We set off together through the celebrations, Berin grinning and exchanging a few words here and there as we searched. But I stayed quiet, letting my eyes sift through the crowd for my mother’s face.
As Nisien had said, she wasn’t here. We made for the hall, passing through the eerie stillness of the houses and dirt paths, neatly fenced gardens and woodsheds. Leaves rustled in the warm breeze and a night dove mourned, nestled below the fringe of grasses and flowers that adorned every roof. We passed the open windows of a home, unlit, and caught the strains of a murmured lullaby—a father’s deep voice soothing the whimpers of an infant.
I glanced at Berin’s expressionless face as the voice faded and we neared the lording shadow of the Morning Hall. Did he think of himself when he heard that father’s song? Did he think of the child whose birth he would miss, and the pain Isa would endure alone? Did it grieve him, or was there a part of him that was relieved his wife had cast him out?
My brother’s face was inscrutable, and I did not ask.
We entered the hall to find the hearth still cold, though bowled oil lamps hung from pillars here and there, lending the space a passive glow. Up in the loft the sounds of sleepy humanity drifted, but there was no one in sight as we moved past the unused tables and toward the chambers where we’d grown up.
Berin knocked and our mother’s muffled voice called us in.
The room beyond was not large, centered around a stone hearth along one wall. A door stood at the far end, leading to our mother’s sleeping quarters—and our father’s, when he was here. Berin’s and my childhood beds were built into the walls, slim straw mattresses now neatly made for guests. Shelves stretched between painted runes, displayed weapons and a poor tapestry I’d woven as a girl. A battered shield with a stylized lynx hung over the hearth, every scratch and chip and crack left intact and unrepaired. My mother’s old shield.
Hessa sat at the table next to the hearth with an empty cup before her. Berin bent to hug her, putting a kiss on her cheek and sinking into the next chair as he murmured some apology over not having come earlier. I came more slowly, my stomach a tempest of emotions. Would she be upset that I hadn’t been able to convince Berin to stay? Perhaps. But I hoped she would also be proud of my bravery, in agreeing to go with him instead. We should be able to say our goodbyes with hopeful smiles.
But as her eyes drifted my way, my heart stopped. My mother was a guarded woman, her walls carefully formed over years of scrutiny from our people, our allies, and our enemies. She’d worn the same mask with Berin and me for most of our lives, only removing it here and there, at the most life-altering moments—the painful ones, the death of my aunt Sixnit, the banishing of Thray, and the joyful ones like Berin’s betrothal, my ordination as a healer, my father’s homecomings.
Seeing unfettered emotion in my mother’s eyes was a sign of change. It meant that this moment was real and potent, and the impact of it could not be avoided, for good or ill.
Her eyes were glossy with tears as she rose to pull me into a tight embrace, one of her hands buried in my hair, holding my face to the side of her own.
When she released me, my vision was blurry. I blinked hard and forced a laugh, moving to sit next to Berin. “Don’t make me cry, Mama.”
“I’m sorry. In honesty, I’ve no desire to speak about your leaving,” Mother said, looking at us both across the table. It was small and we all sat close, my knee against Berin’s thigh, all six of our feet clustered on the reed mats. “Except for this. Tomorrow morning, I will take you and your companions through the High Halls to the White Lake. You can begin your journey from there.”
Berin’s eyes widened. “That will save us weeks.”
My mother nodded. “Then you’ll be back to me a few weeks earlier.”
I hesitated, Aita’s prohibition ringing in my ears. Living humans were only permitted in the High Halls for specific purposes and duties, and my mother herself was one of the loudest voices behind this law.
“That… that’s forbidden,” I pointed out. “Only Askir is a priest. The rest of them shouldn’t be in the Halls, not for any reason.”
Berin surveyed me, a spark of indignation in his eyes. “Us. You’re not a priest either.”
“Aita was my mentor,” I placated. “It’s different. I know how to move safely in the upper realms.”
“What’s there to know?” Berin rolled his eyes and reached for my mother’s cup, then tsked when he found it empty. “Don’t drink anything, don’t eat anything, and don’t bother the dead. There. I’ve revealed all your great secrets.”
My mother broke in with a hard look. “I will personally see you to the White Lake. Your company will be in the Halls for no more than an hour, under my guidance.”
“There will be questions,” I warned. “The Miri will oppose it. Unless Thvynder is endorsing Berin’s quest?”
I said the words carefully. One of the secrets I’d scoured from the Miri was that our god, Thvynder, hadn’t spoken more than a handful of times since I was a child. Any direction “from” the god since then had come through two beings the deity had made—the Watchman Omaskat and the Vestige I’d seen at the counsel, Vistic.
Mother sat back in her chair, and, in the space of that small movement, the pieces of her mask slipped back into place. The sight of it was a fist in my chest.
“I am the High Priestess of the Eangen,” Hessa said. “I guide and protect our people, as I will guide and protect my children. I need no permission for that. I will ask no permission for that, and if the Miri protest, I will remind them they are no longer gods. Now, go back to your festivities. Enjoy the night and the glory—and in the morning, meet me at the foot of the mountain.”
* * *
I did not let myself look down the path toward my cabin as we gathered in the meadow near the old shrine. The morning was already bright and my back slick with sweat from the climb, chafing beneath my pack. It would be so easy to walk away now, down that shaded path between the trees, back to my garden and the bees and the timbers of the roof, creaking in the rising heat of the day.
“Why do you live up here alone?” The question came from Askir, the priest. He stopped next to me, turning to glance down the path I would not look at.
“Solitude,” I answered simply.
“You don’t like people,” he observed, not judgmental, but not understanding either.
“I don’t like what people do,” I corrected. If I’d been honest I would have added, I don’t like what I do, but I barely knew Askir.
The priest glanced at me, blue eyes curious. His gaze traveled up to my blonde hair, where Algatt colors were still smudged into my hairline.
“I’ll see my father today,” I explained, though I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to. “He gave me the paints.”
“He’s obviously the one you take after,” the priest commented, no doubt taking in the Algatt-paleness of my skin, barely darkened by days in the sun, and my sun-bleached eyelashes and brows.
My mother’s voice rose through the heat and sunlight on the meadow. “This way. Follow me, and do not stray. Askir? Guide them through the door.”
I stepped aside to allow Askir ahead of me as the golden rift flared. Most of our companions did not react to the sudden light—only the Sighted, priests or those touched by the High Hall’s magic, could see it.
Berin and I watched them go. My brother wore a fine sword along with his axe, one-handed and straight-bladed. He had his shield at his shoulder, painted with a leaping lynx to match our mother’s old, battered one. He looked the picture of an Eangen warrior, his hair neatly braided and bound, sides shaved, his beard oiled and his skin clean. His armbands and torcs glinted in the sunlight, and I felt a pang of regret.
He was made for this. Those weapons. This moment. It encouraged me and filled me with dread in the same breath.
“A gift?” I asked, eyeing the sword askance.
Berin looked down the weapon and palmed the hilt. “Yes. From Uncle Sillo.”
“He didn’t give me anything,” I muttered with feigned hurt.
Berin gave a huffing laugh and the tension of our departure eased.
I could resist no longer. I looked over my shoulder. The worn path I so often trod stretched out from my feet, a narrow line of dry, packed earth dividing the meadow and slipping away into the trees, where sunlight and shade shifted with the wind.
Berin smiled down at me, and I didn’t think I was seeing things when I glimpsed a trace of shame in his eyes. “Thank you for coming,” he said for the dozenth time since last night.
I let out a long sigh and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go.”
The world tilted and hushed as we stepped through the rift, and then opened again. We emerged in the same meadow to find early winter snow drifting from an obscured sky. It melted as soon as it touched the ground, but balanced lightly on the arcs of brown, papery grasses and the shriveling seedheads of poppies.
The wind was refreshing rather than cold and I drew a bracing breath. The rest of the company gathered around Hessa, taking in the High Halls with caution and reverence.
As they did, the snow began to thicken and mingle with a mist that wafted in over the tops of the trees. It came to cautiously swirl around us, and our companions muttered in unease.
“These are the realms of the Miri and our dead,” my mother said, watching the company closely. Snow settled on her braids and the shoulders of her pale green tunic while, behind her, the forest disappeared. “But this is no time to seek out dead loved ones. If you stray from the path I carve for you, this realm will swallow you. Do you understand? You do not belong here, not yet. That is what this mist signifies. It protects you.”
There were nods and murmurs. I noticed Askir step out to the periphery of the group, reaching a hand into the miasma. It licked at his skin like flames, then retreated. He was a priest, and the mist recognized the power in his blood. Just as it did Berin’s and mine.
Berin, however, eyed the fog with grim caution from the heart of our company.
“Follow me.” My mother set off. As she moved her fingers wove, the fog swirled, and runes flared.
A narrow path formed beneath our feet, damp and girded with snow-crusted grass. I brought up the rear, dividing my attention between the line of my companions, the path, and the quiet all around.
We were two hours on that path, or so it felt to me. We rested once while my mother scouted the way ahead, concerned by something I neither saw nor heard. The hush between the companions was marked as we waited. For my part I stood a little away from the group, passing my hand through the fog, watching how it danced around my familiar presence.
“I’ll never understand how you spent so much time here as a child,” Berin muttered, holding out his flask, which I took and sipped from. Moisture condensed on his beard and hair and beaded on the wool of his outer tunic, making his thick silver armbands glisten.
“It becomes familiar.” I handed back his flask. “Without the fog, it’s almost… It feels so close to the Waking World, I barely notice some days.”
“Except for the lurking dead and gods know what else,” he muttered wryly. “Do you ever see people you know?”
I nodded. “Thray’s mother comes to me, sometimes. But most of the dead avoid me now. I think Father told them to. And it’s not as though they wander aimlessly; they have patterns to their days, just as we do. At least until the pull of the Hidden Hearth grows too strong, and they begin their Long Sleep.”
“You mean the dead eat and drink and tell tales?” Berin suggested, quoting the conventional Eangen wisdom.
“Food must be gathered and made, and mead and ale and wine do not flow in rivers,” I pointed out.
“So I’ll live a glorious life and die in battle and become a brewer?” My brother laughed. “So much to look forward to.”
My mother returned, offering no explanation as to what had concerned her, and we carried on. Soon, our feet passed from dirt to stone, and a light bloomed through the mist—muffled and diminished, but present. It danced above us and reached high into the sky, like the northern lights, but without color.
Our company pooled on the edge of the High Hall’s version of the White Lake, the lake sacred to Thvynder and the Vynder Priesthood. My mother sketched a few runes and the fog retreated, billowing back to reveal milky waters nestled between rocky shores. Wildflowers and grasses grew in tufts here and there, but none dared encroach on the lake itself.
A rift waited, a glistening golden crack between worlds. We passed through, emerging into the Waking World on a bright summer morning. The sun just peeked over the mountains to the east, barely higher than when we had entered in the meadow.
We’d crossed the length of Eangen and into Algatt in mere hours, just as my mother had promised.
A man waited on the shore for us, his gray hair in a topknot and his gray-blond beard oiled and braided, clasped by a thick leather band. His forearms were traced with tattoos and old ritual scars, and age had hardened rather than softened his frame. Blue paint was smudged into his hairline at the temples and he wore a simple brown tunic and undyed leggings, with plain wrapped leather shoes and no legwraps. He wasn’t armed, but carried two warhorns at his belt. From the sleepy squint to his blue eyes, I suspected he’d recently awoken.
“Father!” Berin called with unashamed joy, unshouldering his pack and starting toward him.
Imnir, our father, gave his son a narrow grin. “Boy.”
They embraced. At the same time a dog streaked across the rocks from the direction of a forest, huge and sleek and thick at the spine with boar-bristle fur. The creature made for Hessa in a blur of wagging tail and buffeting shoulders, knocking me aside with one distracted nuzzle before planting its paws on my mother’s shoulders and licking her face.
Hessa staggered, laughing, and pushed the hound down. “Nui! I thought you’d decided Omaskat was your master now, you stinking dog.”
Nui sat back with a lolling tongue and looked between my mother and me. On the rocks, her tail still thumped. She had been a fixture of my life for as long as I could remember, and had accompanied my mother to Arpa before I was conceived. Still, the years had done little to slow her, and only the graying fur around her mouth showed her age.
My father pulled me into an embrace and I buried my face in his neck. My heart had begun to ache, though I wasn’t sure when, and the sound of Nui’s paws clattering about on the rocks as she greeted Berin only made the pain worse.
When Imnir pulled away, he kept a grasp on my shoulders and peered into my eyes. “I see tears,” he observed, thumbing one away.
I blinked and wrinkled my nose. “These? No, not tears. Though if we stay long, I’m sure I can find some.”
He gave a soft huff of a laugh and reached down to his belt. He unfastened the two horns and handed me one. The other, he held out to Berin. “So you can always hear one another,” he said.
I met Berin’s gaze and saw his lips waver at the corners. Then he nodded, a short, perfunctory nod, and fastened his new horn to his belt.
I took longer to look at mine. It was mottled gray and white, smooth and carved with runes and scenes of hunt, both ends capped with embossed silver. It was beautiful, twin to Berin’s as we were twin to one another.
I lifted the horn to my lips and, drawing a deep breath into my belly, blew. The sound filled the valley, reverberating and repeating in a rich, strident call. It ended in a twisting crack, Algatt-style, and I smiled at my father as I lowered it.
“Thank you,” I said, fastening the instrument to my belt as Berin had.
Imnir nodded and gestured toward the end of the valley, where the mountains folded into a pass that led down to a larger, glistening lake below. The Headwaters of the Pasidon River—and beyond it, the vague line of green that was the eastern shore. “Your boats are waiting. Walk with me, Daughter?”
I slipped my arm through his and began the long descent to the Headwaters, the boats, and that distant eastern shore.