Prophecy Of The Silver Born

Chapter 2: The Weight Of Being Named

Wind whistled through the high limestone gaps above Skarrhold, carrying the wet

grit of limestone dust and the sharp, freezing tang of early frost. From the

cliff-face entrance below the fortress, the heavy, rhythmic grinding of the

rope-and-timber lift rose in a series of metallic screeches, a sound that

marked the arrival of the daily salt-rations and grain sacks. It was a cold,

hard morning. The wind turned the yard's clay to a freezing mire. Every step

was a calculated risk.

In the center of the ring, Morwyth of Skarrhold kept her weight centered, her

knees bent slightly beneath her grease-stained wool tunic. Her dark hair was

scraped back with a strip of rough hide. Nothing about her build or features

marked her as high-born. To any casual observer on the gallery above, she was

simply another low-ranking fighter trying to keep her footing in the mud. Her

power lived behind her ribs, buried under years of careful silence, showing

only in the flat grey of her eyes.

Opposite her stood Grenn of Skarrhold, a senior warrior with shoulders twice the

width of her own and a jaw scarred by old border skirmishes. He circled her, his

heavy wooden training stave held at the ready. He breathed hard, boots kicking

clods of grey mud as he tested her guard.

"Move, girl," he grunted, the words puffing in white clouds between his teeth.

"The wind is freezing my marrow."

Morwyth didn't answer. She repeated his movement in reverse, maintaining the

distance between them. She watched the twitch of his right shoulder. The dip of

his clavicle told her where the strike would land. He was going to sweep high,

aiming for her left temple to force her onto her heels.

She could have ended it in three heartbeats. If she dropped her weight, slid

beneath his reach, and drove the butt of her own stave into the soft hollow

behind his knee, he would be face-down in the freezing clay before he could

blink. She already knew where he'd fall.

She held still. Then she let her muscles lag. As Grenn swung, her parry came a

fraction of a second late. The wooden staves collided with a flat, hollow

clatter, the vibration jarring up her forearms and rattling her teeth. She

allowed her feet to slip in the wet grey mud, letting her weight fall backward.

The stave spun from her numb fingers, clattering onto the frozen stone borders

of the ring.

She went down on one hip. Cold mud soaked through her tunic instantly. She let

her breath rattle, her face gone dull with practiced frustration.

On the wooden gallery above, three of the pack elders had been watching with

half-closed eyes. As her stave rolled into the gutter, they lost what little

interest they had. One of them spat into the yard below, turned his back, and

began gesturing toward the southern valleys, his voice carrying down in

fragments about winter meat stores and the price of salt fish.

Her shoulders loosened. This was the trade she made every morning: a bruise on

her hip and clay in her hair in exchange for another day of being left alone.

She pushed herself up, her joints aching from the damp chill, and walked toward

the low archway of the dry-room.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of bruised pine needles scattered over

the floor to mask the smell of wet wool. A single copper brazier glowed in the

corner, radiating a dry, localized heat that made the steam rise off Morwyth's

damp tunic.

Fennika of Skarrhold was already there, leaning against a rough pine bench with

a dry wool cloth in her hands. Fennika's copper eyes never settled; her fingers

drummed her thigh even at rest.

"You look like you've been dragged through a peat bog," Fennika said, tossing

the rough towel at Morwyth's head.

Morwyth caught it, using the coarse fabric to scrub the grey mud from her cheeks

and temple. "The yard is slick today."

"The yard is always slick," Fennika shot back, her words coming in the

rapid-fire cadence that always made Morwyth feel as if she were trying to keep

pace with a mountain stream. "But I woke up, decided to check the winter stores

myself because the cellar-master was snoring, realized the rot has taken half

the dried fish we hauled up last month, and now I'm entirely convinced we'll be

eating pine bark and leather straps by mid-winter. Also, I might be executed for

trespassing in the deep cellar before noon."

Morwyth pressed the towel to her face, hiding her expression. "The cellar-master

won't execute you. He's too lazy to fetch the ropes."

"He might," Fennika insisted, leaning forward, her eyes narrowing as she studied

the way Morwyth avoided her gaze. Her voice dropped, losing its frantic rhythm,

turning sharp and precise. "But that isn't the point. I saw you out there,

Morwyth. You had Grenn open on his left flank when he lunged. His weight was

completely on his front heel. You let your own weight slide on purpose."

Morwyth kept the towel pressed to her skin for one beat, two, before she lowered

it. She looked at her friend, her grey eyes flat and unreadable.

"You think I slid on purpose?" she asked, repeating the question back to buy a

second of thinking time.

As the words left her mouth, her right hand rose, her fingertips settling

lightly against the pulse point on the side of her neck. It was a tiny,

unconscious touch, a small pressure against the fluttering skin of her throat.

Fennika's copper eyes dropped to the movement immediately. She had seen that

hand rise a thousand times since they were children, always at the exact moment

a falsehood crossed Morwyth's lips. Fennika let out a low, heavy sigh, her

shoulders dropping.

"You are a terrible liar, Morwyth," she murmured, reaching out to drag her

fingers through her own dark hair. "To me, at least. The elders might be blind

because they want to see a clumsy girl who can't hold a stave, but the council

summons is coming. Osskander's scribes won't be looking at your footing in the

mud. They'll be looking at your blood. You can't slip your way out of a formal

court."

"I can try," Morwyth said quietly, her hand dropping back to her side.

Fennika's fingers stopped drumming her thigh. "Vaeloch has ships off the cliffs

now. That's not a rumor anymore. Roggarth is burning challenge-fires along the

plains. They are coming for the Unifier. If you keep holding back your

strength, one day you'll forget how to find it when a real tooth is at your

throat."

Morwyth turned toward the clay water jar, pouring a cold stream over her hands

to wash the remaining grit from her knuckles. "I'll cross that peak when the

snow blocks the pass. Right now, I have to see Aethwen."

"The Hearth-Seer?" Fennika grimaced, her nose wrinkling at the thought. "She

smells like scorched bark. Go on, then. But clean your tunic first. She's blind

in one eye, not dead."

The air in the upper passages of Skarrhold grew colder the higher Morwyth

climbed, the drafts whistling through the seams in the stonework. By the time

she reached the heavy oak door of the Hearth-Seer's Sanctum, her breath was

rising in thin grey plumes.

She pushed the door open, and the cold was instantly replaced by a thick,

suffocating wall of heat and herbal smoke. Dried moonwort and scorched ash-bark

choked the air, thick enough to sting her eyes, and made the yellow flames of

the tallow candles flicker and swim. On the limestone walls, the carved

prophecy-runes seemed to shift as the candle-flame guttered.

In the center of the room, a massive copper brazier glowed with a deep, angry

red, radiating a heat that made the skin of Morwyth's face prickle.

Aethwen of Skarrhold sat curved and narrow on a low stone bench beside the

fire, silver braids brittle over her shoulders. At sixty-one, it was her face

that drew the eye. Her right eye was dark and sharp, but her left was a ruined,

sunken mass of pale scar tissue. Decades ago she'd offered it to a ritual fire

in service of a vision.

"You are late, Morwyth," Aethwen said, her voice dry, cracking at the edges.

"The yard was slick," Morwyth replied, stepping closer to the brazier.

The Hearth-Seer did not look up. She reached out with a thin, liver-spotted hand

and struck the small bronze chime that sat on a stand beside her.

The low, metallic hum of the bronze chime vibrated through the air, a deep,

resonant tone that seemed to sink into the cold stone floor beneath Morwyth's

boots and rattle her shins.

As the vibration filled the room, Aethwen's left hand rose. She pressed two

fingers to her milky, scarred left eye, her posture going instantly rigid. Her

jaw locked, teeth clicking, as the vision pressed in. She sat there in that

frozen pose for several heartbeats, her breath held, before she slowly let it

out and lowered her hand.

"The blood is steady," Aethwen whispered, her clear right eye finally turning to

study Morwyth's face. "The silver is quiet within you. For now. But the winds

are shifting, child. The council has set its seal. The alphas will be here

before the frost hardens."

Morwyth's jaw tightened. *Unifier.* They'd started calling her that before she

had teeth to argue with it. She stepped closer to the stone bench, her gaze

dropping to the floor where the light of the brazier did not reach.

"The elders say I am to bind them," Morwyth said, her voice flat.

"It is," Aethwen said.

"Then tell me the words," Morwyth said, her voice sharpening as she looked

directly at the old woman. "What are the exact, unaligned runes carved into the

rock? Not the polished version the elders repeat at every feast. The literal Old

Tongue roots. The ones you guard in the deep vaults."

Aethwen's shoulders went instantly rigid beneath her heavy wool mantle. She

lowered her hand into the wide, dark folds of her sleeve, hiding her trembling

fingers from the girl's sight. Her clear right eye narrowed.

"The Old Tongue is not for the tongues of children," Aethwen said, her voice

dropping into a stern, rumbling register. "The runes are fluid, like water over

gravel. They do not bend to simple, spoken questions. My translation has held

this pack together since before your mother was of age. To dig into the

foundation of a wall is only to bring the ceiling down upon your own head. You

are the Unifier, Morwyth. That is all the mountain requires you to know."

Morwyth watched her, noting the sudden defensive stiffness in the old woman's

frame, the way her hand remained hidden in her sleeve.

But she could not press further. Not here, and not now.

She forced her features to go completely flat, erasing the frustration from her

eyes and the tightness from her jaw. She bowed her head in a slow, perfectly

performed gesture of submissive compliance, letting her shoulders slump

slightly.

"I understand, Hearth-Seer," she said softly, her voice smooth and entirely

obedient. "I will trust the mountain."

Aethwen studied her for a long, silent moment, her rigid shoulders relaxing

slightly as she accepted the display of submission. "Go then. Wash the clay from

your tunic. The world is coming to our gate, and we must not look weak."

Morwyth turned and walked toward the door, her steps deliberate and even. She

pushed the heavy oak panel open and stepped out into the freezing, drafty

corridor of Skarrhold.

The door clicked shut behind her, cutting off the heavy choke of the moonwort

smoke.

The moment she was out of the Hearth-Seer's sight, her right hand rose, her

fingers pressing hard against the pulse point on her neck. The skin was hot

beneath her cold fingertips, her heart hammering against the lie she had just

performed. She had bowed, she had spoken the words of a dutiful child, and every

syllable had been a silent, necessary deception.

She walked down the long, drafty passage, the cold stone biting through her

boots, her mind fixed on the rigid stiffness of Aethwen's shoulders. The woman

who had raised her to be a savior was keeping her in the dark—and for the first

time, Morwyth realized she would have to find the letters of her own destiny

herself.