“Are you saying—”
“I’m only pointing out one of my many concerns. Your father is my friend, and I fear his own adherence to tradition might cause someone to act rashly.”
Something caught Gryndal’s eye.
“What is it?” Mawyndulë asked.
“Fresh stones.” Gryndal walked his horse over.
At the center of the flat-topped hill, Mawyndulë saw what Gryndal had: new dirt dropped into a burned-out cavity of a building’s foundation. Fresh stones had been set upon scorched ones.
“Looks as if Petragar missed a few rats,” Gryndal said.
He walked his mount around the debris, peering with a slight squint. His eyes shifted left and then right. A grin filled his face as he trotted forward around a collapsed pile of stone and blackened logs. With a wave of his hand, the logs flung themselves end-over-end, revealing five huddled people.
Rhunes!
They were so caked with soot, dirt, and ash that Mawyndulë could hardly make out their features. They looked nothing like the paintings. Their hair was long and filthy and not just on their heads. Dirty mats also grew on the cheeks and chins of the males. All were dressed in tattered rags, the original color of which Mawyndulë couldn’t begin to guess. They were barefoot, unless mud counted as a covering. Primitive knives and hatchets made from sticks and stones were stuck in strips of animal hide tied around their waists.
“Like rats,” Gryndal said. The sound of his voice caused the cowering Rhunes to wail and quiver. “They just come back. Look at them already building their little dens in which to breed.”
Gryndal walked to Mawyndulë’s side, turning his back to the Rhunes, who whimpered and huddled together with arms wrapped around one another.
“And oh, my prince, do they ever breed. They spit out a new litter of offspring in less than a year—less than a year! This group, even as small as it is, could become twenty-five in five years. In twenty years…well, in twenty years, who knows? Depends on how many of the offspring are female, but easily a hundred. In a mere century…” He shook his head in disgust. “Before your first centennial feast, this little nest of rodents would outnumber any tribe in Estramnadon, even the Nilyndd.”
“How many Rhunes are there?”
Gryndal shrugged. “Ferrol knows. Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands. Too many for the land to feed. By denying them the fertile fields beyond the Bern River we’ve been able to keep their numbers down.” He indicated the horizon. “Contained, they exhaust the ground they live on and create a wasteland. They end up starving or eating one another. Either way their numbers are controlled to some degree.”
“They do that? Eat their own kind?” The prince grimaced.
“Just like your goldfish.”
Mawyndulë looked at the little cluster of dirty creatures with newfound revulsion. The feelings of pity he’d initially experienced faded.
“Honestly, I’d prefer rats. They’re cleaner. My greatest fear is that some of these”—he nodded in the direction of the Rhunes—“would cross the Bern or, worse, the Urum River. It’s a vast country out here, and only two need to slip over. The horde that would result would blanket the world. Then they would breach the Nidwalden en masse. Once inside Erivan, they would act like locusts. All of Elan would be devoured. Nothing would be left except a world like this—a world of dirt, rock, and rubble. This is the sort of trouble I spoke of, the peril your father toys with because he lacks your imagination and vision. It makes me fearful, so very fearful.”
Gryndal stared. “The Instarya and a few Asendwayr live among the Rhunes. They think of them as pets and in some cases even more than that. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those stationed out here have taken Rhune females to their beds.”
Mawyndulë recoiled. He looked at the filthy, hairy, bony females in the dirt and ash. He shivered. “That’s not possible. No one would—”
“Don’t be so naïve; of course they would. You need to understand that the lesser tribes have more in common with the Rhunes now than they do with us.”
Mawyndulë couldn’t help glancing at the soldiers behind them and wondering if they could hear. Gryndal made no effort to speak quietly, but if they heard, they showed no sign of offense. They were the personal guard to the fane and probably had heard worse. Mawyndulë felt awkward.
What must they think?
“The two groups share the same limitations, the same subjection to the dominance of nature,” Gryndal went on. “What we use for our delight, they are slaves to. We can tell the sun when to shine and grant the sky permission to rain, but the non-Miralyith Fhrey freeze to death when it gets cold—just like the Rhunes, Dherg, goldfish, and locusts. They are all the same. It’s time we understood this. We Miralyith aren’t just another tribe, but another being altogether.”
A new thought poked into Mawyndulë’s mind as once more he looked at the soldiers. What if the reason they don’t take offense is because they don’t think the same way I do?
Mawyndulë looked over at Alon Rhist, only a short distance away now. The fortress appeared different, less majestic, less heroic. The buildings had been hewn from rock, chiseled from stone by hundreds of workers. If Mawyndulë had wanted to, he could have made a better fortress by himself. The whole of Rhulyn, he realized, wasn’t grand or glorious at all. It was nothing but abject desolation.
“Compared with everyone else,” Gryndal told him, “we are gods.”
The prince’s teacher glanced over his shoulder and flicked his fingers. The five huddled Rhunes died in a burst of blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Full Moon
I swear, the reason for full moons is so the gods can more clearly see the mischief they create.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Nights were warmer. Leaves were full. Fireflies streaked the forest. This was Suri’s calendar, her chronological list of things needing attention. The stars announced the time for gathering wildflowers on the high ridge and collecting winter’s deadwood. She should have had a large bowl of dandelions soaking already. Tura had always liked the early batch the best. Spring edged toward summer and Suri was behind, but she had more important things to deal with—the moon was just shy of round.
Suri climbed the steps and entered the Great Hall of the lodge. Doing so at night made her think of death. Tura hadn’t said much on the subject of dying. Whenever they found a lifeless bird or fox, they’d buried it. “Replenishes the world,” Tura always said. But when the old mystic had become ill, she’d told Suri, “When I’m gone, heave my carcass on a pile of wood and set it aflame. Then let the wind scatter my ashes to the forest and field. I want to fly like dandelion tufts.”
The part Suri had latched onto was when I’m gone. It begged the question of where she was going. Suri asked a few times, but Tura’s answers were always vague. The woman knew how many veins were in the average maple leaf and insisted on following an insanely precise recipe for apple butter, but she talked of her death in imprecise generalities. She spoke of Phyre, the afterlife. According to her, it was divided into three sections: Rel, Nifrel, and Alysin. Rel was an indifferent place where most went after they died; Alysin welcomed only the greatest of heroes, and Nifrel took the truly evil. When pressed for specifics such as exactly where Phyre was or how she planned to get there, Tura changed the subject. Suri figured the old woman didn’t know. She found this frightening because Tura knew everything. After burning Tura’s body in a shallow hole, Suri pictured death not as a mystical place called Phyre but as a fiery pit. She was reminded of that each time she went to watch over the Miralyith.
Entering the dark hall—that pile of deadwood with its eternal fire—was like dying.
Firelight danced on the walls as the mystic crossed the big room, carefully avoiding the furs and refusing to look at the mounted heads in fear she’d see a friend.
That’s probably why Tura had me burn her. So these strange people of the dahl couldn’t hang parts of her body in their lodge.
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Persephone asked her for help because Suri was one of the few who understood the bald lady’s language. She didn’t mind watching and genuinely liked Arion, despite her obsession with me and I. So few people knew how to build an interesting string pattern, and most of the time the Miralyith just slept. But there was another, more important, reason she suffered trips into Dahl Rhen’s shrine of death. She was looking for Maeve.
Suri hadn’t seen the old woman since hearing the conversation between Roan and Gifford. Maeve was as elusive as a unicorn—perhaps more so, as Suri had seen at least two of those. The Keeper of Ways hid herself in the depths of the wooden building that Suri was loath to explore. She had taken her shift looking over Arion while secretly hoping she would cross paths once more with Maeve, but so far…nothing.
“We’re out of time. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to sniff her out?” Suri asked Minna.
The wolf looked up silently.
“Fine. I understand. We’ll just have to open some doors.”
Suri didn’t like the idea of opening doors in the lodge. Given the horrors kept on display, she worried about the things they felt the need to hide.
No one was there to stop her. As usual, the place was empty. The chieftain and his friends had vacated shortly after Arion had been housed on the second floor. They were probably outside the wall again. Suri and Minna had been making a daily escape from the wooden prison to breathe free air lest they go insane. On these excursions, she often saw a group gathered on the east side of the dahl near the standing stone. Konniger, his wife, the one-handed man who had been at the cascades, and a crowd of men—as many as twenty—would be there, but not Maeve. That old unicorn never showed herself.
Suri’s bare feet and Minna’s four paws padded across the raised wooden floor. They both halted at the sound of a muffled cough. It felt wrong to disturb the silence of the flickering tomb, but she needed to chance it. “Maeve?” she called.
Suri heard a creak and the sound of one of the doors opening.
The old woman shuffled out of the shadows into the wavy light. A bony hand held a robe tight to her neck. She peered at Suri with furrowed brows. “What do you want?” She glanced at the ceiling. “You’re supposed to be up there, aren’t you? Playing guard, or gatekeeper, or whatever?”
“I need to speak with you…about Shayla.”
Maeve took a step back as if Suri had pushed her. Fear and fire both ignited in the old woman’s eyes. “Leave me alone.” She moved to close the door.
“I know how to free her.”
The Keeper of Ways stopped. “Free her? What do you mean, free her?”
“A child left in the wood is irresistible to a morvyn spirit, like a squealing mouse to a night owl. They swoop in and possess the helpless; the innocent gives them the ability to walk the face of Elan, to have a physical presence. But a child can’t hope to survive in a forest, so the morvyn turns itself into an animal—wolves or bears mostly. That’s why they get such bad reputations.” Suri looked down and patted Minna’s head sympathetically.
“In most cases, they live an unusually long life and then die. Rarely do they do anything bad because the child is still in there, still fighting for control. But if they taste human flesh, then the spirit of the child is weakened and the morvyn gains the advantage. Seeking to take total control, the morvyn lusts for more human flesh. The more it eats, the weaker the child’s spirit becomes and the stronger the demon gets. Should the spirit of the child grow too weak, then the demon becomes all-powerful, able to unleash its evil upon the world.”
Maeve cringed in horror with each word. “You said you know how to free her?”
“I read the bones,” Suri went on as gently as she could. “Grin the Brown is coming to devour everyone on this dahl. This will happen at sunrise tomorrow. So I’m going to her cave to stop the morvyn by freeing your daughter. Without a body, it can’t harm anyone. I was wondering…would you like to come?”
—
When the door opened, the old shriveled Rhune, whose face reminded Arion of rotted fruit, slowly rose to her feet. Someone was going to great effort to avoid making noise, trying not to wake her.
Arion wasn’t asleep. There was only so much sleep a person could endure. The first few days she’d been blessed with a body demanding rest, and she’d retreated into unconsciousness whenever possible. She had good days and bad. Good days were when she had trouble seeing and felt like her head was going to explode. Bad days made her look forward to good days. Recently, there had been more good days than bad, a hopeful sign that she was getting better.
With the improvement, she’d lost the refuge of sleep, which had become elusive. Arion spent hours lying on her back, staring at the wooden rafters. Most of the time she lay listening to the world: the breathing of whoever was on watch, the wind above the roof, random thuds from below, or an occasional shout from outside. On that evening, she listened to the whispers of the old woman trying not to disturb her rest.
The guard changed every few hours, always the same three: Persephone, Suri, and the old woman, whose name Arion didn’t know. Maybe she’d heard it, but it hadn’t stuck. The old woman didn’t speak Fhrey, and as a result she was as interesting as the chair she sat in. Arion’s eyes were closed, but she knew who had entered the room—impossible to miss the click of claws on wood. The girl with the wolf was back. As much as she feared the animal, which had a tendency to stare while licking its fangs, she looked forward to Suri’s shifts.
The girl was fascinating. She made complex string patterns and juggled. Suri understood the Fhrey language and talked to the wolf as if it understood what she said. And although none of those things by itself indicated anything, all of them together suggested a particular inclination. If Suri were Fhrey, Arion would have her tested for entrance into the Estramnadon Academy of the Art. The enigma, of course, came from Suri being a Rhune. Only a small percentage of Fhrey had the talent to be Artists, and Rhunes were known to be akin to animals and incapable of basic reasoning, much less mastering the Art.
Unfortunately, Arion also continued to lack any ability in that regard.
The Rhune girl hadn’t explained what she had meant about it coming back. Arion had asked, but the girl had feigned ignorance, teasing her with a smile each time the subject was broached.
It hadn’t come back.
With each day’s passing, Arion grew less confident the Art would ever return. The blow to her head had severed her connection to the natural world. The ability to sense life had gone numb. Like birds that knew when to fly south, Arion used to feel the impending sunrise and experience the shifts in weather and seasons as if they were moods, colors, or music. Once discovered, the Art had opened a previously unnoticed window through which a continuously shared consciousness with Elan passed. The world was a bonfire of power that produced constant heat, but that heat was gone, and she felt horribly cold in its absence. Unlike the numbness in her hands and feet, which had healed quickly, her connection to the world and the ability to tap it in order to wield the Art had not. Arion felt blind, deaf, and numb—imprisoned in her own body.
“You can stop pretending,” Suri said. “Padera is gone.”
Padera! That was her name.
Arion opened one eye. In the light of the little lamp with its flickering flame, the girl was perched once more on the chair, one foot tucked underneath her, the other thrown over the arm. The wolf curled up beside the chair. Both stared at Arion.
“How did you know?”
“Breathe different when you sleep.”
Arion carefully pushed up to her elbows. She could feel her fingers, which was good, and her head throbbed with just a dull ache. She was much better, yet knowing this was little comfort.
Why hasn’t it come back? If I can feel my hands, why not the Art? What if it never comes back?
“Did you bring your string?” Arion asked. Helping the girl with patterns was one of the few things she looked forward to each day.
&n
bsp; Suri tugged on the loop around her neck, pulling it out of her clothing but leaving it as a necklace. She still sat on the chair, staring at the floor.
“Something wrong?” Arion asked.
“Might not see again.”
“You’re going blind?” Arion asked, dramatizing the girl’s purposeful avoidance of pronouns.
The girl scowled. “Know what I mean.”
“You know what I mean, and you should have said, ‘I might not see you again.’ ”
Arion expected an irritated smirk or maybe an argument. She’d been making a concerted effort to teach the girl to speak proper Fhrey, something Suri reluctantly submitted to but rarely without protest. Suri did look over but showed no hint of resistance. She appeared pensive, even a bit scared.
“Why? What’s going on?” Arion’s first thought was that a village meeting had been held and the mongrel hordes had decided to execute the evil Miralyith. They probably would do it at dawn, a ritual killing, a sacrifice to their sun god.
“Have to do something dangerous,” Suri said.
A wind blew in through the window, threatening the lamp’s flame, which fluttered but survived.
“What are you going to do?”
“Fight demon for girl’s soul.”
Arion wasn’t certain she had heard correctly. Suri had probably gotten the words wrong. She did that on occasion, and it then became a verbal form of the string game as Arion worked to untangle the idea from the sounds Suri made. “The word demon means an evil spirit.”
Suri nodded. “A morvyn—an evil spirit—took over an infant. Turned her into a giant bear. She feed on people. Bones show morvyn will come here on morning of full moon. Tomorrow. Greatest power then. Kill everyone if me not stop it.”
Arion didn’t bother to correct the pronoun. She had other more important concerns. “What do you mean when you say you saw the future with bones?”
Suri pulled out what looked to be a burnt stick from her satchel. “The signs are clear. Even know part of the name of the demon, Grin, like a nasty smile, see?” The girl held out an old chicken bone. The bottom half was scorched black. “There is an evil bear in the forest called Grin the Brown. Not bear, is morvyn. Think that is what the bones mean. But me never drive out demon before. If fail…”
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