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

“What does any of that have to do with me going to Rhulyn?”

“I gave Fenelyus a gift. To be honest, she already had it. I just showed her how to use it. Fane Alon Rhist was dead, and the Fhrey were losing the war. I was angry with the Dherg, so I intervened.”

Trilos did give Fenelyus the Art!

“That should have been the end of it. The Dherg had murdered thousands of Fhrey out of greed. Fenelyus had just cause and more than enough power to erase the Dherg from existence.”

“But she didn’t,” Gryndal said.

“No. She chased them to Drumindor. Everyone expected her to rip it apart and throw the remains into the sea. So did I. Instead, she spared them. The story goes that she left the Fhrey army camped around the base of the Dherg fortress for weeks, and when she returned, she met with King Mideon and offered peace.”

Gryndal nodded. “And you think while she was gone, she came here and went inside the Door?”

“Yes. And that saved the Dherg from extinction.”

Gryndal stared at the Door with new interest.

“I had set a boulder rolling when I gave the Children of Ferrol the Art, knowing your people would wipe out the Children of Drome, but something stopped it. You might call it luck, but could random chance stop such a thing? What could have prevented a boulder that big from rolling? What unlikely occurrence could forestall the sun from rising? Who opened that Door for Fenelyus, and, more important, where might that person be? That’s why you’re going to Rhulyn, to separate luck from intent, and this time I’ll be watching.”

“Watching for what?”

“For an invisible hand to open that Door and once again stop the boulder. You, dear Gryndal, are my boulder.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Healing the Injured




It was like waiting for the sunrise and a chicken to hatch—if the sun marked the end of the world and the chicken was an all-devouring demon.

—THE BOOK OF BRIN





The light intensified the throbbing behind Arion’s eyes. Both her hands and feet felt numb, and when she tried to move, a sharp pain exploded from the back of her head as if a chisel had been slammed through her skull. She might have cried out, impossible to tell. Between winces and despite the pain, Arion had managed to discern she was inside a crude hut of some sort; the walls were made from thick, untreated wood and the ceiling from bundles of yellowed grass. She was on a bed of sorts—rough wool over straw, stiff and itchy.

What in Ferrol’s name has happened to me?

Working that single thought and trying to use her eyes was all she was capable of. Everything else went toward enduring the pain. She felt as if she were drowning in anguish. Panic welled up, but mercifully she drifted off again.

Arion fought to consciousness several more times but never stayed awake for long. Always she was in the same bed, beneath the same grass roof, flooded by the same awful pain. In her haze-filled agony, she sensed the presence of others around her. Conversations in a language she didn’t understand. Occasionally hands touched her, mostly around the head. When she was moved, she passed out again. How long this went on was impossible to tell. Time became a vague tangle of dreams, visions, and reality mixed in equal measures and degrees of importance. When she wasn’t in the hut, she was talking with Fenelyus about the importance of teaching more than the Art to the next generation of leaders and how power without compassion would destroy them all. On occasion, a wolf would enter her visions, or an old shriveled female Rhune whose head was wrapped in a cloth. Once, she found herself sitting on a bench in the Garden across from the Door with an irresistible urge to try the latch.

“Go on,” Trilos told her from where he sat on the other bench. “You know you want to. Everyone wants to know what’s on the other side.”

Arion stood up and walked to the Door. She placed her hand on the latch, knowing it would do nothing, but what if it—

She lifted. The latch clicked.

Arion’s heart raced as she felt the Door give, felt it start to open.

“So you’re the one I’m looking for!” Trilos exclaimed.

With Trilos’s voice still in her head, Arion woke.

She was once more in the hut, on the straw bed with wool covers. The numbness in her extremities was gone, and though her head still throbbed, the stabbing pain behind her eyes had taken a break. She looked around. Sunlight came through a window. Birds sang, and she felt a gentle breeze brush her face, the only part not covered by a wool blanket. A moment later, Arion noticed she wasn’t alone. Across the room, caught in a shaft of mote-filled sunlight, was a Rhune girl.

She sat sideways, legs hanging over one arm of a stiff chair, bare feet moving back and forth, forming little circles in the air. The girl had markings, tattoos that curled symmetrically around the sides of her face like vines. The child was filthy, her hair a ratted mess, the bottoms of her bare feet blackened. Over her shoulders, she wore a tattered woolen cloth the color of clay. Her legs were covered in baked-on mud, stained from splashes of dirty water. Every fingernail was outlined in dirt as if she’d just come from digging with bare hands.

Do Rhunes do that? Burrow underground like moles?

The girl’s attention was focused on something in her fingers while a huge white wolf lay at the foot of the chair, its muzzle resting between its forepaws.

The Rhune girl was disgusting, the animal disturbing.

Arion didn’t move. Instead, she tried to remember, to think how she had gotten where she was. The last thing she recalled was being in the Garden with Trilos and opening the—

No. That wasn’t real…was it?

It couldn’t be. She had left Estramnadon in search of the rebel Nyphron. She remembered arriving at Alon Rhist and meeting with Petragar.

Yes, I definitely remember doing that—him and his servant. What was his name? Vert, something.

She remembered arriving at a Rhune village and—

Yes! I found Nyphron!

After that, the trail went cold.

The girl noticed her and smiled. She spoke some brutish language that sounded like barking.

Rhunes are animals, Arion thought. Animals that merely resemble Fhrey.

She lifted her head, but pushing up to her elbows made her instantly dizzy.

The girl barked once more, but within the beastly yelps she caught what sounded like Arion.

“You know my name?” she asked in the Fhrey language.

The girl nodded.

Arion was stunned. “You understand me?”

The girl nodded again. Arion saw the full measure of her face: homely, inelegant, and misshapen, no doubt the result of a godling left unattended to play with a pile of clay.

“Tura,” the girl said. “She teach divine words.”

“Who are you?” Arion asked.

“Me is Suri.”

“Where are we, Suri?”

“Dahl Rhen.” The girl continued to sit sidelong across the arms of the chair, feet still making circles in the shaft of sunlight. Lothian had said that the Rhunes were terrified of the Fhrey, that they considered them to be gods and would cower in their presence. In Estramnadon, no one except those in the palace would remain so casual in Arion’s presence.

The Rhune girl pointed at the ceiling. “This is a…ah…wooden cave. Call it…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Place where Rhune leader sleeps.”

“How did I get here?”

“Carried after.”

“After? After what?”

Suri pointed at Arion’s head.

Arion reached up and noticed something there. A cloth wrapped everything above her eyes.

The girl swung her legs off the chair’s arm and onto the wolf, which didn’t seem to mind. “Best leave on or insides fall out.”

“What…?” Arion froze. “What happened to me?”

Suri mimicked hitting herself on the head and made a bursting sound as she did. “Hit with rock. Fixed now. You don’t die.” The girl grinned.

“You did this? Wrapped my head, I mean.”

Suri nodded. “Yes. Others help, too. Many help. Keep insides in.”