When Ravens Call: The Fourth Book in the Small Gods Epic Fantasy Series (The Books of the Small Gods 4)

by Bruce Blake

  Not long after they paused for the brief repast, Danya spied the first robed figure.

  He stood at the edge of the forest beside the thick trunk of a massive cedar, his form near invisible in the shadows. The princess squinted at the silhouette, not sure if she should trust her eyes in the late afternoon light. Three heartbeats later, Evalal elbowed her in the side and nodded toward the shape. Their captors gave no sign they'd seen him.

  The robed man did not follow them and, when Danya strained to look back over her shoulder, he'd either left or the shadows had swallowed him whole.

  She wiped nervous perspiration from her palms onto the front of her breeches. The green, the woman and beast, now the watcher in the woods, all of it increased her discomfort.

  "Mr. Fellick says we are getting close," Ive said, again without so much as a grunt from his stocky partner.

  Danya split her efforts between looking back for the robe-wearing follower and attempting to see past their captor-guides at what lay in their path. For a while, she spied nothing but trees and brush, grass and rocks. Until a movement at the edge of the woods caught her attention. She touched Evalal's forearm and gestured at a spot ahead of them.

  Another figure wearing the same garb as the first—or perhaps the same fellow—stood by a leafy bush. His black clothes made him appear a man-shaped gap in the verdant leaves. Nothing differentiated him from the original fellow. If he'd hurried, he might have gotten ahead and waited for them, but this fellow's bearing didn't suggest someone who'd rushed to his place.

  Danya slowed her pace, letting her hand drop from Evalal's arm. When she reached Ive's side, the tall fellow raised one brow but said nothing.

  The princess leaned toward him. "I think we're being followed."

  She nodded at the man standing in front of the bush; they'd drawn even with him. Ive gazed across the grass to the edge of the forest, watched the figure for a heartbeat before returning his eyes to the path ahead. Danya expected a response from him right away, but he made her wait. He swallowed, the prominent lump in his throat rising and falling.

  "No need to worry, princess. They are here for us."

  As if awaiting Ive's cue, the robed man left his place by the bush and walked a line parallel to theirs, matching their stride. A little farther along, another figure dressed the same emerged and joined the first, then a third. Despite the thin man's reassurance, a fresh sheen of perspiration coated the princess' palms.

  The ground sloped upward, preventing her from seeing what lay ahead. The number of men keeping pace with them grew to five, each one identical to the next. None of them turned their cowl-hidden faces toward the group, their steps matching in the measured cadence of a death march.

  "Priests," Fellick said, noticing her continued interest in the robe-wearers. "They are priests."

  Danya nearly stopped. She'd heard stories of the black priests, her parents encouraging her to dismiss them as fancy, like they did the Goddess, her priestesses, and both kinds of Small Gods. Yet she walked beside the fabled veil separating the kingdom from the home of the Small Gods, her Goddess-follower companion accompanying her as a clutch of black priests stalked them. Did it leave any doubt the stars prepared to fall from the sky?

  They crested the short hill, and ahead of them stood another group of robed silhouettes. Two other figures with them didn't match their garb, and a third unmatching shape lay on the ground. As they approached, one man not wearing a black robe raised his hand and started toward them.

  "Fellick! Ive!"

  Beside her, Ive returned the gesture of greeting. "Ho, Birk. It looks as though we have arrived in time."

  Danya attempted to see the other fellow with the group, but the lanky weapons merchant stepped in front of her, blocking him from her view.

  "A little too late, I'm afraid. The woman got away. Slipped through the veil."

  The Barren Mother.

  "But I see you have the princess."

  "Aye. And you?"

  Birk stopped and moved aside, waving his arm in a grand gesture as he did, a grin on his face so wide, someone else might find it humorous.

  "I present to you the man from across the sea."

  Danya gaped at the other fellow, halted dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened.

  "Teryk?"

  She broke into a run.

  ***

  "Tare ick!"

  The woman bolted from the others, but no one made any move to stop her. Tall grass bent before her, a trail of broken blades left in her wake. The nameless man tensed, unsure of her intention as she bore down on him. When she reached him, she threw her arms around his neck. He attempted to pull away, but she gripped him tight, pressing herself against him. His head spun, his gut roiled. Who was she?

  "Tare ick," she repeated, breathless. "Wareuv yubin? Ayewuz so wureedbowchew. Ayethotchew werded."

  She slackened her grip and leaned back, continuing to hang on to him. Now he saw her up close, he realized she was older than the other captive, but much younger than Ailyssa. A young adult, but no more. And the nagging sense of recognition nipped at his thoughts. Did he know her as it appeared she knew him?

  She stared at him, eyes glistening on the edge of tears born of relief, love, happiness, judging by her expression. He answered with raised eyebrows and searching gaze, grasping for any clue to identify her and why he should recognize her. It took but an instant for her to recognize his disorientation.

  "Tare ick? Izzmeed anyuh."

  She released her grip from around his neck, and the man called Birk grabbed her by the arm, pulled her away like a parent with a child. She allowed him, but her gaze stayed locked on the nameless man's features, her hopeful expression melting to concern. The other men and the girl arrived as the line of black robes joined the group. Her eyes remained on him, pleading for him to respond to her, to realize her name, their relationship.

  He didn't. He lowered his head, traced the curves of the chain attached to his ankle with his gaze instead of looking at her and disappointing her with his faulty memory. Her eyes stayed upon him but he didn't look up.

  The men spoke to each other, their strange language falling on his ears. Through the thump of his heartbeat, he sensed what he might have interpreted as excitement and hope in Birk's words. He chattered more quickly than usual, his voice of a higher pitch as he updated the others on what had happened.

  The nameless man pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

  "Tare ick?"

  A chastising tone quieted the woman and then three male voices carried on the conversation, though one of them said little. Feet shuffled in grass and the hard log pressed against his buttocks. Instinct begged him to remove his palms from his face to make sure his life wasn't in danger, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He became acutely aware of the surrounding noises. Each foreign word bludgeoned him like a club, each trod-upon blade cracked in his ears with the volume and force of a snapping branch. He heard the veil behind him, too. It hummed, crackled as an insect buzzed against it.

  Before this, he hadn't noticed the slightest sound emanating from the barrier.

  It held an energy he might have guessed at, pulsing and throbbing in the air. It exerted pressure in his ears as though he'd jumped into a lake and dove too deep.

  Like when the grate trapped me at the bottom of the river under the castle.

  His breath caught in his throat and his body tensed. What river? What castle? He concentrated, searching for the thread of memory finding its way out of the depths of his mind and into his awareness. A vision of running water came to him, an iron grate, struggle and panic. Trapped under the lattice, convinced death awaited him until hands found him, pulled him out.

  And the shred of recollection ended.

  Whose hands?

  He raised his head, pulling his face from his palms and opening his eyes, his surroundings blurred from holding them closed for so long. The people around him appeared faint and gauzy, the grass a streak of yellow-gr
een. He blinked a few times to clear the gummy haze, and the world came back into view.

  Birk and the black-robed men were gone, no trace of them left behind. The young woman who'd embraced him sat on a log beside her companion, their hands held in their laps, bound by lengths of rope. The tall, skinny fellow stood near them while the stocky one waited a few paces away, staring up the shallow hill. He followed his gaze, found the object of his interest.

  ***

  When days of peace approach their end,

  And wounds inflicted are too deep to mend,

  A sign shall come, a lock with no key,

  Borne by a man from across the sea.

  A barren mother, the seed of life,

  Living statue, treacherous knife.

  To raise the Small Gods, a Small God must die,

  When stars go out, the end is nigh.

  One must die to raise them all,

  Should Small Gods rise, man will fall.

  One can stop them, on darken'd wing,

  The firstborn child of the rightful king.

  The words from the scroll echoed through Danya's mind as she stared across the clearing at her brother while Fellick bound her hands.

  He doesn't recognize me.

  Her gaze slid to the chain attached at his ankle, its end going nowhere, as though the ability to unlock and remove it wasn't a possibility. Realization brought a pause to her breathing.

  The lock with no key.

  The barren mother.

  The seed of life.

  Facets of the scroll's prophecy materializing together? Or the results of fanciful imagination?

  He isn't the man from across the sea. But he is the firstborn child of the king.

  Danya shifted on the log, Evalal to her right, already bound. Fellick finished tying her wrists and stood, turned back to his partner. The princess glanced away from her brother with his hands hiding his eyes from her and focused on her traveling companion. Any concern the younger girl may have possessed before had disappeared from her face, leaving her with the same expression of unconcern with what transpired. When she saw Danya scrutinizing her, she half-smiled and leaned toward her.

  "The Goddess has a plan. We don't see it, but she does."

  Danya opened her mouth to respond but sighed and looked away instead. Sometimes she wished she enjoyed the same faith Evalal displayed; it seemed it might make life easier. Meeting the Mother of Death had shifted her opinion about some truth behind legends of the Goddess toward belief, but the chasm between belief and faith is wide. She'd seen more unusual—unbelievable—things since she and Teryk had found the scroll than she'd experienced in the entire rest of her days. Yet ongoing, unwavering faith eluded her.

  She looked at her brother, barely recognizable with his shaggy hair and stubbled face, his clothes stiff with dirt and old sweat. He continued pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, so she watched Fellick instead. Instead of rejoining his fellow weapons merchant, the stocky man separated himself from the others. He sauntered past to stand with his back to them, directing his gaze up the shallow hill climbing away from the green wall as though awaiting an arrival. His right hand rested on the pommel of his sword, but whether doing so meant he expected trouble, or a soldier's habit, she couldn't guess.

  A vague beaten trail in the grass running toward the woods rather than up the long bank denoted the path Birk and the robed men had taken when they left. No other sign of their presence remained. No one discussed their departure; they'd wandered off as though part of a predetermined plan.

  Danya tilted her head back, surveying the sky. The sun shone bright on the meadow, only a few wisps of cloud remaining from the passage of the strange bird that seemed to leave a storm in its wake. She saw no other winged creature come to bring sunshine, or wind, or fog. She shook her head—one more unbelievable detail in her once-normal existence that had become filled with the incredible.

  As she lowered her gaze, she noticed a tremor in the log beneath her, slight enough it might have been her imagination. She focused her attention toward it, at first thinking it a vibration caused by the Seed of Life. She understood it wasn't the case.

  Horses.

  Fellick must have realized it at the same time; his sword hissed from its scabbard and Danya raised her head to stare past the squat fellow, the sun glinting on his bared steel. The tremor beneath her ceased and, though the earth's gentle shake suggested several riders, she spied a single horseman guide his horse to the brink of the hill. He paused but an instant before pulling his weapon and sliding from his saddle in a manner many horsemen would have made awkward but which was second nature for a man with one arm.

  "Trenan!"

  XXXII Rilum – Not So Long Ago

  He didn't find them on the shore this time.

  Four of them. Not so much like before. More similar to him now.

  They slouched around the small clearing ringed with trees, shuffling their feet, heads drooping. Searching. Looking. Hunting. Occasionally, one stopped, bent, picked an item from the ground and put it into his mouth.

  Through his gauzy vision, he realized their skin wasn't pink, but not white, either. The color of weathered canvas. Two had patchy hair, another none, the fourth's hung past his shoulders with a single spot with a handful missing. They still wore their tattered clothes, clinging to the last vestiges of their former selves as though doing so might take them back to when they knew something other than the hunger. A time when their lives included wives, children, things.

  Once-was-Rilum settled on his haunches. The breeze blew the right way to keep his scent from them, and theirs wafted across him, sank into his skin. They stank of salt and sweat, desperation and hopelessness. Familiar odors—he'd smelled of them himself until he took to smearing mud or feces on his bare flesh to hide his essence when he hunted. He moved in silence, but too many times his stench cost him meals.

  For ages, he'd wondered what he might do if he found men again. He vaguely recalled their flavor, the way it satisfied his belly, but he'd learned to hunt in the time since. The hunger stayed with him always; perhaps if he hadn't just gorged on the two-horn his thoughts may have been different. But with its blood smeared across the indentation where once had been his mouth, curiosity got the better of him.

  And so he watched, waited.

  ***

  They were stupid, the same as he'd been at first. They seldom wandered from their tiny clearing and into the forest. How would they feed without hunting? How would they survive if they didn't protect themselves?

  They'd do neither if it wasn't for him.

  Thrice he intercepted predators determined to make them their meal. Each time, he ate most of the meat himself, but left the rest for the four during their long slumber. He didn't sleep that way anymore. Instead, the days and nights passed at an excruciating slow pace. He felt each moment it took the sun to cross the sky, counted every breath he exhaled while the moon lit the forest.

  Those moments pained him, each inhalation hurt.

  He no longer slept, leaving pain and hunger, waiting, despair to possess him. Though the craving drove him to feed and feed, a minute sliver remained in him that wished for the long suffering to end. Part of him wanted to die.

  This time while they dozed—their sleeps became shorter during the period he watched them—he circled the clearing, found a spot which allowed the breeze of third season to waft his scent across their position. He crouched on hands and knees. Waited. The sun rose and set. The moon cast its dark shadows on the forest floor. Birds sang, animals chattered. The hunger gnawed at his gut, but he resisted its need.

  And he waited.

  XXXIII Trenan – The Green

  Trenan slid out of the saddle, his fingers wrapped around Godsbane's grip before his feet touched the ground. He signaled to the others to stay put as he leaped over a low bush, pulling the sword free as he ran, sharp edge glinting in the sunlight. The oily scent of the well-kept blade wafted to him, reminding him of bygone fig
hts, of battles fought long ago. How many lay dead at his hand? Impossible to count. Hundreds of blades—maybe thousands—had left notches in his own. He'd wiped so much blood away from his silver steel. Despite his lack of faith, he prayed after every time, asking whatever God or Goddess to forgive him for taking those lives, beseeching them to take mercy on the men sent on their way from this world.

  The stocky man lifted his sword, ready to accept the attack. Over his shoulder, Danya watched, hands bound. To her left, across a short expanse of grass, her brother sat on a log, a confused expression on his brow. His face appeared slack enough he might soon drool on himself. Trenan's heart raced—he'd found them, the princess and his son. Before the first blow fell, he decided to offer no prayers once he dispatched these men from the world. They deserved what they got, which didn't include mercy, now or after their deaths, and taking their wretched lives required no forgiveness.

  The second man, tall and slight, stood near the princess. He'd have to keep his eye on him; best to dispatch the stocky fellow as quick as possible to make sure the other one didn't harm Danya.

  His gait gobbled up the last bit of ground separating them, and Trenan raised his weapon. His opponent grinned and, in the instant before steel clashed against steel, the master swordsman understood this man's experience included his share of battles and fights, too. Without a doubt, his sleeves hid a multitude of scars, but the suspicion didn't deter him—no one bore injuries as great as his.

  Their weapons came together with a deafening clang, the impact sending a jolt up Trenan's arm hinting at the strength of his opponent. He drew back and struck again, and the stocky man received the blow with deft, quick moves. His breadth and thickness made his power expected, but he possessed more agility for a fighter of his girth than one might guess. Another stroke, and Trenan formed a good sense of his foe.