The dragon marked one speaks of snow and he remembers the cruelness of the Mydalr winters, a dull ache pulsing through his chest. His mind is on frost lichen and yule grass when Wessex confirms the smell of water nearby. She asks the winged mare to seek a healer, a request wasted on him and yet he says nothing as the two mares speak. He lived amongst healers, Thord the greatest of them, but he would share no link with a healer here. Not when they were but a name away from strangers to each other.

He makes no small talk when they reach the pool, drinking his fill and allowing her to do the same before entering the chest-high water. Despite the salt that cakes his body he does not try to wash it away, the very salt that ravaged his insides would be the same salt to salve his burns. Burns that still had no face, no story to tell the one who’s skin they scarred. The cool water brings back no rush of memories, as he had only mildly hoped, still the scenes would not reveal his own tale. His memories of that night were not stirred, not when they passed the forests that looked so much like Mydalr’s, not when they came through the narrow mountain’s pass, and not when they crossed into the Basin.  

Before they even reach the sentinels, the blue roan’s ears are laid back against his skull, his posture rigid, his chin tucked slightly. He had never smelled so many different scents so heavily mixed, predator’s musk as thick as prey’s. It smelled of wolf and snake and goat and it was all bound up in the scent of an unfamiliar magic.

Altar can taste the sentinel’s iron before it rises in the path before them, “the sentinel,” he says to Wessex, a statement more than a question with a need for validation. The pair continue deeper into the space between the mountains, slowing when a raven circling above two figures in the path comes into view.

Altar recognizes the yellow-eyed Weaver, with her wings folded against her slender sides and a stallion beside her, unfamiliar to him. The draft eyes the ram horns that rise from the stallion’s head, the sight still a very much a novel one. Altar’s were a gift and so he had been the only one amongst his kind with horns, but here, they all had horns and none were alike.

The black smells of herbs, some Altar recognizes and others he struggles for the name. The scents remind him of the offering burns, where some came to be healed by the fire while others were surrendered to it. But he was rarely involved in the matters of the herbalists, Altar saved his strength for the martyrs, for the messages left amongst the bones and ash. The darkness in the black recognizes his own even before they were within a shadow’s reach of each other.

They arrive while the stallion is still speaking, Altar only catching part of the conversation, “and now you need help disposing of the body?” If he had eyebrows, one would be raised, but Altar dismisses it down to banter. The stallion continues, assuring her of his assistance should she need it and though he isn’t sure, he assumes the black is the healer that had been requested on his behalf. The blisters were no longer leaking, now that the morning had begun to cake them with dried salt, “your generosity is appreciated, but my wounds will heal fine on their own.” Prayers long ago prayed to Elr begin to recite themselves in his head, the goddess of shamanic healers and restoration. Reminding him that perhaps she would not take too kindly to him abandoning his consecrated ties for paltry pain relief. Altar’s wounds would heal on their own here, or he would fester away – to be remembered as a fanatic, or far more likely, a fool.

The black looked like he had perhaps seen his share of battles –surely, at least he, would recognize his choice as one made of prudence and not conceit. They were but named strangers to him and he to them, their sacraments would be but wasted on his pagan skin. Not yet. Not when his name hadn’t even had time to sour on their tongues.“Can you tell me of the iron horse? Was it you or your gods who built it?” He asks to the three that smelled of mountains and metal, the idea wild and bidding of his interest – if it was the former, their powers were surely greater than his, at least as far as tangible powers went. “What gods do you claim here?” he continues, courteous but forward, Altar had never been one to layer perfumed banalities, a wagging tongue never felt comfortable in his mouth. Perhaps they shared the same gods, although his doubt in that weighs heavier each passing minute amongst the myriad of strange beasts.

altar