I am Ursk.”I am Ursk.”
The newcomer was older than any of us by perhaps ten years but his eyes were distinctly round, nearly childlike. He wore no beard and was clad in a linen undertunic, with a road-worn kaftan unbelted on top. His smile was warm and his posture polite. He might have been any traveler seeking shelter in the Morning Hall instead of a stranger in the wilds.
“You’re Duamel,” I observed. The man’s large eyes and pale skin made his heritage undeniable, though I couldn’t fathom how one of the northerners had wandered so far east, let alone happened upon us. He also looked ill, I noted—dark circles shadowed his eyes and his cheeks were too flushed. “What are you doing here?”
“He’s a guest.” Berin’s voice was impatient. I glanced at him, startled, and he seemed to collect himself. His manner toward the Duamel was almost proprietary, while Esan simply looked tired. He shouldered through the group and dropped his pack in the outer circle of bedrolls, barely under the shelter of the tent.
“He’s a Priest of Fate,” Berin clarified, “sent by his goddess.”
Askir shoved forward. “You would have had to leave Duamel months ago.”
Ursk gave a small bow. I noticed a pack on his back, but he had no bedroll and no tent. “I left Atmeltan last year. Eirine—” the Duamel name for Fate, I recalled “—sent me to Algatt, where I wintered and learned more of your language. I set out from there when the snow melted.”
“Why?” The question came from Sedi, blunt and perplexed.
Ursk shrugged and looked around at us. His manner of speaking was low, slow in the Duamel way, but his accent was Algatt, like my father’s. “To guide you, I believe.”
“You came to find us?” Seera asked. She had edged slightly in front of us, her hand conspicuously close to the axe at her belt. “Last year?”
“I obey my goddess,” Ursk said. I eyed him, searching for a lie at the same time as I tried to identify his ailment. “I saw a vision of a road east, and a great tree, and two men beside a pyre.” At this, he looked at Berin and Esan. “So here I am.”
Nui prowled the edge of the firelight, head still low and eyes wary. I felt much the same, though I found my unease was directed less toward Ursk than to his mission overall. It was no great stretch to imagine Fate had foreseen our journey and sent one of her new order of priests to join us. But why? What did that mean for the magnitude of Berin’s foolish quest?
Ittrid, evidently realizing no one else was going to step up, transformed into hostess. She ushered the stranger to the fire and pressed a cup of water into his hands.
“Do you heed Hearth Law?” she asked.
“As Fate upholds it,” the stranger returned, giving her a shy smile. His childlike eyes were disarming and genuine.
I caught Berin’s arm as he passed. “He found you in the forest?” I asked in a low voice. “Did he tell you anything else?”
My brother looked archly from my hand to my face. “Yes, and no. I wasn’t about to leave him. He serves one of the Four Pillars, just like we do.”
“His people also invaded when we were children.” Seera shuffled in, arms laced across her chest, voice low. “My father nearly died because of them.”
“They invaded because the Winterborn forced them to,” Berin reminded her. “But they’re our allies now, and good people. If you’d been to Duamel, you wouldn’t speak like that.”
“Forgive me, far traveler,” Seera said dryly. “But after what just happened, I can’t believe you’d trust a stranger wandering out of the forest. He could rob us. Kill us in our sleep.”
For once, I agreed with Seera. This must have been plain in my face, because Berin leveled his gaze at me. “A Priest of Fate turning up is far less strange, in my opinion, than my twin sister hiding a divine gift.”
I tensed. I wished Seera wasn’t part of this conversation, but there would be no barring her out now. My best defense was honesty, and confidence.
“I haven’t hidden anything,” I said, low enough that the others were unlikely to overhear. “Aita gave me a gift for this journey. I didn’t know what it was until Ovir… until that moment. I didn’t know. I swear.”
Berin still surveyed me, but his eyes once again took on a guarded, glassy quality at the reminder of Ovir’s death.
“How could you not know?” Seera pushed.
“I didn’t.” My temper frayed. My thoughts snared on a memory of Ovir—the water dripping from my hair, the feel of his shuddering chest beneath my hands. The raw flesh of his throat and his bulging, bloodshot eyes. “Aita gave me no warning and no instruction. I don’t know how to use it.”
“That’s obvious,” Seera murmured.
I started to reply, but the sight of her face half turned away, tears brimming in her eyes, stayed my tongue.
Berin put an arm around her. She didn’t fold into him as I might have done, but she blinked the tears from her eyes and cleared her throat.
I drew a deep breath and looked over my shoulder to the fire. Bara sat with Ursk now too, talking steadily.
“I’ll do what I can to heal him,” I said, turning my gaze back to my brother and ignoring Seera, still wrapped in his arm. “But we should be cautious.”
“Of course,” Berin said, squeezing Seera one last time before he let her go. “We’ll have plenty of time to learn about our guest.”
A warning horn blared in my mind. “You sound as if…”
“He’s offered to guide us to the Hask.”
“The Hask,” I repeated flatly. “Do they worship the Bear?”
“Yes. They are the people who live beneath the great tree—” My brother gestured outward, encompassing the land ahead. “—at the edge of the world.”
* * *
The next morning I fell into step beside Seera as we set off east. The day was gray, the air cool with whispers of autumn and the threat of rain. But according to our new guide, we would reach shelter before the storm hit.
“I don’t like this,” I murmured to my cousin as we walked. I eyed Berin and Ursk up ahead, conversing in quiet voices as they picked their way over tangled roots and ducked low branches. Seera and I were at the very rear of the party, with only Nui further behind. “He seems harmless, and I trust Fate, if he’s speaking the truth. But why would she send us a guide?”
Seera made a noncommittal noise. She wore a light cloak under her pack with the hood down, and the tufts of her braids snagged in its folds as she glanced down at me. “What’s wrong with him? His health.”
“I’m not sure,” I replied honestly. I’d listened to Ursk describe his symptoms to me last night, but the combination of them had been baffling. “It doesn’t sound like anything that can spread. It’s a poisoning, perhaps from something he’s been eating. There’re any number of dangerous mushrooms and berries out here, some of which have perfectly safe twins. I’ve given him something to clean his blood, but it will be days before I know if it’s working.”
Seera took this with consideration. “Then he’s lucky Berin took him in.”
I’d already heard Askir mutter that the decision should have been a communal one, but he, Seera, and I seemed to be the only ones concerned by the man’s appearance.
“Berin does seem taken with him,” I murmured.
“Ovir’s dead,” Seera said bluntly. She paused before she went on, and I saw her fight back emotion. “Berin isn’t thinking clearly. He snatched up the closest thing he could save.”
“I’m the one that failed Ovir.” The words struck me as they came out of my mouth, and I quietened. Focusing on the path, I noted the edge of an ancient paving stone—an unnaturally smooth line in the pattern of moss and deadfall.
I thought of the same moss on the arm of the creature, locked around my throat, and resisted the urge to touch my neck.
Seera didn’t correct me or taunt me. I thought she wouldn’t speak at all, and I began to slow my pace to fall out of step with her.
Then she said, “Ovir tried to save you. When he went to protect you, the rivermen took him. You didn’t just fail him. Your helplessness is the reason he died.”
The sudden ice in her voice jarred me. “I fought,” I bit out, desperate to shirk this new burden. “I tore out its throat.”
“And you still would have drowned without one of us to save you. Me. I saved you. But I won’t lose my life for you, Yske. You say you’re here to keep us safe, to bring us home? Such a great sacrifice for you, Berin’s poor meek sister, giving up her quiet life. But you won’t pick up a sword when we need you to. You’ll stand by and let us die for you.”
I stopped in my tracks. “That’s not what—”
My cousin spoke over me. “Next time you fail, I’ll leave you to die.” She spared me one more short, heavy look before turning her back on me and lengthening her strides.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move, pinned in place by her cruelty. Maybe that was all it was—cruelty, born of grief and the need to blame.
Or perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was more of a burden than I was worth. Perhaps my passivity, my refusal to train and channel my potential for violence, was selfishness. Perhaps the responsibility of Ovir’s death was mine and mine alone to carry.
The rest of the group continued on, all of them save Seera oblivious to the fact that they were leaving me behind.
The hurt and indignation burned, so deep I felt dizzy. I had fought. I’d done my best to take care of myself, but it hadn’t been enough. I’d done my best to heal, and that hadn’t been enough either.
Was this the price of my ideals? The lives of my friends?
A crack made me jump. I spun to see Nui land on the forest floor with a newly broken branch between her teeth. She caught up to me in self-satisfied trot and flopped unceremoniously at my feet, gnawing on the end of the branch in a flash of sharp white teeth.
I crouched, wavering under the weight of my pack, and scratched at the hound’s pointed ears. She pliantly turned her head into my hand, still chewing, eyes soft and only a little distracted. Her tail thumped on the moss.
Grateful tears burned behind my eyes. My mother might have sent me to care for Berin—faulty as I was—but she’d sent Nui to comfort me.
“Come,” I murmured, unfolding with a muscle-aching wince and starting off after the group. “We have to catch up.”
* * *
Rain struck at noon, mere moments before Ursk led us into the shelter of a conifer grove. The trees were enormous, their trunks as thick as houses and their boughs so dense no light reached the cushion of needles beneath our feet. The only reminder of the storm berating the outside world was rain darkening the trunks and a steady dripping sound.
A dozen paces in, Ursk pushed back his hood and turned to smile at us. “See? Shelter. We can continue this way.”
Grateful as I was to be out of the rain, I looked behind us. The more varied forest we’d emerged from was still in sight, green leaves and tall ferns shuddering under the assault of the storm. I could just make out a pair of waystones marking the road east.
“We shouldn’t leave the road,” I cautioned.
Ursk’s haggard eyes found me, the rings under them especially pronounced in the dim light. “That’s barely a road, and it will become impassable soon. If you want to reach the Hask before winter, you’ll have to go around.”
“Around what?” Askir asked.
Ursk looked at my brother, seeming discomfited for the first time. “Berin and I spoke of this last night. You must know of my priesthood’s… abilities. We have a touch of Fate’s foresight—sometimes in visions, sometimes simply knowledge. If we do not go south now, we will lose too much time.”
I looked at my brother. His black curls stuck to his face and droplets of rain clung to his beard. A little of the grief that had haunted him since Ovir’s death had ebbed, but I wasn’t sure I liked what had replaced it any better—a distracted shallowness that didn’t belong to my brother at all.
“Ursk knows the way,” Berin reminded us. “If he says we need to veer south, we’ll try it.”
I looked, of all places, to Askir, wondering if I’d see any trace of my own unease in his face. Would he sense something amiss?
But the pale Algatt only eyed the forest around us, his thoughts hidden behind passive vigilance.
No one else spoke up in protest, so we began to walk. I fell behind as I usually did, keeping company with Nui as she ran before and behind us, sniffed under deadfall and dragged fallen branches. Eventually she tired of exploring and settled in at my side at a stately lope.
I’d just about convinced myself that my unease was unfounded when I saw the doe. She was far off through the trees, shielded by trunks, but from where I stood I had a clear line of sight.
The doe lifted her head, surrounded by the dripping hush of the forest. She was pale dun and speckled with white, her brown eyes large and innocent, even at this distance.
But from her mouth hung a young rabbit, little gray paws dangling limp and its head between her teeth. I halted and Nui looked up, letting out an instinctive warning huff.
As I watched, one hand resting protectively on Nui’s back, the doe ate the rabbit. She did so politely, munching and crunching with her ears flicking and her eyes bright. Occasionally she shook the limp creature a little to adjust her hold. When the last limp paw vanished between blood-stained lips, the doe dropped her head to the forest floor, sniffing for remnants. Finding none, she flicked her tail and wandered out of sight.
Nui twitched beneath me and I realized I was crushing her to my hip. I crouched, hugging the hound instead, and tried to quell my racing heart.
Still, my stomach roiled. Nui squirmed again in my grasp and I reluctantly let her go, mourning the lost consolation of her smelly bulk. She started off in the direction the deer had gone, nose questing.
“Stay with me,” I warned her, swallowing the gorge in my throat. The dog obeyed and I slowly unfolded, my stomach still clenched. “Gods below… What was that?”
There was no one to reply, but an answer already sat heavy in my gut.
It felt like a warning. It felt like an omen.