Divinity. Mortality. War.
Silva, Queen of Wolves, Lady of the True Woods, seeks her only friend Etan, who, along with other deities of the Council of Divinity, has gone missing for reasons unknown. Her search traps her on a world where the wolves ha...
The mountains whispered to the witch, telling her the knowledge that was her birth right.
Thalaea had passed through here. A week before; she and the wolves had stayed in the caves. The mountains sang the younger woman's name to Enendoa, recognizing her as a witch as well.
Enendoa spent the night in the caves, sleeping on the hard rock, absorbing the secrets of the mountains. By morning she knew what she had to do.
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24th Cige, 709 years after Landfall
The wolves had left the mountains.
The witch had followed them to a point. Then she'd found her own set of caves, and stayed. She'd stay there until the stone told her it was safe to move on.
She could still feel the progress of Thalaea and the other wolves. Thalaea was a wolf. Always had been — Enendoa had known that from the moment she saw the woman. Wolf exuded from the younger witch's very pores, and when she chose the name Thalaea that cinched it.
Enendoa had lied when she'd said the word meant forest so far as she knew. She knew a lot farther. In the old language of Thaen, the word for forest — for woods — was the same as the word for wolf. Just as in Minae, the word for witch came from the same root as wolf.
Perhaps she should have told her apprentice this. Perhaps it didn't matter. Enendoa had not become a witch yesterday; she had not survived as long as she had by sharing her secrets.
Perhaps it was better, anyway. Thalaea was now with her people.
And the older witch was now living in a cave in the mountains. She'd brought her most important copper implements — sickle, cauldron, kettle — and her most important iron one — her wand.
The iron buzzed in her hand, reacting to the iron in the stone around her. These mountains were heavy with the stone; they were heavy with magic.
They'd kept Thaen safe for centuries with that magic. Minae didn't do so well around iron unless they were witches. Or wolves.
From this space, Enendoa could hear and sense everything as the earth could. Not much clarity in the vision, but more than what her Minae eyes and ears could bring her. The iron in her blood sang to the iron in her wand, and when she reached out and touched the wall of the cave with that wand, she could do anything.
She settled into an extended stay in the mountains, and watched the oncoming shadow of war creep across her homeland.
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4th Rew, 709 years after Landfall Adivus. The Summer Solstice.
It was time to move on. The days would grow shorter now, and Thaen needed her more than Min did.
Besides, if the armies of Min marched through the Pass, her life would be in danger. There was a reason Daetus City had held no witches for a century or more.
Armies had already made it around the western edge of the mountain range, and had met bloodshed and death. Troops were mobilized on the eastern edge, too, though she did not sense they had passed into Thaen yet.
Regardless, she could do no more good here. She'd spent almost three months in her cave, subsisting off mountain goat and the few hardy plants in the area, gathering dew from their leaves and, later, water from a small spring she found in the rocks.
She'd not been idle in that time; anything but. Three months of magic and ritual dedicated to keeping her apprentice safe and guiding her on her path. Thalaea's destiny was far from fulfilled.
Three months of magic and ritual dedicated to minimizing the casualties of war. She could not stop this tide; centuries of propaganda had primed Min for a fight. She only hoped she could mitigate the damage.
Three months of absorbing all the information she could about Thaen from the threads of iron and copper that ran through that land. She hoped it would be enough; that she would not be killed on sight for being Minae.
It was time to head north once again. She needed to find Thalaea.
