She focused on Maevu’s muttered prayers, they were chaotic and difficult to understand, but words were powerless. The discipline of prayer was training the body, the will, and the soul to inhale and shape the energies of the gods with ritualized focus, and then release the prayer in a moment called the Dispersion. Eliles watched the muscles in Maevu’s shoulders tense, followed the pitch of the prayers as they rose.
Even before Eliles’ first trial, her master had worked with her on leashing her feral magic. Whether the trial was to light and extinguish a single candle, to set a cloth ablaze, to summon Fire into a ventless globe, to build a wall of flame, or one of a hundred other tasks, they strove to perfect her succeeding while building the illusion of effort.
Mistiming the call to Fire could bring an inquisition Eliles wouldn’t survive. She closed her eyes as a flare approached and imagined the candles smoldering, glowing orange, then fluttering into flame.
Maevu’s tone climaxed.
Now. Her tiny, unseen friend caressed her skin with flickers of warmth and Eliles opened her eyes.
First the candelabra, then the twelve remaining candles ignited, sputtering and imperfect, but they lit. The priests and postulants in the chamber gazed at the wicks, smiling as they nodded with approval and relief. Maevu’s tear-streaked face betrayed bewilderment with wide eyes and slack jaw as she stared at the flickering wicks, and a monk rushed to apply salves to her wounds.
Eliles grinned and ducked her head.
Mistress Liermu twirled her whip in a spiral on the floor, her lips straight and eyes cold. “The gods have blessed your perseverance, child. Your strength is commendable. Stand, servant of Sol, and leave this chamber so you may be judged.”
Maevu stood, stiff and sore despite the salves, and the monk helped with her robes. The girl kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to her forehead in thanks to the gods as she strode from the room hunched and sobbing.
Liermu said, “Eliles, come before the nineteen candles.”
Eliles strode to the center of the room, chin high, and sucking a deep breath to calm the gloating rhythm of her beating chest. She wanted to smile, but didn’t dare.
Liermu’s passionless lips turned into a crooked grin beneath squinty eyes, and Eliles wondered if this woman dreamed of striking her. She lowered her gaze, untied the sash of her robes, and lifted them from her shoulders, dropping them into a bundle on the floor. Her face burned red with shame.
She stared down the length of her nakedness, her skinny legs and knobbed knees, her breasts not so developed as some other girls, but what blushed her cheeks to rose she couldn’t see: a lone scar on her left shoulder.
A four-inch welt of porcelain white.
Priests tallied scars much as a warrior recounting battles, and in Istinjoln the fewer the marks the greater the pride. Less than fifteen was a monumental achievement of skill while over forty meant you were tough as an axe head. For two hundred years the holy number twelve was the record, until Ulrikt took only three lashes on his fabled path to lord priest of Istinjoln.
Ulrikt still ruled, the most powerful lord priest on the island of Kaludor, the chosen one whom the oracles proclaimed a future leader before he’d turned twelve. Eliles was a nobody, a fishmonger’s orphan whose oracle bones bore no witness to an esteemed fate. Her single scar was a slap to the tender egos of her peers, and a slight to her elders’ beloved lord priest. Many praised her with smiles and shamed her as she walked away. Eliles wanted neither, she wanted to be free.
“Eliles, orphan, postulant, seeker of the fires of Sol, nineteen candles await the fire of your prayers.” Liermu’s whip slapped the hard rock floor. “By decision of the Council of Masters, because pain is the greatest teacher, and you have suffered so little, you will begin with three licks of the Maimer’s tongue.”
Eliles twisted her body, gazing back at the woman and her demon’s smirk as the whip’s tip danced circles on the stone floor.
Three scars, giving her four, one more than this devil’s lord priest. It made a sense that twisted her guts into a knot until she wanted to puke. Her eyes darted into the hooded and shadowed faces, hoping someone would speak for her, but not a one stirred.
Eliles spoke as calm as her rigid spine and rapid breaths allowed. “I demand confirmation from the full council.”
“Number four, for daring to question the council’s decision.”
The slither of the Lash’s twirling ended with a wisp as it rose from the floor, and every muscle in her body tensed.
“No.” The word was deep and carried the power of prayer, the power of law in Istinjoln, and the whip slapped stone. “The council has overstepped its authority.”
Lord Priest Ulrikt stepped from the crowd of priests and into the shadowless light wearing a plain black habit instead of the gold-threaded robes of his station. He eased his cowl to his shoulders, revealing a handsome man in his sixties with an angular face and a straight nose, but what stood out so close to the Light was his silvered hair, aglow as an aureole in paintings of the gods.
Her tongue dried in her mouth as she stared into the eyes of her savior. She’d never been so close to the man; his eyes were kinder, a softer blue, than she would have imagined from a man with the blood of innocents soaking his hands, a man who preached fire and doom for children born like Eliles.
“Continue.”
Liermu’s voice shook. “Yes, My Lord. What is easy in practice, with solitude and patience, may prove impossible beneath the stare of hundreds of eyes and in the face of time.”
Eliles forced her eyes from Ulrikt as the trial-candle lit.
This was her one-hundred and forty-fourth trial in twelve years, in a place she gave the blasphemous nickname of the Twelve Hells. In the eighth year postulants faced the whip for the first time. Courage or naïveté gave her the strength to take a lash while trying to light and snuff a single candle with a single prayer. Over the years her master had tried to convince her to take more scars, the better to hide her feral magic, but she never found the strength.
She mumbled her prayers, as she always did, hoping the gods would answer, as she always hoped, but knowing they ignored her. With Ulrikt so near, might the gods listen to her pleas? Flickers passed, and the memory of the Maimer’s pain still burned within, stretching through the healed gash in her back and into her lungs.
Her heart beat faster with half of her time remaining, and Sol denied her Fire. Forsaken by the gods, but hidden amid their faithful. Please.
She continued her whispering prayers, but the candles remained dark, and her will to trust the gods faded as a familiar heat warmed the breath in her lungs, spreading to her heart to follow her veins.
The wick burned short, but the mistress wouldn’t have her blood this or any other day.
The warm caress on the back of her hand came as it had since childhood, beckoning her to summon its power, and though she dared not smile, she felt a joy in the creature’s touch. She clenched her eyes, and the room appeared in her mind, empty but for the white candles. She imagined them burning.
And when she opened her eyes, they were.
Gasps echoed through the chamber and someone whispered too loud, “… gentleness, as if they were already lit.”
Her gut tightened, and she fought to keep her face placid. She’d gone too far, made a trial that sent energies in nineteen directions look easy.
Eliles met Ulrikt’s gaze, and the man nodded with a smile, as if an oracle had told him what to expect, before turning and walking away. When Eliles looked to the Mistress of Fire, Liermu’s hideous smile had been replaced by a stricken, blank expression, with every muscle in her face gone limp.
“Stand, servant”—the words struggled from her lips—“of Sol, and leave this chamber so you may be judged.”
Eliles pulled her white robes over her shoulders, covered her head with its hood, and shuffled from the room in silence. She couldn’t smile, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t laugh, even the stone face she for
ced herself to wear would draw someone’s ire.
She’d arrived at Istinjoln at the age of five, expecting to face beatings and a branding iron, then execution by fire or thorns, but the torture here was more subtle: Isolation, jealousy, fear, awe, her punishment for being different.
She stared at the stone floor while exiting the Chamber of Trials, marching silent through the rows of postulants. She entered the maze of tunnels beneath Istinjoln without a one raising their eyes to her as she passed, and she knew they’d whisper of her as soon as her shadow disappeared around the corner.
A tall man in black robes fell in step beside her and a sonorous voice as familiar as her own came from beneath the cowl rimmed in red silk. “Sol answered your prayers with strength, my child, and beneath the most holy judgement of Lord Priest Ulrikt himself. You should be proud your prayers were answered with such strength. Walk with me.”
Master Dareun’s voice remained cool and steady; she understood the undertones well. Eliles tucked her chin to her chest. She was in trouble and hoped the walk would soothe her master’s anger.
3
UNSEASONABLE SNOWS
Obsidian sockets in fleshless bone sobbing tears of diamond and sapphire,
rubies not blood, in Mortal sorrows shed for the imMortal,
those living in universes breathing lip to lip, hand in hand, never eye to eye,
eternal Lovers with a mortal affair doomed to Die.
—Tomes of the Touched
Seventeen Days to the Eve of Snows
Cold breezes slipped up Tokodin’s sleeves, driving icicles into his arms as they approached the cavern’s exit to mountain skies, but there was a deeper chill in his soul. The depths of the world were safe most times, but today the warmth and security of being in from the weather had turned into a miserable march through winding, drip-slicked tunnels.
When they reached the final rise before departing the Chanting Caverns, the party stopped, and Guntar spoke to a priest Tokodin didn’t recognize. He slipped between bodies and cocked his head for a listen.
The priest’s tone was tepid. “An autumn squall blew through two days back, left us a couple hands of snow, but drifting pushed spots above your head.”
Tokodin’s eyes rolled, the dice were just the beginning to his luck. The whole damned year had been unseasonably cold, but this was the first mountain snow.
Guntar asked, “I’m on foot, then?”
“We’ve had teams out since, cleared the trails down to the Omindi, salting the worst parts, and word is it’s clear enough. Mountain pony should keep its feet for you.”
Guntar nodded and waved his guards up, but Tokodin lingered as Meliu stepped in his path and hugged him; the embrace grew too long, more than the ordinary goodbye, before she wriggled from his arms. Her smile belied the tension. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You’re not going back down there.”
“You know I am, there’re more than lives to be lost.”
“What the hells is that supposed to mean?” The smirk reminded him of what a scholar valued most. “Don’t you go dying for some damned books.”
She rolled her eyes and strode past him, walking backwards into the dark to face him as she faded in the shadow. “Worse things to die for.”
He watched until the light of her torch disappeared, mumbling to himself. “Foolish woman, anyhow.” But staring into the dark worrying after her wouldn’t save her life; getting Guntar to Istinjôln might. He spun for the exit with a new determination.
Blinding sunshine speckled by shimmers of snow falling and rising with swirling winds greeted his cave-accustomed eyes as he stepped outside. Tokodin covered his brow with his forearm, listening to the clop of hooves on stone as his vision adjusted. They had a solid three candles before dusk.
He gazed over the sturdy mountain pony’s withers as his eyes strained into focus, taking in the ring of mountains surrounding the cavern’s mouth. A fortnight past, only peaks and high ridges wore crowns of white, but now snow covered everything but the most severe outcroppings, and the green pine forest hugging the lower reaches of the valley stood frosted and gleaming.
Snowy mountains, white-capped seas, and ladies in white, Tokodin’s father had always said they were the three most beautiful and dangerous sights in the world. Tokodin had never seen the sea, and women in their postulant robes had battered his ego more than a few times, but of the mountains, his father was right.
Mountains killed men in a hundred ways, but the risks of an avalanche, tumbling from a cliff, or freezing to death, these dangers were mitigable; they weren’t random. Colok were more akin to the dice in Tokodin’s pocket.
When man and beast met, it meant death. No prisoners, no survivors, and a year ago the Colok had eaten their human kills for the first time. Whether he was dinner for vultures, wolves, or Colok, it didn’t sit well. Travel to the foothills would be half the speed they’d make on open ground, at least four candles, but once on the winding downhill they should reach the village of Ervinhin in a half candle or so. Istinjoln was a longer but secure journey from there.
It wasn’t as cold as it might be, the days were long this time of year. He pulled gloves from his pack and slipped them on, but several men went without.
Guntar swung onto his mountain pony and strapped himself to the saddle with leather lashes and steel buckles; even if Guntar died, the pony would take the message home to Istinjoln. The remaining priests and monks surrounded Guntar on foot as escort.
“Loepus, Tokodin, scout the lead, stay in earshot.”
Perfect. Scouting the trails meant them scaring up any fever snakes. The deadly creatures weren’t common, but the way his bad luck was piling up today, he didn’t like it.
Tokodin turned and strolled ahead, eyes dancing between boulders and brush for signs of ambush. They spent a quarter candle walking a rocky goat trail two men wide, with a jagged-fall precipice on their right hand. Violent winds rocked his steps without warning, and patches of ice hid in shadows the sun and salt didn’t find.
When they reached the Omindi Pass Tokodin kissed two fingers and pressed them to his forehead. Thank you, Burdenis, thank you.
Loepus grinned at his display of faith. “Don’t let no Colok eat me, now.”
Tokodin smirked and faked a laugh as they slid down a slope of scree to Omindi Pass. If Colok attacked his weak prayers made him fodder, not savior.
Guntar and his pony followed, guided down the loose rock by a monk on either side of the pony’s withers and flank. The Omindi was broad here, and the party spread out, their eyes on the walls of the trail despite it being an unlikely place for an attack. The Ambush Chokes, the most dangerous stretch of the Omindi, were a candle’s walk north, opposite their heading.
As promised, the pass was clear of snow, but there was a trade-off for easy walking. The sound of the pony’s clopping hooves kept time as they passed through open valleys and narrow gorges, announcing their arrival as sure as a drum.
The damned pony needed softer shoes.
A chill ran the length of Tokodin’s spine, but not from the bitter winds and pellets of ice in the air. Fear. Foreboding. Dread. A presence? He pulled his wool cloak tight, peering from beneath the hood for movement on the icy slopes of Omindi Pass. Colok were famous for ambush, their pelts perfect camouflage in snow, rock, and shadow.
A Colok roar echoed through the valley, an eerie blend of elk call and wolf’s howl carrying on the winds, but it was distant.
Tokodin muttered a prayer to Sol for warmth, and a comforting heat rose in his heart, spreading through his veins like warm molasses. A simple but blessed prayer on a frozen day.
A rock tumbled from the cliffs, clattering to his feet.
Tokodin crouched and whipped his staff off his back. He stood, chest heaving, ready for a fight, but nothing came.
“A little jumpy, aren’t you? That rock remind you of your dice?” Loepus’ eyebrows danced to a smart-assed tune.
Tokodin smirked, as close to
a smile he could manage without poking his friend in the nose. He scanned the cliffs, spotted a switchback trail crossing above. Tokodin remembered passing it on the way in, a miner’s path, he figured. He squinted. High above, dangling over a rock, what might be a hand.
Loepus leaned in. “What the hells you looking at?”
He pointed. “Somebody pushed that rock.”
Loepus squinted, muttered a prayer. “Mercies be kind, it is a hand.”
“Move along!” Guntar shouted, only twenty strides away, but his voice was faint over a surge of wind. Tokodin signaled with two sharp whistles and pointed at the trail with his staff.
Tokodin faced Guntar’s scowl, glanced at Loepus. “If we don’t look and we get ambushed—”
“We make it quick.” Loepus raised his staff and nodded to Guntar.
Guntar waved his arm, giving them permission to explore.
Tokodin slipped his staff into its harness. “Let’s go.”
“We waste Guntar’s time or get ourselves killed, he’ll be pissed.”
Tokodin reached into his pocket. “The target is sixteen, Snake we stay low, Hawk we go high.” He held the dice in his palm: eighteen. He’d hoped for Snake, but the dice passed judgment.
“Considering your luck, we should stay low.”
Tokodin snorted and climbed the trail, slow and steady, slipping off his gloves to grab shrub Junipers for a better grip on the slope. Rocks skidded beneath their feet on the steep, narrow trail. They pulled their hatchets from their packs and used the pick side in slick spots, climbing on all fours. Picks clinking. Fingers scratching. Knuckles bleeding. Eyes wide unless chill winds forced a squint.
A ravine cut through the mountain at the top, a well-used trail leading west. To the Ihomjo mines? Dark mounds scattered the ground fifty feet away, likely bodies and gear, and a mule stood in the distance, still alive. The hand belonged to a man, arm outstretched, a crawling pose, and they rushed to his side.
Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One Page 3
