by H. M. Long
“Please,” the slave said quietly.
“Ah, my pet Eangi!” Ogam broke in, waving me over. He stretched out on his cushioned chair like the other men, though he was out of place with his grey kaftan and icy complexion. “Oh, put those trifles down; everyone here knows you do not need weapons to kill them, and nor do I. Are you hungry?”
I was ravenous. My eyes dragged across a table laden with the stripped ribcage of a boar, heaps of half-eaten vegetables and stacks of breads.
I handed my weapons to the slave, who nodded with gratitude. As she set them aside, I rounded the table, making for Ogam as all the men’s eyes trailed me. I did my best to ignore them, searching for somewhere to sit – but all the seats were occupied. I did notice, however, that Castor was not among the company. That was something.
Ogam sat up higher in his chair to make room and slid his plate towards me. It looked as though he had just refilled it, but run out of appetite two bites in. Casting a casual glance at the watching Arpa, I reluctantly eased onto the edge of Ogam’s chair and took up a three-pronged fork.
“Have the Arpa properly honored you, my lord Ogam?” I asked as I stabbed a chunk of boar with the fork. I remained composed, but, even hungry as I was, I was nearly too uneasy to eat.
Ogam leant back and patted his belly. “Yes.”
“And? What have you spoken about?”
One of the other men leant forward. No one bothered to introduce themselves; I was too lowly to even know their names. The speaker’s eyes passed over me in an insolent, dismissive sweep. “We’ve spoken about the north and the trouble in the mountains, Eangi.”
“Where your men are driving the Algatt into my homeland?” I asked. I knew I trod dangerous ground, but my hostility kept my nerves in check.
General Athiliu replied, “As I have been telling Lord Ogam, whatever is happening in the mountains north of Eangen is entirely unsanctioned.”
“Everything you do north of the Spines is unsanctioned,” I replied. “You have no right to be there at all.”
Ogam rested one finger on my back, so cold that pain lanced up my spine. I understood the warning and shut my mouth.
The pain retreated and my companion spoke: “General Athiliu has decided, with my permission, to send a detachment into the mountains to investigate our allegations of Arpa in the north. And, if Arpa are found, to stop the bloodshed.”
I nearly dropped the plate and fork. “You did what?”
“I will send soldiers north with Commander Polinus. A special detachment, hand-picked.” Athiliu gestured to one of the other men at the table. “Polinus, here, is Second on the front and I trust him to uphold my directions. This is a peaceful foray; violence will only be used if violence is met.”
Polinus inclined his head low, letting a wave of dark brown curls fall over his forehead. I made sure to note his face, with its wide mouth and deep-set eyes; if he was truly heading north, there was a chance I’d see him again.
“It is my pleasure, sir,” Polinus said.
I did not miss the looks the other men shot him.
“Anyone who sees you will kill you,” I pointed out. “Algatt or Eangen. Eang herself.”
“This has already been decided. If you wanted a seat at the table, you should have come down earlier,” Ogam told me tiredly. He waved at the slaves and one of them approached, filling the god’s cup quickly before he retreated to the wall.
My chest burned. Sensing the rise of my Fire, Ogam reached out and took my wrist in one cool hand. I twitched.
“Curdling their brains will not help root their men out of the mountains,” the Son of Eang said.
Athiliu’s eyebrows rose and the other men exchanged glances.
“I didn’t realize the consistency of my brain was in peril,” one of the oldest men at the table chuckled. He was bald and kept a dinner knife conspicuously close at hand. “Though I have heard stories about the servants of Eang. Perhaps you could…” his mouth quirked up, “…give us a demonstration, later.”
I forced myself under a blanket of calm. I needed to think clearly, not snap and overreact.
“Did you swear upon your own gods to uphold your word?” I asked, looking at General Athiliu. “Upon your… Lathian, and his court?”
Athiliu inclined his head. “We will even make a sacrifice before you leave in the morning.”
Dread pooled in my stomach. In the morning? I might have known we wouldn’t be escaping this place tonight.
“I also have a proposal for you, Hessa of the Eangi,” Polinus leant forward, his eyes shadowed in the torchlight. Among his companions, I noticed, he and Athiliu were the only ones that didn’t find me amusing. His expression held no condescension, and I found myself meeting his gaze without hostility. “If you travel north with us, our passage may be eased. A priestess of Eang sanctioning our way through the land?”
I shot a look at Ogam. Had he told them I was going to the mountains too?
His face remained impassive.
I hesitated. Traveling north with the Arpa would let me ensure that they kept their word. Yet, though the matter of the Arpa and the mountains was like a millstone around my neck, I had to find Omaskat. And in order to do that, I needed freedom.
“I have duties elsewhere,” I declined. “Besides, I would do you little good. If my people saw me collaborating with you, they’d just kill me.”
“I will mark you instead,” Ogam offered the foreigners. “If it does not offend your tender sensibilities. It will give you some measure of protection.”
“What do you mean by mark?” Polinus asked.
“Other gods will be warned to stay away from you, along with unnatural beasts and other threats. Like the blessing of your own gods, but more effective in the north.”
“I would want to consult with Quentis first,” Athiliu spoke with equal measures of respect and caution. “Our head priest. But I am sure it will be acceptable.”
Ogam shrugged. “As you will. Now, Hessa, eat. Athiliu, do any of these slaves play music?”
Fifteen minutes later, my plate was clean. Two soldiers had been fetched, one with a double flute and one with a curious stringed instrument I didn’t know. The latter’s fingers danced while his companion raised a gentle, nondescript melody. Whatever the song was, I dearly hoped that the lyrics were elaborate, otherwise Arpa music was maddeningly dull.
My focus broke as the priest I had seen on the fortress wall, the one who had carried the rune scrolls, entered. He noted me, where I sat cross-legged on the end of Ogam’s couch, then he bowed to Athiliu and greeted him in Arpa. His voice was deeper than I had expected, with a pleasant crackle, like a low-burning fire.
The general inclined his head and transitioned into Northman. He reviewed the agreement he and Ogam had come to and Ogam’s proposition of ‘marking’ the company headed north.
“What is this marking? Please, tell me more.” The priest addressed Ogam in flawless Northman. Back on the fortress wall he had seemed tall and imposing, but now, standing before the Son of Eang, he looked small and waxen. Human.
While my gaze lingered on Quentis, Ogam licked the inside of his gathered fingers and pressed them unceremoniously to my cheek. I jerked back in shock and, without realizing it, pressed my dinner knife into his belly.
“That.” Ogam settled back, away from my knife, and waved his hand at me dismissively. “Examine her, if you like.”
Quentis eyed my blade. I lowered it and he circled the table, his head preceding him like a curious dog. It only retreated when he stood right in front of me, eyes slitted. His breath smelled of some strange alcohol, chewed mint, and that heady Arpa incense I had noticed in the street.
Discomforted by his proximity, I let a touch of my Fire flare.
Quentis’s next breath was a thin, strangled whine. He recoiled, bumped into the table and sent a fork clattering to the stone floor.
Every eye in the room darted to us and the music stopped. At the same time, I withdrew the Fire I ha
d just pushed into the priest’s lungs and pulled it back into my own in one, deliberate breath. I held the man’s bulging eyes the entire time, my own level and calm – an expression I’d learned from Svala.
“Forgive my pet,” the Son of Eang drawled. “She’s not domesticated.”
Quentis’s mouth thinned into a line. Behind him, I saw the old man who had prodded me to showcase my Eangi skills murmur to one of his companions and Athiliu signaled the musicians. They clumsily resumed their song.
Ogam slipped closer, bringing his shoulders level with mine and looking at Quentis. His eyebrows rose, prompting the priest: “The mark. What do you think?”
“It seems harmless enough,” Quentis relented, though he still stood a solid pace from us.
“I don’t see anything,” the grumpy old commander snorted.
“It’s only for… certain eyes.” Withering disdain flickered across Quentis’s face, but at this angle, only Ogam and I saw it. He looked at Ogam. “What will this deter?”
“Beasts. Lesser demons, and such ilk. Other gods who might otherwise disregard the dedication of a southern deity.”
“Demons?” The old commander let out a full-bellied bark of laughter that made the flutist sour a note. “My word. It’s true, what they say of the north. What good are your gods if they cannot even keep demons down?”
Athiliu cast him a look, as if noting the man for later rebuttal. Then he turned seamlessly back to us. “Quentis, if you have no objections? No? Then we accept your offer, Ogam, Son of Eang.”
* * *
Instead of being returned to the tent, Ogam and I were escorted to a well-ornamented room in the main fortress. Gauzy curtains covered a window overlooking an interior courtyard and the comfortable bedchamber had a lived-in feel, out of place on the northern front. Whoever had been evicted for us to stay here, they had impractical taste.
Ogam retired to the bed while I laid out my bed roll, fetched by a slave from the tent, on the floor.
However peaceable he had seemed with me in front of the commanders, Eang’s son was still angry I had contradicted him. He did not flirt anymore. Irritation rolled off his skin long into the night and when morning dawned, he did not demand I braid his hair. He simply swept it up into a knot, belted his kaftan with an emphatic jerk, and stepped over me on his way out the door.
After the Arpa made their sacrifice, we rode out of the fortress and into the Spines under an escort of a dozen men. The air down here was cool and laden with sweet moisture. I chose to walk instead of riding with Ogam, striding in the middle of the group and watching spires clad with moss and fern pass by.
The Arpa-built road we traversed was level and smooth, bringing us to the other side within one short hour. My heart ached, sudden and fierce, as Eangen opened below me. Thick forests and rolling hills filled my eyes, unbroken until the distant fields of Urgi, while to the west Mount Thyr loomed towards the clouds.
I let out a thin breath and closed my eyes, tasting the pine and wildflower familiarity of the wind. For one blissful moment, I was able to forget that the distant mountain no longer marked home, that there was no more Hall of Smoke. No Eangi. No Albor. No Eidr or Yske.
I directed my gaze north, burying that pain in a knot in my chest. I blocked out Thyr and imagined I could pick out the Algatt’s mountains in the north instead. They were my goal: my road to Omaskat, destiny, and absolution.
We crossed a wooden bridge over the broad trench that formed the northernmost fortifications of the Empire. It was guarded by two wooden watchtowers, which sent twin trails of smoke into the morning sky.
Then the Arpa retreated, the bridge was withdrawn, and Ogam and I were alone. I stared at Eang’s son, any thanks I might have offered sticky on my tongue.
“I want to trust that you did the right thing,” I offered finally. “Letting them go north.”
He dropped to the ground before me with a lightness that did not suit his size. “I have every right to kill you for the way you’ve questioned me. Do remember that. The fact that you’ve a task to perform is the only reason you’re alive.”
“I understand.” I adjusted the strap of the saddlebag I had modified into a pack. “Goodbye, then?”
He grunted and smoothed a few hairs escaping my braids, redirecting his displeasure towards my hair. “We’ll meet again. If I have anything important to tell you, I’ll send the wind.”
I held still, refusing to retreat under his touch. My trust in the Son of Eang had certainly faltered since yesterday, but the knowledge that he would still be in contact was consoling. “Thank you.”
With that Ogam mounted back up and nudged Cadic into a canter. The forest roads swallowed them within moments and I was left alone on the Arpa border.
I looked north again, then west and back north. Omaskat. Thyr. My people. Omaskat.
I thought my heart might rend in two. Ogam had advised me not to go home, but how could I not? How could I continue north when my family in East Meade might be in danger or even dead, and when Sixnit and I had promised to meet there? How could I, once again, forfeit the chance to release the souls of the dead in Albor?
You are Eangi. The voice inside my head was my own, yet not. She was the harder side of me, the zealot, and the priestess. I could not even consider making the long journey to Albor and East Meade, not when I would be unwelcome, and it would jeopardize my charge from the goddess. That charge took precedence over all.
And perhaps, in the deepest corner of my heart, it was Albor’s dead, and the thought of facing them, that made me grit my teeth and start walking north.
TWENTY
My route north took me in the vicinity of Urgi. I held a thin hope that the town had managed to survive the raids, being so far south, but I could not risk my life and freedom on hope. So I kept off the main paths and moved carefully, still wrestling with my decision not to go home.
At the slightest movement in the trees, I paused. A trio of deer here, a curious fox, a bird rooting about in the deadfall. These were normal occurrences, consoling and natural, but the further north I delved, the more I sensed all was not well. Something was amiss in the fall of light and the scattering of songbirds.
Still, I could not decide precisely what it was until I found the dead, charred tree. Once, the tree might have easily been eight feet thick, but the years had hollowed it out, leaving a shadowed interior visible through a high, triangular split. Weather had stripped the outside of bark and worn the trunk to a smooth grey beneath swaths of black char.
The hollow tree was unique, but three things stood out as unnatural. Firstly, the doorway was of raw, newly torn wood. Second, there was no deadfall inside – no branches or refuse – only a smooth, earthen floor.
And third, it was covered with runes. From knotted roots to cracked, battered branches, the tree was rife with markings for safety, protection, warding and suppression, just like the ones the Soulderni priestess and I had carved into Ashaklon’s tree. But these were far older, weathered and bleached by the sun.
I circled the tree with hatchet in hand, each step carefully placed and a prayer to Eang ready on my tongue. Reaching out one finger, I brushed at the burned wood.
Charcoal outlined the swirls of my fingertips. The fire had been recent, at least since the last good rain. Perhaps around the very same time that this binding tree had been torn open.
My eyes fell on the four biggest runes, hidden among their fellows right above the doorway.
Eang. Binding. Death. Urgent, warning danger.
I left without another word. I did not question my decision. I simply adjusted my pack and put as much distance as I could between that tree and myself before nightfall.
Just like Ashaklon had been bound within a binding tree at Oulden’s Feet, something, someone, had been bound inside this grey trunk in the name of Eang. It was a binding that should have lasted for centuries but had now been broken with force and fire. Eang’s absence in the land was taking its toll and, short of the knowle
dge of a high priestess and the intervention of the goddess herself, there was nothing I could do.
Whatever had once lain within that tree was now loose upon the world.
* * *
On the second day, fear of the woods – and whatever had broken free of the binding tree – drove me onto the main road toward Urgi. Here I found more signs of disturbance, both mundane and bizarre: a shattered waystone, a broken cart, and a burned farmhouse.
I encountered no other human beings until I found an abandoned watchtower on the edge of the forest, within sight of the riverside settlement of Urgi. It was twice the size of Albor, its fort and surrounding town made wealthy by lush farmland and trade up and down the Pasidon.
But now it was surrounded by the Algatt horde which had captured Sixnit, Vistic and I. The once Eangen settlement had been expanded, tents and temporary dwellings clothing the hillfort in a living, writhing skirt of humanity. The river also hosted the stolen Eangen longboats I’d seen in the camp by the Pasidon, and smoke from a thousand fires drifted up into the blue summer sky.
“Turn around. Turn around and throw us your sword.”
I stilled and slowly, slowly, looked over my shoulder. Four Algatt were tucked amid the trees, two at the fore with bows drawn, and two at the back bearing a dead doe between them. Hunters.
“Your sword,” one of the archers repeated, gesturing with his half-drawn bow to the Soulderni sword across my hip. He noted my hatchet and added, “That too.”
My mind raced, calculating chances and variables, the direction of arrows and the speed of my road-worn limbs. Fire, ready and willing, curled on my tongue.
But I hesitated. I hadn’t seen another person in days. These Algatt, I realized, might be more of an opportunity than a threat.
“Where are the people of Urgi?” I asked, making a show of drawing my sword and hoping they could not see its slight tremor. However much I silently consoled myself, however much the Fire smoldered, the sight and sound of my people’s murderers affected me.
Albor. Eidr. Sixnit. The Hall of Smoke. A blade at my throat.
