Free Heartwood (Tricksters Game) by Barbara Campbell

all very well to hear about slaying monsters and crossing the rainbow bridge into the silver branches of the World Tree, but it would have been nice to glean something useful to an ordinary man.
    He hefted his spear and took a last look around the hut. The place where his mam had birthed him, where he’d brought his wife, where both had died, and his father and little Milia, all those years ago. His sister would have been seventeen at Midwinter.
    When he spied the turtle shells, he added them to the sack. What else was he forgetting? He hesitated when he saw Tinnean’s flute. They didn’t need it. His sack was already bulging. Still, he snatched it up. He hesitated even longer when he saw the small pouch shoved into a crevice in the wall.
    He had gathered the charms as a boy: the pointed tine of the stag’s antler; the feather of the golden eagle; the fire-blackened twig in the jagged shape of a lightning bolt; the scaly tail of the salmon. Earth, air, fire, water. He’d worn the bag around his neck day and night until the morning he had laid his mam and Maili in the Death Hut.
    Cursing, he yanked the bag free and slipped the leather thongs over his head. His fingers crept up to stroke the soft doeskin. In spite of all that had happened, the touch comforted him.
    He looked up to find Tinnean watching him, a hesitant smile on his face. A little ashamed to be caught clutching his bag of charms, Darak dropped his hand and nodded toward the doorway. Even if the council decided in Tinnean’s favor, this act of defiance would make them exiles. They would never see their village again, never stand with the others before the heart-oak, never watch Bel perch for a heartbeat atop Eagles Mount before impaling himself upon the mountain’s peak to die and be reborn the next dawn in the eastern forest. They would be alone—without home, without kin—from this night on.
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bearskin move. Dropping his spear, he thrust Tinnean behind him, ripped his dagger from its sheath, and fell into a defensive crouch.
    Yeorna’s eyes widened at the sight of his dagger. Darak sheathed it as Struath bent low to enter. He forced himself to offer the formal words of greeting. “You are welcome in my home.”
    “Your welcome warms us on this winter’s night,” the Grain-Mother replied.
    Oddly, both Yeorna and Struath offered deep bows to Tinnean. His brother studied them a moment before mimicking the greeting. Darak gestured to the fire pit. “Would you sit?”
    The stiff formalities helped him control the fear twisting his guts. There had never been a casting-out in his lifetime, but he had heard the stories told by the Memory-Keeper: the evildoer stripped naked in the center of the village, proclaimed dead by the Tree-Father, and then driven from the village with rocks and dung, his face never seen again, his name never spoken.
    He struggled to keep his voice even. “When will you perform the casting-out?”
    “It is not a casting-out,” Yeorna said.
    With her words, fear changed to terror. Every child learned the story of the wicked shaman Morgath. It was a tale whispered around fire pits, warning of the fate that awaited those who subverted nature’s order. And now the council had proclaimed the same fate for his brother.
    Tinnean would be bent backward over the roots of the heart-oak. Tinnean’s still-beating heart would be cut out of his chest. Tinnean’s dripping blood would be sprinkled around the glade. Tinnean’s body would be hung from the oak’s lowest branch. Tinnean’s flesh would be devoured by animals. Tinnean’s bones would lie in a discarded heap, never to be gathered by his family, never to lie in the tribal cairn.
    “You cannot do this.”
    “Darak …”
    “I’ll not stand by while you sacrifice—”
    “Darak!” Struath’s voice overrode Yeorna’s protestations. “That is not the council’s decision.”
    Relief left him weak. He had to clear his throat twice before