The wind whistling through the bare forest cut me to the bone. The snow was falling faster now. I stared up at the skeletal branches overhead in despair. My jaunt through the woods to the seer’s hut had turned to a trudge. I feared I would be frozen solid by the time I reached her.
For the hundredth time I bit back a curse for the winter storm that covered all the usual landmarks. My destination was barely visible from the hillcrest, marked only by the thin curl of smoke over a distant hump of white. Thankfully Shiloh knew the way despite the weather. He whickered as I kneed him forward. One more ridge.
The last stretch of our journey was slower going. Thick gusts of snow continued to pelt our path. Any more would mean a night sleeping on the hard-packed floor of the crone’s hovel in hopes the storm would break by morning. It was better than the alternative of finding an abandoned den for the night. If it came to that. Besides, the prolonged journey afforded me time to mull over my purpose in coming to the crone. The sharp crunch of snow under Shiloh’s hooves and wind whooshing past my ears compounded how isolated I felt.
My preoccupation nearly made me miss wind-muffled moans closeby. We were at a stream, if it could be called that, though it was mostly slush and broken sheets of ice amid a clearing that was knee-deep in snow. Shiloh’s ears perked, his great head swinging from one side to the other in search of the source of the sound.
The moans came again. We both caught sight of a trembling heap at the stream’s edge. I dismounted cautiously and drew closer to the sound.
Kneeling, I hauled the heap from the stream’s banks. It groaned softly as a crust of ice crumbled away to reveal a leathery face in a deerskin hood. The crone shuddered into my arms, filmy eyes blinking up at me in the harsh winter light. “I came to find you”, she wheezed. “The gods have spoken. It is time.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I came to seek your blessing for death. Time for what?”
The crone stared through me with glassy eyes. “It is your birthright,” she whispered. I shivered, but it was not the frigid wind this time that gripped me to my core.
My birthright. No one had said those words to me in what felt like a lifetime.
“You have come to seek death but it has found another. The reign of the false god-king has ended. The reign of the Arbiter has come. This I see.” She sagged in my arms, heavy as an anvil in her stiff, frozen grab. Her last breath misted above her still-open eyes.
Numbly, I let her body slide back into the icy slush of the stream. Her words echoed in my ears. The gods have spoken.
There was no time to waste.
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