I thought it was a boulder at first. Taller than I was and twice as long, it lay on its side beneath the towering trees. I might not have identified it as a skull at all had a lynx not slipped out from an empty eye socket with a rodent in its jaws and sauntered off into the trees.
I watched the lynx go, then inched closer to the mound of bone. My mind worked, trying to identify what kind of beast the skull might have belonged to. It was larger than anything I’d seen in the Waking World or the High Halls. Sea serpents grew to near this size, and I’d seen their skulls, trophies from the war with the Winterborn, suspended from the rafters of halls along the coast. But we were far, far from the sea.
Furthermore, this skull was not… whole. Yes, it was intact, with eye sockets and arching browbone and a jaw with many teeth, thick with moss. But there were odd seams beneath a patchy skin of lichen and a cap of clinging, spindly wildflowers. Sections of bone did not quite meet up, and showed varying degrees of degradation and discoloration—as if it had been pieced back together.
A crash in the bushes announced Nui, who skittered around the skull, sniffing earnestly. But her tail also wagged, and I forced my breath out in a calming rush. The skull was disquieting, but no threat.
Seera came after the hound, followed by Ittrid. The other two women slowed when they saw my find.
“Gods below,” Seera muttered, coming closer. “What left that behind?”
The rest of the company emerged from the mist after the women, staring and muttering. I spied Berin carrying my pack, and gave him a distracted look as he set it down.
Ursk reached out and felt a patch of exposed, weather-worn bone. I touched my Sight and saw a flare of power ripple down his outstretched arm—the palest gold, twined with a powdery, winter-sky blue.
The Duamel priest turned to look at us, his brows furrowed. “This is old. Too old to lie like this. It should be buried beneath rock and stone. It was buried, and then it was not.”
No one asked how he knew, even though most of them couldn’t have seen the flare of his magic like I had.
“What did it belong to?” Seera muttered, peering into the skull’s empty eye socket.
“A monster,” Esan replied.
Berin looked at Ursk. “How did it get here?”
The Duamel pulled his fingers from the bone and gave us all a tight, uncertain smile. “It walked.”
He could offer no more explanation. But as we left, spurred by unease and the shadow of that ancient beast, I couldn’t help but fixate on how the moss clung to the bone… just as it had clothed the creatures who had attacked at the river.
* * *
Time passed. I bled, my time corresponding with Sedi’s, and Berin called a halt. For three days we camped in a rare meadow, where sunlight broke through the trees and wildflowers bloomed. I rested when my pains were too great and hobbled about when I could, restocking my stores. I made a salve to rub on my lower stomach and ease the pain, which Sedi shared. Her arm was also healing well, and my aid combined with the comradery of mutual trial dulled the edge between us—or so I felt.
Ursk’s health had been improving, and his progress redoubled during those days of rest. He and the others hunted and foraged, repaired gear, and smoked meat, whiling away the hours as productively as they could.
It was during this time that I finally found widow root. It grew beside a stream, frail yellow flowers rustling in the breeze. I cut off the leaves and set them to dry for soap, then knelt eyeing the mound of leftover roots and flowers for some time.
I could make yifr with this and try to reach the High Halls in spirit. But I could not do so openly, not with Askir watching me.
Most of the company left early the next morning to hunt, before the first blush of dawn seeped through the canopy. Nui bounded after them, eager to run and chase. Bara and Sedi wandered off together, arm in arm, and Ittrid went to a nearby stream to bathe. That left me with Ursk, fast asleep on a bedroll of donated blankets and a pallet of woven grasses.
I eyed him for a time, watching him breathe as I pulled out the ingredients for yifr. I withdrew another pouch as well, one marked with red string. Covering my face with a lavender-scented cloth, I opened the pouch and held it just under Ursk’s nose. His breathing immediately became deeper, longer, and the flicker of dreams behind his eyelids faded. Now, there was no chance of him intruding upon my ritual.
I made the yifr quickly, grinding and heating and mixing with quiet efficiency. I put away my tools and herbs as I went so that by the time a steaming cup of yifr rested before me, there was no sign of what I’d done. If anyone returned early, they’d find Ursk and I both fast asleep— he in true slumber, I in another world entirely.
I raised the concoction to my mouth and paused, the smooth wood of my cup brushing my bottom lip. The forest was full of dawn light now, warm and gold. I rooted myself in the moment, just for a breath, then I drank.
I took time to rinse the cup, dumping the dregs into the side of the fire, where the coals hissed and spat. Then I lay down, folded my hands over my fluttering belly and closed my eyes.
Sound began to blur. I felt momentarily as though I lay in a boat, tilting and rolling on gentle waves, then I lost physical sensation entirely.
I pried my eyes open. Instead of the lush canopy, I saw a night sky of pure and unadulterated black, smooth and vast. From where I lay, my view was hedged by waving, parched reeds.
I sat up, blinking through a wave of dizziness. The reeds swayed in a breeze I couldn’t feel, and the textureless sky left me feeling disoriented.
Sensation slowly returned to my limbs, though muted and dull. Fingers braced in the cool, muddy earth, I slowly climbed to my feet. Waves of reeds spread in every direction except what I supposed must be west. There, faint on the horizon, I saw a variance—a mingling of vague colors and light, like a distant forest fire under a belly of cloud. The Eangen High Halls?
The only other illumination came from vague, pale curls of light among the reeds. Foxfire? No, there was no forest here, no wood for it to grow on. Perhaps they were some other form of fungus, or even dormant fireflies, clinging to the thick, dry blades. They were beautiful, in their way—stars cast across this divine earth, instead of the featureless sky above.
Everywhere else was a thick and impenetrable darkness. It was the essence of both potential and lack, and reminded me distantly of how the Miri described the Unmade itself.
I was tempted to walk further east, deeper into the speckled blackness, but fifteen years of experience in this realm kept my feet firmly rooted in place. Instead, I sketched runes in the air. They stood out boldly, glowing lines imprinted over the colorless landscape with my new lavender taint at their core.
My stomach turned in unease as I sketched the runes for prayer and travel, and Aita’s name. I overlaid them, tangling them together in the artful way my parents had taught me. When I finished, I kept my fingers splayed, holding them open like a net to catch my words.
“Aita, hear me if you can,” I said. Meanwhile, in the quiet of my heart I whispered, This is not a prayer. “Come to me. Tell me what this magic is, and how to use it.”
With that, I pulled my fingers together. The runes vanished in a burst of fine, lavender-gold sparks and the wind swept it toward the faint glow in the west.
I waited. The reeds waved and rasped. My shoes soaked and dampness seeped into my clothes. I began to shiver, though I knew that my body lay in the comfort of my bedroll, beside a fire on a gentle morning. A morning that was swiftly passing by, its passage marked by the increasing clarity of my mind as the yifr’s effects wore off. Already, the horizon was beginning to fade, and soon my soul would retreat through the fabric of the worlds.
Finally, a voice came. It was thin and distant, a murmur in a long tunnel, but I knew it was Aita. The power in my blood surged at the sound and my grip on the High Halls hardened again.
“…change nothing now,” she said, her voice fragmented and thin, but waxing with each word. She did not sound pleased and I sensed I’d missed a longer tirade, but I had no time to ask her to repeat it.
Aita continued, coming to me in ebbs and flows—clear one moment, faint the next. “Have you forgotten all I taught you? …old ways, Yske, for this power to succeed. My priestesses…”
Anxiety fluttered through my chest. “Have you marked me as a priestess?”
“Goddesses have priestesses. We are neither,” Aita stated, harsh and clipped, then her voice faded for a breath. “…pay the price for this magic, at each turn of the moon. Use it sparingly. Blood will replenish it. Blood will stay the hand of death.”
Something touched my face. Water? Droplets of water, like rain? I flinched back, hands flying to my cheeks, but there was nothing there. Again it came, a drop of wetness and… another voice. An urgent voice, coming not from the world around me but from inside my own skull.
The blackness closed in around me, then faded. I blinked. Ittrid leaned over me in the Waking World, black hair dangling between us in dripping braids. Her eyes were wide and, as I stared up at her, she made a relieved sound.
“We have to move,” she said, pulling me to a sitting position. Belatedly, I saw the axe in her hand. “Yske, now!”