Hall of Smoke

by H. M. Long

  Sixnit trembled as the man took Vistic from her. I understood why. I half expected him to break the sick child’s neck then and there. But instead, he opened the baby’s swaddling cloth and noted his sex with approval. Then he nodded for Sixnit to turn around like I had.

  She did so without further provocation. She was laced tighter than a bowstring, but her gaze was level and her steps firm.

  The Algatt did not accost her like he had me. Instead, he read her body and expression with an experienced eye. “I’ll let you keep your child if you cause me no trouble. Keep my bed, my hearth and my children, and you’ll receive protection and fair treatment.”

  Sixnit gauged him, head to toe. I watched her in turn, filled with horrified admiration. My courage was fickle, but Sixnit’s was contained and deliberate. She was being sold into slavery, into the bed of our enemies, yet somehow, she had managed to snatch a fragment of power.

  “Then I will serve you,” she agreed.

  With that, Sixnit was sold. I watched the Algatt return Vistic to her arms and wave to an older boy at the front of the watching crowd. The boy led three ewes forward as payment.

  I watched Sixnit and Vistic vanish into the Algatt. I met her last, tremulous smile with a helpless stare, uselessly willing Fate to send me a vision, to give me some glimpse of their destinies or to tell me if our paths would cross again. But Fate rarely deigned to answer human cries.

  Man after man passed me by. Questions came, hands groped, and my eyes glazed over. Every word, every indignity fed the shard of Eang inside of me until I was sure my blood would boil. Then, without explanation, my Fire died.

  Another man had stopped in front of me. Even before I saw the newcomer’s face, I knew he was different. The very air around him smelled richer, weightier; like an ancient, creaking forest. His shoulders were broad and easy, set in the manner of a man who felt no need to elevate himself. His skin was sun-darkened – a color I had once mistaken for true Eangen blood – and his sea-blue tunic was embroidered at its slit collar, buttoned with a wooden bead and belted at the waist with a short sword and knife.

  But it was his eyes that were the most distinctive. Mismatched. One gold, one blue.

  I hurled myself at the traveler called Omaskat. But even as my fingers closed around his throat, he seized one of my wrists and snapped it. I dropped with a screech of pain.

  The warrior in charge of the prisoners rebuked Omaskat, but I could not hear what he said. My vision swayed and blurred as the traveler continued to apply pressure to the break. I had no more air, nothing left to scream and no Fire to throw. Black sparked across my eyes.

  The pressure released. Omaskat put a hand on the back of my neck and led me away into the crowd, which parted before my stumbling feet like ants before a flame.

  “Stay quiet, little Eangi,” the man murmured into my ear, “and perhaps I won’t tell these wolves what you are.”

  * * *

  Omaskat cinched my bindings tighter, securing me to the trunk of a sticky, towering pine.

  “I’m your only protection now,” the man reminded me, sitting back on his haunches. We were in a corner of the camp, his small plot hosting only a fire, bedroll and an enormous hunting dog. I recognized the creature from their visit to the Hall of Smoke, big and lean and shaggy down the spine. Ayo, she was called.

  “If you escape in your condition,” Omaskat continued, those mismatched eyes fixed on mine, “the bastards out there will make a sport of you before I can track you down. You look too Eangen.”

  My eyes flicked to his throat and the fingers of my good hand, tied across my stomach, twitched. But no heat welled up into my mouth. My Fire was inexplicably silent in the presence of Omaskat.

  “You led them to Albor,” I accused, trying not to dwell on my lack of power. Either something protected this man, or Eang was withholding the Fire from me. Both options were daunting.

  Omaskat’s head tilted to one side. “I did no such thing.”

  That made me angry. “There’s no use denying it. Why else would you visit the Hall of Smoke a week before your people burned it down?”

  Why else would Eang charge me with killing you?

  The man rested his forearms on his knees and let his fingers drape down between them. “The horde came to Albor because it was the richest settlement within a few days’ ride, and the greatest threat; heart of the Eangi priesthood. There are more than a thousand people in this camp and the numbers grow every day. They’re hungry and desperate.”

  My lower lip trembled – exhaustion, I told myself, not emotion. “They slaughtered everyone.”

  He paused. No amusement crossed his face, nor disdain. He just leant closer, bringing his dark blond beard an inch from my chin. “The Eangen and the Algatt have lived in crude harmony for hundreds of years, Eangi. But the world is changing. The Arpa have taken the mountains and the Algatt must migrate. Power is shifting, above and below, human and divine; powers older, and greater, than your demon-goddess.”

  “There is no power greater than Eang,” I snapped. I had no interest in whatever heresies the Algatt were concocting to justify the loss of their home. “And she is no demon.”

  “She is also no god,” Omaskat replied, still watching me. “Which you would know, if you had ever encountered one.”

  The priestess in me ignited, bitter and laughing. The suggestion was so absurd – even for an Algatt – it didn’t merit rebuke.

  “Eang is God of the New World, is she not?” Omaskat asked. “Begotten by the Gods of the Old? Yet who, young priestess, begot them?”

  “No one,” I said without falter. “They created themselves, from the smoke and ash of the Last Age.”

  That was the story I’d been told since childhood, the pattern of existence itself – and the tale from which the Hall of Smoke had found its name. Before the time and world in which my people lived, there had been another. And after its end, the first gods had formed themselves from the remnants of that Old World. They had made the universe anew, the High Halls and the Waking World. They had loved and bred and birthed the Gods of the New World, and they had made humans, from the earth on which their own birth-blood spilled.

  Omaskat considered me for another few heartbeats, cool and unflinching, before he relented. He sat back and said in a low voice, “Then I misspoke, priestess. Clearly, you know better than I.”

  His concession lacked scorn. If anything, it was pitying, which made me angrier.

  I ran my teeth along the inside of my bottom lip. Heresy aside, this man had denied leading the Algatt to the Hall of Smoke. I didn’t believe him. His visit to Albor made no sense unless he had been involved in the settlement’s destruction.

  And I was the one that had welcomed him, fed him and given him my bearskin to sleep on. When he had sat at the fireside with us, had he cared that we would all die within a week?

  My mouth felt dry. If I killed him now, if I fulfilled the vision Svala had of me three years ago, perhaps everything would be righted. Perhaps Eang would save us. Perhaps I would wake to find this was all a dream in a meadow of poppies.

  Omaskat stood up. “The woman and baby sold off today – yes, I saw. Was that Sixnit?”

  Taking my expression for confirmation, the man scratched under his beard. His movement was more nervous than casual. “I’m sorry for that. I remember her, from the night I visited your Hall. She was close to her time, then. Very close.”

  I stared at him, choking on grief and anger and everything in between.

  Omaskat turned away, hiding his expression in the night. “I’ll fetch a healer for you.”

  However much I distrusted this man, the thought of being left alone, tied to a tree in an Algatt camp, chilled me to the bone.

  “At least tell me your real name,” I threw after him, squinting through my pain. “So I can scream it. Or do the Algatt have laws about marring one another’s property?”

  “Omaskat,” he replied without falter.

  I glared. “That’s
not an Algatt name. Are you from somewhere else, then? Somewhere where the people are so ignorant, they believe the gods are not gods?” When he still did not confess, I added, “Someone will tell me who you are eventually.”

  “They’ll tell you I’m Omaskat.” He clicked his tongue at the dog, who still waited by the fire, and pointed to the ground at my feet. “Ayo, stay. Guard our purchase.”

  The hound plunked down, tail brushing against my ankles. She was at least as large as I.

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  With that, Omaskat left. I peered around, muscles tensed as though some vile Algatt would set upon me the instant he disappeared. But this corner of the camp was quiet, and the population kept a respectful distance.

  The dog rested her head on a paw, watching me as if to say, do you not trust me?

  “I already trust you more than your master,” I replied.

  Her tail waved.

  SEVEN

  Eang was vexed. In the dream, she stood on a battlefield strewn with her Eangi. I knew them, each one. There was lithe Yske. Eidr, his scarred hands limp. Sixnit’s husband Vist, open-mouthed in death, together with a dozen others so tied to my days, my sleeping and waking, that it seemed my every memory lay butchered before me; their flesh cold as clay, and their open eyes lain with red poppies.

  I saw myself from a distance, sitting next to Eidr’s corpse and clutching a bundle to my chest. Our child? No. Vistic. The boy was as motionless as when I found him, little lungs stifled with smoke and ash, and Sixnit was nowhere to be seen.

  Eang glared at me through eyes rimmed in kohl. She wore a black tunic without armor or embellishment, save the crossed straps of the brace for the twin bearded axes she wore at her back, framing her head – the fabled blades Galger and Gammler. Her legwraps were splattered with mud and blood and she was beautiful, beautiful in a way that stole the light from the sky and curdled the marrow in my bones. But when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly human, melodic and rounded.

  “I should stop the heart in your chest.”

  My mind scrambled, but there was no defense. Eang was many things, but merciful was not one.

  She paced closer to me. “Did no other Eangi survive?”

  “Just me,” I whispered, though I felt she should already know that. “And Svala. They told me she’s missing—”

  “Svala is not your concern.” Eang’s shoulders drew in. Another pace closer. Two. She was so near now that I could smell her: the iron taint of blood, the gust of breath from angry lungs. “Then you are one of the last, Hessa, in this whole wretched land. You! Gods below.”

  “One of the… last? The last Eangi?” I repeated, numbly. How could the Algatt have killed all the Eangi so swiftly? There was at least one in every settlement, in every corner of Eangen. I gaped at the goddess, fumbling to understand.

  “Yes,” Eang said, offering me no comfort. “Hear me. Your task was to kill the traveler in the Hall of Smoke. I sent the owl. I gave you three years to prepare and spared you a dozen deaths in between. A dozen! I stopped an arrow from piercing your throat. At Boilingbrook, I put legionaries to sleep who would have worn you and that cousin of yours to tatters. The bear at the Sound? Did you truly think a knife stopped that beast? You,” her voice darkened still more, “you could not slay the one man I raised you up to kill.”

  “He… he tricked me,” the protest stumbled from my lips, as pathetic and feeble as my voice. “He was kind and – I didn’t know it was him, not for sure. We were under Hearth Law. And I thought that if I was wrong, if it wasn’t him and I killed an innocent man—”

  Vistic and Eidr and the others vanished, and I stood alone with Eang in the smoldering remnants of the Hall of Smoke. She watched me with deadly intent, one eyebrow cocked as if daring me to finish.

  I swallowed hard. Pleading and excuses would do me no good here, much less the borderline lies I was pulling together now.

  Because the truth was, I hadn’t wanted Omaskat to be the man I was supposed to kill. I’d known it was him, that it must be him, but I had chosen to let him go because he was kind, and I couldn’t fathom why Eang would want him dead.

  “I can still do it.” I forced myself not to cower, to set my shoulders and ram steel down my spine. It didn’t matter that I had no idea why Omaskat’s death was so crucial to the goddess – it wasn’t my place to know and, with my world crumbling, I was willing to do anything that might stem the tide. “Set me free, give me more Fire, and I’ll kill him tonight. He’s sleeping beside me.”

  “Set you free?” Eang scoffed. “Give you more power? I will give you nothing. I’ll feed you to the next pack of wolves I find. I will blind them with your blood so that they hunt nothing else to the ends of the earth.”

  “Goddess!” I lunged to my feet, facing her head on. “This is my task. My right. Let me wake, loose my bonds. Let me do it. Please. Please!”

  She still glared at me, but I saw the corners of her mouth turn up in satisfaction. “Very well. But I will neither loose nor arm you. Kill him with claws like the beast that you are, or not at all. Wake.”

  * * *

  I awoke to the bite of ropes in my flesh. I jerked against them, heart hammering. I was sweating and cold, wrapped in a blanket against the night.

  Then the blanket slipped, and my eyes fell on Omaskat. He slept on his bedroll beneath the stars, facing me across glowing coals with his short, single-edged sword nestled between his thighs, just loosened in its sheath. Ayo leant against his back, ears flicking here and there, chasing sounds out in the darkness. She surveyed me, once, before the screech of a dying rabbit drew her attention away.

  My broken wrist was not bound. I lifted it and poked at the knots in the rope, but the pain made my stomach toss and roil. I leant my head back against the rough bark and took a few seconds to breathe.

  I couldn’t function like this. Despite knowing I would fail, I reached for my Fire. Even if I could take the edge off my pain, I might at least be able to think.

  There was no power to be found, however. Not with Omaskat so near.

  Something dug into the back of my head, leant against the tree. I cracked my eyes open, trying to remember what it was. The hairpin. Eidr’s gift to me, my last keepsake from the Hall. I felt it press into my scalp, each of its three sharp prongs laid out against my skin.

  Purpose settled over me. It took three attempts and a bout of retching with pain for me to disentangle the pin and drop it in my lap. I stared at it for a delirious moment, waiting for the ringing in my ears to subside.

  Gradually, I became aware of someone watching. I lifted my head and discovered it was the dog, Ayo, her large eyes fixed on my face. We sized one another up. Then she made a muffled grunt, deep in her chest, and commenced scratching behind one ear.

  I returned my attention to the hairpin. Pain made me wheeze as I turned it around and braced it between my knees.

  Omaskat, disturbed by the dog’s enthusiastic scratching, shifted.

  I froze. But the man only buried his cheek a little deeper into the pack he used as a pillow and let out a sleepy breath, sending loose dirt skittering towards the embers of the fire.

  I waited a heart-pounding minute to ensure he was still asleep, then I severed each fiber of the ropes across my chest one by one. The task was maddeningly slow and at every turn, some weakness of my mortal flesh screamed at me. Hunger. Relief. Pain. Exhaustion. Longing. Grief.

  All around, the camp slept in the cool summer night. Occasionally, men and women walked by, talking in low voices. A father led a sleepy child. Two women stifled their laughter and murmured about the antics of a mutual friend, even though one had an arm in a sling and the other’s face was mottled with bruises. A goat bleated, a horse whickered, and the lines of a tent creaked. A man wept.

  I ran my eyes over the tents, identifying the one where I thought the latter might be. His weeping was contained, not wild and rampant, a familiar sorrow.

  I pushed the thought aside, but the keenin
g continued. It clawed at my concentration.

  The suffering of the Algatt was none of my concern, I told myself. They chose to worship their god in the mountain – and entertain stranger heresies, if Omaskat spoke true. If their god had seen fit to let them fall to the Arpa, so be it. I, a servant of Eang, had my own task.

  It took hours before the rope thinned enough for me to break it. I arched my back, letting the muscles of my stomach harden against the last strands.

  The rope snapped. I stifled a victorious gasp and wiggled out of the remainder of the bindings, leaving them piled around the base of the tree. Then I tucked the hairpin into the palm of my good hand.

  I crept across the space between us, listening for each of his breaths.

  Ayo watched me.

  “This is his fate,” I murmured to the animal. I slipped the pin into a better grip and ran a thumb over its sharp, silver prongs. “I have no quarrel with you.”

  I circled the pair, staying beyond the reach of Omaskat and his cradled sword, and stroked the dog’s head. I did not want to harm the creature. Besides, if she left Omaskat’s side too quickly, he would wake.

  I knelt, keeping up a pretense of petting the hound, and watched Omaskat’s exposed throat. Vague starlight ran down the prongs of the hairpin as I adjusted my grip one last time and raised my hand for a killing stab.

  Omaskat awoke. I barreled him onto his stomach, right knee braced in his back, left foot driving into the earth and my good hand stabbing wildly for his throat. I connected with his jaw instead, grating off bone and earning a frustrated, shocked cry.

  The dog yipped and lunged, sinking her teeth into my thigh. I clenched my jaw and ignored the pain, pushing her back with the elbow of my bad arm. I only needed a few more seconds and one good angle to puncture Omaskat’s throat. Then he would die, my task would be fulfilled and my atonement made. Then, I was sure, Eang would burn through my veins and I would escape into the night, rescue Sixnit and Vistic and head for East Meade.