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Náli trod the familiar paths toward the heart of the village, to the longhouse there crowned at both ends by massive pairs of antlers. Runes were painted in white chalk around the door frames, and smoke issued from the chimney hole at the center of the roof.
He didn’t knock; the grizzled dog lying in the shade of the bench beside the door didn’t stir to regard him. He pushed open the simple, oaken panel, and found himself in a dim, warm space that smelled strongly of fresh onion tops and peat smoke. Even if he wasn’t corporeal here, the smoke burned his eyes and nose, and the onion-smell made the back of his throat itch.
Like at Dreki Hörgr, the fire ran the length of the longhouse, a stone-lined channel filled with kindling, logs, and merrily crackling flames. Three great cookpots on iron tripods bubbled and steamed above it. At the center one, seated on a low stool, the shaman awaited. He lifted his head, met Náli’s gaze with the surety of one who’d been expecting him, then nodded to the stool opposite.
Náli crossed, and sat. The flames licked up between them, casting upward shadows on the shaman’s regal face. It wasn’t gray here, like it was in the well; was ruddy from cold and sun, brow creased with lines from knitting his brows. His cheeks were smooth, but not flawless: a nick along his jaw marked uncareful shaving; patchy beard growth covered his chin like lichen. In this realm, his circlet was simpler, of iron, stoneless, unremarkable. But the eyes were the same: shocking blue, seeming to glow in the dance of firelight as he lifted them to meet Náli’s gaze.
“You’re late.” His voice was clear and bell-like. A melodious contrast to the gravel-rough voices of most men of Aeretoll.
“Yes,” Náli said. “I am. It’s a bit busy out in the real world.”
The shaman – that was how Náli thought of him, since he’d never been offered a name – glanced down into the pot between them and stirred in slow, measured movements. Something alarmingly like an eye bobbed to the surface before it was lost in the bubbles and went back under. “This world is just as real as the world of the living,” he said, tone gone lecturing.
Náli bit back a sigh. “Not exactly urgent, though, is it? We’ve a war on, beyond the veil. People are dying.”
“All men die.”
“Yes, eventually. But I’d rather not meet my end at the hands of cannibals or Sels, thank you very much,” Náli snapped. He loathed the dead for their placidity; for the way time stretched endless and unhurried, with never an emergency to be found. What did it matter to this corpse that he was late? Was he the one who made the mountain erupt? A petulant fit because he’d been ignored too long? Náli had asked him once, and earned only a riddle in response.
Now, though, that bubble of indifference wavered. The shaman paused, hand tightening on the handle of his spoon. His eyes lifted again, the blue even brighter. “The Sels?”
“Yes, great lumbering purple bastards that they are,” Náli said with a dismissive wave. “Out to try and conquer more continents. In need of a good slaying. But no, here I am, watching you stir some poor fool’s brains around in a…”
Belatedly, he realized the shaman was staring at him, something like panic drawn in the lines of his normally-passive expression. “What?” And then, realization striking again: “Wait…how do you know of the Sels? The Great War was long after your time in the mortal realm.”
The shaman did something Náli had never seen him do before: he licked his lips in an obvious show of nerves. Turned loose of the spoon and wiped both palms down the front of his robe. “The dead know many things. We see that which you cannot, Corpse Lord.” But he didn’t sound sure of that; his voice trembled.
“What are you…are you frightened?”
“No mortal bow or blade can pierce beyond the veil of the Nágrindr.” Rote words, ushered through quivering lips.
“Yes, yes, I know. So why are you shaking like that? The Sels have attacked before, you know. That whole war in the South, when King Erik’s father–”
But the shaman stood, suddenly, kicking sand into the fire that set the flames to hissing and dancing. He turned his back, and marched into the shadows along the walls of the longhouse.
“Where are you going?” Náli asked. He stood. “I came all this way back so you wouldn’t blow the whole bloody kingdom apart, and now you’re–”
A sound overhead. One newly familiar, but never heard here, on this plane. An emotive, bugling cry, half-hawk and half-horse, loud and brash.
“Valgrind,” he breathed. “But how…?”
Something banded tight around his waist and yanked him backward. The room swirled, a twist of fire overlaying shadows. His hair covered his eyes, and his ribs squeezed, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe–
White. He hung suspended in a pool of white, without a clue which way was up. Something cold and strong held him around the waist; his fingers slipped over smooth, hard scales as he probed at it.
A flash of blue. Eyes.
But not the eyes of the shaman, no. The dead were gone, with all their peeling flesh and weeping sores. In their place, a sleek, toothy head appeared before him, open eyes glowing unnatural blue, a hint of blue edging each scale and the dark, flickering tongue all that gave him shape: a white drake in the midst of a white pool.
Valgrind.
Wings folded neatly at his sides, tail wrapped secure around Náli, he blew happy, open-mouthed bubbles into his face, and then shot upward, clawing his way through the water.
Weak, confused, achy, Náli couldn’t have swum on his own, but he didn’t need to. Within moments, his head broke the surface, and he took his first painful, gasping breath in who knew how long. He coughed, and sputtered, and pushed his sodden hair out of his eyes.
Valgrind, neck lifting out of the water like a great white sea serpent, shook water off his head, frills opening and fluttering. He snorted vapor, blinked vigorously, and turned to thrust an eye into Náli’s face. Inspecting him.
“My lord!” Mattias called from the shore, voice full of worry.
“I’m all right.” And he was. As he became reoriented in his proper plane, able to tread water and keep himself afloat, Náli found that his exhaustion was draining away, leaking like wine from a tapped barrel. “I’m all right,” he repeated, and laid a wondering hand on Valgrind’s neck.
The drake trilled a glad nose and set to licking his face with his cold, blue tongue.
Every time he went down into the well, it became harder and harder to disengage from the village; from the shaman and his cryptic, slow speech. More difficult to find his way back through the gaps in the weave and into the pool. The last time, he’d nearly drowned; he’d lied about that to Mattias, not wanting to worry him.
But this time. This time Valgrind had come diving after him. Had dragged him back.
“You bloody marvel,” he murmured, and Valgrind stuck his tongue in his ear.
