Thirteen

Interlude

Aita surveyed an expanse of bare rock, unbroken save for a few patches of reedy marsh where the rock bellied and rain gathered, and lines of stalwart sumac grew. A river meandered to the south, close enough that I could see its glinting water and hear its rush.

Creases of moss and frail purple flowers gathered in smaller seams in the rock. I walked along these, enjoying the cool squish beneath my bare toes.

“Why are we here?” I asked Aita absently. The seam of moss I was following ended, and I jumped to the dry warmth of stone.

“We’re waiting to see if a rumor is true,” Aita replied. She looked away from the barren landscape and up to the sky, to the divisions between the four quadrants of the High Halls: the twilit dusk to the west, the snow-diffused daylight of the south, warm summer from the east and a dark night to the north, rippling with blue and white lights, like a swirl of skirts in a festival dance. It made the light around us strange and prone to unpredictable shifts. But I was used to it by now and had learned to enjoy each turn of season, weather, and sun as they came.

“What rumor?” I wanted to know, poking at the moss again with my foot.

“We will see,” Aita returned.

Curious, I returned to my mistress and hovered beside her skirts.

Eventually, a distant sound drew our gaze south. I saw a man standing on the riverbank—or, at least, the shape of a man.

“Stay behind me, and do not ask him any questions,” Aita told me in a voice that brooked no disobedience.

I opened my mouth anyway. “Why—”

“Otherwise he will eat your flesh,” she told me flatly, “and craft himself a new pet from your bones.”

I clamped my lips shut as Aita took my hand and led me toward the man beside the water, always keeping me one step behind her.

As we drew closer, I saw that the man was not a man. He was male in shape, but his skin was woven reeds and each of his eyes held riverstones, smooth and sparkling orbs of jade. Those strange eyes turned to Aita, then to me, partially hidden behind her skirts.

He smiled, reed lips turning up to reveal rows of fine fish teeth. His hair was the only thing human about him, thick and black—even at nine years old, I realized that it likely did not belong to him.

A riverman. I knew of these creatures from stories, usually the frightening kind that Berin loved and I avoided. I understood then why Aita had forbidden me to ask any questions—rivermen hated being questioned on any topic, and were dangerous and unpredictable.

“Your kind are not welcome in these halls,” Aita said coolly.

The riverman looked at me, water pooling about his woven feet. “Hello, little shadow. Aita, have you finally spawned? Who is her father? Pity I couldn’t serve the role.”

At the last, his grin curled lasciviously, showing every one of his fish teeth and the bulge of a lithe black tongue. Human men might not have such teeth or tongues, but that smile was one I had already learned to be wary of, and I edged a little further behind my mistress.

Aita ignored him. “Thvynder could destroy you for this trespass.”

The riverman slowly turned his jade eyes to Aita. “If they were here, perhaps. But their journey stretches long. Very long.”

I was captivated by the riverman’s strange eyes, but the implications of his words still struck me. “Thvynder is everywhere,” I said, every inch an indignant daughter of the High Priesthood. Being indignant felt better than being afraid. “They’re not on a journey.”

Aita shot me a silencing look, but it wasn’t the command in her expression that quieted me. It was the tightness around her eyes. Worry.

“Ah,” the riverman said, looking from me to the Miri. “Your shadow doesn’t know that her protector god is gone? Do any of the humans, I wonder? The priests?”

“You are here,” Aita observed, ignoring the riverman’s words again. In her effort not to ask questions, her words seemed stilted. “Many of your kind may be as well.”

The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not as sociable as some.”

“You will all leave.” Aita stepped forward, slipping her hand from mine. I felt a moment’s fear for her—she was a Miri but she carried no weapons, and she wasn’t a warrior like my mother. The riverman, with his teeth, each one so fine and pointed, glistening in the sun…

“This is not your realm,” Aita stated.

“There is no realm for us,” the man returned, a note of true lament in his harsh words. “We are born of the same creator, you and I, but my kind have languished in the human world while you Miri feasted here, drank these waters. You made yourselves gods. We became nightmares for children.” At the last, he looked to me and smiled again, needle teeth straight and sharp. “No more. Not with so few of your kind remaining. Not with your god a year gone, with no sign of return.”

I thought of the water Aita had given me to drink, the honey and the berries. I’d understood, on some level, that these things made Aita strong and helped her magic, and they’d do the same for me. But even young as I was, the riverman’s words sparked a deeper, more dangerous understanding.

We were born of the same creator.

You made yourselves gods.

“I will assemble the council,” Aita declared, her voice as hard and unyielding as the stone beneath our feet. “You and all your kind will be driven out of the High Halls. You may have passed a few moons in these waters, but our power is still vastly beyond yours. Go back to whatever den you’ve been hiding in, and never return.”

The riverman’s lips curled in anger, reeds splitting and cracking in fine lines. “Try, cousin.”

With that, the riverman slipped back into the water. His eyes lingered on me as he left, and I swore that I heard his voice once more, his lips twisting as he farewelled me: “Little shadow.”

Aita led me away from the riverbank. I was slow to comply, eyes still pinned on the place where the riverman had vanished beneath the shining water.

“Is Thvynder really gone?” I asked, because it was easier to talk about my god than the monster.

Aita looked over her shoulder at me, thought for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes. But you must never speak of it again. Thvynder is searching for their sister, Imilidese. The last Pillar. She left creation long ago and still has not returned.”

That made perfect sense to my child’s mind—if Berin was missing, I would search for him too. “Will Thvynder come back?”

Aita stood, nodding firmly. “They will.”

“How do you know?”

“Fate ordained it.” Aita squeezed my hand and cast her eyes north, looking toward something far out of sight. She started to walk across the rocks, and I dutifully followed, running to keep up. “Just like she ordained you be here, by my side.”

“She talked about me? When?” I pestered, intrigued. “What did she say?”

“Fate does not speak, not in the sense that you mean. And I will tell you no more.”

“Please!”

“No.”

I accepted that, frustrated though it made me. “When will Thvynder come back?”

“I cannot say exactly,” Aita told me. “But all will be well—so long as you keep all the secrets I’ve entrusted to you, especially this. Do you promise?”

“I promise,” I said without hesitation. I grabbed her hand and leaned my head into her arm. “Mistress.”

She smiled at the title, but her expression turned grim as she added, “And if you should ever encounter a riverman when you are alone, Yske, you must never ask it any questions. You must never let it touch you. You must run. Promise me.”

“I promise, mistress.”