Pillar of ash, p.19
Pillar of Ash, page 19
Satisfied, I crept around the cellar, between two houses, and behind a third. I found an axe in a chopping block and took it with a soft crack. My head remained clear, the last of the inebriating drug burned off by Aita’s magic.
I didn’t breathe freely until I’d passed through the concealing wall of evergreens outside the village. I sagged for an instant, glancing back toward the huts, then retightened my grip on my staff and axe.
“Isik is this way,” a tendril of winter wind whispered, tugging me right. “Stay alive, and I will find you soon.”
I hastened away, relishing each painless step and the flame of hope that came with them. A dozen paces. Two dozen. The forest closed in and the scents of the village—smoke, animals, mud and rot—faded away.
I found Isik sitting against a tree. He rose when I came into sight, steadying himself on the trunk. His face was still crusted with blood, and slack with pain and relief.
“Yske,” he breathed. I saw the questions in his eyes, multiplying as I stopped just out of his reach and set my staff aside, hefting the woodcutter’s axe high on the shaft.
I didn’t speak. My relief at seeing him made my throat thick and my heart ache, but every word risked giving us away. Besides, I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to risk him talking me out of what I would do next.
I laid one palm over the blade of the axe and squeezed until blood welled. A muffled cry hit the back of my clenched teeth. Isik flinched forward, hissing a startled rebuke, but stopped short of grabbing me. His fingers spread wide instead, warding me off as I turned my gaze back up to him.
“This is the cost of Aita’s gift,” I explained compulsively, hating the horror in his eyes. “Do not try and stop me.”
Twenty-Five
I awoke to the rush of wind through leaves. My eyes were closed, but my senses stretched out—I lay on the frigid ground, rocks and roots digging into me and snow damp in my hair.
The forest floor spread before me, moss-covered stumps and fallen branches topped with half-thawed blankets of white. Nui lay nearby, her head on her front paws. I stared at her, sure that I must be imagining the dog’s presence. Her paws twitched in a dream, and the leaves beneath her shifted ever so slightly.
Slowly, I began to piece my memories together. Berin, screaming as I tore an arrow from his back. The riverman, surrounded by monsters. A Winterborn, laughing. My bloody fingers drawing runes in the air between myself and Isik. Then a hasty, endless flight through darkened woods, until dawn broke and we stopped to rest, panting in the snowy, pastel light.
“Where’s Isik?” I croaked. Nui looked up at me, eyes exhausted and melancholy, but her tail thumped. “How did you find me?”
She bellied a little closer and rested her head on my hip. I scratched her instinctively, and she closed her eyes in pleasure. Her trust, her warmth and realness, made my throat clog. I’d never been more grateful that my mother sent her along.
I raised my voice a little more, daring to break the forest hush. “Isik? Are you here?”
Wind rustled the leaves around me and, in a heartbeat, my friend appeared. Nui glanced his way, the whites of her eyes large, but she did not get up.
Isik noted the dog without surprise. His cheeks were flush with color and he’d washed the blood from his skin. His expression was worried but cold, reserved in a forceful way that I couldn’t analyze just yet, but likely had to do with my blood sacrifice. Still, he looked healthy, and I tried to smile.
To my horror, the smile immediately quavered into tears as my exhaustion reared, and his cool regard failed to soften.
I swallowed and sniffled for a breath. I expected him to comfort me, to pull me into the embrace I desperately needed, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped back into the forest and reappeared a moment later with two packs.
“Once Nui came, I went back and found these,” he said. I noticed he was wearing a cloak now too, not his but Askir’s, from the blue and yellow Algatt embroidery at the collar. One of the packs was mine, while the other was Seera’s—plain and unadorned.
I was relieved to see my pack, but Isik’s demeanor unsettled me. “Isik… about the healing…”
“Aita is no goddess,” he cut in, dropping my pack beside me with a weighty thunk. “Don’t give her your blood. Don’t let her treat you like a priestess.”
I rankled. “I’m not. She gave me a gift and it saved Berin’s life. It saved mine, and yours. I can’t ignore power like that, not… not right now.”
“It’s wrong.”
“What in this world is right?” I threw out a hand—my bloodied one, unfortunately. As cold as I was, I hadn’t realized that the wound was still partially open. I’d given every scrap of my healing to Isik, and hadn’t had enough left to finish my own.
He looked at the cut, crusted with dried blood and dirt. “You should clean that.”
I fought the urge to snap at him, and instead fumbled with the fastenings on my pack. Nearly everything was intact, though I had to shoo a large spider from the clutch of leather-wrapped packets.
Isik watched me struggle for longer than I thought he would. When I dropped a bundle of clean bandages into the snow, he finally let out a frustrated hiss and shifted Nui out of the way so he could kneel beside me.
“Let me help.”
“Why would you help?” I shot back. “I’ve betrayed Thvynder. Isn’t that what you think?”
He unrolled a section of bandage and held it out to me. “Yske, I’m a Miri. I think you forget that too often. I think we both forget that.”
I poured vinegar from a small flask onto the bandage, releasing the tart, sour scent into the winter air, and tried to tug the fabric from his grip. He didn’t let go, but instead took my bad hand and began to clean away the blood. The sting caught me off guard and I bit my tongue.
“I’ve never had worshipers,” Isik continued, cleaning with gentle precision. “But I feel the lure of it. Aita, my parents, those who remember what it was to be worshiped—I can’t imagine how much greater their struggle is. They remember the power. The love. Fear.”
I watched his face now, trusting his hands to do their work. He’d never spoken of his nature like this before, and I did not want to stop him.
“If Aita falls back into old ways, perhaps we all will,” Isik murmured. “Thvynder is still away. The Winterborn gain power and influence across the world, and not all of them are allies. My siblings and I… we are the new Miri. Perhaps we’re all that will ever be, the last pure-blooded of our kind. Perhaps that’s for the best. But for now we stand in the middle, born in a new age, but with millennia of crimes and mistakes and… needs… on our shoulders.”
He paused cleaning my hand and met my eyes. There was prompting there, and for a moment I thought he wanted me to speak, to say something.
“What should I put on this?” he asked.
“Oh. That.” I pointed to a jar and he set my hand back on my knee. My fingers felt cold without his touch and my wound ached.
“I will never worship Aita,” I said lowly. “You know that. Thvynder is a true god. And I’ve… I’ve as much Miri power in my blood as a human can have. You and I are not so dissimilar, aside from how we’ll age.”
“We’re still different.” He took my hand again and carefully applied the salve, both bitter and sweet with honey and herbs. “That is what I’m trying to say. Aita has power and strength you do not.”
“It’s a simple exchange. Blood for magic.”
“For her magic.” Isik, ever transparent, looked pained and pitying, almost guilty. “She still gains from it.”
My doubt over Aita’s motives was only momentary—she cared for me, I knew that, and she would not abuse me in the way Isik suggested.
“Aita did what she could for me.” My voice felt hot now, indignant. “And if that benefits her in some way, I do not care. Everything comes with a cost, and this is the cost of keeping us alive. What’s the blood of one human, anyway? What could I give—”
“Even if she intends nothing by it,” Isik cut me off in a tone that suggested he was humoring me, “it opens a door that should be closed. A temptation.”
“A temptation for you,” I shot back, unsettled and indignant. “Don’t assume Aita is as weak as you. You’re young. And don’t be so arrogant as to think you’d be worshiped by anyone. Let alone by me, if that’s in your head.”
Isik sat back, blank-faced, resting his forearms on his knees. Nui raised her head, watching the two of us with a new alertness.
“What are you even doing here?” I demanded, lowering my voice. “You’re accusing me of being too close to Aita, but you followed me across the world. What does that mean, Son of Esach?”
Isik bristled. “I came to keep you alive. Your priest didn’t sense a Binding Tree right next to your camp, or that I was close. You spoke with me for… how long? Yet your own brother slept unaware and your watchman didn’t even think to check on you. You would all have died a dozen times if I didn’t follow you.”
“Follow me? You’ve been here all along?” I ran back over the miles, the weeks that had passed since that night by the Binding Tree. I searched for hints of his presence, but found none—save the night Ovir had died. “Did I see you the night the Revenants attacked us? Listening to me sing?”
He shook his head. “That night I left before dark to scout ahead.”
“How helpful,” I said. I knew I was being childish, but I was exhausted, my brother was missing, a riverman was out for my blood, and my best friend was pushing me away. “Ovir is grateful, I’m sure.”
Isik’s eyebrows rose in the casual, collected shock of a parent insulted by a child. “I was scouting ahead, as I did every night. I chased off wolves and bears and worse, Yske. I pushed back storms that would have made the rivers impassable and your journey impossible. I did what I could.”
“Why?” I demanded, needing to hear his answer. “Because we used to be lovers? Because we were friends? Because you want us to be grateful?”
“Because I should,” he answered. “Because I can.”
“Because you’re a Miri, and we’re humans, weak and helpless,” I clarified.
“If that’s how you want to describe it, yes.”
I stared at him. I’d seen inklings of this mentality in him before, but where previously I’d seen a self-imposed purpose, charming and useful, now I saw it as superiority and pity. And perhaps, hidden there around his eyes as he watched me now, threads of old ties between us, twisted and cheapened.
“You came to keep Berin alive,” Isik said finally, his voice softer. “Because you have a skill and power he does not. I came to do the same for you. We serve the ones we love, as best we can.”
Love. A winter wind chased his words around the clearing, icy and tasting of snow and frost-rimmed deadfall. Was Arune here now, listening in amusement as we bickered?
I didn’t sense or glimpse the Winterborn, but the thought of him— and the weight of Isik’s words—sobered me.
“Do we still love one another?” I asked quietly.
The corner of his lip curved in a melancholy half-smile. His gaze was fixed, wholly centered upon me. “Growing up beside you has taught me there are many kinds of love, Yske. Many shades of it. Many seasons and verses.”
I stared at him, simultaneously longing for him to go on and wishing he’d never spoken at all. There was too much possibility in his confession. Too much unsaid.
I released a long-held breath. “Thank you for watching over us,” I said, hiding in the steady voice my mother used as ruler and priestess. “But you needn’t any longer. You can go home.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Isik brushed the thought away, his voice still quiet. Slowly, the intensity in his gaze retreated, and he stood and glanced out at the trees. “Not with a riverman in the woods and your companions missing. Berin might be an ass, but you’re better off with him now.”
I ground my jaw, even as my throat clotted with unsorted emotion. I didn’t want him to go, but I also couldn’t face this new complexity between us, the memories and the possibility.
I looked down at my hand, the wound now clean and the salve thick. Distantly I acknowledged that I could simply make another sacrifice and heal it, but the weight of Isik’s judgement was too heavy.
“Do you know how your kind open doorways to the High Halls?” I asked.
Isik looked back down at me, caution in his eyes. I took that for affirmation.
“The riverman intends to open one,” I told him. “He’ll use your blood to do it. That’s why he took us. He’ll kill you, and likely use us against each other. You should go back west. Tell your mother and father what’s happening here. That is the best thing you can do for me.”
Isik’s eyes moved back to the trees again, suddenly alert, and I watched the thoughts pass over his face. Calculating. Weighing. Burdened?
“I will not leave you,” he said at last. He met my gaze again and I saw a flicker there, a care and softness so profoundly Isik that my heart swelled uncomfortably.
“Then go find Berin for me,” I said, tossing him a useful distraction. “I have Nui.”
“Arune will be back.”
“He has a use for me, and he doesn’t know who my parents are. He won’t harm me.”
“What use?” Isik demanded, going cold again.
“I assume it’s someone he wants to be healed. He wanted to see my power.” I gestured to my leg. “He also knows where some of my companions are.”
Isik clearly wasn’t comforted by that, but nodded. “All right. I will go find your brother, after I make sure Logur hasn’t found our trail.”
I nodded, closing the matter, and began to dig in my pack for more bandages. I didn’t look at him again, but I felt his eyes on me as I wrapped my hand instead of healing it.
It wasn’t a concession to him, my choice to let the wound finish healing naturally. But it was something small I could do to restore peace between us.
He made a soft sound, a relieved, resigned exhalation, and vanished to the wind.
* * *
After their failed invasion when I was eleven years old, the Winterborn—half-Miri children of Ogam, grandchildren of Eang and the elemental spirit Winter—scattered to the winds. Some chose to remain in their homeland of Duamel in the far north, though few found forgiveness among the people they’d deceived into fighting their war. Most Winterborn simply left, becoming errant adventurers. Tales of them began to crop up across the world, in Algatt, Eangen, and every reach of the Arpa Empire.
Thus when I pondered Arune’s presence here in the East, I felt little real surprise. If the tales and rumors of this land had been enough to tempt Berin and his company, it seemed fitting that they should also have drawn one of Ogam’s reckless children. Though, immortal as the Winterborn were, there was considerably less risk for them in exploration—particularly as this one was a Windwalker, capable of shirking flesh and blood and moving with the elements, as Isik and his mother did.
Isik was gone all evening and into the night. I hated to remain in one spot, my mind full of images of hunting Revenants and the riverman’s watching eyes, but I also wanted Isik to be able to find me again quickly. So I remained where I was, trusting Arune had properly concealed our trail.
I wove firescreens and made a small blaze to chase back the cold and damp. The snow had melted but the air was still frigid and frost rimed my blankets when I awoke the next morning. Leaves crackled as I searched for firewood, the snap of sticks was overloud in the waning forest.
At some point Nui appeared with a blood-smeared mouth and a limp rabbit, which I wrestled from her and turned into a stew before the day began to darken toward dusk again. The hound, deprived of her kill, watched me sullenly for a time, then vanished back into the woods.
As the shadows grew, I ate quickly, glancing up at every curl of wind and hoping it would bring Isik back. I was still unsure what to feel when I thought of my old friend, but I knew I wanted him here, by me as night drew in.
Stranger.
I stiffened and twisted, staring at the night with wide, sharp eyes.
Stranger.
I stood. The voice came from the forest, but it didn’t drift on the air between the trees—it thrummed up through the earth beneath my feet. Who, or what, would speak in such a way?
I turned full circle, looking for any variance in the night. I found too many, too many shapes of darkness beyond the light of my fire.
I picked up my staff, steeled myself, and edged out of the circle of firelight. Back to the fire, I waited for my eyes to adjust, toes curling in my shoes. Silence. Shadows. Then, glistening trails of white foxfire came into focus on the trees. It was brighter than it had been in the riverman’s village and pulsed ever so slightly—like a heartbeat.
Free me.
The whisper came with a creak of limbs and a rustle of leaves. I hastily stepped back into the firelight, but the warmth at my back did nothing to soothe me. The light cast my shadow starkly across the ground, where roots contracted like spasming serpents and shriveled autumn ferns shuddered in an unseen breeze.
“Thvynder.” My god’s name burst from my lips in a prayer. I didn’t care that there was almost no chance they would hear. Something was alive in the forest. “Thvynder, what is this?”
No answer came, though I could swear I felt a distant touch of power, a hint of the deity’s presence. But perhaps that was wishful thinking. I was alone in the night, and my imagination was very, very alive.
The foxfire faded to a dull, persistent glow and the ferns ceased to rustle. Roots settled back into the earth and in the distance, an owl hooted mournfully, at ease in the night.
Still, I didn’t move. I stood alert by the fire as time stretched and the forest returned to slumber.
