“What was your typical day like?” Raithe gritted his teeth as the water reached knee depth. The current churned around his legs and pushed, forcing him to dig his feet into the riverbed.
“Mostly I poured wine.”
Raithe chuckled. “Yeah—this will be different.”
A moment later, the river pulled both of them off their feet.
CHAPTER TWO
The Mystic
Dahl Rhen was a grassy hill nestled alongside the Crescent Forest where a log lodge and several hundred mud-and-thatch roundhouses were protected by a wood-and-earthwork wall. Looking back, I realize it was a crude, tiny place where chickens and pigs roamed free, but it was also where the chieftain of Clan Rhen lived and ruled. And it was my home.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Persephone knew everyone on the dahl, making strangers stand out, and the girl at the gate was stranger than most. Small, young, and slender, the visitor was boyish with short unevenly hacked hair. Persephone couldn’t tell if the sun had darkened her face or if it was merely dirty, but it was decorated with elaborate tattoos: delicate curling thorns that swirled along cheeks, bracketing her eyes and mouth. The designs lent her a mysterious quality. Framing her face, they provided an expression both permanently quizzical and intensely serious. She wore a dirty cape of ruddy wool, a leather-and-fur vest, a skirt of cured hide, and an odd belt. Persephone wasn’t certain, but she thought the belt was made of animals’ teeth. Curled up at the girl’s side lay a white wolf. Its keen blue eyes darted, watching the movements of everyone who walked toward them. Few did.
The newcomer stood outside the dahl’s gate next to Cobb, who’d come down from his perch on the wall and held his spear as menacingly as he could, which was to say not at all. The man’s usual job was feeding the pigs and keeping them out of the communal garden, a task previously held by eight-year-old Thea Wedon and one at which Cobb often failed. Most men took turns keeping watch on the wall above the gate. That morning it was Cobb, and, as with the pigs, he was having trouble.
“We have a visitor, ma’am,” Cobb told her, pointing at the girl with his spear. He nodded toward the ram’s horn tethered around his neck and grinned as if blowing it had been an achievement worthy of praise. Persephone had to admit he’d done a better job watching the gate than the pigs. “She says she’s a mystic and wants to speak to the chieftain.”
The girl couldn’t be much more than twelve, and although she did look like she’d spent most of her life in the wilderness, she was too young to be a mystic.
“I’m Persephone, Lady of the Lodge.” She waited for any sign of understanding. When none came, she added, “I’m Chieftain Reglan’s wife. My husband is away on a hunt, but you can talk to me.”
The girl nodded but said nothing more. She stood there, biting her lower lip and shifting her sight with every dropped hoe, shout, or hammer fall.
On closer inspection, Persephone decided the girl was more malnourished than thin, and filthy didn’t begin to describe her. Pine needles and leaves littered her hair, and dirt caked her legs. She had bruises on her arms, scrapes on her knees, and it was dirt rather than the sun’s tan on her face.
“May I help you?”
“What’s he hunting?” the girl asked.
“Excuse me?”
“The chieftain.”
Persephone hesitated. She’d been doing well that day by not letting herself think too much, banishing the horrible event to a dark corner that she’d revisit only once her husband returned. But the question had shone a bright light, and Persephone struggled to maintain her composure.
“None of your business.” Cobb came alive, taking a genuinely menacing step forward. The threat wasn’t in the spear, which at that moment hung slack and forgotten at his side, but rather in his voice, which was heartfelt and angry.
“A bear,” Persephone said. She took a breath and straightened her back. “A terrible bear called The Brown.”
The girl nodded with a frown.
“You know it?” Persephone asked.
“Oh, yes, Grin the Brown is famous in the forest, ma’am. And not well liked.”
“Grin the Brown?”
“That’s what we call her on account of how she sneers at everyone and everything. I’ve even seen her sneer at the sun, and who doesn’t like the sun?”
“That bear killed my son,” Persephone said, the words coming out more easily than she’d expected. This was the first time she’d said them, and somehow she thought they would refuse to pass her lips.
“Killed Minna’s family, too,” the girl said, looking at the wolf. “Found her in the Crescent, just like Tura found me. I took Minna in, clearly we’re sisters, and you can’t turn away family. Tura thought so, too.”
“You know Tura?”
“She raised me.”
All at once the tooth belt, the facial markings, and even the weathered ash staff made sense. Persephone remembered Tura’s bony hands holding just such a staff. “So Tura sent you to us?”
The girl shook her head. “Tura is dead. I set fire to her myself.”
“You did what?”
“Was her wish, ma’am. Didn’t like the idea of worms. I think she wanted to fly. Who wouldn’t?”
Persephone stared at the girl for a moment, then said, “I see,” even though she didn’t. Persephone had no clue what any of that meant, then realized it didn’t matter.
“What’s your name?”
“Suri,” the girl said.
“Okay, Suri.” Persephone looked at the wolf. “I’d like to invite you in, but we have chickens and pigs inside the dahl, so—Minna, is it?—can’t come in.”
“Minna won’t hurt them,” Suri said, sounding insulted and a dash angry. Tattoo tendrils around her eyes curled tight.
“Wolves eat chickens and pigs.”
The girl smirked and folded her arms roughly over her chest. “They eat people, too, but you don’t see her gnawing on your leg, do you?”
Persephone looked at the wolf, which lay curled up, innocent as a shepherd’s dog. “Does seem pretty tame. What do you think, Cobb?”
The ineffective pig wrangler turned mediocre gate guard shrugged.
“All right, but keep an eye on her. If she attacks anything, there’s a good chance someone will put a spear through her.”
Persephone led the way inside the gate.
As she did, Suri whispered, “Not a very welcoming place is it, Minna? Wonder how they’d like it if we put a spear in their sides when they come to the forest and hunt our animals.”
Spring was dragging its feet, leaving a colorless world of matted grass, leafless trees, and gray skies, but the people of Dahl Rhen weren’t waiting. Everyone was more than tired of the long winter, and with the first mild day of the year, the inhabitants of the dahl were out working. The Killian boys, wellsprings of pent-up energy even in midsummer, were up on the sagging cone-shaped roof of their family’s home. They were tying in new sheaves of thatch to replace the ones winter had ripped away. Bergin the Brewer was splitting wood and feeding the fire under boiling vats of sap he’d gathered. Others were prepping the communal garden, which at that time of year was nothing more than a miserable patch of bare mud where last autumn’s stubble remained like sun-bleached bones.
Cobb returned to his perch on the wall, and Persephone led Suri up the gravel path to the large lodge in the center of the dahl. The almost forgotten song of birds was back, and Persephone spotted yellow and blue wildflowers on the sunny side of the well. Winter was over, according to the stars, birds, and flowers, but snow remained in the shady places. Persephone pulled her mourning shawl tight. Spring was being selective that year. It hadn’t come for everyone.
Persephone paused in the open common before the lodge’s steps and bowed to the stone statue of the goddess Mari. Suri watched with curious interest, then followed. The big doors to the lodge stood open, casting sunshine into the Hall of Reglan, which had been a smoky wooden cave since autumn. Illuminated
by firelight in the dark of winter, the twelve pillars holding up the roof always appeared golden, but in harsh sunlight they were revealed as old and weathered. The bright light exposed more reality than just the pillars: discarded shoes, a cloak hanging from the antlers of a deer’s head, and a ram’s-horn goblet in the corner where Oswald had thrown it at Sackett months before. The raised wooden floor surrounding the smoldering fire pit was coated with dirt and ash. Sunlight had a way of showing the realities that shadows born of firelight hid.
The eternal fire burned low in the central pit, and Habet, whose job was to keep it stoked, was missing. Persephone added a split of wood, and the room brightened a little. Crossing to the pair of chairs near the far wall—the only chairs in the room—Persephone sat in the one on the right.
Suri had stopped at the door. She peered at the rafters of the peaked roof, where shields of past chieftains hung along with trophy heads of stags, wolves, and bears. She grimaced, then looked across the room toward Persephone, eyeing the floor as if it were a deep lake and she unable to swim. Then, with effort, the girl and the wolf entered.
“How old are you, Suri?” Persephone asked as the girl made her way across the hall.
“Don’t know—maybe fourteen.” The girl spoke absently, her attention still on the rafters.
“Maybe?”
“That’s my best guess. Might be more. Might be less.”
“You don’t know?”
“Depends on how long I spent with the crimbals. Tura was fairly certain I’m a malkin.”
“A—a what? A malkin?”
Suri nodded. “When a crimbal steals—you know what a crimbal is, ma’am?”
Persephone shook her head.
Suri sucked in a breath, glancing at the wolf beside her as if the two shared a secret, then explained. “Well, a crimbal is a creature of the forest. They don’t actually live there, just come and go, you see? They’re common in the Crescent, lots of doorways because of all the trees. They dwell in Nog, a place deep underground where they have grand halls and banquets. They dance and make merry in ways you can only imagine. Anyway, when a crimbal steals a baby, they—”
“They steal babies?”
“Oh, Grand Mother of All, yes. All the time. No one knows why. Just a thing with them, I suppose. Anyway, when they steal one, they take it back to Nog, where who knows what happens. On rare occasions, one sneaks out. They’re called malkins and aren’t quite right again because anyone spending time in Nog is forever changed. Now, usually a malkin is older, like ten or twelve, but somehow I managed to get out before my first year. That’s when Tura found me.”
“How did you get out before you could walk?”
Suri, who by then had completed the bulk of her journey, looked at Persephone as if she’d said the craziest thing. “How should I know, ma’am? I was just a baby.”
Persephone arched her brows and nodded. “I see,” she said, but what she actually saw was how even an innocuous question such as How old are you? wasn’t a simple matter for a girl with a belt of teeth and a pet wolf. Best to keep matters simple. “All right, Suri, what is it you need?”
“Need, ma’am?” the girl asked.
“Why are you here?”
“Oh—I came to tell the chieftain we’re going to die.” The girl said it quickly and with the same casual indifference as if she were announcing that the sun sets in the evening.
Persephone narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me? What did you say? Who’s going to die?”
“All of us.”
“All of whom?”
“Us.” The girl looked puzzled, but this time Persephone wasn’t certain if it was the tattoos or not.
“You and I?”
Suri sighed. “Yes—you, me, the funny man with the horn at the gate, everyone.”
“Everyone in Dahl Rhen?”
The girl sighed again. “Not just Dahl Rhen—everywhere.”
Persephone laughed. “Are you saying all living things are going to die? Because that’s not exactly news.”
Suri looked to Minna, a pleading in her eyes as if the wolf might help explain. “Not all living things, just people—people like you and me.”
“You mean Rhunes? All the Rhunes are going to die?”
Suri shrugged. “I suppose.”
“I think perhaps you should back up. Start with when and how this will happen.”
“Don’t know how…soon, though. Should start before high summer, I suspect. Definitely before winter.” She paused, thought, and then nodded. “Yes, definitely before the snows come, and by this time next year we’ll be in the worst of it. That will be the edge of the knife, the peak of the storm.”
“So it’s a storm that’s coming?”
The girl blinked, furrowed her brow, scowled, and shook her head. “Not an actual storm, just a bad thing, although…” She shrugged. “It could be a storm, I suppose.”
“And you have no idea what is going to cause this or why such a terrible thing will happen?”
“No—not at all,” the mystic said as if such things held no importance.
Persephone leaned back in her chair and studied the girl. She was a sad case, an orphan alone and scared. “Why are you really here, Suri? Are you hungry? Lonely now that Tura is dead?”
Suri looked confused.
“It’s okay. I’ll ask someone to find you a place to sleep. Get you some bread, too. Would you like some bread?”
The mystic thought a moment. “Bread would be nice.”
“And would you like to live here? Here on the dahl?”
Suri’s eyes grew wide, and she took a fearful step back, glancing once more at the rafters. Her head shook. “No, ma’am. I could never live here. I only came because Tura told me it’s what I should do if I ever discovered such a thing. ‘Go to the hill in the big field at the crux of the forest and ask to speak to the chieftain.’ That’s what she said. Not that there’s anything to do about it right now. Need to talk to the trees. They could tell us more, but they’re still asleep.”
Persephone sighed. This wasn’t like talking to Tura, who’d had her own eccentricities.
I can leave this for Reglan. Maybe he can make sense of her.
“Well, thank you.” Persephone stood and offered the girl a smile. “I’ll see that you get the bread I mentioned, and you can take this up with my husband when he returns. If you’d like, you can wait in here.” Seeing the girl take another step backward, Persephone added, “Or out on the steps if you prefer.”
Suri nodded, pivoted, and walked away, the wolf following at her heels.
So thin.
Persephone was certain the prophecy was a ruse. Clever, but the girl had overdone it. She should have kept it simple, like predicting a poor harvest, approaching fevers, or a drought. She was just young and hadn’t thought things through. With Tura dead, she didn’t have a hope of surviving alone in the forest.
“Suri?” Persephone stopped her. “I wouldn’t tell anyone else about what you told me. You know, about the deaths.”
The girl turned around, a hand resting against the nearest of the three winter pillars. “Why?”
“Because they won’t understand. They’ll think you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
Persephone sighed. Stubborn, too.
Suri took a few more steps toward the door, then paused and turned back once more. “I’m not Tura, but I know something awful is coming. Our only hope is to heed what counsel the trees can tell. Watch for the leaves, ma’am, watch for the leaves.”
Just then, Cobb’s horn sounded again.
—
By the time Persephone passed through the doorway, she knew something terrible had happened. Mattocks and hoes lay abandoned in the garden. The Killian brothers had come down off their roof, and people scurried to the gate or fell to their knees, weeping. Those with tear-filled eyes spread their pain to the bewildered around them. The whispered words were followed by shock and a shaking of heads. Then they, too, cried.
As if she were seeing rain cross a field, Persephone braced for the approaching tempest. She’d weathered many storms. For twenty years, she’d helped her husband guide their people. She’d faced the Long Winter and the Great Famine that followed. She’d lost her first son at birth, the second to sickness, and recently the only one who had grown to adulthood. Mahn had been a fine young man whom the gods inexplicably had failed to protect. Whatever came through the gate, she would endure it like all the other events. She had to. If not for her sake, then for her people.
At the gate, both wooden doors had been pushed open, but the view was obscured by people clustered on the pathway. Several had climbed the ladders and lined the ramparts, pointing over the wall. Persephone reached the lodge steps at the same instant the crowd finally parted to reveal the mystery.
The hunting party had returned.
Eight men had left. Six had come back. One on a shield.
They carried Reglan through the gate—two men on each side, Konniger walking in front. The sleeve of his shirt had been torn away and wrapped around his head, one side stained red. Adler, who always had keen eyes, returned with only one of the two he’d left with. Hegner had a bloody stump where his right hand had been.
Persephone didn’t move beyond the steps. The downpour had reached her, and there was no need to go farther.
What struck her the most acutely wasn’t the shock of her husband’s death but that the scene was so familiar. Persephone wondered if she were losing her mind, reliving the events of three days before when they had brought her son back. He, too, had been on a hunting trip and carried home. She remembered standing in the exact same spot at the exact same time of day.
But it’s not the same.
With Mahn, her husband had stood by her side. He’d held her hand, and his strength had kept her standing. Anger had radiated off him, his fingers squeezing too hard. Reglan had left the next day to seek vengeance.
The bearers approached the steps. Grim faces looked to their feet. Only one dared look at her. The crowd folded behind the procession.
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