Ember and Ash by Pamela Freeman

Author:Pamela Freeman [FREEMAN, PAMELA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC009000
ISBN: 9780316175487
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2011-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Foothills of the Eye Teeth Mountains

The morning was full of fog. Ember looked out of her tree tower into a shifting mass of white. Every leaf was outlined with beads of water, and each step she took sent a shower down below. Her hair crinkled up and was hard to plait, as it always was in the damp. She cursed it under her breath and looked up to find Ash laughing at her from the entrance to the stairway, his eyes bright and his brown hair tousled.

Something clenched under her heart. So might a young husband laugh at his new wife. Osfrid… Osfrid would never laugh at her like that. A whisper in her mind said that Osfrid would never have laughed like that anyway; he had been a serious young man, far more serious than Ash. And although he loved her—had loved her—and had desired her, he had never looked at her with such simple affection.

Well, they had not known each other very well, after all. If they had had time together…

“What’s the matter, lass?” Ash said. He came up and began to roll his sleeping pocket ready for travel.

“Just thinking about Osfrid,” she said, tying a blue ribbon tightly onto the end of her plait. She put the brush away and began to roll her own pocket.

Ash was silent for a moment, and then asked, not looking at her, “Was it a warlord’s marriage, with him, or a real one?”

She paused. “I wanted to marry him. I was so happy…” She wanted to say that she had loved him, but it was as though Fire had seared that feeling out of her, leaving only pain and fear behind. The day when Osfrid had asked for her hand, eyes warm and hands gentle, seemed a long long time ago. “My father let me choose,” she concluded.

“From the warlords’ sons,” Ash said. She felt a flicker of irritation. What did he know of politics?

“I would have chosen Osfrid anyway,” she said, but even as she said it, she wondered if it were true. She had wanted everything that Osfrid was and had—the life as warlord’s lady, the move to the south, the promise of children and comfort, as well as Osfrid himself, handsome and straight and intelligent. If Osfrid had been a farmer’s son like Ash, would she have chosen him?

She was ashamed to realize that she didn’t know.

Ash didn’t comment further. They packed in silence then went up the stairs to the dining room. Sure enough, there was breakfast waiting for them: porridge with honey and berries, and some food to take with them, wrapped in neat packets of leaves. She could smell the dried apple and apricots through the leaves. There were enough packets for all of them.

Ash stowed them away after they had eaten, and they went down and used the privies, having to search for them through the mist, then looked for the others.

They were in the glade behind the elms, saddling up, the fog swirling around their feet and curling over the horses’ hooves.

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