by Rachel Dunne
When the shouting fury subsided, Joros pulled his rabbit from the flames. It was overcooked, blackened along one side, but it tasted delicious nonetheless. Meat that he had caught and killed with his own hands.
Joros ate all of the rabbit, even the parts that were more char than meat, and he sucked the bones clean. When he was done, when his belly was full and his head was clear and his core was filled with the familiar clear-burning anger that had always driven him forward, he rose and stomped out his half-dead fire, kicking the scraggly patches of snow over the embers to be sure. He began walking, his feet generally following the direction he’d originally come, but in the darkness one tree looked very much like any other. He might not be heading back to the others at all.
Would it be the worst thing, if he turned his feet north right now?
He saw the fire through the trees—likely Rora and Aro and Anddyr, though he supposed it could be a group of preachers, or a group of commonfolk hiding in the woods from the end of the world. There was enough doubt that he could justify it, even, if he were to turn away from the flames. What kind of fool would approach strange fires during the Long Night? Better, surely, to leave, to strike out on his own. He didn’t need anyone but himself.
Joros stood for a long time, staring at the fire, and then he began walking again.
He heard their voices before he reached the fire: Aro and Anddyr, their madnesses synchronized as they muttered at each other. He made enough noise as he approached so that Rora wouldn’t be startled and put a dagger in him, but she was standing and ready to do just that when he stepped into the circle of light. She deflated with a strange mix of disappointment and relief and put her daggers away. Then she sat once more, studiously ignoring the two mages arguing. “You were gone awhile,” she said.
“You should rest up,” he told her as he shook out his cloak, wrapping it snugly around himself. “We’ll need to start moving faster from now on.” He didn’t need anyone else, and that was true enough—he’d take on all the world with his hands if need be, cut the throat of anyone who got in his way—but things would be easier, far easier, with drudges.
It was simple arithmetic, an equation done in reverse: he needed to succeed, and so it was simply a matter of finding the values: How much effort, how much skill, how much blood? If he had failed before, it was only that he had not given enough. If he had failed, he simply needed to try harder.
“After all,” he said, staring at the fire’s flickering, and he felt a small smile twist his lips, “we have some gods to kill.”
Chapter Five
Even with the moon not yet risen, Scal could make out Mount Raturo. It was a darker shape against the dark sky. A space with no stars, an emptiness. Like the sky had torn open to show the nothingness the winking stars hid.
The night was silent around them. All the creatures of the forest lost and confused without the protection, the consistency, of the sun. No other humans nearby, or at least none that he could hear. It was quiet because Vatri did not speak. Quiet because Scal had never learned the trick of breaking a silence.
They were too close to Raturo, far too close, and Scal could not help staring at it as they walked. His neck began to ache, from turning so often to where the mountain lurked at his left shoulder. Even when the trees blocked it from his sight, he still thought he could feel it. His eyes would not leave it alone.
There had been a time, not so very long ago though it felt like another life, when he had almost walked willingly into the mountain. He had been a different man then, trying to find his place, trying to find the shape of his life. It had been before he had found Vatri again. A group of the black-robed preachers had found him, had been kind to him. Had offered him a place among them. Had offered him purpose. He had ached with need, but he had turned from them, turned from the mountain, turned to Vatri. She had shaped him. It had been a better choice.
And yet.
The mountain called to him like a toothache. Unavoidable, nagging, sharp. Dangerous. He did not know why.
In time, Raturo dropped behind his shoulder. This made it harder for him to look, easier to ignore, and he was grateful for it. He had known a man with a bad tooth, who had hardly been able to eat without pain. A fellow caravan guard, whose jaw had slowly swollen around the tooth. When the swelling had spread to his neck, there had been nothing they could do but listen to his wheezing breath grow louder, more strained. When the wheezing had stopped, his hands clawing at his swollen neck as his eyes went huge, killing him had been a kindness. The ache in his tooth had ended, though. It always did, one way or another.
Scal followed in Vatri’s wake, and ignored the way his head wanted to twist over his shoulder. Ignored the pulse of the mountain.
He heard the sound before Vatri did. It was not a surprise—she was always in her head, lost in her thinking and planning. At least she did not startle when he wrapped his fingers around her arm, pulling her to a stop. She heard it, too, when her eyes focused on him.
Talking. Voices low, but they carried through the silence of the dark forest.
Scal watched Vatri, watched all the thoughts flicker behind her eyes as she stared into the night. Waited. She would ask, and he would do whatever she asked. It was all he could do.
Finally she looked to him, jerked her head in the direction of the sound, the direction they had been going. She was smart, to speak without words. He did the same. Reaching out both his hands, pressing them firmly on her shoulders, holding his palms toward her as he stepped back. She frowned, but she nodded. She did not follow when he began picking his careful, quiet way through the trees.
His eyes had adapted to the darkness, in the long dark walking hours. Even with the tree cover, even when the moon hid beneath the edge of the world, Scal’s eyes could still pick out shapes well enough. He had torn strips from his tunic, looped them around his belt to hang the sword at his side. It swung to his right; his left hand was slower, but he would rather pull ice than fire. He did not draw it now, as he walked forward. He would not until he needed to.
The two voices, talking together, grew louder. Dull light guided his feet, calling him closer to the edge of a small clearing. He hung back among the trees, but he could see well enough: a small house, a smaller shed where a handful of pigs milled. Farther in, two men, one younger and one older, moving in an awkward crouching walk along lines of thick logs. Picking mushrooms, he finally saw. Farmers. But they both wore black robes. Had tied their hair back with black cloth. Farmers, but preachers of the Long Night, too.
He watched them for a time, listening. They talked of the mushrooms, of the pigs, of the darkness. Things that did not matter. They talked of the Fallen, of all the preachers who would surely be returning in triumph soon. Scal heard movement inside the house, another person. A family, alone and peaceful and happy.
He stayed longer than he needed to. Longer than he should have. He would have stayed still longer, silent and watching, but he heard the steps behind him. Careful steps, but loud to his own ears. He did not turn to see; there was no point. He did not look as Vatri came to stand at his side.
She watched, and the edge of the moon crept above the trees, shining its light into the little clearing.
Vatri touched his arm, and Scal turned to face her. Her face was tight as a mask, the eyes carved grim, pitiless, unyielding. He had seen carvings of Metherra, where the face looked much the same. Vatri’s hand fell, and landed on the hilt of the sword that hung at Scal’s hip. She did not say it. She did not need to. Scal had known, from the moment he had seen the black of their robes.
Scal had never tried to count how many he had killed. From the start, it had been too many, more than he could remember. Five lives he had lived, all washed in a sea of blood, an ocean, a world of it. So many lives taken that one more, three more, could not possibly matter. Could not make any difference.
He left her side. Walked quiet around the shadowed edge of the clearing, closer to the men. The elder told a joke, the yo
unger laughed, the sound shivering through the trees. Under the cover of that noise, Scal drew his sword. Drew it with the left hand, the hand of ice, and crystals danced along the blade. They did not see him when he stepped from the trees. Did not hear his feet, silent on the ground.
He took the elder first. It was a kindness, for no man should have to see his child dead. The blade went smoothly through the man’s neck, and the spiny ice shards did not catch when Scal pulled the blade free. The younger man did not react in the time it took Scal to take three steps toward him. He fell as silently as his father. The woman screamed when he entered the house, but it did not matter. There was no one for her to warn.
After, when it was done, the moonlight whispered across the floor to the woman’s body, and it shone off the killing wound in her neck. Shone, for her neck was pale and shimmering, frosted with ice halfway up her cheeks and beyond the neck of her shift. There was no blood. Frozen, likely, within her veins.
The sword, too, was clean. Perhaps it was meant to be a kindness, less blood added to the sea of it that could drown him so easily. A kindness, from the gods who would use him as their tool . . . but it did not feel like a kindness.
Outside the pigs were shuffling nervously. He let them be; his stomach rumbled with hunger, but he had no taste for flesh. He did not even think of the mushrooms.
Vatri met him near the edge of the clearing, her yellow robe bright in the moonlight. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out to touch his wrist. Not the one that had held the blade. The words felt true, though. “Will you gather wood?”
There was nothing else for him to do. Vatri went into the house, likely to search for anything valuable, anything useful. Scal did not know if she meant to make a camp or a pyre, and so he piled sticks between the house and the mushroom logs, in the empty space where—if he kept his eyes straight, did not let them see anything to the edges—death had not touched.
Vatri piled her own findings nearby: a bedroll and a sturdy travelsack, three blankets that were thin but better than nothing, pots and spices and a tiny jar of salt, wooden bowls and utensils, needle and thread, candles and oil, the lantern, a tinderbox, two small knives and a hatchet, a whetstone, a long length of oiled canvas, scraps of leather, dried meat, hardbread. The belongings of people used to travel. It would be foolish not to take it all.
She began arranging the sticks for a fire. No pyre, then. Scal took the tinderbox from the pile she had made, but she stopped him with a word: “Wait.” Building the sticks higher, a pile big enough it would drown a spark, not enough small pieces to catch. “The sword,” she said at last, and Scal drew it. The flames licking along the blade turned her face once more to a mask. Vatri motioned to the pile of sticks before her, and the mask murmured, “Now make a fire.”
Scal frowned. He had walked through the long grassy Plains with the fire-sword live in his hands, and the flames had brushed against the grasses, but they had never caught fire. He had touched his free hand to the flames, and felt nothing save heat. The fire seemed harmless.
Vatri sighed. Dug through the pile of her new belongings. Pulled free one of the small knives, no longer than her hand, and she threw it to Scal. It was a foolish thing, but he managed to catch the knife, even with his slower left hand. And dropped it in surprise, when ice shards swept along the little blade. Unease churned in his stomach. Scal crouched down, set the sword aside so the flames died along its edge, and instead he lifted the knife with his right hand. Stared, as the same flames flickered.
He had thought—hoped—that it was the sword. Taken from one of the Fallen’s mercenaries, it was surely some of their strange magic that turned the sword to fire and ice.
But no. It was him, his own hands.
In this same forest, Vatri had drawn on Scal’s body with ash, symbols that hurt his eyes if he looked at them too long. She had drawn two symbols on his palms that were like a mirror to each other, and she had sent him into the bonfire. He had almost convinced himself it was a dream. No memory of the flames, no memory until he had woken in a pile of ash with not a mark of it on his naked flesh. He remembered his palms had hurt, but the ache had faded.
“This,” Vatri said softly, “is the will of the Parents. You are their will. Metherra and Patharro have put their faith in you to help in this fight against the darkness.”
She had told him, in the great grass sea, though he had not listened. A weapon for the Parents, to match the mercenaries of the Fallen. She had said he was made to serve the Parents, shaped by the hands of life into a tool for them to use. It had not been the explanation he wanted. He had not wanted to hear, and so he had not truly listened.
“The power they’ve given is yours to bear, yours to use as you will. You need to learn now how to use it. There is so much we must do.”
Scal laid down the knife, raised the sword instead. A sword had always felt better in his hand. Even when he hated the things a sword could do, the hilt fit perfectly in his hand, an extension of himself. The flames that danced along the blade whispered, and Scal thought of Vatri. Of how she had gotten her scars. The fire had spoken to her, and she had leaned in to hear better, leaned too close. Scal let the fire whisper. It could say nothing that would draw him in.
So. She wished him to make a fire with the sword, with the power of the Parents. Scal reached, and touched the tip of the sword to the piled sticks. The flames touched and skimmed harmlessly against the wood.
Fire. It was what his name meant, one of the Northern runes, the oldest words in the world. It was what he had named himself in his second life, the life after the killing snows, the life of warmth and smiles and nothing but brightness. It had been the only word in his head, at the start of that life. But flames had burned Aardanel, burned away his home and his life and his hope. Burned them all over again in his third life, burned away what little peace he had found in the frozen North. Fire. The tool of the Parents. Metherra’s sun, brought to earth. Warmth and death and life and destruction.
Perhaps he had only ever had one life, built of blood and built of fire. In all his days, those had been the only constants.
Fire, Scal thought, and the sword’s light flared, and the sticks caught with a roar.
When the flames settled, and Scal looked across the crackling fire, Vatri was smiling, pleased. It hardly looked a real smile. Her face a mask still, mouth carved in the proper shape.
Scal set aside the sword, and held his hands in his lap. Staring at the lines that marked his palms, the scars, the calluses. Trying, somehow, to see the sigils she had drawn there. To see the mark of the Parents on his skin.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” Vatri said, her voice soft from the other side of the fire. “I understand you, Scal. You wish the world had made you differently. You wish you could have a simple life—if not free of blood and pain and death, then at least with less of it. You wish you could be happy. I understand you.” Scal looked up from his hands. She was watching him through the flames, and her face was less a mask. More open, behind the old scars carved into her face. Honest, and sad, and hopeful. “I want you to understand me, too. My whole life, I have served the Parents. They’re what I live for. They chose me, and I must be worthy of them. But it’s not easy. They ask so much . . .” She looked away, and a gust of smoke hid her face from him completely. “You wanted guidance. A hand to point you, a voice to direct you. You asked me . . . but I’ve only ever served the Parents. If you follow me, it’s them you’re following. Any orders from me are orders from them. The gods ask much of us, but they never ask more than what we can bear. Anything I ask of you, anything you do for them through me . . . it may hurt, but it won’t break you.” The heavy smoke cleared, and Vatri had turned back to him, her face set once more. “The world sits at a delicate balance, now more than ever. The return of the Twins will change things even more than it already has. We have to maintain balance, Scal. We have to do whatever we can to make sure the scales don’t tip too far in either direction. And that means the
coming days, weeks, months, will not be easy for us. But they will not be impossible.”
Scal stared into the fire. Tried to pull the important pieces from her speech, tried to decide if she wanted him to say something, if there was anything he could say. She had said so much, enough to drown his own thoughts. He could think of nothing to say before she spoke once more.
“The fire is always full now . . . full of Metherra’s voice, full of Patharro’s will. I know you can’t read the flames like I can, but they’re full of hope. We can fight the Twins, and fight the Fallen. We can restore the sun, return the world to its proper balance. I see all this.”
Scal stared into the fire between them. She was right—he had never seen the future in the red-gold flares. He only ever saw the dancing, indistinct shapes as the wood snapped and the flames wove about each other.
“I see Raturo,” she said, and he thought of the mountain, felt it over his shoulder, and stopped himself from twisting to look at it. He stared at the fire instead, and perhaps the flames did dance in the shape of a crooked thumb. Perhaps he saw. Perhaps he only wanted to. “I see its peak crumbling, falling—the mountain destroyed. It’s the symbol of their power, the Fallen and the Twins both, and we will crush it. I see them fleeing, scattering like dust, and the fall of Raturo crashes like a wave upon them.”
A twig snapped, sending embers dancing high. If he could see the shape of the mountain within the flames, perhaps, too, he could see the preachers spreading out from the mountain. But Scal had seen the Fallen assembled in all their numbers. If he saw them in the flames, reaching out from their mountain home, he did not think they were fleeing. He had seen the Fallen, seen how they carved their path upon the earth like a mighty river, how they swallowed the ground like a sea. If Vatri saw the tide of the Fallen receding from Mount Raturo, it was only so they could crash against a different shore.
