Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

  The realization she’d lost track of time lurched her heart into a frenzy. By now the fires burned red, but guardsmen didn’t swarm the streets with shouts and commands. There was only this wagon.

  She leaned against the parapet with her head cocked. The drills were a lie, and she didn’t know why that surprised her, falsehoods filled these caverns and walls. No, they’d closed upper Istinjoln for an important arrival.

  Her heart warned her, but her curious mind and feet already had her on the move. She descended the nearest stair and did her best to pass without notice through the scattered outbuildings, getting closer to the wagon and its escort. She stopped outside earshot in deep shadows, close as she could get and still feel safe.

  The lead rider greeted a priest of Istinjoln. Darkness hid their faces and ranks, and their conversation was too quiet to catch a single word. Creeping closer to eavesdrop on her betters wouldn’t sit well with Dareun after his recent reprimand, and while she toyed with pushing her senses to hear the conversation, that’d risk more than mere sneaking. If she pushed her hearing too close while eavesdropping, people sensed her; it was safer to use in crowds.

  The driver of the wagon jumped from his perch and went to hands and knees. Moments later a rotund shadow draped in black robes stepped from the wagon and onto the driver’s back before tromping the ground. She wasn’t close enough to see the color of his cowl’s lining, nor any markings on his sash, but as far as she’d seen only high priests demanded such respect, but this priest wasn’t of Istinjoln.

  Despite several strong appetites among the high priests of Istinjoln, none bore the weight of this man. It would take three sashes from average men to tie his waist. In her years here she’d witnessed high priests arriving from other regions a handful of times, often around the Eve of Snows, and always with fanfare and greeting parties. To arrive after dark and without heralds was downright scandalous.

  The driver stood, brushed his knees, and climbed to the wagon’s seat while thirteen figures robed in plain gray slipped from the wagon and fell in line behind the high priest, their shadows dancing in lantern light. Unloading last came a man without robes, dressed in a black tunic and leggings, and as his sleeves fell back while lowering himself from the wagon, silver bracelets caught lantern light.

  An inquisitor.

  Peculiar didn’t begin to describe the situation. A foreign priest arriving with an inquisitor after dark was one thing, she could brush it away as a matter of timing, an accident, but the false drill to seal lower Istinjoln from this courtyard spoke of secrets. Who was this man?

  Her thoughts snapped in twain: The priest’s company headed in her direction. She could’ve stepped from the shadows with her hood pulled and passed the party with her eyes to the ground and they might never say a word to her, but a wiser voice in the back of her head stopped her. It was a bad idea, she guessed that witnesses to this priest’s arrival were hand-selected. She skulked deeper into shadows and crouched.

  The group passed so close she recognized the priest of Istinjoln as Woxlin. An esteemed guest to warrant a greeting from a high priest.

  Woxlin’s voice was low, but the winds helped carry his words. “I’m certain Lord Priest Ulrikt will be pleased to hear of your arrival. At your will, I’ll alert him immediately.”

  The ranking guest answered in a voice more used to preaching in wide halls than clandestine sneaking about, and with a heavy Broldun accent. “Yes, mmm. Good, very good. I would like to meet with him as soon as is convenient, mmm.” The group passed into a small building where a monk began his bow, hesitated, then prostrated himself on the ground, kissing the dirt instead of the deep bow a high priest required.

  Eliles’ eyes flew wide as she sucked her breath. A meeting with Lord Priest Ulrikt, and a monk prostrate. Lord priests drove monks prostrate. Lord Priest Dunkol of Fermiden Abbey. Dunkol and Ulrikt were famous for butting heads over politics and theology, but here the man stood in the dead of night. If discovered, the lord priest of the Broldun clan sneaking into Istinjoln would enrage the Clan Choerkin. If the Choerkin hated anything more than a priest, it was a Broldun priest, and that’s why he’d arrived in secrecy.

  If anyone found out she’d witnessed his arrival, her scar would have companions.

  She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, waiting for time to pass. Whatever she’d stumbled upon, it was monastery intrigue she’d be better off forgetting.

  The lord priest and his procession had long since entered the tunnels of Istinjoln, but she didn’t budge. She crouched in the shadows until the wagon creaked and groaned to the stables and there wasn’t a soul in sight, except guards of Istinjoln who paid Eliles no mind. She passed between buildings, one shadow to another, until she grew certain of her safety and stepped into the open.

  For a flicker she forgot how close she came to a frightful punishment and allowed herself a breath. A hand grabbed her throat, crushed her into a wall, and stole that air.

  The voice was raspy and quiet, with a Broldun accent. “Your name?”

  Images of fire burst into her mind as her nose and cheek raked across rough stone. She came within a moment of summoning flames to discover what one of her little friends could do to a man before yielding to greater wisdom. “Eliles, postulant of Istinjoln.”

  “Seekin’ a breath of fresh air, I s’pose.”

  She nodded, and he ground her face into the stone. “Yes, air.”

  “Now I know your name, be sure I do not hear it again, nor see your face where it should not be.” She couldn’t see his face, but the jingle of his silver bracelets left no doubt who held her.

  “Yes.”

  The inquisitor released her and disappeared into the dark, leaving Eliles to slip to the ground. Feral magic roared within her, begging for vengeance. She quenched these raw desires with the will Dareun had taught her and rose to her feet. She calmed her breath and made her way into the subterranean halls, the lanterns having turned to a blood-red flame.

  She sulked back to her granite cell with her cowl pulled snug over her face. Sleep didn’t come until she lay beside her little fiery friend, who warmed her scratched cheek and kept her company as it had since she was a child. Twice the size of a candle’s flame it floated several fingers from her nose. Silent, flickering, warm, it bore no judgment nor ill will. The flame was her peace. As her eyelids gave way to the weight of sleep, she wondered if this was the same flame as always arrived to her call. Her oldest and most faithful friend, this tiny flame. When a child she’d believed the being protected her from harm.

  As an adult, she prayed the child was right.

  6

  HALLOWED BONES

  Some dead are forgotten, some Dead are known only after Dying.

  Death is a mystery with marvelous many endings to the Living.

  The Enduring. The unending Ending.

  But what can be learned from knowledge only knowable when Gone?

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Fourteen Days to the Eve of Snows

  A ball of brilliant white Light hovered above Dareun’s head as his fatigue-blurred eyes gazed at the hole in his inventory list: Five missing kegs of Thonian whiskey. If he’d licked the toes of the right people and spoken the right words, he might’ve achieved the high priesthood decades ago, and now be curled in his blankets dreaming of quaffing rare, imported liquors instead of searching for them.

  He stretched and glanced down a warehouse row, a hundred paces of crates and barrels stacked from the floor to well above his head, full of beer and whiskey and wine… thank the gods for the girl who found the final cask of wine—if anything was pricier than Thonian whiskey, it was the wine. He glanced to four young monks who too would rather be asleep and felt bad for making them move half the stores in his fruitless search.

  He rolled his list and rubbed his temples as he yawned. “You boys head to your dormitory, but meet me in the upper warehouses after morning devotionals.”

  The monks and their strong bac
ks bowed and bustled from the chambers, leaving him to stare at the mass of supplies. He’d taken final inventory of this warehouse for a decade now, and he’d lost nothing more than a few bushels of wheat, but this year’s supplies doubled the usual count, so there was plenty to hide between and behind. Thonian whiskey, an expensive favorite of Lord Priest Ulrikt, wasn’t a thing a man wanted to lose.

  It was late, and finding the whiskey would have to wait, there were more pressing matters: The bones of divination were sorted and shelved after months of preparation, and there shouldn’t be any attendants to note a late-night visit. He strode between the walls of crates and oak casks, the ball of Light following him until he stepped into torch-lit halls, where he released the energy of his prayer. He turned and made his way to a stair that led to another stair and yet another. His destination was deep in the ground, far away from this storehouse, with a single winding route with a multitude of wrong turns for the uninitiated.

  Everyone in Istinjoln knew of the place, but only those with a reason learned the way. Many called it the Chamber of Bones, or the Cave of Mysteries. In Dareun’s opinion, albeit a well-guarded one, the Pit of Deception rang truer.

  After winding his way through a rising and falling maze with more than a score of potential wrong turns, he paused beside a nondescript passage to regain his breath and listened to make sure no one approached to witness his entrance. He slipped into the cramped, rough-hewn hall which led him to a steep descent.

  The twisting and uneven stairs, worn rounded by centuries of trickling water from these caves, as well as the thousands of adherents who trod them, collected treacherous mold-slimes slick enough to send a man tumbling. Old and brittle, an injurious fall might kill or leave him unconscious, crippled, or dead in a place he shouldn’t be. In the strictest terms, he wasn’t forbidden to make this journey, but his presence would raise questions he wouldn’t be able to answer well enough, and he wanted nothing to jeopardize Eliles’ future, let alone reveal his role in hiding her.

  He reached the bottom of the stair with tentative and thankful steps and slipped beyond the feint lights of the scarce lanterns in this region. He leaned against the wall, relaxing for a moment in abject dark, a blackness to which eyes would never adjust without aid from the gods. He mumbled a prayer to enhance his vision and the empty abyss shifted into grays, with shelves and tables and bones igniting into glowing whites, their edges sharpening into crisp lines.

  The Pit was a storehouse of bones bleached by the sun, washed in the sands of the surf, then polished by the hands of priests, and arranged on rows and rows of shelves. Divination bones ranged from cattle to dolphins, each with its own specific use and reasoning, many beyond his knowledge. Dareun had studied the ways of divination in his youth, enough to realize it wasn’t his calling.

  This marked his twelfth journey to the pit since Eliles had infiltrated his life, once for every year he’d known her. The girl had appeared at the gates, five years old. She was an orphan with eyes so similar to his dear sister’s he took her in rather than turning her away, even when he discovered her feral magic. She wasn’t an orphan, and her eyes didn’t bear a resemblance to his dead sister’s, those were dweomers, auras of feral magic manipulating his vision, connecting Eliles to his own memories to build a sympathetic attachment.

  Whether he believed in the Vanquished Gods or their curse didn’t matter; the Church believed, and they didn’t tolerate those defiled by the heresy of feral magic. If the Oracle of Bones had revealed her secret she would’ve been “cleansed” of feral magic’s taint by an inquisitor, which Dareun supposed was a euphemism for tortured until dead. What became of the children was a mystery, rumors spoke of a deep oubliette layered with bones, but whatever the truth he couldn’t allow it to happen to his girl.

  Most who sought an oracle prayed anticipating an honest fortune. Dareun was either fortunate or unfortunate to know the truth. At age eight he’d found himself assigned to polishing bones, a slow and tedious chore, but from this hated task he’d learned a greater truth than most ever received from their divinations:

  The future was a lie.

  They called it Smoothing the Carve, and the priests had shrugged at his youthful concerns over the practice. Then threatened to clean the skin from his bones with a cat-o’-nine-tails if he spoke of it. Dareun had always been bright, so his mouth smiled and praised the wonders of the oracle. As his reward they allowed him to train in carving the bones and how to alter them to the designs of the ruling priesthood. He kept his promise of silence, so when his strengths proved to be in another direction, his elders had allowed him to pursue instruction in the ways of Fire. A rare honor to change paths.

  After decades without an honest use for the bones, a quirky knot in the strands of fate had given him a dishonest one: Eliles. He couldn’t allow a truthful prophecy, one which could reveal her secret, but this time the smooth would be specific and directive, not obfuscation.

  The familiar and disturbing scents of glues and oils struck his senses as he entered the Hall of Bones. A putrid mix of musk and spice, kerosene, and something caustic assaulted his nostrils and left a foul metallic twang on his tongue. These were the tastes and smells of lies. His face wrinkled as he tugged his nose and snuffled, getting reacquainted with the odor.

  The shelf which held the bones destined to provide readings for the eldest postulants rested in a distant corner of the Pit. Dareun found Eliles’ bone after a few wicks and passed his hand over the surface with a silent prayer.

  At first he detected nothing unusual, with glues used to strengthen much of the bone’s surface. This was the first and crudest method to altering a bone’s prophecy, but hidden beneath the surface of the bone and its carvings lay the greater lie. Prayers created hairline fissures guaranteeing the locations and lengths of the cracks to achieve the desired divination. One passed through Bontore’s Wisdom, an attempt to keep her in Istinjoln, and others teased the possibility of love and glory in the name of Sol.

  Dareun prayed, his eyes slipping closed. He placed his thumb over the Feral Tooth and hardened the bone all around as he’d done every year. Such strengthening was impossible to detect, far as he knew, but what came next worried him. In the past he’d kept everything simple, increasing cracks he approved of, reducing those he didn’t like, but tonight he took the unprecedented step of adding his own fissure.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the tiny symbol of the Wanderer’s Star and its eight waves radiating from its center. He prayed, his finger tracing a line straight through its center, felt the tiny tremble of the bone. He took a deep breath and inspected his work: The line was strong, but still weaker than Wisdom.

  He sighed, fretting over this detail, and instead of working his own line a second time, he healed Wisdom instead, figuring the alteration would be harder to detect. There was no way to know if it was perfect, but it would have to suffice; anything more would complicate matters.

  A single important crack would free her from the vows of Istinjoln, nothing else mattered. His father had taught him as a small boy that simplicity is best when practicing deception. A hard lesson learned at the end of a belt after a complex string of lies. He replaced the bone to its seat, pleased with himself, but he froze on his first step to leave.

  In all the candles he’d spent in the Pit after midnight, he’d never seen another soul. Tonight, he had company. The soft slap of shoes on stone wouldn’t have been audible if there was another sound, but in the silence, they were as loud as a lash of leather on flesh.

  The footfalls came his way, too close. His heart pounded in his chest so hard he feared it might betray him. What would become of him? There was no precedent he’d heard of for his meddling. Thrown to the thorns seemed a reasonable bet. A brutal and popular punishment under Lord Priest Ulrikt, being cast from the monastery walls and into the briar. Being sundered from the gods wasn’t outside possibility, either, a horrific ritual which would leave his soul wandering the mortal realm until fading i
nto oblivion.

  The shoes of the priest passed without pause as they headed straight for a section of bones considered sacrilege to smooth. These were honest bones, those reserved for the high and lord priests.

  Dareun braved a peek around the corner, struggling to keep his breath silent with a pounding heart. In the distance, a hooded figure passed his hand over what he suspected was a bear clavicle. Dareun’s breath stopped and his mouth dried. The prophecies of lord priests used bones of bears in Choerkin territory.

  Any attempt to smooth the purity of this bone should cause it to explode, killing the sinner. Tezlonu would claim their soul from the Road of Living Stars and condemn the violator to an eternity in the Slave Forges. Courage, audacity, or foolishness, what would drive a priest to such madness?

  The sanctity of the lord priest’s divination could be a lie, smoothing could be commonplace. Body and soul, he wanted to believe this, but it wasn’t true.

  He drifted into a dark corner, prayed for shadow and silence, and didn’t move until long after the priest’s flapping soles passed from the Pit. If he told anyone of this sin, he’d incriminate himself. He sat in pitch-black terror, taking deep breaths. There was one exit, and the sacrilegious priest could be waiting. He resolved to sit for a while and yawned as he counted to give the priest time to be plenty ahead of him.

  One thousand.

  Stiff, weary muscles brought him to his feet with an agonized groan. The journey from the Pit to his chambers felt longer than ever before, and the security of his bed far greater. He did his best to forget the priest and the holy bone’s desecration. A meditative prayer cleared his thoughts and eased his conscience as he fell into slumber, but no prayer protected him from dark dreams promising blood and eternity in the Slave Forges.