“Shall I remind you why the Woodsmen come?” Virág asks.
“I know the story well,” Katalin says demurely.
I scowl at her. “We’ve heard it a hundred times before.”
“Then you’ll hear it a hundred and one, lest you forget why Keszi stands alone and untarnished in a kingdom that worships a new god.”
Virág has a propensity for morbid theatrics. In truth, Keszi is one of a handful of small villages pockmarked throughout Ezer Szem, bands of near-impenetrable forest separating us from our sisters and brothers. Keszi is the closest to the edge of the wood, though, and so we alone bear the burden of the Woodsmen. I tie off Virág’s braids with a strip of leather and resist the urge to correct her.
I could recite her whole story from memory, with the same pauses and intonations, with the same gravity in my voice. More than a century ago, everyone in Régország worshipped our gods. Isten, the sky god, who created half the world. Hadak Ura, who guided warriors toward their killing blows. And ?rd?g, god of the Under-World, whom we grudgingly acknowledge as the creator of the world’s more unsavory half.
Then the Patrifaith arrived, borne by the soldiers and holy men that marched north from the Vespasian Peninsula. We speak of it like a disease, and King István was most horribly afflicted. Spurred by his nascent and feverish devotion, he spread the Patrifaith across all four regions of Régország, killing any man or woman who refused to worship the Prinkepatrios. Followers of the old gods—now called by the new, derisive term pagans—fled into the forest of Ezer Szem, building small villages where they hoped to keep their faith in peace, and armoring themselves with the old gods’ magic.
“Please, Virág,” I beg. “Don’t make me hear it again.”
“Hush now,” she chides. “Have the patience of the great hero Vilm?tten when he followed the long stream to the Far North.”
“Yes, hush now, évike,” Katalin cuts in gleefully. “Some of us care very much about the history of our people. My people—”
Virág silences her with a glare before I can lunge toward her and show her how much damage I can do, magic or not. Almost unconsciously, my hand goes to the other pocket of my cloak, fingering the grooved edges of the golden coin nestled inside. For the briefest moment I really do love Virág, even with all the scars from her lashings latticed across the back of my thighs.
“No fighting today,” she says. “Let’s not do our enemy’s job for them.”
She smiles then, extra eyeteeth glinting in the firelight, and the smoke rises in dark clouds around her, as if it’s streaming from her skull. Her mouth forms the shape of the words, but she never makes a sound: her eyes roll back in her head and she slumps over, newly plaited hair slipping from my hands like water.
Katalin lurches toward her, but it’s too late. Virág writhes on the floor, her neck bent at an odd angle, as though an invisible hand is twisting the notches of her spine. Her chest rises in ragged spasms, breathing dirt—her visions look like someone being buried alive, the fruitless, manic struggle as the earth closes over your head and your lungs fill with soil. Katalin chokes back a sob.
I know what she’s thinking: It could be me. The visions come without warning, and without mercy. I feel the barest twinge of pity now, as I gather Virág’s head into my arms.
Virág’s eyes shut. The quaking stops, and she lies as still as a corpse, dirt matted in her white hair. When her eyes open again, they are thankfully, blessedly blue.
Relief floods through me, but it vanishes again in an instant. Virág pushes up from the ground, seizing Katalin by the shoulders, all twelve of her fingers clawing at the fur of her wolf cloak.
“The Woodsmen,” she gasps. “They’re coming for you.”
Something—a laugh or a scream—burns a hole in the cavern of my throat. Katalin is frozen like the trees we tied down, helplessly rooted in place, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. I don’t think the realization has hit her yet. She’s trapped in that cold, arrested moment before she feels the blade between her shoulders.
But Virág isn’t frozen. She gets to her feet, even as she trembles with the ebbing of her vision. Whatever she saw still shudders through her, but the lines of her face are carved deep with determination. She paces the floor of her hut, from the moss clotted in the doorway to the flickering hearth, her eyes trained on something in the middle distance. When her gaze finally snaps back to Katalin and me, she says, “Take off your cloak.”