Age of Myth (The Legends of the First Empire #1)

“You want to abandon everything we’ve worked hundreds of years to build because the gods saw fit to punish the Dureyans for killing one of them?” Tressa asked, and shook her head, her face bitter.

Konniger sat back, stroking his beard and shifting his eyes while deep in thought. After a few minutes, he straightened and said, “No, such drastic measures aren’t warranted. You’re overreacting. Tressa is right. We have it good here, better than most dahls, and leaving a place of comfort for the unknown is foolish. You are worried about something that will never come to pass.”

Several in the hall were nodding now. Persephone had seen this before. If given a choice between a potentially great hardship and doing nothing, people gravitated toward what was most familiar and comfortable. That was why leadership was needed. To do what was necessary rather than what was easy. Persephone had a history of advocating unpopular ideas and arguing with chieftains. Reglan used to say it was her best and worst trait. If the potential danger weren’t so great, if the repercussions of getting this wrong weren’t so dire, she would have left it at that. Instead, she said, “But what if it does? Then it will be too late. If we—”

Konniger slapped the arm of his chair. “Tirre won’t tolerate us on their doorstep. We’d be as welcome as locusts. Will they share their food? Will there even be enough?” Konniger’s voice had lowered to an angry growl.

Maeve finally interceded. “Persephone,” she began, clasping her hands and taking a step forward. “Gath of Odeon was renowned even before the flood. Heroes like him no longer walk among us. He was able to win the support of every chieftain. Gathering the clans will do nothing without someone to lead. I fear the chieftains won’t kneel before anyone less.”

Konniger glanced at the broadax he had lodged in the winter pillar. “I’ve fought and killed to become chieftain of this clan. I can’t take a knee to any man from Menahan, Melen, Tirre, or Warric. The decision is mine, and I say we stay here. This discussion is over and I’ll hear no more on the subject.”

Maeve locked eyes with Persephone. The old woman shook her head ever so slightly. Maeve wouldn’t support her. Persephone couldn’t oppose both the chieftain and the Keeper of Ways. Looking around, she saw less anxiety than at the start of the meeting. When she had been talking about leaving, she had seen the eyes of rabbits staring back at her, scared and wanting nothing more than to hide in their burrows. The people feared a mass exodus more than they did the gods. She wondered if even Reglan would have listened to her. Konniger was right about one thing. It was far easier to do nothing than to brave the unknown. She sat back down.

—

The meeting had concluded with the usual prayer to Mari, the goddess of Rhen, and to Elan, the Grand Mother of All. Persephone filed out with the rest, feeling utterly alone in a crowd of people. Avoiding stares, she walked around the north side of the lodge, away from most of the homes and toward the open space left behind by the depleted woodpile. There, she saw the young mystic again.

“Almost got him that time,” Suri told the wolf, whose head was stuffed in a gap between the logs, scratching the dirt and trying to push deeper. “You’ve lost him now. You’re too big to fit in there.”

The girl was kneeling on the grass in front of the five-foot-high double-row pile of stacked wood, all that remained of the dahl’s winter supply. Both the wolf’s and Suri’s heads popped up as Persephone approached. The girl frowned. “Don’t tell me there’s a rule against wolves hunting rats in woodpiles. Is there?”

“What? No,” Persephone replied.

“There are rules against everything else here. What you can and can’t eat or where you can sleep. Even where to squat in the morning. Everyone here is touched, there’s no mistake, but I suppose that’s what you get from living inside a wall. Tura always said walls were bad, said the same thing about shoes.” Suri looked down at her bare feet. “I didn’t understand Tura’s scorn of either until now.”

Not knowing how to respond, Persephone simply said, “You’re still here.”

“Your eyes still work,” the girl answered with a grin.

If Suri were a normal person, Persephone would have been insulted.

Normal person. Already she had branded the new mystic bizarre. New mystic, new chieftain, there were altogether too many news on the dahl lately.

“Strange game, this stating the obvious,” Suri said, shaking her head. She got up and joined Minna at the woodpile. “Pointless, but popular. Everyone plays it. You’re eating our bread. That isn’t your bed. You have a wolf. But as you can see, I’m getting the knack of it. Tura told me to blend in at villages, especially the dahls. She said people who live inside walls are crazy and can be dangerous. Touched animals are, too. Cursed by the gods, sort of like you, and even a tainted squirrel’s bite can make you that way.”

“I merely meant, well…” Persephone hesitated. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

Suri pointed at the treetops visible over the rear wall of the dahl where the gray spears had become a curtain of green. “Was waiting on the leaves.”

Persephone laughed. “It’s been two weeks.”

The mystic twisted her face, thinking hard. “You have two ears.” She smiled proudly. “I’m starting to see the fun of this. Using a part of what another person says makes it harder, doesn’t it? Probably gets more challenging late in winter when you’ve been sealed up for months—I assume you can’t repeat the same thing twice, right?”

Persephone rolled her eyes.

Suri looked perplexed. “Does everyone here suffer from this eye sickness as well? I’ve seen a lot of that.”

I’m sure you have, Persephone thought.

A pattering sound from the depths of the woodpile sent the wolf thrusting back into the crevice, her claws skittering on the stripped bark littering the stack’s perimeter. She sprayed the torn shards across the yard.

Suri sighed. “Minna, you’re still too big.”

Bizarre might have been an understatement. Persephone decided to get to the point. “When we spoke, you mentioned something bad was going to happen. What did you mean?”

“What do you mean, what did I mean?”

“Ah…” Persephone faltered. It hadn’t been this difficult talking with Tura, not that Persephone had seen her much. Mystics rarely came to the dahl, and when they did, it wasn’t to proclaim Everything is going to be cream and honey from now on! Persephone hadn’t seen Tura since the season before the Great Famine.

“I mean, well, your prediction sounded implausible at the time. But two of the nearby dahls have been attacked, and I think I should listen to what you have to say.”

“I told you, ma’am. I don’t know exactly, but the signs were clear.” Plucking bark off one of the logs, she tasted it. Then she spat and tossed the strip aside.

“What signs?”

“Near sunset on the first day of spring, I saw lightning in the northwest. The thunder startled a flock of crows that took flight, also in the northwest. The wind was blowing west to east, and a moment later, the sun was blocked out by dark clouds.”

“And what does that mean?”

Suri sighed. “Okay, listen. The sun is born in the east, so the east is good. West is bad. That’s where the sun goes to die. When signs happen in the west, those are bad omens. Lightning is a judgment of the gods, powerful and violent. Birds are extremely significant, often used as messengers of the gods, and since I saw a whole flock, it means a lot of people will suffer. Blocking out the sun…well, even you ought to understand that’s not a good turn of events. Any one of these signs would have been serious, but all three? Bad news. Very bad news.”