But nothing happened now. The fire didn’t whisper. No owl called from the pines. The smoke didn’t twist into a recognizable shape.
I turned full circle, scanning the tree line. Poppies sagged under the rain and thrumming on the roof of the shrine filled my ears.
A minute passed. Then ten. Twenty.
I wrapped my arms across my chest. I couldn’t go down the mountain without a reply – I was an exile, and not just from my home, my hearth and my family. There was no salvation for a disgraced priestess of the Goddess of War. No place in the High Halls. If Eang did not speak, my soul would remain in the earth where my forsaken body would eventually fall, exiled and imprisoned until the Unmaking of the World.
The thought made me pale. I shivered and clutched at my arms more tightly, searching the trees again. I couldn’t wait here forever, could I? I had no more food. No blanket. No dry clothes. A Climb of Atonement was not intended to be a comfortable experience, even without rainstorms.
I tightened my resolve, ignoring the fear that turned my stomach. Eang was simply making me wait. She would reply. She would accept my pledge. She had to.
Because, if she did not, I could never go home.
* * *
I made myself a second, more modest fire under the shadow of a bent pine on the north edge of the meadow, just enough to lend a little light and protection from the gathering night. Beyond the dripping boughs, the meadow’s poppies closed their petals and the half-light of the storm relented to true dark. Eventually, the fire I’d lit in the shrine was all I could see. Then it retreated too, turning into a low, flickering belly of coals.
I closed my eyes. I should have gone back out into the rain, rekindled my offering fire, reopened the painful scabs on the ends of my fingers and prayed again. But my tunic was still wet and the meadow so open, so empty.
I ground my teeth. I was no High Priestess, but I was still a vassal of the Goddess of War, with the scars under my sodden tunic to prove it. One night on a mountain alone should not have made me feel so vulnerable.
But this was more than one night in the rain. This darkness felt like a warning, a glimpse of what the rest of my days – my eternity – would be if the goddess would not hear me.
A stick cracked.
I shot to my feet, smacking my head on a branch and sending a shower of cold rain and pine needles down my scalp and back. Even as I cursed and tried to shake needles from my hair, my hand fell to my belt. No sword. No axe. Just my small ritual knife, barely longer than my thumb, its simple wooden hilt darkened with age.
Another crack.
My heart, already battering against my ribcage, threatened to rupture. My knife was likely useless against whatever was out there – whatever beast Eang was sending to tear me to pieces – but the goddess had given me other methods of defense.
My heel slipped back and I dropped low as a familiar, unnatural fire welled up in the back of my throat. I watched the darkness, steadying myself and letting the heat grow.
The rain pattered and wind rustled the treetops, far above my damp hair. Whatever was in the forest drew closer, edging around trunks and boughs and boulders.
My fingers twitched and power seeped onto my tongue.
“Hessa?”
I wilted, half in shock, half in relief. The heat extinguished as a shadow separated from the darkness and stepped into the firelight, pushing back the hood of his cloak. Dark red hair, damp with rain at the brow. Brown eyes, creased with worry that contrasted the soft, unhappy smile tucked into his beard.
A woman came behind him, her lithe form ducking around boughs with all the height and grace that the gods had neglected to give me. Seeing the look on my face, she rounded the fire without a word and embraced me.
In her arms, the cold of the night and the well of anxiety in my stomach lessened. But I didn’t have time for consolation.
Before she could speak, I cleared my throat and peeled away. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you. You should have returned before dusk,” my cousin Yske retorted, resting one hand on my bare neck before she released me. Her eyes lingered on my throat. “They cut off your collar?”
Compulsively, my own gaze dropped. A bronze ring, little wider than the tip of my smallest finger, rested against the tawny skin at the base of her throat. Firelight caught the ring’s fine runes, twined into endless patterns. Brave, vengeful, swift, watchful. They were the qualities of our goddess, the first words of our prayers, and the heart of our identity as warrior-priests – as Eangi.
“Why didn’t you come home?” My husband took my cousin’s place in front of me. I sidestepped, but the movement was half-hearted and when he pulled me into his chest, I didn’t resist. The scent of him – smoke, leather and sweat – disarmed me, thick with memories of a shared childhood, urgent kisses and bloody battlefields. The scent of my husband.
I felt the shape of his own Eangi collar against my temple and pulled back.
“Eidr, stop.” The words came too fast. I narrowed my stinging eyes and pointed down the mountain. “This is sacred. You can’t be here.”
Eidr grabbed the back of my head and kissed my forehead, gently but firmly. “I pledged myself to you,” my husband reminded me, holding my face close. “Yske is your blood. You may have been cast out of the Hall of Smoke, but you cannot be cast out from us.”
I couldn’t hold his gaze, so I looked down at his chest and brushed at the embroidered collar of his tunic. As kind as the words were, they were just that – kind. If Eang refused to shrive me, neither he nor Yske would be able to remain at my side. I wouldn’t let them.
“You’ll not suffer for my sins, either of you.” I separated myself from him again and dragged damp hair from my face. “You need to leave.”
“Hasn’t she spoken yet?” Yske interjected.
Eidr would not back away, so I did. I put the fire between us and raised my chin, hoping that neither of them could see how badly I wanted them to stay. What if the goddess never spoke and this was the last time I saw them?
Yske spun the clasp of her cloak and pulled it free, revealing a tunic of mild blue, undyed leggings and the knife at her belt. “You’re shaking. Wear this, Hessa, please.”
“No,” I said, proud of the fact that my voice didn’t waver. “I ignored a vision from Eang. I broke a vow. I deserve this.”
Yske and Eidr exchanged a glance, then Eidr’s hand slipped beneath his own cloak. When he withdrew it, he held a hatchet.
“You can’t give me that,” I snapped.
Eidr gave me a weary look that failed to conceal his concern. “I won’t. But Yske and I just climbed a mountain in the rain and I’m cold. If you want to go sit out there and be wet, do it, but I’m going to find some dry wood – somewhere – and build up the fire.”
My throat closed. Eidr shouldered off into the night and left me alone with my cousin.
Yske swung her cloak back around her shoulders. “The fire in the shrine is almost out.”
I gazed back across the dark meadow. Sure enough, the warm glow of my offering fire was nearly extinguished.
I looked back at her, coaxing my expression into impassivity. “I have to go tend it. By the time I come back, you need to be gone. Both of you.”
Yske shrugged and, setting my shoulders, I slipped back out into the rain.