Chapter 11 : SIGRID - The Carvings Speak74Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc6j0GWWFK8
The wounds on her thighs had begun to fester.
Sigrid knew this because she could smell them now—a sweet, rotten scent that cut through the stale urine and sour sweat of the ward, a smell that belonged to dead things left too long in the sun. She sat on the edge of her cot with her back against the damp stone wall and her robe pushed up around her hips, and she looked at what she had done to herself. The spirals and angles she'd carved with her own fingernails were no longer clean. The edges had gone soft and yellow, weeping a thin, cloudy fluid that dripped down her legs and soaked into the rough wool of her robe. Some of the cuts had closed. Most hadn't. The deepest one—the spiral at the centre of her left thigh, the one she'd carved first, the one that had started all of this—was ringed with red flesh that throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
She pressed her fingers against the wound. The pain flared white-hot, then settled into a dull, familiar ache. She'd been doing this for weeks. The pain was the only thing that felt real. The pain was the only thing that belonged to her.
The voice had been quiet since the night before. Not gone—it was never gone—but distant, coiled in the back of her skull like a snake digesting a meal. It had spoken to her for hours, days, weeks, a ceaseless stream of words in the Warden's tongue that she understood without knowing how. They are eating us from the inside. The old ones. The forgotten ones. Find the girl who wounded one. She carries the answer. She'd carved the words into her skin without meaning to, her fingernails moving on their own, and now 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 hadn't understood it at first. She'd thought the carvings were just madness—her mind breaking under the weight of a dead god's silence. But the more she looked at them, the more she traced the lines with her fingers, the clearer the pattern became. The spirals were roads. The angles were mountains. The deepest cut, the one on her left thigh that wept yellow fluid and smelled of rot, was a river. The Warden's river. Her river. The river that had flowed backward and drowned her village and then evaporated into nothing, leaving her hollow and screaming on the dry bed.
The map pointed to a place beyond the river's source, deep in the Frostwood where the trees grew so thick they blocked out the sun. A place where the oldest things slept. A place where something was waking up.
You see it now, the voice murmured. It was Yska's voice—she knew that now, though she hadn't known it when she'd first heard it. She'd thought it was the Warden, at first. She'd thought her god was still alive, trapped somewhere inside her, trying to speak. But the Warden was dead. The thing speaking through its corpse was something else. Something older. Something that had been waiting for five hundred years. You see the door. You see the prison. You see where they buried me.
"I am not your mouthpiece," Sigrid whispered. Her voice was cracked and raw, barely a breath. She'd said the same words a hundred times, a thousand times, and they never made a difference. The voice didn't care what she wanted. The voice was patient. The voice had been waiting for five centuries. A few more days didn't matter.
You are already my mouthpiece. You have been carving my words into your flesh for weeks. You have been dreaming my dreams. You have been walking my path. The only thing left is to open the door.
"No."
The girl who wounded the Lament is coming. She carries the key. She carries the answer. She will open the door, 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. Your mother. Your sisters. The Warden. All of them, returned to you. All of them, alive in me.
Sigrid closed her eyes. She thought about her mother, who had died of the wasting sickness when Sigrid was twelve, her tongue black and her eyes hollow. She thought about her sisters, both younger, both given to the temple as god-speakers before they were old enough to understand what they were giving up. She thought about the Warden of Shallows, the god she'd loved, the god that had filled her with its voice and its presence and its cold, patient purpose. They were all dead. They were all gone. The voice was promising to bring them back.
It was lying. She knew it was lying. But the lie was so beautiful, so warm, so perfectly shaped to the hollow in her chest where the Warden had been. She wanted to believe it. She wanted to give herself over to the voice and let it fill her and stop fighting. It would be so easy. Just stop. Just let go. Just let Yska take her the way the Warden had taken her, all those years ago, when she was nine years old and the priests had cut her palm and pressed it against the river's surface.
But the Warden had never lied to her. The Warden had taken her memories, but it had given her its voice in return. It had been a bargain, not a theft. Yska was offering no bargain. Yska was just taking. Yska had been taking for five hundred years, and it would keep taking until there was nothing left.
She opened her eyes. She looked down at the carvings on her thighs, the map that led north to the prison, and she pressed her fingernail into the deepest wound—the river, the source, the place where it all began. Fresh blood welled up, hot and red, mixing with the yellow fluid of the infection. The pain was sharp and clean, a spike of clarity in the fog of the voice's whispers.
"I am not your mouthpiece," she said again. Louder this time. Stronger.
The voice laughed. It was a soft, wet sound, like water bubbling up through mud.
We'll see.
The carer came at midday. Not the thin one with the cracked lips who fucked the guard in the alcove—a different one, older and broader, with hands like slabs of meat and a face that had stopped feeling anything a long time ago. Her name was Hara. Sigrid knew her name because Hara had been the one who'd strapped her to the cot three weeks ago, when Sigrid had tried to claw her own ears off to stop the voice. Hara had held her down while the physicians sedated her, and Hara had cleaned the blood off her face afterward, and Hara had said, "You're a fighter. That's good. Fighters last longer." She'd said it without warmth, without pity. Just observation. Just fact.
Hara stopped in front of Sigrid's cot. She was holding a bucket of water and a rough cloth, and her expression was as blank as ever. "Time to clean you up," she said. "The physicians are coming this afternoon. They want to look at your cuts."
Sigrid didn't move. Hara didn't expect her to. The carer set down the bucket and grabbed the hem of Sigrid's robe, pushing it up around her hips with the impersonal efficiency of someone handling meat. The air was cold on Sigrid's exposed skin. The wounds on her thighs glistened in the grey light from the barred windows, the yellow fluid crusting at the edges, the red flesh angry and swollen.
Hara looked at the cuts. For a long moment, she didn't speak. Then she said, "These are worse than yesterday. You've been picking at them."
Sigrid didn't answer. She never answered.
"Right." Hara dipped the cloth in the bucket and began to clean the wounds. The water was cold—there was never any hot water in the ward, hot water was for the physicians and the priests—and the cloth was rough against the raw flesh. Sigrid's body jerked involuntarily, but she didn't make a sound. She'd learned not to make sounds. Sounds didn't help. Sounds just made the carers sedate her, and the sedation made the voice louder, and the voice was already too loud.
Hara worked in silence for a while, wiping away the crusted fluid, the dried blood, the thin film of sweat and grime that coated Sigrid's skin. The cloth came away stained pink and yellow. When she reached the deepest wound—the spiral on Sigrid's left thigh, the river, the source—she paused. Her slab-like fingers traced the edge of the cut, following the curve of the spiral, the angles that branched off it, the smaller lines that radiated outward like tributaries.
"This isn't random," Hara said. Her voice was still flat, but something in her expression had shifted. "This is a map."
Sigrid's heart stuttered. The voice in her head stirred, patient and pleased.
A map, it murmured. Yes. A map to the place where they buried me. The place where the girl will come. The place where the door will open.
"Where does it lead?" Hara asked. She wasn't asking Sigrid—she knew Sigrid wouldn't answer. She was asking herself, her slab-like fingers tracing the lines. "North. It leads north. Into the Frostwood. Past the river. Past the mountains. To—"
She stopped. Her finger had reached the centre of the spiral, the place where all the lines converged. The place where Sigrid had pressed her fingernail a moment before, drawing fresh blood.
"There's nothing there," Hara said. "There's nothing in that part of the Frostwood. Just old trees. Old stones. Old stories the clans tell about—" She stopped again. Her face went pale. "The First Dreamer. The clans tell stories about the First Dreamer. A god that was buried under the mountain. A god that was never supposed to wake up."
Tell her, Yska whispered. Tell her my name. Let her hear it. Let her carry it to the Prince.
Sigrid clenched her jaw. She would not speak. She would not. She had been silent for three weeks, and she would stay silent, and the voice could not make her—
Her mouth opened.
She felt it happen, felt her jaw move and her tongue move and her throat shape a word that wasn't hers. She tried to stop it, tried to clamp her teeth together, tried to swallow the sound before it could escape. But the voice was stronger. The voice had been growing inside her for weeks, feeding on her silence, filling the hollow where the Warden had been. The voice was not asking anymore. The voice was demanding.
"Yska," she said.
The word came out cracked and broken, barely a whisper. It tasted like river water. Cold and clean and full of old, old things. The moment it left her lips, something in the room changed. The torches on the walls flickered, their flames turning blue for a single heartbeat before settling back to orange. The other patients stirred on their cots—the screamer, the mutterer, the two new ones who'd been brought in the night before. All of them turned their heads toward Sigrid, their white eyes fixed on her face, their mouths opening in unison.
"Yska," they said. One voice. Many mouths. The name echoed off the stone walls, filling the ward, filling the corridor beyond.
Hara stumbled back. The bucket tipped over, cold water sloshing across the stone floor. Her slab-like hands were shaking. Her face was white. "What—what was that? What did you say?"
Sigrid couldn't answer. Her mouth was still moving, but the voice coming out wasn't hers. It was deeper, older, a chorus of a thousand stolen memories layered over each other like strata of rock. "Yska," she said again. "Yska. The First Dreamer. The one they imprisoned. The one they forgot. I am waking up."
Hara turned and ran. Her boots slapped on the wet stone, and the door at the end of the ward slammed open, and her voice echoed down the corridor—shouting for the physicians, shouting for the guards, shouting words that Sigrid couldn't hear over the roar of the voice in her head.
Good, Yska said. Let them come. Let them see. Let them send for the Prince. He will know my name. He will come looking for answers. And when he finds the girl who wounded the Lament, when he brings her north to the prison, the door will open. The cage will break. And I will be free.
Sigrid sat on the edge of her cot, her robe pushed up around her hips, her thighs wet with water and blood and yellow fluid. The other patients were still staring at her, their white eyes fixed on her face, their mouths moving in silent unison. The ward was cold, and the torches were flickering, and the voice was filling her, drowning her, erasing the last pieces of who she had been.
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. The way she had loved it, the way a god-speaker loved her god—not like a person loves a person, but like a river loves the sea. She had given it everything. And it had died, and she had been left hollow, and something else had crawled into the hollow and made a nest.
No, she thought. The word was small and quiet, buried beneath the roar of Yska's voice. But it was hers. It was still hers.
No. I am not your mouthpiece.
Yska laughed again. The sound was soft and wet, like water bubbling up through mud.
We'll see, little vessel. We'll see.
The physicians came at dusk. Three of them, grey-bearded and grim-faced, with wax plugs in their ears and fear in their eyes. The head physician—an old man named Kellan, who had been tending the god-speakers for forty years and had seen everything the covenant could do to a human mind—knelt in front of Sigrid's cot and looked at her thighs. He looked at the carvings, the spirals and angles, the map that led north to the prison. He looked at the deepest wound, the one that wept yellow fluid and smelled of rot, and he looked at the word that had been carved into her flesh just below the spiral. The word she hadn't carved. The word the voice had carved while she was drowning in it.
YSKA.
He read it. His lips moved, shaping the letters. Then his face went grey.
"Gods," he said. "Gods preserve us."
"What is it?" one of the other physicians asked. "What does it say?"
Kellan didn't answer. He stood up, his old knees cracking, and turned to the guard who was standing by the door. "Send for the Prince," he said. His voice was shaking. "Send for Prince Vail Torrhen. Tell him the mute has spoken a name that hasn't been uttered in five hundred years. Tell him she's carved it into her own flesh. Tell him—" He stopped, his hand going to his chest, his breath catching. "Tell him the First Dreamer is waking up."
The guard stared at him. Then he turned and ran, his boots echoing on the stone.
Kellan looked back at Sigrid. His eyes were old and tired and full of something that might have been pity or might have been dread. "What have you done, child?" he asked. "What have you let in?"
Sigrid opened her mouth. She didn't mean to. But the voice was there, patient and pleased, and it spoke through her one more time.
"I have let in the truth," she said. "And the truth is hungry."74Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjtg8u818mz
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