Because the Black Carlyon's second
death had not ended anything, just as he'd said. One of the Watch
had already delivered the news that the Rockways cellar had, if
anything, become noticeably colder. The strange liquid had
certainly shown no sign of dissipating, and so Ash and Thornaster
would be gambling a great deal on their marriage bond.
Leaving the linen cupboard behind, they
found Lauren sitting beside the manor's drive, talking with Garet
Pelandis. With Garet's father dead, and his entire family in a
state of confusion compounded by kismollen poisoning, the boy was
facing as mass of responsibility, not least of which would be
standing before Astenar and Luin in hopes of being judged worthy of
the Decselry.
"Wouldn't Luin know that one of the
Luinsel wasn't Luinsel?" Ash asked, considering the Garet's slumped
shoulders.
"Not if 'Pelandis' stayed out of the
Decselry. Though the bond would have lapsed if he'd kept away for
more than a year."
Thornaster gave the pair a long look –
two young men whose fathers he'd just killed – and despite all the
circumstances around it, Ash could see that would weigh on him.
Lauren looked up then, and nodded. A
"thank you", and an "I'll take care of this", and so they passed on
to make a detour to the palace, to report to the Rhoi and recover a
little, and fortify themselves with food. Ash visited Kiri, and did
not quite let herself sound like she was saying goodbye, while
Thornaster wrote a letter that he handed over to Hawkmarten.
Hawkmarten made no attempt to hide his
opinion of "if we accidentally feed our souls to Karaelsur". The
consequences of that weren't small, and Farpatten was already off
arranging an evacuation of the houses nearest to the dismantled
building.
"Rapidly followed by the abandonment of
the entire city, I presume, if you do fail," Hawkmarten said.
"Thorn, write as many messages for your family as you like, but the
only result I'm going to accept is you saving me the trouble of
delivering them. After all, Astenar has provided."
He formally embraced Thornaster and
then Ash, and told them he would ride down with them. Ash thought
about his words all during their return to the Rockways, distracted
only briefly by the important step of saying goodbye to Cloud Cat
and Arth.
"If I followed the idea of 'Astenar has
provided' to its logical conclusion, I'm not sure I could face the
rest of the afternoon," Ash remarked, as she and Thornaster walked
down a rapidly emptying street.
"Sun! What a thought!" Thornaster
stared up at the sky, and then shook his head. "If Astenar could
manipulate events so exactly, they would never arise in the first
place, surely. Though my father's decision to send me in response
to Rhoi Malaster's request becomes more explicable. I'd only been
Luinsel for a year, and several cousins would have been a better
combination of Estarrel senses and experience. I thought my
father's choice simply due to the time I'd spent with Arun." He
smiled. "I can't say I've previously been first in his thoughts
when assigning serious tasks."
"Too inclined to levity?" Ash
asked.
"Perhaps. I spent a great deal of my
younger days trying to live up to my older brother. And never quite
managing to surpass my sister at the sword, or my mother with
horses. And demonstrating how little that mattered to me. It's only
been the last couple of years that I've gained a better sense of
perspective."
A family emerged from a house to their
right, assisted by a Watchmen with two children held against his
chest. Ash turned to survey other, similar scenes, and shook her
head. "So if we fail, and it gets stronger, the best thing to do is
deny it food?"
"That's the idea. Though if I thought
this wasn't the solution, I wouldn't try it. It makes no sense to
give Karaelsur my strength."
"Will the old Sun be actively fighting
us?"
"I don't think so. This is a tool, a
device. Which is not to say it won't react. I would still rather be
anywhere else right now. The fact that Astenar should be able to
use us as a conduit doesn't give us any immunity to
ill-effects."
Ash blinked, then diverted to a clump
of Guards escorting another family, and made several requests. This
produced in short order a collection of sturdy coats, gloves, caps
and scarfs.
She shared the pile of garments with
Thornaster and they fumbled them on as they found their way through
the maze of debris into the upturned rear garden. Not wanting to
look at the churned earth, or the plants yet to be dug up, she
said:
"Not proof against soul-stealing, I
know. But a little protection against the cold can't hurt.
And...you seriously have to wear that another time."
Thornaster, tugging on a sheepskin cap
complete with earflaps, tweaked her nose, and then pulled her
against his chest.
"I can't be sorry I married you,
stripling, but I could wish it hadn't brought you to such a
place."
"I'm here for Genevieve." She said the
words tersely, but leaned into his embrace, squeezing tightly. "And
Frog, blast him. If I can't be sure why he did it, then I'll choose
to believe he was the person I thought him, and had just mislaid
himself."
She stood away and finished buttoning
her coat, her breath pluming into mist. While she definitely didn't
want to be in this place either, she saw it as at least a course of
action, and in a way less difficult than the weeks where they'd
flailed about failing to make any progress.
"Will the souls of the people who have
been fed to it be...are they damned?"
"I don't know. I'm not certain there's
anything left of them."
"Let's go find out, then."
The Guard had destroyed most of the
building, leaving intact only the area supporting the stair down,
and even that creaked ominously as they set their weight on it. The
stair itself was lost in a growing mist lifting from the now
exposed roil covering the cellar floor.
Ice crunched beneath their boots as
they eased their way onto the first step, and they paused to wrap
the scarves more firmly across their faces.
"We're going to have to touch it,"
Thornaster said.
"The way this stair feels, we might end
up falling into it."
"If that happens, lead with your fist."
Thornaster tightened his grip and raised the joined hands they'd
left free of gloves. Silver lines glowed beneath, but her fingers
were already numb.
In all her nightmares Ash had never
thought to walk into a breathing pit, a spider work of rime
reaching out from the stairwell walls, and ice crystal quickly
crusting her eyelashes and the knitted wool protecting her face.
The air became daggers in her throat.
Drawing his rapier, Thornaster knocked
down icicles hanging from the stairwell's partially demolished
ceiling, and they used their grip on each other to keep their
balance on the cracking layer of ice.
Ash, wobbling, inadvertently put her
hand down on the stair's railing and had it stick fast. Immediately
she tore free of the glove and left it – and what felt like a large
amount of flesh – behind.
"All right?"
"Yes. It's so much colder than
before."
"When we reach the bottom, position
your feet as best you can, and we'll crouch and touch our hands to
it. And..." He laughed briefly, coughed, and slipped a fraction
before regaining his balance. "And then Astenar will provide, or I
will be a fool, but in either case there is no-one I would rather
be doing this with."
Ash didn't reply immediately, because
they had reached that unnaturally raised floor, and it was so cold
that the already-difficult task of crouching without slipping was
made doubly hard by uncontrollable shaking. It did not help that
the silvery lines beneath their skin were barely visible through
the mist.
Ash had spent long years believing that
Astenar had failed her. And even longer trusting those around her
only up to a point, and the question of how much she trusted
Thornaster-who-was-Morrion was paramount since the lines of her
marriage bond were not changing or increasing their glow or doing
anything at all to encourage her into thinking this plan was going
to work.
They lowered their hands toward dark
liquid and still the soul bond showed no sign of reacting, but
proximity to the floor was starting to make Ash feel dizzy.
"Right now," she said, looking away
from the moment of contact to the misty outline of her husband.
"Right now, I'm giving you a starry-eyed look of approval."
Choked laughter accompanied sucking
dizziness, while a deep, agonising cold consumed her hand and shot
up her arm. She cried out, and fell forward into...gold.
Wings. Hundreds, thousands: a blizzard,
a fountain. Sprawled on slick flagstones, Ash let go of
Thornaster's hand and rolled on her back, damp and shuddering, too
spent to do more than stare up at glimpses of blue sky through the
mass of tiny golden butterflies carrying away the souls of the
sacrificed.
Astenar had provided.
Trailing the mass, a spiral of grey
moths. Luin, taking to be washed those whose sins weighed too
heavily. Ash watched them rise until there was more blue than gold
above, then turned on her side and looked at her husband as he
pulled the scarf away from his face.
"Can – can you tell if they took
everyone?"
"There's nothing here but you and I,
for what it's worth." He tugged her scarf down around her throat.
"We're still here, stripling."
Ash tested her limbs to make sure all
of them were present, and then took time to kiss Thornaster
properly. He still tasted like mead.
"What now?" she asked, because even
kissing Thornaster did not mean she wanted to lie in a puddle
indefinitely.
He laughed. "We hope that our second
day of marriage is less eventful than the first. And assist your
Kiri in being a seruilis, though I suspect she will require very
little help. We ensure that the laws regarding smallholdings are
passed. Think up a reward for a laundry maid. And perhaps go see
the glacier that is the source of the Milk, which Arun tells me
shouldn't be approached outside of summer – though I must admit
that right now glaciers hold little attraction for me. And I will
continue to try to teach you sword-fighting, and we will ride a
great deal, and see a thousand new places, and..."
"And just be us," Ash finished,
pleased. No matter what names they went by, whatever challenges
they faced, or the consequences of the bond that joined them. These
things altered the frame, but she always had, and would, remain
herself.
Epilogue
A sun-browned girl sat far above the
River Milk. Early morning light combined with the setting moons to
pick out gleams in the turbulent water as it split around Luin's
Island, and she was able to look down the length of the enormous
statue from her perch on its shoulder.
Moving slowly, she unwound a vividly
pink ribbon from around her waist, and knotted it into an elaborate
bow in Luin's stone hair. As a message it was redundant, since
almost all the people who meant anything to her were on the bank
below, watching.
She waved to them. Kiri, proudly
wearing a tabard of red and gold, magnificent and assured. Veirhoi
Heran, now in Thornaster's colours, trying hard to pretend he was
not excited to be sent to Aremal. The Huntsmen, and the Rogadneys,
come to see off not only Ash Lenthard, but also Melar, Lark and
Bitty, who would travel to Hawkmarten's Tye's Haven, before
splitting off to head south, volunteering their support for Telat's
attempt to regain her lost birthright. And Lauren Carlyon. It had
been inspired of Bitty to suggest he come along – or, as she'd put
it – "bring money, keep us out of hedgerows". Lauren was at his
best looking after others, and could escape his father's shadow
without feeling he was running from his name.
There was even a sizeable contingent of
the Guard and the Watch, along with the Rhoi himself, despite it
being strictly illegal to climb Luin's statue. He was now a Rhoi
she approved of, not for this indulgence, but for a sincere apology
made to a good friend. One step among many he was taking toward
becoming the sort of Rhoi Montmoth needed.
A crowd of early morning travellers was
also gathering to stare and point, so the girl waved at them too,
and then climbed down. Directly below, minding the ferry they'd
used to reach the island, Morrion Estarrel watched her descent and
smiled.
"Ready now?"
"As I'll ever be."
They rode south, but the girl looked
back often, and could see it long after they'd left the Commons. A
ribbon for Genevieve, in Luin's hair. From Daere.
ooOoo
Thank you for reading
Hunting
For information about
other books by
Andrea K Höst
visit