The Chosen of Anthros (2 page)

He huffed out a deep breath and plunged his fingers into his socket. His fingers sank into the warm, wet cavern of his eye socket, and as if nothing was holding it in place his eye popped free of its confines. Blood tricked down his cheek and there was a strange moment where the All Father was looking
down
out of that one eye as it dangled against his face.

His hands shook and his body responded in turn. His chest rose and fell frantically in erratic breaths from the pain and the disorientating feeling his double vision brought on. He reached into the folds of his white robe smearing blood over the ink stains, and pulled out a knife. Before he could think about what he was doing, the All Father cut the tendons and veins free allowing his eye to fall into the Well of Wyrding.

He cried out in pain. His hands began to shake and the knife slipped out of his wet grip. It sunk beneath the surface of the wyrd like it was falling through mud. Like his tear before, the blood didn’t mix with the wyrd, only trailed deeper and deeper into the murky depths.

The silver wyrd held his eye steady, not allowing it to sink like the knife did. The bloody organ bobbed up and down on ripples of wyrd.

“Yes,” Skuld said, reaching up to his empty socket. Blood bloomed between her fingers as her hand closed over the wound. “Now your eye is dead. It’s a sleeping eye. While your waking eye is alive in the sky, darklings will be weaker. But when the sleeping eye dominates the night, then the nine worlds will know fear, for you won’t be able to see what is coming in the night, and you won’t be able to protect them.”

The All Father said nothing. Though she had healed his eye, the pain of his loss still slithered through his head with fiery intensity. He groaned through his teeth barely hearing what she said.

“Now,” Skuld said. “You may see what we see.” She dipped a finger into the wyrd and when she removed it, a sparkling drop of wyrd clung to her long nail. She held it up to the All Father. “Just a drop will do.”

He leaned down toward her finger, and opened his mouth. The drop of wyrd fell upon his tongue. A taste like honey and rain flooded his mouth, and suddenly his surroundings vanished.

He existed in the void, and around him were stars and darkness beneath him the Tree at Eget Row. Around the tree the rainbow road of Eget Row ran like a web, streets reaching out to doorways to all of the nine worlds.

It was something he’d seen many times before from his room in the Ever After, but this time it was different. This time there was a darkness on the road. A darkness that slithered and writhed over the cobbles of Eget Row like a perverse snake. The shadows reached out, and pulled themselves along the rainbow road, seeking out new homes.

As the All Father watched, he became aware of doorways splintering, cracking, and allowing the darkness into the worlds. The fabric that kept Eget Row safely away from the nine worlds and allowed Heimdall to police the expanse of the void and protect the nine worlds, was crumbling.

The darkness reared up before one such broken door, and like a cloud of charred smoke it slipped through the fissures and into the world.

“No!” the All Father cried out, coming back to himself. He looked at Skuld with his one and only eye.

“Yes. Your hatred for the darklings has called them from their hiding places. Your disobedience of the laws that govern the void has given power equal to the darklings as you created when you made Boran. There must always be a balance. If there is absolute good, there has to be an absolute bad.”

Over the rise of the hill Anthros called again.

“I have to stop it.” The All Father’s eye was rooted on that crest of hill, which hid the monstrous wolf from site. He was bound to a root of the great tree at Eget Row that rested within the Well of Wyrding. Anthros was bound by a silvery strand of thread, which was wyrded like the strongest steal. He’d never escape without the power of a god to help him, and the darkling gods weren’t able to enter Eget Row with Heimdall standing guard.

“I’ve already told you what I thought would help.” Skuld told him.

“Is that certain? If I do what you suggest and seek the aid of Surt, will that purge the darklings from the nine worlds?”

“I thought you would have learned by now, purging the darklings from the nine worlds is what got you into this mess. They can never be purged, but if you lessen your power it stands to reason theirs will lessen as well.”

“Then that’s what I must do,” the All Father said. He gazed with his one eye off in the distance where he could see the fires of Muspelheim burning like a cancerous plague in the void. “I must go to Surt.”

Muspelheim.

Surt.

The words chased Abagail into wakefulness. The last visage of the dream ebbed away from her like fog against the coming of the sun. She stretched her arms and gave a great yawn.

Despite how foul the words that woke her were, none of the anxiety they would have normally brought plagued her that morning.

Around her the camp was coming to life. Some of the harbingers that rescued her from the frost giants were already awake. The raven twins, as she had come to learn they were called, were already awake and talking to each other some distance from the other harbingers. When Abagail woke they looked over to her in unison and it made her shiver.

Abagail had steered clear of Huginn and Muninn as much as she could in the days since she was rescued. None of the other harbingers treated the raven twins differently, but for some reason Abagail just couldn’t warm up to them. She had a sinking suspicion that they were always watching her. Their stares were almost reverent at times, like they knew something more about Abagail than she knew about herself.

A flurry of silent activity kept the camp busy as some made preparations to leave and others tended to breakfast. Her eyes slid over the crowd looking for Rowan; the woman she used to think of as Aunt Mattelyn.

When she didn’t see her among the crowd of harbingers, Abagail let out a silent prayer to the All Father, thanking him for that respite. When she’d first met Rowan she thought it was going to be a happy time. Well, maybe not happy, but she at least thought she would find a modicum of comfort being around a family member who had gone through what Abagail was going through.

She’d been wrong. Rowan wasn’t her aunt at all. Apparently Rowan didn’t even like Abagail’s father. She assured Abagail that it wouldn’t stop her from helping her learn to control the plague, but she hadn’t precisely been warm to Abagail on their trip.

“On your feet,” a voice barked behind her.

Abagail groaned. She didn’t need to look to know that the person who spoke was Rowan. The white-haired harbinger stalked by her, dropping something on the ground beside Abagail as she plodded past her through the snow. Abagail glared at every black-clad inch of the lady’s back. She would never glare at her face, but as long as Rowan couldn’t see her she felt safe enough to glare.

It was a small victory.

Abagail couldn’t deny that Rowan was a striking woman. Her hair was as white as the snow around them, belying the harbinger’s younger features. Where her hair had been braided days before with feathers and beads, now it hung loose to her waist.

Rowan crouched beside a shackled figure some distance away from Abagail. It was Fortarian, Rowan’s brother who had recently played host to the darkling god Gorjugan until Abagail had evicted him from the man’s body. The loss of the darkling god didn’t make Fortarian any less suspect. He had been a powerful darkling before Gorjugan had taken residence in his body, and for that Rowan didn’t seem inclined to trust him. Abagail couldn’t blame her, she was always on guard around Fortarian as well.

Abagail had the feeling that Rowan didn’t really trust anyone.

Abagail sat up with a grumble and smoothed down the arrant locks of her short dark hair. Her hazel eyes took in the package Rowan had dropped beside her. In fact, it wasn’t a package at all, but a rough looking work glove, like the one she’d lost weeks before when she almost died at the hands of the nix.

Abagail didn’t waste any time pulling the brown glove over her blackened hand, the hand corrupted with the shadow plague. This glove was better. It fit, and the tips of the fingers didn’t harbor any dirt and debris like her last one did.

With the glove in place, Abagail felt freer. She didn’t have to constantly guard her hand from coming into contact with others. Another small victory, but this one made all the difference. Now she couldn’t accidentally infect someone.

With her hand hidden, Abagail could pretend she didn’t have the shadow plague. She could imagine that she’d never caught it tending bees and that she was just another normal person in a world gone insane.

But now she didn’t have to worry about that. Now she was with the harbingers of light and they would teach her how to control the plague. Soon she would be free of it, as soon as she could learn to keep her emotions in check.

In fact, that’s what Rowan’s first lesson with her was.

“Before we can go any further, you have to learn how to control your emotions,” Rowan had told her. Then she went on and did everything in her power to irritate Abagail. When Abagail finally got angry enough to say something, Rowan would chide her about giving in to her darker emotions.

It was ironic to Abagail that Rowan was to be her mentor. A woman who claimed not to harbor any ill feelings for Abagail, yet clearly did. Forced to train with her on a daily basis it was hard to hide her true feelings from Abagail.

Beside Abagail, her sister Leona stirred. Her hand was clutched around the hilt of the large hammer they’d gotten from their father. Initially their neighbor Rorick had been carrying it, but just a few nights before Leona had somehow activated it. Now she was the only one who could carry it.

And she still sleeps with her hand locked around it, as if anyone can lift it let alone steal it,
Abagail thought with a smile.

She didn’t like how Leona was growing up. It reminded Abagail so much of how she’d been forced to grow up too soon. Leona was six years younger than Abagail and already she knew how to fight and had made the hard call to kill two people who threatened the life of her sister.

Abagail frowned.

“What’s got your pretty face in a tangle this morning?” Skye asked. The light elf crouched down beside her and tousled Leona’s hair. Her blonde sister grumbled and yanked the covers over her head. Skye laughed.

“Well?” he asked again, turning his violet eyes on Abagail.

She hated the way his smile made her heart hitch. Even worse, she hated that her hair was so wild every morning they’d traveled together.

She pawed at her tangled locks, hoping he hadn’t seen the mess her hair was in. Abagail blushed.

If he thinks
this
is pretty, maybe he needs his eyes checked,
she thought.

“Just thinking about the journey,” Abagail said. It was only partially a lie.

“Well, tonight it will come to an end,” he told her, looking off to the south. “Tonight we will be in New Landanten, and you will be in the harbinger settlement.”

“Does this place have a name?” Abagail asked. “No one has mentioned a name this entire time.”

Skye shrugged, “I think they call it Haven or something. It doesn’t have an official name, no.”

“How original,” Abagail said. She rolled her eyes.

“They need to call it something.” Skye shrugged.

“And then we will part ways?” Abagail asked, ignoring what he said. Her chest tightened at the thought. She blinked several times and looked away from the elf.

“Going to miss me?” he smirked at her, his full pink lips curving up in a way that didn’t help her heart one bit.

“That’s not what I said,” Abagail said.
Yes
, she thought. She could feel the heat rushing to her cheeks.

Skye smiled again.

Her blush deepened.

“You can come to New Landanten any time you want. A lot of the younger harbingers like to come there for our festivities,” Skye said. “And I’m sure that I will stop in every now and then to see you.”

“Festivities? You have festivals?”

“Well, not really planned festivals, but there’s almost always a big gathering every night. The humans can’t handle our drink.” Skye laughed.

Leona huffed and flipped the covers off herself. She made a spectacle of folding her blankets and jamming them into a pack the harbingers had provided them. Then she stomped away, the hammer held in her hand, to find breakfast.

“I think she has the right idea,” Skye said. “You should get ready to go.”

After the elf had left Abagail cleared up her bedding, depositing it in the pack Leona had used. Then she went to find some breakfast as well.

Catching sight of Rorick, Abagail headed toward his fire.

“You really need to trim your beard,” she said to him as she stepped up beside him.

Rorick turned to her with a smile, stroking his beard that was now nearly down to his chest. His blond hair was dark with grease and in desperate need of washing. She imagined her hair didn’t look too clean either.

“I could tell you the same thing,” he said to her.