“How dare you?” Oden’s dark eyes flash in the light of the hearth fire as he looms over me. I shrink against the wall of our cabin. “This is betrayal, Inka. Betrayal!”

He turns then and paces back across the room toward the fire, leaving me feeling small and uncertain. “It’s not betrayal, Oden,” I say. “I’d never betray you. You know that!”

He shakes his head angrily. “I thought I did. I thought I knew you. But this! Why, Inka?”

I look around the small space we share, desperate for some inspiration, for some way to help him see things my way, to understand that my intentions are not hurtful. My eyes land on the far wall, where feathers, animal skulls, knucklebone necklaces, dried herbs, rough wooden masks—all the paraphernalia of our craft—hang neatly from hooks.

“You told me yourself,” I say, desperate for him to understand. “You said there’s almost nothing more you can teach me. That I’m almost done. But Oden—I need to know more. There’s so much hidden, so many secrets, so many things yet to learn. I need to know them all!”

Oden gestures angrily, brushing my comment aside. “You were supposed to be my successor, Inka! All the time I’ve spent teaching you, all the resources I’ve invested in you… You would throw that all away? What about me? What about Timberwall?”

I open my mouth but find it empty of words. What can I say to that? I know it’s always been implicit between us that Oden was training me to replace him as the village shaman, but… I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t considered my training as an investment he’d been making. It makes me feel selfish. Childish.

Still…

“I asked you about Hilda,” I say. “And you said she could probably teach me everything I ever wanted to know. I thought you were encouraging me to go to her!”

“I was not encouraging you to go to her. You asked what I knew about her, and I answered. Nothing more.”

What can I say to that? He turns his back to me, faces the fire. I can see his shoulders moving as he takes deep breaths, obviously trying to calm himself.

“We could search them out together,” he says, turning again toward me and spreading his arms wide. “Those secrets you mentioned. In the time we have left, we could hunt for them, reveal the hidden things. There’s no need for you to go in search of Hilda.”

Something in the way he phrases that rattles in my head a bit, but I can’t focus on it just now. “Hilda already knows those secrets,” I say. “If I can find her, I know I can convince her to take me as an apprentice.”

“Hilda Deepsight hasn’t taken an apprentice in years,” Oden says. “But even if she did, somehow, take you on, what about Timberwall? The village needs a shaman, boy. Timberwall needs you.”

“But Timberwall has you,” I say. “There are other boys and girls in the village, some even seem to show hints of Sight, like you saw in me.”

Oden gestures dismissively. “Bah,” he says. “Perhaps, perhaps, but there isn’t time. It’s taken years to train you, Inka. Years that I just—“ he stops.

He stops, and suddenly what he said before strikes me. “Wait,” I say, sitting up straighter. “What did you mean, ‘in the time we have left?’”

Oden purses his lips. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It doesn’t matter because you’re not leaving. As your master, I have final say as to your coming and going. You’re staying, and that’s final.”

“But Oden,” I say, straightening. “I’ve already sworn a Vow. On iron!”

Oden gestures with one hand, an abrupt chopping motion. “More fool you,” he says. “A child will make vows he cannot keep, and learns to accept consequences by forswearing them.”

The small cabin is warm from the fire burning at the far end, but I feel chilled, suddenly. “You would have me forswear my oath?”

“What else would you have me do?” Oden asks angrily. “If you’d consulted me before swearing that foolish oath, it all could have been avoided!”

“But you said—“

“I know what I said,” Oden says. “And I know what I meant by what I said. You misunderstood me. I did not encourage you to seek out Hilda. You asked me who the greatest mystic in the Ironlands was, and I told you. That’s all.”

“I asked you because we’d just been talking about how you’d taught me all you could! You said my apprenticeship was nearly over!”

“Yes!” Oden shouts. “Over! Because it’s nearly time for you to assume the mantle of village shaman in Timberwall!”

“But I can’t be the shaman yet. There’s so much I still don’t know—“

“You think I know everything?” asks Oden. “I’ve been shaman in Timberwall for almost 30 years. I learn more about the unseen world every day, boy. You will, too. Now, forswear your oath and be done with it.”

“I can’t!”

“You must!”

I take a deep breath. “Oden—Master—I beg you, please let me go. You taught me this much in seven years. In another seven, you could have another apprentice trained, surely.”

Oden shakes his head. “Inka. My boy. My son.” My breath catches. He’s never called me son, before. In all the years since he took me in after the death of my parents, through all our lessons together, he never once has spoken the words to make me family. “Inka. I didn’t want to tell you this… I—“ he coughs, then, and falls silent.

He called me son. I, certainly, look to him as a father. I’ve never said as much, never wanted to oblige him to reciprocate the feeling. But… He called me son!

“Inka,” he continues, then. “You deserve to know. I am dying.”

My train of thought shatters, like ice struck by a heavy stone. “What?” I ask, dumbly.

“I am dying,” he says. “I’ve known for several months, now. The omens and portents are clear. The augurs have confirmed it.”

“But…” I cast about, trying to think of something relevant to say. “But, when?”

He shrugs. “Not even the wisest shamans may know the day of their doom,” he says. “But mine is clearly approaching. Months, maybe. Maybe a couple of years. But certainly not seven.”

I stare at him, aghast. I see, for the first time, the gray at his temples, and in his beard. When had that appeared? “But you’re not old!” I say.

He laughs softly. “We never believe it will happen to us,” he says. “We always believe we will live forever. But the Boatman comes for us all in the end.”

I feel tears in my eyes, both for Oden, and for my own dreams. I can’t leave Timberwall without a shaman, and Oden is right: if he is unable to train another shaman, it might be a generation or more before a new shaman comes to Timberwall. The village might not survive that long without one.

I harden my resolve. “What if I swear another Vow?” I ask him. “I will swear to you, and to Timberwall, that when my apprenticeship is done, I will return. I will be Timberwall’s shaman. But the things I could learn from Hilda Deepsight could be of great use to Timberwall. Think of all you’ve been able to do for us! And imagine how much more you might have done, with the secrets she knows.”

Oden looks at me for a long moment. “Does it mean that much to you, boy?”

I nod, unable to speak, afraid my voice—my resolve—will break.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Very well,” he says, finally. “Very well. You may go, then, with my blessing. But I will have that oath. And if you don’t find Hilda, or if she refuses to take you on as her apprentice, you agree to return here, straightway.”

I nod again, barely daring to believe what I’m hearing.

Oden looks at me again, his pale blue eyes boring into mine. “You must come back, boy,” he says. “The things out there…and especially in the Hinterlands, and farther north. If anything were to happen to you…”

I see tears in his eyes, now, too, and I stand. I hold up the iron pendant my parents had left me, gripping it in my right hand. “Father,” I say to him, and watch as he smiles sadly. “Father. I Vow upon this iron…”

As I speak the words of the Vow, I feel them settle into me, binding me as surely as any cord.

I speak the words, and it is done.

I leave in the morning.