The Bear King.docx by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Part Three

A SKY FULL OF SOULS

They didn’t linger any longer than they had to. Mavnos had no wish to be around when the Bear King finally arrived, and no strength to argue in their face of their scouts’ denials that he was coming. They would suffer the weight of the ignorance soon enough. Let them live in blissful oblivion for a while longer.

Jarngi offered to accompany them, but without knowing where they were going, Mavnos had no desire to drag the gentle giant away from his family and the quiet life he had carved out for himself on the hillside. Or the bees that crawled so contentedly across his hands as he whispered his sweet nothings to them in return for the honey that went into their precious mead. There was a fierce embrace and a tooth-rattling backslap to send them on their way as the two of them struck out.

They walked.

And they walked.

Ommot had seen that their packs were filled, and that they had more than just shreds of dried and cured meat stolen from the wayfarer’s house. They had enough to see them through at least a few weeks in the mountains. Beyond that, they would be forced to scavenge to survive.

The worst of it was the wear on his boots. The leather soles failed him long before he reached journey’s end, with every step letting in the cold and the damp as the snow soaked up through the gradually widening holes until there was more hole than leather and the uppers were the only thing holding his boots together.

He didn’t complain.

It could always be worse.

At first, the lack of game to hunt was a curiosity, but as they moved on deeper into the mountains it became a concern. The food wouldn’t last forever. Even the vegetation was suffering; more and more they found rotten plant life, the roots blackened, the leaves withered, and berries dried to husks. It was as though the soil had no nourishment left in it.

Mavnos began to fear a curse had fallen upon the mountains, and that he was the cause, bringing the dead seidr with him. There had been so much suffering already, more was unimaginable.

And yet, even the ground beneath their feet was dying.

Still, they walked on, into the burning skies.

The first night they lay under those strange stars it felt as though the world around them was on fire with the most unholy of flames. He had forgotten just how haunting that rictus grin of light was as it split the black of the heavens.

A bilious green halo clung to the edges of that smile, rippling out for miles upon miles above him, like a secret constellation all of its own, only visible to them.

Mavnos asked her, “Do you know what causes this fire?”

The girl didn’t have an answer for that. Not at first. Then she offered, “The souls of all the dead burning as they leave us.”

Even if she was messing around with him, the thought placed a chill in his heart.

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