“I know all the stories about Raska and Tion, Father,” Adalina protested. The eagerness in her face fell away.

  “Nobody knows all the stories. And you don’t know this one. It's about their first encounters with the medicine men.”

  "This isn't a fantasy Grandpa made up, is it?" Adalina interrupted.

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “You know the first part. How Raska petitioned the great King Cadrafel for the Seveners' homeland. She wanted a place for us to live in safety, free from drafts into the army and safe from the wars between Giftahl, the South and the raiders of Maralon. More than anything, though, she wanted a place for her faith to survive. A home for the truth, she called it.

  The Westerners have another version of this tale but Raska maintained that Cadrafel believed in her, deep in his heart. She said the chariot of war was moving too fast for him to stop it, but he knew that one day both Earth and Heaven would need the Seveners. He gave her this forest, to be kept forever as part of his kingdom, but to hold a special status apart from the rest. His advisors were furious, and they blamed his later defeats on this mistake. But the politics of the Godsroof meant nothing to Raska and the Seveners now. They plunged into the deep forest and left everything behind them. They were free to be themselves and follow their own way. Free to pray to the gods, not for favours, but for a return to the harmony of the first days."

  Adalina nodded as he spoke, waiting for the moment when the story would diverge from the one she had always known.

  "The king warned Raska that life here would be hard. The easternmost settlers spoke of evil monsters and dangerous beasts, and ghouls that talked endlessly of their unfulfilled dreams. But the Seveners never expected to find humans living here. Perhaps there were only one or two, for they were rarely seen. The Seveners didn't dare to travel alone, not even after they stole knowledge of the paths, but these wild fellows roamed the land freely. Even sleepers seemed to fear them. Occasionally one appeared out of nowhere in a moment of need and closed a wound with a touch, or left powerful tinctures at the door of someone who was sick and dying. They became known to our ancestors as the medicine men, who saw them as part of the fabric of the forest.

  Raska declared they must be priests, and that Seveners should avoid them. After all her work, she did not want their children swayed to singular worship and led off to the battlefields by honey-tongued preachers.”

  “It sounds like they were priests,” Adalina commented, “if the stories are true. Perhaps priests of Farlean, if they could heal the sick?”

  “But they denied it, and which priest declines to exalt their chosen god? Eventually, Tion broke his wife's decree.”

  “Wasn’t he always ignoring her rules? Is it why she left him in the end?”

  “It could be part of it. Though this was before even their children were born. They were still young and very much in love, but Raska was dying of the disease we named after her.”

  Adalina frowned. “I know this part. They used the barrow needle cure, like they did for Kuno and...” She trailed off.

  “And Ingo’s mother,” Luthold added softly. The barrow needle cure for the Raskan Fever usually killed the patient before the disease. It was a last resort that caused the recipient agony and torment. An uncomfortable feeling accompanied his memory of Lena's funeral, and he pushed it aside.

  “It’s the only remedy we’ve ever had, but it’s a cruel one at best. Tion brushed her with the needles and soothed her with scursleaf, but the illness spread and she shivered and shook under the pain of the treatment. The needles caused her fair hair to fall and soon she looked like an old woman, close to death.

  Tion begged her to go west and see a priest of Farlean, but she refused. He was ruled by his heart and only wanted to fix the problem in front of him. But Raska was guided by her principles and pride. She’d won this land from the king himself. How could she abandon her faith for fear of death? Can you imagine the shame that would have been heaped upon her? The king’s advisors muttering from their alcoves in the corners of the Godsroof that she’d come to her senses, that she’d finally chosen the Summer Trinity. As her strength faded, she responded to every entreaty with a single phrase. Can you guess what it was?”

  He watched as Adalina mouthed the words that she had heard so many times, connecting them to this story as they connected to all others.

  “Medicine and poison. One beast with two heads."

  Luthold nodded. "If she accepted the healing of Farlean, she'd have to accept her battles, too. The Summer Trinity of Hurean, Farlean and Manafel had banded against the rebellion of Terlos. The followers of Maralon had gone their own way, raiding others without pity. Sindrah's servants ruled the roads and the underworld which spread through the shadows of every nation. Only the Lost Daughter, the silent, nameless god of death summoned no followers. Perhaps she did not need to, because all souls found their way to her in the end. There was a deeper meaning to the saying, too. Fortune and misfortune are bound together for our people. We cannot have one without the other.

  She gave her whole life to defending our people’s way – honouring all the gods but serving none. Remembering them as they once were and will be again, when they lay down their spears and the heavens are made whole. She could have taken a better chance to survive by turning away from Maralon of the Waves and Sindrah of the Shadows, and most of all from Terlos, the Jealous Brother. But then who would keep the memory that the gods had once been friends, even a family?”

  “Are we the last people who remember it, Father?”

  The question hung over them as they marched onwards, a people fleeing the invasion of their home by a force indifferent to any of their ways. Luthold shivered and continued the tale, burying his uneasiness beneath the simple joy of blowing the dust off an old story.

  “For good or ill, Tion found another way to save her.”

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  “The medicine men. They were not priests after all?”

  “We never learned, but we didn’t need to. Whatever they were, they didn’t want to be bound to us any more than we did to them.

  Tion was hunting when he crossed the tracks of a lone traveller. Only one sort of person crossed the forest alone, unafraid of its dangers. An idea struck him. He ran to his village and gathered in a satchel the richest cheeses and spiced meats they had — things that should have been shared with everyone. He filled a jar with aged berry wine and pulled out his thickest coat, the one he took from Garva, and slung it over his shoulder.

  People tutted that Tion was going to drown his sorrows alone in some shady copse. He ignored them, dragged Raska from her sick bed and took her with him, delirious and unaware, to the trail of the medicine man. He followed it and met Orovos, the eldest of their kind. I believe the medicine men have – or had – as many stories about Orovos as we have about Raska and Tion. The Levonin know some. They live close to where he passed his final days, talking to himself by Lake Silence.

  The Northern families, who would later become the Sullin, had discovered that it wasn't always safe to approach the medicine men unexpectedly. Sometimes vines grew beneath the feet of those who stalked them and spread to their necks, choking the breath out of them. But Orovos did not attack. Perhaps he saw that Tion had brought neither spear nor sword. He watched his visitor, who laid down a sick woman at the mossy foot of a big elm tree and sat on the ground beside the old man. Tion opened his satchel. He took out the meat and bit a chunk off it. He watched Orovos out of the corner of his eye.

  Tion paid no heed to rank, title or appearances. That’s what got him in trouble with the king, but it’s also what won him Raska’s heart and his freedom. Where others would have seen a powerful and frightening conjurer, he saw a lonely old man whose eyes strayed to the meat and wine. Everyone likes good food and company. They passed the jar back and forth until it was empty. Then Tion laid out the thick, well stitched coat and backed away. Still without uttering a word, he roused Raska to leave.

  Orovos called out to him: ‘What do you want in exchange?’ Tion answered: ‘Mine is a gift that incurs no debt or obligation.’ Orovos gave a low bow and replied: ‘As is mine.’ By the time Tion returned to the village, Raska was walking upright. The next day her fever broke. On the third her rash cleared. She bore none of the scars that afflicted other survivors of that terrible disease. The only difference was her hair. When it grew back, it was thick and dark like the night, so that people compared her beauty to Sindrah now, whereas before they compared her to Farlean.”

  “It fits with the other stories.” His daughter looked thoughtful. “But what’s the rest? Why was I never told these things? Why didn’t Heridan take Lena and look for a medicine man?”

  “That’s a more recent development. For generations, there was a happy friendship between the Seveners and the medicine men. The clans did not approach too often with their unspoken requests. When they did, though, their wish was understood and often granted. Some boys and girls had strange dreams and left their huts in the night. When they returned it was to say goodbye before leaving as an apprentice to one of the strangers. It was sad to lose a child that way, but it was better than death, and sadness is part of life in the forest. There was a balance, and nobody felt beholden to anyone else. The medicine men seemed to respect the Seveners, and never tried to win their loyalty for one benefactor over the others. The Seveners, for their part, never tried to pry into their secrets.

  Until, without warning, a change came over them. The faces of the medicine men filled with doubt and horror, as though a terrible truth had been revealed to them that they could neither understand nor speak of. In time the doubt turned to bitterness and anger. They gave themselves over to wild, unpredictable outbursts. One day they might fall on their knees and weep in gratitude at a gift of wine. Another day they might spurn it and curse the name of the clan that made the offering, and then diseases and incredible, unlikely accidents would befall their village. The Sullin started chasing them away. Parents bolted their doors at night, lest dreams summon their children to join the cursed loners whose wails and cries blew across the treetops under the moonlight. Some children still managed to slip away. When they returned to say goodbye, they looked miserable and haggard, and no one came out to meet them.

  Generation after generation, they became less and less like men, until their lowest point in the lives of our grandparents. It became as suicidal to go near the medicine men as it was to enter a sleeper’s nest, but their numbers also dwindled. The Sullin took to hunting them down, and managed to catch one or two in moments of confusion. The Levonin tried to help them, at first. The elders of the other clans forbade us from telling stories about them. When children got the dreams, we invented tales about ghosts and lost spirits. The true story about Raska’s illness came to be known as ‘Tion’s Mistake.’ Those unspoken agreements constituted a pact, the elders said. Tion had fettered the Seveners to strangers, whose purpose and origin he didn’t even know. We were the last generation to hear it, and we swore never to tell it to our children. It was to become one of those stories kept only by the elders.”

  “Was that Tion’s mistake, or our elders'?” Adalina asked.

  Luthold sighed. “No one knew what to do, Ada. Nobody knew what was best. Do you know who had the dreams in our clan?”

  She shook her head, then her mouth fell open.

  “Pasha!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly. Quiet, though.” Luthold looked over his shoulder. No one paid them any heed. The clan was tiring. Time had passed quickly while he was telling the story. He would need to announce a break soon, or some of the older folk would be forced to ask for one.

  “So, that’s what happened when her parents kept her in for a whole month and we all wondered what she’d done, that she wasn’t allowed out to play in the middle of summer...”

  “If she’d known the stories, she’d have tried harder than she did to escape from their home. She’d have believed that entering the forest would cure her of the visions and nightmares. She’d have been right, but it would have been a bitter medicine. A poison.”

  “Were you ever going to tell us?”

  “We got used to it, and the very mention of them felt like bad luck. We were afraid of the power of those tales. Besides, nicer stories had begun to take their place.”

  Adalina smiled, realisation dawning on her face. “Of course! Tion ‘the Gift Bearer!’ The tradition of sweets on Terlos’ night. You all said you were bringing back an old ritual, but you made it up, didn’t you?”

  Luthold laughed out loud, “It goes all the way back to when Elder Oslef let slip the name ‘Gift Bearer.’ I remember his face when Kuno asked, ‘why did you call him that?’ He came up with a beautiful lie though – one for the younger children about Tion descending from the night sky to leave sweets and toys. We spent days gathering the honey to make good that lie. Aimar and Ethren made more dolls that winter than pots and pans... and just like that a beautiful tradition was born.”

  They both laughed. Then the mention of Ingo and Oslef’s names caught up with them and they fell into a poignant silence, each lost in recollections of the one they held dear.

  Luthold called a halt to the march and families mingled and chatted in low voices, each keeping a lookout into the darkness around them. He saw Winilind approach, and their eyes met. She did not come close, she was busy helping Lien find a place to nurse her baby, but he thought she understood what he had told Adalina. He had only told her part of it, though. A smaller, more painful part of it, only he and Winilind knew. Their part.

  “What does it have to do with us, Father?” Adalina asked. "You said the story is connected to me and Oli."

  Luthold could see people waiting to speak with him.

  “Ask your mother, but only when you're alone. Tell her I agree that it's time you know.”

  He was not ready to relive those memories. He was not ready to unleash the submerged grief they would haul to the surface. And, he did not yet understand everything that had happened. It suited him to go south before leaving the forest. He might find answers there if he was lucky. Or, perhaps, if he was unlucky.