A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 6 Sorceress
Ashes become a full Sorceress, but not in any way she had ever imagined.
Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Breathing hard, a twenty-year-old Ashes cursed her mistress again. It would have been easier getting up this damnable mountain if this had been stairs instead of such a steep lane. But she had to get to the town up here. Her instructions were exact.
“If you ever want to be a full sorceress, you will not fail in this.”
She could still hear her mistress’s frosty voice and dire warning.
“You must be at the inn, The Lantern Inn in Overlook, in four weeks. I will give you money for travel and a room there. It is an inn for aristocrats, so wear your best robe or they will toss you out and you will fail.”
Her mistress had given her far more detailed instruction than her usual.
“Be outside on the east side that morning. Roughly halfway between dawn and noon, the sun will reach the bottom of the inn’s corner stone. The moment sunlight touches the ground at its base, enter the inn and give the innkeeper at the desk this note. Not before, not after.”
“Overlook is far. May I have funds for a guard?” Ashes pleaded.
“No. You must make this journey alone, or you will fail and never become a full sorceress.”
She’d taken pains to hide her figure and age in large, dirty, bulky clothes while traveling. But now, with the gate in view in the distance, that had to change. She shrugged. The bushes lining this part of the road would be good enough. Once her bulky clothes were on the ground, she used the last of her water to give herself the best cleaning she could. Then she unwound and unbraided the single spine-length ponytail, and started combing. Once her hair was as clean combing could get it, she carefully braided it into ten different braids. Those, she wove into as fancy a hair style as she could manage by touch alone.
Only when she was sure she was done and would not mess them up did she pull her best robe from the small case she had put it in inside her pack.
She took a deep breath and hoped she looked the part she needed to get a room there. Stomach tight, she picked up her heavy backpack. The two massive texts she carried in addition to her spell book made it far heavier than she liked. Ashes hadn’t wanted to bring them, but her mistress assigned her to create an improved healing spell while on the trip. She accomplished far less of that than she should have.
No guard stood at the Overlook gate. Looking at the gate, Ashes doubted it could be closed without a lot of work, as age had warped the timbers. She passed through it into the town proper, unchallenged.
Ashes found The Lantern precisely where her mistress said it would be, three blocks from the gate on the main street. It was easily the best inn she’d ever seen. The armed doorman eyed her, his suspicion plain in his eyes as she entered, but let her approached the desk unchallenged. That desk alone told her it was an aristocrat’s inn. Only they had a hostess whose sole task was seeing to their guest’s needs.
“I need a room for the night,” Ashes said, with as much dignity as she could muster.
“If you like,” the comely woman manning the desk said with a smile. “But it will be eight sovereigns.”
“Oh.”
She hoped her mistress had given her too much money and she would have a bit of funds to replace her footwear. “I was told to be here tomorrow, so I will take the room.” As she counted out those coins, she began planning out how to economize enough of her remaining funds to return home. It would be harder than the trip here. Just a few coins would be left in her pouch.
The woman gave her a cheery smile as Ashes handed over the coins. “Dinner and breakfast come with the room. Dinner is an hour before sundown. Would you like it in the dining room, or on you room balcony watching the sunset?”
“Room,” Ashes said with a smile.
Dinner was fabulous, the sunset spectacular setting over the flatland of the kingdom. Ashes grasped why aristocrats would climb that road and come here and pay so much for this room.
***
Ashes luxuriated, using the soft towel to dry herself after a late breakfast. Not only would she love to live like this, but she awoke with part of the answer to creating that healing spell her mistress assigned her. That alone made this cost worthwhile in her estimation.
Overlook looked cleaner and more prosperous than any town Ashes had been in, and this inn was in the best parts of it. She left her room and the inn and took a table at a cafe across the street to watch the sun creep down the side of the building. Having woken with that answer, she didn’t resent the quarter sovereign they charged her for tea.
They didn’t make it nearly as strong as her mistress did, and it had a distinct taste. Not bad, just strange. Eyes locked on the building, and the sun climbing down its side, she sipped her tea. Sip by small sip, she made it last. Her timing was perfect. Only leaves remained in the bottom of the cup when the sun reached the ground.
As she got to her feet, she felt a strange sensation in her gut.
The tea?
Doing two easy cantrips, she determined that was not it, so hurried back into the inn.
The girl at the desk gave her a big smile. “Ready to check out?”
She couldn’t help but smile back. “Not quite. I mentioned I had to be here today.” Ashes pulled the letter from her bag, “I am to give you this letter at this time.”
“Thank you, and here is yours,” she pulled one that had “Ashes” written in her mistress’s handwriting on it from under the desk. “You’re supposed to take it to your room.”
Ashes’ stomach was worse. Something magical was wrong. Had her mistress done something to her powers? She took the letter offered. “Thank you. I’ll go there right now and read it.”
Her magical unease grew as she climbed the stairs. In her room, she went to the chair on the balcony, sat and tore open the letter.
Ashes:
You may not be the most disappointing apprentice I ever had to survive her apprenticeship, but you are in the bottom ten.
You are smart, talented, but mentally lazy.
You are easily dominated, eager to pass on decisions you should be making.
And you act more on your fears than any other thing.
You don’t follow the Gray because you love it; you follow the Gray because you fear the White and Black.
But you survived, so I am saving your life now.
If you look to the northwest, the dark cloud you see is everyone and everything you ever knew being destroyed as you read this. I built my home here over three hundred years ago, knowing that on this day a volcano would erupt here, destroying everything. I will not explain to you why, only that which I guard must be destroyed. If you are lucky, you will never understand why.
Continue east through the pass. This is the largest explosion in my six thousand years of living and one of the few things that can destroy that which I guard. The poison and ash from this will reach even there. By this evening, everyone not through that pass will be dead or dying. It has disrupted magic, so that will not be reliable for weeks.
I am now dead, and you are now your own mistress, a sorceress, beholden to no one, a slave to no one.
She hadn’t signed it, Ashes thought, and then looked northwest. There, where she said it would be, an ominous black cloud rising among the white.
Her blood turned cold, and goosebumps ran up her arms. As she watched, the ominous black cloud grew from three fingers wide to four. She’d been on the road for four weeks to get where she was. To be that big and visibly growing from this far away told her how big and dangerous that volcano must be. She believed the letter. No one could survive that.
Damn that crazy old bitch. Ashes’ budding library was gone, and the priceless one her mistress had possessed. Two books, neither exactly rare, her spell book, one extra robe, some spell components, and a handful of coins was all she now owned. She could have sold any of a dozen different volumes in her mistress’s library and been set for life. All of that, gone.
The cloud continued to grow. Looking down, she saw others in the street starting to notice the big expanding black cloud on the northwestern horizon.
It was now hand size and higher. If all of that was ash from a volcano, she and everyone else had trouble, deadly trouble, according to her mistress. Ashes turned back to the inn, slipped her books back into her bag, and headed out.
East and south, it was.
Outside the east gate, it hit her. Her slate was clean. Every man who had raped her was dead. Not one person now alive knew she had ever been a slave.
* * *
The massive gate of Black Water, the largest town Ashes had ever been to, loomed before her, giving her a chill. This town was ten times Cold Fork, with massive walls and even had a castle at the far end.
But after three weeks of Ash fall, she needed work. The tattered thread bare robe she now wore was just slightly better than the rag of one that covered her face keeping ashes out of her lungs. That still came down, even this far away, but not the thick blanket that had filled the air further north and east when she started her trek. But there was still enough in the air that breathing it too long would destroy your lungs. She shuddered. The number of dead and dying behind her was uncountable. It was being touted as the fourth cataclysm.
That, she thought, was possible. She doubted the third, the Dark War, was as destructive as this volcano, but it was in no way in the class of the first two, Sky Fall and the Great Flooding.
Her coin gone weeks back, and her last meal a day ago, she walked through those gates under the watchful eyes of its guard.
By the type of building, she knew this was the wrong side of town for her to earn some coin. A group of men she thought likely to lead her to where she needed to be passed. She fell in behind them.
Luck went her way. She found what she was looking for, an inn. This one was called The Ram’s Pen. It was in every way a tavern like the Lazy Stallion. Twice before, when low on coin, she found such, and exchanged healing for a room, food and coin.
The masked boy standing out front with a duster in his hand eyed her. “Coming in?” he rasped, then coughed.
She only nodded, and he began dusting ash from her clothes and hair.
A different older man opened the door when he knocked. That man inspected her to see that it was well done before letting her in and taking a seat by the door.
He needn’t have bothered. Ash coated everything inside and hazed the air. She would not be removing the scarf from her face in here except to eat.
At the bar, she asked, “Owner around?”
“What do you need?” the fat man asked.
“Barter. Healing for a room, food, and jug of wine.”
He gave her his full attention. “Mage healer?”
She gave a single nod.
“Most of my girls have a bad cough. You fix that?”
“Yes, but it won’t stay fixed if they don’t keep their faces covered until this ash goes away. One girl, one night, two meals and a jug of wine,” Ashes stated firmly.
He countered, “Four girls, one night, two meals, and a jug of wine.”
She shook her head. “Not an easy spell. Two girls for a room, two meals, and two jugs of wine, or I walk. This town has other places that need a healer that can do that spell.”
He looked over at a very dark girl that began coughing. “Set, heal two girls for one night, two meals and two jugs of wine. But you stay for five nights doing two a night. Same pay each time.”
“Set, bring me the two you need healed the most.” She could use a week of not moving. The ashfall shouldn’t last much longer. Her mage sense had said the volcano had only lasted a week.
She thought about it some more. This might be a good town to set up shop. She could speak to the local healers and see if they would let her set up shop here. Until then, she could get a few coins doing minor things in a tavern.
The two dark-skinned girls he brought to her were twins, maybe sixteen years-old. Neither could quit coughing, and likely would be dead of lung rot in a few more days had she not come here.
“Quailkan Sol Lesa.” She hadn’t known that one before the volcano, but had been researching it at her mistress’s insistence. It was a powerful healing spell she could only do twice in a day. It was so powerful that if she messed it up, she was dead.
The first quit coughing and her face lit up with a beautiful smile. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” the young girl gushed.
“Quailkan Sol Lesa.”
The other broke down crying with joy.
“Set, you’re the real thing,” the owner said in satisfaction. “Tia, show her to room nine, Kay, get her a bowl, take it to her room, see me before going up with the first jug of wine.”
* * *
The room stank worse than the one she stayed in at the Lazy Stallion that first time.
The dark girl smiled at her. “I keep a clean blanket hidden here, but I will let you have it. Thanks again for healing my lungs.”
“It might come back if you don’t keep your face covered.”
“I’ll ask Kale if he will let me.”
From its clever hiding place in the back of a padded chair, she pulled out a clean piece of cloth barely large enough to cover half of her and handed it over.
“Set, I need to get back to work. Kale is pissed at how much work Kay and I have missed, but a girl can’t dance if she can’t breathe.” She punctuated the statement with a spin and a high kick. Both moves she used to expose her womanhood to greater scrutiny, and promise erotic fun. The girl was obviously proud of her moves and used them as propositions.
Ashes liked her, and the way she made sure she was talking about vertical and horizontal dancing too. But Ashes wasn’t into girls.
The second girl arrived with the food and wine. She was even bolder than her sister. “Thanks for the healing. Tai and I would love to come back and entertain you after closing if you like.” She grinned broadly. “We are experts at pleasing men or women here.”
“Thanks, but all I want is sleep.”
“Oh, I am sure you will get enough of that.”
She set down the wine jug and walked out, closing the door behind her.
After the food, and a third of the way through the jug, Ashes yawned. Then the lights went out.