Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Oh, just being wise. You know. Like a fox.”

I tighten my jacket, feeling chilled under the gaze of the hollow towers. They hunch together, lording over the scattered stone and shadow, the many empty doors and windows like so many eye sockets. Once this was home to Sefi the Quiet, Ragnar the god. Now only wind moves in the dead city.

“Do you hear them?” Ozgard cocks his head to the wind. “Not all the people of Alia had heart to follow Sefi to the stars. Those who remained felt the wrath of Gold. Their spirits are trapped in the stone, shamed for all time.”

“Poor sods.”

He snorts. “If it were true, yes.”

“I’ll be damned. Is that skepticism I hear from a shaman?” Ozgard shrugs and prods the crumbling pine of the fire with a distant look. His mood is different than amongst his people. Less frivolous. I shift closer to the flames. “So…what now?”

“We drink until Freihild returns with nightgaze. The gods must be offered strength of the beast and beauty of the land to speak.” He sounds bored.

“Right.”

He sighs and looks at the darkness creeping around us. “I confess, I hope she does not hurry. It is good to be alone in the snow.”

“Thought you liked Freihild.”

He chuckles. “Freihild is clever woman, but she is blind, not like us.”

“How’s that?”

“The more blessed the creature, the less they question life. She is like Valdir and his big muscles this way. Blindly forward with purpose. Guided by the trough of expectation.” Ozgard plays with his rings. “But us…that which is thin to us is thick to others. Dull to us, resplendent to fools. I envy the blind. To accept mystery. To witness a corpse and think Valhalla instead of maggots.

“Did you know I was born to a woman of power? You would not think it. Brood of a great queen. Destined to fight the gods’ battles in the stars. But I was cursed for my mother’s impiety. So our shaman said.”

He brandishes his twisted hand.

“Amniotic band syndrome. Agony. Bred out of the other races, but not ours. My fingers were never formed. My spirit berries dull the pain.”

“Why not just get an upgrade?” I pat my new leg.

He turns the twisted hand. “Many of the braves believe it is the root of my power. At four, my mother found me amputating my own hand

with a fish knife to stop the pain. They said a dark spirit was within me. Fools. Shaman pressed coals into the soles of my feet, and I was given to the Ice. No Valhalla for a cursed child.

“They now say spirits found me. Raised me with their arts. That I sacrificed my hand to Mimir for a drink from her well of wisdom.” He spits into the coals in disgust. “Cruelty is the heart of myth.

“There was no Mimir. I could not walk for the wounds. So I crawled, dragged my child’s body with one hand until my fingers blackened. No spirit came. No gods. It was the kindness of a noman that saved me. A shamed man cast out from his own people who lived as a hermit in the mountains. He became my father, my mother. But his life was withering. Hepatocellular carcinoma, I believe. Soon I would be a boy alone on the ice. So he gave me all he could to survive when he left. Omens, prophecies, tricks. He taught me religion is a lever. With a slight force at a clever angle: immense power to shift tides of humanity. When his andi returned to the Allmother, I gave his flesh to Sky and bones to Ice, and went to find a people.”

He passes me a horn of grog. I take a generous swig, then another, and scoot closer to the fire, intrigued and a little mystified he’s letting me see beneath the mask. Risky business, that.

“The first tribe found value in my father’s tricks. I was clever, but reckless and cruel. Their shaman had a trick in wooing ice serpents. He would light a fire of bitternettle to make them sleepy. I changed the nettle for a mangroot. I declared him a falsifier. When his snakes killed him before his Queen, I became their shaman. Soon, they were conquered, and I became shaman to that tribe, and the next. To survive, I replaced other clever men. I used the lever. I learned to say what queens want to hear. In time, I learned to say what queens need to hear. And when I came upon the shaman who put coals to my feet, having left my mother after her tribe was conquered, I fed his manhood and liver to him and burned his body on the tundra. But I despaired. I felt no joy. The river of blood flowed and flowed. Tribe fighting tribe. Queen fighting queen. Shaman unseating shaman. We were cannibals. When Sefi and Tyr Morga slew our gods, I saw a queen who could tame the darkness inside us.”

He grows quiet and watches the stars.

“That’s some story.”

He glares. “You doubt me?”

“Well, you’re not exactly Victra au I-cannot-tell-a-lie.”

He grins. “And what can bond sinners but their sins? None of my people would understand. Secrets are weight.”

“I’ll drink to that.” I take down another gulp and pass the horn. “Quite a pair, eh? Two con men just trying to stay above water. Was wondering if you’d ever drop the mask.” He laughs and drinks deep. “Was the Alltribe her idea or yours?”

“Mine. Sowed over years. Too long she listened to Xenophon, thinking Gold wisdom wisest. And to Valdir, guide of her heart, a stonebrain who worships the Reaper because he is master of violence. Were it not for the cost of the Mercurian Rain…”