PROLOGUE
They shouldn’t have climbed for so long, but they’d been convinced that if they reached the top of Shinway, they would be able to look out over the sea, all the way to Eastlandia. They thought they might spot their father’s sails—the sails of all the warriors of Dolphys—returning from raids on distant shores. Their father always brought them something, even though it often wasn’t what either of them wanted. He gave Dagmar swords when he’d rather have scrolls. He brought Desdemona trinkets when she’d just as soon have a length of rope or a clever snare. Still, they watched for him, waited for him, and they’d climbed too high.
“It’s going to storm, Des,” Dagmar worried. “The fog has settled on the water, and we won’t see Father even if he’s almost ashore.”
Desdemona scowled and kept walking, scrambling up the rocky path like the goats they kept and should be returning to. If Father did come home, he would wonder at the empty cottage and the hungry animals, the cow that hadn’t been milked, and the wood that hadn’t been gathered. They’d left at dawn, and it was midday, though the thickening clouds and the gray light made it seem much later. They had played along the way, collecting treasures only to discard them for new finds. They’d stopped for berries and climbed a towering oak that had lured them in with low-hanging branches. Now it was growing late, and they’d been gone too long.
“He isn’t coming home today,” Desdemona said, dismissive. “Yesterday, old Hilde asked the sea, and it gave her five shells in a pile on the sand. She said it would be five more days until the warriors return.”
Mistress Dunhilde was charged with their care when their father was away, though she was drowsy and doddering, and Dagmar felt ofttimes that he looked after her more than she looked after them. But Hilde was rarely wrong about such things.
Dagmar stopped walking. “Then why did you insist on climbing to the peaks?” he asked, exasperated.
“I was weary of the cottage,” Desdemona said, shrugging. She tossed him an impish grin and tugged at his hand.
“We need to turn back, Desdemona,” Dagmar demanded. “A storm is coming and we’ll be caught on the cliffs.” His younger sister was constantly getting them into trouble, and she never listened.
“Don’t worry, Dag. I will protect you,” she reassured him, pulling her long blade from the leather sheath at her waist. She launched it with both hands at the unassuming pine tree directly in their path.
“I got him!” she crowed, racing toward the tree, and Dagmar realized she hadn’t been aiming for the trunk at all. A gray rabbit, Desdemona’s blade jutting out of his back, bounded away and disappeared among the rocks at the base of the highest crag. The three cliffs of Shinway were stacked like enormous steps, one atop the other, and were as stony and flat as the hills around them were green and rolling. They afforded nothing but a spectacular view and a long climb, and the people of Dolphys rarely made the pilgrimage to the top. Time was too short and life too hard for unnecessary journeys.
“Hurry, Dag,” Desdemona called over her shoulder, tucking her skirt into the belt at her waist to keep it out of her way as she gave chase. She slipped once and caught herself on a jagged outcropping, but was up again immediately, clambering after her fat prey, who was bleeding but unbeaten.
“He went in there,” Desdemona panted as Dagmar reached her side, pointing at a cavity tucked between the first two ledges.
“And he has your blade,” Dagmar added, though he was certain the rabbit would be glad to be rid of it. The cave was not visible from the narrow path, and a curtain of ivy, spilling from one height to another, obscured the entrance.
“Let me see your hands,” Dagmar ordered. Desdemona raised her palms, impatient. They were both abraded and bleeding from her fall.
“The bleeding will stop,” she insisted. “They only sting a little. I’m going in. I want my blade and that rabbit. He’ll make a fine stew and a pair of slippers.”
Dagmar didn’t bother to protest. The cave would be black as pitch; she couldn’t go far. He studied the cliffs still rising above them and considered the distance they’d already come. Below him, to the left, lay the sea, though mist covered the water and the wind melded with the waves, muffling her sounds and her shores. But he knew she was there.
Behind him, the valley of Dolphys stretched in stubborn splendor, the silver line of the river Mogda snaking through it, winding around huts and homes that, from this height, appeared no bigger than bits of broken shell among the sands. Hills, lumpy, misshapen pyramids in green, dappled the valley, separating one community from another. There were many such hills in Dolphys. The people called them sleeping giants, though they appeared more like enormous, slumbering toads.
“It’s dark in here,” Desdemona called from the mouth of the cave, and Dagmar lifted his face to the skies. Clouds as dark and ominous as his father’s temper swirled overhead, casting the world around him in the color of rain. He sighed and went in search of something to burn. It would be foolish to descend the mountain in a deluge, and the cave would be a good place to spend the next few hours, but they would need a fire.
A felled pine, its branches broken and brittle, would provide fodder enough. He hacked a few limbs free with the hatchet he wore at his waist and dragged them up the narrow path toward the opening in the rock. He had to stoop to enter, Desdemona holding the vines aside so he could drag his kindling behind him, but once inside, he could fully straighten. He could not see beyond a few steps, but the space felt as vast and unexplored as the night sky.
“We need light. Use my hatchet to clear some of the vines, and try not to cut off your toes,” he ordered. Desdemona was a skilled huntress, but she was clumsy in the way of the overconfident and easily distracted. She obeyed him with an obligatory grumble, shearing the vines by the handful, allowing the tepid light to peer into the cave.
It didn’t take Dagmar long to coax a flame, though the crack of Thor’s hammer and the resulting torrent now lashing the cliffs threatened a longer stay than his fire would last. Desdemona crouched nearby, tying several twigs together with the stringy vines she’d cut, fashioning herself a torch. She made one for Dagmar as well but was too impatient to wait for him and went off to hunt the rabbit on her own.
Dagmar continued to tend the blaze, noting that the smoke from the branches did not gather but rose, whisked away into heights and places he could not see. There was an opening somewhere above him, he was certain, but he abandoned his musings when Desdemona called to him, her voice odd and distant like she too had risen with the smoke. He couldn’t see her, but a ruddy glow smeared a section of the dark, and he walked toward it, the torch she’d crafted for him in his hand. Tunnels veered off the main section, man-size doorways that burrowed to places he would never explore, and Dagmar kept his back to the fire he had built as his eyes clung to the glimmer of light ahead. Desdemona had gone much farther than he would have ever gone alone, and he bit back sharp words when he finally reached her.
Framed by the arched opening of a separate cavity, Desdemona stood facing the wall, her torch lifted to illuminate something on the rock. As he neared, she turned slowly, lighting one section of wall at a time. The shadows breathed around her, expanding and disappearing as she moved, and Dagmar noted the dimensions of the space. It was more a chamber than a cave, the rock encircling them like the dome of the temple he’d seen only once.