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Arn moved with me as I set off, and I aimed us for the upper edge of the death-ground. We had been moving westward all day; though my legs were leaden and both my face and wrists pained, walking was better than waiting for men to finish their nattering. It was a torment to work across the hillslope instead of down.
“I do not worry for Caelgor and Curiaen,” Aeredh said. “Give the women somesithevieland what other aid we have, and let us move swiftly as we may.”
Not by Foe
Mortal time may be held in abeyance, but not forever. Only in the West does the blossom not fade, the fruit not rot, the tree not wither.
—Elder proverb
The first traces of snow quickly became long clutching vein-streaks reaching for the shattered city, and mounted to drifts shortly afterward. At last my overboots no longer crunched in thin tinkling ice; steadily intensifying cold swallowed us as the sun descended.
When the drifts reached knee-high, the group halted. I thought they wished to give us moresitheviel, though the scant swallow I had taken earlier—the last in Eol’s black-glass flask—still burned inside me. Instead, each Secondborn was given to an Elder companion, who grasped their arm. By some seamlessseidhrour steps were lightened, and we walkedatopthe snow’s white crust, as if we had left our heavier bodies behind and went forward with only our subtler selves. Even Arn, once she understood what they wished, consented to give her left elbow to Daerith the harpist, his bow riding his back and her spear riding hers.
Only infrequently and at great need does a shieldmaid carry her weapon thus.
Daerith also sometimes touched my shoulder, for Arn sufferedhim to walk between us since he carried no blade save a short curved healer’s knife, and no other weapon save his bow. A burst ofseidhrfrom that brief contact warmed me each time, and even soothed some of the swelling upon my face.
Aeredh tucked my hand in the crook of his right arm as if we were about to ring-dance around a summerpole, and the first few steps upon unbroken snow, my boots weightless against its smooth clean sweep, were almost a joy. We forged onward, some of the Elder singing softly, their voice barely disturbing the sough of wind among treetops. Bare branches appeared, and evergreens weighed by white blankets under a thin gleaming ice-skin.
I stared at my feet moving as if unconnected with the rest of me, the tang ofsithevielmixing with blood in my mouth. The cut inside my cheek stung if I tried to speak, so I did not bother. I could not even concentrate enough to untangle what weirding they used to walk thus.
A stream too swift to freeze still bore ice at its fringes, a single slender stone bridge over its silvery back. On the far side a bloody sunset dyed snowy forest, and I gathered we were no longer in Nithraen’s lands. I expected us to make some manner of camp, but the Elder continued walking so the Northerners, Arneior, and I were obliged to as well. A short purple dusk gave way to clear new-winter night, the kind that kills if one has no shelter or fire.
Yet the Elder are hardy, and one or two were always singing. The music, laced withseidhr, was part lament for Nithraen and part quiet exhortation to keep lungs and limbs from freezing solid; I sensed, almostsaw, how it drew strength from earth, stone, and tree, feeding trickles into the Children of the Star and their more fragile companions.
Shivers gripped me. Aeredh freed his arm from my hand only to slide it over my shoulders and draw me close, his warmth somehow spreading to drive back the killing cold. Arneior made no objection; she was too occupied with the warming breath, a shieldmaid’s strength pitted against deep winter. The harpist no doubt helped her, but I was too weary to worry.
I merely endured.
Starlight filtered through snow-laden or bare boughs. Soft bluishradiance strengthened around the Elder, not so much actual light as a form of clarity. Eol was braced between the two spear-wielders, breathing shallowly and staggering oft. I did my best not to trip, and after a cold eternity the waning moon shed more faint glow from a bright, cloudless sky.
At some point I thought longingly of Dun Rithell, and lifted out of myself.
Under a vault spread with diamond-chip stars, the greathall stood silent. All were abed—all save one, for a single candle burned in the stillroom, where a golden-haired girl stood before a wooden table cluttered with familiar implements.
Astrid, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking, wept. Even in the dead of night she muffled the sound. The candle flickered under a breath from nowhere, but she did not notice, too sunk in her grief.
The warriors were at muttering, soft-breathing rest; the women’s quarters deathly quiet. Up stairs and down a short hall, in his closet a short distance from our parents’, Bjorn curled upon his side, a great strong body sleeping curiously childlike, damp traces upon his bearded cheeks as if he sorrowed while dreaming. A few rooms away my mother lay in her husband’s arms, both deeply unconscious, but my father’s brow furrowed as his eyes flickered under their lids.
My mother’s lips twitched. She, too, was dreaming of something. Her outflung hand, resting upon a fold of woolen counterpane her daughters had embroidered a few winters ago, stretched pleadingly.
I am well enough, whatever self I had sent home whispered, anxious to ease her.Be at peace.
In the stillroom, the candle flickered again. I sought to brush against Astrid, to comfort her. But the vision was fading like sun-bleached cloth, and I burst from the roof of Dun Rithell as a white-wingéd bird, circling once before arrowing northward.
Above, the great river of stars echoed with faint sweet voices. Yet a dark grasp was upon me, drew me steadily, swifter and swifter, my heart thundering with each wingbeat.
Long I flew, under a waning moon turned leering-yellow as bad cheese. Forest, river, mountain, infrequent steading—they wheeled below my tucked-tight claws, barely glimpsed before vanishing. Snow gleamed, and knifelike peaks rose in sawtooth progression. Starlight faded, soft silver voices suffocated behind a thickness neither cloud nor mist.
Sickening heaviness clotted about me, a terrible pressure squeezing both breath and pulse. The subtle bodies do not need such things, but they are anchored in the physical, and ’tis air and blood which fuel every living thing. Even the subtle selves may be injured, if their bearer believes the strike does some damage.
Or if the attacker is strong enough, and skilled enough, inseidhr.
I struggled, but it did no good. I was drawn inexorably northward, and in the far distance a low crimson glow rose, swelling like a boil as I approached. Great black towers rent the sky, their angular battlements sharp as needles, and endless, terrifying screams rose from deep vents in riven stone. A sickening fog drowned all healthful light, leaving only a pale fungal glow in secret caves; leaping ruddy fires gave no cheer, for they were unwholesome and feasted upon flesh as well as other noisome fuel.Orukharand worse thronged the vast citadel’s ramparts and battlements; underneath their anthill seething I sensed passages, hallways, and mines carved deep in tortured earth.
Something else lived in those depths. The rubescent smear woke, glittering balefully, and above it lingered two pale gleams almost suffocated by a hatred so massive, so twisted, even glimpsing it threatened to strike me from the sky—
“Solveig.” A hand upon my throat, massaging. “Drink, my weirdling. There.”
