by Pedro Urvi
The Secret of the Golden Gods
Complete Series
Pedro Urvi
Books in this Series
The Golden Gods:
Book 1: ORIGIN
Book 2: REBELLION
Book 3: REBIRTH
Other Books by Pedro Urvi
The Ilenian Enigma:
Book 1: MARKED
Book 2: CONFLICT
Book 3: TRIALS
Book 4: DESTINY
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Copyright © 2018 Pedro Urvi
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Second Edition
Illustrations by Sarima
http://envuelorasante.com/
Translated by Christy Cox and Peter Gauld
To my father, my number one fan, always.
ORIGIN
Pedro Urvi
Contents
The Secret of the Golden Gods
Books in this Series
Other Books by Pedro Urvi
To my father, my number one fan, always.
ORIGIN
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
---THE END-BOOK 1--
REBELLION
Pedro Urvi
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
---THE END BOOK 2---
REBIRTH
Pedro Urvi
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Note from the author:
Acknowledgements
Author
Books in this Series:
Other Books by Pedro Urvi
Prologue
Legends tell that the Golden Gods appeared to the first men one evening under a full red moon.
The Senoca, the people of the sea, welcomed them humbly and offered them gifts, but the all-powerful Gods demanded slavery. The Senoca turned to Oxatsi, Mother Sea, and they fought them in the battle field, defending their sacred freedom.
The Golden Gods made the sky explode in a rain of fire and caused the earth to break up and devour men.
The Senoca were defeated and were enslaved for a thousand years.
1
The Ring on his left wrist vibrated.
Ikai looked at it and a white radiance burst in his mind.
“The Hill of Skies, in three days,” was his Master’s message.
I’m summoned… I must leave.
He stared for a moment at the polished surface of the golden metal, the hated Ring which marked the whole Senoca people as slaves of the Golden Gods. His eyes ran over the contours of the intricate engraving of the bracelet: an eagle with extended wings, the Hunters’ symbol. Hunters of men, at the service of the Gods. Ikai closed his eyes, shaking his head, and sighed.
He finished adjusting the armor of reinforced leather, enough to save him from a sword-strike if it was not too accurate, or the mauling of a wild beast, but it would not protect him from anything worse. He picked up his sword, the throwing dagger, the yew bow and his traveling bag with the rest of his Hunter equipment. He crossed the common area of the humble farm and went outside. The sun received him with a gentle winter smile which warmed his body with its morning glow. In the Sixth County, the climate was warm for most of the year, one of the few blessings of the region as it was the poorest of the six Senoca counties.
Dazzled, Ikai leaned on the out-of-joint door frame, the adobe wall had settled again. The building was so rudimentary that any day now it would collapse. But it was the same with all the farms in the area, where hungry slave peasants struggled day after day to survive, to fulfill the quotas demanded by the Gods. Many did not manage it. He shaded his eyes with his hand and saw them. His mother and sister were working hard in the field, as they did every morning with the first light, as they did every new day. He watched his sister Kyra and his mood lightened. She helped their mother, Solma, to till the hard soil which barely fed them. He went to them with a smile in his soul.
“Ikai!” cried his sister when she saw him arrive. She dropped the hoe and ran to him.
Ikai watched her run like the wind— at her seventeen springs she was a year younger than he was, but almost the same height. She was pure nerve, as her thin, wiry body attested. Her tongue, though, was as fiery as her red hair, which had already created more than one complication. But Kyra’s heart was noble and her character indom
itable, like the ruby gleam of her eyes. Ikai adored his sister and envied her lively, unbreakable spirit.
“Hold your reins, little sis, you’re going to make me fall,” Ikai said with a guffaw, trying to keep his balance with his sister hanging from his neck.
How different they were as siblings… both in looks and in character. He was like their father, Siul: tall, broad-shouldered and strong-armed, with straight brown shoulder-length hair and those damned eyes… his weird eyes… which everybody noticed and frowned upon: one intense emerald green and the other pale blue, almost grey, just like their father’s. His character was also his father’s, but much calmer: patient and peaceful, totally unlike his sister. Kyra had inherited their mother’s physical traits, fortunately. But nobody knew where she had got her volcanic temperament from.
“Are you leaving again? You only just got here!” said Kyra reproachfully, taking a step back. Her eyes were fixed on the weapons Ikai carried, and her face hardened.
Ikai lowered his eyes. “I’ve been summoned…”
Kyra frowned, and her eyes sparkled. “You shouldn’t go with them, you know. What you do is wrong.”
Unable to look her in the eye, Ikai remained silent. “Let your brother be, he does what he’s told, for us, for his family,” scolded her mother, panting from the effort.
Ikai watched Solma come up to them, a hoe in her hand. The strength of this woman made his eyes moist. She had raised them both practically on her own. The Eyes-of-the-God had taken their father soon after Ikai turned ten, they never heard from him again. Ikai thought him dead, since those the Enforcers of the Gods took away ended up in the mines or the Eternal City, the Gods’ dwelling. And nobody returned from there alive. Solma had raised them with great economy in order to fulfill the quotas, and even now that she was sick in the lungs she still struggled on their behalf, going out to work in the field every morning only to be forced to stop before noon with blood at the corners of her mouth, beaten by the illness.
“I don’t want him to do anything for me. Not for those false Gods and the despots who serve them among our people!” cried Kyra, clenching her fists.
Solma and Ikai straightened up, as if whipped by fear, and remained stiff.
“Kyra, be quiet, for the sake of our lives!” Solma scolded in a hoarse whisper, fear shadowing her face.
Ikai looked around at once, fear lying on his chest like a slab of stone. If a Proxy of the Regent had heard her she would end up in the quarry, or something worse… Luckily there was nobody near, only acres and acres of tilled fields and a few crows on a distant fence to the east. “Kyra, be careful, you mustn’t raise your voice like that, you put yourself in danger… you put all of us in danger. If they take you away I won’t be able to do anything for you. The privileges of my position as a Hunter are few…”
Kyra shook her fiery mane and seemed to reflect. “All right,” she protested, waving her hands. “I only say what we all think,” she said in a low voice, and kicked a clot of dirt.
“I know you don’t approve of what I do, but it lets us obtain coin, and that allows me to buy medicine in Osaen, for Mother, for you. Very few can…”
“We’ll find another way, don’t sell your soul to the Gods for a few coins. If we sell ourselves, if we give up and become absolutely submissive to those pitiless Gods, we’ll remain a slave people for all eternity.”
“It’s the only way I have…”
“We’re the Senoca, the People of the Sea. Look at us, Ikai,” Kyra said, pointing at the fields around them. “They deny us the sea, they force us to work the fields without pause, starving us with quotas we can’t fulfill. We have nothing. We are nothing but a slave people.”
Ikai swallowed. “We are slaves of the Golden, and so it has been for more than a thousand years. It’s not going to change today.”
“And so it will go on if we don’t do something.”
“Why are you like this today?”
Kyra raised her hands to the sky and cried out in rage.
“Ughhhhh! You’re right, it’s just that today is not just any day and I wanted to spend it with you, I don’t want to see you go…”
Ikai smiled. “You remembered?”
“How could I forget, tuna head!” Kyra said, laughing, and pushed him hard.
“Happy birthday, my son!” Solma said, and a wide smile lit up her face. For a moment Ikai saw his mother happy, something which rarely happened, and the good woman’s face seemed to be rejuvenated. For a brief moment the lost beauty Ikai remembered surged up from her joyful heart.
“Thanks, Mother,” said Ikai with a look of tender understanding, which his mother returned. Seeing her happy, even for just a moment, was the best gift Ikai could wish for.
“I can’t believe you’re eighteen already. You’re a man. The man of the family. You’re so much like your father…” she said stroking his hair. “Remember your father, remember the family, that must always come first. Keep it in mind, my son. Without a family we’re nothing more than a speck of dust carried away by the wind.”
Ikai nodded and smiled at her gratefully.
“I have a gift for you, come with me,” Kyra said, sounding happier now. “It’s a surprise. I think you’ll like it.” She took his hand and led him to the back of the house.
A centenary oak rose there like an imposing guardian protecting the small, humble dwelling. Kyra bent over the massive roots and picked up an object wrapped in a linen cloth.
“Here, it’s for you,” she said with a smile, impatience gleaming in her ruby eyes.
Ikai unwrapped the object and uncovered a leather string with a wood carving: a perfectly detailed seahorse. He looked at it with his mouth open.
“It’s… it’s beautiful…”
“Then, you like it?”
“Like it? I love it!”
Kyra hugged her brother and shook him, happiness all over her face. It made Ikai’s heart leap with joy.
“Thank you very much, little sis,” he said, and hung it around his neck.
Ikai sighed. He worried about Kyra. Lately her overwhelming vitality was dwindling; the scarcity of food was reducing the flames of her spirit to embers, no matter how much she tried to hide it. Ikai was well aware that his sister was hungry, just as their mother was, just as the whole Senoca people were. Hunger, a slave people’s fate. Too few were the days when they had enough to eat; even fewer those when they went to sleep with something hot in their stomachs.
“There, you’re lost in the depths of the sea of thoughts again,” said Kyra, as she passed her hand in front of his contrasting eyes.
Ikai smiled and looked into her eyes.
“There’s something else I want to show you,” she said, weighing a dagger in her hand with an intriguing look.
“What’s that?”
Kyra took six careful steps away from the oak. She pointed with her left hand. “See that knot?”
Ikai nodded. It was half way up the trunk, a lump the size of a small apple.
With a flash, Kyra reached behind her head with her right hand and threw the dagger. It stuck right in the center of the knot.
Ikai opened his eyes wide with shock. He himself would not have been able to hit the target at that distance, and he had been trained in the use of weapons since the age of twelve, when he had joined the Hunters. “Awesome. I see you’ve been practicing what I taught you.”
“Whenever I can. I like it when you show me how to fight, it makes me feel stronger, braver and safer.”
“You’re an amazing thrower, much better than I…”
“Unfortunately I’m no good with the sword,” she admitted. “We must train more.”
“When I come back, I promise.”
Kyra nodded, happy.
“But remember what I always tell you: what I teach you is for your own protection; don’t let anybody see that you know how to fight. It’s forbidden by the law of the Gods. If a Proxy discovers you you’ll be sent to the quarries, to forced labor.�
��
“They won’t discover me, those sons of a hyena rarely visit the fields. They prefer the city and the bigger villages where there’s some comfort.”
Ikai was not happy about his sister’s reply. The danger was very real. Very few men were allowed to carry weapons; they were only slaves. The Proxies under command of the Regent Sesmok kept firm control. Carrying a weapon without permission was considered an offense against the Golden Gods, and any offense against the divinities was punished with death. The slaves could not be armed; the Gods made sure of that through their servants among men.
“Don’t be so trusting. If instead of a Proxy an Eye-of-the-God discovers you, an Enforcer of the Gods, he’ll kill you. And the Eyes, with their Executors, roam the six counties, controlling everything that happens, directly informing the gods.” Ikai shook his head. “You must be more careful about everything. I don’t know who puts those rebel ideas in your stubborn, crazy head, but you must learn to stay quiet or we’ll all end up dead. If you don’t want to do it for me, at least do it for Mother. She couldn’t bear to lose you, you know that. Not after Father.”
Kyra’s expression changed at the mention of their father. A shadow fell on her face, the light in her eyes went out and she bent her head. She was thoughtful for a moment. She sighed deeply, as if letting out all her wariness.
“All right, for Mother I’ll stay quiet, but that won’t change the way I feel.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Ikai’s Ring vibrated again. His mind was filled by a white luminosity and an image was projected into his mind. His Hunting Party was calling; he had to leave.
“Go, don’t worry,” Kyra said. “I’ll take care of Mother and the farm.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Kyra kissed his cheek in farewell.
“May the depth of Mother Sea guide your head, and her greatness be in your soul.”
“Thank you, little sis,” replied Ikai. “We are the Senoca; from Mother Sea we come and to Mother Sea we shall return.”
