The full moon came on the second night of our journey east. Guided by Ursk, we camped in the shelter of a stand of boulders and huddled close, not daring to risk a fire. So it was that when the light of the moon spilled across me, I was nestled between Thray and Berin, and there was nowhere to hide.
The pain began slowly—memories of cuts and bruises, swelling and fading and chasing one another as my body began to seize. Then came the aching of my bones and the phantom taste of blood in my mouth. I felt the bite of arrowheads, crushing blows and lacerating claws.
I reached for my knife. My arm moved sluggishly, each stretch of my finger marked with absolute agony. I would have screamed, but all that left my lips was a thin, crackling exhalation.
The frigid handle of the knife brushed my palm. I closed my fingers, but could find no grip. My teeth ground, my lungs labored, and every muscle in my body began to quake.
A shadow fell over me, interrupting the light of the moon. Through a haze of pain, I saw Ursk. His face was hidden in silhouette but the white fur of his hood was full of moonlight. He wrapped his steady hand around mine and closed my fingers around the hilt of the knife. He—we—drew it.
“What are you doing?” I felt Berin sit up, but my eyes could no longer focus and my ears began to ring.
Ursk replied, his words lost to me. Other voices came too, and I felt Nui’s paws briefly on my chest.
My secret was exposed, now. All my companions would see the price I paid for my magic, here, in the darkened woods.
It did not matter. It could not matter.
Blood will stay the hand of death.
Pain latticed my body in a fresh, writhing wave. I twisted, feeling earth and snow and rock beneath me. My knife jarred against rock, and someone tried to pry it from me—gently, worriedly, trying not to hurt me. Ursk spoke, and their grip retreated.
I felt the back of my other hand on the cool ground, open and twitching with the remnants of someone else’s pain. Then my blade found the exposed palm, and I cut.
There was no new pain, only a sudden cessation of it—the breaking of a fever, the relief after birth, the departure of a smothering hand.
I opened my eyes and stared at my hand, pale and bloodied in a pool of moonlight. Beyond it was a haze of knees and feet and peering faces.
My dazed eyes traveled up Berin’s form. Unconsciousness swelled close, but before the shadows took me, I saw the horror in his dark eyes.
When I awoke again my forehead was pressed to Berin’s shoulder, my head cushioned on one of his arms. We lay mirroring one another—I with my bandaged hand tucked into my chest, he with my sheathed knife held to his, as if to keep it from me.
I looked upward, blinking to clear my eyes. The now moonless sky was latticed by bare branches and the night was hushed, punctuated by the forms of my friends as they dozed nearby. Nui’s head was heavy on my waist and I saw Thray’s white-haired form sitting watch at the mouth of the cleft.
“Ursk said you relive it all.” Berin’s voice was close to my head, low and devoid of sleep. “Everything you’ve healed?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak yet. There was no point asking how Ursk knew.
“The arrow that nearly killed me?”
I nodded again.
His arm under my head curled inward, pulling me more tightly into his embrace. “I didn’t know.”
I found my voice, though my throat felt thick with fatigue. “I didn’t want you to.”
He gave a humorless huff of a laugh. “Yske. I’m sorry. I’m… I don’t have the words. Why do you still use it?”
“Because I will bring you home,” I replied. His contrition soothed a resentful knot inside of me, but I still felt a tug of indignation. “I couldn’t turn my back on a power like that.”
“Even though it’s blood magic.” He spoke low, though this truth was certainly no secret anymore. “Even though it could kill you.”
“Yes,” I said, the word a shield.
“The priesthood will… I don’t know what they’ll do.” I felt Berin shift, and wondered if he was looking at Askir. “Mother and Father will protect you. We all will. But blood magic is—”
“Old magic.” My thoughts drifted back west, to the White Lake and the priesthood, my parents, and the Vestige and the Watchman of Thvynder. But as heavy and uncertain as my imaginings were, Aita was the figure who remained at the forefront of my mind. “But Aita is not my goddess, and I am not her priestess.”
Berin was quiet for a long, weighty moment. Whatever he thought of my assurances, he only said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for bringing you here. I’m sorry for all of it.”
The words were simple, his tone devoid of great emotion, but there was a depth of self-reflection that struck me.
“You can make it up to me,” I said, burying my forehead into his shoulder.
“Oh?” There was a new waver in his voice now. “How’s that?”
“Be nice to Isik.”
He laughed, and murmured, “I’ll do more than that. I’ll make Mother be nice to him too.”
The tension eased, and I pulled the cloak a little higher. Nui made a discontented huff and shifted position, lying with her back to mine.
“What will happen when you heal the tree?” my brother asked softly. “To you?”
“I don’t know. I won’t pay the price until the next full moon. If all goes to plan… we’ll be home by then. Aita can help me.”
“I can’t ask you to heal me again. None of us can. Or will.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Good thing you’ll never have to ask.”
* * *
The next morning Ursk watched the forest and Thray stood above our hiding place on a shoulder of rock, one ear cocked to the wind. The now perpetual light of foxfire glowed over her head from the treetops, lending her pale hair and lashes an eerie glow in the purple dawn. Beyond her, branches latticed the sky, dark and decorated with snow-laden autumn leaves.
“There are Revenants close by, but Kygga is leading them away,” she told us as she dropped back into the cleft, snow muffling her footfalls. “We need to circle south.”
We set off, eating dried meat and nuts as we went. My breath misted in tired gusts and I kept my eyes down. The company seemed to share my mood, even Nui trotting soberly in our midst.
Noon came and passed. The forest became rockier the further south we traveled and though I felt safer with my feet on solid stone, I couldn’t help but fear we were adding too much time to our journey.
Midafternoon, Kygga materialized in a windblown, stalking stride. We immediately stopped, hands dropping to weapons—not against him, but whatever danger he brought word of. The Winterborn tapped the tips of two fingers over his lips in the Duamel signal for quiet and beckoned us.
I broke into a jog to keep up, avoiding roots and keeping to the thickest patches of snow and rock. A ridge appeared through the trees and Kygga waved us onwards, into the space between the stony rise and the sheltering bulk of a drift-laden rockfall.
We piled into the shelter like pups into a den, Berin grabbed Nui, and we went still. I glanced around for Mawny the owl, but I hadn’t seen him in hours.
Pressed between Ittrid and Seera, I could just see over the drifts of snow. Foxfire continued to trace a steady glow across exposed wood and beneath the mantle of white, passive and unaware. The sky above was murky with cloud and the daylight muted.
“What are we hiding from?” Askir murmured to the Windwalker.
“Hush,” was Kygga’s only reply.
At first I heard nothing but the wind and the creak of frozen branches. Nui gave a plaintive whine, shushed as Berin scratched her ears.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The frozen earth shivered beneath us. Branches rattled. The echoes of cracking, breaking trees chased snow from the canopy in trails of drifting white, the softness of its falling contrasting with the continued snap and rupture of old wood.
A ridge appeared in the forest, draped in moss and snow. But no— that couldn’t be right. The hulking shape was moving. It was so huge the trees shuddered and snapped in its path and I struggled to find the end of it, but there was no denying that it was alive. A beast larger than Aegr, easily the size of the Hask’s meeting hall.
I grabbed Ittrid’s arm, and the other woman caught mine in return. Even Seera, on my other side, quivered closer.
A cluster of thick pines toppled with a squealing, cracking groan, and at last I caught a clear view of the beast.
It was a Revenant. The vague melding of a mountain lion and a boar, its powerful body was clad in flaking, mismatched furs, mosses, and vines. Its ribs jutted through here and there and its empty eye sockets oozed a constant, thick pus of white and yellow. Its teeth were a haphazard jumble, though its tusks—as long as I was tall—matched. Perhaps they were even original, still clinging in the skull of a beast that died long, long ago. And should have stayed dead.
At long last its swishing, molting tail flicked from sight.
“Tell me that wasn’t hunting us,” Bara breathed.
“It wasn’t,” Kygga said, unfolding from his own crouch beside Thray. “There are a dozen of them, all heading east to join Logur and his army at the lake. The island is already thick with Revenants, and there will be no getting to the tree without bloodshed. But theirs is not the only army massing.”
I straightened slowly. “Who?”
“The Arpa have arrived,” Kygga said, giving us a tight, satisfied smile. “Estavius awaits you on the southern shore.”