Page 100 of Cursed Shadows 5

Rune touches the root to his mouth. “You are leaving now?”

“I will make a stop on the way.”

Rune arches a brow. “Where?”

“The brothel.”

Rune’s smile glides around the grimroot; a contrast to the sudden pulse of a stirred ache.

Samick feels the nip of pain biting at the cold air around him; the lie in the smile. A lie he is all too familiar with since Rune found his evate in a brothel, ran from her, then lost her to the Wastelands.

The practiced nonchalance that Rune wears as he tugs the grimroot from his lips, it is a mask that Samick can see through as clearly as a glass window.

“In that case,” Rune says, then finishes his implications with a shrug before he takes a step forward. "Shall we?”

Samick turns his back on the glittering lights of Kithe, Rune trailing behind.

20

††††††

The Sabbat isn’t unlike the Sacrament in that it’s a joined event, a celebration that brings the lands together.

The Sabbat is a day—or, here, aphase—of gods.

In Licht, it was my favourite day of the year.

Festivals flood the streets, fires smoke up into the skies, lives are sacrificed in blood and screams, gifts are passed from hand to hand, lovers are found in fields, and offerings are made to the gods in fruits and meats and wines.

Gifts were my favourite part of the Sabbat. I would receive a new pair of pretty sandals or a lovely dress from my father.

This Sabbat, I look forward to another practice.

I look forward to the sky messages.

This phase isn’t chosen at random, and it is the same for all lands. The Sabbat is chosen by the gods themselves, for it is the night that is coldest and the day that is warmest; it is the phase where the veil between the worlds is thinnest; the only time of the year that one from this world can write a message on parchment, then burn it and the smoke will rise up into the skies to deliver those sacred words to a passed loved one. The only time of the entire year that the dead can hear our whispers without suffering our pain.

We speak to the departed.

This will be the first time I do this, write to the dead. I didn’t have many dead ones in my life before coming here. Now, I will write to Aleana, as I’m certain Daxeel will, and his mother, and Rune and Dare and Eamon. Samick, I have no idea.

I think little of it, no more than a fleeting thought, before I sit on the foot of the narrow bed this Warmth, and I write my letters. Two letters.

Eamon writes his on the roof.

It is a private thing.

And as we write, we mutter the prayers to our gods, ask for the safe passage of our messages, and give thanks.

In Licht, we worship Gaia and the light. Sometimes the light is separate to Gaia, and we call it Sulis. Other times, Gaia and the light are one of the same.

They worship neither in Dorcha. There, it is all about Kahrimaht, the god of dark, of night, of evil, of famine, death and disease.

Here, in Kithe,allare worshiped. And I meanall…

Arawn, Macha, and Diancecht are ones I recognise in costume and sculpture. Badb and Eostre are gods I wouldn’t recognise at all, and I read their names on the boards that folk carry overhead. I suppose those god worshippers came from smaller villages and eventually settled in Kithe.

I watch them out there.

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