Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

  Wrenching the thug to his feet, he said, “No worries, the ice won’t be the thing to kill you.”

  Solineus looped the sling over a sturdy branch and tied it around the man’s neck, ignoring his muffled cries before yanking him from the ground and tieing off the sling to the tree. He stepped back, making himself watch the flails and kicks, listen to the grunts and groans.

  Death took the slinger and Solineus passed the brutal test set before him. If he got his hands on the lord priest, morality wouldn’t stop him from protecting those he cared for, no matter how violent.

  A gust spun the dangling carcass as Solineus strode for town, but he stopped, emptied the slinger’s coin purse in his palm. Two dozen coins, a couple tiny and silver. He pocketed the silvers and returned to the corpse, tying the purse’s drawstrings to the man’s wrist. The songs should cover a box and a hole in the ground. It didn’t feel right to make folks work for nothing, and a man should pay for his own funeral.

  18

  SMOKE AND HONEY

  From the Womb of Eternity was I expunged

  With the cord still wrapped around my brain,

  Filling me with the Rhythm of the Universe’s Heart.

  My vision so acute I am Blind,

  My hearing so keen I am Deaf,

  My feelings so sharp I am Dumb,

  My wisdom so great I am a Fool.

  My desire to die so strong I will live forever.

  Perhaps if I wanted to live, then finally, I might die.

  Come the Worms.

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Nine Days to the Eve of Snows

  The party rode for the Omindi Pass in the morning and headed north, deeper into the mountains with Meliu by Rinold’s side. Her eyes held a haunted glaze and she had the creepy habit of grinning at Ivin.

  When young women smiled at him, he assumed it was to curry favor because of his family name, or they might be attracted to him, but Meliu’s grin felt like she sized him for a hole in the ground. The Choerkin were no more popular in Istinjoln than the lord priest among Ivin’s kin.

  But as a guide she proved true. From the Omindi she led them up a scree littered climb onto a trail with a harrowing drop on their left. They led their horses one by one until reaching a box gap where they tethered horses and split the Wardens, with Modan striking camp to guard the rear.

  Meliu rounded a massive outcropping several hundred strides later, and Ivin spotted a cave hidden by rocks and evergreen shrubs. A great, black, cat’s pupil in an eye of snow and granite stared back at them, but when they arrived at the entrance, they found it wasn’t so huge. The vertical crack in the mountain was skinny, its false height the result of blackening by fire.

  “Don’t know what the Twelve Hells happened here.” Pikarn ran a finger across the blackened stone, streaking his glove, and sniffed. “Whale oil.” He slipped an axe from his belt.

  Meliu peered into the entrance. “Oil’s used to enhance prayers of fire… possible they tried to seal the cave behind them.”

  Ivin stared at the girl’s matted hair with an ugly thought. “These caves connected to the Ihomjo mines?”

  Meliu hesitated and her eyes flashed to the ground for a flicker. “No, I don’t think so.”

  She lied. The holies weren’t just trying to keep a shrine hidden, they’d brought the tunnels down on those miners. Maybe sealing an evil from the world justified collapsing a mine shaft, and the lives lost written off as noble sacrifice in Istinjoln, but his father’s voice cussing in the back of his head kept him from swallowing the justification bait. Nothing was so simple and innocent as it seemed on this journey: Istinjoln had plenty to answer for

  The Wolverine thumped his shoulder. “You stay close. I don’t want your clan blood on the ground first ride out, got it?” He turned his gaze to the priestess. “These Shadows, anything in ’ticular attracts them?”

  She stared, then rubbed her eyes. “Prayers, maybe. They’ll come to sound, light, movement, but prayer, it’s like they feel the energy. I wasn’t safe until I climbed into the Tears of the Gods, sitting silent, no prayers.”

  Ivin asked, “Tears of the Gods?”

  “It’s a stalactite formation, veins of some mineral run through them, glowing soft with power. I saw Shadows and Taken pass; they should’ve been able to see me. Their eyesight is maybe weak, I can’t say for sure.”

  The Wolverine nodded. “No way we travel silent or in the dark.”

  “I didn’t see a single one sneaking out, even with a little prayer to light my way.”

  Suvarn said, “I hope your luck holds, girl.”

  Several men stepped to the sides so sound wouldn’t travel so loud into the cave’s mouth and struck flint to steel to ignite torches. The orange flames cast wavering shadows on the ceiling and walls as they stepped into the caverns, their fluttering forms mirroring the sensation of the butterflies in Ivin’s belly.

  A reek which reminded him of burning, sacrificial lamb, struck Ivin’s nose the moment they entered. A sickly sweet and nauseating odor, but beyond that, a deep breath revealed a peculiar hint of honey. Most covered their faces as the company pressed forward through the dark hall, their feet leaving prints on the soot-slicked floor.

  A hundred paces in they passed an alcove housing a couple stall doors, but they were empty of everything but straw. A bridle and reins still hung from a spike driven into a wall. They moved on after a quick inspection, with Meliu leading them without hesitation past tunnels splitting to the north and south.

  Even such a short distance in, unease crept into his soul. His brain told him the way out was simple and straight, but the dark outside the torch’s globe of light rankled his nerves, oppressing his senses with the weight of the unseen.

  Rinold stepped to Ivin’s side. “Relax and keep your eyes on the heads in front of you, elsewise you’ll be pissin’ yourself the first bat we meet.”

  Ivin rolled his eyes, but the notion of a nickname blending turd and piss didn’t settle his nerves. He took deep breaths, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword, and instead of focusing on the dark beyond the torches he turned his attention to what the light revealed. The tunnel was natural, with rough stalagmites and stalactites prodding into the bobbing and uneven light, casting dancing shadows where a being of flesh and blood could never tread. But Ivin found it hard to imagine a Shadow couldn’t hide anywhere it damned well pleased.

  The tunnel they followed made a steady descent, and after passing another tunnel which turned south. The slope felt as if it fell out from under his feet, taking a steep drop. Flesh shifted beneath his right foot and squealed: Ivin lost his footing and his ankle rolled. He hugged a stalagmite to keep himself from taking a tumble.

  Rinold waved his torch and scorched a wounded rat, a blind, white-eyed creature squirming and flailing with a broken back.

  Rinold smirked. “Lucky, if that’d been a fever snake you’d be bit and on a painful journey to dead.”

  “Fever snakes don’t live in caves.” Ivin raised a boot, putting the critter out of its suffering with a crunching stomp before kicking it to the side so no one slipped on the carcass.

  Rinold’s torch lit a smug grin. “Ratsmasher, I’m a thinkin’ that’s a name could be set to song.”

  “Squirrels and rats, they aren’t so different really, don’t you think?” Ivin mocked the man’s nickname, curling his lip and protruding his teeth to imitate a squirrel gnawing a nut.

  Puxele said, “I’ll be working on the words, Rinold, you figure out the tune.”

  Pikarn’s voice echoed from ahead, “Shut yer mouths, children, leave a man to his hobbies.”

  Stifled chuckles echoed through Ivin’s pride as he continued the descent, but the jovial mutterings stiffened and froze as a man-shaped Shadow surged onto the ceiling in front of them. Ivin’s sword wasn’t alone in leaving its sheath as mail rattled and blades sang around him. Ivin froze in a defensive stance, but the shadow quivered and didn’t move to attack.

 
Meliu said, “Belt ’em, boys.” She strode forward and patted the hip of stalagmite carved into the likeness of what Ivin assumed to be a god. “This old man ain’t moved in a right long time and guards the Hall of Faces.”

  The passage took a sharp turn right but leveled and faces carved into the walls’ stone stared at them with terrifying visages. A three-eyed woman with horns, a howling man with a wolf’s muzzle, a screaming woman without eyes, a face upside down with a snake for a tongue, a single head with two faces, one masculine the other feminine. There was a hundred or more, and every one of them strange and unworldly.

  Ivin asked, “What are these?”

  Meliu shrugged. “Images of the Vanquished Gods, some say.”

  “Blasphemy to depict the Vanquished.”

  “Which is why some argue they aren’t the Vanquished, while others insist on their destruction.”

  Suvarn said, “I’d take a pick to ’em ’cause they’re ugly.”

  Ivin grunted his agreement and kept his eyes on the back of the Wolverine’s head instead of the haunting faces until they came to a crossing of four passages.

  Meliu stopped, pointing to their left. “That there leads to the Tears of the Gods…” She stared forward, then took a right turn. “This way.”

  Pikarn said, “I was assuming you knew the damned way, girl.”

  “Better than you do, old man.”

  Twenty strides later the tunnel split again, and this time the priestess didn’t pause, turning left, and leaving Ivin with the belief he’d be lost if forced to find his way out.

  The passage grew too tight for more than two side-by-side, but they’d passed numerous trails which looked so tight they might snag a man’s gear and never let go, so he chose to be thankful rather than complain. His gratitude ended when they stopped to stare at a massive pillar standing in their way, stretching to the roof and shrinking the tunnel on either side into something that might give a fat badger pause. They made their way shimmying sideways, and Ivin stopped a dozen times to unhook his cloak from protruding rocks until the cave stretched wide again.

  A hundred strides or so later, Meliu stopped to stare up. She gripped a notch in the wall and put foot to a slender ledge, and the light and shadows presented a precarious climb. The wall’s walk was less wide than Ivin’s booted foot and steep, unclimbable if not for the protrusions and cuts in the rock the priestess used for handholds as she moved like a spider up the wall.

  Ivin’s mouth gaped as the girl disappeared into a shadow seven poles above their heads, a fall high enough to kill a man straight out.

  Meliu’s voice came soft from above. “You brave men a-comin’?”

  Suvarn said, “That’s a climb for skinny little girls, not my big boots and fat fingers.”

  Ivin licked his lips, glanced at Suvarn. “Scared of a little climb?” He wriggled several fingers into a notch in the wall and tested the ledge with his boot. It wasn’t so bad as he expected, whoever had carved the holds spaced them well, and the craggy nature of the wall gave extra purchase. In little time he stood beside the priestess in the dark watching others climb their way. As the first torch arrived, the light revealed the girl’s creepy grin, made worse by the shadows, and he wondered if maybe she’d thought of pushing him.

  I’m being silly. He smiled at her, but she turned into the dark, and he followed her gaze. The blackness ahead wasn’t so much dark, as dim. “What the hells?”

  “The troughs must be lit.” She offered no further explanation as they waited for everyone before moving forward. The passage curved sharp and grew brighter as they walked. A rushing noise with intermittent pops grew in the hollow distance, some sort of fire he guessed, and the smell of honey which had been so faint and common as to be forgotten swelled in his nostrils. Cautious steps carried them around the bend, their weapons at the ready, but the view defied expectations.

  Their passage shifted into a hall and bulged to forty strides wide and was lit by what must be channels carved into the walls of the cave and filled with oil. The fires rushed as they burned oil, and either Ivin’s eyes had grown used to the dark, or the flames burned brighter than any he’d ever seen. The channels ran the length of the walls, leading deeper into the yawning cavern.

  Ivin said, “No way for a Shadow to hide in this place.”

  Pikarn spat. “That’s sure to’ve been the point, but we ain’t sneaking across, neither.”

  Meliu’s voice was soft, awed. “I’ve never seen it lit before, it’s beautiful.” She wandered into the hall, her head thrown back to stare at the ceiling.

  Ivin followed her gaze. The light of the brilliant flames reached the heights of the cavern and ignited stars of shimmering gold. The farther they walked, the more stars appeared, then streaks and swirls, patterns he couldn’t pinpoint as natural or manmade… or by the hands of gods.

  “Such wealth. Where are we?” Pikarn asked.

  “The cavern’s roof is called The Fool’s Haul,” the girl said with a grin. “It earned its name for all those who believed the sparkles were gold.”

  Pikarn squinted. “Count me a fool, then. How far to the Crack?”

  Her grin disappeared, and she moved on. “It’s here.”

  The hall took a mild curve to their left and opened into an even greater cavern. Three channels were carved into the heights of these walls, each row of flame staggered a pole higher as they rose toward the peak of the dome, lighting a ceiling fifty poles above their heads. Golden patterns swirled into a canvas no mortal could paint. Shimmering silver joined the gold, painting images at once too abstract to name, and too perfect to deny they meant something, if only Ivin could understand the language. The brilliant whorls drew the eye inward, focusing on a majestic circle of gold at the highest point of the roof, and in the center glowed a silver snowflake, the only image undeniable in its shape.

  Ivin lowered his eyes from this shimmering piece of storm to find it fell eternal into a gaping maw in the world, a crack of darkness impervious to the light of this cave that stretched an easy fifty strides in length, and at its widest was fifteen strides across.

  He muttered, “The Crack of Burdenis.”

  Meliu said, “As I’ve never seen it before. I’ve only heard rumors, it hasn’t been lit in decades.”

  The girl was awestruck, but Pikarn kept priorities on his mind. “Now where we headed?”

  Meliu nodded to the crack and led them to a point at its edge where a post with a bell on its top was splintered and leaning over the abyss. “Messages went up and down here.”

  Ivin caught her gaze slipping far to their left, but the space was empty except for several braziers long dark. “What’s over there?”

  She flashed him her first smile that didn’t promise blood. “Nothing, just remembering a game of Hawk and Snake.”

  Ivin figured she’d won a handsome purse, and glanced into the Crack, where shallow steps carved into the wall descended into the abyss. “Did the priests carve these stairs?”

  Puxele leaned over the precipice. “Looks to me like some damned goat picked up a hammer and chisel.”

  Meliu shrugged. “They were here when they discovered the cave after the Great Forgetting.”

  Pikarn scoffed. “Fairy tales’n legends.”

  Meliu returned the scoff. “I’ll call you a fool twice, now. When these caves were first explored, they found a group of priests in the Chamber of the Forgotten, followers of the Pantheon of Sol. They guarded a stack of books. These people awoke without memories, lost in these caves. But they found each other, even if they never found their way out, and they died in that chamber. The Great Forgetting was very real. Some say it’ll happen again.”

  Puxele said, “That’s encouraging.”

  “Gotta survive gettin’ to the bottom before worryin’ about gettin’ back,” Rinold said.

  Suvarn slapped Rinold’s back. “Squirrels are some o’ the best damned climbers, you go first.”

  “What, so you can knock me off when you fall?
”

  Ivin reeled at the stair’s prospects. Even repaired, the post and pulley wouldn’t handle a man’s weight, and either way, scaling into that bleak hole scared him more than a walk.

  They lit fresh torches and descended with Rinold in the lead, a trail of glowing ants. Ivin hugged the wall as he made his way to the first platform, where the stairs zigged back under the wardens who followed. He stopped to breathe and slow his heart, glanced back. His torch highlighted shadowy dimples in the walls, similar to those they’d seen in the Omindi.

  Unlike in the Omindi, there were several sets of pocks, and the eye could follow them as far as torch-light traveled. He hoped they were natural; if they weren’t, he didn’t want to know what caused them. He focused on the steps from there and eleven zigzags later his feet found the bottom of the Crack of Burdenis.

  Puxele came last and with a soft whistle of relief. Meliu grabbed her by the hand and tugged her onward. “Keep moving, less we’re here the better,” Meliu said.

  Ivin approached Pikarn as they walked, whispered. “Did you see the pocks in the walls?”

  The Wolverine nodded and handed him a chunk of jerked beef. Ivin took the hint, dropped back, and gnawed on the meat as they entered a passage tight enough that rough-hewn stone snagged their shoulders in places.

  Rinold muttered, “If’n enemy sit on either side of this neck, we won’t be walking out alive.”.

  Chittering noises echoed from ahead and they slowed. Ivin’s grip on his sword tightened, and he slipped his shield from his shoulder

  Foes didn’t wait for them, but the rat feast the enemy left behind might make a butcher retch. The chamber was an irregular shape thirty strides across at its widest, and blood spattered the walls and pooled on the floor where arms and legs lay ripped from bodies, and a hundred blind rats scurried with sanguine faces and feet. The savagery of the mutilation made it hard to guess how many holies had met their end here. A broken table in the corner wore an eyeless head on one of its splintered oak legs.