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“In the mouth of the cavern stood a woman, tall and slender as a willow stem, pale as the moon, her hair the silken silver of the white bear fur she wore. Her eyes dazzled, blue as the winter skies overhead.”
Lots of people had blue eyes, Náli reasoned. It was quite common in the North. Erik had them. Oliver had them.
Oliver who possessed Drake magic.
He sipped more tea.
“She walked out to greet them, this soft maiden with the clean hands and the angelic voice. They thought her a goddess, so divine she seemed, so untouched by the mortal squalor of hard, everyday, ordinary life. Skin smooth and smile kind, teeth straight and feet bare across the snow, as if she didn’t feel the cold.
“She greeted them, and the men bowed before her as the drakes had done. ‘Rise,’ she said, with laughter like the chiming of bells. ‘Rise and be easy, friends of the valley. You have traveled far, and bravely. Will you sup with me?’
“Weary from travel, and bewitched by her besides, they followed her into the cavern and found that it was outfitted richly and strangely, full of wonders beyond their imaginings. Sumptuous as a palace, it was.”
“A palace?” Náli said, snorting. “Not when I saw it.”
The shaman tilted his head, expression bland.
Náli waved. “Fine, fine, go on.”
“Over a meal of venison cooked on a spit, she told them that her name was Lucia, and that she was the last of her family. That she came from a line of powerful mages, and that they’d come to these lands after sailing the Impassable Sea.”
Náli felt his brows shoot up. “There’s a reason they call it that. The few ships that have made it back turned around after less than a day. None who went farther returned. The harbor there was abandoned several generations ago for just such a reason.”
“I’m not speaking of ‘several generations ago.’ But of events that transpired long, long before that.”
Náli bit back a sigh. “Yes. I understand.”
“Lucia told the men of her family’s perilous trek through the ice floes. Her great-grandparents, her grandparents, her parents, and her siblings had all ventured forth from the far-off land of Se, a vast land of splendor and wonders beyond imaginings, far more remarkable than her drakes. Magic of all sorts, unharnessed and wild, flourished there. No humans could manipulate it, no man could weave its flows and bend it to his will.
“No man,” he stressed. “Lucia and her twin sister could, though. She and her sister Lilac possessed power so great they could alter the world around them. Seithr, they called this power. A magic so great it allowed its possessors to commune with animals and control the weather. To bolster a crop or slay an enemy. They could turn coal to diamonds in a blink, melt ice with fire from their palms. They could even,” the shaman said, voice becoming grave, “raise the dead.”
The fine, colorless hair on Náli’s arms bristled; the back of his neck prickled. “Raise the dead?” he echoed, voice a dry scrape in his throat.
The shaman nodded. “It was that, most of all, that frightened Lucia. She was a gentle woman, who enjoyed using her power to speak with animals and encourage green things to grow. Dead things, she reasoned, were meant to stay dead.
“But her sister, Lilac, disagreed. She had lost her lover to clan fighting; he’d been struck down by a blow with an axe from behind. She mourned him deeply: would not eat, would not sleep. She wasted away to skin and bones, until the grief washed the blue from her eyes, and left them colorless.”
Náli couldn’t fight the urge to scrub at the back of his neck. Silvery hair. Colorless eyes.
The Sels.
“Lilac’s lover,” the shaman continued, “had been buried in the hull of a small boat, his worldly possessions at his feet, his body covered over with a mound of hard-packed dirt. Lilac’s family cautioned her, they said it went against the world’s natural order, but she commanded her drakes to dig up the corpse with their strong claws, and when he was bare to the moonlight, maggoty and fetid with death, she laid her hands on his cold chest, and called upon every ounce of the seither that dwelled in her blood. Her lover sat up, and was made animate…but he wasn’t alive.”
Náli thought of the skeletons he’d dredged from beneath the snow in the Fang fighting arena. They’d been nothing but marionettes, responding to his whims like overgrown children’s toys. Yes, he could raise the dead, but he couldn’t give them life once more.
“Her sister pointed out her folly, kindly, gently, with great compassion, and hoped that Lilac had seen the error of using this power. But she had not. She tried again, and again. She became obsessed with perfecting this power: with bringing back not just the body, but the soul from beyond the veil as well.
“Their clan was divided: those who encouraged Lilac, and those who feared her. Her drakes were large, far larger than that one.” He gestured to Valgrind, still snoring in his sun patch. “These were tremendous, as big as this longhouse.” The glint of fear in his eyes left Náli believing him. “They killed a man who tried to stop her, and she didn’t bring him back.”
“And so Lucia and the rest of her family left Se?”
“Yes. And after a treacherous journey in which half were lost, they found their way to the harbor far north of here, beyond the mountains, in Impasse. The rest of the family, she told the men, had fallen one by one as they journeyed south, falling to hunger and fever and weariness. By the time she reached the cavern, she was alone, save her dragons.
“She was weeping by the time she’d finished her tale, filled anew with a terrible sadness from so much loss. They comforted her, offering kind words and strips of their own travel-stained cloaks with which she could wipe her eyes. So moved by her story, they offered to take her with them down into the valley, where there were warm fires and bountiful fish, and hare, and elk to hunt. She could make a home amongst them; would be welcomed by their people with open arms.
“She agreed, on the condition that she could bring her drakes with her, and they said yes. ‘But first,’ she said, ‘you must eat, and partake of the fresh spring waters that flows in the caverns, and rest after such an arduous journey.’
“And so, the five men, those resilient enough to last the journey, heeded her urging and lay down to rest.
