Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2)

by Justin DePaoli

  He continued backing away, stopping only because he bumped into Heinla. She smiled at him, a mouth full of yellow-stained teeth, gums the color of infection.

  “How?” Gynoth asked. Or rather, demanded. “Did you melt the snow?”

  Her eyes creased, and she stepped back, as if insulted. “Hum! A lowly trick, that. No, I did not melt snow. I created water. There is a fabric stretched over your eyes, Mister Necromancer, and you’re privy to only a small, insignificant thread: this world right here, the world that churns before you. Well, I suppose you are also privy to a thread overways, where the dead go and disease lives and rot resides.

  “But I—me, Mister Necromancer—am aware of so many more. There is a world consumed by only lightning, whose bolts I can borrow to electrify my waterfall. There’s a world consumed by flames, but I don’t like fire very much. There are worlds of illusions too, and so many more. I enjoy the world of water. Waves bigger than mountains live there. I love playing with them.”

  Sorcery, Gynoth thought. They’re not gods. They’re sorcerers. But I’ve never heard of a sorcerer capable of more than one discipline. “Are all of you gods and goddesses capable of this?” Heinla seemed to enjoy the title of goddess, so he continued referring to her as such.

  “I’m the only goddess of water,” she said. “No one can manipulate water better than me.” She scowled and said, “No one!” Then a softening of her face, and a smile. “Just like I’ll never be able to manipulate fire like Nollis, the god of fire, can. Well, maybe if I practiced real hard and he was kept locked away forever. But I don’t like fire, I already told you that.”

  Gynoth felt the ever-constant trembles in his feet. “We are going to free all the gods, Heinla.”

  She wrapped her hands around the stakes jutting out of her eyes and squealed with delight. “Yes! Yes, we should. You’re helping us. Such a good…” She paused, eyebrows furrowing in intense confusion. “Why would a necromancer want to help us?”

  Gynoth watched as the rising creek before him oscillated slightly with each throbbing shiver of the hill. “Because you will kill for me.”

  Heinla tilted her head, no reflection in the smooth round caps of the stakes. Gynoth felt like the abyss was staring at him.

  “Of course we will,” Heinla said. “You own us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “I think,” Valterik said, rubbing his reddened fingers, “we won’t find much here. No, I do not think so. If you ask me, nothing here but a whole bunch of ice and snow. Sure, sure, it’s—”

  Adom slapped his hand on the back of Valterik’s neck, firmly pressing his fingers until he elicited a few ahs, oohs, and ouches from the bald-headed man. He leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “You talk too damn much. How ’bout you fix that?”

  Valterik winced. “Sure.”

  “What the fook are you two doin’?” Tig asked, ripping off a chunk of jerky. “If yer gonna kiss, kiss already.”

  Adom looked back and flicked up a middle finger, while Tig chuckled and puckered his lips.

  Elaya stopped up ahead. She’d combed over Coraen for the second time in as many hours. She found nothing.

  “Well,” Kaun said, strolling up beside her. “We spent plenty long kickin’ around out here. Time to go investigate what the innards of this ice palace hold.”

  Elaya remained silent. Discouraged, mostly. From far below, when they had first begun climbing this mountain, the City of Ice had appeared as dignified and grand as any city she’d ever seen. But up close, its luster wore off. Beautiful still, no doubt—but death can only appear so majestic. And that was what this city was: dead.

  Snowdrifts had swept along where the streets presumably lay, high as her knees in some places. Merchant stalls stood as frozen sculptures scattered throughout the city, relics of a time when possibly it wasn’t so cold and when its grandiosity had attracted travelers from all over.

  “I second Kaun,” Paya said, combing ice crystals out of her hair. She gave a little upturned face to Elaya and said, “Hard to believe, I know. But there’s obviously nothing out here.”

  “Nothing anywhere!” Valterik shouted. He cleared his throat and added, “What I mean is… what leads you to believe life exists inside? Look around you; no one’s prowled these streets in years, centuries even.”

  Elaya grasped the hilt of her sword, then released it for that of her dagger. She lifted it out of its sheath, walked purposefully toward Valterik. The bald man smiled at her, a mouth full of perfect teeth.

  In one smooth motion, she punched her palm into his chest and stuck her leg behind his, tripping him to the ground. The impact billowed frosty snow into Elaya’s face.

  “What the—”

  Elaya fell to her knees and pressed the blade of her dagger lengthwise across his neck. “I have asked you many times—quite nicely, in fact—if you know anything about these lands and, in particular, about Coraen. I am not being nice anymore, and my suspicions are the reason why. Fork over your information, Valterik.” She shoved her face within a finger’s length of his. “Now.”

  His cheeks turned a deeper shade of red than usual, the color of strong wine—or perhaps the color of one who drank too much strong wine. “You, my dearest of dears, are suffering—I do believe—from cold sickness. It’s gone straight to your head, I’m afraid.”

  Elaya was cold. Brutally cold, in fact. All the furs and wools she’d bundled herself in didn’t prevent the frost of the Ancient Lands from settling into her bones from morning to night. She was also tired. Tired of walking, of climbing, of encountering only the wilderness of a land utterly deprived of life.

  Angry too. She was pissed-off-rage-inducing angry and had been for weeks. She couldn’t pinpoint the reason why. But every morning she woke, she was spitting fire—and gods help whoever talked to her first. So it should have come as no surprise that the moment Valterik smiled, she raised her first, clenched, and socked the grinning bastard in his jaw.

  His head snapped back, and spit flew from his mouth.

  “Elaya!” Adom sprinted over and shoved her off Valterik. She put up no resistance, letting him pin her arms into the snow. “What the hells are you doing?”

  “He knows something,” she said flatly. “He’s known something this entire time.”

  Paya tended to Valterik’s busted face. “Are you okay?” He grunted something unintelligible.

  Adom shook his head. “He’s a jittery fella, that’s all. Nervous and strange, sure. Yeah. But come on, Elaya—what’s wrong with you?” He offered her a hand and helped her up.

  Valterik sat up, rubbing his jaw. “This was a fool’s journey; I told you that. Don’t pretend I didn’t tell you. You didn’t trust me—even said as much!”

  Elaya squared herself with Valterik. Adom kept himself close, like a father watching over his child as she takes her first steps, standing there for when she inevitably comes crashing down. Or in Elaya’s case, goes down swinging.

  “You sold the Conclave mutations,” Elaya said. “You lied to us about that. You lied to us about how you came into possession of the mutations. Why should I believe you?”

  Valterik opened his mouth, flexing his jaw this way and that. “Those were necessary lies. Little, um, untruths that—well, look. If I didn’t tell them, would you have even considered helping me? Imagine that—some gaunt vagrant poppin’ out of nowhere, steam coming off his bald head.”

  “Sounds like how you made your appearance,” Kaun said.

  “I’m not finished! As I was sayin’… some gaunt vagrant poppin’ out of nowhere, steam coming off his bald head. He tells you about these godly mutations and how he needs them back, oh so desperately bad. Mind you, he put himself in this predicament because he sold them, so this is all his fault, but please help him, won’t you? I’m sure you five would be lining up to assist me, huh?”

  The mountain began trembling as it had in the morning and all last night and the day before that. Every few hours there came a brief respite, but t
hen it started all over again. Each day it seemed stronger, as if the epicenter drew closer.

  “I’d really like to know what that is,” Kaun said.

  “You and me both,” said Adom.

  “Fookin’ sorcery, ya ask me,” Tig put in. “Ancient Lands and all. Who knows what wicked stuff they got goin’ on here?”

  Valterik bowed his head into his knuckles, as if he was praying. “It’s not sorcery. Listen.” He lifted his head, regarded Elaya with tired eyes. “There’s a lot I could tell you, but most of it’s boring and you won’t believe it anyhow. The good bits, though… you fancy hearing them?”

  “Inside,” Paya said. “My feet are cold, and my toes are numb. One of these doors must be open.”

  “And if not, I’ll break the fooker,” Tig said.

  Elaya pointed to the grand palace that loomed over the whole city, like a preacher on a pedestal, gesturing in his crowd with wide arms. It’d take them a little while to cut through all the snow and get inside, but if there was one building she wanted to rummage around in, it was that one.

  She hooked an arm under Valterik’s pit and hefted him to his feet. She put her lips to his ear. “If you’re lying,” she warned, “I’ll kill you.”

  Valterik snapped his head away and wriggled out of her grip. He didn’t seem scared, but she knew he probably was. Maybe, however, not quite so scared as she was of herself. Adom had asked a good question—what was wrong with her?

  Maybe, Elaya thought, I shouldn’t have come here. It wasn’t these lands that enraged her, but rather the journey. Once more she found herself doing another’s bidding. Yes, it was—as the Twins claimed—for the good of the world. And, yes, a big part of her agreeing to come here was bringing Lavery back. But what had happened to her desires? Her wants?

  She’d been perfectly happy living the life of a mercenary once more, after her near-death experience at Silderine. Maybe it wasn’t even the mercenary part, but the fact that she’d had freedom to do whatever she wanted and whenever she pleased. And now? Now she was doing another’s bidding, something she’d done since she was born.

  Saving the world, she thought, was a noble thing. A selfless act. Frankly, it simply wasn’t for her.

  The palace doors looked like thick sheets of ice, handles carved of glass. They opened outward, shoveling snow aside. Elaya had expected darkness when she walked in, but instead she found massive inlaid fire pits across marble flooring, blue flames licking up and out.

  “Well, well, well,” Kaun said, clicking his tongue. “Looks like someone’s been here after all.”

  “No,” Valterik said, bringing up the rear. He closed the doors. “These are eternal fires. They burned a thousand years ago just as they burn today.”

  The walls of the palace trembled.

  “Sorcery?” Tig suggested, managing to form a word in between his gawking. The room he stood in was vast, like six Great Halls merged into one. Pillars thicker than ancient trees and sculpted from ice supported a vaulted roof.

  Valterik rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s sorcery. What else could it be?” He sat near a rectangular fire pit, hands close to the flames. “Just as the shaking you feel in your feet, the quivering of this mountain, it comes from giants. What else?”

  “Funny fella,” Adom said. “How doesn’t the fire melt the ice?”

  “Mutated ice, and I’m not being funny.”

  Elaya and the others at around the fire. She undressed out of some furs and pulled her knees up to her chin. “Giants? Another word for dragons?”

  “No,” Valterik said. He sighed, gave his bulbous skull a rigorous rub. “I came from this city twelve hundred years ago, en route to Avestas. Me and two twin sisters. We… we had a plan. The war was nearing its end, and it became clear that the victors would be those who wanted to permit sorcery to exist, yet control it so as to mitigate its harm.”

  “You lost me,” Adom said.

  “Me too,” Paya said.

  Kaun nodded, then elbowed Tig and said, “You probably lost him before you finished your first word.”

  “Sod off,” Tig said, punching Kaun in his shoulder.

  “Enough,” Elaya barked. “You and the Twins came from the Ancient Lands?”

  Another sigh. “We were Children.”

  “I think we were all children,” Elaya said.

  “Children as in the first—and only—to directly receive mutations. There were over two hundred of us. Many had babies of their own. The Children promised they would never subject their own babies to mutations, for we had come to realize mutations were unnatural. They cursed us with power beyond recognition. We could move mountains, raise the dead, flood the seas. We were—” He waved a hand, fishing for the right word.

  “Gods,” Elaya suggested.

  Valterik looked at her and nodded somberly. “More or less. Gods, I came to learn, should not exist. Promises were not kept; babies were given mutations, but the mutations didn’t stick. We came to learn that descendants of the Children already carried with them mutations, but generally only one. This is how sorcery as you know it was born; anyone able to reach into another realm, be it an elementalist, an illusionist, a Wraith Walker—they are descendants of the Children.”

  Elaya pulled her knees closer to her chest. Lavery, she thought. He’s a—and what about me? “Daughters can sense sorcery. Does that—did that—not make me a sorcerer?”

  “Not all mutations are permanent,” Valterik said. “Of the many things I told you that were either misleading or entirely false, that was not among them.

  “The descendants,” he continued, “migrated southward, leaving behind the Ancient Lands. Some fourteen hundred years later, the war among Children began. There were two factions: those who saw the danger of mutations and wished to forever eliminate them—and all descendants of Children—and those who thought they were gods and could restrain their impulses to freely use what you call sorcery.

  “The Twins and I were on the losing side.”

  Adom untied his boots, freeing his feet and warming his toes. “Oh, that feels good. Well, you might have lost, but you came out unscathed.” His face wrinkled in deep thought. “Huh. You know, this makes sense. The Twins created Daughters like Elaya to—”

  “Eradicate what they could not,” Elaya said.

  A slow, unimpressed clap echoed throughout the room. “A valiant effort,” said a woman, her voice warm and soothing. “But it was always a war of attrition, and those with the numbers win, in the end.”

  The woman walked at the edge of a nearby fire pit, approaching Elaya and the others. She wore a long white dress, its fabric thin and nearly translucent. A rope of sapphires hung around her neck, and hair cascaded down over her shoulders like a waterfall, in layers of hazel and gold.

  Valterik’s face collapsed into his hands, as if her coming was inevitable and a harbinger of doom.

  “Who are your friends, Valterik?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Are you sad? Do you feel like a fool? You might.” She swept her hair aside, behind one shoulder. “We never wished to restrain the impulses of our power. We simply had to bide our time, until our numbers were such that our dreams could be realized.”

  The woman neared. She idled near Adom, flicked her chin subtly. The flames froze, becoming shards of ice, sharp and curled cycles where the fingers of the fire had reached out. She climbed onto the uneven ice and sat, facing Valterik.

  “Who are you?” Elaya asked.

  “My name is Lusilia. What is—ah, that’s right. I don’t care. Shush now, dear. Let the gods talk. Valterik, why did you come here? Hmm? We gave you what you wanted.”

  Elaya moved for her hilt. “What is she talking about?”

  Valterik sounded as if he was weeping. “The Conclave…they—”

  “Are going to make this world idealistic,” Lusilia interrupted. She flung her head back, looking at Elaya upside down, still sitting on the iced-over flames. “I heard Valterik telling you all about
his good deeds. Did he also tell you that he gave his bounty of mutations away willingly?”

  “Yeah,” Adom said. “We’ve already got that information.”

  Lusilia smiled. “Did he tell you why?”

  No response.

  Lusilia exaggeratedly threw herself forward, again looking at Valterik. “Well? Tell them. No? You don’t want to? Oh, come on, Valterik. Tell them that you abandoned your ideals because you’re a selfish little boy who didn’t want to be a god anymore.” She giggled, squeezed her knees and spun around on her rump, facing Elaya. “In exchange for the mutations that he stole from this city, he was given a mutation to purge all the others within him. Useless, if you ask me, but some men aren’t fit to be gods, I suppose.”

  Valterik picked his head up, reflections of a cold, frozen fire in his eyes. “I knew it was a lie. You never truly wanted to restrain sorcery.”

  Lusilia frowned. “Of course you say that now. I don’t think you ever knew the truth.”

  “You always thought yourselves superior,” Valterik said. “Am I getting close to your true intentions?”

  She grinned. “Getting warmer. Let me help you. We’re going to purge this world of lesser creatures. Only gods and their babies deserve life, Valterik.” She cocked her head, laying it listlessly on her shoulder and offering Elaya a pouty lip. “It’s not personal, I promise.”

  Valterik shook his head. “You can’t kill giants and demons and men.”

  Giants and demons? Elaya thought.

  “Actually,” Lusilia said, “we can. The first two don’t concern us as much. They’re raw power, yes, but not as intelligent. Now, the domain of men is vast, I grant you that. But we need only crush their hopes. Do you remember Craw?”

  Valterik’s flared nostrils and clenched jaw said that, yes, he remembered Craw.

  “Always the charmer, wasn’t he? He should be arriving in Avestas within a few weeks, just as colossi and demons begin ravaging the lands. Quite unexpected, truthfully. The Conclave hadn’t anticipated him for several months, but he rather stumbled his way into a lucky predicament. Was able to take a dragon instead of a boat across the Glass Sea.