CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Skallagrim
It did not take too long to find Aeshyr. Or, rather, it did not take too long for him to finish up his business inside the temple and come through the hallways to leave again. If I’d had to actually search him out, it would have been much longer. But as it was, while I stalked down unfamiliar hallways in the temple, he came as if to meet me, a wooden chest balanced on one black-plated shoulder. His limbs were deceiving in their length and leanness – but like this, one arm up and holding the chest – the hard lines of corded muscle were obvious in the golden light of the temple.
“Aeshyr! Halt. I have questions for you.”
The blasted man did not halt. But he did make a raspy sound of acknowledgement, as if inviting me to ask my questions while we walked. I bristled, then forced down the irritation, falling into step beside him. I sensed that as soon as we reached the courtyard he’d be in a hurry to leave, so I wasted no time asking the question that burned at the forefront of my mind.
“How did you know about Suvi?”
“I don’t know what a Suvi is.”
I held the tips of my tongue in check and fought the urge to cuff him on the back of his shaved head.
“You know whom I speak of. When you first saw me you said, ‘I see that you have found her.’ How did you know I’d found Suvi?”
“Ah.” That actually did make him halt. He watched me with those lifeless eyes. “You truly do not know what she is to you? How she’s done what she’s done?”
Every other thing that came out of Aeshyr’s mouth seemed designed to give offense. This time, I tensed against the idea that he could know more of Suvi than I did, but the gut-deep curiosity was stronger than any anger I felt. As if starving and standing before a plate of food proffered by this strange stone sky god, I found myself saying, “Please.” A pause. “She’s my...”
My little star my human my friend my captive my sacred hope my only salvation my female, mine mine mine...
The words remained inside me. Out loud, I just said, “Tell me what you know.”
I wondered if Aeshyr’s face was capable of any emotion at all. He was entirely expressionless as he said the words that brought my entire universe down into a single point and then made it all explode.
“She is your true mate, Skallagrim. Your fated bride.”
The hallway tilted. I snapped my wings to one side so that I did not go crashing into the wall. I regained my footing with immense focus and then, with a strangled voice I did not recognize and a lack of wit I did not wish to acknowledge, replied, “What?”
“Your mate. Your fated mate,” Aeshyr repeated slowly, as if dealing with a dunce. Which I rather felt like at the moment. He hoisted his crate into a better position on his shoulder and resumed walking. I scrambled to keep up with him, once again surprised by his sudden movement that didn’t really look like movement at all.
“You were mate mad, Skallagrim. For a very long time, even by our standards. I am not surprised it’s obliterated so much of your mind and memory.”
“Watch your words,” I hissed reflexively, even though he was right.
He did not appear to register my testy comment. He just ploughed on with that low voice, his tone as emotionless as his face.
“You descended into violent darkness because you had not yet found your bride. That is what mate madness means. I was born long after you went mad. I never saw you before today, but I’d heard tell of the half-stone sky, half-Bohnebregg prince who left his world in a rage and had not returned.”
His eyes remained forward, his steps ghosting over the stone.
“But now, you have returned. And clearly, you are no longer mate mad. The only prevention or cure for such a thing in a stone sky god is finding his true mate. When you mated Suvi and gave her your knot, you sealed your bond, tied your lifespan to her mortal one, and saved yourself from the madness.”
I did not even attempt to hide the way my feet tangled together, making me stumble and nearly fall.
“I have not mated her!” I said loudly, too loudly, my voice bouncing off the walls. There was a defensiveness in my reply that made me wince. Like I needed to prove that, despite my lecherously wandering eye, I hadn’t actually indulged in my wanting. “And I don’t have a knot!”
Aeshyr made a sound in his throat that could have meant anything. Maybe surprise, maybe simple acknowledgement.
“If you haven’t mated her then your current state of mind won’t last. Just being near her will not sustain your sanity for the long-term. Eventually, she will starburn, you will starburn, and you’ll grow a knot and give it to her. Or else you will fall into madness once again.”
Two children passed us as he said that, but they didn’t seem shocked by the talk of rutting and knots and madness. For the first time in the conversation, I realized that Aeshyr was not speaking the tongue of Bohnebregg, but I could fully understand him.
“Are you speaking the stone sky language?” The question was a good distraction from everything else he’d been saying. My head ached with the whirl of his words.
So did my cocks.
“No,” he grunted. “Riverdark.”
“Then how the blazes am I understanding you? It took days and days of endless talking and teaching to get to the most basic level of conversation with Suvi,” I snapped, my frustration mounting. We reached the curtains, then passed through them to the courtyard. The sun beat down and made Aeshyr look even paler than before.
“I assume you have webbing, but it must not be fresh enough to have picked up your mate’s language.”
Webbing. That word tickled something inside my brain. A ripple in the river.
“Here.” Aeshyr put down the Bohnebregg-constructed chest. Metal clinked inside it. His hands free, he pulled one side of his vest away from his pale, sinewy torso and dug inside an inner pocket. The pocket could not have been very large, but somehow his entire hand disappeared inside it and spent far longer rooting around in there than made any sort of sense. Finally, he pulled out something shimmery, crumpled in his fist.
He dropped it into my outstretched palm. Not it, them – two scraps of silken webbing with strands glinting in every colour imaginable. A name bubbled up, then burst without warning or context. Ruhnwebbe.
Instinct told me what I needed to do with the shimmering pieces.
“We... we need to put these in our ears,” I said slowly, as if testing the words, testing my own memory.
“Correct.” Aeshyr hoisted the chest up onto his shoulder again.
“Why do you even have these?” I eyed his vest with suspicion, wondering what else jangled in the impossibly large, unseen pockets.
“I never know when the mortal leadership here will die and I’ll need to begin communicating with a new Mother’s Eye. Besides, I’m a trader. I have all sorts of things on hand.”
“But I have nothing to trade for this.”
Not that I would consider giving the webbing back to him now. The thought of effortlessly communicating with Suvi made my insides feather with want. If he decided to take the webbing back now, he’d have to fight me first.
But Aeshyr made no move to swipe the bits from my hand.
“You can owe me.”
I eyed him closely as I put the pieces of webbing in the pocket of my robe.
“How come they didn’t make you wear a cotton robe to enter the temple?”
He plucked at the frayed edge of his vest with his free hand. “This is cotton. I always wear it when I come here.”