8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
The library’s humid air clung to me as I stepped out, still tasting of parchment and candle soot. My mind felt stretched thin, threads of thought tangled between Karthmor’s ashen halls and the black-glass seas of Dorchadas.
I thought about the men in the tavern, the half-born who’d spoken of stirrings in the Underworld. If that were true, of course, the Godhead would send protection. Protection from what had found me in the First Forest. What soured my mouth was who they chose to send.
Tairngire. The Awakener. The god who bent to no rules.
Who cut down Cindraloch armies without hesitation.
Who embodied everything the Old Gods despised—defiance.
Even the Shaman’s teachings felt dull against the reality of him.
I was amazed the Godhead didn’t send him to the hallows of the shadow realm.
And the Oracle’s excuse? He has seen ends you have not yet begun. Horseshit. I was the one who saw endings. That was my curse, not his.
Anger surged hot in my chest. Out of every god they could have sent for the job, they really chose that one? The Godhead knew everything, yet they foolishly thought the wretched Forest God would help rather than destroy? Fate itself seemed to bend toward breaking.
I descended the stairs toward the waterfall and courtyard, mind heavy with the Elder’s final words: Every realm has shadows, Seer—Dorchadas is where those shadows take corporeal form.
The echo settled in my ribs as the corridors narrowed, then spilled into the courtyard. Mist kissed my skin as I neared the waterfall, its rhythm threading into my pulse.
The High Priestess stood at the stone lip of the pool, the cascade turning her braided crown into a halo of fire and gold. Robes the color of spilled wine swayed with their own gravity. Her gaze found me the moment I emerged, as though she’d been waiting longer than she’d admit.
Well, at least it wasn't Brannach.
“You’ve been in the library,” she said, threading her hands together delicately. Everything she did held the grace of the divine. Even though she wasn’t, she was created in their image to lead ascended mortals to the light of truth.
I slowed, unable to ignore the weight of her presence. “I have.”
She tilted her head, eyes like polished obsidian cutting through me. “And now you carry more than you came with.”
“Knowledge isn’t always light to bear,” I answered with another of the Shaman’s many musings.
A faint curve touched her lips. “No, and some of it is meant to find you.”
Silence hung until her gaze drifted back to the falls. “I hear you’ve also been to the Oracle,” she said, her voice a thread of silk. “And I imagine she spoke plainly.”
“Plainly enough,” I answered and fought the urge to grit my teeth.
Her lips curved up on the left side, a half-smile.
“I’ve allowed you liberties, Aurenya. A home beyond these walls.
Your own hours. Indulgences others in your station wouldn’t dare ask for.
” She stepped closer. “You see, I believe a thing grows stronger when it is not pressed too tightly in the fist.”
The words should have sounded merciful. Instead, they reminded me exactly who held that fist.
“But this training,” she continued her gaze drifting beyond me, weighing something unseen, “cannot be put aside. You will do it. Not because the gods have willed it, but because I have.”
I dared a question I wouldn’t have asked a moon cycle ago. “Why have you been so kind to me?”
That earned me a pause, and a smirk, a secret dangling just out of reach. “Kindness is a currency, child. I choose to spend mine where it will yield…return.”
The unsaid hung there—if I should call on you one day, I trust you will remember what I have paid in advance.
I felt the weight of what she hadn't spoken.
She glided past me. “You might not hate it as much as you think.”
She was already turning to leave when the words slipped out—quieter than I intended, but still fine as a razor’s whisper. “If the Oracle won’t tell me why Tairngire was chosen for this task…can you?”
She halted mid-step, silence stretching until the air seemed to throb with it. Her shoulders rose, then eased with a measured breath. When she glanced back, it wasn’t with surprise, but with the cool appraisal of someone who had gotten exactly what they planned for.
“Come.”
She moved with the confidence of someone who already knew each step I would take. It truly was off-putting when she did that. I followed her into the courtyard anyway, despite my reservations.
Acolytes read quietly, heads bent over books.
The square was enclosed by high temple walls, cedar beams shadowing the balconies above.
Latticework screens caught the shifting light, seeming to whisper an old blessing.
Faint scents of pressed herbs and parchment drifted from the doorways.
Somewhere, water trickled from a hidden fountain behind the far wall.
A holy place, decadent enough to seem ridiculous.
The High Priestess moved as though the space was hers alone. “You think the Godhead sends protectors for their gentleness, Aurenya. They do not. They choose them for what they have endured. For what they have already survived.”
Her words lodged somewhere beneath my breastbone, causing gooseflesh to form on my arms.
“You see Tairngire as he is now—a blade in their hand. But it wasn’t always that way. Once, he was the forests will made flesh. Untouched. Unbound. Answering to none.”
She turned to me, obsidian eyes gleaming in the cracks of sunlight, the edge of her mouth lifted, brief and fleeting. “The Old Gods could not command him…so they took something from him instead.”
My lungs forgot their rhythm. “What did they take?”
Her head tilted. “The one thing he would not abandon. The one thing his will alone could not guard. And when it was gone, he bent the knee.”
The words hung between us, dense and dangerous.
She stepped closer, close enough for me to catch the faint bite in her perfume, a mix of jasmine and…
something bitter I couldn’t identify. “Understand this, child: gods who have bent once will bend again, but they remember the weight that made them bow. That memory shapes them more than loyalty ever could.”
She studied my face, her eyes searching. “Fourteen days. Use them to decide whether you will let the gods forge you as they forged him.”
I couldn’t answer.
Her toothless smile deepened with the satisfaction of someone who had placed her piece exactly where she wanted it. “And Aurenya…” She let the pause stretch, tightening like fingers closing, inch by inch. “If you are wise, you will remember that I have been kinder to you than most ever will.”
She turned, robes fluttering with the breeze. This time she didn’t look back.
I was left alone in the courtyard, the soft sound of the waterfall far away. The weight of two unsettling truths rested on my shoulders: the Old Gods had bound Tairngire to their will, and the High Priestess wished to do the same with me.
The sun bowed low when I reached the Shaman’s dwelling, its last light drawing long shadows through the trees, gilding their edges in gold. Smoke curled from the chimney. The hut crouched deep in the forest as if the woods themselves kept it as their own.
The door was unlatched—always was. Inside the air pressed warm and heavy with sage, pine resin, and pipe smoke. Shelves sagged with herbs, feathers, and bones polished smooth with age. The hearth burned low, with flames licking at a blackened pot.
The Shaman sat on the floor beside it, back to me, turning a stone between his palms. His skin was dark, his frame slumped, tethered robes hung loose.
His voice reached me before his eyes did. “Your steps are restless, Little Mirror.”
Little Mirror. One of his many names for me, and I knew better than to ask why. The answers always left more questions, leaving only anger in their wake. “It’s been a day,” I muttered, pulling off my cloak.
He turned, one brow arched. “Days are often greedy things. They tend to take more than they give.”
I dropped onto the stool across from him. That was a new one.
Noted.
“The Oracle says there have been stirrings in the Weave. That’s why they sent…him.”
The Shaman needed no explanation. “Him,” he repeated, tasting the word before taking a long drag from his pipe.
“Mm, yes. The wind’s been whispering of your protector for some time now.
A storm speaking of lightning.” He let out a low chuckle.
“Hmm. The Oracle didn’t mention the blood you’ve spilt on sacred soil? ”
I frowned. He knew. But unlike the others, the Shaman did not serve the Old Gods. He served the forest itself. My secret was safe with him. Even still, his vagueness irritated me.
“If you know something, just tell me.”
He chuckled, dry as willow bark. “If I did that, you’d think you understood. And what you think you understand often keeps you from truly seeing.”
I nearly rolled my eyes. That one I had heard before. “That’s not helpful.”
“Hmm. Perhaps it’s not meant to be, in this moment.”
He reached for a shallow clay bowl with his pipe still hanging from his lips, sprinkling dried leaves before touching them with a coal. Smoke bloomed sharp and sweet, curling like it had intent of its own. He pressed the slick obsidian stone he’d been holding into my palm.
“Close your eyes. Breathe with the smoke, and I’ll take you walking.”
I obeyed. The incense filled my lungs until the weight of my body shifted, seated no more but suspended somewhere between realms.
His voice followed, no longer from the hut but from everywhere. “You wish for clarity? Then walk the edges where the Weave hums and let it show you what the waking realms hide. But remember, clarity is a mirror. And mirrors show truths you may not wish to see.”
The air cooled, light thinned, and faint lines glowed under my feet, stretching into Féaraithe Aithreachas, the elated fields, where dreams and visions ran free.
The Weave stretched in every direction. Its hum was faint at first, swelling with each step until it thrummed inside my bones.
The air wasn’t air at all. It was too still, too heavy. It pressed against me until I felt as if I was magically breathing in deep water. The Shaman’s voice was gone, but his presence lingered, smoke curling at the edges of my vision.
Up ahead, a figure stood in the crossing of several lines.
The threads of Fate were everywhere here, connecting life to life in an array unseen by all eyes but mine.
It was a woman, cloaked, her hood shadowing her face.
She didn’t move, but her attention burned straight through me, like the sun on skin before it started to burn.
When I reached the center, she lifted her head.
Her eyes were like fire. The kind you watch from afar because if you got too close, you wouldn’t walk away.
I knew that heat. Every time I swallowed my fury, every time I held back my tongue, I’d felt it.
Saw those red rimmed eyes pinning me. This was not the first time I’d encountered her.
I’d seen her often when the Shaman took me dream walking.
But this time…she was so clear that I could make out the sharp lines of her jaw.
“You wear false skin,” she said, voice low and rough, like fractured ice shattering. “And you bury me.”
The Weave pulsed, gold flaring bright beneath our feet. I gasped. She’d never spoken to me before. She only ever sat with her hood low, turned away from me.
“You cannot destroy what you refuse to name,” she went on, stepping closer, her shape shifting with every heartbeat—every color in her hair changing, her features softening.
Her eyes carried a quiet, lethal sharpness.
She was tragically beautiful in a way that made my heart ache. “But you still try.”
“Who…who are you?” My voice cracked.
Her mouth curved into something that was neither gentle or cruel. “I am what you would become if you ever stopped pretending you were above me.”
The hum of the Weave swelled to a roar, the light surging so bright it blinded me. Invisible fingers closed around my throat, not squeezing but holding me in place. The air burned my lungs. My vision narrowed.
Then, blackness.
When I jolted upright, I was back in the Shaman’s hut, incense thick in my throat, hands trembling around the obsidian stone.
His gaze was already on me, dark and knowing. He didn’t ask what I saw. He didn’t have to. “Some truths do not wait to be invited, Little Mirror. They come when they’re ready…and they rarely come unarmed.”
The incense still clung to my chest, bitter and sweet at once. My pulse hadn’t slowed. The vision’s heat lingered under my skin, embers refusing to die.
The Shaman leaned forward, firelight catching his coal-like eyes. “You feel it, don’t you? That restless heat. The kind you’ve been told to chain. The kind you’ve been told makes you unworthy.”
My grip tightened around the obsidian stone. I didn’t answer.
He tilted his head, a smile flickering without warmth. “Shame is a fine lid, Little Mirror, but lids are meant to be lifted. And yours…” He let the words trail, inhaling smoke like it spoke back to him.
I swallowed. “And mine?”
“Yours rattles when a subtle breeze touches it. It will not hold forever.”
The words sank into the thick air, each one a heavy stone.
“So what happens,” I asked quietly, “when it doesn’t hold anymore?”
He tossed more herbs into the fire, resin flaring sharp. “Then you will discover whether what you’ve caged is your enemy—or your inheritance.”
He leaned back, half his face in shadow. “And remember, anger is a fire. Fire does not care if it burns the wrists, or the chains that shackle them. Only that it burns.”
I stared at him, a knot tightening in my chest as the light outside faded to indigo, that strange in-between before night fully claims the sky.
He closed his eyes, a familiar finality in his expression. “Go home, Little Mirror. You’ll need your rest. Fourteen days is not so long as you think.”
If I heard that one more time, I would surely explode.