For a moment she didn’t remember where she was. The air smelled faintly of smoke.
Mallow was already up. He’d rekindled the fire to boil snow in a dented pot, and the sound of it hissing and melting filled the silence. His coat was on, his book laid across his knees as he flipped through the pages. He didn’t look at her when he said, “You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Nothing clear. Just… names. Someone called Tanel?”
The name made her heart recoil. She sat up too quickly, her head spinning.
When she watched Mallow read, flipping one page and another, enjoying the strong set of his brow and the strength of his focus.
“I’m trying to find a recipe,” he said. “Maybe something to help you.”
“Are you a healer?”
“More like an herbalist. The licorice root pointed me in the right direction, I think. But I’ll want to stop in the village, down the range. Not far out of the way.”
“I haven’t said I’d go with you,” she reminded him. “I might return to Ivath.”
He looked up. “You’ve got a death wish?”
“No. Those Brighthand are gone. I can tell the Dagorlind what happened.”
Mallow shut the book with a sigh. “Tell me what you think happened.”
“I think they wanted to kill me. Because I’m Kelthi.”
“And you think they acted on their own?”
“They must have. I was sent on this journey for a purpose.”
“What purpose?”
She wasn’t certain she should tell Mallow what she was meant to do. How much did outsiders know about the Underserpent and the role of the Starbloom? Finally, she said, “I’ve sinned. I’ve been sent on a pilgrimage. To redeem myself.”
He stared at her for a long while. “Do the Dagorlind have other Kelthi among their ranks?”
She shook her head. “No. Elder Tanel found me as an infant, in the wilds. When my village was taken by Wyrmrot.”
“And he just… brought you home?”
“I’m Tuned,” she said. “They wanted to raise me as a Glinnel.”
“And they make you cover your feet. Hooves. Drug you when you have your cycle.”
“They have to.”
“Do they?”
Lain flushed. “The Dagorlind take a vow of chastity.”
“And the Brighthand take a vow of obedience.”
She glared at him. “What are you getting at, sellsword?”
He smiled thinly. “Sister, I mean this with all due respect, but you might consider opening those pretty violet eyes of yours and taking a better look at who you serve.”
“The Dagorlind would never send me off to be slaughtered.”
“All swords are sold, for gold or glory or faith. And no one outbids your Brighthands' masters.”
Her voice rose. “A Dagorlind’s faith is not for sale.”
“Of course not,” he said, already turning back to his book. “Isn’t that what I said?”
Outside, the wind had quieted. Pale light filtered through the roof, catching notes of ash. The carvings on the walls were clearer now: rows of serpents intertwined with bells, each bell etched with a small circle at its heart.
“This shrine,” she murmured. “It’s not Dagorlind.”
Mallow glanced up. “Obviously.”
“Care to explain?”
He gestured at the wall. “See the way the pattern loops back? The Kelthi built their sanctuaries to echo. Every mark carries the sound of the last. If you sing in here, the walls sing back. Or they would, if you knocked some of this old moss off the stones.”
She looked around skeptically. “Kelthi did this? But they’re… we’re mostly animals, aren’t we?”
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He laughed once, sharp. “Is that what they teach you in those spires?”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “Why do you know so much about the Kelthi?”
“Why do you know so little?”
She pressed her palm to the wall, and beneath her skin she felt the faintest hum. It was so weak she might have imagined it.
She drew her hand back quickly. “We should go.”
“You just woke,” Mallow said. “Eat first.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He shrugged, poured steaming water into a tin cup, and set it beside her. “Drink, then. You’ve got the look of someone who’s been through the gods’ laundry.”
She laughed despite herself. “You’re a poet.”
“Only when exhausted. It lowers my standards.”
For a while they sat in relative peace, the fire cracking between them. But beneath that quiet was something heavier, the unspoken thing that had passed through their hands the night before. When he finally met her eyes, there was no accusation in his gaze, only a kind of wary distance.
“When we leave,” he said, “we’ll keep north. The way should follow the river until the pass. That’s where the village is.”
Lain nodded, though her thoughts had already drifted back to the wall, and to the carved bells, and to what might lie waiting in the mountain beyond them. The shrine had felt empty in the dark, but now she wasn’t so sure it had ever been empty at all.
Somewhere beneath the stone, faint and far away, a sound answered her thought like a single resonant chime, too low for Mallow to hear. She held her breath. Mallow began to pack his gear. The sound had vanished like it had never been. But its echo lingered, the way music sometimes does long after the last note has died.
The draught had dulled her edges for days, mainly leaving only ache and hunger, but now it seemed to sharpen her instead. The air tasted brighter. The smoke from the fire smelled sweet. The faint rasp of Mallow’s movements behind her struck her ears like rhythm.
Mallow glanced up as she turned toward him. “If we move, we can reach the village before dark. The snow’s worse higher up.”
His voice was even, unbothered. Not cruel, but distant – the tone of a man reminding himself this wasn’t his problem. He adjusted the strap across his chest, the movement brisk. “Can you keep up?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m not carrying you again.”
There was no smile in it, only practicality. She thought she should hate him for that, but instead the bluntness steadied her. His indifference was a kind of mercy.
She turned toward the shrine’s mouth. Light spilled across the floor, cold and clear, gilding the carvings on the wall. Bells and serpents, intertwined, must be the Kelthi mark. The sight stirred something deep in her chest, a chord between reverence and mourning.
When she stepped through the doorway, the world was unbearably vivid – the taste of frost on her tongue, the sting of light on snow, even the ache in her legs. For the first time in days, she felt wholly a part of things.
Mallow followed a few paces behind, his expression unreadable. If he saw the strange brightness in her eyes, he gave no sign.
“North, then,” he said.
She nodded once. “North.”
The air was so cold it burned the inside of her nose. The snow lay in ridges of crusted white, hard enough to hold their weight if they stepped carefully. Mallow led the way, his pace steady, boots crunching. Without the caps on her hooves, her claws splayed, and she enjoyed the pleasure of balance as they traversed the difficult terrain.
The first hour passed in silence. Then the world began to change.
The path narrowed into a ledge carved along the mountain’s side, where the wind gathered itself into long, keening notes. Lain had to stop once, pressing her hand against a rock to steady herself. The sound wasn’t just wind. It was… layered. Within its cry, she could hear something like voices, distant and half-buried, the echo of bells chiming through stone.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” Mallow said without turning.
She swallowed. “Nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. Every shift of air struck her antlers – small yet growing – as though they were instruments tuned to something beyond the range of ordinary hearing. Even her hooves picked up some movement in the frozen ground. It was disorienting at first, but then strangely grounding, as if the mountain itself was speaking in pulses only she could understand.
Mallow stopped to check their bearings, pointing toward the distant valley. “We’ll keep north until the ridge forks. There’s an old logging trail that drops down to the river bend. The village should be a few miles past that.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t looking at the map in his hand. Her gaze had gone to the far cliffs, where something like light, or a ripple in the air, seemed to move just beyond sight. For a heartbeat she thought she heard a chime again, so low it made her teeth ache.
“You’re falling behind,” he called back.
“I hear things,” she said before thinking.
He glanced over his shoulder, frowning. “Wind’ll do that.”
“It’s not the wind.” Her ears turned toward the sound, flicking now and again when some interesting thing struck them.
He studied her for a moment longer than necessary, as if gauging how much trouble she was likely to be. But when he caught sight of her turning ears, he grinned. “Saint’s sake, Lain.”
“Yes?” But she wasn’t focused on him. She realized with sudden joy that she was picking up on the distant sound of some sort of herd, moving through snow. She knew the way cloven hooves sounded as they crunched through ice and scree; and here there were many of them. She tilted her head, trying to get a count.
Mallow laughed outright – a chuckle he tried to hide, that grew into something full of glee.
Her ears dropped back. “Why are you laughing?”
“You should see yourself,” he said. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite so adorable as a deer girl trying hard to hear something.”
“Deer girl?” she asked.
“I’m teasing.” Then he turned to walk again, the glee still present in his voice. “You can listen as we walk, Little Hooves.”
They moved on. The air thinned further. Yet beneath the ache of cold, a strange exhilaration bloomed in her chest. Her steps grew surer. The hum in her antlers deepened until she could almost sense the shape of the land itself, the hollow of the ravine, the pulse of frozen water deep below.
It frightened her. But it also thrilled her, like hearing the first note of a song she already knew.
By midday, clouds had begun to gather over the ridge, heavy with snow. Mallow shaded his eyes against the glare. “Storm’s building.”
Lain looked back toward the half-buried shrine, now only a shadow in the distance.