Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

‘Is she pregnant now?’ she asked.

The Domina smiled. ‘She is. And, this time, the new life is vibrant and strong. It is a male child,’ she added.

Josse, apparently, had endured enough of this. He said, stubbornly returning to the matter uppermost in his own mind, ‘Why were you chanting, then, that night? If there was no ritual, what were you doing?’

Steady! Helewise wanted to say. We are on the Domina’s ground, and it is neither diplomatic nor prudent for us to interrogate a woman possessing powers such as hers!

As if the Domina had heard, she turned and said to Helewise, ‘Do not be distressed. I will answer the man.’ Then, to Josse: ‘There were Outworlders in the grove that night.’ A faint smile crossed her face. ‘Outworlders other than you, man. We were there to observe.’

He looked doubtful. ‘Not to kill?’

‘Not to kill,’ she confirmed. ‘The Outworlder who bled like a stuck pig on to the forest floor did not die at our hands.’ She fixed Josse with piercing eyes. ‘We kill cleanly. And, as you are well aware, Outworlder, that man took a time to die.’

Josse, Helewise noticed, was nodding. ‘Josse?’ she whispered. ‘What does she mean?’

He shot her a compassionate look. ‘I heard him,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ He heard a man die! she thought, horrified. Heard the screams of a long drawn-out death. Oh, dear God!

‘We saw you, too,’ the Domina said to Josse. ‘As I think you are aware. We knew you visited the grove, both that night and the night before.’

Josse gave a brief grin, which looked more like a grimace. ‘Yes. I know. I felt eyes on me, both times.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You did not harm me,’ he said.

‘No,’ the Domina agreed. ‘Of all the Outworlders in our realm that night, you had some faint sense of what the forest element means.’

Josse nodded slowly. ‘Aye.’

‘You stood by the fallen trees, and you mourned for the life that was no more.’

‘Aye.’

Helewise said tentatively, ‘Josse?’

He turned to her. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ he said, an apology in his voice. ‘I — it — oh, it’s just not something I knew how to put into words.’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I see that.’

He was looking at the Domina. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

‘Why did you not harm me?’ he said. ‘I wondered then, and I wonder now. Wonder, indeed, why you are here with us, answering our questions, tolerating our presence, when you have demonstrated quite clearly before that you do not welcome strangers.’

The Domina pointed to his pack, lying on the stream bank where he had thrown it. ‘That is why.’

‘The pack?’

She gave a soft sound of impatience. ‘No, Outworlder, what is on your pack.’

He looked. As he turned back to the Domina, Helewise knew, before he spoke, what he would say. ‘The talisman,’ he whispered. ‘You saw the talisman.’

‘It is ours,’ the Domina said.

‘Who put it on my pack?’

The Domina smiled. ‘Who do you think?’

‘Caliste,’ he said, an answering smile creasing his face. ‘It was Caliste.’

‘It was,’ the Domina agreed. ‘You must have made a favourable impression, Outworlder,’ she said, with gentle irony. ‘Caliste understands our signs, and, by putting the amulet of the Sword of Nuada on your pack, she was saying, as plain as light, do not harm him. ’

‘Dear Lord,’ Josse muttered. Then, as if a new thought had occurred to him, he glanced at Helewise and said urgently, ‘Does that still hold good?’

For a long moment the Domina did not answer. She stared back at Josse, then turned her steady gaze to Helewise.

It felt, Helewise thought amid the fear, as if her very brain were being penetrated. By two thin beams of white light, which seemed to emanate from the Domina’s extraordinary eyes and pierce through Helewise’s pupils.

It was a ghastly sensation.

But, just as she was beginning to feel that she could endure no longer but must cry out for mercy, it stopped.

The Domina said, gazing innocently out over the stream, ‘By ancient law, you should both be put to death. It is not permitted for Outworlders to live, having shared in our secrets.’ Briefly she looked again at Helewise. ‘But you, woman, have taken to yourself one of our own, and she speaks for you.’ Bless Caliste for that, Helewise thought swiftly. ‘And you, man,’ the Domina turned to Josse, ‘bear the sacred talisman.’ She indicated the little sword on his pack. ‘Its protective magic overrides the death penalty. I could not slay a bearer of the Sword of Nuada, even if I wanted to. Not,’ she added softly, almost to herself, ‘without great difficulty.’

Helewise felt her rigid shoulders relax. Josse gave an audible sigh.

But the Domina hadn’t finished.

‘No harm shall come to you, for now!’ she cried suddenly, her raised right hand pointing threateningly at Helewise, at Josse. Then, more calmly, ‘For now, I release you back into your world. But you will not speak of what you have witnessed. Ever.’

‘No!’ Helewise agreed.

‘Never,’ Josse echoed.

The Domina was watching them, frowning as if deep in thought. Then, her expression lightening, she said, ‘If either of you break faith with me, I shall know. Have no doubt, I shall know.’ Helewise was quite certain she would. ‘And, should that happen’ — the Domina walked over to Josse, staring into his eyes for a moment, repeating the process with Helewise — ‘should that happen, whichever one of you has spoken of our secrets, I shall kill the other.’

In the shocked silence that followed her words, a single thought rushed into Helewise’s head: how very clever!

One of them, she or Josse, might have yielded to temptation, and, one dark night, whispered of what they had seen into some sympathetic ear. After all, it was human nature to confide, and, from King Midas’s poor barber onwards, the torment of carrying a marvellous secret, of keeping it for ever to oneself, was well known.

Yes, one of them might have felt it was worth the risk. Had it been merely their own safety that they were thereby putting in jeopardy.

But for each other, Helewise thought, looking across at him, that big, kind, strong man whom she had come both to like and admire. But for each other! Oh, dear Lord, I would not dare take the risk!

And neither, she knew equally well, would he.

The Domina was nodding in satisfaction. Knowing what Helewise was thinking, no doubt what Josse was thinking, too, she had, Helewise reflected, every right to be satisfied.

The Domina raised both hands, holding them palms-outwards towards Helewise and Josse. ‘Leave the forest,’ she intoned. ‘Do not come back to our deep realms. We go from here now, but we shall be back.’

She was backing away, the soft, subtle colours of her cloak seeming to merge with the undergrowth and the rich green foliage behind her. She was becoming hard to make out …

Her voice floated softly out from the trees: ‘Go in peace.’

Helewise and Josse stood by the stream for some time. Breaking the silence that had fallen around them, eventually Helewise murmured, ‘We wish the same to you.’

* * *

On the long trudge back through the forest, Josse repeatedly asked the Abbess if she were all right, or if she’d prefer to sit down by the track while he went on ahead to fetch a horse to bear her home.

And repeatedly she answered, ‘No, Josse. I can walk.’

He was worried about her. Her face was very white, and the bruise on her forehead was now enormous, the swelling bulging down beneath her left eyebrow and half-closing the eye. She looked, he thought with compassion, as if she had been in a taproom brawl, and come off the worse.