Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One

by L. James Rice

  Rikis said, “What the godsdamned hells? Poison?”

  Ivin’s head thrummed, his eyes blurred. He glanced to the bowl and Kotin’s empty mug. “The stew. Where’s Joslin?”

  “Right here, sir.” Terror stretched the boy’s eyes, his fingers trembling.

  Rikis lifted Kotin onto the table, his eyes on Eliles. “Can you help?”

  “You need a healer, not me. But I’ll do what I can.” Eliles stood over the fallen giant, hands trembling as she touched him. “Poison. I can feel it burning. He needs a healer, fast.”

  “I’ll drag one back.” Rikis ran out the door.

  Joslin cleared his throat, his voice meek. “The monk, I saw him pouring something in the mugs when I were cleaning—”

  Pikarn ripped the scullery boy from his feet in a fury, lifting to stare him in the eye. “You said nothing?”

  Piss streamed down the child’s leg. “I thought it were whiskey.”

  “The monk that brought us the ale! Where’s that godsdamned son of a bitch?”

  “In the privy down the hall.”

  The Wolverine slung the boy into the wall and pulled an axe from his belt. Ivin ran after him.

  Tokodin? No, it wasn’t possible. Not after everything they’d been through. He wouldn’t believe it, but still his sword was in his hand.

  Pikarn ripped the garderobe’s door open with a bellow and froze. The tip of Ivin’s sword clanged on the stone floor.

  Tokodin sat on the wooden ring with a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, eyes wide and staring, and a dagger thrust through his heart.

  Pikarn spat on the dead man. “Cowardly bastard.” He grabbed the monk by the back of his head and slammed him into the wall, then floor.

  The Wolverine bellowed and stormed from the room but Ivin could only stand and stare. His eyes trailed to the floor where the single white pip of a die painted black stared at him. Ivin snatched it from the floor, shook it in his hand. The monk kept his dice in a deep pocket, they wouldn’t fall out by chance. He knelt to the floor and stuck his hand in the dead man’s robes, but the pocket was empty.

  A scream from down the hall shook him from his folly: What the hells was he doing worrying about dice? He clutched the die and ran to the dining hall where Kotin thrashed on the table, Eliles fought the dying man and her own tears as several men held him down.

  Rikis stumbled into the room, breathless, a priestess in tow. He slung the young woman at the table. “Save him.”

  Eliles stepped from Kotin’s side and wrapped her arms around Ivin as the priestess prayed. Ivin wanted nothing more than to hold her, but he pushed her aside to help hold his father down, grabbing an arm.

  Kotin’s muscles relaxed as the priestess prayed, splaying her hands across the man’s chest and stomach. Ivin hoped it was a sign the prayers fought the poison, saving his father, but when the young girl’s eyes turned to him with tears, he knew the peace in his father’s arm was the tranquility of the dead.

  Ivin slumped and dropped to his knees, but the peace was broken by Rikis’s roar and the ring of steel. His brother charged the priestess with his sword, a dirty froth trickling from his mouth. Ivin lunged, driving his shoulder into Rikis’ sternum, the sword tumbling through the air as he drove his brother into the floor. Several men helped hold him down, and the priestess held her hands on the eldest brother’s chest and prayed.

  Ivin knelt, panting, pinning his brother to the floor until the Wolverine returned, taking Ivin’s place by Rikis’ side. Ivin stumbled to a chair, tears in his eyes and Eliles provided what comfort she could with her arms and soft words, but all he heard were distant whispers, senseless words he didn’t bother to understand as he sat watching his eldest brother die by the hand of a man he’d brought into the fold.

  MERIS ARRIVED on Herald’s Watch among an early wave of refugees from Kaludor, and once on shore rode in a litter with no one giving Her Holiness a second glance amid the throngs. They carried her through the streets, horrific descriptions of Shadows and Taken assaulting her ears, but she put no faith in them. Small people and small talk, lies spread by the Choerkin to turn the people against the Church. For once, however, she didn’t blame the Choerkin, because the truth was Holy War and the Church had returned to rule.

  Her bearers carried her to Skywatch, where she crawled from beneath wool blankets to test her legs for the first time since Ulrikt died. Her muscles were stronger than expected, and she used her cane more from habit than necessity as she climbed into the stars. She stared to the sky and focused on the Twelfth Star blazing as the Eye of the Fire Lion. A terror seeped into her blood, but she denied the sensation. All would be well, the gods were wise and generous.

  She slept the next two nights in perfect peace, falling into slumber with her stars cloudless and tranquil in her eyes. In her heavens the chaos spoken of in the outer world faded and she forgot Ulrikt and his Face for a blessed time. But whispers assailed her haven in the night sky: Lord Kotin Choerkin lay dead, poisoned by a monk. Choerkin’s pyre would burn that afternoon, sending his remains to the world in the form of smoke and ashes, to honor the Choerkin before him.

  Meris hadn’t attended a funeral since Pineluple died, but this was one she daren’t miss. Respect or guilt, the driving motivation didn’t matter, and she didn’t waste time over-thinking her need to be there. She slipped into the plain robes of a senior monk, pulling the hood over her face and tossing her cane to the side.

  She blended into crowded streets, a thing she wouldn’t have considered before Ulrikt healed her. His prayers were powerful beyond any she’d experienced before. For years she’d sought the finest healers to give her vigor to continue her duties, but she’d never dreamt of walking the steep streets of the Watch without agonizing pain again. She was hale with the energy of a woman decades younger. She smiled at the sun overhead, despite it blinding her star-accustomed eyes.

  The gate to Herald’s Abbey stood crowded with mourners, but in her robes she passed the guards without question. Meris made her way to a hill overlooking the grounds where a stone platform heaped with kindling stood. Folks often called it the Smoking Rock. She couldn’t see the body, but knew Kotin lay amid the sticks, draped in pure white linen. She’d known him since his teenage years, but he was just another dead man on the list of hundreds to pass before her, despite their youth.

  For a long time, watching those younger than her pass made her sad; how unfair it was that she lived while they died, and now she didn’t know a single soul older than her. The pang of sadness sometimes turned to a jealous burn for the lucky souls who’d escaped this world with so few years of anguish.

  She muttered a prayer to improve her vision in time to see Ivin and Eliles stride from the crowd after the Prayer of Stars was intoned by a young priestess, a healer named Izilfer. Ulrikt’s prize priestess standing arm in arm with a Choerkin brought a cluck to her tongue. The world’s gone upside down. It was amazing how life could still surprise her. Izilfer’s presence made sense, street whispers spoke of her saving the eldest brother’s life, although he remained ill and unstable from the poison, but she had to wonder what Ulrikt would think of Eliles standing proud on Herald’s Watch.

  The eulogies were too distant for her ears, but whatever the words she didn’t care. There was nothing to say she hadn’t heard a hundred times in her century of living.

  Ivin’s face remained stern as he spoke, but when he smiled, it sent a shiver of pain through Meris’ marrow. Her mind turned to Pineluple, the boy’s mother. The hair, the cheekbones, the set of his eyes, his cursed smile, maybe it was her imagination, but she never realized how much he looked like his mother. A dear friend and corpse on Meris’ list of victims, more painful killing her than even the infant girl.

  She had read the bones and their intent was obvious. Bontore spoke through prophecy, a Choerkin daughter would break the Church and bring doom upon the people. Meris had eliminated both the threat of the first-born daughter and any further children in one
cry-stricken night.

  Her eyes remained glued to Ivin’s sorrowful smile. I was wrong. Cracks in a bone could be interpreted with mild but critical variances. The weight of failure was crushing, driving the breath from her lungs and a wave of vertigo struck.

  A tug on her sleeve shook Meris from the spin of her world and she turned her gaze to a young boy, perhaps ten years along his life. The boy smiled at her with an innocence that gave her chills. “Do you know me, child?”

  The boy let go her sleeve and watched as Roplin Choerkin lit Kotin’s pyre with a torch.

  “After all these years you realized your mistake, didn’t you? And the child who most resembles the mother will break the Church and bring doom to the people.”

  “How the hells…?” Meris’ throat seized as if she’d swallowed poison. She wanted to scream at the boy to explain himself, but she knew who she spoke to, even if the face was different, and she didn’t know its real name. “I failed.”

  “Sweet Meris. Like Sundel of Mirest who broke his legs and pulled himself from the mountains with bloodied hands, the Church’s bones will heal, and grow stronger. Doom, too, has more than one interpretation. No, you did not fail, nor did you succeed. You did precisely as the gods knew you might, even if misguided. But if guided correctly, what then? Murder Ivin Choerkin? Neither the gods nor I would have allowed it.”

  “Leave me, please.” I killed my dearest and only friend on this island because I misread a bone, and this thing allowed it.

  “I will speak with you again, soon.”

  Meris couldn’t look the Face in the eye, she stared at the smoke until the boy walked away, then she descended the hill. She stood in the middle of Januel’s Way dazed and numb, glancing up and down the cobbled walk. She turned uphill, making her way toward the Watch Tower.

  She arrived at the entrance and contrived a fable of bringing herbs to the kitchens from the Slave Gardens to gain entry. The night she killed Pineluple was the last time Meris had set foot in the tower, but she recalled the halls with an acuity of wit worthy of a younger woman.

  She found the central stair, unguarded, as it had few destinations except the roof. The climb was slow and arduous, but she pumped her aged legs and rested as needed. Hurried decisions most often became the worst ones, so she took her time on the journey to destiny’s end.

  Icy winds cut straight through the sky and her robes when she crawled through the trapdoor at the peak of the climb and stepped into the elements, but prayer warmed her skin and strengthened the feeble remnants of will and muscle. She eased her way to the parapets. Two hundred feet above the world, she preferred to look up at the sky, where rising smoke thinned before reaching the clouds, rather than the body-breaking rocks below.

  A deep breath drained her fear and she surveyed the scene below. Hundreds of boats and scores of ships bobbed at anchor, surrounding the island’s jagged shores and filling its harbor. So many people desperate to live, and she had had a small hand in their plight. She had served the gods and might make her way to the heavens with their graces, but she deserved the Traitor’s Hell or worse.

  Ulrikt had given her a choice in Istinjoln, to die or to serve Sol one more time. Her decision demonstrated a lack of wisdom and a hubris unbecoming in a woman so old. Meris’ soul would be happier navigating the Road of Living Stars without having realized her error. She had one pathetic revenge and retribution remaining to her. Repay lives lost with her own, and take a sad, antiquated tool from Ulrikt’s arsenal. Whomever they wanted her to kill, they would need find another assassin.

  But as she stood on the edge of paralyzing heights, thrilling in the breeze and a rush of fear, she contemplated the lord priest’s words and his healing. She wondered if Ulrikt knew the path she now took, wondered if he didn’t heal her so she could overcome the stairs and take her own life. Maybe hers was the life they wanted her to take.

  She stepped from the stone tower without a care for her mind’s final conspiratorial amusement, exulting in the rush of blood to her head, the rush of air rising beneath the folds of her cloak, before excitement and terror careened into tranquility.

  The sun disappeared and every star she studied for decades shown bright in a black universe. A twisting pattern emerged and she felt her soul pulled to the Road of Living Stars, felt the judging eyes of the gods on her soul. Perhaps she smiled, she wasn’t certain, but if she did, it didn’t last. Joy faded as a voice echoed from the mortal world, the intonations of a young boy muttering prayers for her passage along the Road of Living Stars.

  ELILES HAD ATTENDED funeral pyres twice in her life when common folks died in Istinjoln and the ground was too frozen for internment, but she’d never stood so close as to feel the licking heat of the flames. She stood by Ivin’s side with twined arms, fingers laced together. His touch was gentler than her own, despite it being his father turning to ash. His unflinching stare made her wonder how she’d handle her own father’s death, the man who had called the inquisition when discovering her feral fire.

  Would she have cried, or would she have set the fire herself with glee? She doubted he still lived and refused him even the small honor of thinking his name. But when she considered he might still walk, Taken, shame and sorrow crept into her mood.

  Branches crackled and flames rushed, helping to disperse her thoughts from her family. The Smoking Rock was a chiseled platform standing in front of Herald’s Abbey, ten feet long and charred black over centuries of sending Ivin’s kin to the clouds and sea with fire. Priests declared it hallowed ground, but for her and so many others it was just another place of sorrow.

  She gazed at the man Januel had chosen for her; Ivin hurt, but it didn’t show with tears. Instead, he’d transformed into a statue, jaw clenched and his eyes more likely to bleed than shed tears. She leaned into him with a nudge. “May we leave?”

  Ivin’s expression didn’t change, and she wondered if he had heard her. She couldn’t bring herself to ask a second time, but he exhaled and muttered to Roplin, “I’ll see you back at the keep.”

  They turned arm in arm and strode through the gathered crowd, several folks calling out their support for the clan. Ivin waved and nodded; Eliles stared at her feet, knowing her priestess’ robes drew the ire of many folk, no matter who walked on her arm.

  They passed through Sol’s gate and onto Januel’s Way, and her shoulders relaxed in their escape from the fire and crowd. They turned northeast, beginning the winding trek to the central tower.

  “I watched my mother and baby sister burn on that same godsdamned stone. Twelve years ago, a year for every hell.” She gripped his hand. “I mean, I knew someday I’d watch him burn, or he’d watch me…”

  “You think he’d trade positions?”

  Ivin grunted. “He’d die a hundred deaths for each of us boys. For a daughter he never knew.”

  “My father would’ve seen me burn.” His brows knitted and she regretted her words. “What I mean is you had a loving father.”

  “The man was an unerring arrow in my ass.”

  She fought a grin. “With good intent, I’ve no doubt.”

  He snaked his arm from hers and draped it over her shoulders. Walking so close she could feel the gimp in his stride, the wound from Istinjoln still healing. “Any thoughts on the Tome of the Touched?”

  “Was your father so obvious when changing subjects?”

  “At least.”

  She leaned her head into his shoulder as they walked. “I’ve read his words a hundred times, and flipped through other sections in Silone, I know I’m missing something.”

  They took several strides in silence and turned a sharp corner that afforded a view of the bay below. Small boats continued to arrive despite the clutter of masts anchored in the bay, desperate folks struggling to survive. Rumors spread by sailors spoke of families pulling their fishing boats onto every small island along the coast, even if it was little more than a boulder stuck from the surf. Many survived like this, sailing to shore for fresh water
, fishing for food, but Shadows, hunger, thirst, and a score of unknowns would trim the number of survivors day by day.

  Eliles said, “I wish the book told us how to feed all these people.”

  “Our larders will grow thin too soon, fishing boats will be a key, raiders another.” Ivin scoffed. “Reclaimers, more like. We’ll send ships to scout the shores, row in, snatch supplies, get out. Rain might afford us better chances against the Shadows.”

  “How long you think we can survive doing that?”

  Ivin stared at the cobbles passing beneath his feet. “Long enough to find a better answer.” The tower’s bells rang. “Gods be kind, what the hells could it be now?”

  They raised their pace the best they could with Ivin’s limp and arrived at the tower as the clamor of bells faded. Several armed men stood out front, but nothing appeared untoward. An older warrior stepped forward, his cheeks, chin, and eyes marking him as Choerkin even if he stood several inches shorter than Ivin, but she didn’t recognize him.

  Ivin said, “Artus… When’d you make it to the island, you old dog?”

  “Came in on the Xole this morn and paid my respects to your pa from afar. Too much crowd at the pyre for my tastes. Headed up to see Rikis and found the tower is raining monks. Hellish weather you got ’round these parts.” He cocked his head and lead them around the tower. “Nobody’s touched the body yet, not much anyhows.”

  “A name? What was a monk doing on the peak?”

  “Don’t know to either. The guards at the door mentioned letting an herbalist in.” He glanced back with a toothy smile for Eliles. “This the purty priestess I been hearing about?”

  “I’m my father’s son after all… This is Eliles, a finer lady I’ve never met; this is Artus, no finer Artus I’ve ever met.”

  The man guffawed. “This boy is my fifteenth favorite cousin, give or take a few.”

  They rounded a boulder at the southern base of the tower, the purple flowers of blooming monkshood scattered across patches of dirt and moss amid the stone. A twisted and broken body lay mangled on the ground, a sight Eliles might have choked on a couple weeks ago, but it felt tame after what she’d seen.