Hall of Smoke

by H. M. Long

  Eidr’s firm kiss, that night on the mountain by the shrine. Yske. The Hall of Smoke.

  I drew in a ragged breath.

  My family in East Meade. What had happened to them? Were they gone too?

  Could I really, truly be this alone?

  It was then, as I stared desolately into the shadows beneath the cedars across the river, that I saw the owl. I scrambled to my feet with a clattering of stones and the complaints of a dozen injuries, but I ignored them all.

  There, perched on a low-swinging branch of a great cedar, was a pristine grey owl. He hooted, ruffling his wings, and glowered directly at me.

  “Messenger?” I breathed, hardly daring to believe Eang had sent one of her owls directly to me. “I’m listening.”

  The vision came. I saw Sixnit wailing, her arms empty and her chest caving in with inconsolable grief. The man that had bought her raged, bellowing at their neighbours, demanding to know where the child had gone. Where Vistic had gone.

  The image fled. I thought I saw Omaskat in its place, walking over a rise with the hound at his heels, but his face was unclear.

  The third part of the vision came with Eang, clad in black tunic and knotted muscle. Her strigine eyes, gold as those of her owl messenger – rather, merged with those of her owl messenger – pinioned me.

  “What have you done?”

  Whatever hope the sight of the owl had conjured now fled in terror. Tears for Sixnit and Vistic dammed behind my eyes, as constricted as the breath in my lungs.

  “You failed again, and you bound yourself to an infant?”

  “He’s just a baby.” The words left me in a shudder, all thoughts of Souldern and Arpa legions vanishing from my mind. Wind stirred my hair, still damp from the river, and my exhausted limbs threatened to drop me back onto the stones. I forced them still.

  “Now I must fulfill your vow to protect him,” she hissed. “Do you think I have no more pressing matters than chasing down an infant? You’ve no concept of what this means.”

  I felt a spark of indignation. I did know what it meant, or I thought I did. I, an Eangi, had dedicated Vistic to Eang and vowed to protect him. In my absence, that responsibility overflowed to Eang. That was normal. Usual. Gods cared for their people and their people served them. That was how the world worked. It was Eang’s duty to protect Vistic now, as well as my own. He was devoted to her.

  Yet now, Eang raged as if I had committed another vile sin. I didn’t dare question her, but I tried to see through her anger, tried to follow the threads of what I knew. Omaskat had spoken of a shift among the gods. The riverman had mentioned upheaval. Eang’s people were spread thin, and the Eangi vastly depleted. Eang herself could not be everywhere.

  Still, if Vistic was in some simple peril, she could have righted it easily. That meant whatever had happened to the child did not fall into the category of standard human misfortunes – or Eang simply had no care for Vistic’s life.

  “Where is he?” Caution trickled down my spine. The sunlight no longer felt warm, and the scent of cedar on the wind was tainted with smoke – real or imagined, I couldn’t say. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Eang came to stand before me on the bank, the vision of her tall, powerful form overlaying stone, cloud-studded sky and desolate mountainsides.

  “Find Omaskat and kill him,” she charged. She reached out and put her palm in the center of my chest. Fire laced out from her fingers, worming down into my bones, alleviating my pain and fatigue, and closing many of my lesser wounds. “I give more fire and clarity for the journey, but when you face him, you will do it without my help. Be prepared. The riverman was right to bring you here – go to Oulden’s Feet. Even if that bastard is still in hiding, his people will help you.”

  “Hiding?” I repeated, but Eang’s fingers were already fading on my chest.

  Her last words came distantly. “Turn around.”

  With that, she was gone. A dozen desperate questions lodged into my throat as the owl winged away and, by the time I blinked, all signs of the goddess’s visitation had dissipated.

  “Are you lost?”

  I fell over, trying to turn, brace and flee all at once. Somewhere between hitting the ground and getting back up again I seized a rock, my heart hammering wildly, and brandished it.

  A girl stood on the riverbank. She was just short enough for the scrub to shield her – ten, perhaps, or eleven years old. She had spoken Northman, like me, but with a tumbling, hitching dialect that I had rarely heard before: Soulderni. She carried a crook and was so darkened by the sun that her skin nearly matched the color of the branches. Half a dozen goats separated from the brush around her, clopping down to the riverside to drink.

  My eyes darted around the bushes and my ears strained for signs of anyone else. But other than the goats, the girl was alone. No threat, just a child. And from her unfrightened expression, she had seen nothing of my vision.

  “Yes, I am. I’m lost,” I replied. My fingers loosened on the rock, but I did not put it down.

  The girl frowned from the makeshift weapon to my face. Despite my being twice her size, muscled and unkempt, her crook and better health seemed to convince her I was no real threat. “Where are you from? What happened to you?”

  “Eangen,” I managed, forcing my shoulders to relax. “There’s… trouble, in the north. Can you take me to Oulden’s Feet? Is it close by?”

  “Nor-th. Nor-teh,” she mimicked my accent curiously, then stuck out her hand in a practical, maternal way. “Yes. Come with me.”

  TEN

  Oulden’s Feet lay in a small, broad bowl of a valley. There were great trees here, ancient and creaking, with branches that spread low to the ground like descending spiders. Half a league from a waterfall they gave way to patterns of hip-high stones, radiating out in concentric circles from an inner ring and ending in a rim of pillars, weatherworn and taller than two men.

  The girl led me to a camp amid the standing stones. There were hundreds of tents, hide and canvas stitched with bright colored threads and supported by intricately carved poles. Some dwellings were girded by worn pathways, as though they’d been there for months, while others were only now being erected; men and women hammered in pegs and corralled herds of goats, gnarled mountain sheep and huge plains horses. Children ran free. Dogs barked, pots clinked, and the eyes of the lean, dark-skinned Soulderni followed my progress around the edge of their settlement.

  But no one intervened. No guards stopped us – I wasn’t even sure if the pre-pubescent boys and girls, watching over the outer herds, could properly be called guards. I tried to take comfort in this, but my nerves were so raw and my body so exhausted, I almost wished for a hostile welcome. At least then I’d know where I stood.

  “What is this?” I asked the girl, who had told me her name was Uwi. My voice was shallow now, raspy and flat with exhaustion, and it took nearly all my focus to put one foot before the other. “Do your people live here? Are you… nomads?”

  “No! Well… we do live here during the Summer Solstice, but that’s still three weeks away. We live in the mountains, but they aren’t… safe, anymore. So we came early.” Uwi brushed burnt brown hair back from her eyes and nudged her clutch of goats with her staff.

  “Because it is safe here?”

  “It is always safe at Oulden’s Feet,” she stated with the ease of an oft-repeated phrase. “Only his servants can pass the borders.”

  I began to nod, slowly processing her words. The thought of the mountains being unsafe resonated, but the girl’s last sentence presented a more immediate problem.

  I slowed, struggling to focus on the nearest standing stone. “I serve Eang, Uwi.”

  Uwi shot me a surprised look, though it transitioned to one of caution when she saw my blanched face. “That doesn’t matter. I invited you in. You’re under Hearth Law, Hessa.”

  Hearth Law was as old as these stones, a code of mutual respect and protection enforced by the enigmatic force of Fate herself
to protect travelers and hosts. It was Hearth Law that had led me to trust Omaskat and invite him into the Hall of Smoke, not two weeks ago. But he had broken that law, claiming to be Eangen and lying about who he was – I did derive some satisfaction from pondering what punishment Fate might unleash on him for that. Stories of Hearth Law breakers usually involved lives of ill luck, culminating in bizarre, fatal accidents. I’d heard of one who was mauled by her own, suddenly feral dog, and I thought such a punishment would be particularly fitting for Omaskat.

  If Uwi was offering me Hearth Law, it meant I was under the protection of her family and her god, so long as I returned their kindness with truthfulness and respect. It meant that, for now, I was safe.

  “Come.” Uwi offered me her staff for support and pointed to a nearby tent. “We’ll take care of you.”

  * * *

  I remembered little of the next days save a bed of furs, the scent of herb and honey salve, and the constant, murmuring chatter of Soulderni dialect. The presence of such comforts, rather than alleviating my fatigue, seemed to give it rein. I passed seamlessly from dreams to waking, barely able to discern between the two. Only pain rooted me in reality for any length of time – the pain of my wounds being cleaned, bandages being changed, and memories creeping to the forefront of my beleaguered mind.

  At long last, I slipped from a dream of Eidr under the summer sun to a clear, sharp wakefulness. I cracked one eye to see the hides of a tent, sealed with wax and red zig-zag stitches and supported by poles carved with circular patterns. The breeze was cool, and a grating sound came from nearby; a steady rasping, interspersed with the rustle of clothes.

  I saw a woman kneeling by a millstone outside the tent. The bottom stone was bellied with age, speaking of generations of Soulderni use. The second stone, held in both her hands and drawn lengthwise across its companion, was equally worn – smooth, and lightened from decades in the sun.

  The woman set her stone aside with a deep clunk and swept newly milled grain into a bowl. As soon as she stood, another woman appeared to take her place with a bowl of raw grain, and the grating began again.

  “Hessa of the Eangen,” the first woman greeted me as she ducked into my tent. Or, rather, her tent. Now that she was closer, I recognized her as Uwi’s mother. Her skin and her accent were lighter than her daughter’s, clear and almost familiar. “Have you decided to join us in the Waking World? Or shall I nurse you like a babe for another week?”

  I couldn’t tell if her words were teasing. “A week?”

  Uwi’s mother nodded. She was clad in a many-layered Soulderni gown of browns and oranges, belted high and hung about with daily tools – knife, scissors, pouch, and a carved disc I thought must be a charm. She stopped across the fire from me, hooked a suspended metal plate and nudged it over the flames to heat. Smoke, captured under the surface, began to seep around its edge in curling grey fingers.

  “My name is Silgi,” the woman informed me as she fetched several jars and baskets and arrayed them around her bowl of flour. Taking up a jar of oil, she poured some onto the cooking plate as she continued, “My daughter found you by the water, and it is I who have nursed you, and my hearth and family that have protected you. So now, in return, tell me of the trouble in the north.”

  I met the woman’s eyes for a weary, strained moment, and she raised her brows at me. She expected her answers now and was obviously unconcerned by the fact that I was covered in bandages and had just woken up from a week’s illness. But though I didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to remember the events that had brought me here, she was right. After all her family had done, she deserved an explanation.

  And I had questions of my own that needed answering.

  “The Arpa have driven the Algatt out of the mountains,” I began, forcing my leaden tongue around the words and sitting up. I was clad in a linen shift, though I only vaguely remembered putting it on. Beside me, I noticed my own clothes rested on a rock, cleaned and repaired. “The Algatt are stripping Eangen land. The gods are… restless.”

  Silgi’s hands, now sprinkling salt and seeds into the bowl, hesitated. She murmured “Mmm,” and began to sift the ingredients together with her fingers. “I thought there have been too many legionaries heading north in the past few years.”

  I sat up straighter. “What? Why did you not… not warn us?”

  She stifled a laugh. “Warn you? Of what, Eangen? Legions pass all the time. We pay our tribute and move on with our own concerns, as you do with the Algatt.”

  Even weak as I was, the thought made my Fire flare. She didn’t know I was an Eangi, but even so – who was this woman to speak me, a wounded guest, in such a way? “We do not pay tribute to the Algatt.”

  “Then what are predictable raids?” the woman inquired, pouring honey into the bowl in one long, amber stream. On the metal cooking disc between us, the oil began to grow transparent with heat. “You hide what you need and let them find what you can spare. Your Eangi and your warriors spend a few weeks running about, keeping their swords whet and sating your goddess with blood. And the next year it all just happens again.”

  I sat back, cradling my splinted wrist in my lap and eyeing her grey hair. It was blond between those streaks of silver, and she talked of the north far too knowledgably to be a simple Soulderni mountain woman. Then there was that accent, so clear and familiar.

  I felt myself darken. “You’re Algatt.”

  “So was your grandfather or his, like as not.” She shrugged, eyeing my face with a new guardedness. Before her heavy skirts, the fire popped, and the oil on the great metal disc began to steam. “A marriage here, a rape there, a forbidden lover. The bloodlines bleed, Eangen, more than we’d like to admit. You Eangen have Soulderni blood from before the Arpa came. I fell in love with a Soulderni traveler and left my people behind. Even my son Iosas is half Arpa. That was my choice; a bargain I made. But he works hard, and his father’s god protects him, so for that I am grateful. Life continues.”

  Her words angered me, but we were under Hearth Law, in the middle of an encampment to which she obviously belonged. Now was no time for hostilities.

  “His father’s god protects him? What god is that?” I inquired, fighting to keep myself under control.

  “Aliastros. An Arpa god allied with Oulden.”

  “If he’s an ally, won’t he protect your people in Oulden’s stead?” I wanted to know. “Your daughter told me the mountains are too dangerous to live in.”

  “Oulden is quiet,” Silgi returned, adding some water to the bowl and beginning to knead briskly. Pockets of dry flour burst beneath her knuckles. “A new god has been seen; shrines destroyed. But Oulden, and Aliastros, and even Esach, have not stopped it. So, we’ve fled here, to Oulden’s Feet – and at the Solstice, our priests say he will come and put all to right.”

  This was shocking but I took it mutely, fitting the information together with Eang’s words. If there was a new god in Souldern, they must be very strong to send Oulden into hiding. Perhaps he would be no help to me at all. Perhaps I’d be better to beg for a horse and leave Souldern right now.

  “Who is this new god?” I asked. “Are they ours, or Arpa?”

  Silgi eyed me at the word ‘ours’ but shrugged. “I’m no priestess, who am I to say? I do not walk in the High Halls or the Arpa courts.”

  That was fair enough. But where Silgi was no priestess, I was, and though I’d normally have relinquished a concern like this to Svala, I was alone now. Unrest among the gods was my concern and, if I was to make it back to Eangen alive, I needed to know what – and who – I might encounter.

  “If I was to guess,” Silgi added, “I would say they are Arpa. No, don’t ask me who. I don’t know. There are too many Arpa gods, and half of them aren’t even proper deities. Just heroes or ancestors.”

  She flipped the dough and shook in wrinkled, sun-dried berries, eyeing the steaming oil and picking up her pace. She continued, “They have a head god called Lathian, as you Eangen have E
ang, but no one has ever actually seen him, even his high priests. And only Aliastros has ever been seen in Souldern.”

  “What does he rule?”

  “The wind, elemental and without territory,” she replied. “The same generation as your Gods of the New World – like Eang, like Gadr and Oulden. When you meet my son, the half-Arpa one, you’ll see… his eyes are different. You, do you serve Eang, or one of her court?”

  I watched her shoulders and arms flex as she folded the dough, again and again. Eang had numerous lesser deities under her rule, and many of them governed Eangen clans like the Rioki, the Addack and the Amdur. As an Eangi I answered to Eang alone, but I wasn’t about to tell an Algatt what I was.

  “My people serve Eang,” I said simply. Hearth Law forbade me to lie, but I didn’t have to be entirely honest. “I’m from East Meade, between Mount Thyr and the sea.”

  With a noise of consideration, she looked from me to the oil, then passed me her bowl. “Well, I still worship Gadr, so I’d thank you not to put a knife in my back. I’ve been away from my people and their raiding for a very, very long time.”

  I felt my face twitch.

  “Now,” the older woman said brusquely, “you look well enough to bake us some bread for supper – flat cakes, northern-style, and do not let them burn.”

  “I need to pay my respects to Oulden,” I interjected, glancing from my pile of waiting clothes to the standing stones. I wasn’t familiar with Soulderni ritual or Oulden’s expectations, but if he was anything like Eang he would require me to present myself somewhere.

  “Then I’ll fetch my son,” Silgi conceded, brushing off her hands. “He can show you to the waterfall.”

  * * *

  Iosas, Silgi’s son by an Arpa legionnaire, met me in the open ground between the tents. His mixture of Algatt and Arpa blood left him paler than I, and paler than the Soulderni by far – a compact, narrow-eyed young man with skin the color of milk and irises of drifting summer cloud. At first glance, I might have thought him blind. But when his gaze met mine, it was fixed and keen.