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Náli sat, and watched the man who, on his last visit, had seemed gray and frail, settle with lordly grace on the crate opposite. “Defend against whom?” Náli asked. “Forgive me, but you’re all…” He cast a glance toward the men and women who were cooking, tending to children or scrubbing clothes with wooden buckets and stiff-bristle brushes. A few brave souls darted glances their way. “Well. Dead.”
Lucian’s face twitched, a fleeting smile touched with wryness. “Yes, we are. And I too assumed that death was the final battle we all must face. But it isn’t.” He lifted a hand when Náli gathered breath to protest, staying him. “Where do you think we are now?”
“In a cave.”
That earned him a look for being smart-mouthed. “You asked.”
“I did. And you failed to come up with a reasonable answer. Because you don’t know what this place is, do you?”
Náli stared at him.
“All dead must pass through the Nágrindr, which is not a fixed point in the bottom of your white pool, by the by. Wherever a soul leaves a body, there a gate will open. Some warriors go the Ancestral Halls, yes, where the mead flows and there are beautiful women to attend to their every need; where the Val-Father himself toasts their arrival.
“But most go to the fields and halls of Hel, the goddess of death. There, they are not feted, but their souls wander forward into eternity free of pain, reunited with their loved ones.
“And then there is this place. The Meðal.”
“The between?” Náli asked.
He nodded. “My domain. Think of it as a way to sort the dead and send them on to their final destination. A few” – he motioned toward the villagers behind him – “have chosen to remain here. Some are waiting on loved ones to join them, others are restless. Others fear going farther.
“I think many of them will be moving on soon, though. Some already have. Because once they’ve joined the hall of the Val-Father or the goddess Hel, they are beyond the reach of the living…or the dead who wish them harm.”
The back of Náli’s neck prickled with uneasiness. “Which are you expecting to defend this mountain from? The living or the dead?”
“Perhaps both,” Lucian said, eyes seeming to glow in the firelight. “You are not the only one who walks between worlds, Lord Náli. The descendants of Lucia can travel the old paths. But so, too, can the descendants of her sister.”
He swallowed, throat dry. “Lilac’s children. And grandchildren.”
Lucian nodded. “And so on.”
“Se. The land the twins came from – it’s Seles, isn’t it?”
The shaman tilted his head, gaze reflective. “Seles,” he said, slowly, tasting the word, and Náli bit back an impatient huff. “I’ve heard of it. Fierce warriors in possession of powerful magic.”
“But that’s what became of Se, yes? It’s Seles now? The bloody awful empire intent on spreading to the ends of the earth?”
Lucian’s voice became almost dreamy. “She was lovely, Lucia said – Mother said. Her twin sister. Even more beautiful than she was. Pale silver with eyes like ice. She gathered the wild lilacs for which she was named to dye her robes.”
“Purple,” Náli said, fear seizing his guts. “Lilacs are purple.”
It all made sense. If the story of the twins was true – and he’d lived through enough impossibilities to think that it was – then all signs pointed to Lilac’s offspring becoming the Sels they now fought, with their silver looks, and their inbreeding, and their purple…everything. And their accusations of magic theft.
“Yes,” Lucian said, simply.
“Are they hunting you? Selesee magic users?”
Lucian blinked, and his gaze cleared, and he grew somber. “It’s the drake.”
“What is?”
“I sensed the old magic on the other side of the veil; close, and strong, and unseen in these Northern lands for many generations. But none of the living came searching for me until your drake” – he nodded toward the opening of the cavern, where Náli had left Valgrind happily munching a haunch of venison a nervous villager had offered – “came through the Nágrindr. They were here already – these Sels you mention, Lilac’s children – but they weren’t hunting me, then.”
“And now they are.” Náli grimaced. “Sorry.”
“It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”
But what would happen if the enemy found Lucian and his people here? Could a dead lord be killed? And if he was, what would happen to this realm? This gray-washed place that Náli had visited, and hated his whole life, but which he couldn’t imagine being without?
