When they discovered her, she never moved.
Just stood, little and motionless, half concealed in a crumbled wall which had been the home of some one. The village behind her was still smouldering three days old the fire had long since died but still the ash was floating on the wind like gray snow. Bodies lay in the streets. Not many. When the flames broke most of them were indoors.
Aldric paused at a distance of twenty feet.
The girl watched him. Broad lavender eyes, still too serene to belong to a child deprived of all. Her face was pale dusted with white ash that stuck to her cheeks, her arms, the backs of her hands spotted forever. Silver white hair, an uneven cut she had cut it herself, no doubt, recently, and with what blade she could get.
She was in a plain linen shift, ripped at the shoulder. No shoes. Her feet were lacerated and hurt by walking through rubble.
Artemis sucked in, behind Aldric. "She's... she's the only one."
He knew. The silence said it. There are no birds, no insects, no motions but the girl and the ash.
Aldric took one step forward.
The girl didn't flinch.
Another step. Still nothing.
He came near her, within touching distance. She must bend to see his face looming over her, ashen haired, chains upon his arms as dead snakes.
She looked at the chains. At the cracks in his skin. At the cold eyes which had never been warm.
Then she extended her hand and touched a link.
Her fingers were cold. Small. Absolutely steady.
No fear. None at all.
Low pitched voice, Artemis came nearer. "She's like you. The ash... it stuck."
Aldric again inspected the skin of the girl. It was not only on her that white stuff, but in her, like it was in him. Fused. Permanent.
He knelt. It put him down to her level, his face to her face. At a closer distance he was able to notice the shadows beneath her eyes, her lips fissured with thirst, the slight trembling in her hands which she was struggling hard to conceal.
Three days had passed since she was alone. Exploring the rubble of her house, treading on corpses that she is likely to have known, biding her time.
Aldric put up a hand and unhooked his mantle.
It was ancient the vestiges one time of the armoury of his knight, when he had been of colour and insignia and creed. It was ripped now, splashed with ichor, ragged out by a hundred battles. But it had not cooled yet with his body, it was still downy enough to keep out the mountain wind.
He had made it round her shoulders.
It drowned her. Dragged, on the ground, took her little frame, and thus made her look smaller, still. Even as he looked up at her in it she looked lavender with her eyes wide.
Then she spoke.
"You're not a monster."
Her voice was small. Hoarse. Like she hadn't used it in days.
Aldric's jaw tightened. There was nothing he could say to that. Had no idea whether there was anything to say.
So he remained and turned about and began to walk north again.
Small footsteps were pacing behind him.
And they took a stroll in the dark.
The girl had not questioned them where they were going. Didn't ask who they were. Just followed, with his bare feet trips unheard on the cold earth, wrapped in a mantle thirty times too large. Artemis made two attempts to speak to her. Got nothing but silence.
Her stride began to slow down around midnight.
Aldric realized earlier than Artemis. He paused, turned, stared the girl pushing herself along swaying and even blinking at too great a rate to keep one foot in advance of the other with sheer determination.
He walked back to her. Knelt. Gestured to his back.
She looked at him long and long. Then, slowly, climbed on.
She weighed nothing. Like carrying a bird. She threw her little arms around his neck, and her cheek against the ash on his shoulder, and in a few minutes she was asleep.
Artemis followed him into step. Glanced at the face of the girl, slack with weariness, away a long time.
"She trust you."
Aldric didn't answer.
"Don't know why. You're terrifying." The voice of the goddess Artemis was light, however, her eyes were not. "But she does."
Silently they walked away after that.
They were in a sheltered place of the rocks, out of sight of the sky, which Dawn discovered.
Aldric sat on the entrance and watched the trail behind them. Artemis slept in brief, spasmodic and her hand never left her grimoire. The girl was still in the mantle, curled up in the rear, and was small enough to squeeze in the place where a full grown adult would have huddled.
She woke screaming.
And Aldric, before Artemis could stir crouching next her, chainless, and still and still. "You're safe."
The eyes of the girl were crazy, blind. Swimming in vain at what she could not see. Her mouth was open but there was no sound that just came out but a breath ragged and broken.
Aldric didn't touch her. Just remained in, firm, here.
Slowly, the panic faded. His face came into the attention of the girl. On the ash. On the chains.
She extended her hand and touched his.
And then she returned to sleep, and retained his fingers.
Artemis was staring over her bedroll with an unreadable expression. As Aldric glanced at her, she only shook her head and shut the eyes.
He remained there until the dawn, and his little hand in the one of the girl, as he watched the entrance.
Three days passed.
They kept on towards the north, and northward, to the next temple. The girl walked wherever she could. Rid on the back of Aldric when she could not. Said almost nothing.
On the second day, Artemis got to know her name by accident.
They'd stopped to rest. The girl was scribbling in the ash with a stick figures that may have been people, that may have been houses, may have been anything you like. Artemis crouched beside her.
"What are you drawing?"
The girl pointed at one shape. "Mama." Pointed at another. "Papa." Pointed at a smaller one. "Me."
Artemis waited.
The stick of the girl followed a circle about all three. "Fire."
Then she rubbed out the larger figures and drew the small one singly.
"Signy," she whispered. "Mama called me Signy."
Artemis looked at Aldric. He stood on a few feet onlook on with the same expression. But his chains had been very silent.
Signy. In primeval language the name was significant. New beginning. Or maybe victory. She couldn't remember which.
Aldric stood. "We move."
They moved.
On the third night they came back to the forge of Gorm.
The smith that lived long was at work, and beating up metal. He had looked up as they entered, and caught sight of the girl, and halted in full swing.
"That's a child."
Aldric: "Yes."
You took a child to a forge of a god-killer.
"She followed."
Gorm stared at him. And then at Signy, who looked out in her too large mantle, without anything in her expression. Then at Artemis, who shrugged.
"Huh." Gorm set his hammer down. "Well. She's not dead yet. That's something."
He went back to work.
Aldric was keeping guard that night, and Signy was sleeping, when Gorm was in the forge, and discovered Artemis.
"He's different." The ancient smith tossed his head in the direction of Aldric. "Since the girl."
Artemis feigned no misunderstanding. "A little."
"A little." Gorm snorted. I watched that man weeks long. He doesn't stop. Doesn't rest. Never looks at anything but the target next to him. He shook his head. Now he bears a child on his back and sits on the alert where she sleeps.
Artemis said nothing.
Gorm took on a piece of half-generated metal. Played with it in his scratched hands. First time he seen him look human since he came.
He moved back to his forge, and left Artemis there all by himself.
The attack came at false dawn.
Aldric felt it first it was a change of atmosphere, an oppression, a burden, which had not existed before. His chains sprang, noiselessly extended themselves, and made themselves a protective net. Artemis was on the move and awake within a moment, flashing grimoire.
"Divine," she hissed. "Multiple. Small."
They burst forth out of the darkness.
Winging birds, all of them as large as big dogs, of too many joints, too many teeth. They were pale white, and nearly transparent of body, and their eyes were bright in the same imploring light as those of the Hound. Godly murderers to make things clean.
The first wave fell on the chains of Aldric.
Three were killed on the spot, torn to pieces by black steel. Four others went round, and attempted to flank. Two of these caught the violet blasts of Artemis, which changed them to ashes. The rest kept coming.
Aldric came to receive them, and chains were strained in all directions. He had lost sight of the number, ten, fifteen, more falling out of the darkness. They were not even attempting to kill him. They were endeavouring to amuse him.
Behind him, Signy screamed.
He turned.
One of the animals had eluded him. Now, ten feet away, Signy could see it crawling, with ghastly intent toward her, wings half open. Its mouth opened and showed the rows of needle teeth.
Aldric moved. He wouldn't reach her in time. He was aware even as his chains lengthened, even when his legs were propelling him, even when his heart, which remained, froze.
Then Signy's ash flared.
There was a burst of white radiance with which she had flown with her little body, so bright, that there were shadows on the rocks. They scream high and thin and melted. Not burned. Not torn apart. Dissolved, as the salt in water, as it existed never was.
The other assassins stampeded. Aldric's chains didn't. Within ten seconds he killed them all of them, and he could do it unconsciously, his eyes on the little girl standing in a ring of fading white light.
At the end of it he got on his knees before her.
She stared at her hands. To the ash, still clinging to them, faintly burning, and then fading.
"I... I didn't..."
Aldric waited.
Signy raised her eyes upon him, her eyes wide. "I didn't mean to. It just... it came out."
Artemis was coming behind them slowly, his grimoire in his hand, violet light searching the remaining energy.
It was not an aspect of divinity, she said to herself. "Not exactly. It was... older. Primordial." She looked at Aldric. "I need to examine her. Now."
They camped in the depth of a cave beyond the sky.
Artemis was sitting cross legged opposite Signy with a grimoire floating next to her and pages turning themselves. Her eyes cast violet light and she was studying the energy of the girl.
At the entrance Aldric was guarding. Since the attack his chains had not ceased going.
Minutes passed. Then an hour.
Artemis's eyes snapped open.
"She's not cursed." She had a weird voice stunned, perhaps, or scared. "She's marked. By something some may say the pantheon pre dates.
Aldric turned. "Explain."
Her village was not burned by gods because she was a heretic. They set it on fire since she was there. Artemis leaned forward. The power I am reading it is not Godly. It's anti divine. It unmakes their power. Her ash did not kill that creature when it came in contact with her. It stopped existing."
Signy looked, again, at her hands. "I don't understand."
Another glance of violet flicked through the eyes of Artemis. "There are old texts. Forbidden texts. They discuss the prophecy, the Ash Child, who was a product of godly fire and was bound to bring to an end the rule of gods. The pantheon believed that it was figurative. Symbolism." She looked at Aldric. "It wasn't."
Aldric's chains tightened.
Signy gazed up at him, and was small and pale in her mantle that was too large. "Did I... do something bad?"
He was over the cave in three leaps. Knelt before her. peeped in those lavender eyes that had known too much and known too little.
"No."
Signy's lip trembled. "Then why did they come? Why did they burn my village? Why did Mama and Papa "
She couldn't finish.
Aldric didn't know what to say. He never did. So he did as much as he could stretched out, very tenderly, and touched her head.
She leaned into the touch. Closed her eyes. And, first, since the fire, cried.
Artemis stood at the other end of the cave, with a mixed expression. Then she withdrew and gave them space, and resumed reading her grimoire.
Outside, the sky lightened.