REIGN OF GODS
SORCERY AND SIN BOOK 2
JUSTIN DEPAOLI
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Edited by ELIZA DEE (WWW.CLIOEDITING.COM)
Proofread by DONNA RICH
CONDUIT BOOKS
CONTENTS
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
A Free Book and a Cheap One
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Justin DePaoli
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Megan and for all that you do, which is far more than anyone should have to.
MAP
The Lands of Avestas
CHAPTER ONE
The world perished.
Lavery watched as the craggy hides of mountains collapsed, boiled into a soupy lava that effervesced into a silver plume of steam. He crawled beneath trees whose knotted boughs bore the weight of a collapsing sky.
Hillsides sloughed away, plummeting into an oblivion blacker than the cosmos and entirely starless.
Lavery promised himself he would never Wraithwalk into the future again. Some promises are hard to keep, to be sure, but those you make to yourself are doubly so.
Tree limbs burned and trunks shattered as ropes of lightning tore through them. Lavery suddenly emerged in a humid wetland dotted with ponds and swampy pockets of mud and muck.
He reared around, expecting a forest tempest to be nipping at his heels. Nothing lay that way except a blur. This isn’t real, he reminded himself.
Probably it wasn’t real. Baern had warned him against Walking into the future; you could never be certain what parts of your visions were true and which were ugly, twisted caricatures of deceit and falsehoods.
Still… Lavery had seen the dragon flights coming, hadn’t he? With his first Walk into the future, no less. But then his second Walk, after the dragons had fallen and he had woken under the care of Elaya… that Walk was no good. It was a bad Walk. A terribly bad Walk.
He’d seen Baern brought back to life. He’d run up to the old man, arms swung out for a warm embrace. Then a hand full of grotesque claws had ripped Baern’s heart from his chest and squeezed it till it burst and sprayed blood on Lavery’s face.
The old man had fallen then, only to rise again. And again his chest was rived open, heart clutched by a crooked hand of twisted, yellow nails. Lavery tasted blood for a second time, and then a third. He’d eventually escaped that vision, but not before seeing Baern murdered mercilessly dozens of times.
It wasn’t real. Lavery knew that. But the dread that had knotted up his stomach for weeks afterward, the absence of hunger for days, the crying himself to sleep… those things were real. He’d promised himself then that he would never future Walk again.
This was the fifteenth time he’d broken that promise. He couldn’t help it. Knowing he had foresight at his disposal, the opportunity to envision fate before it would unfold—that was power. Unbelievable and immense power, which is the kind that breaks you, in the end.
Lavery felt himself breaking. But he had to keep Walking. Avestas had been spared from dragons, but Gynoth still lurked. That evil man—no, worse than evil, and he was no man, either. He was a necromancer, and he had an army of dead at his disposal. What was he planning?
Lavery had to know. And so he Walked. And right now he stood ankle-deep in a water hole. Also, he heard voices. They came from over… there. Near a cave.
The good thing about the future is that it cannot—presently speaking—kill you. So he crept along not out of fear for death, but fear that he’d find another Baern vision. Maybe not involving Baern, exactly, but his father. Or his mother. Or Elaya. People he cared for. He hadn’t known his mother very well, not when she had been of sound mind, but he still loved her.
The voices sounded clearer now. He could recognize words sometimes, though rarely more than two strung together. He tiptoed around a yawning puddle and quietly navigated over a fallen trunk strangled by thorny vines. A few strides later put him against a lonesome pillar of rock some six feet from the cave.
He listened. And his nostrils flared.
A man’s voice. “Tell me again how the Conclave is unimportant.”
“Its inception never was,” said a woman. “Its pivot from those original goals, however…”
“Arguing, truly?” said a third woman. She spoke in a low, nasally pitch. “Is that what you two are doing right now? Arguing while the whole bloody world is in peril?”
The man snorted. “It’s a bit more than in peril, Haviel.”
“Doomed, you might say,” suggested the other woman. “I heard this morning that the Spigatoon Mountains had inverted themselves.”
“A sight to behold, I’m sure,” said the man. “Don’t worry, Haviel; we can fix this. Sorcery was its cause, and it will be its cure.”
Lavery grasped the spongy-textured pillar tighter.
The apparent Haviel huffed. “You’re mad. Both of you. Maybe the Twin Sisters were right all along. I didn’t think they were; I thought sorcery could be controlled, mediated, governed. But I guess it can’t. I suppose sorcery truly is a sin.”
A whisper startled Lavery. It came from… well, inside his head. Lav. A pause. Lav—Lavery. Lavery!
The world began to blur and spin away. No, Lavery thought, reaching out for the pillar that now raced away from him. No!
Seconds later, his eyes snapped open. And a cold snowflake fell on his lashes. The sky was black and calm.
“You’re a bloody heavy sleeper,” Tig said, steamy breath temporarily imprinted on the air. “Right yerself. We’re leavin’.”
“What did you do that for?” Lavery said.
Tig had already turned away. He muttered something as he squatted and hefted a sack into his arms.
“What did you do that for?” Lavery asked again, this time emphasizing each word. He balled up his fists, scooping snow into his palms. “Answer me.” He sat up. “Answer me!” He felt rage rising within him. Uncontrollable rage, but sadly—for the past several weeks—not unfamiliar.
Tig put a knee into the snow, craning his thick neck around. “What the fook is wrong with you?”
Ice crunched beneath fast-approaching footsteps. “Shut your mouth,” Adom said with a harsh whisper, finger pointed at Lavery. “Unless you’ve got grand plans for death, keep quiet and get your ass on Tig’s horse.”
“I was learning things,” Lavery said, snarling. “You—you killed it. You killed my vision!” He found himself on his feet now, though he had no rec
ollection of standing. “I can’t get it back. Don’t you get that? I can never see it again. You never see two identical visions.”
“Lavery,” Adom said, “calm yourself and get on the damn saddle. We’re being followed, and we need to leave.”
“You killed it,” Lavery said again, thinning eyes aimed at Tig. With gnashing teeth, he leaped at the burly mercenary.
“Ah!” Tig cried, his eye the recipient of an errant fist—or maybe not so errant, given the circumstance.
“I hate you!” Lavery screamed, beating his fists on Tig’s body like a child in the throes of a tantrum. He wasn’t aiming for anywhere in particular, so long as he caused Tig pain. He deserved to feel pain for interrupting Lavery’s vision. He deserved worse. Much worse, like—
Before he could complete the thought of what exactly Tig did deserve, his ear was ringing and he ate a faceful of snow. Adom had clobbered him upside the head with his forearm.
“In the bag,” Adom told Tig. He turned Lavery onto his stomach and put a knee between his shoulders. “No, not that bag. Yes, that one.” A roll of rope flew over Adom’s head. “Great fucking throw,” he said, reaching and straining for the rope.
Lavery kicked and writhed. Being only twelve years old and ninety pounds dripping wet, he made little progress in his ultimate goal of dislodging Adom.
Elaya’s sharp voice came from the gap between two trees. “What are you three doing?”
“Having a grand bloody party,” Adom said, holding the rope between his teeth. He wrenched Lavery’s arms behind his back, kept them in place with his knee and then quickly spun the rope around his wrists. “It’s not a very fun party. Lavery here’s lost his mind.”
“Find it for him,” Elaya said. “And quickly.”
“All this fuss didn’t scare our li’l stalker off?” Tig asked.
“No. He’s still there. He’s probably a lookout for the Daughters.”
Adom wagged his hand toward Tig. “Dig in that bag again for a leather scrap.”
“Lots o’ leather scraps in here. How many ya want?”
“One will be fine. And don’t throw it; you’re a terrible throw.”
“Not my bloody profession, so you’ll have to ’scuse me. Prick.”
“Up you are,” Adom said, yanking Lavery to his feet. With a square piece of leather in hand, he slapped it against the boy’s mouth and tied it tight with some excess rope he’d chopped off. “There. Now be a good lad, yeah? Get him on the saddle,” he instructed Tig.
With a fat eye that would fatten up even more before the swelling would go down, Tig shuffled over to Lavery. He threw the boy across his shoulder and hauled him off to a mare tied to a nearby tree. “Yer lucky I don’t hold no grudges, little Lavery Opsillian. Otherwise you’d be hurtin’.”
From behind Elaya, branches rustled and shook free their fine coating of snow. A slender, agile woman ducked and weaved into appearance. Behind here trudged a much less agile man. He held his nose like one might when blood pours from one’s nostrils.
Elaya squinted. “Why do you have a bloody nose?”
“He fought with a tree,” Paya said.
“Tree won,” Kaun said soberly. “Mister Shadow’s up and left.”
Paya snapped her gloved fingers, which didn’t have the effect she’d hoped for. “Gone, like that.”
“Which direction?” Elaya asked.
Kaun shrugged. “No telling. He closed his eyes, and—”
“Melted away,” Paya suggested.
Elaya swore to herself. She had seen tracks two mornings ago, but they’d originated far from the Eyes’ temporary campsite and terminated even farther. Vagrants weren’t uncommon in the far northern reaches, so she didn’t press the issue.
That was a mistake. Not thirty minutes ago, she had seen two pinpoints of light in an otherwise overwhelmingly black forest. She thought—or rather, hoped—they were critter eyes, or even those of a predator waiting for its prey to fall into a slumber. But the clouds had parted momentarily, and a crescent moon swept across the forest. She hadn’t glimpsed much except the face and shoulders, both of which had told her those eyes belonged to a man.
Older, younger, big, tall… she couldn’t tell. But he’d undoubtedly seen her staring at him, and still he remained. He didn’t fear her. Or Adom or Tig or Paya or Kaun. When you’re outnumbered five-to-one, or six-to-one if you counted Lavery, you would be smart to retreat.
Either this man was not smart or he wasn’t truly outnumbered. Elaya feared he was a scout for the Daughters. And scouts and Daughters are never far from one another.
“Saddle up,” she told Kaun, Paya and Adom. “And keep your swords unsheathed. Our visitor didn’t decide to depart because he was bored.”
It was regrettable they had to move. This forest provided good cover, and it was a midpoint between Ruck Village and the frozen Ellorn Lake. Normally that detail wouldn’t be important, but Elaya and the Eyes had taken a job to find—and eliminate—the Merrydwellers. The Merrydwellers were two merchants who’d sold opals to Lord Oahn Dane, patriarch of the Prave. Turned out the opals were fakes, and the Merrydwellers had gotten off with seven hundred gold coins.
They didn’t know Oahn Dane was a vengeful man who would pay a handsome sum to see their heads adorn his palace walls.
The Merrydwellers often traveled between the village and lake, so Elaya hoped to intercept them. But she couldn’t risk staying here any longer. Not if the Daughters had caught a whiff of her.
She leaned down and thawed her fingers above a stamped-out fire. She didn’t know how long it’d be until warmth would filter back into her bones again. Could be hours. Could be days.
Could be never, she thought.
Head swiveling this way and that, she untied her steed. This was a pure night; no wind, insignificant snowfall. She could hear for probably a mile out, so the sound of silence gave her a moment of respite from fear.
And then she remembered how quietly Daughters could travel, even on horseback.
Paya, Kaun, Adom, and Tig were sitting in their saddles before her. Lavery was slumped over, face smooshed against Tig’s back.
“Is he okay?” Elaya asked.
Tig shrugged. “He’s breathing. Think he’s worn out.”
“Let’s move. Keep it tight; no one gets more than fifteen paces ahead or behind. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Every muscle in Elaya’s body seized. That “yes” came from a voice both booming and raw, and one that did not belong to her mercenaries.
Adom pointed his chin. From over there, he mouthed.
In what was arguably a foolish move and what could inarguably be the last one she’d make, Elaya climbed down from her horse.
Sword in hand, she approached two trees with peeling gray bark. The rumble in the unwelcome visitor’s voice placed him at least that close, and if Adom’s directional awareness was on point, those trees were the only place to conceal himself.
She idled herself before the gap in the trees. She did not fear one man, no matter his birthright, his swordsmanship, his legend. She feared what came with him. But if the Daughters were already here, running wouldn’t help. The Daughters would come with bows and on horses faster than any Elaya could procure.
“You might be looking for me,” the man said.
Elaya spun around, putting his coarse voice behind her.
“But if you are who I think you are, you won’t find me.” Now he was in front of her again. “Don’t worry, this is not a riddle.” Now to her right.
“A demon?” Adom said.
“Quite hurtful,” the invisible man said. “Put away your weapons and I will show myself.”
Elaya swallowed. The knuckles around her hilt were as white as nearby piles of snow. “That seems unwise.”
“Trying the patience of a man whom you cannot see and of whose disposition you are unaware seems more unwise. Wouldn’t you agree? Ah, that sounded threatening. Excuse me. I do have a sword on my person, but it
is small and meager. Keeps honest folk honest.”
Elaya considered the situation. It was one out of her control. Those were among her least favorite situations. As a Daughter, she’d learned of illusionary sorcerers who could pass through a crowd undetected with the use of illusionary loci. But communicating with those outside the loci required the sorcerer to also be outside.
So this man wasn’t a sorcerer. At least not of a discipline Elaya had ever heard of. He also didn’t seem particularly dangerous. If he’d wanted to kill her, he could have done so already, and apparently without being seen.
She sheathed her sword and nodded at her mercenaries to do the same. Everyone complied, without question. At least without verbal questioning.
There was a clap. And then a man with very little hair on his arms, a year’s worth on his face and absolutely none on his head came rather toddling into existence. He was walking forward, toward Elaya, cherry-nosed and plum-cheeked.
“Hello, Elaya,” he said. He wore only a thin linen robe that he’d sweated through. The top of his head was shiny and wet, beads of sweat pouring down his face. “Do you remember me? I expect not, and your face says no.” He turned. “I’m afraid I don’t know any of you in particular. Is the boy there alive?”
“He’s breathing,” Tig said. “I think.” He concentrated, then concluded, “That’s a breath, all right.”
“Good,” the man said. He faced Elaya, wringing his wrinkly hands. “I’d be devastated to learn you’d become a murderer of children.”
Elaya crossed her arms. Riddles brought her little joy and enigmatic, mysterious men even less. “I want a name.”
“Valterik Afenwaft. Perhaps you would recall my name if I told you what most Daughters knew me as.” He winced, as if struck by a painful memory. “I greatly dislike it, but… the Mutator.” He waited expectedly. “No? Nothing?”
Elaya shook her head. “Never heard of you.”
Disappointment marked Valterik’s face. “That’s too bad. Well, I spent a lot of time with you when you were young. I was the man who made the Daughters into… well, Daughters.” His face fell. “And I’m afraid I’ve made a very costly mistake.”
Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 1
