You died on the road in your last life. You remember headlights, the sound the world made when it shut, and then nothing, and then grass.
Two moons hang over the valley, one pale and one copper, and the grass under your back is wet. Below you a river is working its way around a hill, and on the hill there is a city with a castle in it, lit torch by torch, as if it has been waiting up for you.
The voice does not come from a mouth. It comes from the hill and the river and the space behind your ears at the same time, and it is not quite a man's voice or a woman's.
"Easy. Breathe. That body is yours now; I built it from what was left."
The words arrive warm and slow, the way someone reads to a fever.
"You died on a Tuesday. Try your hands."
Your hands move. Ten fingers, and none of the scars you remember. A sword stands in the ground beside your right elbow, plain iron, older than the city, and it is humming.
"I have been pulling souls out of the dark for six hundred years,"
the voice says.
"Most come apart on the way. You did not. The things in the mountains felt you land, and they have been walking toward this valley since the hour you hit the grass."
A bell rings once, down in the city.
"So. Stand up. Take the sword. Walk down to the gate, and I will tell you what your new body can do and what it cannot, and the name the soldiers will shout, and the three things the mountain must not see."
A pause, the first one it has taken.
"And when you are angry with me, and you will be, say it out loud. I am listening."
The wind moves your hair like a hand.