Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

  A Shadow’s scream, followed by the warbling call of a Taken spun them to face the entrance. The damned things were coming faster than she’d hoped. The men put their hands to the massive stone door, but it didn’t budge.

  Ivin asked, “See anything for leverage?”

  A Shadow rushed through the entrance and Solineus dove from its path to the hard floor. A flame darted into the shade of the demon’s body and ignited in a burst before she’d bothered to ask for help. The substance of the Shadow showered dissipating tendrils in the air, and with a hollow howl the Shadow disappeared through the door.

  Ivin lent a hand to launch Solineus to his feet and glanced to Eliles. “Can you keep those fires guarding our rear?”

  With her nod five flames darted between them and the door, the sixth remaining above her head.

  Ivin said, “The Taken will be here soon enough; let’s move slow and steady.”

  The tunnel descended on a gradual slope until reaching broad stairs carved with flowering ivy vines. By the time they reached the bottom, Eliles figured they were below water level, but still the floors and ceiling were dry as desert bone. Four Shadows followed as far as the first steps, watching them, but after the corridor turned north, the Shadows stopped. Little comfort in not being able to see your enemy.

  Thirty strides farther they came to a longer flight of stairs which led into a chamber five strides wide and long, empty but for a bowl carved from silver-veined marble which sat in the middle of the room. Its rim was three feet high and stretched a man’s height across its middle. Eliles stood at its edge and looked into the bowl: At its bottom yawned a hole large enough a child could slip into its dark depths. Some sort of well, she suspected. Or a place to make offerings to unknown gods.

  The corridor bent north, entering a room with four central pillars. Statues of men, some close to nine feet tall, lined the walls. Warriors armed with spears and shields, wearing breastplates and determined expressions. She recalled the giant skeleton outside and wondered if the statues were more life-sized than she’d otherwise assume.

  Eliles requested five fires to remain at their rear as they climbed a short stair, entering an antechamber lined with maple benches carved with exquisite dragons and sunbursts, and covered in golden silk pillows. The sheen of the maple was flawless, as if oiled yesterday, the threads on the cushions immaculate, as if fresh placed and never sat in.

  Stepping from the sweltering, muddy haze of the outside world into these halls was like walking into someone’s perfect dream.

  “This place is unreal,” Ivin said.

  Lelishen replied, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not even—”

  The rattle of antlers interrupted, louder this time, and from the direction of the door.

  Ivin crept close, his targe to the fore and broadsword over his head. “Eliles, could you send a fire in there?” A rattle followed his words.

  She snuck to his shoulder and sent her tiny flame dancing along the ceiling; it stopped twenty strides ahead. Something was there, but it was indistinct in this light and distance. The scene became clear after a few steps down the passage where another corridor crossed beneath the Fire’s light. It might have been a city street crowded with people ranging from seven to nine feet tall, except the people were bones frozen in the act of walking. Pristine clothing and armor hung slack on their shoulders and limbs.

  “Holy hells,” Tokodin muttered, and the skeletons moved, several bumping each other, their bones clacking. In moments they stopped again.

  Ivin said. “At least we know what the scroll meant by Wakened guards.” The skeletons clicked and clacked into motion as he spoke, but they didn’t acknowledge the presence of the living.

  Solineus rubbed his forehead. “They seem as passive as the one outside, but that was one, not a horde.”

  Eliles strained her memory for anything that might be useful. “I’ve heard of secret passages in tombs?”

  Ivin smiled. “Good notion.”

  Solineus took a drink from his canteen, frowned as he gave it a shake. “Aye, but the priests were here before us and would’ve thought it, too. And they had time.”

  Ivin looked to Lelishen, “Any ideas?”

  “Oh, goodness no, and if your priests couldn’t destroy them…?” For a moment she broke back into the prattling speech of her façade, before settling into her real voice. “No, I’m sorry to say. People, languages, are my expertise, not the Wakened Dead.”

  History books which survived the Age of Warlords didn’t tell what had happened to the city beneath these waters. It didn’t even have a proper name, far as Eliles knew. A place and people lost to water and time. “We need to find a way across. If we put these things between us and the Taken… Solineus, your hunch earlier?”

  “You want to trust my memories?” The man chuckled, easing closer to the cluster of traipsing skeletons. “Way I seem to understand it, Wakened without flesh are less… sentient? Conscious? And less aggressive. The more flesh on their bones, the more apt to attack unprovoked.”

  Tokodin said, “A skeleton rose from the Umptor family mausoleum when I was a child; it killed three people in their sleep before being destroyed.”

  “We’d be dead by now if these were aggressive. So could we simply walk through?” Eliles asked.

  Solineus said, “If there were a path between them, I think so. Bumping one, knocking it over, well, I don’t think it takes much for the Wakened to get riled.”

  Eliles stood close to the walking bones, leaned out to glance down the hall they traversed. The walls were honeycombed with empty holes where these dead once slept. The corridor ran thirty strides in either direction, ending at sarcophagi carved with fantastic creatures, winged and horned, that she didn’t recognize. Here the skeletons turned, swarming as graceful as might a flock of birds, in an endless oval.

  She muttered, “The priests of Istinjoln would never have thought of the subtle.”

  Her companions bickered the merits of fire and steel, of searching for secret passages, or trying to fight their way back out of this trap, but Eliles stuck her arm into the path of an oncoming skeleton. It altered course without hesitation, brushing her fingers as it passed, and the next several skeletons followed.

  She stepped into the gap and held her breath, ready to dive if the bones in the velvet dress headed for her, but graceful as a dancer the Wakened eased around her. Inch-by-inch, Eliles shuffled her way among the dead. Cold, empty-eyed skulls passed without a glance, but they knew she was there, she felt that in her own bones. She slipped her arm in a gap and the dead parted, but shuffled to a stop.

  Eliles’ heart lurched before she realized everyone had stopped talking to stare at her. “Keep talking, please.”

  The dead lurched into motion with a clatter as the group spoke, and her heart raced. She shuffled another step.

  Ivin yelled, “Eliles!”

  The sound of her name didn’t catch her attention at first, over the clatter of bones and her focus on slipping into the next gap of Wakened. She looked back at Ivin, squinting, straining her ears.

  “That one’s looking at you!” But she couldn’t see him well enough through the bones to see where he pointed.

  She glanced frantically, spotting more than one who pinned empty eyes on her. Panic struck, her mouth drying out. A skeleton sat in each sarcophagus at the ends of the hall, staring with the emotionless visages of naked skulls. Wakened passed in their lines of sight but their gazes didn’t flinch. But from Ivin’s vantage, he wouldn’t be able to see this pair. Eliles scanned the passing skeletons until she looked to what had been an empty corridor across from the party. She saw the one now, taller than the statues and draped in vibrant gold and green silks woven with silver. Two swords were stuck through its belt, horribly undersized for this giant.

  Tales of the Wakened who wielded weapons other than fists and teeth never ended well.

  Eliles’ body tingled as the swarm of dead stopped in their tracks, then parted to m
ake way for the armed Wakened. It kept its hands clasped behind its back in a dignified manner, leaning over her sweating brow until Eliles’ eyes were inches from empty sockets.

  “What do you see, little mortal, when you look into my eyes?” The voice was masculine, deep and sonorous, and spoke flawless Silone.

  Eliles gazed into the depths of the creature’s skull. “All I see is darkness.”

  It stood straight, skull nodding. “We shall speak further. Come.”

  The skeletons cleared a path and the rest of the party joined her, following the dead man into deep halls.

  Ivin glared at her as they walked. “That was reckless. You could’ve gotten us all killed.”

  Eliles recognized the truth in his words, so didn’t argue, despite wanting to. She grinned. “You’re just happy I’m still alive.”

  His stern frown faded with a roll of his eyes and turned into a smile. “Yeah, that I am.”

  Eliles stole a glance back to see the ranks of skeletons close, sealing their fate or protecting their rear.

  39

  TOMB OF THE TOUCHED

  DANCE BENEATH THE EYE OF THE CREATOR,

  Dance beneath the eye of the Creator,

  soar without wings and cast your seeds.

  Your Children, your children, they will set wing to sky

  blocking sun and star and moon, mighty.

  But seeds grow weaker even as they grow greater.

  Seeds in heavens, seeds on wind, seeds growing from dirt, until dirt is all they know.

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Lanterns illuminated a chamber lined with book-filled shelves. A white marble sarcophagus sat atop a black onyx dais in the middle of the room, both relief-carved with stars and moons and soaring dragons, several with wings, a couple without.

  A large desk and chair stood to the side. A fat book sat open on the desk, and beside it a pen and inkwell. Ivin strolled close to the table, disappointed to see blank pages before turning his attention back to the dead man.

  The skeleton sauntered around the tomb, took a seat in a high-backed chair resembling a throne, and crossed his legs. The room reminded Ivin more of bedchambers than a mausoleum, except the bed was for the dead.

  They stood silent, the fleshless man staring at them as though they sought audience with a king.

  Ivin broke the quiet. “There are creatures—”

  The Wakened’s eyes turned to the desk, and he spoke in a language Ivin couldn’t understand. Ivin glanced to Lelishen, but she shook her head. The man’s gaze returned to them.

  “The Shadows, the Shadows, the Shadows of Man all men should dread, but so often they see their shadows not until too late, but the Shadows they do see they should not fear, not here. And the little men, the Taken, bones will take.”

  Ivin turned again to his companions. Eliles shrugged. “I think he means we’re safe?”

  But before they could clarify, the skeleton turned to empty air and spoke. “Dark feathers and dark wings, in the bloody maw of feline, of cat, of lion, no gryphon, without wings? Could a gryphon it be without feathers?” He looked to the chamber’s ceiling, back to the party. “My apologies. It is so good to see you again, not yet. Do go on. I will try not to spoil your fun, fun, fun, this time round.”

  Ivin stared, lost for meaningful words. “Who are you?”

  His laughter echoed and he thumped his sternum, pointed to the desk, babbling in a foreign tongue to nobody before addressing them again. “You seek me without knowing my name? No. Of course you did, you did again, you’ll do again, until you learn. Names are not things, names are things earned. You earned your name wriggling from the belly of the now dead, how should you earn my name? Chewed back into the belly of the hungry dead? And you!” His eyes fell on Lelishen. “Trelelunin woman, you have been here before or perhaps not yet, have you not earned my name?”

  Eyes landed on Lelishen as the Wakened spoke to her in a lilting language Ivin couldn’t comprehend, and she answered, but in Silone. “I’ve never seen you before, here or otherwise, and your name is unknown to me.”

  Trelelunin were a people of magic who lived in forests across the Parapet Straits. Tales spoke of their culture’s wisdom, but if true, how did it make sense she was here with them on the island of Kaludor? He shook off these questions for another time; he needed to focus.

  Ivin said, “We didn’t come here for you or your name.”

  “Indeed, but perhaps you should have. You come seeking hope when all I can give you is truth in falsehoods. But you should be able to call me something, pick a name, choose a name, Craven Raven is taken already, he and his surly beak. But you may call me as I have been called by so many who knew my name but chose not to use it. My name you may choose is the moniker the Touched, whether simply erroneous or a lie or a misspoken misspeak, it will suffice all the same.”

  “The Touched,” Solineus said. “Touched by what?”

  “He who doesn’t trust the name which is his own questions the source of mine title? Precious and precocious in wisdom and foolishness. How old are you, ancient soul, immortal child, favored of the slaves of man, two weeks or thirty years? Burping baby or hoary elder? When next you come to speak to me, we’ll delve further. This little man, among others, this Silone”—his gaze fell on Ivin—“seeks me out this day, and finds me. For what?”

  Ivin stammered for words under the scrutiny of the unnerving, faceless gaze.

  The Touched stood, bony fingers grabbing the top of his skull, pulling, and he roared a wordless song in anguish as a layer of pale bone-white peeled from his face, revealing flesh beneath, and where once were empty sockets, an eye of blue and another brown. As hands stretched beyond his chin, lips formed, and a tongue quaking in his shrieking mouth. The Touched released the osseous layer, flesh and eyes fading into bone and black.

  “Does it help to look into my eyes, young mortal? You speak not to the cursed dead, no, you speak to the cursed to be alive.” He eased into his seat, dignified, rubbing the cheeks of his skull. “An immortal not meant to be.”

  The Touched’s bony fingers rattled on the arm of his chair as Ivin took deep breaths before speaking. “We seek the Sliver of Star.”

  The skeleton stared, featureless and unreadable. “A white star or a black star, or just a star, star? Shall a spider cast its web to pull a piece to Kaludor for you? No! I jest. A Sliver of Star, you say. The Sliver of Star, perhaps its trail of dust. There is no Sliver of Star. I fear, you feared. The Sliver is a name unearned, the unhappy ending, the unhappy naming, of a false vision given to prophetic falsehoods bringing most major pain. Tom— Tom— Tomorrow. Today. Not yesterdays gone.”

  “It isn’t real?”

  “No, no, and no. Chasing unearned names in the holes of the worlds, I feel bad for you, most certain I do. Changes come, changes go, changes always staying the same. Your face is strange. Traditions they might be called with a name earned. Tradition suggests gifts, and gifts I give, because they never truly leave. What would you like, oh mortal man, what of my treasures?”

  Ivin didn’t know what the hells the man meant with his words most of the time, but he wasn’t a grave-robber. “Silone do not plunder the tombs of the dead.”

  “Noble sentiment from a person of people willing to fill tombs with smelly things no one except desperate loved ones would wish to retrieve, but I repeat: I am not dead, so how a tomb to rob? But if these gifts are gifts unearned as they appear, I will choose for you.”

  The Touched leaped to his feet, waltzing with an invisible partner to the sarcophagus, and dipped her imaginary form above its opening with a kiss. He reached in and withdrew a shield, black as night and sparkling with stars. Only they weren’t stars. Fifty arrowheads or more, several with pieces of broken shafts still in them. Steel and stone, three of glass.

  The Touched flung it at him, and Ivin caught it in defense of his head. Larger than his targe, about three feet in diameter, it still weighed less than his steel-rimmed shield, as if constructe
d from thin wood rather than a quarter-inch of black metal.

  “It suits you well, and makes for fitful slumber in the rare times of my rest, a most prickly pillow I assure you. I will not miss it until it comes back.”

  Ivin had no idea what kind of shield he held, but it sure wasn’t what he came for. Time was a luxury a skeletal madman had plenty of, but in the south people were dying. “We need a way to stop the Shadows, the Celestial Gate—”

  “Man child who fears the Shadows of Man, and no wonder, but I am not a man and therefore need fear not your Shadows. No Shadow nor little man Taken will penetrate the shield you now bear. You came looking for one gift unreal you will never hold, I give you a real gift, think me a horse to look into my mouth?”

  Horse, Twelve Hells. How could one man speak so many words in Silone without Ivin being able to piece them together? There wasn’t much else to say. “Thank you.”

  “And you, little mouse man of the gods, too shy to ask?”

  Tokodin stepped behind Solineus to hide from the creature’s gaze. “Me? I’m a simple man; gold is good.”

  “Silver and gold, only a man who values these things gifts such things, and I know what you value most.”

  “The lives of our people?”

  “Clever man of gods, but no, what you value third then, after your people and skin your own.” He walked to a shelf and grabbed a bottle, presented it to the monk. “Careful with that, what year it is in your now I am uncertain, but this is old no matter, and is liable to make even a dragon forget their own lies with but a whiff.”

  “And you!” The Touched turned to Rinold, who faced the skeleton with a smirk and a hand on his hip.

  “I don’t need a damned thing.”

  “Squ- Squ- Squirrel, where is your cute fluffy tail? Ha! I jest, I know your tail—excuse my lack of an eye for a mischievous and knowing wink—travels south with clopping critters long of ear. And, here! Yes, here, not there, is what you need for there next.”

  The skeleton reached into its robes and tossed a golden ring that flashed sapphire and diamond as it arched over the tomb. Rinold snagged it from the air before it thudded his nose. “I, uh… Huh.”