I waited until my mother was gone, then traced her footsteps outside. The sea breeze stirred my hair and skirts as I descended the hill, thick with the scent of salt. In the Waking World, this was the western coast of Eangen, the land of my birth—two weeks’ travel from home. But here in the High Halls, space and time were unpredictable forces. Day and night came without rhythm, and each quadrant of the sky might show a different time and season at once. A walk that one day took me an hour might pass in a handful of breaths the next, while a path I’d trodden for a dozen years might vanish overnight and never return. It was part of the magic of the High Halls, an overflow of the innate power that resided here in every leaf, every gust of wind, and every drop of water.
Head full of thoughts of Miri and the Unmade and my wayward brother, I retrieved my satchel.
“Yske,” a voice called.
Isik hastened down the slope toward me, the slit sides of his knee-length tunic fluttering in a gust of wind. His deep-brown hair was black in the night, escaping its simple braid at the nape of his neck, and his beard was shorter than any Eangen man would keep it.
An answering smile spread across my lips. I glanced around, ensuring we were alone before I spoke. “Where’s your mother?”
“Gone with Gadr,” he replied. A large knife, nearly a short sword, hung horizontally across his thigh, and he touched the hilt as he approached— not in threat, but in pride.
“You don’t have to carry that just for me,” I chided.
“I carry it because I like it.” Isik held out his hands in prompting and I stepped into his embrace, lacing my arms around his back as he barreled me close, his broad arms familiar and tight. “And it’s still new. You know me… I enjoy new things.”
“Mm,” I replied happily, voice muffled by his shoulder.
“Though,” he said over my head, “your father did remark on it recently. Who told him?”
I gave a grunting laugh. “Likely my mother. But she knows it’s a gesture of friendship.”
Isik shifted to hold me away from him, eyeing me critically.
I grinned, hard pressed to mute the affection in my eyes. Isik and I had dallied together when we were little more than children, my waist barely narrowed and his beard not yet grown. Those few years had been sweet, full of new experiences, laughter, and awkward exploration, all charged with the intensity and short-sightedness of youth. Their end had come gradually—a natural gentling of feeling as we aged and settled into our places in the world.
He was the son of two Miri, the first fullblood of their kind in a century. I was the daughter of the High Priestess and High Priest of our god—human, though with a little more magic in my veins than usual. In romance, we realized we were a match that could not last. In friendship, we remained forever bound.
I stepped back and glanced at the star-scattered sky, then south toward home over a spread of forest and the long, rocky shore of the sea. “I should go. It’s been at least a day and a night since I left, and I shouldn’t be here anymore without cause. My mother was distracted enough not to question me just now, but…”
Isik glanced at my heavy satchel. “That’s not a cause?”
“No one can know about this, still,” I reminded him in a low voice. The night was quiet and we seemed to be alone, but there were any number of creatures, seen and unseen, that might listen from the shadows—not least, the human dead.
Some of my friend’s mirth ebbed. “Then stop taking the risk.”
“There’s no risk, not usually,” I corrected. “I keep Aita’s secrets, and she keeps mine. I trust you to do the same.”
“Always,” he returned with his habitual, tireless sincerity. But I saw the hesitation in his eyes. He glanced up the hill behind me toward the Hall of the Gods, then seemed to come to a decision. “Come spend the night in my hall. You’re tired, and I’m sure you’re hungry too. I haven’t seen you in months.”
The offer was tempting, particularly after all I’d heard tonight. My head was full, and there was no one more suited to discuss the council with than Isik. I wouldn’t be descending the mountain tonight to talk with my brother, as my mother had requested. And Isik was right—we hadn’t had an opportunity to talk for more than a few moments since winter, when a snowstorm had trapped me in my mountainside home and he’d come to keep me company.
“All right,” I consented. “So long as your siblings aren’t home?”
“Only Thvynder knows where they are.” He offered me a hand, the other already tossing three runes into the air. They were different than Eangen ones, a blockier, older order I recognized but didn’t know well.
The High Halls shifted at his command and a new path opened before our feet. The moon-bathed coast faded into a veil of fog as Isik strode forward. I trailed behind, and the fabric of the world folded in around us.
I’d only time to draw one breath before the landscape resettled into low mountains and open plains, divided by dozens of rivers and scattered woodland and wetland.
We stood partway up a mountain, near a longhouse with a single large door. The ridge of its thatched roof was carefully shaped, with a second layer of dried reed cut like arrowheads and pinned by intricate designs of woven willow.
Isik released my hand and preceded me through the door. A wash of warm firelight spilled across the worn earthen path between goat-shorn grasses, and I entered the house of Esach.
The familiar scent of smoke, pine resin, and beeswax surrounded us, joining that of roasting meat. Doorways at the back of the structure marked sleeping places, but there was no one else in sight. Three looms sat quiet, tucked along one wall, and baskets of carefully spun wool clustered around empty stools. A leg of deer hung from a hook over the fire, and as we entered a drop of fat made the fire spark.
Just as Isik had used runes to manipulate the distance between the Hall of the Gods and this place, his mother used runes to suspend her hall in time—a perpetual place of warmth, retreat, and plenty.
Isik took off his weapons belt and rolled it around his knife, setting it on a side table. “If any of my siblings do come home, it will be late. Until then you can eat and drink without fear.”
I nodded and deposited my satchel on the table beside him. Eating and drinking in the High Halls was forbidden to living mortals like me. Common wisdom said it would kill us. But as the Miri and the High Priesthood had discovered long ago, it did quite the opposite—it blessed and changed, granting unpredictable power and, occasionally, long life. I’d learned of the effects of the High Hall’s spoils in the same way I learned many other things—Aita’s secrets, gifted to me with a wink, or stolen when I overheard something I should not.
In my case, eating and drinking in this realm had made my Sight particularly keen and allowed me to use runes with remarkable proficiency. It remained to be seen whether the length of my days would benefit or not.
I gazed at Isik’s back as he nudged an iron pot from the coals of the fire. The disparity between our lifetimes had been a key factor in ending our romance, and though I was content with our friendship as it was, that did not stop old memories and possibilities from rearing up—every so often, in the closeness and quiet, and the privacy of moments like this.
Isik shoved a large wooden spoon into the pot, revealing a mixture of cooked grains and vegetables. I pulled bowls from a shelf on the wall and filled them for us while he cut thick slabs of venison, spearing them onto a shared plate on a nearby table.
We ate quietly for a time—I was too hungry to do much else, despite the thoughts crowding my mind. Isik filled our cups with sweet mead, a little watered down. Only when my cup was empty did I speak.
“What do you think of it?” I stabbed at a remaining chunk of venison with the tip of an eating knife and popped it into my mouth, chewing and swallowing before I added, “The Arpa reaching the edge of the world. The Unmade.”
Isik lifted his head from a second heaped portion of food. “It’s interesting. The mortal world is growing smaller.”
“Humans are everywhere now,” I nodded, as if I wasn’t one of them. I tapped the tip of my knife absently on the venison plate, now holding only a pool of cooling juices.
Isik ate another few mouthfuls. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Stability breeds boredom among your kind.”
I arched my brows. “Ah yes, and what does it breed in yours?”
He thought on this for a moment. “Ingenuity. Art. Creativity.” He waved his knife at the ornate tapestries on the walls. “See.”
“Tedium, vexation, and meddling in human affairs,” I corrected.
“I don’t meddle,” Isik said, voice overly grave. “Though stopping my father from doing so is no small task.”
I smiled back, but my thoughts drifted back to the Unmade. “What could it mean? Movement in the Unmade?”
“The explorers sniffed too much rotsnare,” Isik suggested, fluttering the fingers of one hand at his temple. “Started seeing things.”
I tsked. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he returned, but put aside some of his humor. “There is nothing in the Unmade to change or shift. What these Arpa claim to have seen is one of the few true impossibilities of our world.”
I wanted to agree, but: “Then why call a council so quickly? And send me away? Estavius didn’t want me there.”
“Yet you snuck back in.” Isik eyed me. My tendency to eavesdrop was a frequent source of contention between us.
“I’m curious, sometimes.” I shrugged innocently and reached over to spear a chunk of carrot from his bowl. I sat back, popping it into my mouth.
“Then keep me informed, and I won’t have to skulk in the shadows.”
His eyes met mine across the table, creased with warmth and an echo of something else, something older and nearly forgotten. “Of course. Anything for you, Yske.”