he’d been set to watch them, but that was fair. He’d do the same to strangers in his home.

  The cuts on his back were shallow, but it had taken a while to stem the bleeding, and he was feeling groggy. Worse was the deep bruising, which would make him stiff as a granfer if he didn’t move around soon. The pain wasn’t as bad as being cooped up in the men’s cave. Ash was oppressed by the stone roof, the unbroken walls, the eternal candlelight. Although the air was fresh, he longed for breeze on his face. He might do better with a hood on, like a falcon in a mews, he thought.

  He lay on his stomach with his face in the crook of his arm, planning. Cedar had insisted on cleaning the tack with Tern’s help, and Ash had seen the sense of that. He had to rest, or he wouldn’t be able to ride tonight, and he could not, must not, hinder Ember’s escape.

  Second watch. Yes, by then they should all be asleep, except for the guards. He had no bow, but he and Cedar each had his belt knife and Tern had his dagger. The arrows might be useful, too.

  Ash was uncomfortably aware that he might have to kill someone to get out. One of the men who’d joked with him; one of the guards who’d ridden with them. It was hard to think of them as enemies, as the ruthless horde who attacked without mercy.

  He had never killed face to face. Never with a blade. Never someone he knew.

  Seeing these people in their homes had made him realize why they raided. The pasture outside was the richest thing they owned, and it only lasted a few months a year. The valley earth was thin, producing spindly plants and lean grazing. They were poor, these people, living on a knife’s edge of cold and wind. He hadn’t even seen a chubby baby here—all the children were scrawny. A few men were solid enough, but Ash was taller by far and even Tern looked muscular compared to the others.