A quiet lad at the front raises his hand. “But we know how this goes. The trolls are so distracted that they do not see Paca draw his sword and kill the both of them. He crosses the bridge without trouble.”
The bard shakes his head. “It is there you are wrong, for Paca was not a violent person. This tale happened in the days of the power of men, so he had little need to be. No, the trolls grew so enraptured with their argument that Paca snuck by unnoticed.”
The boy snorts, but the bard is unhindered.
“Just as he was passing, Paca heard one of the trolls make an oath to the other, words he had never heard uttered before. An oath to promise trustworthiness and innocence. Paca could feel that the oath had power, and so he kept it in his heart and continued on his way.
“He went to Eterellis, and he found his fortune—how is another story for another day—and after four hundred days had passed, he made his way home, a richer man than he had ever been before. And when he stepped back on the bridge, two new trolls emerged atop it, again demanding all he had as toll.
“But this time Paca uttered the oath to the trolls, shocking them greatly. The trolls honored the power of his words and let him pass without trouble. Paca wended his way back home, where he met with his love’s father and boasted of his success and indeed won the hand of the lord’s daughter. And all his life he kept the troll oath sacred—”
“But why?” Danner, Finnie’s oldest brother, four years my senior, asks. He stands at the edge of the firelight, his arms folded tightly across his chest. “Why would it matter? They’re trolls.”
The bard gives him a knowing look. “Not just trolls, my boy. They’re your counterparts. There was nowhere for the trolls to go, so they built their city in the darkness descending from that very bridge. The humans drove them from the sun, until the sun searched for them so hard that the land became unbearable for living. The city still stands today.”
A few people murmur to one another. Pairs of adults lean close. No one likes the idea of the endless drought being their fault. I glance to Finnie, but she has lost interest in the tale and draws patterns in the dust at her knees. Her father calls out, “Sing us a song.”
But the bard responds, “That will be another bag.” Everyone groans and begins to depart. A bag of amaranth flour, he means. A small one, barely larger than my fist, but food is too precious to be wasted on a song, especially when there are a few among us who sing well enough.
The bard puts away his mandolin and picks himself off the stump. I hesitate, but as the crowd clears, I approach him, wringing my fingers together.
“What was the oath?” I ask. I offer him a copper, though foodstuff is worth more. Still, I have a good handful of money taken from my father’s house, hidden away in the room I share with Finnie.
The bard dips his head and accepts the coin. “It is but a story, lass.”
“Then it is a story that leaves out the most important part,” I argue.
He studies me, his pale eyes raking over my face. “It is told in many ways, Paca’s journey to Eterellis. But the way I have heard is this: that Paca crept away from his would-be robbers, and as they argued, the second said to the first, ‘By sun, earth, and shadow, and as Regret forms on my lips, I am of trollis and am bound by its words.’”
I mouth the strange oath. I don’t understand its meaning, but it’s beautiful, poetic in its own way. “Thank you,” I offer.
The bard smiles before swinging his pack over his shoulder and starting for his bed.
I can’t help but notice the sharpness of his teeth.
Chapter 1
Six Years Later
The Empyrean Bridge is the most wondrous thing I’ve ever seen.
Despite my dry throat and empty waterskins, the blisters on my feet, and the sunburn stiffening my arms and shoulders, I marvel at it. It has not been used in a hundred years or more, not since the drought hit and wiped out Eterellis, the great human city far west of it. The bridge spans a canyon that cuts the world in two, a dark, jagged line stretching farther north and farther south than I can ever hope to see. Its workmanship is impeccable, more brilliant and beautiful than any other architecture I have ever beheld, beyond what I had pictured since hearing of its existence. The stories don’t do it justice. Its many arches gleam white as sun-bleached sand. It’s longer than any township, including my hometown of Lucarpo, the largest east of the canyon, 150 miles almost due east, if I’ve read the stars correctly. I know Lucarpo is the largest, because I’ve been to every human outcropping worth a mark on a map. I’ve visited them all, slept in their peoples’ homes, worked in their dying fields, and run from their borders. Often because my father’s men, or rumor of them, arrived. Other times, because others saw the darkness within me and hated me for it. I once wielded it like a vile sword against one of their own, who was equally as vile.