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

One look at the old woman and Suri knew the trip would take forever; she just didn’t think forever would take so long. They left before dawn, but the sun was past midday by the time they reached the Third Step. That was Suri’s name for the shelf of rock that jutted out from the cliff just up from the base of Talon Rock, which was what Tura always called the mountain. The Crescent Forest had many hills but only one mountain, a steep climb of rocky ledges. The forest was different there, less undergrowth but darker and denser. Trees did what they could to survive among the cliffs, resulting in acrobatic growth around boulders as they reached for sunlight. There were about fourteen steps in all, but that was to the summit, and luckily Grin the Brown made her home in a cave on the eighth step. This was still plenty high, well above the tree line, but not too much of a hardship for a normal person. For Maeve the climb was an epic feat.

Although the two had walked well enough when in the forest, as soon as they hit the incline, the old woman started needing rest stops. Suri gave her Tura’s staff to lean on, but she still moved at a creep. Maeve could have lost a race with a tree. Now the path was as vertical as the stairs in the lodge, and Maeve was panting like Minna after a late-summer run. Suri didn’t think it was possible, but Maeve’s face looked even more like melted wax than before. It drooped, sagged, dripped with sweat, and had a flushed rose color. They would make it in time, and that was all that mattered. Suri was pleased with her foresight in starting as early as they had.

Unlike many of the other bears, Grin hunted during the day—another sign of a morvyn Suri couldn’t believe she’d missed all these years. They had plenty of time before Grin returned, and it wouldn’t take long to set a trap. Suri just needed to get to where the morvyn slept before it came home.

“This is all my fault,” Maeve said as she sat on the rocky shelf of the Third Step. The Keeper of Ways had babbled nonstop as they walked. Suri hadn’t paid attention, but sitting still there wasn’t anything to do but listen.

“Why did you abandon your baby?” Suri asked. “Was it ugly? Was it like Gifford? I heard people wanted to throw him in the forest when he was born.”

“No!” the old woman yelled. “I never wanted to give her up. She was taken from me.”

“Someone took your child? Was it a crimbal?”

“No.” The old woman shook her head. “Chieftain Reglan ordered Konniger to take her away. I was weak. I should have stood against him. I should have made him kill me first.”

Wiping the sweat from her face with a white cloth kept in the wrist of her sleeve, she said, “I should have fought. That’s the whole of it. I let my little girl down. You know Padera, don’t you?”

Suri nodded as she sat cross-legged on the dirt. She could tell this was going to be a longer-than-usual rest.

“I hate her. Oh, Mari, how good it feels to say it aloud. I hate her!”

This surprised Suri, who thought the toothless woman with the humpback was one of the nicer inhabitants of Dahl Rhen.

“Do you know why?” Maeve didn’t wait for an answer. “Because that old hag raised six children—six! All dead now, including the grandchildren, because she outlives everyone, but each survived to maturity. She saw to that. Padera is a good mother. No, she’s a great mother. That little troll is a perfect mother. Nearly bald under her scarf, did you know that? That’s why she never takes the wrap off. She has a face like a goat stepped in a melon but is too embarrassed to let people see she has no hair. Honestly, who cares?”

Suri felt completely unnecessary in the conversation. Maeve wasn’t even looking at her. The old woman just stared at the ground between her knees.

“Padera wouldn’t have let Konniger take one of her daughters into the forest.”

“Is Shayla Konniger’s daughter, then?”

Maeve looked up with an expression somewhere between appalled and the brink of laughter. “By Mari, no! Konniger was…well, much younger. And if it had been his child, if it had been anyone else’s…” She looked back down at the dirt. “Konniger was kind about it. Might not think it seeing him today, but back then he was a decent lad. He took Shayla gently. Said he would find a pretty place. A place where the gods would surely find her and keep my baby protected from harm. He did a good job. I owe him for that kindness. When he came back, he told me that after he’d set her down in the forest he’d only taken a few steps, and when he looked back, my sweet little girl was gone and in her place sat a bear cub.”

Suri was surprised. She’d never heard of a morvyn possessing and transforming a body so quickly. Her understanding was that it took days.

“When he told me, I went right out and looked. Weeks I hunted. Every day rooting through every miserable thicket, but I finally found her. The gods turned Shayla into a beautiful bundle of brown fur, but I could still tell she was mine. So cute, so perfect. And she needed someone to take care of her. I fed her. Milk at first, then I took some meat from the feasts. Just a little. But then she got bigger. I stole a goat, then another.”

Maeve wiped her face and squeezed her nose. “Soon Shayla learned to hunt on her own. That was a huge weight off my shoulders, but then…the Long Winter and the Great Famine came. There wasn’t any food, not for us on the dahl or for her in the forest. Everyone was thin; walking dead, we used to say. When people started to die, we stopped saying it. Even Padera’s children died. But I wasn’t going to let my baby perish, not after all I’d gone through, after all she’d gone through. My baby needed meat to live. All the goats were gone. And the sheep were guarded.”

Maeve stopped talking and just stared at the ground as if seeing ancient snow.

“You found meat?” Suri asked.

“Yes. I found meat. Frozen meat, but Shayla didn’t mind.” Maeve brought the cloth to her face again but this time wiped tears from her eyes. “They were just lying there, stacked in the hut near the south wall, near the gate. The ground was too frozen to bury the dead, so they just packed them in the snow to wait for the thaw. When spring came, everyone thought animals had stolen the missing bodies.” Maeve’s voice cracked and hitched. She held the cloth to her lips. “Padera’s children kept my Shayla alive.”

“As the morvyn’s strength grew, she craved more human flesh,” Suri said.

Maeve nodded, “I didn’t know. I didn’t…” She was crying too hard then to speak anymore.

“Let’s just hope Shayla still remembers the sound of her mother’s voice.” Suri held out Tura’s staff for Maeve again, and without another word the old woman got to her feet and began to climb once more.

—

That morning when Persephone entered the Great Hall to take her shift watching Arion, she was surprised to find Konniger. She hadn’t seen him in the lodge since Arion had moved in, and so it was odd seeing him in the First Chair, leaning slightly forward, staring out the door. He wore the chieftain’s fur over his shoulders but his leigh mor was wrapped in the summer style, pinned and belted at the waist, forming a skirt that revealed pale, hairy legs. The fire burned low; the room was quiet; Konniger was alone. This concerned Persephone. Konniger was never alone.

Since becoming chieftain, he traveled with an entourage. His drinking friends, cronies, and the growing number of men from Nadak were always around.

“Konniger,” she said, trying not to sound like a guilty kid caught coming home too late.

“Persephone,” he replied, slouching a bit to one side and resting his chin on a hand.

He knew she came there every morning to take over the next shift from Suri. No other reason for him to be sitting in that chair all alone. This was to be a showdown of sorts. He would chastise her for causing trouble, seek to bring her in line. She decided to get her words in first, state her case before the conversation got ugly.