Hall of Smoke

by H. M. Long

  I shifted onto my knees, taking a moment to measure my own strength. The headiness of the mead I’d consumed in the High Halls had not transmitted back to the Waking World, but the power of that place remained. It slipped through my blood and bone in a way Eang’s Fire never had, promising and constant in its flow.

  Still, the absence of the Fire jarred and unsettled me. I caught hold of those feelings before they could grow and pushed them aside for later contemplation. If Estavius’s words held true, my fight was not yet over.

  As I knelt, something dug into my leg. My hand dropped to my calf and there, hidden inside my legwraps, I felt the shape of a small, sheathed knife.

  “Did Estavius bring me here?” I asked, though I already suspected the answer.

  “Yes. Are you all right?” Nisien asked. He held his tone steady, but I heard the falter beneath its calculated edges. “You’ve been unconscious for hours.”

  “Yes,” the word came with a laugh, soft and a little unhinged.

  Nisien shot me a look between reproach and despondency, and my elation faltered. A pregnant silence opened between us and the man shifted, stretching his long legs and holding up his unbound hands. He waved his fingers. “Estavius is doing what he can for us.”

  Judging by the fact that Nisien had yet succumb to Lathian’s thrall, the anomaly that was Estavius – and his supposed god – might be doing far more than the horseman realized.

  “At least,” he added, “you and I… we won’t have to wait to die alone.”

  I let this sentiment sit between us for a moment, melancholic and strained, before I nodded gently. I indicated his hands. “Did you try to escape yet?”

  Real, raw hopelessness cracked through his façade. “There’s no point, Hessa. Where would I go? How would I live with myself? I can’t go back to my mother, even if the world wasn’t burning. And what I let Quentis do… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Estavius told me what he did, letting you go. I should have been the one… I’m so sorry.”

  My hand reached out of its own accord, grabbing one of his in the darkness and holding it tight. I opened my mouth to protest, to forgive him – because how could I not on this of all nights, with his voice cracking and my own failures piled around me. I wanted to tell him that, tell him what Estavius might be – empowered vessel or even Miri – and that within a few short hours, he and I would have one last chance to save ourselves and our world.

  Nisien, it seemed, did not want my forgiveness. He spoke again, cutting me off before my dry throat could put a sentence together. But he left his loose-fingered hand in mine, rough and scabbed and inept.

  “Telios stopped them from executing me.”

  Another hush fell between us. The conversation of Polinus’s men drifted through the night, merging with the rustle of the trees and interrupted by the rasp of a sword being sharpened. Telios’s men did not converse, but I sensed them around us – brushes of unnatural life against my new, golden senses.

  “Why?”

  The Soulderni held my gaze, though neither of us could really see the other’s eyes in the shadows.

  “I’ll listen, if you want to tell me,” I said at last, echoing his own words to me by the lake in Gilda.

  “It won’t make tonight any easier.”

  I shrugged. “It might.”

  Nisien took another minute to make up his mind, then his fingers pulled free of mine and spoke again. “He was my mentor.”

  I curled my hands back in my lap and sat poised, fearing that any more movement might stop his flow of words.

  “I was young. I idolized him. When he took me under his wing, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.” Nisien paused. “Fight for him. Die for him. Lie with him. Bear his abuse. I was a thousand miles from home, and he offered me protection. Influence. He kept me alive, and for that I thought I loved him.”

  I held his gaze.

  “Those years were… They ended. I realized the type of man Telios was, and I pulled away. He made a play for power in the army. I had to choose a side and I put a knife in his back. But Telios had so much influence with the priests of Lathian… he went unpunished, publicly. My general, who I’d sided with against Telios, sent me home to Souldern, half in thanks and half to keep me safe. I never expected to see Telios again.”

  I let him sit mutely for a time, ensuring he had nothing more to say and letting myself digest this information.

  Euweth’s face drifted up through the gloom of Nisien’s tale. I recalled the laughing Soulderni horsewoman, her shield of mirth splintered on the night she had banished me. I had never truly resented her for sending me away, even before I understood why she had been so desperate to keep her son away from the Arpa. From the shadow of Telios.

  I crawled over to sit beside Nisien, lending my friend the bulwark of my presence without touching him. I couldn’t offer any comforting words. What was there to say? I had sat with enough warriors after battle, enough friends after the death of a loved one, to know what little use words were.

  But I could bare my own soul in return.

  I cleared my throat, conscious of the absence of an Eangi collar at my throat – I’d left the battered one on the forest floor, and I had a feeling I would never see it again. But my hairpin was still tucked into my hair, tangled and innocuous – my last talisman of Albor and my husband.

  “Will you still listen, if I tell you why I’m here?” I asked.

  Nisien opened his hands in an inviting gesture, without looking up. “Of course.”

  “And what Estavius and I have planned for tomorrow?”

  At that, Nisien raised his head.

  I told him. I told him everything and, in the end, I edged the knife out from my legwrap and put it in his hands.

  Nisien’s eyes darted from the weapon to me. “Where did you get this?”

  “Estavius.” I crooked him a wan smile. “I assume.”

  “Estavius…” Nisien shook his head, turning the knife over in his hands. “What is he? Aliastros, or… is he like you?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “And as long as he plays his part, it doesn’t matter. Do you want vengeance, Soulderni? Do you want to bring down Telios and his god?”

  He gave a short exhale. “Gods above and below, Hessa.”

  “Those gods are coming, and after tomorrow they will be gods no more.” I leant forward, putting one warm hand on his forearm. “I have a knife, and a hairpin. I have no Fire, but I have something better. And if we stand together, perhaps we can end Telios, and Quentis. Perhaps we can even survive. At least, Nisien, we can die a decent death.”

  Nisien watched, still dumbstruck, as I took the knife back from him and tucked it into my legwrap. I disentangled my hairpin and hid it there, too; two small weapons in a war of the gods.

  Then, softly, Nisien began to laugh.

  * * *

  My knees hit damp stone and trampled grass in the light of dawn. More prisoners dropped in rows to either side of me along the lakeshore – Algatt warriors, most of them barely conscious after the night’s horrors.

  I squinted out towards the twilit water, hands bound behind my back. Black clouds still girded Lathian’s beautiful form and his aura saturated the air like an approaching storm. Ogam was with him. I saw the Son of Winter’s impossibly pale skin and white hair, pacing through fog atop an island of ice. And with them, newly arrived in the night, was the shadow that was Ashaklon, free and roiling around the other Old-World gods.

  A shadow fell across me and I looked up into Quentis’s slate-grey eyes. There was nothing human left inside them, no threads of blue or human expression.

  “I told him you would not bow.” When Quentis spoke, his voice had changed too. It was broader somehow, vast and shallow and detached.

  Nisien thudded down on my left. When I glanced at him, his gaunt face produced a smile. It was a feeble thing and, given our circumstances, it was absurd. But it strengthened me.

  “I will offer you only one more chance
,” Quentis said, ignoring my companion.

  I did not reply. The Arpa reached out, once, and touched the top of my head. Then his gaze drifted away and he left, the tips of his fingers trailing across my scalp in abstract farewell. I suppressed a shiver.

  Nisien leant into my shoulder, voice low. “I’m ready.”

  His words wrapped around the knot of determination in my chest and cinched it tight. I pushed aside the thought of Quentis and nodded back, hard and grim. “Then let’s begin.”

  I leant towards the Algatt on my other side. I thought she was a few years my senior, but her face was so bruised and swollen that it was hard to tell. “I can free you. Will you fight with me?”

  A ripple passed down the line. I looked up cautiously, concerned that the Arpa might notice, but most of the soldiers were Telios’s. Their focus was on Lathian.

  “What do you mean, Eangi?” the woman hissed.

  “I mean, we can escape together.”

  She gave a derisive snort, but any other reply died as black clouds began to advance across the lake. Lathian strode in the midst of them with his court – Styga, Ogam, Rioux, the Archeress, Ashaklon and a dozen others I didn’t recognize.

  The Arpa snapped to attention. A glance over my shoulder found Polinus’s men filtering from the trees, some of their strides marked with caution. I could not make out Castor among the ranks but Estavius was there, striding behind Polinus with the cheekplates of his helmet fastened. There was nothing to betray him as anything other than human, save the fact that his eyes, among a handful of others, were not yet grey.

  “Is Lathian free?” Nisien hissed, watching the god progress across the lake.

  “Not fully,” I replied, my words quick and quiet.

  Quentis stepped into the shallows, dragging an Algatt prisoner by the hair. The prisoner was so far gone that he could barely kneel, let alone resist.

  “Behold, my lord, the death of your enemies!” Quentis crowed, echoing his own words from the day before. “Feast upon their fear and break the last of your chains!”

  I leant into the Algatt woman again, who stared at the scene in bleak, watery-eyed horror. “Hurry. Move your arms. I’ll cut your bindings. Hide the ends and wait for my signal.”

  She tore her eyes from Quentis and his victim and met my gaze for another, helpless instant. Then she seemed to find a scrap of courage and nodded slightly.

  “Be ready to free your people.”

  Both our heads jerked up as Quentis threw out one hand, a long knife poised, while the other still grasped his prisoner. He began to chant.

  I slit the Algatt woman’s bonds, then Nisien’s. He loosed mine before hiding the blade up his own sleeve and I slipped my hairpin between my palms.

  The first Algatt died. As his body was dragged away, the soldiers shoved a woman forward. She was younger than me, barely older than sixteen. She looked like my sister Hulda, her face a mask of determination and angry tears.

  “Quentis,” I called with only a slight hitch in my voice, “take me next.”

  The priest turned. A flicker of his old interest passed behind his charcoal eyes and he nodded for the soldiers to fetch me. The girl was shoved back into line.

  I stood before the Arpa priest. The water of the White Lake was as cool around my ankles as the hairpin resting against my forearm; Eidr’s runes of protection, belonging and promise pressed against my skin above deadly silver prongs.

  “I offer you this last chance, Eangi,” Quentis said. He gestured towards the Old Gods with his scarlet knife and stained fingers. “I see you. I see what you could be. Worship. Join us. Lead your people into the coming age. High Priestess of the North. High Priestess of Lathian.”

  His words had a latent power to them. I recognized that power; it was the same one that had tried to arrest me in the vision of the Arpa temple. Now it pulsed through Quentis, attempting to draw my desires towards him like the pull of a tide.

  But it had no effect. Amber pricked at the corners of my eyes and I slipped the pin between my fingers.

  “No.”

  I stabbed Quentis in the throat. Briefly, the delicate skin beneath his jaw held against the silver prongs. Then they punched through, right up to its decorative runes and my curling fingers.

  Quentis crashed into the water. I grabbed his own knife before it could disappear and slit his throat wide. Quentis thrashed. Telios shouted. The legionaries charged.

  I threw Quentis’s knife to the Algatt woman. Her free hands snatched it from the air and she scrambled toward the next person in line.

  Telios’s armored form charged at me. I dodged a stabbing, horizontal blow from his shield and skittered backwards.

  Nisien leapt upon his commander in a blur of muscle and plunging knife. I spun on another soldier and caught his forearm as he hacked at me. Throwing my weight forward, I jerked his arm behind his back and snapped it.

  I had his sword now.

  “Eang,” I said. Each word I spoke became a pledge, a memorial to the life I had once led; a pledge of the person I would become today instead. “The Brave and the Vengeful.”

  I ran an Arpa through, wrenched my sword free and seized his Algatt shield. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nisien retreating, avoiding strike after strike from Telios. He still wielded the knife, but even from this distance, I saw the young man’s resolve falter.

  “The Watchful.”

  I dropped another blank-eyed Arpa. Down the shoreline, Telios landed a blow on Nisien’s chest with the side of his shield. The horseman went down.

  “The Swift.”

  Telios raised his sword for a killing thrust. I broke into a sprint.

  Estavius leapt between Nisien and Telios. The commander’s sword met his shield with a jarring clang and crack, followed by the commander’s full-shouldered impact.

  Estavius braced, taking the blow, but Telios’s hit had been calculated. The young Arpa’s shield tilted left and Telios went with it, rounding him and driving his sword up into Estavius’s exposed back. I didn’t see it connect, but I saw the shock in Estavius’s face. He – man, Miri, combination of the two – staggered.

  I closed in. For the space of one labored heartbeat, Nisien watched his friend struggle to stand. Then Telios was in front of him, sword extended. Unable to get any closer, Nisien snapped. He hurled his knife at the commander’s throat in one last, desperate play. Telios barely deflected it with a flash of steel and it sliced into the water twenty feet away.

  “Nisien!” I screamed.

  His face lifted. I caught his eye, just the barest of glances, and threw my sword the remaining distance.

  Nisien darted right. The hilt dropped into his hand and the blade arched in one silent, deft swing.

  Telios’s head left his shoulders.

  The Soulderni should have had a moment then, to reflect on the death of his tormentor. But this was battle. Panting, he hauled Estavius back to his feet and I shoved my arm under his other shoulder. Behind us, Telios’s body collapsed, headless and unmourned.

  “Bow.”

  It was not a word. It was a… pulse. That pulse radiated over the water and drove everyone, Arpa, Algatt, Nisien, Estavius and I, to our knees in a clattering, splashing thud.

  Only one person got back up. Estavius. The Arpa extricated himself from Nisien’s and my grasp and, grimacing through what should have been a mortal wound, faced the Gods of the Old World. The blood streaming down his back and legs waned, vanishing into the water around him.

  His blood glistened with amber. At first the color was subtle and wavering, as if I saw it though a fluttering veil. But as Estavius spoke, that veil began to lift. The amber glint intensified, the bleeding slowed still more, and Estavius began to change.

  “Go back to sleep, Lathian.” The legionary’s voice shook out over the water. He did not speak in Northman, but somehow I understood him. “Your chains will remain.”

  I’d known something like this was coming, but my mouth still fell open. The features
of Estavius’s face remained the same, but I felt as though I’d only ever seen him in shadow, and now saw him in the unfiltered light of day. His eyes were pale, pale as mist, and his skin itself seemed to move – the subtle, nearly imperceptible swirls and alterations of a cloudy summer sky.

  Once more, amber power rushed around him like the wind itself, ethereal and alive and laden with dust of gold.

  Are you sure he’s human?

  This was no matter of possession, as Eang had done to me. Estavius was not human, I did not doubt that now. He was Aliastros.

  Lathian was over the center of the lake now, billows of tainted cloud ensconcing almost the entire surface.

  “Aliastros,” he rumbled, “what are you doing?”

  Estavius – Aliastros – strode out into the lake until the water reached his hip. The farthest of the black tendrils began to skirt him in a broad, cautious swirl. “Throwing in my lot.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Lathian’s court spread out around him, arraying themselves for true battle. Perhaps Lathian’s full power had not yet been unleashed, but these lesser beings were free, from Ashaklon’s murk to the Archeress with her bow and arrows of bone. Estavius faced them all, unaided.

  I saw the way Lathian beheld him: hard, cold and… cautious. “You cannot stop me alone. Bow, God of Wind. You have eluded me long enough.”

  Estavius – for I still couldn’t help but think of him by that name – watched him coolly. “I finished the ritual last night, Lathian, while your servants cavorted. The God Under the Lake rises as we speak.”

  Lathian paused. Down the line, I saw the Archeress shift her bow and Rioux snarl, both their expressions darkening as they realized that this was the god who had attacked them in the storm and darkness of the High Hall.

  Ogam slipped forward one slight step.

  “And besides,” Estavius added, his voice filled with the billowing, soul-cracking weight of power, “I am not alone.”