Then there was the book from Hlosnian. A gift that must have cost the stone whisperer dearly. Rime had given it to her the night she left.
Hirka heard the flutter of wings. Kuro landed on the window ledge and squeezed in through the vent. He swooped down and got settled in his drawer. He hadn’t been himself recently. He didn’t hop around much anymore. Just walked. She’d even seen him tip over once. It was like he was depressed. Maybe the raven was struggling as much as she was. Struggling to find nourishment in this dead, mightless world.
At least they had each other. She probably wouldn’t have coped these past few months without him.
Hirka laid Hlosnian’s book in her lap. It was thick, with a brown leather cover and straps to secure it. She’d attached a round object that she’d found in the churchyard to the front. Father Brody said it was an old compass. The needle always pointed north, and it helped to stare at it when the world was making her head spin.
Hirka opened the book. She’d never been good at reading and writing. Only a little better than Father. Still, she’d managed to fill pages and pages with her clumsy words and sketches. Maps of the neighborhood. Drawings of plants. As well as pictures she’d found in the street. And a dead leaf. Foil wrappers. Scraps of cloth.
At first, she’d kept everything. Everything was new and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. She’d also written down things she wanted to tell Rime about, but that had quickly become too painful. Worse and worse with every day that passed. So she’d stopped.
But she still made note of new words. She’d gradually worked out a system. Certain pages for things she was familiar with from before. Chair. Window. Bread. Rain. And pages for things she’d never have believed existed. Telephone. Chocolate. Asphalt. Sunglasses. Washing machine. Petrol.
She found her pencil and wrote down the new word she’d learned from Jay. Viking: Someone who lived in a boat a thousand years ago.
She looked at Kuro. He’d fallen asleep in the drawer. The feathers on his head quivered as he breathed in and out. She lifted the pencil and started writing again.
Survive: Exist. Get by. Not die.
THE STRANGER
You can get away with just about anything so long as you make yourself useful.
People weren’t really supposed to live in churches, Hirka had discovered. At least not people like her. They said it was God’s house, but in all the time she’d been there, she’d never seen him. She doubted he used it that much. Father Brody could have kicked her out a long time ago. Or called the police. Or—what was it Jay’s mum had said?—called child services?
But he hadn’t. Not with Hirka doing the laundry, looking after the kids, shoveling the snow, and picking up the groceries. He’d never asked her to do any of those things, she’d just got down to it like she’d done at Lindri’s teahouse, and after a few days people had stopped asking where she came from or what she was doing there.
Still, the feeling she’d been longing for failed to materialize. The feeling of being at home. Having a family. It wasn’t like that here. There were just too many people, and none of them knew anything about her family. She was a stranger in a strange world.
Whenever things threatened to overwhelm her, she tried to focus on something familiar. The shopping list in her hands, which felt so much like the paper back home. Bare trees in the winter, dotted here and there around the bustling city. Or she thought about things that were new and wonderful. Like the sound of boots on wet snow. Boots were amazing. They never came unstitched and never let any water in. She was wearing a yellow pair that Father Brody had given her.
Yellow boots. What a world.
She took a deep breath and entered the shop. The lights hurt her eyes. Humans had so much light. Along the roads. In windows. Fireless light everywhere you looked.
Hirka went over to the counter and put on her biggest smile for the lady who’d helped her the last time. It was important to appear cheerful. And not to need anything too much. Nothing closed doors quicker than desperation.
The lady smiled back at her. She was plump, wearing a tight belt that made her look like an hourglass. Hirka had the shopping list memorized, but she’d brought it with her just to be on the safe side. The lady helped her find coffee, biscuits, toilet paper, and a few other things they needed at the church. Tea, if you could call it that. Hirka had tried some, and she wouldn’t have served it to her worst enemy. Was that what happened to everything in a world devoid of the Might?
The lady stapled the receipt into a book and Hirka picked up the bag of groceries. It was darker now, and the wind had picked up. Snow collected atop the lamp posts. She pulled up the hood on her raincoat. It was almost like a cloak. Not very warm, but it weighed next to nothing and it always kept her dry. And it rolled up so small that it could fit in her mouth. She’d tried, just to see. Nobody back home would have believed it.
She came to a sudden stop. In the café directly in front of her, she spotted a familiar figure. She drew back against the wall and peeked through the window. He hadn’t seen her. It was the man from the bench, the one in the leather jacket and gray hoodie. He was sitting with his back to her.
Hirka slipped around the corner and looked through a different window. She could see him better now. He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a phone in the other. He was maybe twice her age, with short hair and stubble. He was sitting on a tall stool, his foot bobbing up and down.
Hirka put down the bag and leaned closer. Her breath fogged up the glass.
He turned and looked straight at her. She jumped back from the window. Blood rushed to her cheeks. For a moment she wasn’t sure whether to wave or to run. She decided to run.
Her boots sploshed in time with her heartbeat. Was he the only one? Hadn’t she seen others? People giving her furtive looks in the street? People hanging around outside the church? Did she really stand out so much that people had reason to stare?
It wasn’t until she spotted the church tower that she remembered the bag of groceries. She’d left it back at the café. She stopped. There was something all too familiar about this.
The memory came back to her. Father in his wheeled chair. The cabin. Hirka had made it all the way home before realizing she’d left the basket of herbs by the Alldjup. By the toppled spruce tree. Where Rime had rescued her.
One point to me if I pull you up.
The images were so vivid that she got a lump in her throat. She swallowed. That was another life. Another time. A world she’d never see again.
She turned to walk back to the café. She was careful to avoid looking at anyone, staring at her yellow boots in case she ran into him. The man in the hoodie.
The bag of groceries was right by the window where she’d left it. A thin layer of snow had settled on top. Hirka looked inside the café. Luckily he wasn’t there anymore. Relieved, she picked up the bag and headed back toward the church.
Then someone grabbed her. Yanked her back into an alleyway. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by a hand over her mouth. She was thrust up against a wall by a dumpster. The hand tasted of tobacco. Hirka felt paralyzed. Frozen to the spot. Her heart pounded in her throat. She struggled for air. The bag slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground. Biscuits and apples rolled out into the slush. The man from the café stared at her with wild eyes. He said something, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. Hirka aimed a kick at him. He moved his hand down to her neck, tightening his grip. She stopped struggling, and strangely, it helped. She could breathe again.
Hirka glanced at the street. They were hidden in some kind of alcove, and people were walking past. They didn’t turn to look, didn’t know she needed help. Hirka leaned forward and screamed. The man tightened his grip again. A woman in a fur coat gave them a quick glance before scurrying off like she hadn’t seen anything. She had. Hirka knew she had. But she’d left all the same. Hope quickly turned to despair.
The man pulled something from his belt and pressed it against her forehead
. Something cold. But at least it wasn’t a knife. That much was a relief. He barked something at her again. It sounded like a question, but he spoke far too quickly for her to understand.
Hirka swallowed, feeling the muscles in her throat tense against his grip. “I don’t understand … I speak badly.”
He hesitated for a moment and she noticed a small scar that pulled his lip up at one side. He let go of her neck and brought his thumb to her mouth.
“No!” Hirka wrenched her head to one side, but he forced it back. He was strong. He pulled back her upper lip with his thumb. Stared at her teeth. He seemed more confused now than anything. It was all so strange that for a moment Hirka forgot her terror. She felt like a horse at market.
She put her hand in her pocket and squeezed the bloodstones. She couldn’t lose them. She’d have nothing left if she did. Nothing that could be traded for money. Nothing valuable.
The movement attracted his attention, and he tore Hirka’s hand out of her pocket. Grabbed the stones before she had a chance to tighten her grip. He didn’t waste any time looking at them, just stuck them in his pocket and glanced around like he was in the wrong place.
Finally he let go of her and stepped back. Gave a start when he accidentally stepped on a pack of biscuits and it crunched under his foot.
“It’s all right!” Hirka hurried to say. “We’ve got more.”
He looked at her, brow furrowed. He backed out of the alleyway, then turned and disappeared onto the street at the opposite end.
Hirka remained pressed against the wall, trying to catch her breath. A cold terror had seized her and refused to release its grip. She remembered. The pits in Eisvaldr. The man who had tried to take her by force. That time, there had been no doubting his intentions. Now, she didn’t have the faintest clue about what just happened, which was somehow worse. She knew nothing. And in a completely different world, anything was possible. Anything at all.
She slumped against the wall and slid down onto the wet pavement. The pack of biscuits in front of her was flattened at one end. A smell of sour milk drifted toward her from the dumpster. All she wanted was to go home. Home to Ym. To Elveroa. To Father.
Father’s dead. The cabin’s burned to the ground. It’s over.
Why had she come here? She didn’t belong here. She hated this place. Hated it. The light. The smells. The commotion. So much noise. And yet still so dead.
A place without the Might. A cold world full of terrifying life.
TEMPTATION
They’d been open. The gateways.
Rime had seen the landscape shimmering between the stones. Seen the grass ripple in the pull from someplace unknown. Then he’d been swallowed by the empty space as the world ceased to exist. And re-emerged in the Rite Hall.
In one place, out another. They’d woken the gateways once; it had to be possible to do it again. Just for one brief, harmless moment. For the sake of knowledge. For proof.
For her.
Rime entered the library, intent on finding answers. It seemed that if you wanted to keep the Council’s secrets, all you had to do was leave them here. In plain sight. It would take lifetimes to find them.
Conversations here were few and held in hushed tones. The sound of pen on paper drifted from behind a door left ajar. He wondered what was being written, and whether it was the truth.
Rime headed toward the gallery that surrounded the shaft of daylight filtering down from the ceiling. Gray-clad shepherds climbed between floors on ladders that sailed along rails all the way around the library. He hoped one of them could direct him to books about the Might.
Rime was about to ask when he noticed a woman on the lowest level. Her fire-colored skirt drew his eye. She looked around intently, her movements fluid. Graceful. Her eyes met his. There was something familiar about her. Rime realized he was staring, and he turned toward a desk by the balustrade.
On it lay the Book of the Seer, splayed open, baring its lies as if nothing had happened. He felt a stab of disappointment, knowing that people continued to read it. But of course they did.
He ran his fingers over the binding, which was on the verge of falling apart. This book had been here since long before his time. Since long before Ilume. Her only wish had been to see him take her seat on the Council, for him to link the past to the future. But not like this. She had never been keen on change. She’d sooner have disinherited him than see the Seer fall. Than shatter the illusion of divinity that had carried an entire world for a thousand years.
How many false gods had come before the raven? How many more would come after?
The book called to him, as if it might reveal something different than before. Rime remembered every word of it from his childhood.
Such was the goodness of He who looked upon them that they were all saved by His grace. Such was His sorrow for the fallen that His tears washed away their transgressions. Innocent, they looked upon their Seer, and He said unto them: “All power from the earth has been given unto me.”
Innocent? What a joke. And there could be no doubt as to who held the power after the war. Rime flipped ahead.
And the tree grew straight up into the heavens, blackened and vigorous from the blood of all those who had sacrificed their lives. He wrought it according to His will, according to His desires, to serve the kin of Ym, and He said: “This shall be my throne.”
Rime looked around, feeling scrutinized. An unexpected sense of guilt washed over him. He’d shattered that tree. The Seer’s throne. The memory was excruciatingly vivid. Black glass raining down on them. Ilume sinking to the floor. The sound of his heart beating. Urd. And Hirka …
He slammed the book closed. He’d had his fill of lies. Now he needed the truth.
Rime found a shepherd, a gray-haired woman with ink-stained fingers, and asked where he might find books about the Might.
“Two floors up,” she said, pointing. “Southwest sector, twelfth set of shelves. I’d be happy to find the books you’re looking for.”
“Thanks, but I prefer to find them myself,” he replied. She smiled warmly, indicating she felt exactly the same way.
Rime went up the stairs. He found the twelfth set of shelves and started to look through the books. They seemed to be mostly poetry. About the Might, about nature, about love. But there were other things, too.
He pulled out a book with a green cover. The Origin. His body tingled with anticipation. Hope. The pages were so thin, he worried they might crumble between his fingers. Impatient, he started to read, skipping over words, sections, entire pages.
The Might, the cradle of life … Preceding all else … Arrived with the first. With the forces of creation … The balance.
None of this was new to him. Until …
… Nábyrn’s thirst for the Might claimed so many lives that it originated the expression “a body for every raven.” But it is my firm belief that the devastation they wrought gave us the strength we needed to fight them. Dead fought dead. The Seer himself is one of the blind and shapes the Might in ways none of Ym’s kin are able to. Despite this, blindcraft is feared and despised in every corner of Ym. The Might—as the blind employed it—is regarded with scorn. It is too strongly linked to them, to decay and destruction. Even to the loss of our souls, if we are to believe those living under the ice in the north.
Rime closed the book.
Blindcraft. The Might as the blind used it.
He’d seen it with his own eyes. How fast they could move. And the waterfall that had turned to sand, spilling over the cliff like an hourglass. What else could it have been, if not blindcraft? Nábyrn trickery. Was blindcraft all that could rouse the stones again? Urd had managed it …
A sudden crash made Rime jump. He turned. It was her—the woman who’d caught his eye. She’d dropped a book. What kind of Kolkagga didn’t notice someone approaching?
He picked the book up and handed it to her. She smiled, looking up at him from under heavy eyelids. He knew that look. Self-assured. Inv
iting. But in her case it didn’t seem feigned. It was just who she was. Her lips were uncommonly full, as if demanding to be touched. It was difficult not to stare at them.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said.
She took the book, put it on top of the others she was carrying, and squeezed past. Her arm brushed against his. A floral scent followed in her wake as she headed for the gallery. Her tail swayed with every step, making her jewelry clink. Her hair fell to her waist. Thick and lustrous. Black as coal.
She looked back over her shoulder.
“I’ve danced for you, Ravenbearer,” she said so softly that it could have been the start of a poem.
He followed her, knowing that was exactly what she wanted. She put the books down on a desk. Two were about dancing. He couldn’t see the title of the third.
“Nobody’s danced for me since I was a boy,” he said.
“Have you forgotten your own inauguration, Ravenbearer?” She blinked at him.
Of course. The day he’d become Ravenbearer. The celebrations. The dancers on the steps.
“Rime. Just Rime.”
“Indeed, we have no raven to bear anymore.”
Her words were refreshingly direct. Her hair spilled over her shoulder and she swept it back again with a narrow hand. That small movement was a dance in itself. Everything she did seemed to tell a story. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that men would pay a lot to see her perform.
Her smock was open at the throat, and the material draped over her breasts in a way that was impossible not to notice. She restacked the books to reveal the title he hadn’t seen. The Art of Pleasure. The cover depicted a man and a woman in an impossible position.
Rime suddenly felt unsure of himself. Like during a fight, in the moment the advantage was lost. He cleared his throat and turned to leave. She stopped him, her hand resting on his arm.
The Rot Page 3