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

“And me?” Persephone asked. “What are people saying about me?”

Persephone knew there was talk. There was always talk. Life in a dahl was filled with endless days of mundane repetitive tasks, and gossip was the only entertainment. After Hegner’s accusations, the death of Sackett and Adler, and the arrival of Raithe, the Fhrey, and a Miralyith, there was a lot to talk about. All of it in whispers whenever she was around, so Persephone knew much of it was about her.

Moya slowed down, letting the wool play out. “Don’t know how reliable it is, but Autumn told me Konniger is spreading a story about you trying to take over. That’s why you drove him out of the lodge. One more step in your master plan.”

“My master plan? All I’m trying to do is save the Miralyith’s life, and this dahl in the bargain. I put her in there because it’s warm and dry.”

“I’m not the one complaining,” Moya said. “And I know everything Hegner and Konniger are spewing is complete rubbish, but…what if it wasn’t?”

“Moya, you can’t possibly think—”

Moya shook her head and held up her hands. “No, I don’t mean it that way.” She looked around at the others, most of whom saw the seriousness in her eyes and stopped what they were doing. “What I mean is maybe you should become chieftain.”

“Clan chieftains are men,” Raithe said.

“No,” Moya replied. “They just always have been.”

“Well, yeah, and that’s because any member of the clan can challenge a chieftain to combat for control of the clan,” Raithe replied. “At least that’s how they do it—did it—in Dureya. Not too many women are keen with a spear or ax. And a chieftain needs to be capable of leading men into battle, which means you want the strongest and toughest.”

“People in Rhen don’t go to battle every week,” Moya pointed out. “Never been a battle in my lifetime.”

“Still, it helps to have a man in charge to keep order.”

Moya’s face hardened. “Seems Persephone is the one keeping the order around here, not Konniger. When it comes to keeping order, I’d rather have someone using the head above their shoulders than the one below the waist.”

This brought a round of smiles and a few glances at Brin, who looked puzzled.

“But how well would she fare in a one-on-one fight with him?” Raithe asked.

“The ability to kill someone shouldn’t be how we choose our chieftain,” Moya said.

“What should be and what is are usually very different. Doesn’t change the fact that armed battle is how these things are decided.”

“She could have a champion fight for her,” Brin said.

Both Moya and Raithe looked at the girl.

“According to the Ways, anyone can have a champion stand in for them so long as that person agrees to fight and has no desire to be chieftain themselves.”

“Is that true?” Moya asked.

Brin nodded. “I thought everyone knew that.”

“Not everyone studies the Ways like you, Brin.” Moya turned to Persephone. “There you go. Have Raithe fight Konniger and take the First Chair.”

“I wouldn’t ask someone to risk their life for me.”

“He fights gods! You’re only asking him to kill Konniger. I don’t think there’s much of a risk.”

“The Fhrey aren’t gods, and I don’t care if it was Cobb being challenged. I wouldn’t ask such a thing of anyone, especially someone I hardly know,” Persephone said while avoiding looking at Raithe. The man had feelings for her, and she was calling him a stranger. “You just don’t want to be forced to marry Hegner.”

“Of course. Would you? Would anyone? But that’s not the point. Fact is, you’d be a great chieftain. We all know it—those of us capable of thought, anyway. Everyone looks to you in an emergency, and not a single person hesitated when you said to take the Fhrey into the lodge. I was just a kid, but I remember the famine and how you saved us. My mother hated you, by the way.”

“Oh, thanks for that, Moya.” Persephone frowned. “Always glad to add another name onto the long list of people who’ve hated me.”

“Let me finish.” Moya rolled her eyes. “She cursed your name every night because you convinced Reglan to ration the grain.” She turned to Brin, who had stopped carding to listen. Brin loved stories. “The Long Winter was over, summer was here, crops were looking great, but everyone was hungry because Persephone demanded the granary remain locked.”

“A lot of people hated me for that,” Persephone said softly, remembering what, at that time, had been the worst year of her life. She had survived back then by thinking life couldn’t get any worse. Maybe that was why everything was so upside down on the dahl since Suri’s prediction of death—the gods felt the need to prove her wrong.

“My mother said the only reason Reglan appeased you was because you nearly died in childbirth a few weeks earlier,” Moya continued. “He was worried about you, and my mother said you used your loss to get your way. She thought you forced the ration because you wanted the rest of us to suffer along with you.”

“Your mother said that?”

Moya nodded. “And you wondered why I didn’t cry at her funeral. Well, it was stuff like that.”

“What happened?” Brin asked. “I never heard this story.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Persephone said, looking out at the rain.

“You were young then, Brin. This was what? Ten years ago?” Moya asked.

“Eleven,” Persephone said. “But let’s not talk about it.”

“Oh, no, you have to finish it,” Brin pleaded. “I might be the next Keeper, and this could be important. You know, for the future. In case something like that happens again. Please?”

Moya shrugged. “You tell it, Seph. You know it better than anyone.”

Persephone was quiet for a long while; then she sighed and said, “It started with Tura. She had come from the forest and warned Reglan and me about a famine. I believed her, but he didn’t. Part of the reason was because Tura so infrequently visited the dahl. For her to come, it must have been important.

“Another reason was because I knew how low our stores were and how much people wanted to gorge themselves after so long on rations. If Tura was right and we didn’t take precautions, the entire dahl would have starved. I pleaded with Reglan to seal the granary. People were hungry; they almost revolted. They saw no reason for such measures. I had never fought so vehemently with him before, but I couldn’t back down. Maybe Reglan did go along just to calm me. I don’t know. But he heeded my pleas.” Persephone paused, and the room was silent.

“When spring came, everything was fine. The crops were growing well, and everyone gave me angry looks. I ended up spending the nice weather holed up in the lodge. Then the storms came. Weeks of them. Wind, hail, and rain destroyed everything. After that there was a drought, two whole months without more than a few miserable drops of rain. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, winter came early. We went into it with only what we had saved in the granaries. That was the start of the Great Famine. There were a lot of deaths. We stacked the bodies in the snow because the ground was too hard to dig. We waited for spring to bury them. When bodies started to disappear, Reglan and I prayed it was wild animals or even ghouls stealing them.”

“But you saved us,” Moya said. “No one would have survived otherwise, and everyone knew it. People listened to you after that. They still listen to you. You just have to talk to them.”

Persephone shook her head. “Konniger is chieftain.”

“Sure, now he is, but you could—”