Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels

by Daniel Arenson

  Arrago understood why she had not kicked out the men out for laughing, or why she had not hit the prince. No doubt, the powerful men would receive extra allowances for bad behaviour. It wasn’t called the privilege of the rich because it sounded good rolling off the tongue. If Arrago had acted with such disrespect, he knew that dismissal would have been served immediately. But it was the way of the world. Arrago accepted it and possessed no burning passion to change the order of things.

  Besides, a misbehaving prince could not dampen his enthusiasm. Becoming an initiate at The Temple of Tranquil Mercies had been his life’s ambition. There was no greater honor than serving the Gentle Goddess, Apexia. The strange fortune of having his dead parents replaced by an entire monastery had rewarded him with an opportunity to escape nothingness and poverty.

  “Master Henry will give you a number for your leader assignment. Once you have that, match yourselves up with your groups. Training begins immediately.” After stepping back, the Elorian’s replacement, an elderly human male with grey-streaked hair and olive skin, began assigning numbers.

  Arrago noticed Lord Kiner lean close and whisper to Lady Bethany. Lord Jovan looked at her expectantly. Whatever information the letter revealed caused Lord Jovan’s eyes to widen. He couldn’t see Lord Kiner’s face, but assumed his expression was comparable because it looked as though he wanted her to leave. Bethany shook her head, though she didn’t look too sure of herself. Perhaps detachment was just another part of her armor. She needed to put on a strong face for the new recruits.

  She flicked her gaze in Arrago’s direction but he was too slow diverting his attention. She glared at him, an angry, hot stare that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. She turned her attention back to the other senior knights.

  She probably already has it in for me. Typical.

  Master Henry had worked his way through the recruits and only a handful of men were ahead of Arrago. Sweat made wisps of hair cling to his neck. The humidity played merry agony with his body. I hope this is as miserable as it gets here. But it was only spring and he wondered if he would melt by summer.

  “You’re seven,” Master Henry said, pointing at Arrago, snapping him from his daydreams. Heading over to his leader on the other side of the room, he took a quick glance back at the three senior knights and met the Lady’s eyes once again staring in his direction. A chill went over his body. He turned his eyes towards his leader and concentrated on making it across the room without annoying Lady Bethany further.

  “Get out of the way, peasant,” Prince Daniel said as he pushed past Arrago, his purple cloak billowing behind him in a regal flurry.

  Arrago sighed but stepped aside, giving the prince a bow. It didn’t matter. No one could ruin the best day of his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With venom in its heart, the Viper will ignite the world to discover the king amongst men. The world will weep. The Gods will scream in their temple. The flood will open. The end will come.

  —Aleu’s Agony of the Diamond

  It took twenty-two minutes to finish their duties with the recruits before Jovan and Bethany could confer with Allric. Jovan wouldn’t have objected to her going directly to the commander’s office, but she objected to it. Duty before everything, including grief and personal indulgences.

  Once in the rather cramped study of the Silver Knights top commander, Lord Defender Allric, his pity-filled eyes met hers. She took comfort in not needing to tell him about Garran. Clearly, hers had not been the only announcement.

  “You know?” she asked, though it was meant more as a statement than a question.

  Allric motioned for her and Jovan to enter with one hand and held up a dirty page with the other. “I haven’t read the entire letter yet.”

  “I can’t believe he’s been dead.” Bethany said, pacing in her commander’s cramped, but meticulous, study. The small amount of barren floor meant she had to turn with every step, but she paced anyway. Movement prevented her thoughts from exploding out of her head. As it was, the roots of a tension headache pushed through her brain, woody tendrils wrapping themselves around her scalp and squeezing.

  She ran a hand over her pinned, braided hair. “Murdered in his own bedchamber. Marcia’s letter to me said he was still wearing his slippers when she found him. His slippers! He didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Beth, sit,” Jovan said. Taking his own advice, he took up residence in a wooden chair opposite the desk, leaving the more comfortable wicker one for her.

  Bethany kept pacing. She glanced at Allric, who sat calmly, quietly even, at his massive wooden desk, his eyes tracing down the letter. His dark brows pulled together, but he kept reading. He pulled a crumbled sheet from a black, cracked leather carrier that might have been brown at one time. Allric’s attention moved to that sheet of paper, the original letter still clutched in his left hand.

  “For pity’s sake, Bethany, sit down. You’re making me nervous,” Jovan growled. He motioned to the cushioned wicker chair next to him. “Sit down. Now.”

  She shot him the deadliest look she could muster but obeyed nonetheless and collapsed into the chair, the dried twigs creeping under the sudden stress. Anger and confusion swelled inside her, but not grief that her betrothed was dead.

  Theirs had been a complex arrangement, as King Garran still had a wife, Marcia, who lived. Garran had fallen in love with a human after the Elven Marriage Council announced Bethany’s arranged betrothal to him. Normally, the marriage idiots didn’t lower themselves to meddle in the affairs of Elorians, but they considered Bethany a special case. Not to mention that Garran was the king of Ellentop, home of the Elorians. Thankfully, neither she nor Garran wanted the match, friends though they were. Bethany used her influence to postpone the arrangement. Garran was freed to make a love match with the strict instructions that he would marry Bethany after the death of his human wife.

  Now, the contract was dissolved. It was over. She was free again.

  Guilt pricked her heart when the relief settled into her gut. Her reaction stung and swelled her anger and self-loathing. Even if it was an arranged marriage, as all elven marriages were, Garran had been a childhood friend. She wanted to feel something beyond the relief of narrowly escaping lifelong bondage.

  No, she did feel something else. Anger. Pure, delicious anger. She could work with that.

  She watched Allric, whose attention was back on the original letter. The man read almost as slow as she did. Allric laid the parchment down on his too-neat desk and it curled immediately. He folded his massive hands on top of it and looked her in the eyes. “How are you doing?”

  With a heavy sigh, she averted her gaze, unable to handle pity at the moment. Bethany stared at the mechanical clock on the wall. She did not want him to see inside her, see the lack of grief. A warrior to the core, Allric would, of course, understand her reaction. But she did not.

  Instead, she focused on the ticking that grated her nerves far more than usual and considered smashing it into wooden splinters. “I’ll be better once I find out who snuck into a king’s bedchamber and stabbed him a hundred times while he was wearing the slippers I sent him for his birthday.” She spat the words. She nodded at the crumbled letter he’d been reading. “What’s that?”

  “Just the details.” Allric said, shaking his head. His light brown hair was cropped so short that it didn’t even move when he did, though his beard jiggled just a little. She hated the beard.

  Allric stood and reached across his desk to hand her the letters, but Jovan snatched them first. She scowled. Jovan wasn’t being protective; he was simply curious. That was Jovan.

  She pulled Marcia’s letter from a small metal carrier on the back side of her baldric, designed for keeping maps and orders dry. Bethany handed it to Allric. He nodded in thanks and said, “It was kind of the Queen to write you personally.”

  Bethany grunted, though she genuinely was thankful for Marcia’s kindness. Their friendship, though strange to outsiders, w
as a source of comfort. Having no romantic interest in Garran herself, Bethany had quickly accepted the new queen of Ellentop into her circle of peers.

  Receiving the news by Marcia’s hand, instead of someone else’s, felt right somehow. “I’m sure Garran would have approved, me knowing first from Marcia.” She swallowed as more guilt stabbed her temples, the headache growing.

  “I wonder who did it,” Jovan mumbled, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He handed her the letters, but she only skimmed them. She already knew enough of the details to satisfy her need for vengeance.

  Silence fell over the three commanders. While Garran was not their king, he had been their friend and an ally to both the elven Territories and the Silver Knights. Even the clergy were fond of him, and they didn’t like anyone. Even if she did not grieve, Bethany would miss him in her own way. And she would find whoever did this. Of that, she was certain.

  A knock at the door pulled her to the present. Allric’s portly assistant entered the room only long enough to slip a rolled piece of leather on the desk.

  Needle-like pain pierced Bethany’s temples. She pressed her fingers to either side of her head and took deep breaths. As if my day wasn’t bad enough.

  Once the door closed, Allric picked up the leather. A scrap of paper fell out of it when he unrolled it. He scanned it and then the leather carrier itself. His eyes bulged, and his sunburned face paled.

  Bethany looked at Jovan and then back at Allric. “Well?”

  Allric dragged his chair from behind the desk, moving to join Bethany and Jovan. He handed the rolled scrap of leather to Bethany before sitting back down. “I believe this is meant for you.”

  “What do you mean?” Bethany swallowed back the pain that spread behind her eyes and accepted the item. When her fingers touched it, a brown, gooey substance formed over the outside of the letter carrier and clung to her fingers. She dropped it and dragged her hand along her grey trousers but the gunk remained. She winced as her fingers stuck to her clothes and each other.

  “It’s covered in something.” She leaned forward, sniffing her hand. “It stinks, too.”

  “It was dry when I touched it,” Allric said, his eyes narrowing to focus on her. He leaned forward to inspect.

  Brown clots covered her hands. “Look!” Then she looked closer at the substance. “It’s blood. Or, it used to be anyway.”

  In the numerous battles and fights she had seen in her life, Bethany was no stranger to blood and guts and gore. She hoped that it was not Garran’s.

  Jovan leaned in and sniffed her. “Smells like corpse.”

  A wave of nausea passed over Bethany as her headache teetered close to blinding. She wanted to clutch her head but resisted. The last thing she needed was the foul ooze stuck to her face.

  Allric shook his head. “I just held it. There was nothing on that carrier.”

  Jovan grabbed the curled leather carrier from Bethany’s hands and held it up to Allric. “See, it’s…dry?”

  “It’s reacting to me.” Bethany’s heart pounded in her throat, matching pace with the throb in her temples. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Magic.” She swallowed hard, chills spreading throughout her body. The faint hairs on her arms stood on end, even though Allric’s office was comfortably warm.

  Both men recoiled. She didn’t fault them for such a natural reaction. Her own spirit screamed to recoil from the Magic that coated her flesh. Sickened by both the stench and the texture, Bethany jumped up and rushed to the small, porcelain pitcher on Allric’s desk. She dunked her hands into the drinking water, scraping her nails against her hands in an attempt to remove the congealed mess.

  The more she thought about it, the harder she dragged her palms across the edges of the table to scrape the poison away. She chided herself for not having noticed it sooner. The Power of the Goddess that coursed through her veins had always gotten very annoyed when in the presence of evil. It explained her headache, at least. Any other day, she would have remembered the piecing pain. Today, she had dismissed it. She silently chastised herself for allowing Garran’s death to impede her work.

  I should have been more careful.

  A towel appeared in front of her; Jovan offered it. She dried her hands, now sore from peeling the ooze from her skin. Nodding to the still-rolled leather on the floor, she said, “You might as well read it to me.”

  Allric nodded and accepted it.

  “What does it say?” Jovan asked, leaning in closer to catch a glimpse.

  Allric looked up at Bethany before reading. “If the elf King should falter, if the Diamond turns to dust, Our wisdom will fade.”

  Bethany interrupted, repeating the section of prophecy by memory. “The Gods will fall from the fortress. The wind of the spirits will refuse haven. All will suffocate under the burning blanket of madness.” She pinched her eyes shut for a moment. The day was quickly becoming the longest of her life.

  While Allric looked knowingly at her, Jovan shook his head. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “Prophecy of the Diamond. First Tablet,” she said, swallowing hard. Of all people, she would recognize that particular section of the ancient texts. Each time she had taken a misstep—real or perceived—the scholars and priests were quick to lecture her using those lines. She flopped back into her chair, her long legs stretching out in front of her.

  Allric cleared his throat and glanced at Bethany. “Marcia’s note says that it was found inside Garran’s flesh.”

  She crossed and uncrossed her ankles, then her legs several times before finding a comfortable position. Try as she might, she could not erase the sinking feeling that she knew who killed Garran. The prophecy surrounding her and Garran was a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of people even knew of its existence and two of them flanked her.

  She resumed rubbing her temple. “Does she say how many people have seen it?”

  Allric nodded. “Not enough to be concerned about, thankfully. Two knights, the queen, and us.” Allric scratched at his right ear, the one missing its tip. He always did that when he was frustrated. “Queen Marcia assures me in her letter that both knights have been sworn to secrecy.”

  “It’s two more people aware of the prophecy,” Bethany snapped. The links between her and the ancient texts were too close. Each time someone was exposed to the texts or her parentage was revealed, she felt her grasp on her own freedom slip just that much more.

  Jovan shrugged. “At least they don’t know it’s about you. And it’s two Knights, not two people off the wheat fields.”

  “Knights can be trusted.”

  Bethany stared into Allric’s narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth but words did not come out. She sprang from her seat to resume pacing in a small circle. Few who entered the elven Service became vowed knights and those who did endured endless tests, trials, and torture to prove that secrets were safe with them. Only a handful knew of her role as the Diamond in prophecy and they promised to defend her with their lives.

  “When it comes to this, I trust no one.”

  “I never thought the day would come when you wouldn’t trust a Knight,” Allric said with a sigh.

  She frowned and nodded. The whistling wind and the muffled sounds of a busy hallway became the only noise in the study. Bethany felt the heaviness of both her words and Allric’s. Yet, she did not regret them. She had begrudgingly accepted her role in the prophecy but that did not equate embracing that life. Secrecy afforded her a stable world, filled with a fate of her own choosing. If the prophecies were indeed about her, whom the scholars believed, then choosing her own fate was impossible.

  “Allric, two more people knowing about my supposed true destiny are two more potential enemies.”

  “I don’t give two pennies about this prophecy nonsense. It’s this Magic that concerns me,” Jovan said. “It’s bad enough having any king murdered because of politics. It’s another when Magic is involved.”

  Bethany rubbed her hands against the back of her ch
air. Even though the ooze was gone, the Power in her veins still felt violated. She felt violated. And that pissed her off.

  Pissed me off. Logic picked up on the phrase, mulling it over. Someone wanted to upset her. To provide a message. Chills went through her. She nodded, slowly, and decided that she knew who the murderer was. “List the people you think did this,” Bethany said, turning to face her two superiors. Her friends. “In my mind, the list is one name long.”

  Allric shifted in his chair, not meeting her eyes. “It could have been anyone using the dark arts.”

  “Perhaps some nobles got too ambitious and fell into Magic,” Jovan added quickly, his face creased with worry.

  Bethany crossed her arms. “Sarissa.” It came out as a curse more than a name.

  Allric shook his head, though a grim frown formed on his face. “It’s been decades since your sister’s exile. Very few people can practice that long without either killing themselves or being killed.”

  “I’ve heard the lecture before,” Bethany growled. The warning look on Allric’s face was enough to force a softer tone. “This is what I see. Since the discovery of the texts, elven scholars have been working to decipher them. They predicted the change in faith from the Creator Gods to the slew of Fire Gods and then to Apexia’s rise. Correct?”

  The two elves shared confused looks but both nodded in agreement.

  “The priests decided to keep the prophecy a secret to protect the eventual identity of the Diamond, which I’m told is me.”

  The others nodded again. Few beyond the highest echelons of scholars and political figures even knew of the existence of the prophecy, let alone that the Gentle Goddess had children. Almost none knew Apexia’s eldest was third in charge of the Elven Service.

  “I didn’t pay much attention to my studies as a child, but I do remember that scholars had marked several ‘vipers’ of prophecy over the centuries. In my own lifetime, we have assassinated dozens of supposed vipers in the name of these tablets. And yet, none accused had ever threatened to kill me.”