We trekked for an hour before Askir decided we were far enough from the river to stop. “Rivermen can’t leave the water for long,” he told us. “They won’t risk coming after us.”
“That’s a myth, and those weren’t rivermen,” I said, though my words sounded toneless to my own ears, edged with a new rasp. Whatever healing I’d enacted on Ovir had overflowed to me, but it hadn’t been enough to completely heal me.
Or him.
“What else would they be?” Askir asked in a way that told me he’d already disregarded my observation. He said to the others, “We’re safe to stop.”
“We’ll keep watch,” Ittrid said of her and Bara, and the two of them slipped back into the trees.
I bit back another protest. I hadn’t the strength to fight with the priest, and my conviction was weak. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust someone else, and rest here on the cool forest floor.
Any relief I’d found faded as Berin and Esan lowered Ovir’s body to the ground nearby. Tears mingled with the sweat and blood on Berin’s face. The sight of it was almost as painful as my injuries, and I pushed my concentration to that more constant physical pain.
I dragged my pack over, pulling out salves, bandages, and thread. If I couldn’t convince the others to keep moving, I could patch them up and ready them for the next fight. Physical wounds, I could mend.
Memory welled like blood from a wound. I saw myself crouching over Ovir, murmuring runes and feeling that, against all logic, they would heal him. And they had. But I’d been too late, or I simply hadn’t used it properly. Now one of my brother’s closest friends was the first casualty of his quest.
The thread in my hands blurred through unshed tears. I looked down, distantly noting a lattice of new scars on my fingers from the monster’s fine teeth.
“Yske?” Sedi sank down beside me with her broken arm carefully held across her chest. She was gaunt with pain, her eyes haunted and pleading. “Can you…? Are you…?”
“Yes,” I told her, not sure which half-question I was answering or even what it meant. But when I saw the other woman’s need, my own grief and pain retreated. “Let me see.”
Sedi shifted and gingerly held out her arm. “You won’t do what you did with…”
It took me another moment to understand her question. “With Ovir? Oh… no. No. I don’t even know if I can.”
That surety that had compelled me to act with Ovir was gone. When I tried to recreate it, I felt only emptiness instead.
“What did you do?”
I ignored her question and began to feel, as gently as possible, down the limb. She flinched under my touch, but the break was not severe— no jagged ends or broken skin.
“I’ll bind it and give you something for the pain,” I told her, to which she nodded and set her jaw.
Still standing over Ovir’s body, Berin, Askir, Seera, and Esan conferred in low voices. As I carefully applied a numbing salve to Sedi’s arm, I turned my ear toward them.
Askir: “That cave was a trap.”
Berin’s posture was defeated, nearly uncaring. “I knew rivermen carried people off, but this…”
I inserted myself back into the conversation, perplexed. “I’ve seen rivermen before, and those were not them,” I reasserted. “Close, but too different.”
“There’s nothing else they could be.” Askir wouldn’t quite look at me.
Berin glanced at the priest briefly, but his own eyes were glassy.
“The moss and the bones,” I clarified. “Rivermen are creatures purely of water and river and stone, not forest and moss. And the way those bones were visible… the tooth marks. They’d been reused, they—”
“Gods below, shut up,” Esan snapped from where he slumped nearby, glaring at me from hollow eyes. “They killed Ovir. What else matters?”
His rebuke hit me like a slap. I licked my lips, looking from him to the others. They didn’t care what I had to say, and really, what did it matter if I was right? The creatures were a threat, whatever we called them.
Ittrid spoke up, her voice gentle. “We should build a pyre.”
Askir nodded. “Yes. We can’t stay here, and we can’t carry him any farther.”
I glanced at Berin, expecting an outburst, but it did not come. His control was tremulous, though—his fingers shook as he jerked a woodsman’s axe from the side of Seera’s pack and stalked off into the trees.
Worry for him coiled through me—not to mention a constant, unyielding fear that the creatures would return—but there was little I could do. I finished wrapping Sedi’s arm and looked for my next task. Esan had a gash down the back of one forearm, which he grudgingly let me stitch after a short standoff. His eyes had the same agonized, angry emptiness as Berin’s. If he wondered what I’d done to heal Ovir, he did not ask.
We burned Ovir’s body under the noonday sun and lingered until Seera, with growing urgency, insisted we move on. Berin and Esan did not rise, watching the body of their friend blacken and crumble, now nearly indiscernible from charred wood. Nui lay exhausted between them, her head in Berin’s lap.
The rest of us went to work, redistributing Ovir’s belongings between our packs. It felt callous, but we’d only brought what we needed to survive the journey and could leave nothing behind.
Before we left, Askir crouched and drew a series of runes in the earth beside the pyre. Ash wafted across his face as he offered a prayer to release Ovir’s soul from the mound of charred wood and bone.
This was the way of things, a ritual I knew well. Once the soul was released, it would be drawn to the Shepherd of the Dead—my father, wherever he was. In Eangen or Algatt, anywhere the High Halls spread above the Waking World, that passage might be instantaneous. But as far east as we were, there was a chance the High Halls were already inaccessible. If so, Ovir’s journey back to Eangen would be long and lonely—a journey made in a new body no longer bound to or visible in this world.
Touching my Sight, I saw Askir’s runes ignite with a clean golden magic, much like my own. Then there was a whisper, a brush of a presence, and I saw Ovir standing in the ashes of his pyre—whole and clean, flesh and blood. Askir and I were the only ones to look at him. Berin’s Sight was not strong enough, and the others had none at all.
Two blinks later, before Ovir could so much as look at us, he vanished, just as he should. An odd emptiness settled over the ashes, the clearing, and our battered company.
The High Halls were still within reach, I noted. Not bodily, not without doorways. But spiritually. That didn’t mean the edges of the upper realm that Ovir had transitioned to were whole or safe, but it was comforting.
Askir let out a slow breath. “Thvynder,” he murmured in relief, then unfolded his long limbs.
“Go on ahead,” Berin’s voice sounded dull. “Esan and I will bury the bones and catch up before dark.”
I stiffened. “Berin—”
“Fine,” Seera cut me off, shouldering her pack and picking up her wood axe, which Berin had left forgotten on the ground. “Follow the road.”
“I’ll stay too,” I decided.
“No, you won’t,” Berin returned flatly. “Leave us in peace.”
His refusal shocked me. “Berin—”
“Get as far up the road as you can and camp. Double watch, multiple fires,” Berin told Seera without looking at me again. “We take no more chances. Now go.”
* * *
I watched the sun set with growing trepidation. We had camped in the middle of the old road, erecting the tents against an evening downpour. The storm had eased now but the leaves and canvas still dripped, reminding me of the night I’d seen the foxfire and Isik.
I’d realized sometime over the course of the day that the figure I’d seen watching us outside the cave must have been one of the creatures, not my friend. If it had been him, he would have warned us. Helped us.
Instead, I’d seen an enemy and hadn’t told anyone. Perhaps the others would have disregarded my warning, but it redoubled the weight of responsibility in my gut. I’d sworn to bring Berin and his companions home alive. I’d already failed.
I worried burrs from Nui’s thick coat and watched the western road sink into a misty, damp twilight. Askir sat down beside me and folded his legs, resting his forearm across his knees. Nui glanced at him, then looked back to the road.
“Did Aita give you magic?” he asked, then added in a lower voice, “Or did your mother?”
“What?” I rasped. My throat still ached, and it had been hours since I’d spoken to anyone.
“I’ve been friends with your brother for some time,” the priest said, “which means I’ve been closer to your mother than most other priests outside the inner circle. It hasn’t slipped past me that most of that inner circle possess more power than the rest of us.”
“They are the most powerful priests and priestesses,” I pointed out. “That’s why my mother keeps them close.”
“See, that’s not true.” Askir followed Nui’s gaze down the road now, but his eyes were focused beyond it. “You and Berin are not priestly, but you both have magic. Berin can Shadow Walk, and has the Sight, though mildly.”
“It passed to us from our parents,” I reminded him, voice still cool.
“In Berin’s case, perhaps,” Askir acknowledged. “But what you did today says otherwise. No, listen to me, I’ve more to say. The man your father has chosen to succeed him had minimal magic when he was initiated. Now he weaves shadows and speaks to the dead. Your mother’s scion, Uspa, had no magic at all before she wandered into the Arpa High Halls with your mother. Now she heals with a touch.” At the last, his eyes dragged to me. “Like you. Or rather, you seemed to need runes, but I see little difference.”
“Thvynder blessed them. Us,” I replied tightly.
Askir ignored me. “Your mother ages slowly and her power grows by the year. The last time I saw her, I thought she was half Miri, her aura was so bright.”
Nui flinched and tugged away. I realized I’d been digging my fingers into her fur.
“Thvynder’s doing,” I insisted again.
“But Thvynder—” Now Askir lowered his voice even more, leaning to whisper in my ear, “—hasn’t been in Eangen since before the Winterborn invaded, when you and I were both children.”
“Pieces of them remain,” I countered. I felt his eyes pinned on the side of my face, watching every flicker and twitch. “The Watchman and the Vestige. You shouldn’t say things like this so loudly. This… That is a secret of the priesthood.”
“A priesthood you’re not part of. Still, you know everything. Likely because your parents let you live half your childhood in the High Halls with Aita.” Askir glanced over at Nui. “Even Hessa’s dog has a haze about her. Yes, I can see that too. My Sight is strong enough to see the subtleties of magics, and to know that the power that clings to this dog and Uspa looks different than mine. Your father’s has a grayness— remnants of the days he worshiped the death goddess. And yours—it has a lavender taint. Why the differences? Do the magics, perhaps, have a different source? Various sources in the High Halls?”
My mind churned for a moment, trying to piece together a response. Askir was certainly observant, but I felt that his conclusions were too much of a leap—even if they were true. There had to be more behind his assumptions, a conversation overheard or a secret stolen.
I knew much about stolen secrets.
I took my time replying, letting the tension ease out of me, and letting Askir see it.
“My family is favored,” I acknowledged eventually. “So are those close to them. But their sacrifices merit their rewards.”
Askir’s gaze pinned me. “What did you sacrifice?”
I lifted my eyes to the darkened leaves above our heads and watched the shadows shift in the black. As irritated as I was by him, it was a fair question. Magic given by a Miri always had a cost—usually blood sacrifice, as evidenced by the old scars that covered my parents’ hands and arms.
Aita’s voice slipped through my thoughts. There is a cost to such magic—a cost to claim it, a cost to wield it, and a cost to replenish it.
Was that why I felt so empty now? Did I need to make a sacrifice to replenish the magic Aita had given me?
I suppressed a shiver and a flush of resentment. I wanted to question Aita, to know why she’d done this to me with so little instruction or explanation. But I’d asked for a healing gift, twice, and she’d warned me of the price. I couldn’t blame her entirely.
“It was a gift, Askir,” I said, hiding my thoughts behind tired eyes. “Nothing more.”
“A priestess’s gift,” he corrected, unswayed. “Except Aita is no longer a goddess, so you are not her priestess. Thvynder alone dispenses magic to humans. She had no right. Did you give her your blood?”
I glared back at him, irritated by the truth in his assessment. There was still much Askir didn’t know, but pointing that out would put sacred secrets in jeopardy.
Thvynder alone could condone gifts of magic, but it was my parents who gathered it from the High Halls and dispensed it to the priesthood. I didn’t think it honest that they hid the source of their power, but I understood why. They did it because of the way Askir looked at me now—with indignation and a spark of jealousy. Power had to be controlled, given only to those who would use it for the good of all.
That, my mother did to a fault. Mostly.
“No, I did not give Aita my blood,” I said. “And I had no part in this. She gave it to me without my knowing. It didn’t even work, did it?”
“It worked,” Askir muttered, but I could see him pondering my response. “Just too late. Yske, you realize there is always a cost to magic like that. If you haven’t paid it yet…”
I shifted in discomfort. “The payment is still coming.”
“Could you heal again, now? Is the power still there?”
As I’d done earlier with Sedi, I reached for the feeling that had let me heal Ovir. I found the edges of it, but the well was empty.
“No.”
Tension ebbed from Askir’s body and concern shadowed his eyes. He didn’t need to speak for me to know what he was thinking.
I thought of my mother’s hands, covered with sacrificial scars. I looked down at my own fingers, knit with fine new marks from the teeth of the monster. With a start, I recalled the blood I’d smeared across Ovir’s cheeks. My blood had been shed around the healing. I’d let it flow, done nothing to stop it. Did that count as a blood sacrifice? Or had the leaf I’d ingested been enough for that first act?
Did Aita expect me to bleed myself every time I needed to heal?
Grim quiet stretched between Askir and me, filled with the hum of insects and the occasional drip of water from a bowing fern. I heard wolves howl in the distance, so far away that Nui barely lifted her head. But she barked soon after, and I saw a light among the trees.
Nui got to her feet, head lowered. Askir stood too, but I remained where I was. Thin veins of foxfire appeared throughout the forest, tracing the cracks of tree trunks and deadfall like the veins of a single living creature. Blue and green, white and cream, it punctuated the night like stars, filling Askir’s pale-skinned Algatt face with an eerie glow.
In this new illumination, Berin and Esan appeared from the darkness. Nui barked and leapt forward, half wary, half overjoyed— then came to a growling halt.
A stranger parted from the night behind them.