A Door Opens on Borrowed Strength

“Hanwi didn't keep any pets?” I asked. “Or giant Redborn eating monsters?”

Nimiwa looked toward the sealed door, blue eye brightening.

“No. Hanwi is god. No pets.”

“Something inside may have been uninvited then. I think this is the start of the trail.”

Nimiwa planted her staff beside her sack and moved along the trail, studying the impressions until she stopped and placed both hands against one of the deeper marks. Tawa climbed down from Nimiwa’s sack and stepped onto the disturbed ground. His burning hair cast orange light over the slime. He bent and pressed one hand against it. The flames around his mask instantly weakened.

“Hanwi touched this,” he said.

Nimiwa turned toward him. “She came outside?”

“I feel her presence, nothing more.”

That answer seemed to concern her more than if he had just said no. Nimiwa touched the slime, watching it cling to her fingers as she pulled it apart. She touched her slime covered finger to the tip of her tongue. Blue light pulsed through her eye, and her expression changed before she swallowed.

“The Keeper?” she whispered.

Tawa removed his hand from the impression. His flames recovered slowly. “Yes.”

“What is the Keeper?” I asked.

Nimiwa wiped her fingers against a patch of moss. She hesitated before answering, as if revealing closely guarded secrets.

“Hanwi’s guardian. A frog.”

I looked at the trail again. The word did not match any of what lay in front of me. The frog must have been something monstrous.

“Keeper lives in sacred water beneath shrine,” Nimiwa continued. “It eats what Hanwi takes from sick.”

“It stays beneath the shrine?”

Nimiwa shook her head. “Sacred water runs beneath forest. Keeper follows it. Springs. Lakes. Sometimes above ground.”

That explained how something belonging to a sealed shrine had collected Imperial bolts. “Your healing goddess takes the damage from the wounded and feeds it to a frog?”

“It carries corruption into deep water. Hanwi cleans Keeper beneath moon.”

“And when Hanwi does not clean it?”

Nimiwa closed her eyes, searching through what she had studied, but no answer came. “It has never happened,” she finally said.

I looked again at the impression, at Tawa’s weakened flames and the concern on Nimiwa's face. If a frog that size turned out to be an enemy, it wouldn't be something I could fight alone. I had told Tawa that I would repay what I owed. Apparently, the debt had grown legs.

Four of them, judging from the tracks.

“Is it supposed to be this large?”

“When I saw Keeper, it was small.” She spread her arms wide. “About this big.” It looked about the size of a large boar.

“How long ago was this?”

“One hundred sixty years. But Keeper does not grow.” She shook her head. “Every oracle record says same. Hanwi cleans Keeper. It stays as she made it.”

“Then either Hanwi stopped cleaning it before she went silent, or whatever changed the Keeper is why she went silent.”

Nimiwa looked toward Tawa but the god offered neither correction nor agreement.

Nimiwa retrieved her staff and faced the sealed door. “We check inside.” She leaned the staff against the stone before reaching across her chest to unfasten the braided leather holding the bird skull against her shoulder.

I had almost forgotten it was there. With the feathers behind her head, painted skin, absence of practical armor and my attention diverted to her hips, one dead bird had seemed among the less striking features of her appearance.

She cradled the skull in both palms. The bone had been polished smooth and fine symbols had been carved along the beak and around the eye sockets.

“I thought that was just for decoration.”

Nimiwa gave me an offended look. “It has purpose. It listens.”

“To what?”

“Things not spoken for you.”

I decided not to ask what that meant.

She knelt before the door. Near the lowest moon carving was a narrow opening hidden beneath moss. Nimiwa cleared it and inserted the bird’s beak into the stone.

The eye sockets aligned with two small crescents carved into the door. A key, then.

She pressed her forehead against the back of the skull and began speaking in Elvish. Her voice completely changed. The uncertain pauses disappeared. Each word joined the next in a smooth, flowing rhythm. The blue light within the surrounding stones brightened through the carved lines. The empty sockets of the skull were now filled with blue light. The same light gathered in Nimiwa's eye.

Nimiwa’s prayer ended and a high, wavering bird cry answered from inside the chamber. It echoed from somewhere deeper in the shrine.

Stone ground against stone as the phases of the moon rotated around the door until the full moon rested at the top.

A thin seam opened down the center and slowly widened. Cold air escaped through the gap. It smelled of something sour enough to make me almost gag.

Nimiwa removed the skull and stood but her balance failed immediately. I caught her around the waist before her face reached the mud.

For a moment, she remained against me without reacting. Then she seemed to notice how little space remained between us and stiffened. Her body was warm despite the cold air leaking from the shrine, and her waist fit far too easily inside one arm.

Her orange eye remained clear. The blue one flickered, then went dark.

“You neglected to mention opening the door does that.”

“It should not.”

I released enough of my hold to test the claim. Her knees started folding again so I tightened my grip.

Nimiwa looked away, her face becoming flush. “I am well. Oracle duty. I need only moment.”

I kept one arm around her until the trembling in her legs eased.

“Is this because of Hanwi?”

“Opening takes strength. But not mine.”

I looked toward the narrow opening in the shrine.

“Whose should it take?”

Nimiwa shook her head. “Hanwi opens for oracle,” she said as she pressed two fingers beneath her blue eye. The light there gave a weak pulse. “She answered.”

Tawa remained beside the door, staring at her rather than the newly opened chamber. “Not enough,” he said.

I looked from the small god to the woman still leaning against me. The goddess no longer possessed enough strength to open her own door. The difference had been borrowed from Nimiwa.

I had agreed to enter Hanwi’s shrine and restore her blessing to the elves. I had not considered that someone else might be forced to pay for it.

“We still enter,” she said.

“You are having difficulty standing.”

“I know shrine. You do not.”

That was unfortunately true. I grabbed her staff and placed it across her arms. “Then, guide,” I said. Before she could object, I slid one arm beneath her knees and lifted her. She was lighter than the sack she had carried through the forest. Her orange eye widened, and one arm circled my neck more from necessity than agreement. Her blue eye remained dim.

I carried her into the darkness of Hanwi's shrine.