Six

Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to sleep. I sat on a low stool beside the fire in my linen shift, with my thorn-scratched legs folded before me. An owl hooted in the forest outside, punctuating the steady hum of crickets and frogs with its low, steady calls.

I couldn’t go with Berin, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him going without me, either. I felt deep in my gut that he would not come home, not from a road so untested and a land so unknown. Nor would his companions. How long would it be before we finally burned empty pyres and marked empty graves?

How could I live with myself, knowing I could have saved him?

I couldn’t do nothing. At the very least, I needed to learn as much as I could about the east and the path Berin was likely to tread, and arm him with knowledge. Aita had always been my source of wisdom, even the secrets my mother withheld.

I had to speak with her again.

The next morning, I rose in the deep twilight before dawn and stoked the fire just enough to bathe the house in ochre light. I pulled on a fresh overgown of mild blue, belted it, and sharpened my knife while my breakfast heated in the fire. I bound my hair in two long braids, threaded with a strip of cloth, and tied them around my head as the first rays of sunlight broke over the mountainside. The scent of the garden, earthen and damp with dew, swelled as I ate my breakfast on the stoop, set my pot inside the door, tugged on my satchel, and shut up the house.

I passed through my garden, past the wattle fence and down a winding trail on the forested mountainside. At its end a meadow opened, warm sunlight hit my face, and my skirt brushed through half-open poppies.

In the center of the meadow was an old shrine, little more than beams and roof tiles and sharp angles. This was once Eang’s sacred place, where her priests and priestesses made pilgrimage and the most powerful passed freely into the High Halls of the Dead and the Gods.

My mother had come here as a young woman to beg Eang for absolution. Instead, the original village of Albor had been burned to the ground and my mother set on a path that had brought down the Old Gods and raised her to High Priestess of an older and truer deity: Thvynder, God of the Eangen and the Algatt, one of the Four Pillars of Creation.

I strode into the center of the meadow and touched my Sight. A slim golden rift appeared, stretching from the dew-heavy poppies to the height of my head. As I neared the tear broadened, adding a wash of deeper amber light to the rays of the rising sun. It smelled of honey, pine and dew, and for a moment I reveled in the scent and the solitude.

Then I stepped forward. The rift contracted and the world tilted, drowning me in a momentary rush of light and immaterial sensation.

When the world settled again, I stood in the High Halls’ reflection of the meadow. Here, autumn reigned and the trees were a tapestry of red and yellow, brown and burgundy, shrouded in gentle, misty rain.

I wasted no time. Moisture prickled my skin as I sketched three runes in the air and strode into them. Again the world shifted, but this time I didn’t slow or falter. I stepped out onto a windswept coastline before the Hall of the Gods.

“Child,” Aita’s voice drifted through a veil of smoke. I passed through an eddy into the rich herbal scent of Aita’s workspace. Today it was tucked in a far corner of the hall. The braziers were unlit but several old candles burned on the tabletop, thick with dripping wax in a scattered sea of dried flowerheads.

She brushed a pile of lavender into one palm and looked up at me. “Tea?”

I shook my head. “I can’t linger today, mistress. But I have questions I hope you might answer.”

“I see.” A frayed blonde curl escaped her headscarf and brushed her cheek as she strode to a small cooking pot. She ladled hot water into one of two ready cups and, setting her hips on the edge of the hearth wall, rubbed the lavender between her palms. Slowly, she let each crushed fragment fall onto the surface of the water and hummed under her breath. A golden glow suffused the mixture—the same magic that healed mortal wounds in my childhood stories.

“Are there any doors between the High Halls and the Waking World in the east?” I asked.

The Miri did not look up from her tea, watching the herbs saturate and sink. “There was, but it was cut off.”

“Why? By whom?”

Aita shrugged a shoulder, still watching her tea. “It was long before I was born. The most eastern High Halls are untraversable, anyway. We had little reason to mourn their loss.”

“Did the Gods of the Old World cut off the east?” I asked, citing the generation of Miri that had birthed her, Gadr, Esach, Estavius, and many others.

Aita looked up at me, her gaze slightly narrowed. “I suppose they must have. Why are you asking?”

“My brother is planning an expedition east,” I admitted, easing myself down on the hearth wall. “To see what the Arpa saw. Not these… shadows in the Unmade, if they even exist. But a great tree, and a people who worship Aegr the Bear. Thray—our cousin—spoke of the tree once, and Berin’s never forgotten it. She saw it in a vision.”

“Ah.” Aita nodded slowly. “Well, no living Miri has been so far east. We are powerful, but some of us are also lazy. Others must tend to duties, not gallivant across creation with no purpose. As to the halfbloods, the Winterborn may have strayed so far, but Esach’s half-blood children are a boring lot, and they mostly enjoy their short lives among humanity.”

“Not Isik.”

“Isik’s blood is pure.” Aita’s attention wandered for an instant, into memory, then she smirked. “Many… unexpected things happened after Thvynder came to power. Esach returning to Gadr’s bed was one of the most surprising. But I suppose more of our kind must come from somewhere, and I’ll not be parting my legs for that old goatherd.”

“Isik will want a Miri companion someday,” I pointed out, trying to sound pragmatic.

Aita sniffed. “Then he will have to plead with Thvynder to make him a wife. Or he can coax a Winterborn into his bed, or track down the woodmaidens. We are cousins to their kind; such a pairing would not be too impractical.”

I eyed her, amused by her tone—though the thought of Isik wooing a white-haired Winterborn or bare-breasted woodmaiden discomfited me. “What about you? What if you bore a child by Estavius? He’s handsome.”

The Great Healer laughed outright. “What a perfunctory union that would be. No, it is not my place to bear children. Thvynder can create more Miri if it comes to that. I’ll have no part.”

As interesting as this conversation was, I returned to my earlier query: “So the eastern High Halls are truly inaccessible?”

“They are. Travel too far east in that realm, and you’ll simply find yourself mired in fog and smoke and marsh that will not dissipate, no matter how powerful your runes.” Aita’s gaze sharpened, her tea forgotten. “But even if those lands were open, you would not be permitted to bring your brother and his companions through the High Halls.”

She’d immediately seen my intentions. “Berin has as much of a right to be here as I do,” I pointed out. “We share birth-blood.”

“Yet his mind remains firmly bound to the grit of the earth, like any beast,” the Miri returned. “Yske, I let you come here because you can be trusted with knowledge and secrets. I let you drink and eat of this realm, and in doing so gain its power, because you earned the right.”

I looked behind us, momentarily terrified that someone—that my mother—might somehow overhear. The hall remained empty. But still, how could Aita speak so casually of secrets that might upend the balance of the world?

“Berin,” Aita continued, “shows none of your quality.”

Indignation scorched the back of my throat, and it was all I could do to keep my mouth closed. This was the double-edged blade of Aita’s favor—she admired and praised me, but only at the expense of the rest of my kind.

“You show me too much grace, mistress.” I bowed my head.

She made a considering sound and settled back, tea cupped between her hands. “It seems I will show you more today. You cannot shorten your brother’s journey through the High Halls, but there is an old road east. It begins on the far side of the Headwaters of the Pasidon.”

I blinked, catching myself before I could show too much shock. “An old road? How old?”

“Its age does not matter. It was built by the Miri, child, not humans.” Aita puffed on her tea and took a sip. “The waymarkers will certainly still be there. Tell your brother to follow those, and his passage will be eased. But he is still unlikely to return.”

“I know.” The affirmation stuck to my tongue like sap. I wished I’d taken up her offer of tea, just to have something to wash it away with.

There was a knowledge growing inside me, one I couldn’t push aside. What I’d overheard had shaped it; the look in Berin’s eyes had given it an edge. Now, Aita’s words turned it into a knife in my chest.

“I must go with him,” I said. “I don’t want to but… I must.”

Aita stared at me, firelight turning her hair gold and her eyes piercing. “Why?”

“To keep him alive,” I said, though I felt this must be obvious. “I can heal him. Protect him from himself. He asked me to join him already.”

“You would go on a suicidal quest for a chance to save your brother,” Aita said, slow and calculated. “Yet he doesn’t hesitate to put your life at risk by asking you to come? Can you see the paradox, child?”

I shifted in discomfort. “That’s not what he’s doing. He doesn’t realize how dangerous the way will be.”

“So he’ll kill you with his stupidity?”

Heat burned in my throat. “He’s not… It doesn’t matter. He’s determined to go, and I’m determined to bring him home alive.”

“What of his wife? The one with child?”

I hesitated. “She has her family, and mine. And your mercy, I hope.”

Silence fell as Aita watched me for a long moment, her thoughts obscure. “I suppose. Then… go.”

Her response unsettled me. Was her consent a challenge? A dare, to see if I’d balk?

I nodded slowly. An old question bubbled up through my thoughts, one I hadn’t dared to ask since I was a child.

“Mistress…” I started to cut myself off, then found my courage again. “I have no right to ask anything more of you, I know. But you spoke once of a… another power. A power more like yours. You said I was too young and the cost too high. But the risks of this journey—”

Aita’s expression closed like a shutter to the wind. She stood and the smoke swirled, thickening around us, not only cutting us off from the hall but dividing me from my former mentor.

“Go east with my blessing, child,” Aita told me as the High Halls began to stretch the space between us, hiding her from my wide, pleading eyes. “And ask no more of me.”

* * *

The goat-shorn path leading to Isik’s hall was dry under my feet. A quick knock at the door found my friend standing before me, and his eyes immediately filled with concern. Chatter and voices came from within—the laughter of young women and a little boy. Isik’s siblings.

Without a word my friend stepped outside, held out his hand, and I took it.

A few sketched runes later, and we walked a shady forest pathway. I regularly came to this region to forage, harvesting the myriad mushrooms that burst from decomposing logs and crept up their loftier companions’ spines in orange, black, or white frills.

But something felt different about the forest tonight, though I saw nothing unusual—save foxfire tendrils on a rotting tree. It was white rather than the usual blue or green, and it illuminated the ranks of mushrooms on its barkless surface with pale light.

“We’re alone,” Isik assured me, mistaking my hesitancy. “What is it?”

“Why is that foxfire white?” I asked. “And why is it glowing when it hasn’t rained?”

He followed my gaze, but was clearly unbothered. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I pushed the strange observation aside and told him everything. I explained about Berin’s journey and my growing understanding that I had to accompany him. I had to leave the warmth and security of the home that I’d made for myself and embark on a trek across the known world—into the unknown.

Isik did not take it well. “Aita’s right. Risking himself is one thing, but risking you too? It’s selfish. Unforgivable.”

“But it is. This is the situation,” I returned. The urge to defend my brother knotted in my gut, but it felt more like obligation than anything. “I cannot change it, or him.”

“And if his legs were to be broken and he could not lead you to your death?” Isik asked, face dark with unabashed animosity.

“Isik,” I shoved his arm. “Don’t say things like that.”

“You’re human, Yske.” My friend stepped closer and made to grab my hands, but I retreated from the intimacy. “You have one life. Sixty, seventy years at best. Do not throw them away for your brother.”

I took a moment to respond, reading his face. Isik had never actually met Berin. All he knew of my brother was my stories, usually told in amusement or anger, and I pondered that I’d likely painted an unfair picture of my twin. But I saw more than anger in Isik’s face—I saw frustration and fear and protectiveness. They softened my heart and hardened my resolve.

“Isik,” I said, as gently as I could. “You can’t hold on to me so tightly.”

I saw a tremble pass through his lips, a boyish vulnerability masked by a man’s stubbornness. “But I can come with you.”

I almost laughed. “No! What would I say to Berin? ‘Meet the Son of Gadr, who used to be my lover’? You know the way Berin is. He’ll be hostile. He’ll forbid you from coming.”

“Forbid,” Isik scoffed. “I’m—”

“A meddling Miri,” I finished for him. I impulsively grabbed one of his hands and took it between both of mine, his long fingers and broad palm making mine look all the smaller. “I’m going east with Berin. He’ll protect me with his life, just as I’ll do for him, and we’ll come back next summer whole and well and brimming with stories.”

I smiled, convincing myself of the truth of my words as I spoke them. Adventure wasn’t something I craved like Berin did, but I could conjure the impulse, if only for Isik’s benefit, and let it glisten in my eyes.

Isik frowned, perhaps seeing through me. “I still don’t want you to do this.”

“I know. I hear you. But it won’t change my mind.”

His thumb trailed across my wrist for a moment, then he stepped back and nodded, rallying. “Then I wish you a safe journey, Yske.”

“You’re the first person I’ll find when I come back,” I promised.

“I’ll be waiting.”