She felt wretched, but she couldn't bring herself to mourn the loss of Agatha, not the way the elders seemed. She had only become close to the Summoner in the past few years, whereas the elders had known her for a lifetime. For her, all that Agatha's passing meant was that it was time for The Hidden to select a new Summoner for the Sky Folk.
It was time for her to earn the respect of her clan.
She joined the line proceeding to the water, where Agatha's pyre waited. In one hand she held a burning, crackling torch - consume, crackle, pop, burn, wild laughter, warm hearth, blazing tree - she blinked away The Hidden pressing at the edges of her mind and shifted her grip on the bundle of flowers held in her other arm, an offering to the very spirits that had been flitting through the back of her mind, at the edge of her eyes, brushing the hem of her skirt, teasing her ears, since she was a child.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nimue engaged in some kind of heated conversation with her mother, Lenore, and her eyes narrowed. Nimue, who also had a startlingly strong connection to The Hidden, just as she did, but Nimue did not have the constant line of communication, nor the control of that relationships that she possessed and had honed over years of near solitude. Nimue also carried the mark of the Dark God on her back, and was called a demon. Nimue was her only competition for the role of Summoner, and yet it was still hard not to be confident that The Hidden would raise her over the other girl.
It was a strange thing, to be both celebrated and reviled. The elders of the clan had been so delighted since she had displayed her connection to The Hidden at a very young age. From that day on they had made it clear they expected her to become a key religious figure in the clan, Lenore as Head Priestess promoting her own daughter Nimue be damned. They had praised her for her ability to thrust her hand into fire and come away unscathed, to send messages born aloft on the breeze, and told her that she was something special.
For the children, for the people who would have been her peers, it was a different story. They heard their parents praise her and revile Nimue but they didn't see a difference between them. When they were young, Nimue sent branches creeping after people who made her angry, and when she was young, breezes had burst off of her at random. It was hard for a child to tell the difference and so she had become just as much an outcast as Nimue, and her only way into the good graces of her playmates had been to be the only other option besides the witch. If she wasn't, they had shunned her just as cruelly as they had the other girl.
She could feel a breeze playing under her skirts, almost like a cat tangling around her ankles as she walked, and the sensation was comforting. She had never been able to regret the powers The Hidden had blessed her with. The presence had at first been confusing and frightening, but once she realized that they were the nature spirits her people were descended from, she had delighted in them, felt honored and comforted by their presence in her life.
With them, she knew she wasn't as alone as she sometimes felt.
The wind rustled from beneath her skirts as she reached the sandy shoreline where Agatha's pyre was already burning, lit by the torch of the first elder to arrive. She fell in line, circling the old woman's body, and tossed her torch onto the pyre as well. To her right, she could breathe in and let the cool air off the water fill her lungs and feel the gentle lapping of the water at the edge of the lake like a caress upon her. It was why she enjoyed being near water so much, she felt the sensations of it so strongly that it was like a soothing massage after a long day of simply being her and balancing the tightrope of evil witch and future Summoner that she had walked for years.
On the second lap around the pyre, she laid her offering - a bundle of different flowers that had been carefully selected to include some of Agatha's favorites as well as healing herbs - upon the stone table and fell into her place for the ritual. As she looked around, she saw Lenore, whose eyes were constantly flicking to her daughter curiously, and Nimue, who looked as if she would rather be anywhere else but there. Aside from them, to her left was the old woman who, in the winter, would suffer from aches as the chill settled in her bones, who had always been grateful for her fire-warmed hands rubbing the pain from her shoulders and back. On her left was the elder who had often dropped comments to her, whether they were stories of the Sky Folk's history or herbal remedies or pearls of wisdom to guide her. Both of them gave her small, encouraging smiles and she felt her cheeks warm with pleasure.
Surely, with the support of everyone but the High Priestess, with her connection to The Hidden, she could not fail to become the new Summoner? And when that happened, those that had shunned her for her strange quirks and her breezes and her odd comments would celebrate those very things. She would help guide her people to a greater closeness with the Hidden. They would thank her for fulfilling her duties, and when she passed away, ancient and wizened as Agatha was, she would be celebrated and remembered just as fondly as a Summoner who had done much for her people.
"As Summoner Agatha communed with the Hidden, safeguarded our harvest, and divined the winds," Lenore recited, and her lips picked up in a faint smile at the mention of the winds that she had never been without. "Let Airimid's Breath push her down the Great River to the Other World where her voice will join the chorus of our ancestors. As Sky Folk, we are born in the dawn to pass in the twilight.
"To pass in the twilight," she echoed with the elders.
Darkness, faster than any night had ever fallen, and she turned to look over her shoulder, mouth falling open as she saw the moon's shadow passing before the sun. it was an auspicious sign, and an act that could only be accomplished by The Hidden. Looking around, even the other elders seemed surprised by such a great omen for the choosing of the new Summoner of their clan, and she was filled with hope.
It's true... what I always dreamed. There is a reason I'm like this. It is a blessing... It must be...
As the Fingers of Airimid crept up her neck and face her eyes pricked with tears. She could feel it, her future was upon her. This was the moment she became what she was born to be, this moment would be the reward for every barbed insult that had ever found purchase within her heart, for every cruel word or even fist that had ever struck her. Now was when she would take a step forward and become what she was always meant to be.
"The Hidden are with us. They choose the new Summoner," Lenore said, but her words were nearly drowned out as the cinders from the pyre began to rise and swirl in a column that was too controlled for it not to be the work of The Hidden. The whispers were always in her ears, to the point that she often pushed them aside or drowned them out with recitations of herbal remedies she learned from her mother or swordplay combinations her brother had taught her. Yet now they were so many, talking over one another. She heard the high-pitched, laughing tone she associated with wind, the short, sharp words of the flame, the soothing drawl of the water, and the deep, slow rumble of the earth. There were dozens of them, hundreds perhaps, all kinds blending together. She could only catch words here and there, none of them coming together to anything meaningful.
ChoosecracklefuturegustnowwavetimerockSummoner
The column of cinders rose higher into the air, gorgeous, dancing sparks of light like a thousand fireflies. The tip of it dipped down, ready to select the new Summoner, and she suddenly realized she was up on her toes, leaning up and forward desperately, pleading for The Hidden to choose her as they'd always chosen her.
But the cinders swung around, away from her, to the opposite side of the fire, swirling around... around... no... no... it couldn't be... please...
"No!" said one of the elders as the cinders continued to spin around Nimue. "No! Not her! It is not supposed to be her!"
All she could do was stare, feel the trace of tears as they spilled down her cheeks and taste the salt of them as they slipped between her parted lips. It was supposed to be her, they'd always told her it was going to be her. This was why she had never fought back when those children insulted her no matter how desperately she wanted to, because she'd known that one day they would see that her skills were not the curse they believed them to be. They would see that she was meant for something important...
Except they wouldn't. They never would, because her destiny, her fate, her reason for being had been stolen by none other than Nimue, the demonhagwitch, who had stood there watching the ritual as if she could have picked a hundred places she'd have rather been. Yet The Hidden had chosen to bless her, to elevate her to the position of Summoner within the Sky People, despite the fact that Agatha had been training her to take the role these past three years, despite the fact that her own people hated her, despite the fact that she was touched by darkness. Nimue was Summoner, not her.
"She is marked by dark gods!"
"It's witchcraft..."
"Sorcery!"
The elders were whispering, but it reached her as if from the bottom of a well. Her ears were ringing, and for once it wasn't from the voices of The Hidden but the pounding of her own heart. She swore she could feel her blood pumping in her veins and her head swam. For a moment she saw two, three, four pyres before her, and then they solidified. Lenore spun, eyes flashing, and said something sharp to the other elders, but it was drowned out by a loud buzzing.
But clear as day she heard Nimue speak up. "I don't want it. I don't want to be your Summoner!"
She doesn't even want it, she doesn't want it, she doesn't want it, doesn'twantitdoesn'twantit SHE DOESN'T CARE!
The thing she had dreamed of, prayed for, since she was a little girl, handed to Nimue on a silver platter, and she spat on it and handed it back. That was what broke her, and before she was conscious of her actions she was running, sprinting back up the shore and into the trees. She heard the elders behind her shouting, detected her name among them, but it made no difference to her. She had always been long-legged and fleet of foot and her big brother had made sure that she knew the forests around their home as well as any hunter did and could move just as silently.
Like a wraith she tore through the trees, tears speckling the ground behind her as ragged sobs mixed with gasping pants and finally drove her to her knees, wheezing and unable to breathe, hair a mess, eyes blurred with tears. The lakeside was far and away behind her, she knew that, she was far from Nimue and her arrogance and her blasphemy and her... her... her stupid belligerent face!
She flipped onto her back and screamed, and as she did, flames poured from her lips before dissipating into a spray of cinders and then harmless flakes of ash. It was a feat whose occurrences she could count on one hand with fingers to spare, something she had only been able to summon up in times of greatest emotion, and yet it further proved that she was something special, something important. The Hidden spoke to her, had given her these abilities, for a reason, and then they turned on her.
"Why?!" she shrieked furiously at the innocently gurgling river next to her. She was unsurprised to find that she had ended up in the place where her brother had taught her the art of swordplay, taking her far away from the other children and their hurtful comments to teach her something constructive. It was a place she'd always felt safe, where she'd never tried to contain the whims of The Hidden or ignore them, and now she hurled accusations at them.
"Why have you given me these abilities if you don't intend for me to use them?" she demanded of a thick oak tree.
"Why did you let me dream if you never intended to make me Summoner?" she interrogated a thick boulder to one side of the clearing.
"Why did you send me visions of the death of parents yet never warn me of this?" This was said to the grass.
"Did it amuse you to watch me hope knowing I would never be rewarded?" This to a bird's nest high in the branches.
"Why her? Of all people, why her? She doesn't want it! She has always rejected the powers you blessed her with and wished them gone!" To the smooth stones beneath the water.
"If you make me Summoner, you know I will serve you faithfully! I will not reject you!" A bargain offered to the mossy banks.
"Why didn't you pick me?" A final shriek directed towards the sky, sobs wracking her frame as she collapsed onto her side, curling into a ball as the plan she had laid out for her life, the guidelines she had always followed, her entire world, shattered around her and left her broken and confused and helpless.
In her dreams, The Hidden came to her even more easily. They showed her visions of what had passed and what was to come. She had seen the birth of her elder brother, and had watched herself give birth years from now. She had seen her brother wearing a horned helmet surrounded by Fey children of all kinds. She had seen other things too, seen Nimue in the arms of a handsome dark-skinned stranger, had seen Pym being lifted from a grubby dock by the hand of a raider. She had watched a spider crawl across her vision more than once, and had seen herself, clad in robes and powerful, something that had fueled her belief that one day she would be a person who was respected.
But not all her visions had been good. She had seen her parents pass on from fever years before it occurred and had been forced to watch helplessly as they wasted away in reality. She had known her brother would sail from her life on the Brass Shield before he himself did.
Tonight was one of the bad nights. Tonight she saw visions of the camp of the Sky Folk, saw the huts she had known since childhood burning, saw the people she had passed in the streets for years be cut down before some of them even knew they were in danger. She saw those same men in red robes wielding blood-stained swords, hacking through men, women, and children. She saw the temple sacked, offerings thrown about, saw Percival take off into the woods. She saw horses, their sides lit ablaze, eyes rolling, hooves tearing into the dirt as they tore through the trees, trying to save their own lives and escape the carnage.
She saw women cowering behind spindly trees, clutching their children protectively as ash rained around them.
She saw Lenore fall, passing a long, thin something onto Nimue with instructions to take it to Merlin.
In the middle of it all, she saw an older, bearded man in red robes watching the carnage with a satisfied smile on his face as before him a figure in a grey cloak sliced and hacked and cut and tore, his exceptional skill with a blade obvious despite, or perhaps shining brighter because of, his poorly-trained opponents. He cut a swath of devastation through her clan while the bearded man nodded approvingly.
It all flashed white, and then she stood alone in the same glade she had collapsed in, her unconscious body on the ground next to her. As she watched, her own form sat up and her eyes opened, glowing gold with power.
"You and Nimue will save them," she said, her voice layered with the same tones she recognized from the Hidden. "Arise, and go to your people. Take your revenge, take their great weapon from them. Arise, and run."
"Run," she gasped as she woke, and shot to her feet. She had no weapons on her person, but that didn't matter. The Hidden had bade her to go, and she would go. They would be her weapons against these red-robed bastards and she would carry out their will. For a moment she was poised, like an arrow strung taut and ready for release, and then she launched herself through the trees, leaping rocks and roots with ease, following a path she could walk backwards and blindfolded with more haste than she had ever felt before. Her heart pounded as she ran and her stomach dropped as she began to see the falling flakes of ash filling the trees. It was not a warning of the future, it was happening now, and she urged her legs to move faster. Wind twined around her legs and whipped her hair forwards around her face, embracing her as she tore towards the village.
It was as if she hadn't woken, all the details of her dream played out before her in horrifying clarity. The woman behind the tree that offered no protection from the sword of the red-robed men, child cradled in her arms. There were the invaders, now close enough that she could see the crosses branded into their crowns. They wielded their weapons with merciless brutality, all who came before them falling no matter how many they took with them. Fear paralyzed her for a moment, and then the closest burning shack exploded in a gush of air. She heard the command among the roar of flames.
"GO!"
Across the village she could see her own home was already ablaze with no one there to defend it and she tore across the edge of the treeline, dodging a swinging sword and replying with a kick to a red-covered chest before approaching the hut. She was still terrified - her brother had taught her to fight but she had never had to use that skill, not like this, but The Hidden were with her. As long as she did what they said, it would be alright. She didn't need to be afraid if they were with her, and so she tore into the flaming hut, rearing back immediately as a timber gave way and nearly crushed her.
It hung by the door, the small dagger her brother had given her before he departed from their clan, and she seized it, buckling it about her waist. The dagger seemed a paltry weapon compared to the bows, axes, swords being used outside. Still, it was important to her, and she knew how to use it. She knew the tender places of the body where the length of the blade didn't matter so long as your strike was accurate. A dagger could deal death as easily as any other weapon.
One of the red-robed men ran past and she lunged, the dagger coming up under his ribs and puncturing his lung. She heard the wheeze, felt blood gush over her hands, and knew she had connected when she heard the gurgle of blood filling his airways. She ripped the knife free and ran into the fray, knowing there was no hope for her enemy.
"Die, heathen!"
One of the red-robed men had spotted her. He was atop a massive roan horse, sword raised and ready to cleave her in two. Take their weapons from them, that was what The Hidden had bade her to do, wasn't it?
She stretched out her hand towards a firepit that had been kicked apart by the chaos, coals scattered everywhere, and reached for The Hidden. "Burn," she bade, and the flames responded, leaping from the confines of their scattered border stones and blazing into the face of the charging horse. The beast reared, eyes rolling in fear, and the monk toppled free from the saddle. To his credit, he kept his feet, catching himself and staggering as his mount bolted from him but still ready to fight. Her eyes lingered on the sword in his hands. Take their weapons.
But that wasn't precisely it, was it?
The monk charged at her, blade upraised, and she spun sharply away from him, dodging his wild strike - he was clumsy, far too clumsy to catch someone who had been trained by her brother - and found herself behind him. She buried her blade within his spine and twisted and the legs went out from under him. Paralyzed, this one would never walk again, and amongst the Sky Folk screaming in fear and the monks riding their horses with abandon, he would likely be trampled to death rather than live as a cripple. A small mercy.
She scooped up the sword the monk had dropped and brought it around at the sound of pounding footsteps, burying it in the gut of a monk who had thought to creep up behind her with an upraised axe and split her skull. He drove himself onto the hilt, the tip of the sword popping through his ribs at the back. He went limp and she was forced to turn aside to dodge the falling axe. The blade buried itself in the soft earth, handle sticking up, and she looked down at it as she braced her foot against the monk's corpse and ripped the sword free. How was she supposed to keep taking up their weapons?
But it wasn't weapons. It was 'take their great weapon.' What was the great weapon of these red-robed bastards?
The answer was before her eyes in a moment. A grey-robed figure was within view. He rode atop a black destrier and was not even fighting despite the two swords strapped to his waist. He simply observed the carnage around him, detached from it as if he could not have cared less for the blood being spilled. As she watched, he dismounted his horse, and when he did, his hood shifted back enough that she could see marks on his face, as if tears had been drawn there in ash. He knelt before a red-robed man with a beard, the same man from her vision, and then rose and addressed him. They spoke without fear, as if they were so confident in their victory that nothing would dare harm them despite the chaos.
"The Weeping Monk." The moniker was a tickle in the back of her brain, and from the furious burst of fire off of a collapsing hut next to her, she knew she had her target.
"Take my words to them," she requested of The Hidden and felt wind swirl around her, yanking loose strands of hair into her face. She knew now that the monks, red and grey, would hear what she said on the breeze no matter how far apart they were from her or how loud the din of battle was. Beyond her, she could see people tied to crosses being lit aflame. It turned her stomach and filled her words with venom.
"You are their greatest weapon," she whispered on the breeze. "The Hidden have given me a charge, and I will complete it. I will take you from your masters."
She started sprinting, chasing her own words across the village, dodging as a monk leapt from behind one of the few huts not ablaze and aimed a sword for her throat. She dodged, catching the tip of his blade on her upper arm and laying open a long gash that sent pain tearing down to her fingers, yet she did not falter. She had her mission, this was the task The Hidden had set her. Perhaps she would not be Summoner, but that did not mean there was no plan for her, no purpose. This would not shake her faith in the spirits of nature who had never abandoned her. She would not abandon them.
She dragged her dagger around and slit the throat of the monk before bringing the sword to bear and cleaving his head from his shoulders. She turned and nearly impaled herself on a spear thrust. This one grazed her side and she shrieked in pain but kept pressing forward, the tip of her sword diving cleanly through the man's heart. The spear fell from his nerveless fingers. She stabbed her sword into the ground, heaved the spear aloft, and threw it with a grunt of agony as the motion tugged the wound on her ribs, felt the flesh tear from the stretch of her muscles. The spear found its mark though, boring deeply into the gut of a monk and tossing him off balance and into a flaming hut. He writhed and wailed as the flames caught his robes.
She was bleeding but she was still coming. She could see the red-robed monk standing over a cluster of downed Sky Folk being held captive by a horde of his brothers. His gaze, and the gaze of the grey-robed monk, were fixed on her as they advanced, having clearly been able to pick her from the crowd as the one whose words had been born to them.
"You!" she howled, aiming the tip of her sword at the elder monk, the one who seemed to lead these people. "You will die for this! By The Hidden I swear it!"
Behind him, more crosses were being raised with Sky Folk tied to them, bundles of kindling at their bases. More monks were performing the duty of sparking the wood and as the first bundles caught, she stretched out her hand. "Spare your people," she asked The Hidden, and the fire obeyed, leaping from the kindling and leaving it smoking harmlessly, but consuming the robes of the monks who had lit the pyres as quickly as if they had been doused in oil. Those standing too close, including the leader, reared back and shielded their faces from the glow of the flames.
"Witch!" spat the leader, pointing a damning finger at her. "Take her! She will burn for her crimes against God!"
"I will never burn," she whispered, and the wind snatched her words from her lips and ferried them across the diminishing gap to the Father and his grey-cloaked shadow. She saw the eyes of the man widen slightly as she stepped carelessly into a smoldering firepit, flames licking her legs, and passed through unharmed, the fire merely bounding at her calves like a devoted puppy greeting its master upon their return. As a child she had been ignorant, had foolishly thrust her hands into the pretty flickering of the cookfire. Her mother had shrieked, but it had only been pleasantly warm against her skin. It had not burned her. Fire had never harmed her, and that had been how she had learned of her connection to The Hidden. She did not need to fear the flames.
Arrows. Arrows cutting down monks and sending the Sky Folk who had been cowed sprinting into the trees as their moment to escape was revealed to them. The monks scattered under the hail from... somewhere, it was impossible to tell. Those Sky Folk made for the safety of the forest and some monks who had their wits about them still tried to grab for them, to stop them from making their escape. Her eyes narrowed and she changed her direction, feet pounding into the blood-mixed mud and she cut deeply into the back of a monk who had nearly managed to catch a woman weighed down my her child in her arms. He fell with a scream and she hurled her dagger cleanly into the throat of another. He dropped, fingers coming up, twitching spasmodically as they tried to pull the blade from his throat. He succeeded, only for the resulting rush of blood to drag him into death. She seized her dropped weapon as she passed and kept tearing into as many monks as she possibly could.
A whinny stopped her and she turned. A white courser stood, saddled and ready, beside a tree. As she looked at it, it bowed its head and lowered its front slightly, just enough to bend it into a unmistakably clear bow. On its head was a distinctive medicine hat marking and ermine spots were scattered above the hoof on three out of four legs.
"Protect the Summoner."
Nimue. The one person who she could have solidly said before all this that she hated, the girl who stole the title she had been promised by all the elders years ago. But that was then. This was not the time for selfishness, not when dozens of her people lay dead or dying in the dirt, when their flaming corpses had been hoisted as warnings, when their people had been attacked and slaughtered for no reason.
She didn't hesitate, thrusting the sword through the loop on her belt and sheathing her dagger. Her foot slid into the stirrup and she swung into place atop the saddle, taking up the reins. A wind whipped around her, swirling ash up into a column instead of cinders falling down around her. It was a perverse reversal of what she had dreamed would happen - how long ago had Nimue been chosen?
The horse reared and then lunged into a full run, weaving amongst the trees with a skill seldom seen. A gift from The Hidden, she had no doubt. They had given the horse to her to save their Summoner, because as darkness fell around her she did not bother with steering. She simply gave the animal its head to guide itself in the driving rain and it seemed to know where it needed to go. The howling of wolves filled the trees around her and she kicked the horse's flank, trying to coax every last ounce of speed from the animal. She had seen the caged wolves amongst the monks. She had no doubt they had been trained to follow the scent of Fey people. Those wolves ahead of her were tracking someone, likely Nimue, given that her mount was heading straight for the snarls and snaps that were growing lauder over the rumble of thunder and crack of lightning.
But then the storm was gone, the sound of the wolves were gone, and she went tearing through a clearing containing a large, flat plateau of stone that was decorated by the eviscerated bodies of the wolves. Nimue had no formal training with a blade. That many wolves, they should have made short work of her. The Hidden, perhaps? They had saved the girl once before when that bear attacked her, perhaps they had guided her limbs as they sometimes guided hers.
The sky was lightening and the trees were thinning. It was into the morning now and they were approaching the edge of the forest, and there, there was Nimue, leaning against a tree, retching her guts up onto the grass, as behind her...
She drew her horse up short, finally making use of the reins she'd clenched so tightly despite never using them through her wild ride. Behind Nimue was one of the red-robed monks, and if The Hidden were merciful, he was dead, or would be shortly. Roots had lifted him aloft, tendrils of wood plunging in and out of his skin, twitching gently underneath the surface of him, tearing his body apart from the inside most likely. His foot twitched and a strangled moan escaped him, and she understood why Nimue was vomiting. It was a gruesome sight, made no less gruesome by the fact that it was done by her hands.
"Nimue," she barked, drawing her horse up next to the girl. "The Hidden sent me to you."
Nimue was wild-eyed and covered in spatters of blood - wolf's blood, at a guess, as she hadn't seen the girl anywhere in the fighting back in the village. She looked half-made with her hair full of leaves like it was, but it only took a glance over her shoulder and the monk being slowly torn apart by roots for her to turn and seize up the long, thin package lying in the grass behind her - the package Nimue's mother had handed off in her vision. It held a sheath, apparently, for she drew it up to cover the thick-bladed sword she was holding, obviously what she had used to butcher those wolves.
She stretched out a hand to the younger girl - there was blood on her hands, she hadn't noticed until now - and Nimue seized it, settling on the saddle behind her with the sword sheathed and balanced across her thighs.
"I... Th-Thank you, Morgause," she heard Nimue murmur as she flicked the reins. The horse took off at a less breakneck but still respectable speed, making for Hawksbridge.
She huffed. "Don't mention it."