Thira pushed past the Rahuatl, and strode down the center of the chamber. Rashk kept to the darker areas, slinking alongside, searching for lurkers. While Thira was looking up into the face of Zahra, Rashk cracked the acolytes’ door and slipped through. The rooms were empty of life, but a few acolytes lay curled on the floor. Their god had not saved them from the Fog.
Satisfied, Rashk walked back to the main chamber. “Tulipin is not here. Maybe he ran to another shrine.”
With a snort, Thira walked around the massive statue, and Rashk followed her to the back. The woman slid her fingers over the lines of a Sacred Sun that had been carved into the base. Thin fingers touched each point. “Praised be Zahra,” Thira murmured under her breath. The sun symbol cracked, and a panel opened.
Rashk narrowed her eyes. The Wise Ones’ castle did not give up its secrets easily, and although she had teased many from its stone, it was as twisting as a Reaper’s lair.
Thira disappeared inside, and Rashk stepped in after, sniffing the air. Zahra’s innards smelled of fear.
A tight spiral staircase climbed the statue, ending in its head. Tulipin was there, but the red-haired gnome was not levitating, he was sitting with his back against the statue’s skull. The hollow eyes looked down at the temple proper. A perfect vantage point for a spy.
“Thira,” the gnome breathed. Huddled as he was, he looked incredibly small—like a frightened child cowering from shadows. Only he was wizened and hunched, and his quick eyes darted to Rashk. “She cannot be here—she’s with them.”
Thira ignored the accusation. “Get off the floor and stop sniveling. You were in the council too. I could say the same of you.”
The gnome climbed to his feet. “I had no idea Tharios was a—” his voice dropped to a quivering whisper. “A Bloodmagi.”
“Tharios is; however, Rashk is not.”
“She’s a Rahuatl.”
For effect, Rashk flashed her teeth. “I’ve come to drink your blood and suck the marrow from your bones, Gnome.”
He paled, and backed against the wall.
Thira made an impatient noise. “Where are all the clerics and acolytes?”
“Yasimina came and rounded them all up.”
“And you hid,” Rashk accused.
“I was protecting the sacredness of the inner sanctum—”
Thira held up a hand. “We made a grave mistake, Tulipin. You and I plotted with a Bloodmagi.”
“I had no idea!” he shouted.
“Nor did I. We traded one fool madman for someone far more sinister. Thedus claims that this fog is the Fey, and I have no reason to doubt him.”
Tulipin spluttered. Words like legends, stories, and nonsense flew from his lips. Thira cut him off with a reasonable question. “Do you have a better explanation?”
“Bloodmagic filth.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you had a part in this. As did I. Now it’s time, in Zahra’s name, for you to make amends.”
“What can I do? I’m not a warrior.”
“True,” Thira admitted. “But you are a Wise One who can manipulate air in his sleep.”
“What of it? I can’t blow Tharios away.” The gnome fluttered his fingers.
Rashk looked from one to the other, and when the words clicked, she smiled, a slow, feral grin.
Chapter Twelve
Brinehilde, Priestess of the Sylph, stood alert. Questions swirled in her mind like the falling snow. The day was cold and sharp, and she watched her breath puff into the air. At least it was a natural grey, and not the cursed fog. Under the oak’s sprawling branches, there was peace—for now.
Brinehilde glanced at the roots that cradled her kinswoman. If anything happened to Morigan—she could not finish the thought. That path led directly to Oenghus, and the priestess didn’t want to be the one to tear that chunk out of the brute’s heart. Her thoughts drifted to another, to the boy Zoshi. Was he lost, and wandering through the fog? She hoped not.
The Sylph no longer whispered to her. The goddess had fallen silent. With nothing else to do but worry, Brinehilde became restless. Wisps fluttered around Morigan’s earthy cradle, but aside from the tiny faeries, the healer was better hidden than herself. As tall as Brinehilde was, and with her distinctive red hair, hiding didn’t come easy. But then Nuthaanians weren’t known for their stealth, and they certainly weren’t known for their patience.
She snatched up her quarterstaff and stalked back towards the fortress. The moment she walked into the hallway, she heard a distant thud. It echoed off the stone like a force slamming against wood. A fist.
The priestess hurried towards the infirmary and stopped before the last hallway. She peeked around the corner. Vague shapes moved in the mist. The shift of chain announced them as soldiers, and one man stood a head taller than the rest. Another knock echoed in the gloom.
The dwarf, Eldred, was in there, injured and helpless, and she did not know if these guards were friend or foe.
The door opened and the guards filed inside. She edged closer, following on their heels. Immediately, she noticed the crimson bands around their arms. That, she thought, was a new addition to the Isle Guards’ livery.
Brinehilde hurried to the side, using the commotion to disappear down a corridor. Keeping an ear to the conversation in the main room, she set her staff against a corner, snatched a blue robe from a hook, and quickly wound up her hair and hid it under a scarf. Only a few stray wisps of red stuck out. It would have to do.
With shoulders slouched, she walked back into the main ward. Leiman was talking with a soldier who rivaled her in height.
“There are traitors in the castle who served Marsais,” the large man was saying. “Some guards remain loyal to the Bloodmagi.”
The Void, Brinehilde wanted to shout, but she stilled her tongue and walked towards the room where Eldred had been healed.
“Are you sure, sir?” Leiman asked.
The large man listed the names of traitors: hers and Morigan included.
One word from Leiman, and the troop of guard would be on her in a flash. But the young healer did not so much as glance at her.
She was not well known, but Eldred was, and it was much harder disguising a dwarf. She hurried to his room. A thick bandage wrapped around his skull and his one good eye was closed. Taal Greysparrow and Shimei Al’eeth had nearly killed the man in the chaotic battle that followed the elemental’s release. Instead, thanks to Morigan and Ielequithe, the two men were the ones who were dead. Currently, Eldred slept soundly and quietly—a side-effect of an intensive Healing. There’d be no waking him from that deep sleep.
Brinehilde opened the shutters and looked out. The garden was too far down. She stepped back, surveying the small room. The bed was too low, the cupboard too small. She fixed on the chest at the end of the bed.
Moving quickly, she opened it, eyed the dimensions and began taking out armloads of linens and stuffing them under the bed. When it was empty, she bundled the dwarf in his blanket and lifted, wrestling him into the chest. She shut the lid, and quickly stripped the bedding, dumping the soiled linens in a heap on the floor.
A guard stopped at the doorway. He eyed the empty bed, the soiled bedding, and looked to her.
Brinehilde smiled sadly. “I’m making room for the next unfortunate.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed. He ordered her to stand back as he moved to the window. He looked over the sill, at the garden beneath, and then his eyes traveled to the chest.
With a muttered oath, Brinehilde grabbed the man’s cuirass, clamped a hand over his mouth, and snapped his neck with a clean jerk. He crumpled, and she helped him into the bed. Off came his helm, which she chucked out the window before tossing a blanket over him. As soon as the blanket had settled, another guard came to inspect the noise. The woman found Brinehilde solemnly changing the bedding of a very still patient.
The guard looked at the dead man, and Brinehilde held her breath. But the woman kept walking.
Brinehilde edged out into the hallway.
“We can’t abandon the infirmary,” Leiman’s voice came firmly down the hallway.
“We need to move you somewhere safe,” a deep voice answered. “You can leave two healers here, and I’ll place a guard. I won’t risk the rest of you.”
“Two healers are not enough to tend to the patients.”
“Three at most,” the large man growled. “Unless you want to defy the Archlord too?”
Brinehilde joined a knot of healers who stood watching. She kept her knees bent and her back slouched. No one said a word, or betrayed her presence. But Leiman glanced at her. She gave a slight nod, and hoped that he knew Morigan and Eldred were safe. The message seemed to get through to him. He argued for four healers, and once the large man grudgingly agreed, he began issuing orders. The staff hopped to action, emptying shelves and gathering supplies.
When Leiman picked two healers and himself to remain behind, the large man shook his head. “We need skilled healers.”
“What of the sick here, Quartermaster?”
“You’re not staying.”
Leiman pressed his lips together, and selected the four who would stay. Brinehilde was the fourth.
The guards and healers filed out, leaving a traitorous Wise One, four guards, three healers, and a suspicious Nuthaanian. To say nothing of the injured.
Brinehilde bent over a wounded soldier with a gash on his shoulder. She felt his brow, poked at his bandages, and watched the guards out of the corner of her eye. They were far from relaxed, and rather than taking up positions by the doors, they spread out, watching the healers work. She covertly eyed the remaining Wise One. His robes stretched over his gut, and as he toyed with a medallion around his neck, he stared down his nose at the room.
The Wise One dropped his medallion and nodded to a guard. Tension bled into the air. There was death in the guards’ eyes, and she needed a distraction. Either the Sylph answered, or it was pure luck. A loud noise, like splintering wood, crashed down the hallway. The Wise One motioned the guards towards the sound, and the two men abandoned their targets, reaching for swords.
As a guard passed, Brinehilde grabbed the man’s arm, halting the blade in its sheath. She straightened, yanked him forward, and drove her fist into his jaw. It cracked. Brinehilde lifted the stunned man off his feet and chucked him at his fellow guard. The two went down in a tangle of armor and limbs.
A healer threw himself at the third guard, but the young man was no fighter. The guard drew his sword, and rammed the hilt into the youth’s gut; he doubled over, dropping to his knees.
Brinehilde charged the closest soldier. Beneath her powerful hands, an arm cracked and ribs broke. She swung the reeling guard around and used him as a shield, blocking a sword strike from his fellow guard. Metal screeched on metal.
The sword-wielding guard recovered, and he skipped to the side, reaching around her human shield. A blade sliced across her ribs.
An older healer stepped behind Brinehilde’s attacker and stabbed up, under his helm. Blood gushed, the man reeled. Brinehilde snatched up a pestle and drove it into his face. As the guard staggered backwards, chanting filled the air.
Brinehilde spun, and hurled the pestle at the weaving Wise One. He ducked under the stone missile and released his weave. A force slammed into her like a charging bull, and she was blown off her feet. Broken vials and scattered supplies tumbled around her as she hit the ground.
A deep voice burst into the infirmary, and a crack split the air. And then, silence. It rang in her ears like a gong.
Brinehilde tried to lift her head, but the room danced around her, and spun. Knowing death lurked, she struggled to stand, but found her arms and legs useless. A grizzled, bandaged face came into view. “Who the Void took my armor and stuffed me into a trunk?” Eldred asked.
Brinehilde chuckled, and let her head fall back to the stone.
Chapter Thirteen
The earth was warm. It cradled her, and she was loathe to wake. Morigan Freyr could not remember the last time she had slept so soundly. Before the Wedamen invasion, her mind supplied, long before that. But in this cocoon—so like a womb—even thoughts of those terrible years could not shatter the peace. Morigan had felt this calm before, in the presence of Isiilde’s mother, Yasine, the Sylph.
A whisper brushed her ear along with a dream-like caress. Mother, sister, daughter, friend, lover, goddess—that brush was everything. ‘Have courage, Morigan. He lives, and so does my daughter,’ the voice washed over her like a cool spring. A knot untwisted in her heart.
‘What of the boy?’ she asked in her thoughts.
‘The boy is in darkness.’ There was sadness there, and regret. But whether that meant the boy was in actual darkness, or caught in the mist, Morigan did not know. The Sylph had little power in this realm.
‘This darkness must not spread.’ With those parting words, Morigan opened her eyes to damp earth and a sliver of light. The roots released their hold, slowly unraveling like snakes, nudging her into a winter’s day.
Disoriented, she pushed herself up and put her back to a tree, blinking against the brightness. The world was grey. But then it always was on the Isle. Her heart yearned for the starkness of Nuthaan: the endless sky, white-capped crags, and emerald valleys.
Morigan gazed at her hands. They were stained with blood and earth. As were her clothes. She was a mess.
Footsteps crunched in the snow.
Morigan palmed a knife, and tried to look dead. It didn’t take much acting. A tall, broad-shouldered redhead limped into view. Brinehilde’s breath caught.
“I’m not dead; I only look it.” Morigan’s voice came out as a croak.
“Thank the Sylph.”
“Beyond a doubt.”
Brinehilde sank down beside her. A flask was pressed into her hand, and she drank deeply. It was water, not brandy, and it soothed her throat. Morigan felt as if her veins had been drained of every last drop and refilled with sand. “Oen is alive.”
“I’d have to give his body a few good kicks before I believed otherwise. Takes a bit to kill that brute.”
“Aye.”
“What about Zoshi?”
“He’s in darkness.”
The priestess narrowed her eyes. “That’s all she said?”
Morigan nodded, and finished off the water.
“The stars never explain themselves,” Brinehilde sighed. “They just think the earth will know.”
Morigan searched the ground for a clean spot of fresh snow, and when she found one, she scooped it up and stuffed it into the flask. Wisps swarmed, heating the flask. She murmured her thanks and drank the melted snow.
“The Quartermaster came by your infirmary with a squad of guards. They were looking for traitors.”
“Eldred?”
“Still alive.” Brinehilde went on to tell the whole of events, and as her words painted the scene, a rage overcame Morigan that made the winter day seem hot.
“Are any of the guards still alive?”
“Aye, we revived the simpering Wise One. Pissed his pants, he did.”
“And?”
“You best hear it for yourself.”
Morigan put a hand on the oak, and tried to stand. But Brinehilde shoved her back to the ground. “Piss Pants isn’t going anywhere. If you love your shield-sister, sit and be.”
Morigan subsided. Mostly because Brinehilde’s grip was like iron, and she was too weak to fight it. She let her head fall back against the trunk. Lost snowflakes drifted from the grey, twirling their way towards her face. Their touch cooled her skin.
“Besides,” Brinehilde said, “If anything happens to you, I’m not keen on dealing with that oaf.”
Morigan snorted. “Oen’s not going to hold you accountable for my death.”
“I don’t fancy telling him all the same,” Brinehilde insisted. “It’d send him straight into the Keening.”
She’d seen that grief when Yasine died. She had worried
for him then, and she still worried every day. A foolish habit that she had never been able to break. Nuthaanians did not worry for berserkers; they were dead men walking.
“I’m sure he’s headed back. His heart is here,” Brinehilde said with certainty.
Morigan chuckled. “His heart belongs to another.”
The priestess fixed her with a hard eye, one that blazed with fury. “Is that what you think?”
“I’ve known for some time, Hilde.”
“Do you know why I never asked him to take an Oath with me?”
“Because you had more sense than me?”
Brinehilde smirked, and withdrew a second flask, her usual one that was filled with brandy. She took a long swig before continuing. “I won’t settle for half a heart. As you well know, that brute talks something awful in his sleep. He’s favored, to be sure, but so are you. A stone can gaze at the stars, and the stars gaze back, but neither really understands the other. You’re his earth, Morigan.”
Morigan looked at her kinswoman as if she’d gone mad. “I think that the guards hit your head too hard.”
The priestess smiled, and tapped her head. “I’m only passing on what I’m told.” Brinehilde climbed to her feet. “As long as you let me borrow him. He’s always good for a rough tumble.”
“As sturdy as they come,” Morigan agreed.
She gripped Brinehilde’s offered hand, and the woman pulled her to her feet.
Brinehilde kept her hand, and looked her in the eye. “He’ll find his way back.”
“Bloodied or on his shield.”
Both women spat.
Chapter Fourteen
“Is the Labyrinth Sea usually this calm?” The only sea Isiilde had ever glimpsed was the Fell Sea. It was always windy. And yet here, the sails and flags hung limp.
Rivan shook his head. “Not like this. Not this still. We’re dead in the water,” he admitted, and then lowered his voice. “There’s talk of a curse, on account of Marsais.”
The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3) Page 8
