“What! Shepherd, they’ll kill us!”
“We can’t outrun them, and no, they won’t. Have some faith in your swordsmanship, will you?”
“But… but, they’re Red Sentinels.”
“They’re just three men and one woman.”
If there were only two, we could have chanced pushing our horses hard and losing them. But four meant a couple could lie back, wait for the others to tire, then click their heels and chase us down on our exhausted mares. Of course, if there were only two, I wouldn’t have had many reservations about meeting them in combat. The bravado and confidence was mostly to calm Galmon; chopping up two Red Sentinels each wouldn’t be an easy task. These weren’t exactly poorly paid, out-of-shape city guardsmen.
I reared Pormillia around, spraying snow into Galmon’s face. My recruit thankfully followed orders and halted his horse as well.
Chestnut steeds and a solid black mare approached languidly, crimson caparisons draping them. The dark horse carried the gal in the sumptuous fur coat. Officers always feel the need to stand out. They’re the pimples of an army.
“The Shepherd walks right into our hands,” said one of the Sentinels. The three fronting the officer looked similar, in their crimson cloaks and fur-lined hoods. A long sheath dangled from each of their belts.
“Boys,” I said, pausing. “And girl. What can I do for you? Looking for a shortcut back home?”
“We’re looking for you,” another Sentinel said.
The woman remained silent, her face a glass portrait that seemed incapable of displaying emotion. She was older than I’d first realized. Her nose was long and pointy, cheeks scarred with deep wrinkles and the milkiness of ancient gouges. Her short crop of hair was less gray and more white, almost as if the snow had had a hand in dressing her.
“Look,” I said, “what happened with Braddock… that was between me and him. It was personal. I’m sure he wouldn’t want his elite army to put itself in harm’s way by capturing, or worse, killing me.”
“Way I see it,” said a Sentinel, placing a hand on the hilt of his sheathed blade, “not much harm to be had. You’re outnumbered.”
“You don’t look very far ahead into the future, do you? Trust me, you don’t want the Black Rot after you.”
The Sentinels were smirking. I knew they wouldn’t buy that. I was simply trying to give myself more time, in hopes a patrol from Edenvaile would pass by. But the sky curving downward in the horizon was blue and nothing fell against it. I was rather stuck.
“Fine,” I said. “If you want me, let’s have at it. But not up here on horses. I don’t feel like flailing around while hooves slip and slide and trip in the snow. On the ground, what do you say?”
The Sentinels looked back at their commanding officer. She gestured with a nod, and one of the men clambered down. The others remained in their saddles, wisely, till I stood, slipping my foot out of a stirrup, and jumped into the crisp sheet of snow below.
Another Sentinel followed suit, and finally the last one, after Galmon dismounted.
Swords scraped against leather scabbards. Moments later, the silver of steel, unblemished and gleaming, deflected the sun’s scrutiny into my eyes.
Ebon doesn’t quite have the same talents at blinding your enemy as polished steel; its black point is less about aesthetics and more about terror. As I held the blade up like one might hold a chalice for a toast, its abyssal edge seemed to leach the glaze of gold from the sun and use it to enhance the icy swirls gouging its spine.
Galmon posted up next to me, like he’d been taught to do in situations like these. We’d wait for the Sentinels to make the first move, especially in these shitty conditions. One of them might slip, or hesitate and fall behind the others. One wrong move, that was all we needed.
And as if we were in a play which I had conveniently authored, the Sentinels did make the first move.
But it wasn’t the kind of move I’d anticipated.
One after the other, like synchronized dancers, they threw back their heads and puffed out their chests. And their arms went taut, and veins rose up against their flesh, thick blue nodules ready to burst through.
Behind them stood their officer, her face twisting in malevolent delight. Her eyes were closed, but a dark green wispiness was suffused beneath her lashes, bleeding through her lids. Her clenched fists trembled, and her mouth fell agape.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Galmon look to me for reassurance. I didn’t have a chance to steel his emotions, though. The Sentinels charged us, bellowing a war cry that sounded of a foreign tongue and an ancient time.
They reached Galmon first. Poor bastard took a step back, fear washing away all the training he’d endured. The Sentinel raised his sword, swung it with such force it tattooed a temporary blur into the air.
Steel cracked like the wooden bow of a ship slamming into an iceberg. It shattered Galmon’s ebon blade into crushed, black fragments. I’d never seen ebon shatter. Never met anyone with the power to make it shatter.
My recruit was thrown into the air a few feet, then dumped into the snow.
A quick turn of my head revealed two Sentinels — or whatever freaks they were — about a foot away. I unsheathed a dagger and pitched it at one of ’em. The sharp end tore through his unprotected shoulder, but the brute shrugged it off. Barely missed a step.
Snow began falling then, and the blue sky withdrew into a womb of winter gray.
I ran. Found a patch of hardened snow mixed with ice and I bolted, till I came upon a soft spot and snow went up to my shins. Pormillia charged my attackers, head down, muscular legs exploding through ice and snow.
The wind came now, and it howled. It blew with such ferocity it twisted my hips around, punched my head into the cold white ground.
I got up, tasting hot iron in my mouth and lungs. I crawled along the ground, visibility down to about a foot in front of me. The snow came down in vertical strips now, a relentless downpour.
Galmon was there, half a foot ahead. He was on his back, kicking at a Sentinel who approached him hunched over, as if attempting to push back the storm with his shoulder.
A wailing cry, the high-pitched whinny of a horse, blended with the roar of the wind. Pormillia? I looked back, couldn’t see a damn thing. If those fuckers hurt my lovely girl…
I couldn’t think about that right now. I had to move. Just a little more. Crawl, you bastard, I told myself, ripping at the top sheets of ice with bloody fingertips. Crawl! Crawl!
I crawled, barely, but I got there. Right behind him, at his knee. That was where I aimed, and that was where the edge of my black blade sunk its teeth.
The Sentinel threw back his head, roared like a bear stuck with an arrow — as if angry and annoyed.
And then he had his eyes pecked out by the sharp beak of a white owl. The bird had blinked in from the storm and settled on the man’s face as if he was a branch. He fell with blood spilling out of his empty sockets. The snow drank the red syrup deep into its belly.
I crawled to Galmon, touched the recruit’s arm. “He get you anywhere?” I hollered, fighting the wind for voice.
“I’m fine, Shepherd. Did that owl…?”
Ignoring his question, I grasped his wrist. “Come on, try to sit up. We’ve gotta find the horses and haul ass outta here.”
Galmon pointed a thin, shaky finger ahead. “Shepherd. Th… that don’t seem like a good sign.”
The shroud of snow seemed to bend around a loping figure advancing toward us. It stopped abruptly as the owl launched itself into the air and clicked its beak.
“Nature,” the woman growled, “does not frighten me.”
That was not what I expected her to sound like, not when I watched her walk out of the keep in her fur coat, not even as I likened her to an emotionless glass portrait while commanding her men. This voice made the howling wind tuck its tail between its legs and hobble away. Her words were sharp and full, a glass dagger pulverizing your mind as it’s shoved betwee
n your ears.
The white-haired woman, with a misty eye full of slender shadows dancing like smoke from a fire, vaulted toward the owl. She rose into the air weightlessly, swiping at the owl’s beak, intent on crushing it into powder.
As if it could sense the future, the bird eluded the vicious blow by darting up and away.
“Nature,” said the owl, with Polinia’s charming voice, “has her allies.”
“Shepherd,” Galmon said. “I think I see my horse. Over there.”
A shower of golden rays stabbed through the snowstorm, melting the flakes into nothingness and evaporating the cold gray clouds in the sky. About twenty paces away were two horses, one fallen and bloodied, the other suddenly aware of its existence as it flicked its tail and ran off.
Galmon spoke up again, probably to the effect of, “Oh, I guess I don’t see my horse anymore,” but I couldn’t be sure. The woman with the color of death in her eyes had my attention. She’d landed with such force in the snow that the ground cratered beneath her, billowing white dust high into the air.
She bared her teeth and snapped her head around, tracing the owl’s fluttering movements.
“I believe,” echoed a masculine voice, “in five seconds, cadence will disavow you, lady of war.”
One, I counted. Two. Three… four… five.
Almost got to six before the world went dark. A sky of slate had doused the sun. Stars winked in and out of the night sky, and a crescent moon shone weakly through thin clouds, but the change was so abrupt I couldn’t see a thing.
But I could hear. And what I heard was a scampering of feet crunching snow and ice, the sound getting farther and farther away.
Then voices. Two at first, then three, and a fourth. They said things like hole, trust, and unfortunate.
The last thing I thought was, I’ve gotta get the hell out of here.
But I didn’t.
Chapter 4
It appeared that waking up the morning before leaving for Edenvaile had been a poor decision. I should’ve stayed at the Hole for a few days, drank till I felt the sharp stabs in my flank and my sides, then proceeded to sleep for the next week or so before departing northward. I wouldn’t have had a run-in with three Red Sentinels hopped up on some goddamn concoction of madness and godly strength, wouldn’t have had to endure the gelid cold of two blizzards, and I certainly wouldn’t have been abducted by four — count ’em, four — gods.
But good news! I was back at the Hole after my rendezvous with the celestial powers that be. I woke up there, in my square room with wood-braced walls stained with mud and water, as if it was all a dream.
It wasn’t a bloody dream. I discovered this as I stumbled out into the narrow hallway of the Hole and climbed out of my little assassin sanctuary into the great outdoors.
“Fifteen seconds precisely,” said a man, looking at me.
“I know,” said another. “Precision is my profession.”
There were four of them, which, funnily enough, equaled the number of gods I’d heard discussing things the last time I recalled being awake.
Two men, two women, Polinia among them. The other woman had a perfectly symmetrical face, which was rather frightening to look at. She wore a midnight-blue gown decorated with what appeared to be stars. Literal stars, mind you. The kind that blink in and out of the night sky.
“Where is my commander?” I asked. “My recruits?”
“Your commander will return in two minutes,” said one of the men, the larger of the two, both in voice and stature.
I felt around my waist and noticed my belt, and therefore my blades, was missing. Polinia must’ve seen the worried look on my face, because she said, “You’ll not be needing those right now.”
“Is that so? You’ll have to excuse my apprehension. I had the strangest dream that an owl gouged out a man’s eyes, called up her godly pals and then abducted me.”
“We did not liberate you to cause you harm,” Polinia said.
“Illogical decisions,” said the other woman, “do not make for proper structure.”
I crossed my arms and rocked back on my heels, waiting for an explanation.
“I suppose an introduction is in order,” Polinia said. She opened her hand toward the woman on her left. “Laviel, goddess of structure. Kem, god of cadence. And Harran, god of vision.”
Laviel bowed her head. “Charmed, I’m—”
“I’m sure,” I said, finishing the old and outdated greeting for her.
Harran, the larger of the men and the one who’d predicted Vayle’s return in exactly two minutes, gestured toward the edge of the plateau. “That should alleviate one worry.”
My commander crested the hill on her brown-and-white dotted horse. A stack of successfully hunted squirrels and what looked like the black-and-white stripes of a couple raccoons lay in her lap. She dumped them off on a patch of dirt, climbed off her horse, and ambled my way.
“Have you met our distinguished guests?” I asked her.
“She’s a damn fine entertainer,” Kem said. He withdrew a green apple from his robes, palmed it and flicked out his finger, which was equipped with what looked like a curved blade for a fingernail. He began shearing the apple into thin slices.
“I do my best,” Vayle said, smiling. As she came closer, she held up three dirty fingers. “By the way,” she told me, “three to one.”
I squinted at her, which didn’t help clarify the message at all.
“You’ve needed rescuing three times to my one,” she said, “and that’s only in the past year.” She slapped my chest playfully and added, “You’re losing your touch. With that, I am going to sleep. I have been trapping all day. Wake me when we leave.”
I threw my hands up in confusion. “When we leave? I need to know where the piss we’re going first.”
Vayle strolled into the Hole like a bear entering its personal cavern for a long hibernation, not another word said.
“This has something to do with you four,” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at the supposed gods. “Doesn’t it?”
“Actually,” Kem said, stabbing his nail through an apple slice, “it began with you.”
“The book,” Polinia said.
I tossed my head back and swore at the pink-and-passionate-red-strewn sky. “Oh, of course. The bloody book. Look, I already had this discussion with my commander. I’m gonna dig that bastard thing up, skip on back here into this realm and hold it up to the heavens till one of you come for it. All right? Fair enough? Sound good?”
Kem held up a finger, the one still stuck into a half-eaten apple slice. “Harran informed us of your intentions. He’s been at your side for the past two months. But—”
I cut Kem off. “I’ve been stalked by a god for two months?”
“Mostly,” Kem said with a shrug.
I looked at Harran. “Aren’t you the god of vision? Seems you have some piss-poor vision if you need to be nipping at my heels to see what I’m up to.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said.
“Well, then, how’s it work? In fact, tell me how all of this shit works. Nature and cadence and structure and vision, I wanna hear about it all. What kind of tricks do you gods perform, hmm?”
Polinia folded her hands together. “Allow us first to—”
“No,” I snapped. “Look here, miss goddess of nature. I wasn’t going to question anything before. I’d simply waltz back into Amortis, find that blasted book and hand it over, because I was under the impression all this crazy god business would go away. But somewhere along the way, a small gathering of Red Sentinels commanded by a woman who was later referred to as a lady of war attacked me and almost chopped me into tiny bits on account of their occult strength. Then you four swoop in, save the day, and bring me back here, I imagine to gain my trust. I have a really bad feeling that I’ve made some terrible enemies and they aren’t going to go away simply because I unearth an ancient fucking book. Right? Or wrong? Or a little bit of both?”
The gods blinked.
“I realize,” I said, “that was a terrible segue into further explaining why I very much want to know how your weird fucking powers work, but I ramble when I’m upset.”
Kem chomped on his apple bits and raised a brow to the others.
I may not have made a convincing argument that I was mentally stable, but I did manage to persuade them to lay down at least a simple foundation of who they were.
It went something like this.
Kem, the god of cadence, oversaw the rise and fall of the sun and the moon. From what I gathered, the cycle ran autonomously for the most part, but he had the authority to alter it if need be.
Harran, the god of vision, was essentially a scout. Someone who could sense a disruption in the realm and trace the vague feeling of disorder to its source, where his visions would appear with more clarity.
Laviel, the goddess of structure, oversaw stability in the living realm. She spoke in short, abbreviated sentences that made it rather painful to divine much about her position, besides the abstract.
And of course, we’re left with Polinia, Miss I’ll-gouge-out-your-eyes-while-I-bring-down-a-storm-upon-you. She held dominion over all living things, except humanity, and oversaw the passing of seasons.
“Which brings me,” Polinia said, “to Ripheneal.” She drew her lips in tight, apparently dissatisfied with the very name.
“Which brings us to our problem,” Kem added.
A gentle wind nipped at Polinia’s hair, unwound a couple strands pinned against her temple and swung them in front of her opaque eyes. “We are here,” she said, “because Ripheneal is not. He cannot sense us. He’s passed into Amortis.”
“For the book,” I surmised.
Kem nodded.
“So what’s the problem, then?” I asked. “What is he, a rogue god? Sounds to me like you’re all in cahoots.”
“His actions in reacquiring the book from Occrum,” Polinia said, “were not subtle. He attracted unwanted attention.”
Kem flicked a piece of apple off the ledge and held up a hand. “If I may?”
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