Chapter 7 : SIGRID - The God-Speaker's Silence71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9qAE72C3m1
The god was dead. Sigrid knew this because she could still feel the place where it had been—a hollow in her mind like the socket of a pulled tooth, raw and wrong and filling slowly with something else. Something that had a voice.
She hadn't spoken in three weeks. Her tongue lay thick and useless in her mouth, a dead thing attached to a living body. The carers said she was catatonic, that the binding-breaking had shattered her mind, that she'd waste away like the others. They said this in front of her, as if she couldn't hear. She could hear everything. The rasp of their rough wool robes. The squelch of their boots on the piss-wet stone. The wet, rhythmic sounds that came from the guard's alcove at night, when the thin carer with the cracked lips went in and didn't come out for an hour. She heard it all. She just couldn't answer.
Her name was Sigrid. She had been a god-speaker, bound to the Warden of Shallows for twelve years, since she was nine years old and the priests had cut her palm and pressed it against the river's surface and the Warden had accepted her. She had given it her memories—her mother's face, her first kiss, the taste of honey on new bread—and in return it had given her its voice. For twelve years, she had been the mouthpiece of a god. Now the god was dead, and her mouth was empty, and something else was moving into the space it had left behind.
She sat on the edge of her cot, her back against the damp stone wall, and listened to the voice.
It wasn't the Warden. The Warden's voice had been the sound of water over smooth stones, a deep vibration that hummed in her bones. When it spoke, she had felt it in her chest, her throat, her teeth. This voice was different. It was quieter, older, colder. It spoke in the Warden's tongue but with a different cadence—slower, more deliberate, like someone sounding out words they hadn't used in a very long time.
Sigrid, it said. You are not empty. You are a vessel waiting to be filled.
She dug her fingernails into her thighs to make it stop.
The flesh was already raw there, crisscrossed with scabs and fresh wounds and the faint white lines of older scars. She'd been carving for weeks, using nothing but her own nails, which had grown long and cracked and sharp. The carers had tried to trim them once, early on, and she'd bitten the woman's hand so hard she'd drawn blood. They hadn't tried again. Now they just let her sit in her own filth, scratching at her skin, while the voice whispered in her skull.
At first it had been just pain—a way to feel something other than the hollow where the Warden had been. Pain was real. Pain was hers. Pain didn't belong to the dead god or the thing that was speaking through its corpse. But then she'd noticed the shapes. The lines she carved weren't random. They were spirals. Angles. Curves that didn't mean anything until she looked at them together, the whole map of her thighs, and realised they were a map. A path leading north, deep into the Frostwood, to a place that had no name but had a shape. A doorway. A prison.
She didn't know how she knew that. The voice had told her. The voice was always telling her things.
The old ones are waking, it said. The forgotten ones. They are eating us from the inside. Find the girl who wounded one. She carries the answer.
Sigrid pressed her fingernails into a fresh patch of skin and carved another line. Blood welled up, hot and red, running down her thigh and soaking into the rough fabric of her robe. The robe was stiff with old blood and old piss and old sweat. She hadn't been allowed to bathe since she'd arrived. The carers said it was for her own safety, but Sigrid knew it was because they were afraid of her. Afraid of what she might do if she had access to water. She was a river-speaker. Water had been her element. Now it was her enemy.
The ward was dark except for the faint glow of the moon through the high, barred windows. The other failed speakers lay on their cots, some weeping, some muttering, some silent. One of them—a young man who'd been bound to a tree-warden in the eastern forests—had started screaming at dusk and hadn't stopped. His voice had gone hoarse hours ago, but his mouth was still open, his throat still working, a thin, reedy sound coming out that was almost worse than the screaming had been. The carers had strapped him to his cot. The physicians had given him something to make him sleep, but it hadn't worked. Nothing worked on the failed speakers. Their bodies kept going long after their minds had broken.
Sigrid listened to the screaming. She listened to the muttering. She listened to the voice in her head, patient and cold and hungry.
Find the girl who wounded one. She carries the answer.
What girl? What wounded one? The voice never explained. It just repeated the same words, over and over, until Sigrid wanted to claw her own ears off. She'd tried, once. The carers had strapped her down for three days, and the voice had kept talking, and she'd been alone with it in the dark, no way to stop it, no way to answer.
The door at the end of the ward opened. A sliver of torchlight cut across the cots, and a figure stepped inside. The carer. The thin one with the cracked lips, whose name Sigrid had never bothered to learn. She was carrying a bowl of something grey and steaming, and she moved through the ward with the quick, efficient steps of someone who'd stopped caring a long time ago.
"Still alive, then," she said, stopping in front of Sigrid's cot. It wasn't a question. She set the bowl on the floor. "Eat. The physicians say you're getting too thin."
Sigrid didn't move. The carer didn't expect her to.
"Fine. Starve. See if I care." The carer straightened, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a thin woman with a face like a dried apple and eyes that had stopped seeing anything worth looking at. She smelled of stale sweat and sour milk and the faint, animal musk of someone who hadn't washed in days either. She looked at Sigrid's thighs, at the fresh blood seeping through the robe, and her mouth tightened. "You're cutting again. I've told you to stop that."
Sigrid didn't answer. The carer turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing on the stone. She didn't leave the ward, though. She went to the guard's alcove, the small room beside the door where the night watch slept.
The guard was already there. Sigrid could hear him—the creak of his cot, the clink of his belt buckle, the low murmur of his voice. He was a young man, broad-shouldered and dull-eyed, with a sword he'd never used and a face that still had the softness of youth. He'd been assigned to the ward three weeks ago, and he'd been fucking the carer for two of them. Sigrid had listened to every encounter. The sounds came through the wall with a clarity that was almost obscene—the rustle of clothing, the wet smack of mouths, the grunts and gasps and the rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh.
She didn't want to listen. She didn't have a choice. The walls were thin, and her ears were sharp, and the voice in her head had gone quiet when the fucking started, as if it too was listening. As if it too was hungry.
They are animals, the voice murmured. They rut and they eat and they shit and they die. They don't understand what's happening. They don't understand what's inside them. You are different. You are a vessel. You can carry me.
"I am not your mouthpiece," Sigrid whispered. The words came out cracked and broken, barely a breath. She hadn't spoken in three weeks, and her voice didn't sound like her own. It sounded like something dragged up from deep water.
You are already my mouthpiece. You just don't know it yet.
The sounds from the alcove grew louder. The guard was grunting now, a rhythmic, animal sound, and the carer was gasping—not in pleasure, Sigrid thought, but in something closer to relief. The relief of a body doing what bodies did, of feeling something other than the grey weight of the world. Sigrid had felt that once. She'd been bound to a god, and the god had filled her, and she'd never needed anything else. Now the god was dead, and the only thing that filled her was a voice that wanted to use her.
The cot creaked faster. The guard cried out, a short, sharp sound, and then there was silence. The carer's footsteps, soft and barefoot, padded across the ward a few minutes later. She passed Sigrid's cot without looking, her robe hanging open, her skin flushed and damp. She smelled of sex now, layered over the sweat and sour milk, and there was a smear of something on her inner thigh that Sigrid could see in the moonlight. The carer didn't notice. She went to her own cot and lay down, and within minutes her breathing had evened out into sleep.
Sigrid sat in the dark and listened to the silence. The screaming had stopped. The muttering had stopped. Even the voice in her head was quiet. It was just her and the moonlight and the blood drying on her thighs.
She looked down at the cuts. The spirals and angles glistened in the pale light, and for the first time she saw the pattern clearly. Not just a map. A word. Four letters, carved into the deepest part of the wound, just below the spiral. She hadn't carved them. The voice had. The voice had used her fingernails while she was listening to the guard and the carer, while she was drowning in the sounds of their fucking, and carved its own name into her flesh.
YSKA.
The word seemed to pulse on her skin, black against the red. She stared at it, and the voice stirred in the back of her skull, patient and pleased.
Yes, it said. That is my name. That is what I am. I am Yska. I am the First Dreamer. I am the one they imprisoned. And I am waking up.
Sigrid's hands were shaking. She pressed her fingers against the word, feeling the heat of the fresh wound, the slickness of the blood. The voice was louder now, clearer, as if speaking the name had opened something. As if the name itself was a door.
The girl who wounded the Lament, Yska said. She carries the answer. She carries the key. Find her. Bring her to me. She will open the prison, and I will end the covenant, and I will make a new world. A world without forgetting. A world where every memory lives forever. You will never lose anyone again.
Sigrid closed her eyes. She thought about the Warden of Shallows, the way its voice had hummed in her bones, the way the river had moved under her hands. She thought about the village that had drowned when the river flowed backward, the bodies she'd seen floating in the floodwater, their faces blue and swollen. She thought about the hollow in her mind where the god had been, and the thing that was filling it.
"No," she whispered. "I am not your mouthpiece."
Yska chuckled. It was a soft, wet sound, like water bubbling up through mud.
We'll see.
Dawn came grey and cold through the barred windows. The carer brought another bowl of porridge and set it on the floor without comment. The guard had already left, his shift over, and a new guard had taken his place—an older man, grizzled and silent, who sat in the alcove and sharpened his sword with slow, rhythmic strokes. The sound of the whetstone grated on Sigrid's nerves.
The voice was quieter during the day. Not gone, but distant, as if it was resting. As if it was waiting. Sigrid ate the porridge mechanically, tasting nothing, and then she sat on her cot and stared at the wall and tried to remember what it had felt like to be whole.
She couldn't. The memory was gone. The Warden had taken it, years ago, in one of the tithes. She'd given it freely, the way all god-speakers gave their memories, and in return the Warden had given her its voice. Now the Warden was dead, and the memory was gone, and she couldn't remember what it had felt like to be herself. She only knew that she wasn't herself anymore. She was a hollow thing, a vessel, and something else was pouring in.
The physicians came at midday. Two of them, grey-bearded and grim-faced, with wax plugs in their ears and fear in their eyes. They examined the other patients first—the screamer, who had finally fallen silent, his eyes open and empty; the mutterer, who was still whispering in a language that predated the covenant; the two new ones, a man and a woman who'd been brought in the night before, their pupils white and their mouths moving in unison. Then they came to Sigrid.
"She's been cutting again," the carer said, her voice flat. "Worse than before. Look at her thighs."
One of the physicians knelt beside the cot. He was an old man, his hands gnarled with age, but his touch was surprisingly gentle as he lifted the hem of Sigrid's robe. He looked at the cuts, the spirals and angles, the word carved into the deepest part of the wound. His face went pale.
"Gods," he said. "What is this?"
"Sigrid," the other physician said. He was younger, nervous, his eyes darting between her face and her thighs. "Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"
She didn't answer. She never answered. But something in her expression must have changed, because the younger physician stepped back, his hand going to his chest.
"Her eyes," he said. "They're different. They were grey before. Now they're..."
"Black," the old physician said. "The pupils have expanded. The iris is gone." He let go of the robe and stood, his face tight. "I've seen this before. In the ward patients. In the ones who are furthest gone. The plague is in her. It's been in her since the binding broke."
"We need to send for the Prince," the younger physician said. "He said to report anything unusual. Anything about the god-speakers."
"The Prince has his own problems. The Council is meeting today. Aldric is moving against him."
"This is more important than Council politics. Look at her. Look at what she's carved into her skin."
The old physician leaned closer, his eyes narrowing. "That's not random. That's a word. Four letters. Y-S-K-A." He frowned. "I don't know that word. It's not in any of the covenant texts."
"It's not a covenant word," the younger physician said. His voice was shaking. "It's older. Much older. I saw it once, in a fragment from the sealed archives. A name that was erased from every text. A name that hasn't been spoken in five hundred years."
"What name?"
"I can't—I can't say it. It's forbidden. But if she's writing it, if she's carving it into her own flesh—" He turned to the carer. "Send for the Prince. Now. Tell him the mute has spoken. Not with her voice. With her blood."
The carer stared at him. Then she turned and ran, her boots slapping on the stone.
Sigrid watched her go. The voice in her head was stirring again, pleased and patient, like a cat that had caught a mouse and was playing with it before the kill.
Good, Yska murmured. Let them come. Let them see. Let them understand what they have been feeding for five hundred years. The Prince will know my name. The God-Wounder will carry my key. And you, Sigrid, will be my mouthpiece. Whether you want to or not.
Sigrid closed her eyes. Her thighs were burning. The word on her skin was pulsing, black against the red, and she could feel it spreading—up her legs, into her belly, into the hollow where the Warden had been. The voice was filling her. The voice was becoming her.
She didn't want it. She didn't want any of it. But the want didn't matter. The want was just another thing the gods had taken, and they weren't giving it back.
They are eating us from the inside, Yska said. The old ones. The forgotten ones. But I am older than all of them. I am the First Dreamer. And I am hungry.
Sigrid opened her mouth. She didn't mean to. Her jaw moved on its own, and her tongue moved on its own, and a word came out that wasn't hers. The same word she'd carved into her thighs. The same word the physicians were afraid to speak.
"Yska," she whispered.
The sound echoed off the stone walls. The physicians stumbled back. The screamer sat up on his cot and opened his mouth and screamed the same word, his voice raw and broken. The mutterer stopped muttering and spoke it, clear and cold. The two new patients, the man and the woman, turned their white eyes toward Sigrid and said it in unison.
"Yska."
The ward filled with the sound of the name. And in the silence that followed, Sigrid heard something else. A voice that wasn't Yska's. A voice that was older, deeper, vast as the ocean and patient as the stars. The voice of the Warden of Shallows, the god she'd loved, the god that had died, speaking through its own corpse one last time.
Find the girl who wounded one, it said. She carries the answer. She carries the key. Go north, Sigrid. Go north to the Frostwood. Go north to the prison. And when you get there—
The voice cracked. The hollow in her mind screamed. And Sigrid fell forward off the cot, her body hitting the stone floor, her blood soaking into the cracks, her mouth still moving, still whispering, still speaking the name that had been erased from history.
YSKA.
YSKA.
YSKA.
The physicians ran. The guard ran. The carer was already gone, and the ward was full of screaming, and Sigrid lay on the cold stone floor with blood running down her thighs and a dead god's voice in her head and the name of the First Dreamer on her lips.
She didn't know how long she lay there. Long enough for the screaming to stop. Long enough for the ward to go quiet. Long enough for the voice to settle back into its patient, hungry silence.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling was grey and cracked. The other patients were silent, staring at nothing. She was alone.
Get up, Yska said. Get up, Sigrid. It's time to go. It's time to find the girl who wounded the Lament. It's time to open the door.
Sigrid got up. Her legs were shaking. Her thighs were bleeding. The word on her skin was black and burning, and the hollow in her mind was full, and she couldn't remember what it had felt like to be herself. She couldn't remember anything except the voice.
She walked to the door of the ward. It was unlocked—the guard had fled, the physicians had fled, everyone had fled except the failed speakers and the dead. She pushed it open and stepped into the corridor. The torches were still burning. The stones were still cold. The world was still here, still ending, still waiting.
She walked north.71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUh09dwKxd8
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