A tenuous order reigned in the Healing-Hall. My wish for Dermot’s presence had been presumptive; we found him just inside the Viisp-akad storehouse with a loose tunic around his shoulders and a stormy expression on his face. Astrid Fuller joined us at a run, having completed a circuit through the Beast-Hall. She nodded to Dermot […]
Grannine did not release me until we summited the stairs. My heart fluttered in my throat, and I wavered on the uppermost step, feeling as though I might fall. “Mariead,” Grannine said, at my side. I flinched to the left, and She pursued, placing a hand around my shoulders. “Easy, now. Breathe.” “I should have […]
The further we walked, the further I looked, the more the riches of the archive were compounded. Not for the sake of gold alone—though gold there was, and silver, and precious stones—but for the skill with which this silver and gold were worked, joined as they were to wood and stone and leather. Patterns began to emerge […]
By the final Tec of Winter, the once-grand halls of Raven Lake had become warm and familiar, almost cozy—no longer a place of vast strangeness and unknowable secrets, but a sanctuary for myself and Eris, to Aidan and the Lunanin. With each day this home of ours seemed smaller and less able to contain my ruminations. […]
Tabiir performed his task with a workman’s precision. Arran lay upon the table beneath a blanket of woven cloth, a grey material so dark it was almost black. From some hidden cache or alcove Rina brought several urns with silver covers; these she set upon the edges of the platform which held the corpse, accompanied […]
A crowd had gathered in the Fire-Hall, fractured once again upon factional lines, speaking loudly and harshly over one another. I heard Rina’s voice, and Dermot’s, and Father Zachary. Galia Bridge stood most directly in my path at the edge of the circle, two children flanking her. Some steps beyond was the druid who had […]
It was late in the day when the Hunt rejoined us. This deep in the winter, so far from Church lands, their return was announced with the ring of a druid-horn—a wild, brassy sound that twined its way through the Hold, at once lonely and forceful. Twice this horn was sounded, two grudging drones of […]
When the night had gone, I found my thoughts restless, stirred up from beneath by some cold and meandering current of unease. It was not as though the druids were celibate. Far from it, in fact—now and again I had stumbled across some pair of our hosts…or upon one memorable occasion, more than two—and […]
Though death had never been a stranger in my life, still it was strange to consider it a friend. Yet this was the enjoinder of the Book of Death, and it was on this that I meditated long after the day had ended and the Ix-akad had grown still. While there were halls and chambers […]
“Who is…Anat?” “My friend,” Hope said, as though I ought have known this. “We play together. Biddy says you were a Sister in the South.” “That’s…right.” Hope was watching me again, but I could no longer tell what was passing behind her young features. “Biddy Callend?” Hope nodded. “She says she saw you in Dawnfire […]
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