Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

He found the lord priest in his chambers with High Priestess Sedut and Lord Priest Dunkol. Dareun was happy to see the Broldun didn’t bring the bastard who cut his tongue out and broke his fingers for fun—some scars passed from living into death.

  Dunkol held a goblet of wine in both hands, but his eyes strayed to the glowing artifact in the middle of the table, an uncut fist-sized diamond pulsing with white energy. The star gave Dareun the jitters.

  “When first I read the Prophecy of the Twelfth Star, mmm, I thought it might be mine.” Dunkol’s fat jowls jiggled as he cast Ulrikt a grin and chuckle.

  “An amusing if misguided thought, m’lord,” Sedut said. Her eyes squinted, the tense muscles of her face betraying a mistrust or dislike for the Broldun. The use of his clan title rather than his holy name also supplied insight into her disposition.

  “The Sliver is only for he who is destined to wield its power.” Ulrikt settled into a chair. “But this is not it.”

  Sedut blanched, her fingers shaking, loosening their grip on her wine. “My king, I—”

  King Priest, is it? Ulrikt’s ambitions weren’t surprising, but Dareun would’ve thought him more subtle than to take the title so soon.

  “You failed me, Sedut, but even so, the gods have their reasons.” He picked up the shining gem, stared into its aura. “Our attempts beneath the mountain failed and brought death. If we are to succeed, we must perform the ritual beneath the stars, where the gods may see and feel our devotion the clearest. Go to the lord priests and wake them; they are to meet us in the Commons of the Pantheonate, at the Altar of Sol. We will reach the heavens and bring forth Sol’s hand to guide us.”

  The woman hesitated. “My king? So late?”

  “Did you hear my words and do the stars not shine? Then heed me, do not fail again.”

  Sedut tipped her goblet for a final drink and bowed, departing the room with hasty steps.

  The Broldun laughed, and chill shivers quivered through Dareun’s soul. Temperature was a thing he hadn’t given a thought since dying, not until now.

  “This’s a thing I always liked about you, mmm, not one to waste time.”

  Ulrikt cast the man an irritated grin. “On the contrary, I’ve wasted decades to reach this night. But the will of the gods cannot be rushed.”

  Dunkol flicked his fingers in the air. “Mmm, so, what would you have me do?”

  Ulrikt smiled and refilled Dunkol’s wine. “You and me have plans to make, old friend.”

  Ulrikt had lots of old friends, it seemed, but just as when the lord priest had visited him in his cell, Dareun sensed an edge in his tone.

  “Sometimes old friends, allies even, must speak more directly than they might like.”

  A chill swam through his being, a thousand frozen worms wriggling within his soul. Dareun backed to the wall, tense. He looked around, raising his spectral hands, his palms tingling: The cold radiated from behind Dunkol’s lavish chair. Dareun edged along the wall until a darkness came into view. It bled from the floor’s stone, shadowy tendrils growing into the air.

  The Broldun guffawed. “Mmm! Seems to me you’re doing the opposite. Let us speak plain, shall we?”

  “You know I always envisioned you as my second. Sometimes things change even as they stay the same. Sadly, it isn’t to you whom I need speak.” Ulrikt’s smile met his wine glass, his intense blue-eyed stare trained on the Broldun.

  Two arms of Shadow plunged into Dunkol and Dareun stepped back until halfway through the wall behind him. The Broldun’s body stiffened into a flabby board and his mouth wilted open, but no sound escaped his lips as the Shadow slipped into the quivering body. Possession, an evil art long forbidden by the Church, but this was worse still, more a sacrifice to something wicked.

  Dareun stared, unable to move until Ulrikt’s demented gaze turned to him. “Now you realize the mercy I gave your body and soul, and the true torture I reserved for this dog.”

  He knows I’m here!

  The lord priest and his chambers, the Broldun, everything disappeared. Dareun stood staring at another demon, a smudged face asleep in a stable. Whatever this demon was, its terror paled when compared to the Shadow. He needed to figure out how a ghost could wake the living.

  He jumped in and out of the man’s body and screamed, and with little else to do paced up and down through the man’s torso. Flustered, he stood staring until the demon groaned and his eyes fluttered open. He waved his arms in front of his eyes in a frantic fit.

  SOLINEUS SNORTED, rolled over, and awoke staring at stable rafters through the translucent eyes of a ghost waving his hands. His heart lurched for a beat and he reached for his sword. Beautiful women visiting him in his dreams, and dead priests waking him in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to know what form of spook he might be haunted by next. He sat up, the blade of his sword disappearing into its sheath.

  Dareun’s ghost looked as if he’d seen a ghost, his eyes wide, brows pinched, and his lips straight as a nail. “Did you find something?”

  Dareun glanced about, his mouth moving without words, before he slumped, exasperated.

  Solineus pulled his cloak over his shoulders. “Can you show me?”

  The specter led him into the bailey, past the Dais of Etinbin, then down lantern-lit streets until they stood in the deepest shadow of an outbuilding. The wind howled, knifing through any gap in his cloak, chilling his cheeks. The area was empty. Dareun pointed to the Tower of Sol, its heights glowing halos in the frigid night.

  “The tower?”

  Dareun nodded as he held up six fingers, and pointed to the ground or the building’s shadow, and lowered a finger. “Seven, a shadow, and six, what the hells you mean? Take me. Show me.”

  The ghost shook his head, pointed toward the gates, and waved his arm while running in place. Now that Solineus understood. “We’re standing outside, me whispering to a dead guy no one else sees, someone’s going to notice me. We couldn’t run until sunrise when the gates open, anyhow.”

  The ghost stared until his lip twitched, but didn’t budge.

  “If Ulrikt is at the Tower, take me to him.”

  Dareun slashed his finger across his throat several times with a fierce frown. He pointed to the tower, then a small rock on the ground and traced a semi-circle in front of it, and stared at him.

  “The Tower of Sol and it’s courtyard?”

  Dareun pointed to the sky.

  “The heavens?” Lelishen mentioned a celestial alignment, an eye of the Fire Lion. He gazed at the speckled veil of darkness above and a pattern formed in the stars. There were hundreds of fanciful formations his eyes might draw in the night sky, but the Lion struck his memory. “The Fire Lion. They’re performing the ritual tonight?”

  Dareun led him from shadow to shadow with caution, stopping at every corner to make sure the roads were empty before reaching their destination. The Tower of Sol rose into the sky before them, a gray pillar wearing a crown of white marble lit by a ring of lanterns and torches. The plaza was empty except for a few figures, but even to his heathen’s eye at night, he recognized the robes as those of lord priests. There was no way to cross several hundred yards of open ground to kill a man when any one of them might torch him with a prayer.

  Solineus nestled into the shadows beside the ghost’s legs, waiting for the show to begin. The arched doors of the tower opened with a surge of light and two men descended the stairs, making the number of lord priests seven. Ulrikt stood out with the glowing gem called the Sliver of Star in his hand, and the one beside him he’d heard called the Broldun; his girth left no doubt as to who he was.

  “What are they doing?”

  Dareun pointed, then cupped his hands as if holding an invisible ball.

  “The thing Ulrikt called a Sliver of Star?”

  Dareun smiled with a nod, crossing his hands back and forth.

  “It’s not the Sliver of Star?” Again the ghost nodded, then pointed, but Solineus couldn’t tell at what.

  “
The building? The tower, the priests?” Dareun raised seven then six fingers, pointed again. “Shadow?” The ghost nodded. “I’ve no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”

  Dareun frowned, waved his arms, but all Solineus could do was shrug, clueless. With what appeared a frustrated sigh, the ghost disappeared.

  “I reckon I should’ve expected that.” Dreams and ghosts were fickle partners.

  The lord priests milled outside the tower, forming a circle around Ulrikt. A masculine voice droned, its reverberations dancing off the stone floors and walls of the outbuildings with an unnatural warbling echo.

  The Lady’s voice echoed between his ears and a chill spread through his body. “Remember.”

  Solineus’ heart chugged in his chest, an ache pulsed in his temples, and a vision appeared: A forest of ancient trees higher than towers surrounded an open vale, amid which stood a group of people, blurred by the glow of a stone. A pillar of light streaking black, a presence, an evil. The pain in his forehead pulsed and faded, freeing him from the vision but filling him with dread. He’d seen this ritual before, but he couldn’t say when or how, or what it meant. Something terrible was about to happen.

  He backed away, pressing tight to the wall, and Dareun appeared inches from his face. The dead priest pointed to a door, then mimed getting knocked in the head before stepping through the oak. Solineus hadn’t a clue what the apparition meant, but followed, startling a monk on guard duty. Solineus landed a punch to his jaw before the man could raise a hand, dropping him like a potato wearing a sack. Dareun grinned and descended a ladder.

  They ran and ducked into an alcove as a pair of monks passed at a crossroad. Dareun disappeared. After a couple hundred beats of Solineus’ heart it felt too long. The longer he hid, haunted by directionless echoes of conversations and footfalls, the more he wanted to flee.

  Dareun reappeared and nodded to a side corridor, taking the lead. They wound through a maze, left, right, right, left, right, until Solineus lost track, and they came to a set of stairs. The priest blinked from existence and returned a moment later, taking him deeper into the bowels of Istinjoln, where the dark was lit by lanterns burning with unnerving burgundy flames. Fewer voices echoed, and not a soul crossed their path, but he still appreciated the dead man’s cautious pace.

  Dareun led him onward until the only directions he knew were up and down. They descended stairs, ducked into alcoves, until stopping at a door.

  “Why’re we here?”

  The ghost folded his arms and walked through the door. Solineus’ heart raced as a tingling thread of energy passed down the corridor, massaging through his body. Maybe his imagination, but he doubted it. He cracked the door and slipped across the threshold into utter dark. Soft breathing, at rest, and the mystery’s answer came to him.

  “Eliles? It’s me, Solineus.”

  A tiny flame lit the dark, the girl sitting up, ready for a fight. Dareun rested a hand on her shoulder and her tension eased.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Dareun brought me here, but we haven’t time to waste. We need to go.”

  “Go? Why, where?”

  He glanced at the ghost, but Dareun shrugged and mimed running.

  “I don’t know where, but Ulrikt and the lord priests are performing the ritual now. We need to leave.”

  “How do I know to trust you?”

  “Dareun’s touching your left shoulder as we speak, and you know it.”

  Tears welled in her eyes and she spun, and Dareun’s hands cupped her cheeks. He leaned to kiss her forehead. “He is here, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, please, let’s go.”

  She stood and dashed across the room, grabbing a priests’ robes and threw him one. He slipped into the wool, an imperfect fit, but it helped hide his sword.

  A shiver of energy passed through him, leaving tendrils of prickle between the goose pimples covering his body. He glanced to the girl. “Did you feel that?” The terror stretching her face answered his question. She darted out the door, and he followed, with Dareun trailing close.

  She led them quick and straight, passing numerous priests who didn’t look at them twice. They stopped at a ladder stretching into dark heights lit by a single lantern at the top. “Keep close, the guard will bow, you nod and walk.”

  They climbed into a torchlit room where a monk bowed and opened the door for them. They passed without a word into the frigid night air as another pulse sent shivers racing across his skin. “Do you know where Ilpen and the lady are? Wake them, get the team and some horses ready. And tell the woman Ulrikt doesn’t have the Sliver of Star. I’ll see to the portcullis.”

  The girl took a step and turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know, but she might.” Solineus stuffed his hands in the sleeves of his holy robes, sauntering to a guard tower by the gate. He glanced at the dead priest. “No, I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”

  The guards were lax since the assassin had met his trial and death, and the once-murdered dead lord priest walked again, so Solineus figured he might get lucky. He pulled on the door: Locked.

  He knocked, the rap of his knuckles warbling into a quivering unreal noise, a deep-throated bird call heard from underwater. The ground shuddered. He turned to see the monastery ripple in a wave of reality, and his lungs seized before an invisible force heaved his body against the door. He rose from the ground and staggered, his ears ringing.

  A blinding streak of light rose into the sky from near the Tower of Sol, rising to the Eye of the Fire Lion, a Twelfth Star in a constellation of eleven. He’d seen this before. Whether in a nightmare or a life forgotten, its familiarity engendered an agony in not remembering. He choked and gasped, fighting fear, forcing himself to swallow and breathe.

  The light reached the star, and he imagined the beam of light being consumed by blackness, but only a single bar of dark streaked its middle. He watched, terrified, mesmerized, as the black passed in front of the heights of the Tower of Sol.

  A guard stood in the gatehouse door, staring at the same vision. A heavy, unnatural silence swept into Solineus’ ears until deafening even his thoughts, and then it came, a wave rippling the world before his eyes, slow as poured molasses, but still he didn’t move fast enough. Dareun disappeared before the energy launched Solineus and the guard into the gatehouse like leaves riding the surf.

  Solineus gasped for breath as he struggled to his feet, ears ringing, the distortion fading in a return to clarity. “Raise the portcullis.” He coughed, struggling to find his voice. Three guards leaned heavy against the walls, one with an arm hanging limp, his shoulder dislocated. “As a priest of Istinjoln, I command you, raise the godsdamned portcullis! Raise it or we’re godsdamned dead!”

  Those last words got their attention. The men rushed to the levers and gears, setting the counterbalance in motion, the bells of the tower chiming.

  He stripped his priest’s robes, grabbed an arming jack, a mail hauberk, and nasal helm hanging on the guardroom wall, and slipped into the comforting weight of their protection. A tight fit and short in the sleeves, but better than nothing. Still woozy he stepped outside to see the beam still stretching into the sky, familiar yet different from what his teasing memory told him. Eliles sprinted across the bailey with Lelishen by her side and Ilpen trailing, lumbering as fast as his old legs could carry him. They were alive, a good start. His balance returned as he stretched his legs into a run, but he slid to a stop.

  A fiery flash lit the streets, and a shriek rose from the heart of the monastery, its pitch rising to tear at his eardrums. He scrunched his eyes and cocked his head, enduring the wail to its end.

  His legs lurched toward the Tower of Sol, carried by a hope he might still kill Ulrikt, but he forced himself to the stables. Ilpen’s team was in reins and yoke, the typically stubborn Ears’ compliant as if they too wanted to flee from this place.

  Eliles and Lelishen were throwing bridles on horses.

  So
lineus grabbed a saddle from a rack and tossed it on an animal, then another. “Hurry, but don’t be hasty. Cinch ’em tight, we don’t wanna be bouncing on our heads down the road.”

  Ilpen asked, “Would you tell me what the hells is going on?”

  “The beginnings of a Holy War, as the lord priest promised.”

  Eliles yanked a cinch tight, grunting. “Did they reach Sol or fail? Were there Shadows?”

  “Shadows?” The girl and her master were both worried about shadows, and it clicked in his head: Living shadows. “I didn’t see nothin’ of the sort. How about we jibber-jabber once we’re outside these walls?”

  Ilpen lumbered into his seat, tightening his belt and situating his knives, and Solineus hefted Eliles into the saddle, her eyes wide and lips tight. “Ride much? Grip with your knees, hold tight on the mane; the horse is rein-trained most likely; use them to guide its head. Worst case, it’ll probably follow us.” It was an optimistic worst case, but it’d do. She nodded, but the giddy-terrified smile never left her face.

  They exited the stables on nervous beasts as a crackle of lightning lit and thundered over Istinjoln. Eliles’ mount spun with her even as Solineus’ gelding hop-bucked. He squeezed his legs tight and pulled the horse’s nose to its chest, staring at the open gates as a dozen riders stormed through.

  IVIN RODE with mane and rein clutched tight, leading the wardens with Pikarn, Rinold, and Puxele clustered beside him. They’d reached Istinjoln to find its gates barred earlier in the day and setup camp in a copse of woods to spy. When a beam of light split the midnight sky they’d mounted and spurred toward the monastery.

  A concussive boom surged from Istinjoln and an energy drifted across his skin from over half a mile away, raising the hairs on his neck and arms. He pushed on with the wardens strung behind along the road, and moments later the chimes of the gates sounded. They spurred from an amble into a canter, and charged until passing through the gates, reining in their animals on the stones of Istinjoln’s bailey. Not a single guard moved to stop them; in fact, the only guards they saw bolted right past them.