by H. M. Long
I would have been stunned, but I had no room left for such feelings. There was only reality: the reality that Svala was dead and our patron had fled, leaving me, her last Vestige, collapsed beside Quentis.
Had her wound been mortal? And if so, how long would it be before she traded my life for her own? I wondered how it would feel, as Eang pulled herself from the grave. Would the pain be great? Greater than what I felt now, with Eang’s Fire blazing in constant, soul-rending wrath, and the image of Svala’s bloody head engraved on my eyes?
My fingers came to my throat, where the Eangi collar still lay. Eang’s Fire made every movement agony. Beneath it, the magic of the High Halls roiled, begging for release – and with that I found one last, frail hope. It was a sallow thing, senseless and blind, but I couldn’t surrender, not after I’d sacrificed so much. Not when Lathian prepared to sweep through my land like a tide.
I pulled the collar off. It dug into my throat as it came free, as if it tried to cling in place, but the discomfort was a shadow compared to the Fire. And, once it was free, my breaths seemed to come a little easier.
With the circlet loose in one hand, I looked at Quentis. My gaze ran from his stained fingers to his bowl, and I pushed myself up onto my knees.
He looked at me, his gaze lightening as if I were an old friend. “What is it?”
“Do you still think you can kill Eang’s Fire?”
Quentis looked from me to the lake and laughed softly. Crawling closer to me, he reached out and cupped my cheeks. His hands smelled of musky herbs and something like sour milk, but I forced myself not to pull away.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I can.”
FORTY-THREE
Isat before Quentis in a solitary corner of the afternoon forest, hands bound in my lap and my fevered body aching. The priest occupied a patch of muted sunlight in front of me, bowls and scrolls arrayed around him like wards. My collar lay there too, resting on the leaves between us as a reminder and a promise.
Quentis ground herbs and tested their texture between his stained fingers, his eyes narrowed in a wistful, detached intensity.
He didn’t flinch as a new bout of screams shattered the forest. We were just out of sight of the camp, where the Algatt prisoners were being held. Telios, unable to bring the Algatt under Lathian’s thrall – Gadr had both survived and escaped, it seemed – milked the fear from them while I sat on a cool bed of pine needles, watching Quentis mix his poisons.
My stomach roiled.
“He whispers to me now,” Quentis said, absently. He blew his mortar free of powder from the last ingredient in a heady swirl and sprinkled a new one in. Pods cracked beneath his pestle as he went to work, raising his eyes to mine. They were greyer than they’d been that morning, remnants of his former blue barely visible around the pupils. “Lathian. He tells me secrets.”
Goosebumps prickled up my flesh. The grey of his eyes was the only thing that made me fear my choice. Once Eang’s Fire was gone, would Lathian’s influence wash over me, too? Eang would certainly not protect me – if she even lived out the night.
Still, honeyed power whispered beneath my skin, and with it, potential. I plucked at its threads, cool and full of promise, and met Quentis’s eyes. He smiled, oblivious, and lifted a pinch of the latest powder he’d ground to his nose. He inhaled, and his grin broadened.
“The lake itself is the key,” he said, putting another few pinches into his mixing bowl. As he spoke, he took up a flask and uncapped it, holding it out as if I could see the water inside, though the neck was too narrow. “The lake where the God-Killer sleeps, where their essence resides.”
My throat tightened and, in my lap, my knuckles grew white. “Is that the last ingredient, then?”
“It is.” Quentis poured a stream of milky lake water into his bowl, mixing it with two fingers. It turned to an orange paste, then a viscous liquid the color of old blood. He sniffed at the concoction and, apparently satisfied, held out the bowl.
I took it carefully into my bound hands and rested it in my lap, trying to stifle a surge of anxiety. “It will work?”
Quentis’s voice was candid, without malice. “Lathian believes it will. But if it should fail, or you should still resist my god… I will have to kill you, Hessa. You can die with the Algatt and the Soulderni, in the morning.”
My eyes flicked up to his face. “Nisien?”
The Arpa began to gather his things into a basket, which he clasped to his belly as he stood. “Yes.”
“Lathian hasn’t taken him yet?”
Quentis tsked his tongue in displeasure. “Hush. The drug may take time, Eangi, so drink now. I will return for you in the morning.”
I glanced at the forest around us, dim and empty. His departure would give me opportunity – perhaps even to save Nisien, if he was still untainted – but I was vulnerable. “You’re going to leave me out here alone?”
“I doubt you will be in any condition to wander away,” Quentis said, as if this should reassure me. “And Estavius has volunteered to keep watch over you while you… while this works. He’ll be here soon.”
Estavius, kind Estavius with secrets in his blood. That was some consolation, at least.
“There’s nothing more to fear, my sister,” Quentis added.
The familial term crawled into my ear like an insect. I hid my revulsion until he looked away, stooping to pick up one final pouch of herbs. Then I clenched my eyes shut and steeled my nerves.
Before he’d straightened again, I put the bowl to my lips. It smelled disarmingly sweet, husky and warm, like autumn earth and summer rain on hot stone. Even Eang’s Fire did not respond to the scent, maintaining the steady, punishing burn it had since my betrayal.
I paused then, with the stained wooden brim on my lips. There would be no going back from this decision, no second chances. If this drug worked, when its throes had passed, I would no longer be an Eangi. My screams would not turn my enemies’ bones to dust or boil their blood. My wounds would not knit and my soul would no longer be tied to Eang, she who had given my people their very name.
She who had not been able to save them. She who, I now accepted, was no true goddess.
I drank, deep and full. Grit clung to my teeth and scraped my throat, but I took it down, slow and steady, until it was drained.
I felt Quentis take the bowl from my hands. I was already sagging back onto the earth, watching leaves flutter against a sky muffled by swirls of slate-grey cloud. With every dance of the leaves, my body grew heavier. I felt the hairpin Eidr had given me, tangled beneath my tattered braids, dig into my scalp. I felt leaves tickle my melting skin and roots arch into my back, but there was no pain to any of it. No pain at all.
Then the Fire burst. My body bucked and I screamed into the forest’s muted light; a crackling, twisted memory of an Eangi howl and a human wail of pain.
The world furled into blackness. I writhed and sank out of the world itself, until time and space became irrelevant. There was only agony, heat and the fever-haze of mortal illness.
Eventually, I eased into a body that no longer hurt. My lungs contracted, my jaw cracked, and I drew a shuddering breath of smoke, dense warmth and smoldering sage.
I turned my head. My eyes dragged through the world before me, like a finger through honey, and settled on pillars of ancient wood.
I lay in a shadowed corner of the High Hall itself, with its dark wooden beams and circle of thrones. The bodies of Oulden, Riok and Dur were gone. Nothing moved save smoke, rising from the low-burning fireplace between the thrones, and I heard only the rattle of my breath.
I coughed. The sound was loud in the quiet space, but I didn’t care. I was alone, after all, and my mouth was full of grit. It was all I could feel; there was no conscious thought in my mind yet, no comprehension of my state – dead or alive, Eangi or other. Just the grit of Quentis’s poison.
I rolled over, coughing and spitting, until I made my way onto my hands and knees. My hand collided with so
mething hard and cool. It made a deep, full-bellied clink.
I blinked, swallowing another wave of coughing. There, on the floor before me, sat a full clay pitcher. I glanced around, wondering who had brought it, but I was still alone. Cautiously, I bent down and sniffed at its dark contents. It smelled of honey, fermented and full. Mead. The Mead of the Gods.
I wanted to laugh, but I’d forgotten how. Palms braced on the floor, I stared down into the pitcher with a bleary comprehension. Had my thirst conjured this, or had the High Halls sensed my need?
Either way, I did not pick it up. My memory was returning to me like waves of a waxing tide, each moment bringing me closer and closer to full awareness.
Kneeling, I sank down onto my heels and lifted my hands, staring at them in the Hall’s half-light. My scars were still there and my flesh looked just as it had on every other visit to the High Halls – vital and real.
I wasn’t dead. I was sure of that – if Quentis’s poison had killed me, I would not be in the High Halls. But I was not myself, either. I felt cool and subdued, like a bed of coals after the rain. I turned my hands again, brushing one scarred fingertip against another, comforted by their normality.
Gradually, cautiously, I reached for Eang’s Fire. Silence met my touch, but not the yawning emptiness I’d anticipated. In the space where the shard of Eang had once resided, I found only more of myself, entwined with honeyed, golden threads.
I closed my eyes. The more I prodded at those threads the more vibrant they became, warming me and pulling all tension, all strain, from my muscles. I drew it into my lungs and felt it disperse in my blood with each beat of my heart.
My throat was still full of grit, however. I sat back against a pillar, took up the pitcher up with both hands and drank. For every gulp I swallowed, there was always more, full and rich. It was too sweet, but I didn’t mind. It passed from my lips into my veins and my skull, until my vision blurred with amber magic.
At some point I set the pitcher on the floor at my side and extended my legs, wondering how long it would be before someone discovered me or Quentis dragged me back into the Waking World. Did the Archeress and Rioux stalk these halls, or did they still curl at Lathian’s feet like dogs? Would Eang come to exact her vengeance upon me, in the darkness between these pillars? What would she think, now, of what she found?
As if in answer to my thoughts, the gods – the Miri – took shape before me. One by one they appeared among the thrones and the low-burning fire. Stormy Esach. A woman in a broad-necked gown the color of chicory blossoms, with piles of blond hair – Aita. Gadr was there too, blank-eyed, sunken into one of the thrones while Aita attended his wounds.
“You should have come,” Gadr’s said through his teeth. Neither he nor the women appeared to see me.
“Resurrecting the God Under the Lake was never the answer.” Aita continued to brush a salve onto a horrible wound in his chest. As she did, I watched amber magic dance around her fingertips, and her voice was the essence of solace, low and gentle. “I still believe that Lathian—”
Gadr’s face snapped up. “Gods below, Aita, stop. After what happened today—”
“I think we’d best stop swearing on the gods below,” Esach interjected, glaring at an empty space across the room. “Considering we may soon trade places with them.”
“You must both return with me.” Gadr shooed Aita with an angry hand. “The ritual was nearly finished. The lake took the child, and Omaskat’s body and blood. If only one of us can reach the water, we can still finish it.”
My chin drifted to one side, my right hand poised on the pitcher of mead. The ritual could still be finished?
“How?” Esach retorted. “Ashaklon’s ilk gather like flies. Ashaklon himself is free again and he’ll join them soon.”
“Can we not treat with Lathian?” Aita inquired.
“No!” Gadr bellowed and the foundations of the Hall shook. “Where is Eang, Aita, where did she go after you healed her? Eang, you traitorous witch! Show your face!”
I pressed myself back into my pillar and retracted my legs. So, the Great Healer had seen to Eang? I doubted a wound as grievous as Eang’s could be completely healed so fast, but even injured she was dangerous.
“There are some who might call you the traitor in this circle,” Aita said. Her weight rested in one hip and she appeared unperturbed by Gadr’s rage, now that she was out of range.
“I tried to convince you,” the god of the Algatt loomed, the stomach-dropping gash on his chest oozing amber-red. “If you’d come, any of you, Omaskat would have lived long enough to complete the ritual himself. My people would have lived – or at least died for something.”
Aita spoke again, her voice even lower than before, “If you’d killed the Eangi girl when you had her, things would certainly be different.”
My blood cooled. I knew I should leave, before I was spotted and Gadr’s rage turned on me. But I was loath to return to my body, forsaken in the forest, and whatever the Miri said next would likely be important.
“Omaskat himself insisted she had a part to play,” Gadr retorted. “Besides, how could I kill one of Eang’s last Vestiges? I’m not that foolish.”
My throat tightened. None of the gods here realized what I’d had Quentis do, that my Fire was gone. Eang’s next death would be final. That had hardly mattered a few minutes ago, when I thought all hope was already lost. But if the ritual could still be finished, if the Miri might still intervene…
But no. I couldn’t regret what I’d done. Perhaps that was selfish. Perhaps it was cold. But I could not regret breaking free of Eang’s lies and machinations.
“And now look where we are,” Aita snapped. “You should have killed her.”
Gadr spun away from her, his face twitching in rage. “Eang! Come!”
“She’s gone to fetch the immortal’s sire,” Esach spoke over the end of Gadr’s echoing shout.
“As she well should,” Aita mused. “She should stay as far away as possible. If she dies, if we die, the binding fails completely. And the world belongs to Lathian once more.”
“He will be able to break it anyway,” Esach said. “Once he gathers enough followers. It’s a matter of days, now.”
Gadr cut back in, “I will not hide.”
“Agreed.” Esach’s hand drifted to her stomach. She covered the movement by clasping her opposite wrist and inclined her head to Gadr. “I’ll return with you. This is our best chance. If I must bow to Thvynder, so be it, but I will not grovel before those who killed my child.”
“Eang will never bow with us,” Gadr interjected.
Aita was quick to reply, “Then we do not tell her we’ve completed the ritual, until it is too late.”
The gods descended into rapid negotiations. I rested back against my pillar, letting the scent of mead and sage fill my nostrils. If the gods intervened at the White Lake, I might be able to escape. I might even be able to rescue Nisien and… what? Where would we go?
Aita’s voice rose over the prattle. “Ah, Aliastros. Welcome. Where do you stand?”
Startled, I peered around the pillar. Aliastros? Why would the northern gods welcome an Arpa one? Shouldn’t he be attending Lathian?
No. I remembered in a flash that Aliastros had an alliance with Oulden. Iosas had been free to worship the Arpa God of Wind on Oulden’s land. Estavius, amber-blooded son of his High Priest, had aided me. In the High Hall, when Rioux and the Archeress had attacked me, whoever intervened had come with a gale. And Omaskat’s last words had been…
A new voice, a familiar voice, rushed through the High Hall, and I saw him, striding out from the pillars in the armor of an Arpa legionary. He spoke Northman – at least to my ears – with only the lightest of accents, high on his tongue. “On the shores of the White Lake, my sisters. My brother.”
It was Estavius himself. He looked my way and, through the pillars and smoke of the Hall, met my gaze. I saw nothing out of the ordinary in his wide-set blue eyes, besid
es the acknowledgement that he knew I was there. There was no aura of divinity about him like Ogam exuded, no visible magic like Aita’s, no marrow-crackling presence like Eang. Even my newly freed golden sight saw him as a simple, innocuous man.
But that couldn’t be, not with the way the Miri looked at him now. And they had called him Aliastros. Could Estavius be possessed by his patron, as I had been, and gifted with the magic of the High Halls? Or was Estavius no man at all?
I heard Ogam’s voice in my mind, all the way back in Souldern. Are you sure he’s human?
“What are you looking at?” Esach asked, her tone mild.
“Nothing at all.” Estavius looked back at the thrones. “But I haven’t much time. Tomorrow, when the sun rises, all the prisoners here will be sacrificed to Lathian, and I have little doubt that his binding will break. Between now and then, I will finish what Omaskat began. But Thvynder’s rising will not be instantaneous.”
At this, his eyes drifted back to me, drawing me in, giving the words to me, too. “There will be a battle tomorrow, and a chance for all of us to claim our places in the new order of the world. So run, if you choose. I will not blame you. But I would be honored to fight by your side.”
FORTY-FOUR
I awoke gradually, my mind vacillating between the sage-scented air of the High Halls, the echoes of Estavius’s voice and the close air of a tent. Eventually I settled into the last, reawakening to limbs of weary muscle, a mouth full of grit and the sensation of a hand resting on my back.
I lay on my side. The hand was large and gentle, unthreatening and protective. It came with a shadow, just visible out of the corner of my eye, and the warmth of a nearby body.
My heart fluttered against my ribs, memories of the Halls and Estavius’s words flaking away at this immediate threat.
“Nisien?” I whispered, fervently hoping I’d guessed correctly. And hoping that he was still himself.
“Hessa.” The hand immediately withdrew. I sat up, inching far enough away to make him out. It was difficult to read his expression in the dark, but his posture was sore, closed, and he smelled of sweat, horse and blood. The sight was grim, but also comforting – he acted nothing like Telios’s tainted legionaries. He hadn’t succumbed to Lathian yet.