Into the Ash-Snow

By evening, no patrol had found a source for Seamwarden’s warning.

Nessari refused to let the lesson end.

“Again,” she said, breathless. “One more.”

Maeril rested the butt of her practice staff on the wet ground. “One more becomes twelve. Guard first. Glory later.”

“I had my guard.”

Rishi looked at Nessari’s feet.

She followed his gaze and moved the left one back.

“Feet,” he said. “Then hands. Then intent.”

Nessari raised her staff again.

The three of them stood in the training clearing beneath the first evening lanterns. Earlier drizzle still shone on the packed earth. Mist lay between the trees, and the air held the soft cold of water that had not decided whether to fall.

Maeril attacked without warning.

Nessari caught the line with both hands. Wood met wood in a clean knock. The force drove her rear foot half a pace through the mud, but she kept her balance.

Rishi nodded. “Better.”

Nessari’s grin appeared before she could hide it.

Something cold touched Rishi’s cheek.

He looked up.

White flakes drifted through the lanternlight. They fell slowly at first, wet and heavy, vanishing wherever they found bare earth. One caught in Nessari’s hair. Another clung to Maeril’s sleeve.

“Snow!” Nessari threw back her head. “It’s snowing.”

Maeril held out her palm.

A flake flattened against her skin and vanished.

“That isn’t right.”

Rishi felt the air against his skin. It had grown colder, but not enough to account for what he saw. “Why?”

“It is too mild down here. Too wet. We had drizzle an hour ago.” Maeril rubbed the water between thumb and finger. “Snow can survive a warm layer if the air beneath it is dry enough to cool as it falls. This air isn’t dry. No front passed over us. The wind turned this morning, then held. None of that makes this.”

She lifted her face toward the strip of sky above the canopy.

“This is not weather behaving. It is weather being made.”

Nessari had already abandoned her staff to catch flakes in both hands. She laughed when they vanished against her palms.

Rishi turned one gloved hand upward.

A flake landed and melted. Grey residue remained across the leather.

He rubbed thumb against finger. Fine grit moved between them.

“It’s dirty.”

Maeril stepped close. She scraped a trace onto one fingernail, smelled it, then crouched to inspect the thin white gathering along a root.

“Not dirt. Too fine.”

More flakes fell. What had looked white in the air became bruised against bark and cloth, each one carrying a dark thread at its center.

“Ash?” Rishi asked.

“Perhaps. Soot. Something burned small enough to ride inside the fall.”

Maeril took a metal cup from her satchel and gathered what she could before it melted. Nessari knelt to build a mound beside her, pushing wet handfuls together with solemn concentration.

“Inside,” Maeril said.

“Five minutes.”

“You have already used two arguing.”

“Three, then.”

Maeril pulled Nessari’s hood over her hair. “Three. Then Root-House. Tell Elenya what we saw. Do not eat any.”

Nessari stared at her. “I know not to eat strange snow.”

“I have been responsible for you long enough to know that knowledge and action are distant cousins.”

Nessari made a wounded sound and returned to her little mound.

Rishi collected her abandoned staff. He and Maeril started toward the guest lodge, the cup of grey meltwater held level between her hands.

Seamwarden stood outside the screen.

They swayed in small, uncertain arcs. Their shoulders curved forward. Both hands opened and closed against their chest as though they were searching for a wound beneath the pale grain of their body.

Rishi leaned Nessari’s practice staff against the lodge and reached them before Maeril spoke.

“Something is wrong,” Seamwarden said.

Their voice was clear. Strain pulled the words apart.

Rishi put one hand on their upper arm. Living wood lay cold beneath his palm. With his other hand he grounded the Living Staff beside them.

Pressure entered him through both points of contact.

It was not the bruised alarm he had felt when Seamwarden wandered into the forest. This tightened and spread beneath the surface of the world, a hurt without a place where healing could begin.

“Pain.”

Maeril set the cup beside her and knelt. “Is it in your chest? Can you show us?”

Seamwarden’s gaze fixed on Rishi. “It hurts. I don’t know where.”

He let warmth gather behind his sternum. He drew it down his arm and offered it through his palm. The warmth entered Seamwarden’s grain and found no flesh, no pulse, no ordinary path.

Their shoulders eased anyway.

“Stay with me,” Rishi said.

He began to shape his own breath into the count.

In. Hold. Out.

Seamwarden had no breath to guide. Rishi slowed his own anyway and let them feel the rhythm through his hand.

Maeril retrieved the cup. “Stay here with Rishi while I check this. I’ll be just inside.”

Seamwarden looked at the cup, then back at her. “Find it.”

“I’ll try.”

She disappeared into the lodge.

Rishi placed himself between Seamwarden and the forest path, one shoulder turned so the way remained open.

Grey snow gathered along their shoulders.

“Ilmater,” Rishi said, quiet enough that the prayer belonged only to the space between them, “lend us patience within pain. Take what cannot be borne. Help us ease what remains.”

Seamwarden listened.

The pressure traveled through the Living Staff in a slow wave. Rishi held his hand where it was until the wave passed.

“Patience,” Seamwarden said.

“Yes.”

“Again.”

Rishi repeated the prayer.

By the time Maeril returned, grey had gathered at the hem of her cloak. She carried the cup wrapped in cloth and wore the expression she reserved for an answer that created more questions.

“Ash. Or something close enough that I cannot distinguish it with what I have here. Fine burnt matter suspended in the melt. It isn’t hearth soot, and it didn’t blow into the cup from the clearing.”

Maeril fastened the sample inside her satchel.

Seamwarden lifted their face to the fall.

“Wrong. Falling wrong.”

“We take this to Elenya,” Maeril said.

Rishi kept one hand near Seamwarden as they walked.

Ash-snow lay in a thin film over the household paths. It did not fall heavily enough to quiet the Moonglade. Voices carried between the homes, doors opened, and watch signals passed from one post to the next.

Outside the Root-House, the household had gathered around Elenya.

Elenya stood beneath the sheltering curve of living wood. Nessari had reached her first and now waited at her side, wet to the elbows despite the hood Maeril had pulled over her. Faelar watched the sky with the grave patience of a hunter who had outlived too many surprises.

Scouts waited beside Sirael and Thiarel, winter cloaks drawn close. Bows and short blades rested close to hand. No one had dressed for ceremony.

The gathering turned as Rishi, Maeril, and Seamwarden approached.

Elenya looked first at Seamwarden. Thiarel assessed the ash on their shoulders. Sirael’s gaze found Rishi for one brief instant and closed away from him.

Maeril stepped into the open space and unwrapped the cup.

“There is ash in the snow. The fall does not match the weather, and Seamwarden felt pain when it began.”

Faelar looked at Seamwarden. “Pain from what?”

“I don’t know,” they said.

Rishi rested his palm against the Living Staff. The ache still moved through it, fainter now but present.

Thiarel pointed through the canopy. “I surveyed the cloud line as an owl earlier. There are two places where the snow does not follow the wind. One is close, to the east. The other lies farther south. In both places, I saw grey rising from the forest into the clouds before it fell.”

“Fire?” Elenya asked.

“I saw no flame.”

“Go together to the nearer disturbance,” Elenya told her daughters. “Have the southern watch send word if they find the other.”

Thiarel passed the message to a scout, who left along the southern path. The others gathered beside Sirael.

Elenya turned to Rishi and Maeril. “I want you with them. You felt this through Seamwarden; you may recognize what my daughters cannot. Tell one another what you find.”

Rishi inclined his head. Maeril secured the cup inside her satchel.

“I’ll lead,” Sirael said. “Stay close enough to see my hands. The fall may hide the path.”

Her gaze moved to Seamwarden.

“It’s too dangerous. They’re not ready.”

Rishi felt Seamwarden stiffen beside him.

He looked at them. “Do you want to go?”

“Yes. It hurts here too.” Their hand closed against their chest. “I want to find where.”

“They stay between us,” he said.

Sirael looked at Maeril.

Maeril secured her satchel. “If it gets worse, we stop. You tell us, Seamwarden. You don’t have to wait until we notice.”

Seamwarden lowered their hand. “I will tell you.”

“If they cannot go on, bring them back,” Elenya said. “I will be here.”

“We go,” Sirael said. “Follow me.”

She led them into the ash-snow.

Rishi guided Seamwarden into the middle of the party. Maeril took the other side, and Thiarel walked just behind them with the scouts. The Living Staff carried a low current of pain through his palm as the Root-House lights receded.

Ahead, Sirael’s dark shape passed between the trees without hesitation.