by H. M. Long
That reality was a weighty one, rife with challenges – not least of which was the reliability of the goddess we served – but I didn’t shy from it. What if Eangen could be saved? What if I could not only absolve myself, but restore my people before I returned to this meadow and sought out Eidr among the trees?
The hope was a frail one, stubborn and thin as a winter sapling, but its roots sunk deep.
“Now let me show you something,” Quentis said in a way that made me realize he had been watching my thoughts the entire time. “Let me show you the Arpa Empire.”
The meadow shuddered beneath me and vanished. Quentis and I stood on a cliff overlooking a great, sprawling city of sunbaked red stone. Mist still clung to the corners of my vision, but the night before us was clear, and the lights in the city were as numerous as the stars in the eastern quadrant of the sky. Towers with silver, gold and tarnished copper domes reflected the light of the moon and in the center of the settlement, I saw a circular palace with more arches and walkways and gardens than I could count. To the north-east and west, elevated canals brought swift water down from mountains layered grey and purple against the heavens.
“Where is this?” I asked Quentis.
“One of my own memories, of the Arpa capital. Apharnum.”
Our perspective shifted. We stood in an afternoon street, surrounded by a crowd so diverse my eyes could not alight on one thing before another tore them away.
I saw people paler than an Algatt and darker than a Soulderni. Some of them were slaves. Some of them wore rich clothing. I saw Arpa women with fine-draped clothes and their hair pinned in swoops and curls and coils. I glimpsed a barefoot girl with bells about her ankles, dancing before an appreciative crowd. I saw soldiers, relaxed and at ease. Fathers with children in hand. Mothers with plump, healthy cheeks. Elders who must have seen four generations. Together. Fed. Safe.
Quentis pointed up the street. Before I had even lifted my head to follow his finger, we stood in a temple.
I took an involuntary step back. The stink of Arpa incense filled my nostrils and the dome of the ceiling lorded over me, fixed with a hundred small windows of colored glass. They cast a geometric pattern on the floor beneath my feet, centering around a square altar and a single statue.
“This is where our emperors are crowned and ascend…” Quentis bowed low, reverence humbling each line of his body. “Where the power of the Arpa Empire is sourced… the Temple of Lathian.”
I froze, staring into the statue’s impassive eyes. Somehow the power of the place resonated in my blood, pulsing from the tiles beneath our feet and up into the statue before me. It was the same power that had swept through Iskir after Ried was rebound, and it made my head ache.
A distant part of my mind registered the details of Lathian’s representation – his draped clothing, his impeccable form, the handsomeness of his face and the grave kindness of his expression. But what I saw in those eyes was deeper and more compelling than simple attraction. It was power. It was perfection.
“We all worship Lathian, though we may devote ourselves to one of his divine followers. He is the head, the hub, the root.” Quentis faced me, the pattern of light from the ceiling falling across his face. One shafted directly into his bowl, making the orange paste within glow. “You feel it too, do you not? The pull of him? The power beneath our feet?”
I did, and it terrified me. I took another step back, prying my feet from the stones as my eyes sought a way out. But there were no doors in the temple, at least, not in the version I saw here. Instead, I saw alcoves filled with statues of lesser gods, their sandaled feet wrapped in trails of creeping, telltale mist. Everywhere I looked, another Arpa deity stared placidly back.
“Let me out,” I demanded, spinning back on Quentis.
“Fall before him, now,” Quentis urged. “Devote yourself to him. Guide your people under the hand of the Empire, and they will be safe, Hessa.”
“Safe? They’ll be slaves,” I laughed, thin and frail and high. Did this man truly think I’d believe that Lathian would help my people or that we would submit to him, the god of one of our enemies? “You Arpa despise us – your god will be no different. Eang is ours, our god. We belong to her. We serve her. I serve her.”
Even as I said the words, uncertainty flickered through my mind. We served Eang because she had chosen us and protected us, but now Eangen was overrun with Algatt, ancient bindings were buckling, and Eang herself seemed pettier by the day.
Here, now – this was not the time for such thoughts. And if there was an answer to Eang’s failure, it wasn’t Lathian.
“No,” Quentis corrected. “You serve the Eangen. Serve them, by bending before Lathian.”
I spat at Quentis’s feet.
He held his ground, eyes flashing with wrath. “Your goddess will die, Hessa. Choose what is right for your people.”
“It is not Lathian.”
Quentis’s expression contorted in malice. He stepped forward, his stained hand raised in a bold, warding gesture.
Immediately, my knees began to weaken and buckle. I instinctively reached for my Fire, but it was nothing more than a memory here, while Quentis’s magic still quelled my living body and I was in the seat of Lathian’s power.
I could, however, taste honey on my lips. I acknowledged the sensation delicately, measuring it like a foot testing autumn ice.
The force driving me down abated. But rather than fight, rather than reveal the new weapon I’d found, I allowed my knees to sink onto the smooth marble of the floor. I would use my new power, but not until I was sure of its potential – and the time was right.
“This is what you want from me?” I asked. “To convince my people to submit?”
“Yes,” Quentis returned, his eyes glinting with greed.
Distantly, I recalled Nisien’s comments about Estavius and Castor. They had come north looking for glory, to make a name for themselves on the Rim. Clearly, Quentis had done the same.
“Kneel.” Each of Quentis’s words battered me, but the sweetness on my lips remained like a shield. I bowed my head, hiding my face from his impassioned, nearly euphoric gaze. “Join us. When Eang is gone, Lathian will bring peace to the north.”
His last words echoed up to the domed roof of the temple as heat crept over my skin and the marble beneath my knees turned to ash.
I jerked my head up. The ashes and charred beams of Albor spread around me, still radiating heat and curls of smoke and the ever-present, insidious mist.
Quentis was gone and I was alone in the ruins of my former life. There were no bodies, not in the High Halls’ version of this place, but I saw them in my mind’s eye – butchered, broken and charred.
If Quentis had intended this transition to be his final blow, it succeeded. The sweetness of the honey turned sour on my tongue and a keen tore up from the roots of my lungs, dragging every scrap of my strength and courage with it.
I could not be here. Not this place. I had to get back to the meadow, to its silence and refuge. There, this pain could be held back. There, I could let myself slip away into delirium and forgetfulness. Just for a little while.
But with these ruins before me, the thought of the meadow suddenly held no solace. It belonged to Eang, the goddess who had let this horror befall her own people.
I couldn’t go back, so I began to walk. I walked until I came to a lowland forest of smooth-barked trunks and leaf-filtered light. Birds flitted and lilted through the canopy, their songs a mingling of familiar and strange. Eventually the woods ended, and I found myself on the rocky shore of a lake near Albor, reflected here in the High Halls. Cedars stretched through the mist over placid, clear water, and gradually, its stillness calmed me.
Mist tickled the inside of my nose. I screwed up my face and raised a hand, pointedly sketching the same rune that Ogam had used to disperse it two days ago. Nothing happened. I blew on the unseen rune – or the space where it had been – but my breath, of course, could not freeze the mist
into the symbol’s shape.
I glanced around myself, red-rimmed eyes scanning cedars, still water and shoulders of rock, until I spied a patch of muddy earth down the shoreline.
I went to it and crouched, drawing the same rune in the cool, damp dirt. At the same time I flexed my will, exerting honeyed power through my touch as I might with Eangi Fire, and sat back.
The fog vanished, between one blink and the next. I couldn’t understand what I’d done, but it thrilled me – and unnerved me. I’d found a way to wield my new power, just as Ogam had said I would. But unlike Eangi Fire, this one was hidden from Eang’s sight.
I sat down on the rocks, under the High Halls’ uncoordinated sky. And then I began to plot.
* * *
After that day by the lake, the fog never returned. Whatever was happening to me, whatever this new power meant, the High Halls now recognized me as its own. The truth of that both enticed and frightened me. What were its limits? How long would it last? What would happen if Eang found out?
But with a child’s fascinated audacity, I kept on eating and drinking, and every morning I awoke stronger, sharper, and more determined.
My goal, quite naturally, was escape. I spent the next two days sketching runes in the earth to that end, runes of cleansing and release and breaking. I imagined returning to my own body in the Waking World, but the runes and my new magic failed to take me there, and my Fire still lay out of reach. Either I wasn’t strong enough yet to break Quentis’s curse, or I didn’t have the experience or knowledge to properly wield my newfound magic.
I began to roam further afield, searching for another way out. The High Halls seemed to bend around me, taking me inexplicable distances one minute, while the next I remain trapped in the same patch of woodland. I considered searching for Svala or Ogam, or anyone that might advise me, but Ogam’s caution not to tell the gods about my feasting hung heavy on my mind. And with each passing day, the advice they might give me seemed less and less vital.
In the end, I’d little need to fear discovery. I saw no gods in my wanderings and encountered few creatures. I saw a herd of sable deer one morning, led by a huge stag with antlers the breadth of a grown man’s height, but they fled my voice. I heard howls in the distance that might have been canine, but saw nothing. Birds were as common as trees, brightly colored and singing strange songs, but they ignored me.
I was alone in a world that should have been rife with the beings of mystery and lore. And I couldn’t help but fear where they’d all gone.
There were only two options: Frir’s Realm of Death in the darkness of the west, or the Waking World. Having seen Aegr the Bear, I was inclined towards the latter. Was the war among the gods so great that all the Hall’s denizens were fleeing, or were they simply taking advantage of the gods’ distraction?
Haunted by unanswered questions and a growing restlessness, I wandered north. Of all the directions, its perpetual white lights seemed the most unnatural, so I thought the magic of the High Halls might be stronger there. But the closer I came, the more blinding the light was, and the world began to grow… sparse. There were no trees here, only an expanse of exposed grey-pink rock as far as the eye could see, with the occasional low marsh and rustling reeds like Iskiri and Orthskar territory. Even the rock seemed oddly opaque, as if the white light bleached them like bones under the sun. Whatever this part of the Halls was, I’d never heard of it, and lingering in a fading realm seemed unwise.
I turned west, the fabric of space and time bent, and I came to the sea; the Halls’ reflection of Western Eangen, the land of Addack where Ogam had found the murdered Eangi and many Eangen refugees had fled. But there were no refugees in this reflection, only a beach of fine multi-colored pebbles wrapping a winding coastline, topped with rustling grasses and hulking, perfectly round boulders.
From there, calf-deep in the cool waves, I looked out towards Frir’s Realm of Death: the Hidden Hearth, and my people’s final resting place. It was closer now. I had to crane my head back to see the sickle moon in the sky, and violet light surrounded me. But the sea lay between that realm and me, deep blue and clothed with white-capped waves.
There were legends of mortals who had crossed that expanse, trying to rescue perished loved ones, seek the counsel of the dead, or speak to the Goddess of Death herself. But I did not plan on being one of them. At least, not yet – Frir was Eang’s sister, after all, and not to be trifled with.
The sea breeze raked hair into my eyes. I clawed it back and glanced down the shoreline, momentarily at a loss for what to do. It had been five days, by my reckoning, since I’d seen Ogam. I doubted that time flowed the same here as it did in the Waking World, but the Arpa might be in the mountains by now. I needed to wake up.
Then I heard the moan. The cry quickly faded and the wash of the waves resumed their dominance, but I waded back to the shore and scanned my surroundings in alarm.
A second moan drifted up the beach and turned into a fragile wail of pain. It was female, and I had attended enough births over the years to realize what was happening.
Gathering my new power in my belly, I began to follow the sound. My feet crunched on the pebbles and the wind rose, twisting the woman’s agonized cries up through the sea spray and into the violet-grey sky.
There, built into the side of a low cliff, I found a door. Or rather, what had once been a door. The single wooden plank had long rotted off its hinges and the bottom showed signs of being eaten by the tide.
The door creaked open at my touch and my shadow stretched into a cave. There, a woman lay on a cloak, her great round belly proclaiming just what kind of discomfort she was in.
I fell to my knees on the damp pebbles. “Esach.”
The Goddess of Storms dropped her chin onto her glistening chest and stared at me through dull, broad-set eyes. “Where is Aita? Does she come to me?” she panted over the tent of her knees. Red blood stained her shift, fresh enough to ripple with a strange amber sheen.
I jerked forward at the pain in her voice but caught myself. One did not simply rush to the aid of a goddess. “I don’t know.”
Esach’s head fell back, the muscles of her jaw and throat contorting as she suppressed another wave of pain. When it had passed, she sank onto the mat in exhaustion.
I found my fists clenching with uselessness. “Goddess, may I serve you?”
She dropped an elbow over her eyes. Her response, when it came, was thin. “Yes. Water.”
As soon as I turned away, I let the fear pass over my face. The birth of Esach’s yearly child both foretold the prosperity of the autumn’s harvest and blessed its outcome. But it was too early; she should not be bearing until well into the ninth month and even then, Aita and the other goddesses should be with her. Even Eang was known to attend.
But here was Esach, laboring alone. I was devoted to Eang, but I could not abandon the Goddess of Storms.
I searched the cave and found a flask, abandoned with Esach’s belt and outer clothing on a nearby rock. Then I went back to a stream I’d crossed earlier, emptying into the sea, and filled the flask.
When I returned Esach lay on her cloak, exhausted, her face slick with sweat and the collar of her shift askew. I knelt and helped her sit, making each of my movements cautious and leaving her with plenty of time to reject my help.
But she did not. Esach sagged against me and let me pour a dribble of water over her parched lips.
For the first time, I caught a good look at her face in the light from the door. She was old for motherhood, her mouth lined with wrinkles and her hair grey – the multi-faceted grey of storm clouds shot with the white of lightning. In her prime, she would have been glorious. But now her hair was clustered with sweat and her eyes swollen with strain.
“Where can I find Aita?” I asked. “I’ll fetch her for you.”
“The Hall. She will be in Eang’s Hall.”
TWENTY-NINE
I left Esach in her cave and paused with the waves tugging at my
ankles, trying to corral my thoughts into order.
In all my wanderings, I’d yet to glimpse Eang’s own Hall, the place where she held her court. That wasn’t unintentional – it hadn’t seemed wise to seek out the seat of Eang’s power, not when the gods were being hunted down and I shouldn’t even be in the High Halls. But if Esach believed Aita would be there, I had to go.
I found a spot up the beach where the colorful pebbles and round boulders gave way to a swath of smooth sand. Kneeling, I steadied myself with a breath and began to draw symbols for sight, discovery, and direction. The sand was cool about my fingertip, giving way in gentle furrows until each symbol was in its place.
Leaning forward and praying for luck, I planted my palm in the center of the triangle and reached for my new power. I imagined Eang’s Hall, piecing together legends and stories into one image.
The quality of light changed. The sand warmed beneath my hand and the wind shifted direction, gusting past my mangled ear and sweeping stray hair into my eyes.
I sat back, leaving only the tips of my fingers in contact with the earth, and gazed after the wind.
A Hall now sat on a hill overlooking the coast, where a moment before there had been only boulders and resolute, shuddering grass.
Hardly able to believe my runes had worked, I stood and started towards it. The closer I came the more I slowed, turning my urgent steps into cautious and respectful. I summoned all my strength and poise, expecting someone to greet me – or at least, stop me. I was, after all, a reprobate with a belly full of stolen magic, encroaching on the most sacred of spaces. But no one appeared.
More details of the Hall came into focus. The building was smaller than I expected, no bigger than the Hall of Smoke in Albor, with a hefty wooden structure greyed by weather. Square-hewn trunks formed its doorway, each impressed with the finest carvings I had ever seen. Endless knots coiled into the forms of animals and unrecognizable symbols, and each time my gaze shifted, they reconfigured. Carvings also adorned the gables of its high triangular roof too, and each beam ended in the head of a beast: wolves, bears, eagles, lynx and foxes.
