A Sacrifice to the Stormfather

[Iseult]

It was the gloaming hour when they left her. The clan-mother was the last to leave. She stood on the path that wound away from the peak of the Singing Mountain. She wore the heavy mantle of mourning around her shoulders, the fabric as deep red as freshly spilled blood. Yet, there was no sorrow in her now. No pity. None of the anger that burned cold in the hoarfrost-blue of Iseult's eyes.

“Daughter of Allya,” the clan-mother said, her breath misting in the evening chill.

Iseult knelt at the peaks edge, a noose around her neck and her wrists bound behind her. Stakes driven into the earth held both lengths of rope taut. The wind whipped her rust-coloured hair about her face, throwing strands into her eyes and against her lips and teeth.

“You shame your mother and your sisters.”

The clan-mother lifted her rheumy eyes to the heavens. In the distance, dark clouds loomed, advancing like a herd of rancor, each of their heavy steps ringing out as a clap of thunder. Relentless, the storm approached the Singing Mountain. The clan-mother shifted her eyes to the raw-boned girl knelt before her. Clad in nothing more than her own flesh. Even now, she struggled and fought against that which was – that which could not be changed. She would not be changed

The rancor and the saurian could be tamed and reined, the mountain could be mapped, but Iseult...

“Allya disavows you, child. May the Stormfather take you.”

[Iseult]

There was no time to delay.

With what little movement the bonds around her hands gave her, she fingered the length of rope that ran from her wrists to the ground. It was just as thick as the cord around her neck. Iseult twisted her wrists back and forth, testing the knot that held them. It would not give and soon her skin chafed and burned. She did not have time to waste on trying to slip free from the knots, not when she cold had already begun to numb her bare toes. Even a sister fully clothed and armoured could not hope to survive the full force of a high-storm.

Naked as she was, the Stormfather would strip the flesh from her bones.

Iseult groped blindly for the rope, trying to get a hold on it, but the line was too high and taut. If she could move backwards some, it would slacken and perhaps then...? She shuffled awkwardkly backwards on her knees and instantly she felt the tightening of the noose around her neck. Laboured breaths hissed through gritted teeth as she fumbled at the rope behind her, managed to loop just enough of it around the trembling fingers of one hand to grasp it.

The wind lashed sheets of rain across the peak of the Singing Mountain as the storm clouds drew near. Iseult screwed her eyes shut against it as she strained forward, desperately trying to pull the stake free of the earth it had been hammered into. Her teeth parted into a soundless roar as she pushed her shoulders forward, all of her weight - as meagre as it was - levered into tearing the stake out of the ground. Every muscle in her body was tense, her rigid arms shaking from the strain as much from the cold -

- and then crack! With a wet crunch, her left arm dislocated from her shoulder. Pain skewered her, seared through her mind and the words of the Book of Law came to her unbidden: Those who suffer emotion will never enjoy peace.

“Fuck your peace,” she spat, fresh tears mingling with rainwater as she felt frantically for the rope with her right hand this time. The whipping wind snatched it out of her grasp and she cried out again, a primal sound that was swallowed by the thunder. When the wind slapped the cord against the back of her hand, Iseult snatched and clung to it as if it were the last life-line between her and oblivion.

She barely felt the rope biting into the blotchy red skin of her palm. All feeling and sensation was almost gone in her right hand too. The darkest clouds were almost above her now. As they swirled and seethed, flashes of light sparked within them like tinder striking flint. A slow death by wind and water and cold would but a terrible thing, but to be struck by Stormlight? Wet wood burned poorly but wet or dry, a witch would burn all the same.

When her flesh and bone were nothing but ash, then the Stormfather would take her.

[Iseult]

Her head rolled back, with eyes screwed shut and teeth bared, Iseult pulled at the rope as hard as her numb fingers could. She could barely feel anything now. Only the faintest sensation in the palm of her hand told her that she was still holding anything at all. As the storm advanced, the gusting wind grew stronger. Again and again it snatched the rope from her grasp and again and again she fumbled for it.

The roll of thunder in the sky above was like a rumbling chuckle in the belly of the Stormfather, mocking her.

“You i'n't my fucking father, you hear?” Her voice was a croak, as raw as her skin where the rough cord bit into it.

“A girl can't have two fathers and I seen mine with a spear in 'is belly and 'is own cock stuffed in 'is mouth. You...”

A hacking cough pitched her shoulders forwards. Her whole body convulsed and even as she struggled to claw back some control, every part of her shook and shivered from the cold.

Hair the colour of dried blood was plastered to her forehead and temples now. Water ran into her eyes as she squinted at the sky, right into the heart of the storm. Some said that if you stood out in a high-storm – right beneath it – you could stare up into the face of the Stormfather. His eyes were Stormlight blue and the rolling clouds were froth and foam at his lips, the lips of a mouth that was wide enough to swallow the world.

Iseult's own lips trembled, twisted then pursed into a firm line as she fought for self-control. No one had survived a high-storm, not ever. She didn't believe that. She would not – could not. She dug her knees against the earth and pushed with everything that was left in side of her. If she could just pull the stake free, just free her hands, she could pry the other stake - that was tied to her throat - from the ground and be free.

“You.. come down and face me. Come look me in the eye before you try and take me.”

Her gaze, full of loathing and despair, turned slowly skyward once again.

Light exploded in front of her eyes and Iseult fell forward into darkness.

[Iseult]

Stormlight split and scorched the earth mere feet away from Iseult, wrenching her out of the darkness of unconsciousness. Suddenly and completely awake, every instinct inside of her screamed to get away – but when she tried to move her body felt heavy and clumsy. Impulse fired from her brain to her fingertips, willing them to claw at the earth and haul her herself to safety, but her fingertips barely twitched.

She scrabbled through the mud with legs as cold and heavy as icy, two stakes dragging in the dirt behind her, jerking the rope at her neck whenever they got stuck in a particularly boggy patch of earth. Iseult coughed and gasped and choked, only the ceaseless torrent of rain keeping the thick mud from blinding her entirely.

She squirmed and dragged her way into the shadow of a boulder, the stone providing meagre shelter from the wind and no protection at all from the rain or cold. She swore and the sound was swallowed by another clap of thunder, followed swiftly by spears of stormlight crackling into the mountain-top.

She could not go down the mountain the way she had come up, down the narrow path that bisected a pair of rocks like rancors teeth. At the bottom of that muddy path were the clan grounds – her clan grounds – where the daughters of the Singing Mountain sheltered themselves from the Stormfather. She would just as soon go back there as sprout wings and take flight into the skies. No, there had to be another way to leave the mountain. To leave behind the women who had condemned her.

Wind-swept bushes and brambles, hardy things that could withstand the lashing of the Stormfather, clung to the earth in patches and spread down the side of the Singing Mountain like the last wisps of hair on the clan-mothers head. Pressed with her back to her meagre cover, Iseult eyed the bushes ahead of her. Down that side of the mountain, she'd be sheltered from the brunt of the wind – but what good was shelter if it was provided by a sheer rock face?

The Stormfather answered for her, explosive light punching into the soil to her left. A wordless cry burst from her lips and, driven by the purest animal need to survive, Iseult staggered forwards. She ran blind, brambles soon catching and grabbing at her ankles like covetous hands, heart beating like a fist against her chest -

She ran, and then ran no more, as the ground gave way beneath her.