“To what?” Konniger asked. “In Tirre, we’d have our backs to the sea, without walls or food. And do you think Tirre would welcome us? Such an invasion would spark a clan war. And for what? If the gods are after us, what would a few more miles matter?”
“The time to organize and prepare.”
“For what?”
“For war,” Persephone said.
A collective gasp escaped from those in the meeting hall. For a few minutes, no one said anything.
Tressa was the one who broke the silence. “Are you listening to yourself? You want to declare war against gods?” She lifted her sight to address the assembly. “Do we take up spears against the Grand Mother of All for not sending sufficient rain? The finest warriors of this village couldn’t defeat a bear, and Persephone expects us to make war with the Fhrey?”
Konniger shot his wife a harsh glance she didn’t see, then said, “If the Fhrey are set against us, then there is nothing that can be done. Men can’t kill gods.”
“The God Killer did,” Persephone answered.
“That’s just a rumor,” Konniger replied.
“Why else would the Fhrey destroy Dureya? They use Dureyans to fight the Gula-Rhunes. What else could have angered them enough to turn against allies? If killing a Fhrey is possible, we need to find the one man who knows how to do it. Then, if we can draw all the clans together, including the Gula, we could—”
Konniger shook his head. “It’s impossible to unite the clans. The Gula hate us as much as we hate them.”
“It’s not impossible,” Persephone replied. “Ask Maeve. She’ll tell you. Generations ago during the Great Flood, Gath of Odeon united the clans, all the clans, isn’t that right?”
Maeve nodded but didn’t speak.
“Under his leadership, our people built boats,” Persephone said for her. “We filled them with supplies, and when the waters rose, we set sail and began a new life. Well, this is a new flood, a new disaster. We need to harness the combined strength and wisdom of all our people to survive. When we send messengers to the other dahls to tell them about Nadak and Dureya, we could ask other chieftains to bring their people to meet in Tirre as well.”
“You want to abandon everything we’ve worked hundreds of years to build because the gods saw fit to punish the Dureyans for killing one of them?” Tressa asked, and shook her head, her face bitter.
Konniger sat back, stroking his beard and shifting his eyes while deep in thought. After a few minutes, he straightened and said, “No, such drastic measures aren’t warranted. You’re overreacting. Tressa is right. We have it good here, better than most dahls, and leaving a place of comfort for the unknown is foolish. You are worried about something that will never come to pass.”
Several in the hall were nodding now. Persephone had seen this before. If given a choice between a potentially great hardship and doing nothing, people gravitated toward what was most familiar and comfortable. That was why leadership was needed. To do what was necessary rather than what was easy. Persephone had a history of advocating unpopular ideas and arguing with chieftains. Reglan used to say it was her best and worst trait. If the potential danger weren’t so great, if the repercussions of getting this wrong weren’t so dire, she would have left it at that. Instead, she said, “But what if it does? Then it will be too late. If we—”
Konniger slapped the arm of his chair. “Tirre won’t tolerate us on their doorstep. We’d be as welcome as locusts. Will they share their food? Will there even be enough?” Konniger’s voice had lowered to an angry growl.
Maeve finally interceded. “Persephone,” she began, clasping her hands and taking a step forward. “Gath of Odeon was renowned even before the flood. Heroes like him no longer walk among us. He was able to win the support of every chieftain. Gathering the clans will do nothing without someone to lead. I fear the chieftains won’t kneel before anyone less.”
Konniger glanced at the broadax he had lodged in the winter pillar. “I’ve fought and killed to become chieftain of this clan. I can’t take a knee to any man from Menahan, Melen, Tirre, or Warric. The decision is mine, and I say we stay here. This discussion is over and I’ll hear no more on the subject.”
Maeve locked eyes with Persephone. The old woman shook her head ever so slightly. Maeve wouldn’t support her. Persephone couldn’t oppose both the chieftain and the Keeper of Ways. Looking around, she saw less anxiety than at the start of the meeting. When she had been talking about leaving, she had seen the eyes of rabbits staring back at her, scared and wanting nothing more than to hide in their burrows. The people feared a mass exodus more than they did the gods. She wondered if even Reglan would have listened to her. Konniger was right about one thing. It was far easier to do nothing than to brave the unknown. She sat back down.
—
The meeting had concluded with the usual prayer to Mari, the goddess of Rhen, and to Elan, the Grand Mother of All. Persephone filed out with the rest, feeling utterly alone in a crowd of people. Avoiding stares, she walked around the north side of the lodge, away from most of the homes and toward the open space left behind by the depleted woodpile. There, she saw the young mystic again.
“Almost got him that time,” Suri told the wolf, whose head was stuffed in a gap between the logs, scratching the dirt and trying to push deeper. “You’ve lost him now. You’re too big to fit in there.”
The girl was kneeling on the grass in front of the five-foot-high double-row pile of stacked wood, all that remained of the dahl’s winter supply. Both the wolf’s and Suri’s heads popped up as Persephone approached. The girl frowned. “Don’t tell me there’s a rule against wolves hunting rats in woodpiles. Is there?”
“What? No,” Persephone replied.
“There are rules against everything else here. What you can and can’t eat or where you can sleep. Even where to squat in the morning. Everyone here is touched, there’s no mistake, but I suppose that’s what you get from living inside a wall. Tura always said walls were bad, said the same thing about shoes.” Suri looked down at her bare feet. “I didn’t understand Tura’s scorn of either until now.”
Not knowing how to respond, Persephone simply said, “You’re still here.”
“Your eyes still work,” the girl answered with a grin.
If Suri were a normal person, Persephone would have been insulted.
Normal person. Already she had branded the new mystic bizarre. New mystic, new chieftain, there were altogether too many news on the dahl lately.
“Strange game, this stating the obvious,” Suri said, shaking her head. She got up and joined Minna at the woodpile. “Pointless, but popular. Everyone plays it. You’re eating our bread. That isn’t your bed. You have a wolf. But as you can see, I’m getting the knack of it. Tura told me to blend in at villages, especially the dahls. She said people who live inside walls are crazy and can be dangerous. Touched animals are, too. Cursed by the gods, sort of like you, and even a tainted squirrel’s bite can make you that way.”
“I merely meant, well…” Persephone hesitated. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
Suri pointed at the treetops visible over the rear wall of the dahl where the gray spears had become a curtain of green. “Was waiting on the leaves.”
Persephone laughed. “It’s been two weeks.”
The mystic twisted her face, thinking hard. “You have two ears.” She smiled proudly. “I’m starting to see the fun of this. Using a part of what another person says makes it harder, doesn’t it? Probably gets more challenging late in winter when you’ve been sealed up for months—I assume you can’t repeat the same thing twice, right?”
Persephone rolled her eyes.
Suri looked perplexed. “Does everyone here suffer from this eye sickness as well? I’ve seen a lot of that.”
I’m sure you have, Persephone thought.
A pattering sound from the depths of the woodpile sent the wolf thrusting back into the crevice, her claws skittering on the strippe
d bark littering the stack’s perimeter. She sprayed the torn shards across the yard.
Suri sighed. “Minna, you’re still too big.”
Bizarre might have been an understatement. Persephone decided to get to the point. “When we spoke, you mentioned something bad was going to happen. What did you mean?”
“What do you mean, what did I mean?”
“Ah…” Persephone faltered. It hadn’t been this difficult talking with Tura, not that Persephone had seen her much. Mystics rarely came to the dahl, and when they did, it wasn’t to proclaim Everything is going to be cream and honey from now on! Persephone hadn’t seen Tura since the season before the Great Famine.
“I mean, well, your prediction sounded implausible at the time. But two of the nearby dahls have been attacked, and I think I should listen to what you have to say.”
“I told you, ma’am. I don’t know exactly, but the signs were clear.” Plucking bark off one of the logs, she tasted it. Then she spat and tossed the strip aside.
“What signs?”
“Near sunset on the first day of spring, I saw lightning in the northwest. The thunder startled a flock of crows that took flight, also in the northwest. The wind was blowing west to east, and a moment later, the sun was blocked out by dark clouds.”
“And what does that mean?”
Suri sighed. “Okay, listen. The sun is born in the east, so the east is good. West is bad. That’s where the sun goes to die. When signs happen in the west, those are bad omens. Lightning is a judgment of the gods, powerful and violent. Birds are extremely significant, often used as messengers of the gods, and since I saw a whole flock, it means a lot of people will suffer. Blocking out the sun…well, even you ought to understand that’s not a good turn of events. Any one of these signs would have been serious, but all three? Bad news. Very bad news.”
“But you can’t tell me exactly what will happen?”
“Unlike your word game, the gods aren’t so obvious, which makes their games a lot more interesting to play. I mean, if Elan came right out and said tomorrow you’ll take a walk and be ripped apart by badgers, you’d be terrified and wouldn’t go out, right? So she wouldn’t tell you that. She might drop some hints, but if you didn’t pick up on the clues or couldn’t figure them out…well, that’s really not her fault. Anyway, you go, walking into a horrible badger-ripping death because you didn’t know any better. That’s the way gods play their games and why I think we need to talk to the trees. So we aren’t all ripped apart by badgers.”
So very odd.
“Then we can change fate?”
The girl shrugged as her attention once again was drawn to the wolf and the woodpile.
“And how will the trees help?”
Suri let out a long sigh. “Minna, did you hear that? I’m starting to see what Tura meant about people living in the walls. Ma’am, haven’t you ever talked to a tree?”
Very, very odd.
“I can’t say I have. Do you speak to them?”
“Some,” the girl said, and then stuck her head into a gap between the logs as if testing her chance of crawling in. It was the wolf’s turn to watch with amusement.
“Some?”
“Not all trees like to talk,” Suri said, her voice muffled by the woodpile. “Beeches are famous for being unfriendly. They never say a word. Stubborn as can be. You can feel a sense of superiority with them.” She pulled her head out of the cordwood and delivered a sympathetic frown to the wolf, followed by a hopeless shrug. “Now, a locust, laurel, or holly…well…you can’t get them to shut up, but they don’t know anything. They just chatter. Silly gossip mostly. Willows are notorious for going on and on. And trust me, you don’t want to talk to them. Mind. Numbingly. Depressing.” Suri dragged out the words like heavy things.
Persephone gave her a skeptical look.
Seeing it, the girl added in a quiet voice, “Seriously, people have drowned themselves after spending too much time under a willow. Which makes you wonder about the gods’ motives for putting them near water as often as they do.”
She waited, but Persephone remained silent, so Suri continued. “Elms tend to be proud and snooty. Maples are vain. Look at my leaves, look at my leaves! Never talk to a maple in autumn. Unbearable. You can warn them all you want, you know? You remind them winter is coming and what that means, but they won’t listen. Maples have all the memory of a raindrop, which is weird for a tree, don’t you think? Now, evergreens, like spruce and cedar, they’re nice enough. Most of them are soft-spoken. A cedar on the west ridge knew right where the wind had blown my hat last summer. Every so often you’ll find a really sweet old pine. Dear Wogan, you can lose a few days curled up at their feet while sipping needle tea, which they’re quite proud of but honestly tastes pretty awful. They’ll prattle on about the good old days when the summers were sweeter and the rains wetter.”
“And if I wanted to know what the omens you saw meant?” Persephone asked. “If I needed advice about the intentions of gods? Which would I ask?”
“Oh, there’s only one tree worth talking to for that—Magda, the old oak.”
“Where is this oak?”
Suri hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a glen at the base of the high forest in the fingers of the mountain. She holds court there.”
“Holds court?”
“Oh, yes. Magda is highly revered by the other trees. Bushes and plants, too. They all keep a respectable distance and bow before her. It’s easy to see why. She’s…well…she’s Magda, oldest tree in the forest. And the Crescent is an old forest.”
Persephone stared out at the tree-thick hills, which rose well above the level of the dahl’s wall. The ridges rolled on, fold upon fold, each a different shade of green, drifting toward blue. The Crescent Forest hugged Dahl Rhen, providing precious gifts of wood and food, but remained a mysterious world fraught with terrors. Dense groves of old trees, caves, and rivers were known to be gateways to the spirit world, and the Crescent had all of them. Persephone had lain in the lodge on many a summer’s night listening to the frightening sounds entering the open window. Shrieks and cries, cracks and thumps that could have no mortal origin. The Crescent was a noisy neighbor you knew was up to no good. To live in Dahl Rhen was to dwell on the brink of a leafy abyss.
Persephone’s gaze followed the ridgeline to the south, where it rose sharply. “They say the bear that killed my husband and son lives on that mountain.”
Suri nodded, and her bright smile faded. Persephone was sad to see it go. Something about the girl’s cheerful enthusiasm, as odd as it was, made Persephone feel better—hopeful—as if Suri were spring itself, bubbling and budding with possibility. Now the girl appeared serious for the first time. The tattoos around her eyes and mouth added a grave authority, and for a moment Persephone felt a little frightened. “Grin the Brown makes her home in a cave on a cliff near the top of the tree line. Magda isn’t nearly so high, but Grin has a tendency to wander, and she has no respect for the old oak. Grin has no respect for anything.”
Persephone looked out at the forest. “I need to speak with her…to this tree. Can you take me?”
Suri no longer looked at Persephone; her eyes had shifted to a fluttering butterfly. Persephone waited while Suri watched it land on a sprig of clover. A bright smile filled her face once more.
“Did you hear me?” Persephone asked.
“Did I hear what, ma’am?” the girl replied.
“Can you take me to this old oak? So I can ask her some questions?”
“Do you see the butterfly?” Suri grinned with enthusiasm.
“Yes, I see it, but—”
“So stunning and delicate; it’s marvelous. No one can see a butterfly and not stop to admire it. I’d love to be one. To go to sleep and wake up a season later with such beautiful wings and the ability to flutter about. That’s the most wonderful sort of magic, don’t you think? To change, to grow, to fly. But…” She paused. “I wonder what the cost would be.” The sm
ile diminished once more. “There’s always a cost when it comes to magic. I suspect there is a great price to go from lowly caterpillar to glorious butterfly.”
Definitely not a normal person.
Still, Persephone had to admit she liked Suri. “Can you take me to—?”
“Of course I can.” Suri smirked. “Why do you think I’ve risked my sanity staying in this terrible walled place? Oh, is this another game?” She turned to her wolf, which was sitting but still eyeing the woodpile. “Can you get that rat, Minna? Would you like me to move the wood so you can catch it?” Suri looked back at Persephone and smiled. “How’s that?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Black Tree
The Crescent Forest was our neighbor. A place so vast no one knew all its secrets. From its trees, Dahl Rhen was built. From its animals, Dahl Rhen was fed. And from its darkness, a hero was made.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Raithe and Malcolm were nestled in the eaves of a forest just outside Dahl Rhen, a fortified settlement built on a hill and surrounded by a circular wall of logs. The hill itself was dreamlike, so high, so green. Raithe had never seen such lush land. In Dureya, everything was bleached, the only color painted in sunsets. His father had often spoken about Alysin—a paradise where the spirits of brave warriors went after death, a place of green fields, foaming beer, and beautiful women. Seeing Dahl Rhen, Raithe wondered if his father had simply heard rumors of this place.
“So that hill is a dahl?” Malcolm asked, sitting with knees up, twiddling a twig between two fingers.
Raithe once more marveled at Malcolm’s lack of rudimentary knowledge about how people lived. He’d given up asking how Malcolm had become a slave. Any inquiry resulted in vague responses and a change of subject. Raithe concluded Malcolm had either been taken by the Fhrey as a baby or was born in captivity.
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