Holly Noakes suffered up the roughcut steps of the mountain path, her back bent beneath the weight of the two sloshing buckets whose carrying pole she balanced on her neck and shoulders. Her burden weighed almost as much as she did. Holly made it to the landing and halted, gasping like fish out of water.

Her joints were killing her. Holly was fifty-seven years old and felt every bit of it on these daily climbs to the summit. This made her ancient by halfling standards, but she didn’t dare let that stop her.

“All of life is movement, little sister,” came the voice of Reimiss, the memory of the gentle druid echoing out of the past, “Stop moving, and pretty soon, you’ll stop living, too.”

If only Reimiss had taken his own advice that day on the Thunderbluffs, when the Sargon had come stampeding out of the plains with all the orcish tribes riding beneath his wolf’s tail banner.

Ah, but she was picking at the scabs of her past; a useless effort. She had to save her strength for what mattered. Holly pawed at the sweat that dripped down her nose and stung her hazel eyes. There were still two more flights of steps to go, and daylight was burning.

She took up the burden again before her limbs could admit how tired they were, feet pounding up the incline, refusing to slow down even as her thighs wobbled beneath her. Knots of acid gnawed at her iron-hard muscles formed by a lifetime spent hard trekking. In her prime she had scrabbled over these same paths with the surefootedness of a highland ram. Her people had once been the very finest of the Coalition’s rangers, and Holly had been foremost among them, a maverick who thought nothing of three-day marches up and down the spines of her mountain homeland.

Nowadays even just getting out of bed took the starch out of her. Her bone-aches were becoming more frequent, a sure sign that winter would come early again. Holly conquered the last flight of stairs and lowered the buckets with a pained sigh. Curtains of green ivy and pink flowering vines swallowed up the path ahead, which had narrowed sharply as it came to the mouth of the grotto.

From inside came the music of water and the heady fragrance like that of a summer orchard heavy with fruit. Holly slowly lowered herself onto her creaking knees and drew the circle of cleansing in the dust, thoughts going blank as she prepared to enter sacred ground.

She drew a single wavy line through the circle that neatly divided it down the middle. Unhitching the buckets from the pole and carrying them by hand, Holly sucked in her belly and went in sideways through the gap in the rock.

This was her special place. Here the years rolled back and she could be exactly as she was then: young and daisy-fresh with not a care in the world, all her thoughts turned to the next wild romp she and her friends were certain to get into.

They were all waiting for her inside. The nameless elven goddess stood at the far end of the central grotto, bare white marble arms pouring a silver stream from her jar into the clay stream that circled round her feet. The master sculptor who had carved her out of the living rock millennia ago had hidden her face behind a stone veil that seemed to flow like real cloth, hinting at the immortal beauty beneath, the cherubic cheeks and lips outlining a smile that seemed almost gently mocking. The crystalline water went round and round in an endless cycle before swirling into a drain, where by some miracle of underground hydraulics it climbed back up to the maiden’s jar where it fell in endless cycles of movement.

Well, almost endless. There was barely a trickle of it left in the carven channels—clumps of fallen leaves had dammed up the flow, the rest of the water having evaporated or soaked into the dirt at the foot of the splattering fountain.

“Good morning,” Holly called out, “How’s everyone doing?”

On either side of the grotto were tiny alcoves, shafts of sunlight pouring in through bricked chimneys built into the ceiling. In the first a cloven helmet rested atop a stone shelf, a battleaxe leaning against the wall behind it.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Hello Gotthard,” Holly said, patting the dwarf on his helmet, “Working up a thirst, are ye?”

She reached into her pocket and took out a chrome-plated hip flask that she emptied out over his mound before taking a swig for herself. The spirits burned all the way down her throat and into her stomach, making her hack and splutter.

“I don’t know how you can stand this poison. What? Course it’s the real deal,” she wheezed in outrage, “Genuine firegut from Ironsmoke Foundry. You think I’d swindle a friend?”

But that was a lie, and Holly knew it. Ironsmoke Foundry had fallen along with the rest of the Coalition not long after the War of the Wolf Tail Banner. She still knew a few dwarves in the village who kept their own distilleries, descendants of the refugees whom the mounted marauders had driven across the valleys, but by their own admission their version of the spirit was an unworthy successor to the legendary beverage. She still bought a skein of it whenever she came into town to trade in her pelts, more for Gotthard’s enjoyment than her own.

“And no, I didn’t forget about you, Cyrilla,” Holly said, turning to the middle alcove where a lute missing all its strings save one was propped up against a pile of leatherbound tomes. The halfling woman reached into her other pocket of her coat and placed a fresh volume on the top of the stack, sending up a puff of dust from the dust covers of the one below.

“It’s the Dance of Air and Darkness. What do you mean you don’t like romance novels?” Holly stamped her foot, immediately regretting it as it sent a twinge of pain up her knee, “Now who’s liar? I didn’t catch you complaining when I got you that elven smut you requested. Cultural research my arse! Half that book was illustrations—I couldn’t look the book vendor in the eye for weeks after that.”

“I’m not cross,” she told Reimiss, putting her nose up in the air, “I’m indignant! Just because I’m vertically disadvantaged doesn’t give you the right to kick me around like this.”

But Holly relented soon enough. She couldn’t stay annoyed at them for long—halflings were extremely sociable and made friends almost instinctively.

“Alright, alright,” Holly said frumpily, glancing at the shattered halves of the elf’s gnarled wooden staff which lay on a bed of cloth, “Just hush now and let me work.”

She picked up a handful of reeds and swept up the floor of the grotto, gathering up the dead leaf litter and burning it in a pile outside. She cleaned out the channels of the fountains and poured the water from her buckets into the goddess’ earthenware jar.

“Good morning, milady,” Holly chattered as she did so, “Do you reckon it’ll rain hailstones again today? I sincerely hope not—my pumpkins wouldn’t survive it. I don’t suppose you could swing that for me with the fellows upstairs?”

As if in response, a gust of wind tickled Holly’s ankles, drawing in the smoke from the trash pile outside. Holly’s eyes started to water as the smell of ash soured her nostrils. But with it came other, fainter scents that eluded her at first.

Wet fur, the coppery zest of spilt blood, the reek of stale spittle and carrion emanating from the mouth of a panting beast fresh from the site of its kill.

A bulky shadow blotted out the sunlight from the entrance. Enormous claws clicked and skidded on the flagstones, guided by sleek muscles that made no sound as the shape loomed ever larger behind her.

“So you’ve returned,” Holly said with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

She screamed as the thing hurtled into her, tackling her clean off her feet and bearing her to the ground. Holly scrambled backwards on her arse, her thin arms outstretched as she desperately held open the jaws of a snarling albino dire wolf.

“No!” Holly cried as the steel-trap mouth neared her face, “No, please! Don’t!”

A hot tongue that was rough like sandpaper lashed out and drenched her face in spittle. Judging from the smears of blood and chicken feathers on his maw, the dire wolf had just been out raiding Father Dallahan’s chicken coops again.

“Bruno!” she squealed, “Stop. No kisses! Stop!”

The beast overpowered her, licking her face and hands, snuffling and nudging her roughly with his snout. Holly fought her way clear and stood up, only for Bruno to leap up and place both forepaws on her chest, making her fall over again.

“Oh, tarnation,” Holly sighed, “I’ve got blood all over me now, and I had just taken a bath. Bad boy. Naughty boy, Bruno!”

But she had never been able to discipline the mutt. Only Reimiss had known the secret of it—one whistle from the elf had been enough to get Bruno crawl on his belly, whining as begged his surrogate father for forgiveness. In contrast, he seemed to regard Holly as a favorite aunt, tilting his shaggy head to one side as she wagged a reproving finger at him.

“This is what happens when you spoil your children rotten,” she told Reimiss disapprovingly, “Come, boy! Let’s head home and get some chow on.”

She filled the braziers with some bark scrapings and sticks from the incense box she kept in one of the alcoves, set them alight with her flint and tinder before heading back for home.

“Same time tomorrow, then? Alright then, goodnight you chuckleheads. Milady,” Holly gave a bow which the goddess acknowledged with her unreadable smile. Then Holly went out into the spreading dusk, trooping back down the mountain with the white wolf at her side.