Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

  They rode through the town’s gates as the sun lit the horizon and it took a candle’s ride between the rocky walls of the Omindi Pass to reach the sight of the killings, marked by a red steel post driven into the ground. Winds howled through the craggy ravine, kicking up a snow devil between two steep slopes riddled with shrubs, crevices, and boulders that afforded hiding places for ambush.

  The patrol dismounted, half scattering up and down the road with bows in hand, while the remainder circled the perimeter. When retrieving bodies, earlier wardens had cleared a snowfall, and the winds had kept the floor of the ravine clear since, but patches of snow caked the cliff walls.

  Pikarn said, “Keep your eyes open, look for anything out of the ordinary.”

  Ivin stayed at Pikarn’s side as the man studied splashes of red paint, marking where the bodies fell. A garish map of death. Eighteen dead, one missing, while the dead messenger made it to Ervinhin to receive an escort home. One boulder sat marked by blood, but no paint.

  “Our survivor fell here, maybe.” Pikarn gazed at the scene, rubbing his bearded jaw.

  Ivin said, “Likely enough.”

  The Wolverine turned, staring up at Ivin. “Think you’re gonna see something I miss? No? Then get off my tail and look around.”

  Ivin slunk from him, picking a sheer face of rock to examine while pretending to know what he was doing. Sure as hells, it was stone all right. What, by the gods, was he supposed to be looking for? He made a swath as high as he could reach, brushing snow from the wall into a sun-twinkling cloud that speckled his face with nips of chill.

  He squinted through the frozen cloud: Vertical scratches ran the length of the face. His fingers stretched to match the marks, but as large as his hands were, they didn’t match. A Colok slid down the cliff, its claws slowing its decent, before moving in to kill the holies. With grim curiosity he swiped at the rocks with his cloak, higher, lower, and to either side. He found only the one set of marks.

  He continued along the cliff face, wiping away snow, stopped. The uneven, pockmarked stone of the cliffs showed indentations he couldn’t call natural. He matched his fingers to the dents, then removed his cloak and jumped, whipping it against the wall’s heights.

  He felt someone behind him. “What’re you looking at?” Pikarn asked.

  “I don’t know.” He pointed. “See those scratches over there?”

  “Aye, rockslide maybe.”

  “They’re like fingers scratching down. And over here, there’re pocks in the walls, spaced to fit a man’s hand. If my arms were longer, I might be able to climb up this face using these.”

  “A coincidence of nature. Nothin’ more.”

  Ivin put his fingers next to one set of marks, pointed up. “There’s another set up there, and over there. Left hand, right hand, left hand… like something dented the stone as it climbed.”

  The Wolverine laughed, but there was an unease in the tone. “Nothing could do that. Rinold! Look at these here dimples in the stone.”

  Rinold studied the rock face and rubbed the scar crossing his eye. “Even if a Colok made them scratches, them pips in the wall, no. Daevu wouldn’t leave a mark.” He grunted. “My guess is natural, but we’re hunting somethin’ we don’t know already.”

  The company searched other escarpments but found nothing to tilt their opinion in either direction. Without additional clues to guide them, the Wolverine threw up his arms. “Rinold, anything you see I’m missing?”

  The tracker spat. “Nah, hells, chances of finding any tracks here ain’t good. Lotta wind and a scattering of snow over the last few days, looks to me.”

  Saddle leather groaned as the wardens mounted. “Take us to the second site, then.”

  “Long road or the goat trail?” Rinold grinned at the Wolverine’s hard stare. “Someday you’ll get adventurous; long road it is.”

  Rinold rode ahead, his head on a constant swivel from the ground to the stone bluffs, stopping here and there to dangle from his saddle, inspecting a mark or stone. After a while he veered onto a winding trail out of the Omindi. The climb was narrow and treacherous with rocks under hoof, switchbacking into the mountains, begging the question of what Rinold called a goat trail, but the horses navigated it well enough.

  At the top they came to a miner’s road, cleared of trees and boulders, and followed it northerly before it split and they took the path less beaten. Twenty wicks later they spotted a red stake poking from drifted snow filling a ravine.

  “Son of a braggart-whoreson.” Pikarn gnawed his jerky as he stood in his saddle, gazing west. “Winds and snows done us in here. How ‘bout the mines?”

  “Quicker maybe to backtrack, take the other fork, instead of fighting drifts.”

  The Wolverine grunted and reined his horse, turning back, but the choice proved a wise one. The western trail was windswept-clean, bare rock leading them as straight as a snake’s wiggle to the Ihomjo mines. Several small buildings, tiny but sound enough to withstand snow and wind, stood beside the rectangular adit leading into the mountain. The camp looked abandoned at first, but several heads peeked out of doors to the clop of their horses’ hooves.

  A man with a broad smile met them. “Godsdamned glad to see you wardens, sure as hells. Fig Lundin’s m’name.”

  Pikarn eased from the saddle, shaking the man’s hand. “What word you got for me?”

  Fig’s smile faded. “We’re alive, better than I can say for most everyone else.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were deep in the mine, chipping stone, tryin’ to get to them trapped, well, time came our supply train dried up, we had no idea why. We comes out to find every damned… everyone dead. Some fled for the Omindi and not a one made it, I hear.”

  Ivin asked, “Anything unusual since?”

  “Nah, not that’s killed no one, at least. A little priestess stumbled into camp two days back, half her scalp ripped from her head, and we nursed her back to health best ways we could. Meliu she calls herself, but the girl ain’t right in the head, you ask me. Godsdamned haunting screams from the mountains now and again, but we ain’t seen nothin’.”

  “A miner I know was working this hole in the ground, name’s Ungar. Know him?”

  “Aye, sure, but he weren’t one of the lucky ones that been found.”

  Pikarn ripped a hunk of jerky with his teeth. “Take us to this holy.”

  Ivin, Modan, and Puxele joined the Wolverine in a sturdy shack lined with heavy furs and warmed by a smokeless fire, while the rest of the wardens took the horses into the mine’s stables.

  The priestess was near his age, Ivin figured maybe twenty. She huddled next to the fire in slashed robes, hair matted with blood. The miners did their best, but it was hard to hide the raw flesh where something tore her scalp back from her skull. Hands, knees, face, all bore bruises and scratches.

  Pikarn nodded and Puxele slid beside the girl while taking a salve from her own pouch, then greased the girl’s wounds with the yellow concoction. “Meliu, ain’t it?”

  The girl glanced at Puxele with glassy eyes before her gaze slipped back to the fire.

  Puxele took the girl’s hand, rubbing ointment on a cut. “Who did this to you?”

  Meliu’s lip trembled. “Angin.”

  Puxele pulled needle and thread from her pouch. “I can stitch you up better, the salve should dull the pain. A man did this?”

  “My prayers will kill any pain.” Her head bowed to let Puxele work. “A man once, but Taken by the Shadows.”

  “Awakened Dead?” Ivin asked.

  “Not Awakened, possessed, by the Shadows who bleed from stone.”

  Possession stories were cautionary tales told by parents to keep children in their beds at night. No wonder Fig figured she was touched in the head.

  “Bleed from stone, what’s that mean?”

  “When the Taken die the Shadows linger in the body, trapped. Not for long though. They seep into the stone with the blood, like water into dirt, then t
he blood bubbles back up, and the Shadows… they’re free again.”

  Ivin’s breaths were shallow and his gut tense enough to ache. “You priests couldn’t kill them?”

  “Some prayers killed, but not my prayers… not my prayers.”

  The Wolverine asked, “There was a messenger. Were you with him headed for Istinjoln? We counted nineteen dead.”

  “No.” She kissed two fingers and placed them on her forehead. “I’m a scholar at the Crack of Burdenis; the Shadows attacked there. Guntar, the bearer, he made it, then?”

  Pikarn said, “His pony brought him dead to Ervinhin, we counted him in the nineteen.”

  “Twenty left the Crack.”

  Ivin glanced to the Wolverine and Puxele, sharing a nod as they confirmed a missing holy, but the name, Crack of Burdenis, was something he’d never heard of. Whispers of a shrine hidden in the Omindi region weren’t uncommon, but most passed it off as fancy. If true, it explained why Istinjoln fought against local mining operations. The notion of letting miners die to keep a shrine secret sickened him. “This Crack is a fifth shrine to Burdenis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hidden shrines and missing holies.” Pikarn rubbed his face, staring with unreadable eyes. “Just where the hells did these Shadows come from? What are they?”

  She shrugged. “I heard they appeared at the Crack’s shrine deep in the caves a few weeks ago, but the priests contained them. Shadows, demons, don’t matter where they came from or what they are, it’s what they do. They take bodies and they kill. Kill that body, the Shadow comes back and takes another. The books, I left so many books behind.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  Pikarn snorted. “You need to take us to this shrine. There any priests left in this hole in the ground?”

  A cackling, mirthless laugh erupted from the girl’s throat, short-lived before she stared into the fire. “When I got out of the caves, I didn’t see a soul, neither priest nor Shadow on my way out. I’ll take you there on two conditions: Any books we find are mine, and you don’t let the Shadows take me. Kill me first.”

  Her conviction to die before possession convinced him of how real and terrifying old fire-side tales had become.

  “What do you think, Choerkin?”

  Ivin met Pikarn’s gaze, heart racing. Leaving might be the better choice, but there was an opportunity staring him in the face. “I’m with whatever you decide.” He didn’t doubt which direction the Wolverine would take.

  “You’ll lead us there tomorrow.”

  Meliu smiled at Ivin. “Worst case, I guess, is I die while feeding a Choerkin to Shadow or Taken.”

  Ivin grinned, hoping not. Best case, he found a common enemy to unite Clan Choerkin and Istinjoln.

  Pikarn grabbed his shoulder and took Ivin outside, huddled against howling winds. “She don’t like you much; normally I’m the blood they want. What’s your take?”

  “We want mining rights and cooperation; they want this shrine’s location kept quiet and safe. Might be we find a fulcrum for leverage here.”

  “You’re a godsdamned optimist like your mother.”

  Ivin wondered if he was as much like his mother as folks said, or if it just sounded good. “Something’s making me twitchy, too. Demons and possession and death, but she’s right willing to lead us to the Church’s secret for what, a book?”

  “Your old man’s blood. I was thinking the same: What’s she really after?”

  Ivin shook his head. “She’s going back for a book. Question is, what kind of book makes a person risk death or worse to retrieve it?”

  “I ain’t givin’ two shits for no book, but we need into those caves.”

  Ivin glanced at the Wolverine, an inflection in those words left him wondering if the old man withheld the Name of a Slave, then wondered if the slave’s name was Ungar. Ivin opened his mouth, but licked his lips rather than speak, deciding to leave the man’s secret at peace.

  Pikarn offered him jerky after snatching a hunk with his teeth. “You believe this horseshit about demons taking folks’ bodies?”

  Ivin declined the meat. “After what you’ve shown me, yeah, I’d say I have to take the girl at her word. Either way, we’ll know tomorrow.”

  15

  ARCHIVAL CON

  Fading pages in the storehouse of Time,

  Drowning wisdoms in waves of self-preservation,

  Saving by destroying, for a time, a time sublime.

  Will Lime cover the stench of death

  Before the Brimstone of living uncovers the end again?

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Nine Days to the Eve of Snows

  Eliles focused her thoughts on Guntar and the oversized priest, distracting her from the screams of the defiled in her dreams. The bearer was beyond any help outside of prayer, much like the feral children, but her curiosity was fierce and it gave her restless mind a mission. It’d been three days since the inquisitor’s threats, time enough for the bastard to maybe forget her a little, and time enough for rumors to swirl.

  With a lord priest as large as their visitor, she started in the kitchens. The hall stretched forty paces, with vaulted ceilings twenty high, and housed ten hearths chiseled from the world’s stone with their smoke rising through bedrock to pump through chimneys in Istinjoln’s outbuildings.

  Cooks and servants scurried between tables and cauldrons, going about their chores in the heat of blazing fires. The yeasty scent of fresh-baked bread was a favorite since childhood, so her presence here brought greetings rather than questions. She sat beside a fire, using the light to pretend to read a book while snacking on a buttered roll.

  Rumors were a kitchen staple like potatoes and pork, and as often overcooked. She’d heard tales ranging from husbands who strayed to the stockyards instead of the neighbor’s wife, to heinous murders covered up by the highest powers of the Church, not to mention whispers of a girl with prayers so powerful the gods must’ve blessed her in the womb.

  She couldn’t guess how much grain alcohol a man needed to mistake a cow for a woman, and monks did disappear without a trace (she assumed most fled this horrible place), but the girl chosen by the gods she knew was a lie.

  The cackle and banter of cooks and servants, all of whom lived in a small village a half-candle’s walk from Istinjoln, always changed with the coming of the Eve of Snows, but this year they had a dead priest, a bearer no less, to prattle about. Many spoke of war with the Colok and how the wicked man-bears took to eating people. The snaggle-toothed cook and his wife said there’d be no end to the feast now they got a taste for man.

  The message might concern Colok, so she noted it, but it didn’t explain the Broldun.

  Most gossip centered on the celebration itself. The amount of provisions had the kitchen-folk in a snit. Half a hundred kegs of ale—cleaning up after so many drunken holies assaulted their imagination with mops and vile reek. Four score of hogs; there weren’t enough spits. The fires would burn nigh every flicker of the day to bake the bread, wasted kindling with winter coming on. These holiday chores piled on top of the normal day-to-day tasks were a thankless burden. Not to mention, where the Twelve Hells were guests enough to eat this bounty going to sleep? Let alone draw hot water for baths? The question lurking behind every complaint: Why was this Eve of Snows special? No one recalled so many guests before.

  Every tidbit raised Eliles’ suspicions, but answered nothing.

  Lord Priest Dunkol didn’t escape without hushed words and jokes, however. They labeled him a high priest in error, and when maids first took food to his chambers they witnessed the priest and several young servants disrobed.

  Those were the polite words, anyway. Since then the rotund Broldun sent his people for food and wine while the entire kitchen sniggered at the low priest and his tastes in food. The ribald and oft times sacrilegious comments built until the kitchen burst into thunderous laughter that made her blush. Whatever important matters might be at hand, she couldn’t conceive of how they had to do w
ith candelabras and mouse pie, so she tried her best to bury her nose in her book during these moments.

  She did learn the lord priest stayed with his entourage in the southern wing of the keep. The well-traveled tunnels she knew risked running into the inquisitor. The Keep’s tunnels, expansive and littered with stairs and alcoves, offered her the chance to get close without arousing suspicion. But for what gain? Confirmation of his sexual appetites? He wasn’t the only adherent who enjoyed carrots and cake, in the words of the rumor mill, and it mattered naught to her.

  She was two weeks from escaping this dreadful place, to risk dying for a glimpse of a giant, naked… She giggled at herself. The kitchen banter had worn off on her.

  She slipped from the kitchens with a grin despite her frustration. Whatever direction she took, safety was her priority. Dareun had acknowledged the visiting lord priest, but her prying earned her a “Januel’s wit, girl. Stay away from those people,” followed by his fatherly cluck. When she mentioned Guntar she had received a hug, not information.

  One object in the monastery held the solution to the mystery she’d built in her head: the message itself, and it wouldn’t care one lick about giving up its secrets if only she could get her hands on it… if it was still in one piece. Fire was a great keeper of secrets.

  Woxlin splashed into the whirlpool of her thoughts; he might still hold the scroll.

  The high priest worked to impart the impression as a kind man, handing out treats to young postulants on holidays, but she knew nothing of him, except he’d achieved the high priesthood young, and disrespected her friend’s body. A callous behavior, but he was under orders and in a hurry.

  Was she making excuses for the man? Sometimes she made herself mad that way. He wasn’t a good man. No one ascended to the high priesthood/priestesshood as a gentle soul, not even the pretty Demilu. Many young postulants simpered after her charming smile to find themselves humiliated. Honif followed the woman’s every prayer session like a pathetic hound before earning five lashes for sniffing around the wrong places.