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Hrall sat alone on a small pile of crates, cradling Ethy's quarterstaff. He had cleaned it off, but he could almost feel the blood that had soaked into the wood. The weapon was tainted – but it was all he had left of Ethy, and curse him for a fool, but he needed to keep that small remnant close.
Ethy had been his dearest friend when they were young. Hrall had grown up with her, learned to hunt with her, kissed her one Bloom evening when they were both drunk. He had never understood what people meant when they spoke of attraction, but Hrall knew he had loved Ethy in his own way. But then . . . something changed. Hrall thought he could trace it back to when Ethy's child had died, but he wasn't sure. His mind was so slow these days; his memories marred by the mist of years.
Ornhild and some her friends walked past in a close huddle. They whispered to one another with heads bowed and eyes skittering from side to side like frightened creatures. None of them had seen what happened – what Faren had done. Most barely knew what had happened to themselves in that chaos of wings and smoke, never mind what had been happening to anyone else.
No, only Hrall knew of Faren’s terrible crime. And Hrall didn’t know what to do.
Hrall put his head in his hands. He was the last council member left. It had been much bigger when he was Dannaskeld. Urdven had been on it, as had the old blacksmith, the old coppersmith, a scattering of others from various professions. Most had died from old age, or simply decided that they needed to step away. Hrall had watched with mounting despair as each year brought a new empty space at the table.
Nobody seemed to want to fill those spaces, either. The crafters and smiths were close enough that they’d formed an unofficial council of their own, but none offered to take up a malstenn. Aethvald, who oversaw the maintenance of the wells and water distribution, would swing by council meetings when he deemed in necessary, but never took an official seat. It was like they all sensed that Erdansten was grinding to a halt, stagnant in its fear, and decided that saving the town was more trouble than it was worth. There was something very wrong with Erdansten. Something that Hrall desperately wanted to help fix. He just didn't know how.
Only Rostfar, bright and steadfast, had given Hrall any hope. But now she, too, was lost to him.
"Hrallvir," Faren said. Hrall looked up. Faren was standing by a hastily-erected tent with his arms folded. He tilted his head toward the tent flap and vanished back inside. Reluctantly, Hrall followed.
Faren, more like a wounded animal than a human, paced back and forth. "Rostfar killed Urdven," he finally said, spitting the words as if they were rotten berries. Hrall blinked at him.
"No—"
"It wasn't my fault, Hrallvir. It was all down to her and those creatures. That thing allowed the arrow to pass through and hit Urdven." Faren came to an abrupt stop and turned to stare at Hrall with his hollow, haunted eyes. "I didn't do it."
"You're talking nonsense, lad," Hrall said. "Your intent matters, true, but you still fired the killing shot."
Faren had crossed the room before Hrall even registered him moving, and seized Hrall by the front of his shirt. Hrall tried to lift the quarterstaff to defend himself, but his traitorous fingers had dropped the weapon.
"No, Hrallvir,” Faren hissed in his face. “It was Rostfar. That's what the people have to know. You mustn't contradict me when I tell them."
Hrall closed his eyes. He believed that Rostfar had left voluntarily, deliberately sought out the wolves – but he didn't believe that she was a traitor. Not in the way that others claimed. Perhaps she had lied to everyone about her true nature, but had she ever had a choice?
"No," he heard himself say. "You'll tell them the truth. This has all gone too far."
Faren shook him. Hrall's back and hips groaned in protest and pain snapped up his spine as his feet left the floor.
"It hasn't gone far enough," Faren hissed. Spittle flicked his lips and sprayed onto Hrall's face. "It's always those wolves. Those stinking beasts. They infect everything with their magic, bring terrors into ordinary human lives and ruin them. Magic scares you, doesn’t it?”
"Yes," Hrall wheezed.
“And you want peace?”
“Yes – Faren, stop—”
"Then you have to kill them all. Burn them out of that forest, slaughter them. Then we can all go home and live."
It was getting harder to breathe. Hrall’s vision was going black and he couldn't think. Oh, if only he were ten years younger. If only his body weren’t so stiff and slow. If only.
"We'll lose lives. I'll – not let it – not let you."
"Ethy was right," Faren muttered, more to himself than to Hrall. "She said I did the right thing in Myrardaen. They did have to die. But she failed here, didn't she? Even she failed. And I'm not her. I . . . can't." His grip slackened. Hrall instantly tried to get free, but he didn't make it. Faren was on him again in a heartbeat, pinning him down like an animal. This time his hands deliberately sought out Hrall's throat.
"Stop struggling," Faren hissed. "I'm not killing you. But you can't get in the way, Hrallvir. You can't. This all has to happen."
Hrall's vision went dark. I'm sorry, Rost-Skelda, he thought. Then the blackness claimed him.
⁂
Aethren’s stomach twisted as they were wrenched out of the physical world. Wind screamed in their ears, threatening to peel the skin from their face, as everything dissolved into strands of dizzying colour. They were dimly aware of five points of pain in each shoulder as if from grasping fingers.
Without warning, their feet struck solid ground. They stumbled and landed on their knees with a muffled groan as the movement jostled their shoulder.
“Are you injured, hrafaïn?”
Aethren blinked at a pair of bare feet a mere finger’s length in front of their face. Their vision was blurry, but they lifted their head until they could see the hem of a yellow dress.
“What in the name of Erdan’s rocky boulders are you doing here?”
“I would have come sooner, but I wished to bring as much aid as I could.” Flannað knelt so she was level with Aethren and offered one spindly-fingered hand.
Aethren got up with Flannað’s help and stared around. They were standing on Deothwicc’s slope, their back to the forest. Isha was half-propped against a tree as if he had fallen there, his face a picture of confusion. It might have been comical, if Aethren wasn’t so wracked with shock and pain.
“You know this . . . creature?” Myr asked, drawing close to Aethren’s side. He eyed Flannað with – not hostility, but something close. His lips were drawn back over his teeth in a garish warning snarl. Flannað looked suitably uncomfortable as she took a step back.
“We’ve met before,” Aethren said, still reeling. Their injured arm felt full of pins and needles, and their head was pounding too much to think.
“Aethren! Isha!” Mati broke out of the trees. There was a cut on his forehead, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. He went straight to Isha, helping him up and fussing over him. “Where’s Rost? What happened?”
“There,” Flannað said, pointing back out across the plain.
They all turned as one. First came the rustling of wings, the crackle of raw magic filling the air like lightning, the rush of wind – and then Aethren saw her.
Rostfar was suspended at the centre of a living, seething mass, fighting its hold, her body alight with power. Not a cold power like Ylla’s weaves, though; more like the warmth of Bloom, spilling from her skin in translucent waves. She was terrifying and ethereal and godlike. It made Aethren’s skin crawl.
The cloud twisted its shape like a shoal of fish as it descended on the slope, and Rostfar dropped. As soon as her feet struck the grass, the power drained away, leaving her tired and angry and human. There was dirt on her face and her blood in her hair, and she looked far more dangerous than any deity.
“He killed Urdven!” Rostfar snapped at the hrafmaer who had carried her. “Why did you take me away? I could have – I could have—” But Rostfar didn’t seem to know what she could have done. Her knees buckled.
The revelation hung suspended above them. Nobody seemed able or willing to speak. Isha let out a moan of horror. It sounded muffled and very far away.
“I am sorry, Yrl Wyrdsaer,” said one of the hrafmaer. While her fellows had settled in low tree branches, bare feet dangling and bodies tensed for flight, she had remained on the slope. She was hunched and elderly, with beads of carved bone in her unnaturally black hair. Aethren thought her name was Ólinvar. “Truly, I am. But we had to get you to safety.”
“Why did you come?” Aethren broke in. A high, relentless buzzing in their ears was making it hard to focus on the conversation. “If Ylla sent you—”
“Ylla?” Flannað laughed. “We follow her no longer, hrafaïn. Thrigg was quite the inspiration.”
“Thrigg?” Aethren glanced around at where Thrigg stood in the shadows of the treeline, hugging herself.
“I don’t think—” Thrigg began.
“Hush, dear,” Flannað said with a smile. “Thrigg here made a wonderfully rousing speech. About Ýgren, about Ylla’s crimes, and about you. You inspired her, brought her hope – and she believed it was a hope we should all have felt.”
Thrigg’s cheeks were darker than usual, as if flushed. “Look, it wasn’t a speech. It was an argument. With Ylla. In full earshot of . . . almost everyone in Hrafnholm. But I was fed up! Furious! Ylla caused this, and she’d rather send you to deal with the fallout of her crimes than face them herself, and I could hear you were in so much pain, and I just—” she broke off with a sharp gasp. “I’d done nothing for long enough.”
“Ren, what’s she talking about? What do the hrafmaer have to do with all this?” Rostfar asked stiffly.
“Humans and wolves once lived together. Not just co-existence, but . . . really together. And Ylla – made a rift between them and caused us all to forget everything, because she thought humans shouldn’t have magic,” Aethren explained.
“I was there. I saw the damage she wrought to your culture and history,” Ólinvar said. Her eyes were watery and sad. “Most of the elders are too afraid to leave Ylla, but I came. I came because Eahalr was my home once, long before Ylla drowned it and created the Wyccmarshes to divide the land. My heart is old, but not so barren that new seeds of hope will not grow there.”
Aethren looked up at the hrafmaer in the trees. They counted sixteen in total, including Thrigg, Ólinvar and Flannað. Each one was staring at them with hopeful and determined eyes, as if they believed Aethren a new saviour. The buzzing in their ears rose to a relentless horror-pitch.
“I brought you this,” Flannað said. Her voice came from a vast distance. Aethren slowly dragged their gaze to her and saw she was holding out a circlet of woven silver. Ylla’s circlet.
Aethren stared at it. Was this a trap; some last, desperate ploy for Ylla to have her revenge? Someone might have said their name, but their heartbeat drowned out everything else.
A familiar, calloused hand reached out and took the circlet. Aethren’s eyes snapped to Marken’s face as he held it out to them. He wore an expression somewhere between grief and pride.
“This was Ýgren’s,” he said gently. “She gave it to Ylla before we left Hrafnholm. I think . . . it is fitting that you should wear it now.”
Aethren looked up at him for a long, uncertain moment, aching for reassurance and not knowing how to ask for it – and then Marken pulled them into a hug. They could have remained there for a long time, warm and safe in his arms.
But someone screamed. And the world erupted into flames.
