Gods old and dark

by Holly Lisle

  Gods Old and Dark

  Book Three of the World Gates

  Holly Lisle

  For the real Sentinels, the real heroes:

  the men and women all around us who

  move quietly from day to day but,

  when disaster and terror descend,

  run up the stairs, not down;

  run to the front of the plane, not the back,

  and move forward when forward is

  the worst place to be.

  With love and gratitude.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  HEYR THORRSON, pounding roofing nails into shingles on the hottest…

  CHAPTER 2

  ERIC MACAVERY, Cat Creek's sheriff and the leader of the…

  CHAPTER 3

  PETE STARED THROUGH THE SKY at the dark winged shapes…

  CHAPTER 4

  MOLLY STOOD WATCHING the place where the stranger had been…

  CHAPTER 5

  JAKE LEANED OVER HER, poking her face with one finger.

  CHAPTER 6

  BAANRAAK WORRIED. This was foreign to him; he was not…

  CHAPTER 7

  THE SENTINELS Were still looking at him with that expression…

  CHAPTER 8

  LAUREN SAW PETE running across the lawn before he had…

  CHAPTER 9

  ERIC LAY ON HIS BELLY in the tall grass to…

  CHAPTER 10

  REKKATHAV KNEW HOW TO WORK HARD, and he had worked…

  CHAPTER 11

  BAANRAAK LOOKED NORTH at the tiny town and inhaled, long…

  CHAPTER 12

  BAANRAAK ARRIVED ON the dark side of Kerras in the…

  CHAPTER 13

  AT HIS POST BEHIND and to the right of Aril,…

  CHAPTER 14

  "THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL HEARING of the Cat Creek Sentinels.

  CHAPTER 15

  ERIC SAID, "If there are no further questions, Lauren, you…

  CHAPTER 16

  THE SENTINELS—MINUS Raymond and Louisa—met in Bennettsville at Heyr's request.

  CHAPTER 17

  RAYMOND SMETTY turned to Louisa Tate. "Still a chance back…

  CHAPTER 18

  MOLLY WOKE IN A LITTLE TENT to the sound of…

  CHAPTER 19

  BAANRAAK SNIFFED HIS WAY up the worldchain, hunting for Molly.

  CHAPTER 20

  BAANRAAK ROSE FROM his vantage point atop the sand hill,…

  CHAPTER 21

  THROUGH THE WEIGHT of her own pain, June Bug could…

  CHAPTER 22

  THAT WENT WELL, Baanraak thought, though not precisely as well…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  OTHER BOOKS BY HOLLY LISLE

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  CHAPTER 1

  Siren, Wisconsin

  HEYR THORRSON, pounding roofing nails into shingles on the hottest August afternoon Wisconsin had seen in ten years, suddenly smelled spring in the air. He slid his hammer into his tool belt, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

  The scent that he caught this time wasn't spring, but it had the same feel to it. Newness, and life, and goodness—but fragile. Fragile.

  "Hmmm," he said. And, "Well. By damn."

  He yelled to his fellow roofer, "Hey, Lars, I'm on break." Lars, sweating and shirtless and looking like he'd been run through a wringer, just grunted. Heyr took the time to go down the ladder, though it would have been easier just to jump. He kept breathing deeply, making sure all the time that this wasn't just his imagination, just wishful thinking, because jobs were hard enough to come by anymore and he didn't want to do anything stupid.

  The smell was still in his nose when he went to the foreman, who gave him a little smile when he walked up and said, "You could have the decency to pretend to be as exhausted as the rest of us. Doesn't this heat bother you?"

  Heyr shrugged. Extremes of weather had never bothered him. "Just lucky," he said. And then, one more quick breath. Still there. "I hate to do this to you in the middle of a job, Colly, but I've got someplace I need to be."

  Colly shrugged. "Don't worry about it. You never miss a day, never ask for time off. You need to go someplace this afternoon, go ahead."

  "I don't mean this afternoon. I mean I have to leave now. I quit."

  Colly, whose real name was something so dreadful that Heyr had never heard him or anyone else use it, held his hands out wide and stared at the development springing out of dirt. "We got this house and fifteen more just like it. You know you got a job until this is done, and for anything else I get when this project is finished. You're my best guy. You quit, I'm going to have to hire three other people to replace you. You can't just walk out on me like this, man. In the middle of the day. In the middle of a roof…. Jesus wept, your nail box is still up there, and half a flat of shingles."

  "Told you when I signed on I'd stay as long as I could. Well—this is as long as I could."

  Colly looked at him, exasperated. "You said that six years ago. I figured by now you'd made up your mind."

  "Doesn't have anything to do with me," Heyr said. "I like you, liked working with you. You treated me right, and the rest of your men, too, and I appreciate it. I just got my call. Have to go now. Right now." He turned and left.

  Colly was yelling after him, but Heyr walked across the site, climbed into his white pickup truck, and pulled out. He had a cell phone in the truck. Soon as he was out on the street, he picked up the phone and hit "1" on the quick dial.

  He heard two rings. Then a voice one degree too sexy for professional use said, "First National Savings and Loan, Nancy Soderlund speaking. How may I help you?"

  Heyr had his window rolled down. He took another deep breath. Yep, it was still there. "Have to go, Nancy," he said.

  There was a moment's silence, in which Heyr had time to wish he'd stuck to his guns about keeping his relationships uncomplicated.

  "Go? Where?"

  "I'm not sure. I just have to go."

  Another silence. "Well…for how long?"

  Make it clean, he told himself. Make it quick.

  "This is what I told you about when we moved in together, Nancy—that one day I was going to have to leave."

  A very, very long silence followed this announcement, while she tried to figure out what he was talking about. Then, in the silence, she screamed into his ear, "That was FOUR YEARS ago!"

  "I know." He was going to have to let her get this out of her system. Let her yell at him. If things were different, he'd go home one last time and let her scream at him in person and punch him and maybe break things and throw them at him, but he didn't have the time. What he smelled was pure live magic, too fragile and too tentative to be left untended. He needed to track it down fast, before someone else got to it first and destroyed the source. "I'm sorry."

  "Sorry? You're sorry? I have put four years of my life into us, into taking care of you and loving you and…We don't even fight much, you son of a bitch, and now you're telling me that you're leaving me, and I get no warning? What, am I supposed to just go away now and pretend you never existed? Find someplace new to live, and someone else to love, and act like the last four years never happened?"

  "You don't have to go anywhere," he said. He stopped the truck at an intersection, closed his eyes, and sniffed. Trying to get a sense of the direction of the smell's origin. East, he thought. East, and maybe south, too, though at the moment east was strongest.

  "I don't? How do you figure that? I'm living in your house, unless you forgot."

  "It's your house," he said. "I bought it for you. It's all in your name, and paid for. I didn't want you to not have
anything when I had to go."

  Suddenly she was crying. "What happened? Did you kill somebody? Have you been in hiding? Have the police or something tracked you down?"

  "Nancy, I just have to go. I didn't do anything wrong, but I knew eventually I was going to find what I was looking for, and when I found it, I was going to have to leave."

  Weeping on the other end of the phone. He could just imagine the looks Nancy was getting from the patrons in First National. She had one of those pitiful glass-walled offices that let everyone look in; he thought her job would have to be like working in a fishbowl or being on display at a zoo. He wouldn't have been a banker for any amount of money, but banking was regular work, and the bank was warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and that mattered a lot to Nancy.

  "Who is she?" Nancy whispered. "What's her name?"

  He was going to war, and her mind was jumping to other women. Well, of course she'd think that. What did she know of war?

  Heyr, following the road, heading east, smelled the scent of new life, of fresh beginnings, of rebirth, and the thought occurred to him that maybe it would be easier for Nancy if he was leaving her for another woman—if she could tell her friends what a dog he'd been, how sneaky for having a long-distance affair under her nose, and if she could hate him and bad-mouth him and feel justified.

  "Her name's…Hope," Heyr said. "You don't know her. She lives out east."

  More sobbing, some words Heyr didn't even know that Nancy knew, and then she seemed to pull herself together. "We have four good years behind us, and I thought we had a lot of good years ahead of us. I'm leaving work now, and I'll see you when you get home, and we're going to talk about this. You and I—we're worth fighting for."

  He sighed. "I'm not coming home. I…won't see you again. I'm sorry. You can throw out all my things if you want. Or sell them. Or keep them." He'd reached the edge of town, and wild Wisconsin spread before him, hills and fields and forest. The road curled eastward, black and smooth and narrow, rolling up at the horizon into a copse of trees. "I have to go now, Nancy. You'll find the deed to the house and some money I left for you and some other things in the red box under my side of the bed. The key for the box is in our safety-deposit box, taped to the back. It's labeled 'Spare House Key.'" He took a deep breath and gave her the lie, because lies were sometimes better than the truth. "I loved you more than I ever loved anyone, but I don't love you anymore. I'm sorry, Nancy. I really am. I wish you well, and hope that you'll someday find someone who's good enough for you."

  She was yelling, but he cut her off.

  Then, because he didn't want her to be able to call him again, he threw the cell phone out the window. He'd gotten the phone for her, so she could call him when she needed him, and now there was no more her.

  Keep it clean. Let her hate him. Give her a reason to say "Good riddance" and move on with her life.

  Heyr studied those trees at the top of the rise. Probably not, he decided after a moment. He was still too close to town. He drove past them, rolled onward. Fine countryside surrounded him—a land dotted with glacial lakes, scoured by an ancient ice age, grown back tough and fierce. He'd spent a long time in Wisconsin, and he'd grown comfortable there. The place fit him, fit him as well as any place he'd ever lived.

  He sighed. Sooner or later, it had always been time to move on. This time, it had been sooner.

  He let the road hum beneath his tires for a while, until he found a good spot to pull off the pavement. He drove the truck down a two-rut road, listening to the hiss of tall grasses dragging against the truck sides, smelling the green of late summer so rich in his nose it was almost a feeling, sensing the weight of the heat, liking the taste of dust billowing up from the track. This newest smell—this spring-blown thread of life—curled his toes, arched his back, made him hungry and sharp and tight as a new bowstring. Took some of the edge off of pain so overwhelming he'd stopped fighting it, pain so old that he'd forgotten until just now that pain sometimes lessened, instead of always getting worse.

  Good stand of trees up ahead, fronted by some low understory growth that formed a natural arch over the road. Yes. He was far enough; this place would do. He pulled up close, left the truck running, and from his glove compartment, pulled out a length of twine. He measured out four arm's lengths, frowned thoughtfully and added another two arm's lengths, and snapped the twine in two with one sharp movement. He hopped out of the truck and jogged to the two closest saplings that could be formed into an arch—two pliable young white oaks that grew directly across the road from each other, with single trunks and few side branches.

  Heyr pulled the flexible tops together and bound them with a knot that would untie with one hard tug of the string. He eased the arch he'd formed out of his hands and watched it for a moment. It held, though the trees strained against the twine.

  Then he studied the long tail of string now dragging on the ground and realized he'd still left it a bit too short, so he pulled the truck up until its front bumper rested only a couple of feet from the arch. He tied the string to the back bumper. Patted the hood of the truck as he walked by and said, "Going on a little trip, boys."

  And then he stood before the tree arch. He stared into it, letting his eyes unfocus, so that the shadowed greens and browns of the woods beyond seemed to form a flat, mottled canvas for the arch. He let the image of a surface grow in his mind, and did not stare directly at the little green lights that began to zip and streak across that surface. They began to connect, and then, like spilled ink spreading out across a blank page, radiant green fire filled in the arch, making a doorway big enough for Heyr and the truck. Heyr stared into that sheet of light that hummed with life and promise and energy. In it, he sought the source of the tender, sweet scent that had first caught his attention—and when he located the scent, he found a deceptive web, one that wandered from world to world, universe to universe, that popped up in unexpected places from seemingly random connections in other universes. He found, in short, an intentionally tangled, confusing mess. That was good. But the mess had a center, a strong core to which every single thread could eventually be traced. And that was bad, because if he could find that center, others could, too.

  That core was a single house in a small southern town. He marked the house with a tiny magical tracer and set his vision roaming. A sign outside the town, with badges for the Lions, the Rotarians, the Masons, and the Jaycees, said, "Welcome to Cat Creek, North Carolina, Home of the Fighting Tigers."

  He directed his vision out of town, keeping careful watch on the road. He hated being lost, or wandering around looking for things. Just comfortably distant from the town he found a good patch of woods that bordered on fields white with cotton, with a dirt road running straight out to the road that would carry him back to town. That would do.

  He turned to the truck. "Let's go."

  The door opened for him as he approached, and the motor growled.

  He jumped in and put his hands on the steering wheel, but it was shifting beneath his fingers, becoming hard leather reins. The truck changed as it slid into the green light, and for one brief, wondrous span that was no time and all time as he slid into one of Yggdrasil's branches, he could feel his old friends Tanngrísnir and Tanngnjóstr leaping forward, while at his hip Mjollnir sang, wearing its true seeming. He roared his pleasure, and the green fire enveloped him, and in his ears the Valkyries sang songs of heroes and feasting and mighty battles, and the world tree spun him forward, embracing him, welcoming him, and as quickly and as slowly as that, it spat him out, taking thunder and lightning, sheeting rain and towering black clouds with him.

  Heyr sat in the truck, window still down, while the rain pounded the windshield and sluiced away the dust and grime, while lightning crashed all around him and thunder roared like a choir of giants in his ears, and he threw back his head and laughed. He bellowed into the storm, "I'm here now, you slinking cowards, serpents, you hiders in darkness and weak-kneed back-biters. I'm here, and I br
ought my hammer. Come play with me…if you DARE!"

  Night Watch Control Hub, Barâd Island, Oria

  Rekkathav, personal servant of Aril, keth dark god and Master of the Night Watch, trotted along beside the Master of the Night Watch as the Master glided through the corridors of the ancient Barâd palace, heading for the control hub hidden at its core. Aril was typical of the keth; he was twice as tall as Rekkathav—tall enough to look a rrôn in the eye—and slender as cattail reeds, with huge, black almond eyes, a tiny rosebud mouth, and almost no nose, and an androgynous beauty that added a taste of awe and lust to the terror that he inspired. His silk robes, light as air, floated around him, and the thousands of braids of his pale gold hair swirled as if alive. The aura of power that poured from him terrified Rekkathav, even though he had survived more than two years already as Aril's closest assistant, something of a record.