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“Lucia felt it was a gods-touched moment, meeting them this way. She the last of her people in this strange land, they the only ones who’d survived the journey to find her and her drakes. While the men lay sleeping, she conferred with her drakes, and found them likewise admiring of their visitors. She moved from bedroll to bedroll in the night, waking each man in turn with the weight of her body. She lay with each of them, and in the morning, she gifted each with a gemstone larger than a goose egg, and a drake to ride.

“But the fifth refused such gifts. ‘What of you, my lady? Would you not keep a gem and a drake for yourself? When I have so little need for either?’

“And so, she did. She kept the largest beast for herself, gleaming silver with eyes like diamonds, and together, she and her new lovers flew over the mountaintops, the fifth man riding behind her, back to the valley that would be named Dreki Hörgr in honor of the Lady Lucia, the Mother of All Magic in the North and the South.”

Náli remembered his tea and took a sip to find it had gone cold, which somehow enhanced the mint’s taste. “That sounds like every children’s story I’ve ever heard. Let me guess, she birthed five sons from five fathers?”

“Six, actually, according to legend. Her drake, the great silver one, was in fact a skinwalker, and he transformed into a man so that he could get a son on her also.”

“Gods,” Náli muttered, and choked down a sudden, hysterical laugh. “I think I can see where this is going.”

“Perhaps,” the shaman conceded with a head tilt. “When Lucia gave birth to these six sons, she gifted each with just one aspect of her seithr. The power, she reasoned, was too great for one wielder. To one she gave the gift of weather; another the gift of green, growing things; another the gift of foresight. The son of the dragon was gifted the drake magic, and another the power to wear an animal’s skin.”

“Leif,” Náli said to himself.

The shaman didn’t acknowledge him. “Last of all, she gave her fifth son – the child of the man who would take neither drake nor gem – the gift that had so frightened her in her sister, and in herself, a magic she had never before used. The gift of the dead.”

It was the logical conclusion of the tale, one he’d anticipated, and still he shuddered, against his will. “That one was my ancestor, I suppose.”

The shaman nodded. “It was the greatest of Lucia’s magics; the most powerful and the most dangerous. It was too much for the child, too much for any lone figure, and Lucia was frantic with worry. The healer of the clan said the child would die if his power wasn’t diluted, and so, worried for his son, fueled by Lucia’s tears, the boy’s father broke his power into pieces and scattered it, so that the child might live.

“A portion he gave to a group of wise men who would become the shamans of the Old North.

“A portion was pressed into the massive diamond that he had not taken, and it was then cracked into six pieces.

“The last portion was for the boy himself, but this too he split into six equal shares. He gathered five willing young men of the clan, and Lucia used her seithr to bind their souls to the boy. Together, the six of them shared the burden of the power of the dead, and they became the first Corpse Lord and his Dead Guard. Each wore a diamond pendant, their power replenishing them when they’d overtaxed themselves.”

Náli blinked.

And then blinked some more.

“His Guard…” he said, “shared his power.”

“Yes.”

“His Dead Guard shared his power.”

“Yes.”

“His Dead Guard shared his power.”

“Yes, yes, and yes, Lord Náli.” For the first time in their acquaintance, the shaman’s lips curved in the subtlest of smiles. “Originally, the Dead Guard were not merely guardians of the lord of death – but of death itself. They guarded the power of the dead, wielding it between them, safeguarding it, and passing it to their sons in turn.”

Náli tried and failed to imagine what that must have been like. To have someone share in his burden. To thin out its effects by spreading it amongst six souls, rather than heaping it all upon one.

“But…did they…” His throat squeezed tight, made it hard to speak or breathe. “The fire mountain. Were they forced to return to it? As I am?”

“No. The power was evenly distributed, and it never posed a threat to them or the realm at large.”

“Then why is it different now? Why?”

She shaman’s smile melted as if it had never been there at all. His eyes took on a haunted cast. “Because everything was different after…”

Valgrind shot upright with a sudden jerk. He leaped to his feet, and flung up his head, startling the shaman to his feet as well.

“What is it?” Náli asked.

Valgrind screamed up at the sky, the sharp, hawklike cry he used in flight. A warning? A greeting? It sounded as if it might have been both.