The following weeks passed with little interruption, save for a pack of wolves pressing too close to camp and Esan nearly being gored by an angry boar. The wolves fled when we banked our fire and the boar we butchered, the night’s watches smoking the meat to preserve it for the hot days to come. I tended Esan’s wounds, and he healed with remarkable speed.
The heat was intense. We sweated through our clothing, but didn’t dare shed it in the clouds of mosquitoes. I ran out of herbs and couldn’t find opportunities to replenish them, so we soon became mottled with welts.
Still, we forged ahead, uncovering mossy milestones, skirting swaths of marsh, and fording murky rivers.
I did not speak of the Binding Tree Askir had missed, though I feared that might be a grave error. Covering for a sleeping watchman was one thing, but ignoring a deficiency in our priest might be even more deadly. Yet the further we trekked, the less relevant it felt—Askir proved his capabilities several times, warning us off an ancient burial mound and a seemingly natural spring that turned out to be rune-cursed. So I added the missed Binding Tree to my cache of secrets, and plodded on.
Most of my thoughts were occupied by the unknown potential of the gift Aita had given me. Would my wounds heal faster now? Could I heal with a touch? I considered experimenting on my companions when they brought me their ailments, but that seemed unwise. I could cut myself, but the memory of the scars on my mother’s hands and arms stopped me. Shedding blood to test Aita’s gift felt far too much like a sacrifice to a Miri, and that I could not stomach. I would simply wait and see.
The month waned and the weather became more consistently overcast. The rain never fell hard, but its frequency ensured both us and the forest remained in a constant, miserable state of damp. I pulled burrowing insects from my companions’ flesh, treated a passing fever and made salves for Ittrid, whose skin broke out in a terrible rash.
I did not complain, no matter how difficult the foraging became, how terribly my back ached, or how badly the veins burst across my shoulders from the straps of my pack. I grumbled only to Nui and the trees as I gathered firewood, seeking the consolation and solitude of the forest before dusk. I hunted for wild carrots, berries, and mushrooms, and filled my folded tunic with burdock and lily roots. I replenished my herbs whenever I could, and hung them to dry beside my sweat-soaked tunic each night.
Finally, we topped a ridge to see a clear, bright river, toppling over shoulders of rock smoothed by time and plunging into shallow pools. The trees gave way, permitting the river and falls to sparkle in the light of the sun.
“Gods below, I’m having a proper bath,” Seera declared, already starting down the hill with a skidding, balancing step. “Leave me behind if you have to!”
Berin glanced at the sun overhead, but there was a smile on his sweaty face. “We’ll stop for the day,” he decided, though Seera was already out of earshot, dumping her pack on a sunny expanse of rock and pulling her tunics over her head.
Cheers and laughter accompanied the rest of the party down the hill and onto the rocks. Nui bounded after them, knocking a half-naked Ovir into the pool before joining him with a great splash.
Berin and I descended more slowly, he holding out his hand to steady me as I skidded through last year’s deadfall and emerged from the shade of the trees. On the sides of my pack, bundles of herbs and wild carrots swung.
“You look like a bush,” he told me fondly. “And you smell like a sickbed.”
“It’s a sacrifice,” I informed him with a weary grin.
We shrugged off our packs a little away from the others. All our companions save Askir were in the water already. I watched the priest leap a narrow arm of the river and vanish back into the trees to scout.
“What’s wrong?” Berin watched me set my pack against a boulder.
I winced—I was so sore by now that it was hard to move, and with just Berin nearby, my guard slipped. “Nothing. I just… Everything hurts. But this is good. The river. The rest.”
He pulled his tunic off. I noted the welts of insect bites across his chest and started to tsk, but he waved me off. “Back, witch. At least the mosquitoes are dying off. It means summer is ending, but I’ll gladly take a cold autumn over heat and insects.”
I thought nervously ahead to the colder months and the certainty of snow. “What if the Easterners won’t let us winter with them?” I prodded, not for the first time.
“Yske, we’ve discussed this. They welcomed the Arpa, why wouldn’t they welcome us?”
“But we’re not Arpa.” Bending down, I removed the small circular pin from my legwraps and began to unwind them, relishing the cool breeze on the sweat-soaked fabric of my trousers. “We’re the barbarians the Arpa didn’t even bother to conquer.”
“Don’t worry so much,” Berin chided, scratching at the bites on his chest and eyeing the water. He started forward, then glanced back at me. “Coming?”
“Go on,” I told him, waving at the river. “I’ll find a quieter pool to bathe in.”
Berin glanced from me to our swimming, laughing companions. “We’ve all seen your skin before, Yske.”
“All the same.”
“Don’t go far, then.” He left me, shed the rest of his clothing into a pile and made for the others.
I watched him go for a moment, suppressing a sudden surge of loneliness. Esan and Ovir hurled sodden pinecones at one another and Nui raced between them, leaving trails of dripping water on the warm rock. Berin joined with a splash that nearly washed Ovir out of his pool and down into the next. Seera laughed freely at them from where she, Ittrid, Bara and Sedi floated, sharing a pot of soap between them.
They were happy. Harmonious.
I gathered my sweat-soaked clothes and strode to an empty pool behind a stretch of bushes. I fetched a knot of dried widow soap leaves and lavender from my pack and set to grinding the leaves on the smooth rock ledge. I splashed a little water into the mixture, then left it to bubble as I slipped into the pool.
The water was cool but shallow, and the rock bowl it lay in was warmed by the sun. I scrubbed dirt and sweat from my stiff hair and flushed skin, letting the water wash the pungent suds over a ledge and downstream. Then I scooped up what remained of the soap with my clothes and scrubbed them as best I could.
I tossed them over the bushes to dry in the sun and breeze and drifted, belly up and eyes half-closed. I could hear the chatter of the others all around, but with my ears just below the water I could almost fool myself into thinking I was alone, back at my favorite bathing spot on the slopes of Mount Thyr. I heard Nui barking and saw her frolic through the shadow of the trees, chasing a churring squirrel. I smiled, my sore muscles eased, and my lingering tension did too.
“Do you have more widow soap?”
I raised my head and cracked an eye to see Askir standing at the side of my pool, naked and lean. I watched him for a moment, pulling myself out of my imaginings of home, then floated my feet down to the bottom of the pool and stood.
“In the side of my pack,” I pointed. “The third pouch, with the bone fastening.”
He vanished without a word of thanks. Disgruntled, I turned away and began to work the tangles from my hair, wishing I’d thought to bring my comb over.
Askir reappeared without a single scuff or murmur of warning, widow root leaves in hand. “May I?” He gestured at my pool.
I was too startled to resent the invasion of privacy. “Of course.”
He slipped into the water and, spying the rock I’d used to crush my own soap, began to do the same. I eyed his back, the nape of his neck caked with dirt and blond hair in a knotted tuft atop his head.
“Nothing worrying in the forest?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t be naked if there was,” he informed me, scooping water into the crushed leaves with one hand. While it began to bubble he looked back at me. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Ah. So there was a reason he was here.
“You have an aura about you, like the Miri,” Askir informed me. His gaze was unsettlingly direct, but I was coming to recognize this as one of the priest’s defining traits. “You and Berin both, but you a little more.”
I settled deeper in the water, leaving only my head above the surface. Water licked at my chin and my hair drifted in clumps. “You can see that with your Sight,” I observed. Every Vynder priest was gifted with the ability to see magic in its various forms, some stronger than others.
He nodded.
“Hessa is our mother and Imnir is our father,” I pointed out. “Both of their blood is more gold than scarlet.”
“Then why is your aura stronger than Berin’s?”
“I’m blessed.”
Askir didn’t reply immediately. He untangled his hair from its leather tie and ducked under the water to wet it, leaving me in a stretch of bubbling quiet. Then he resurfaced, puffed water from his lips and set to scrubbing his hair with soap. He hadn’t added lavender, and the bitter smell of the leaves wafted over to me.
“Your aura has grown stronger in the last few days,” he informed me. He kept his eyes closed as he clawed his scalp. “It seems to me that the farther we get from home, the stronger it becomes.”
I froze, taken aback. He chose that moment to duck under the water again and held there, rummaging his fingers through his hair to loose the dirt and soap. Brown suds floated away on the gentle current and vanished over the ledge.
Aita’s gift had increased my aura. My Sight was strong, but I hadn’t thought to examine myself since Isik’s visit.
“You must be mistaken,” I told him when he resurfaced a second time, shaking his head like a dog and blinking water from his eyes. Whatever was happening, I didn’t like that Askir had noticed, or was questioning me about it. I’d sworn to Aita that I would keep her secrets and those of the High Halls. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Askir watched my face, water still dripping from his blond beard and hair. “You don’t know why it’s happening,” he observed.
“No,” I said, with enough honesty to believe it myself. “You’re our priest. This is why you’re here.”
He wiped the water from his beard and nodded slowly, unaffected. “I’ll think on it.”
He set to washing the rest of his body, and I left the pool. Padding back to my pack, I let my skin dry in the sun while I dug out my spare linen undertunic and my comb, and set to untangling my hair. But as warm as the sun was, and as calming the routine, Askir’s words stayed with me.
What was Aita’s gift doing to me, and how long would it last? When I returned home, would my mother notice it too?
“Berin!” Ittrid’s voice cut through the air. “Everyone! Come see this!”
Comb still in my hand, I hastened to the nearest ledge, bare feet curling on the warm rock. Several tiers below I spied the Soulderni woman, dressed and damp-haired, waving from a place where the river veered back into the forest. Between us the rest of our companions swam or lay in various stages of dress, but at Ittrid’s words they stirred.
“What is it?” Seera called, hopping on one foot to pull on her trousers.
“A cave,” Ittrid replied, tone caught between excitement and awe. “And a Great Bear.”
* * *
The rush of water and the pad of our bare feet were the only sounds in the cave. Light chased us through the yawning mouth and peered through gouges in the rock above, where tree roots stretched toward a central pool with tangled, crooked fingers. They formed a living veil between Berin and me as our party spread out.
The light from the holes in the ceiling reflected off the water, casting patterns across the stone walls. I eyed the latter, noting several varieties of lichen, moss, and mushroom as I trailed Ittrid deeper into the cave.
“There’s something in the water,” Sedi’s voice echoed around us.
I turned to see Berin leap to a boulder out in the pool. He grasped a dangling root for support, earning a rain of dirt and deadfall from above, and peered straight down into the water. Furrowing his brows, he crouched and slipped a hand beneath the surface.
The pool was not deep. Before his shoulder touched the water he pulled back and held an object beneath a beam of light.
It was a golden spearhead, as long as my forearm and evidently dulled with age, given how casually Berin turned it about in his palm.
“There’s more,” Askir said. He slipped into the pool and bent, both arms submerged. When he straightened, his palms were full of dull arrowheads of various material and sizes, from stone to green-tainted bronze. “These must be offerings. Though there’s no power here.”
Berin nodded, still poised on the boulder. “Offerings to who?”
“The Bear,” Ittrid replied.
I followed her pointing finger across the walls, tracking the lichen and water stains. Deeper into the grotto they gave way to stronger lines and more unnatural patterns. Runes. Images.
Almost unconsciously, I moved toward them. A pleasant coolness wafted across my naked legs—I hadn’t had time to fully dress—and I slowed, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I trailed my fingers across the cool stone. Lichen flaked beneath my fingers, dusty and the palest green.
“What is it?” Berin’s voice called to me. Beyond him I saw Nui poised in the mouth of the hollow, head cocked curiously.
“There are markings on the walls,” Seera answered before I could. She materialized at my shoulder, her damp hair pulled back into a quick, efficient knot. She had her long knife bare in one hand, though she hadn’t taken the time to put on her belt, and the remnants of black paint were smudged around her eyes. She pointed along the wall. “I see a woman.”
“And a bear,” Ittrid added, gesturing at the space before us. And above us. “Look up.”
There on the walls of the cave, the lichen gathered into carvings in the shape of a huge bear. It stood on its hind legs, its huge clawed back paws originating just before Ittrid, Seera, and me, its head watching from above. Its jaw was closed, its eyes unseeing.
In the center of its body was the life-size profile of a woman, her generous breasts and hips reminding me distantly of Aita, and in passing, myself. But this was not Aita. There was only one woman in our stories associated with a Great Bear. A Great Bear who had been wounded by a spear.
I became aware of the others crowding in around me, craning to see the Bear or edging in to scrutinize the woman in its protection.
“Aegr and Liv,” I observed, voice edged with awe. “This is where the Great Bear was healed.”