Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (46 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Gaultry spread her cloak beside a well-cropped bush and tried to settle herself. It had been a long day, with many compounded mistakes. Her sense of how far they had traveled was very confused. The campfire, constructed mainly of grass, twigs, and dried manure, burned irregularly, casting rapid flashes of light beyond the circle of settled children and their dogs. Sometimes, there would suddenly emerge from the encroaching dark the face of a horse, bay or dun-colored or black, and one repeatedly seen mare with a single, inquisitively quirked eyebrow marked in black. After staring speculatively for a moment at the fire, each horse would snort, blink, and withdraw, returning to graze.
From the feel of the turf, Gaultry guessed that the plain had been experiencing a dry spell. The ground beneath her was pleasantly warm, and the air had a fine grainy summer smell. Tullier finished arranging things in his pack, and came to sit with her.
As the children resettled, one of the boys quickly finished a story about a water-sprite. Small wonder that their arrival had frighted them!
Machen turned to a smaller boy named Phili as he made himself comfortable under his sheepskin.
“So you actually did see one of them little people, did you?”
“No, I didn’t see him. You can’t really see them,” Phili protested. “That’s not how it works. But I heard him. Really I did. He was in the holly tree. He made the green berries move, and he threw down a handful when I turned my back.”
The others laughed at his insistence, disbelieving, and he turned a little pale, until Mechilde, an older girl with a little brother, interrupted their chatter. “I believe him,” she said. “But you can see them. If they want you, they’ll show themselves.”
“What do you mean?” Tullier asked. Mechilde paused, considering whether or not she should answer this stranger. “Water-sprites and holly-tree goblins,” Tullier scoffed. “You’re making it all up.”
“You’re not from around here,” the girl-child said softly. “How would you know?”
“The gods are all around us, and I have seen magic worked,” Tullier said doggedly. “If there were ghosts and sprites and soul-weavers too, the world would be a crowded place.”
A strange, sharp, sickening cry resounded twice in quick succession
across the river. After a moment of chilled silence, it repeated, farther away.
Gaultry recognized it for what it was just as Machen said stoutly, “That was a heron.” He met Gaultry’s eyes across the campfire. “We’re just a little too near the river here. The horses like it, and we won’t go near the water until daylight. We’re safe enough—but a little too close.” He picked up a stick and stuck it into the fire, sending up sparks. Then he looked at Mechilde. “You’ve got to tell us now. What makes you think you can see them?”
Mechilde paused, and patted her brother’s sleeping shape under the rough wool blanket that covered him. When she spoke, it was directly to Machen, as though Tullier, Gaultry, and the rest were nowhere near.
“You know the big stone by the slip where they water the horses?”
Machen nodded.
“I was there on Midsummer night. I’d been braiding crowns for the bonfire. Mama called for me and I left my cutting knife on the stone. I went back for it. It was dusk already but I went back for it anyway.
“I had found my knife, and I was just bending down to the water for a drink when I heard it. Like a woman’s voice, calling my name. ‘Mechilde, pretty Mechilde, wants a cleaner blade, a cleaner edge.’ Then I looked out over the water and I saw it.
“You know how the lilies grow there? The white lilies in the shelter of the lee shore? I looked over there and a woman’s face was rising out of the lilies. Her hair was all in coils and her fingers were white and narrow, like unopened buds. She held a slash of silver in one hand and her face was pale and calm.
“I didn’t stop running until I saw the Goddesses’ double-coil atop the Midsummer pile. Mama asked me what was wrong, but I wouldn’t tell her.” Mechilde’s pretty face dropped. “Maybe I should have taken the knife. They say the fairy-blades make you a master crafter.”
“Or maybe the water-lady would have pulled you under with those slim white hands!” Machen said, alarmed. “It’s a good thing you ran.”
“I know.” Mechilde looked into Tullier’s still doubting eyes, her expression adult and tired-looking. “But I think maybe I would have died happy. The drowned here always come to shore with a smile on their face.”
“Drowned people are ugly.” Tullier’s voice was harsh. “There’s nothing slim or nice about a water-dead corpse.”
G
aultry awoke abruptly, finding herself swiftly, unwillingly awake. A current of fresh air brushed her face. Morning was beginning. She could feel it in the earth.
In the east it had begun to grow a little light. The surrounding scene had already become visible, if only dimly. The pale grey sky shone bright, tinged across with blue; stars winked their faint light or faded; the ground was damp and leaves were covered with crystal dewdrop sweat. The day ahead would be blazing hot and humid. Gaultry’s body responded with a mild, joyful trembling, making her even more awake. She got briskly to her feet, trying not to disturb Tullier, who had cuddled his back up to hers sometime during the night.
The horse-children slept the profound sleep of the young and innocent about the dying fire’s embers. The horses—including the inquisitive mare with the black eyebrow—were scattered, some grazing lazily, some standing guard above sleeping foals, some ranged away toward the brake of trees and scrub that marked the river’s edge.
The river. Mechilde’s story from the night before came back to her—the lily-white lady and the call of the water. Unlike Tullier, she had not dismissed the children’s stories. Tielmark—in many ways Tielmark was less settled than Bissanty, less colonized by law and man. The local people knew what to fear; what stones to worship, what spirits to propitiate. If the children were chary of the river, they probably had good reason.
The river. A whim to see it for herself possessing her, Gaultry left the fireside quietly, and walked out toward the line of scrub. At first the going was easy, but then the summer growth became so thick and lush that she had to hunt for a place where the horses had broken through. A familiar tangle, she thought, pushing aside the last branches, the silver flash of water luring her on. The farmers near Paddleways left the river’s edge similarly guarded to minimize the chance of coming up on it unexpectedly.
As she did now. Passing a clump of osiers, she broke through to a muddy bank, torn in many places by hoof marks. She caught her breath, realizing after a confused moment where she really was.
She and Tullier had come very far out of their way. She glanced at the stars. How could they be here? Afoot, denied the relief of horses? It simply was too far; it wasn’t possible!
The edge of the water was normal enough. The torn mud bank gave way to a dense reed marsh; the reeds, to water. But beyond that—beyond that the broad stretch of the river itself was a glossier, more purple blue than the paling sky above could have created. The surface curled and dimpled, as if under irregular currents above and below its surface. Across the water—across the water the trees were writhing: slowly, sensuously, shifting colors fleeting among the foliage.
Somehow she and Tullier had traveled all the distance to Tielmark’s southern border, and she was looking directly across the border river, the Great River Rush, into the Changing Lands.
Gaultry was familiar with the Changing Lands. She had spent her childhood in a cottage that overlooked that mysterious border, that magically haunted country. She cursed—she should have recognized the river they were describing as the Great Rush from the tenor of the children’s stories. Should have guessed it from their fear of the night water, of the lily-woman. But that fear—that fear had been so familiar to her, she’d been unable to recognize it. Of course she felt comfortable with the horse children, at ease. They were border people like herself—they knew to fear and respect the boundary of the magical lands. No wonder they spoke of smiling corpses. Of fairy-blades, that made for master craftsmen. No wonder—no wonder Tullier had not been able to understand.
The river was narrow here. Tamsanne’s cottage—Gaultry’s true home—lay very far east, downriver, where the river widened and grew less turgid with the Changing Land’s magic. The gloss of purple in the stream was so deep here, so intense.
She stared across at the far bank—a danger, she knew, but in this dark dawn hour, after so much travel, so much time spent from home, she could not resist. As always, as she stared, the far bank seemed to spin closer, to advance. She began to be able to make out the textured bark of the trees, the dappled color of the ground. What she had taken for a narrowness in the river was instead a sandy spit of land, overgrown with spindly trees, the river glinting beyond it. She could see the delicate shivering leaves, grown rangy from surviving repeated springtime floods. She could see the movement of the branches … .
And then—then she could see them. Pale shapes beneath the thin canopy of leaves, pale shapes among the branches. Attenuated figures, with flowing hair and naked skin. Her vision sharpened again, and she could see the tiny white and blue flowers snarled in their hair, men and women both, silent as they moved but somehow also laughing. Dryads.
She was up to her hips in the water before she even realized that she’d been drawn forward. The river bottom here was churned by the horses, half muck and sand, and very shallow. The water was a warm caress on her skin. She took another step forward, and another. The water did not deepen as she moved forward. She knew she should fear a drop, a hole underfoot. There were lilies and fleshy green pads around her, with curling stalks and spiky closed buds like white fingertips. But something was calling her now, something she had to see—
The spit of land loomed ever closer. Three dryad maids danced round a thin silver birch at its closest reach. Human once, they had fed their souls to the trees, and would never leave the Changing Lands. Gaultry did not wish to join them, and yet still something called, and she moved even closer.
Pink and golden dawn touched the far east of the sky. She did not have much time—time for what? The water was at her breast, her hands spread in fans on the surface as she steadied herself. The madness of what she was doing—she did not understand the impulse that was driving her. She thought of Mechilde, the water-sprite offering her the silver knife, the crafter’s knife, her heart’s desire. It was as though some high, distant music was calling her, as though something in her resounded to it. Once more she looked across to the spit of land, the pale water shining behind it through the trees, the transparent shifting figures.
A single figure broke from the dancing, and came, laughing, to join her in the water.
His hair was fiery red and golden—woven thickly with moss and flowers, but still fiery, mingled with the green. His face was turned to his dancing partners, he was almost off-balance as he slipped deeper into the stream—so shallow, no deeper than his supple hips.
Will you call for me?
Gaultry asked, as he waded closer toward her
. I have no need of a crafter’s knife, and my heart’s desire is far away, riding in battle on the western border. So what is it you think you can offer me?
Then he turned, extending his hand toward her, and Gaultry found herself staring into something very like her own face.
T
he children were still huddled around the embers of the fire, deeply asleep. Mechilde and her little brother Alois had curled together against one furry dog’s belly: the dog raised his head halfway and glanced at Gaultry intently as she approached.
I just want to look
, she told the dog. Mechilde’s pure young profile was silhouetted against his dark belly fur: the pretty, stubborn mouth half open, her uncombed hair in matted tangles. Her brother nestled tightly against her thin chest, asleep with his thumb in his mouth. Both children were utterly at peace. Gaultry, pierced by an emotion she did not understand, nodded at the dog, turned quietly, and went over to Tullier to pick up her pack.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. “Before they wake.”
“Don’t we want to ask them for their horses?”
She shook her head. “No. We just need to go. Don’t ask me why.”
The track Machen had told them of the night before headed off to the northwest, shrouded with smoky mist. Under their feet, the damp grass sent up a sweet scent. They had hardly gone a mile when the sun tipped up over the horizon in its full glory, painting the bushes and grasses of the broad meadow first brilliantly red, then glitteringly golden. At that first touch of sun, the birds all came awake at once, singing, chattering, quavering.
They heard a shout from their rear, and suddenly they were overtaken by the racing drove of horses, refreshed after the night. There was Machen, high on a black-faced mare, and Phili, on a dish-faced yearling at his side. Of Mechilde, Gaultry caught only a glimpse of her hair, and an impression of little Alois, his arms clamped tightly around his sister’s waist. The children were laughing, making a last display, showing their youthful prowess as they cantered, bareback, across the meadow to the edge of vision. Tullier and Gaultry, side by side, watched them until they disappeared behind a tall line of trees.

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