The Fall of Waterstone

Uncanny Before

Our houses turn their backs to the North, but that does not make us less vigilant. Even the Elder rely upon our watchfulness, for though they are mighty their increase is slow. We are far more frail, yet who else do they have to turn to?

—Gelveig Steelheart of Aen Taurieth

Why did you not wake me?” Arneior peered out the door, into the hall. It had to be near dawn; she had risen naturally through slumber-veils to find me sitting upon the floor, my lap full of red coral, attempting to shake firecorpse from my hair and rebraid the dark mass with only my fingers to help.

I did not even have a comb. Just an Elder dress, the shadowmantle, my torc, and the thing trapped in my chest. And the beads, but two of those were riven.

What more would I lose upon this journey?

“You need your rest.” I sighed, braced myself, and lifted my arms. The Jewel did not poke too badly, but all the same, even twisting my hair was a torment now.

A soft, almost unheard vibration of wind added to wooden creak-groaning made any silence more a matter of degree than quiet. Yet the entire hall felt somewhat wrong, for there were no distant footsteps, no intimation of a kitchen beginning daily clamor, no hounds clicking their nails upon the floor, and not even the dozing sense of other mortals breathing amid the rooms, halls, closets, cellars, or stairs.

My fingers encountered a knot they were ill-equipped to separate with blunt ends. “Sheepshit.” It felt good to curse, especially in my own language, while I tugged at the obstruction. A sharp yank against my scalp was merely temporary pain, but it was of a kind I knew and understood instead of the thing in my chest and its contradictory, unfulfilled scorch.

Arn turned, regarding me curiously. “You don’t even have your seidhr-bag.” As if she had just realized it.

“I left it in our rooms. Maybe the orukhar now wear my gowns.” I tried to make it into a jest, but my voice wobbled slightly.

Arn stalked across the small room, pushing past me as if to climb back into the bed. Then she dropped to her knees, wedging herself between me and the wooden frame. I had to move—but carefully, with a lapful of none-too-fresh ribbons and clicking red coral. Her spear she propped easily to hand, and poked at my shoulder. “Sit still.”

“Arn…” The lump in my throat would not go away.

“I cannot give you hornbraids. Those are for shieldmaids and wives won by bowshot.” She pushed my arms down. “And I do not think I can use as many beads. But you have a pocket or two.”

I will not cry. I willnot cry. The Jewel subsided as my hands dropped into my lap, and Arn began separating and braiding.

“Now.” She was not gentle, but neither did she pull with sharp almost-random intensity like Astrid. Instead, my shieldmaid was ruthlessly efficient, and swore under her breath at a few knots until they yielded to her far superior force, no doubt ashamed of themselves. “Tell me what you remember.”

In short order I had four tolerable beaded fishscale braids upon my head, which Arn plaited into a thick cable once they fell free of the scalp. We almost ran out of ribbons, but two short ones were left, ready for the remaining red coral to be threaded like pierced chits upon a rivertrader’s counting-string. And through it all ran my halting recitation of what I had witnessed—or what I could remember of the vision, since such things slip swiftly from the waking mind’s busy fingers.

“A tower.” She tugged slightly at the bottom of my hair, tying the ribbon with a knot more suited to securing armor than anything else. “And this stuff in your hair. Doesn’t smell like burning, but…”

“I think it was Naras, in the Gasping.” I chewed at my lower lip, gently. The slight discomfort did not distract from the Jewel, which was now as quiescent as it ever became, as if it listened to our tiny Althing. “Which would make sense, perhaps, because their men are here? Yet I like not that the thing couched there seemed to know me.”

“What thing? One of the Enemy’s…” She exhaled sharply, grabbing her spear as she rose. Her knee brushed my shoulder, a casual touch threatening to stagger my precarious equilibrium. “I cannot believe I am saying such things. Mentioning the Black Land like an elder sister scaring fractious littles.”

“And Elder, and two-skins, and trul and orukhar.” Wonders we had been agog at while listening to sagas, but now all too real. I missed the warmth of her against my back the moment it left.

“Well, we have two-skins in the South, and never heard tell of one breaking pax.” She pushed past me again, clearly done with an unappetizing duty. “I like them better than the Elder, certainly. Sol, does it strike you that…”

It was true we knew of two-skins, but they were held to be distinct from such things as varulv and other ill seidhr treading upon the edge of malignant bestiality. Rather, those who shared a wolf’s skin, or a bear’s or great feline’s, were held to take some nobility from their other form.

Every saga said so, and I had been thinking upon such things as we rode as well, turning the problem of Eol’s malediction over and over inside my aching skull.

I waited, stringing beads on the pair of leftover ribbons. “Does what strike me?”

“’Tis passing strange.” She peered out the hall door again, though there was not a sound or even the feeling that we might be listened to at the moment. “You do not sink in the snow. Light as thistledown you seem, and your eyes… I cannot say.”

I could not tell what was wrong with my eyes, save that they smarted with snow-wrung tears all too frequently of late. “What are you saying?”

“You look, well, you don’t look…” She shook her head, turning her spear’s blunt end a grinding quarter upon the floor. “Ai, listen to me. I sound like a wanderwit herder.”

“What don’t I look like?” The shadowcloth over my lap was neither grey nor black, nor even precious, expensive indigo. It lingered in an uneasy amalgamation of darker tints, blending into the patch of unlight under the bedstead. “I know my braids are bad, but you cannot blame me for that.”

She didn’t laugh. Her knuckles whitened upon the spear. “You look a little like them.”

“Like a two-skin? I only have the one, and ’tis sore enough at the moment.” I found a pocket to hold the bead-strings just where I would expect such a convenience in a mantle, and tried not to think that the fabric itself had responded to my need as it had somehow shortened during our flight from Laeliquaende. Thus I was left with the broken coral-pieces, lying in my palms like bright bloodclots.

“Like Aeredh, and Naciel, only not entirely.” Arneior made a restless movement. “You were uncanny before, but now you even sound like them when you speak their damnable Old Tongue.”

“An Elder wouldn’t have knots in her hair.” I could have taken it as praise, I suppose, for the Children of the Star are beautiful.

But I did not feel complimented in the least.

“It is that thing you carry. You do not sleep, you ate nothing solid last night, and when you think I’m not looking you frown as if pained.” Arn still faced the door as if she stood guard, only turning her head so I could see her profile, thoughtful and pale. “What is it doing to you?”

Nothing you need worry for.A tart reply, and uncharitable even if she had been so thoughtlessly quick to assure Naciel of our aid. “As soon as we find a safe place to rest it, I can return to being Solveig.”

“That is it, exactly.” Her woad-stripe was worse for wear, though still bright. When the snow melted I would have to find more for her, and bless the water for the dye. “Sometimes you do not even look like yourself.”

Well, who am I then?Asking such a thing aloud while carrying what I did was unwise, so I swallowed it. The morning seemed destined to go badly, for what I said was almost worse. “Do you not know me?”

“You are my charge.” Thankfully, she sounded certain. “But you do not even smell like yourself, either. That is what is so odd.”

“I feel ripe enough.” My nose wrinkled. “We’ve been riding for days. Maybe ’tis the Elder cloth, keeping us from sourness.”

“Perhaps.” She shook her head slightly, and ground her spear-butt again. “They are stirring like mice, and building up the fire. Let us not be laggard; I want breakfast if any is to be had.”

I almost told her to go without me, since there could be little danger in an empty hall. But she finally turned from the door to give me a fierce warning glance, striking the thought before it could be uttered, and I refrained.

The last time I had thought there was no danger, we had learned otherwise at dusk. “The orange stars,” I said, instead. “They were the torches in the hills. Orukhar, and other things.”

“Yes.” She had paled, her freckles standing out. “I did not recognize it beforehand.”

“Nor did I,” I admitted. “And I am supposed to be a volva.”

“There was no way you could have, even with weirding.” She tapped the floor, marking the statement—but softly. “You cannot see what the gods themselves hide, Sol.”

Yet that is exactly what a wisewoman is supposed to do.“Hm.” Clutching broken beads, I managed to rise—slowly, and cautious lest the Jewel decide to take offense. Arn hurried to help, but I gained my feet without her aid, my smile stiff as a mask. She did not need to hear more of my fruitless uncertainty. “Well, then, breakfast. Perhaps we should have looked for a sauna last night.”

She laughed, but there was a new light in my shieldmaid’s hazel eyes. And as we navigated through halls that could have been our home—save they would never be so bleak, so cold, or so dark—her free hand cupped my elbow as if she feared I would falter between one step and the next.

While she had frequently done so at home as well, the anxiety in her solicitousness was new.

I did not like it.