Pillar of Ash, page 10
“What’s wrong?” Berin watched me set my pack against a boulder.
I winced—I was so sore by now that it was hard to move, and with just Berin nearby, my guard slipped. “Nothing. I just… Everything hurts. But this is good. The river. The rest.”
He pulled his tunic off. I noted the welts of insect bites across his chest and started to tsk, but he waved me off. “Back, witch. At least the mosquitoes are dying off. It means summer is ending, but I’ll gladly take a cold autumn over heat and insects.”
I thought nervously ahead to the colder months and the certainty of snow. “What if the Easterners won’t let us winter with them?” I prodded, not for the first time.
“Yske, we’ve discussed this. They welcomed the Arpa, why wouldn’t they welcome us?”
“But we’re not Arpa.” Bending down, I removed the small circular pin from my legwraps and began to unwind them, relishing the cool breeze on the sweat-soaked fabric of my trousers. “We’re the barbarians the Arpa didn’t even bother to conquer.”
“Don’t worry so much,” Berin chided, scratching at the bites on his chest and eyeing the water. He started forward, then glanced back at me. “Coming?”
“Go on,” I told him, waving at the river. “I’ll find a quieter pool to bathe in.”
Berin glanced from me to our swimming, laughing companions. “We’ve all seen your skin before, Yske.”
“All the same.”
“Don’t go far, then.” He left me, shed the rest of his clothing into a pile and made for the others.
I watched him go for a moment, suppressing a sudden surge of loneliness. Esan and Ovir hurled sodden pinecones at one another and Nui raced between them, leaving trails of dripping water on the warm rock. Berin joined with a splash that nearly washed Ovir out of his pool and down into the next. Seera laughed freely at them from where she, Ittrid, Bara and Sedi floated, sharing a pot of soap between them.
They were happy. Harmonious.
I gathered my sweat-soaked clothes and strode to an empty pool behind a stretch of bushes. I fetched a knot of dried widow soap leaves and lavender from my pack and set to grinding the leaves on the smooth rock ledge. I splashed a little water into the mixture, then left it to bubble as I slipped into the pool.
The water was cool but shallow, and the rock bowl it lay in was warmed by the sun. I scrubbed dirt and sweat from my stiff hair and flushed skin, letting the water wash the pungent suds over a ledge and downstream. Then I scooped up what remained of the soap with my clothes and scrubbed them as best I could.
I tossed them over the bushes to dry in the sun and breeze and drifted, belly up and eyes half-closed. I could hear the chatter of the others all around, but with my ears just below the water I could almost fool myself into thinking I was alone, back at my favorite bathing spot on the slopes of Mount Thyr. I heard Nui barking and saw her frolic through the shadow of the trees, chasing a churring squirrel. I smiled, my sore muscles eased, and my lingering tension did too.
“Do you have more widow soap?”
I raised my head and cracked an eye to see Askir standing at the side of my pool, naked and lean. I watched him for a moment, pulling myself out of my imaginings of home, then floated my feet down to the bottom of the pool and stood.
“In the side of my pack,” I pointed. “The third pouch, with the bone fastening.”
He vanished without a word of thanks. Disgruntled, I turned away and began to work the tangles from my hair, wishing I’d thought to bring my comb over.
Askir reappeared without a single scuff or murmur of warning, widow root leaves in hand. “May I?” He gestured at my pool.
I was too startled to resent the invasion of privacy. “Of course.”
He slipped into the water and, spying the rock I’d used to crush my own soap, began to do the same. I eyed his back, the nape of his neck caked with dirt and blond hair in a knotted tuft atop his head.
“Nothing worrying in the forest?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t be naked if there was,” he informed me, scooping water into the crushed leaves with one hand. While it began to bubble he looked back at me. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Ah. So there was a reason he was here.
“You have an aura about you, like the Miri,” Askir informed me. His gaze was unsettlingly direct, but I was coming to recognize this as one of the priest’s defining traits. “You and Berin both, but you a little more.”
I settled deeper in the water, leaving only my head above the surface. Water licked at my chin and my hair drifted in clumps. “You can see that with your Sight,” I observed. Every Vynder priest was gifted with the ability to see magic in its various forms, some stronger than others.
He nodded.
“Hessa is our mother and Imnir is our father,” I pointed out. “Both of their blood is more gold than scarlet.”
“Then why is your aura stronger than Berin’s?”
“I’m blessed.”
Askir didn’t reply immediately. He untangled his hair from its leather tie and ducked under the water to wet it, leaving me in a stretch of bubbling quiet. Then he resurfaced, puffed water from his lips and set to scrubbing his hair with soap. He hadn’t added lavender, and the bitter smell of the leaves wafted over to me.
“Your aura has grown stronger in the last few days,” he informed me. He kept his eyes closed as he clawed his scalp. “It seems to me that the farther we get from home, the stronger it becomes.”
I froze, taken aback. He chose that moment to duck under the water again and held there, rummaging his fingers through his hair to loose the dirt and soap. Brown suds floated away on the gentle current and vanished over the ledge.
Aita’s gift had increased my aura. My Sight was strong, but I hadn’t thought to examine myself since Isik’s visit.
“You must be mistaken,” I told him when he resurfaced a second time, shaking his head like a dog and blinking water from his eyes. Whatever was happening, I didn’t like that Askir had noticed, or was questioning me about it. I’d sworn to Aita that I would keep her secrets and those of the High Halls. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Askir watched my face, water still dripping from his blond beard and hair. “You don’t know why it’s happening,” he observed.
“No,” I said, with enough honesty to believe it myself. “You’re our priest. This is why you’re here.”
He wiped the water from his beard and nodded slowly, unaffected. “I’ll think on it.”
He set to washing the rest of his body, and I left the pool. Padding back to my pack, I let my skin dry in the sun while I dug out my spare linen undertunic and my comb, and set to untangling my hair. But as warm as the sun was, and as calming the routine, Askir’s words stayed with me.
What was Aita’s gift doing to me, and how long would it last? When I returned home, would my mother notice it too?
“Berin!” Ittrid’s voice cut through the air. “Everyone! Come see this!”
Comb still in my hand, I hastened to the nearest ledge, bare feet curling on the warm rock. Several tiers below I spied the Soulderni woman, dressed and damp-haired, waving from a place where the river veered back into the forest. Between us the rest of our companions swam or lay in various stages of dress, but at Ittrid’s words they stirred.
“What is it?” Seera called, hopping on one foot to pull on her trousers.
“A cave,” Ittrid replied, tone caught between excitement and awe. “And a Great Bear.”
* * *
The rush of water and the pad of our bare feet were the only sounds in the cave. Light chased us through the yawning mouth and peered through gouges in the rock above, where tree roots stretched toward a central pool with tangled, crooked fingers. They formed a living veil between Berin and me as our party spread out.
The light from the holes in the ceiling reflected off the water, casting patterns across the stone walls. I eyed the latter, noting several varieties of lichen, moss, and mushroom as I trailed Ittrid deeper into the cave.
“There’s something in the water,” Sedi’s voice echoed around us.
I turned to see Berin leap to a boulder out in the pool. He grasped a dangling root for support, earning a rain of dirt and deadfall from above, and peered straight down into the water. Furrowing his brows, he crouched and slipped a hand beneath the surface.
The pool was not deep. Before his shoulder touched the water he pulled back and held an object beneath a beam of light.
It was a golden spearhead, as long as my forearm and evidently dulled with age, given how casually Berin turned it about in his palm.
“There’s more,” Askir said. He slipped into the pool and bent, both arms submerged. When he straightened, his palms were full of dull arrowheads of various material and sizes, from stone to green-tainted bronze. “These must be offerings. Though there’s no power here.”
Berin nodded, still poised on the boulder. “Offerings to who?”
“The Bear,” Ittrid replied.
I followed her pointing finger across the walls, tracking the lichen and water stains. Deeper into the grotto they gave way to stronger lines and more unnatural patterns. Runes. Images.
Almost unconsciously, I moved toward them. A pleasant coolness wafted across my naked legs—I hadn’t had time to fully dress—and I slowed, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I trailed my fingers across the cool stone. Lichen flaked beneath my fingers, dusty and the palest green.
“What is it?” Berin’s voice called to me. Beyond him I saw Nui poised in the mouth of the hollow, head cocked curiously.
“There are markings on the walls,” Seera answered before I could. She materialized at my shoulder, her damp hair pulled back into a quick, efficient knot. She had her long knife bare in one hand, though she hadn’t taken the time to put on her belt, and the remnants of black paint were smudged around her eyes. She pointed along the wall. “I see a woman.”
“And a bear,” Ittrid added, gesturing at the space before us. And above us. “Look up.”
There on the walls of the cave, the lichen gathered into carvings in the shape of a huge bear. It stood on its hind legs, its huge clawed back paws originating just before Ittrid, Seera, and me, its head watching from above. Its jaw was closed, its eyes unseeing.
In the center of its body was the life-size profile of a woman, her generous breasts and hips reminding me distantly of Aita, and in passing, myself. But this was not Aita. There was only one woman in our stories associated with a Great Bear. A Great Bear who had been wounded by a spear.
I became aware of the others crowding in around me, craning to see the Bear or edging in to scrutinize the woman in its protection.
“Aegr and Liv,” I observed, voice edged with awe. “This is where the Great Bear was healed.”
Thirteen
Interlude
Aita surveyed an expanse of bare rock, unbroken save for a few patches of reedy marsh where the rock bellied and rain gathered, and lines of stalwart sumac grew. A river meandered to the south, close enough that I could see its glinting water and hear its rush.
Creases of moss and frail purple flowers gathered in smaller seams in the rock. I walked along these, enjoying the cool squish beneath my bare toes.
“Why are we here?” I asked Aita absently. The seam of moss I was following ended, and I jumped to the dry warmth of stone.
“We’re waiting to see if a rumor is true,” Aita replied. She looked away from the barren landscape and up to the sky, to the divisions between the four quadrants of the High Halls: the twilit dusk to the west, the snow-diffused daylight of the south, warm summer from the east and a dark night to the north, rippling with blue and white lights, like a swirl of skirts in a festival dance. It made the light around us strange and prone to unpredictable shifts. But I was used to it by now and had learned to enjoy each turn of season, weather, and sun as they came.
“What rumor?” I wanted to know, poking at the moss again with my foot.
“We will see,” Aita returned.
Curious, I returned to my mistress and hovered beside her skirts.
Eventually, a distant sound drew our gaze south. I saw a man standing on the riverbank—or, at least, the shape of a man.
“Stay behind me, and do not ask him any questions,” Aita told me in a voice that brooked no disobedience.
I opened my mouth anyway. “Why—”
“Otherwise he will eat your flesh,” she told me flatly, “and craft himself a new pet from your bones.”
I clamped my lips shut as Aita took my hand and led me toward the man beside the water, always keeping me one step behind her.
As we drew closer, I saw that the man was not a man. He was male in shape, but his skin was woven reeds and each of his eyes held riverstones, smooth and sparkling orbs of jade. Those strange eyes turned to Aita, then to me, partially hidden behind her skirts.
He smiled, reed lips turning up to reveal rows of fine fish teeth. His hair was the only thing human about him, thick and black—even at nine years old, I realized that it likely did not belong to him.
A riverman. I knew of these creatures from stories, usually the frightening kind that Berin loved and I avoided. I understood then why Aita had forbidden me to ask any questions—rivermen hated being questioned on any topic, and were dangerous and unpredictable.
“Your kind are not welcome in these halls,” Aita said coolly.
The riverman looked at me, water pooling about his woven feet. “Hello, little shadow. Aita, have you finally spawned? Who is her father? Pity I couldn’t serve the role.”
At the last, his grin curled lasciviously, showing every one of his fish teeth and the bulge of a lithe black tongue. Human men might not have such teeth or tongues, but that smile was one I had already learned to be wary of, and I edged a little further behind my mistress.
Aita ignored him. “Thvynder could destroy you for this trespass.”
The riverman slowly turned his jade eyes to Aita. “If they were here, perhaps. But their journey stretches long. Very long.”
I was captivated by the riverman’s strange eyes, but the implications of his words still struck me. “Thvynder is everywhere,” I said, every inch an indignant daughter of the High Priesthood. Being indignant felt better than being afraid. “They’re not on a journey.”
Aita shot me a silencing look, but it wasn’t the command in her expression that quieted me. It was the tightness around her eyes. Worry.
“Ah,” the riverman said, looking from me to the Miri. “Your shadow doesn’t know that her protector god is gone? Do any of the humans, I wonder? The priests?”
“You are here,” Aita observed, ignoring the riverman’s words again. In her effort not to ask questions, her words seemed stilted. “Many of your kind may be as well.”
The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not as sociable as some.”
“You will all leave.” Aita stepped forward, slipping her hand from mine. I felt a moment’s fear for her—she was a Miri but she carried no weapons, and she wasn’t a warrior like my mother. The riverman, with his teeth, each one so fine and pointed, glistening in the sun…
“This is not your realm,” Aita stated.
“There is no realm for us,” the man returned, a note of true lament in his harsh words. “We are born of the same creator, you and I, but my kind have languished in the human world while you Miri feasted here, drank these waters. You made yourselves gods. We became nightmares for children.” At the last, he looked to me and smiled again, needle teeth straight and sharp. “No more. Not with so few of your kind remaining. Not with your god a year gone, with no sign of return.”
I thought of the water Aita had given me to drink, the honey and the berries. I’d understood, on some level, that these things made Aita strong and helped her magic, and they’d do the same for me. But even young as I was, the riverman’s words sparked a deeper, more dangerous understanding.
We were born of the same creator.
You made yourselves gods.
“I will assemble the council,” Aita declared, her voice as hard and unyielding as the stone beneath our feet. “You and all your kind will be driven out of the High Halls. You may have passed a few moons in these waters, but our power is still vastly beyond yours. Go back to whatever den you’ve been hiding in, and never return.”
The riverman’s lips curled in anger, reeds splitting and cracking in fine lines. “Try, cousin.”
With that, the riverman slipped back into the water. His eyes lingered on me as he left, and I swore that I heard his voice once more, his lips twisting as he farewelled me: “Little shadow.”
Aita led me away from the riverbank. I was slow to comply, eyes still pinned on the place where the riverman had vanished beneath the shining water.
“Is Thvynder really gone?” I asked, because it was easier to talk about my god than the monster.
Aita looked over her shoulder at me, thought for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes. But you must never speak of it again. Thvynder is searching for their sister, Imilidese. The last Pillar. She left creation long ago and still has not returned.”
That made perfect sense to my child’s mind—if Berin was missing, I would search for him too. “Will Thvynder come back?”
Aita stood, nodding firmly. “They will.”
“How do you know?”
“Fate ordained it.” Aita squeezed my hand and cast her eyes north, looking toward something far out of sight. She started to walk across the rocks, and I dutifully followed, running to keep up. “Just like she ordained you be here, by my side.”
“She talked about me? When?” I pestered, intrigued. “What did she say?”
“Fate does not speak, not in the sense that you mean. And I will tell you no more.”
“Please!”
“No.”
I accepted that, frustrated though it made me. “When will Thvynder come back?”
“I cannot say exactly,” Aita told me. “But all will be well—so long as you keep all the secrets I’ve entrusted to you, especially this. Do you promise?”
