Blood Of Gods (Book 3) (34 page)

He was almost to Karak when the deity raised his hand and a gush of purple flame and shadow, eight feet wide and spiraling, leapt from his palm. The spinning shaft decimated all in its path, living and dead alike, as it careened toward Ashhur. The God of Justice locked both arms in front of his face and lowered his head, and Karak’s magic hit an invisible wall a few feet in front of him, sending tendrils of destructive energy flying in all direction, killing even more soldiers.

Those soldiers, their bodies smoking but still intact, rose a second later.

“COWARD!”
Karak roared.

Velixar reached his chosen god’s side, shoving Lionsbane through the chin of yet another grasping undead. The blade exited the top of its skull with a
pop
. He yanked it free and turned to Karak. The god sent another magical attack Ashhur’s way, only to see his brother deflect it once more. The anger in the deity’s eyes was so great, Velixar thought his god would set the whole world on fire if it led to Ashhur’s defeat, consequences be damned.

“My Lord!” he screamed.

Karak’s glowing eyes turned to him, and for a moment it seemed the deity might burn him to a cinder. Velixar kept his gaze intent on the god’s, using his elbow to smash away another dead attacker.

“It is lost, my Lord,” he said, his voice ragged and gasping to his own ears.

“It cannot be! I will not let it!” snarled Karak, turning back to Ashhur and sending another blast of energy his way.

“It is, but not forever,” Velixar said. “My Lord, we must fall back. When next we come for him, we will be ready!”

Another undead slammed into Velixar. He kicked the thing to the ground and removed its head with two frustrated hacks.

Karak looked at him once more, his gaze softening. Velixar swore he saw not only rage behind those divine eyes, but embarrassment as well. The deity nodded to him, then leapt forward,
gathering
twelve grasping, snapping beasts in his arms. He hurled them straight ahead, toppling the hundred now approaching like so many saplings.

“Soldiers of Karak, my brave warriors,” his god called out. “We must retreat. We have failed this day, but we must live to fight again!”

His voice carried throughout the settlement, and the remaining Eastern soldiers turned tail and sprinted for the hole in the wall. Karak placed his hand on Velixar’s shoulder, and the strength that had previously left him returned tenfold. The pendant on his chest pulsed as he slid Lionsbane back into its sheath. Together, the god and the First Man raised a wall of fire, shielding the retreating soldiers from the advancing undead. Grunting, he poured all his anger into the spell, heightening the flames. Finally, the last brave stragglers limped through the gate, and the god and his prophet followed suit, Karak having to duck beneath the jagged opening.

Once outside, Velixar saw thousands of soldiers tramping across the snow-covered valley toward their distant camp, where black smoke billowed.
No.
The last of their supplies were burning. He shot one last glance behind him, saw the undead pouring out of the gap in the wall, but noticed they didn’t pursue. They stopped the moment they emerged, forming a wall of decaying flesh, their dimly shining eyes staring straight ahead. Not wanting to see any more, Velixar turned away, quickening his pace to keep up with Karak’s much longer strides. Where once there was confidence, frustration now simmered.

“All this time . . . for nothing,” Velixar said. “How did this happen? Victory was there, we held it in our hands . . . ”

Karak gazed down at him, and the pendant on his chest throbbed.

“I made a mistake, High Prophet,” the god said. “And now all of Dezrel shall suffer for it. I offered mercy, yet only death will suffice for my brother and his people. So be it. If he will turn his own dead into soldiers, then let us make soldiers of his entire kingdom as we burn it to the ground.”

A bright flash came from Patrick’s left, followed by a gust of hot wind that knocked him off the wall. He lost hold of Winterbone and landed on the ground on the other side with a
thud
, then rolled down into the bunker. His head rattled and he shook it. Lying just in front of him was Warden Ludwig. The Warden’s eyes were open and unblinking, already gone milky in death. Patrick watched in horror as a faint light began to shine deep within those unblinking eyes. The body shuddered once, and Ludwig lifted his head. He looked right at Patrick, though there was no recognition in his gaze. The Warden slowly hauled his body off the cold ground and walked, hunched over, out of the bunker. The flap of flesh on his chest sagged like a panting tongue.

Patrick scampered after him, picking Winterbone up along the way, and watched as Ludwig hopped over the bunker and re-entered the fray. Another bright flash came, momentarily bringing stars to his vision, and he blinked and turned around. There he saw Ashhur, standing not two hundred feet away from him and surrounded by a crowd of bleeding humans and Wardens. Ashhur looked imposing, a scowl on his face and his hair fluttering behind him like golden smoke. The light coming from his eyes was so intense that Patrick couldn’t gaze at it directly. He turned his head slightly and squinted, watching as the deity raised his hand. Another
whoosh
ensued, and a massive spiral of dark matter detonated not ten feet in front of the god, sending streamers of dissipating energy in all directions. Patrick had to duck before one of those streamers struck him in the side of the head.

“We have failed this day, but we must live to fight again!”

He recognized that voice. How could he not? It had been seared into his brain in the aftermath of the attack on Haven. In a daze, he took a step backward and peered over the low wall. Sure enough, there in the distance he saw Karak, the deity just as imposing as Ashhur in his black armor and with his flaming ethereal sword. The god was backing away through the horde of vicious dead things, fending off dozens of them at a time. And beside him, his eyes alight with crimson, was Jacob Eveningstar. God and man both then lifted their hands, and a massive sheet of flame rose into the air. The flames raced across the ground, becoming a wall all their own, blotting out Patrick’s vision. A good number of the walking dead were set alight, but that didn’t stop their forward momentum. They continued to pursue even though their skin charred and smoked.

Then, not ten minutes later, it was over. The wall of flame fizzled away. A few hundred living soldiers remained within the walls, dashing this way and that, trying to escape any way they could. He even saw a score of them along the far wall to his right, tiny from such a great distance, attempting to climb the staircase. A cluster of men and women wearing burlap chased after them, fists pumping as they shouted. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, for the sound of weeping and moaning drowned out all else.

There were wide patches of muddy earth all around him, littered with discarded bits of armor and even a few wriggling limbs. There were also the corpses of at least two hundred horses out there, somewhere among them his own mare. Yet though the dead horses stayed on the ground, the human corpses persisted in walking. There were thousands of them streaming out the gap in the wall, but they didn’t pursue Karak and his soldiers across the snowy field. Instead, they spread out once they exited the outer wall, lining up in a formation of living death. Patrick felt disgusted just to look at them . . . and his horror peaked when he saw Denton hobbling among them, his right arm dangling by a thread, his gait lurching. Patrick closed his eyes. Barclay would be overcome with grief, if the boy still lived.

Finally, he allowed himself to consider the battlefield again. Dazed people were moving about all around him, appearing almost as mindless as the living dead. The wounded were tended to, and he even saw a young man wandering among the numbers of the walking corpses, eyes brimmed with tears as he scanned every face. Patrick turned away from the sight, but in doing so he was forced to look at his childhood home as it sat atop its hill. There was a crowd packed around Manse DuTaureau, more people than he had seen in a single place in all his life. For a moment he wondered if they were cheering or sobbing over what had just transpired, or if they were like Patrick and felt nothing but revulsion.

War makes monsters of us all.

“Fuck that,” Patrick muttered.

He jammed Winterbone into the earth, turned on his heels, and marched toward Ashhur, farther along the bunker. His sorrow bloomed, even though he caught sight of Preston and Edward assisting with the injured. He also saw Tristan, and the youth raised a weary hand to him in greeting. Patrick ignored him and picked up his pace. Just as the soldiers had done when he rode through the walls, the multitude of weary people gave him a wide berth as he walked. When he reached Ashhur, he found the god on one knee, hovering over Master Warden Ahaesarus. Ashhur touched the Master Warden’s chest, his hands lighting up a brilliant white, and Ahaesarus cried out. A chorus of
snaps
and
pops
followed, and Patrick watched the Warden’s nearly severed leg gradually stitch back together. There had been many times in the past when Patrick had felt awed by such a spectacle. Now was not one of those times.

When the deed was done, three Wardens helped Ahaesarus to his feet and supported him as he limped away. Other men and women began approaching the god, but immediately retracted when they spotted Patrick coming up from the rear. Ashhur turned around and looked at him. The deity wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked more exhausted than he had back in Haven.

“My son,” Ashhur said.

“Your Grace,” Patrick said softly. He spoke his next words without thought. “Does that name even fit any longer?”

“How dare you?” shouted an injured Warden flanking Ashhur. Patrick recognized Judah, one of Ahaesarus’s closest confidants.

“Leave, Judah,” the deity said.

“I cannot, your Grace. He has—”

“Leave.”

Judah, his eyes showing hurt, gradually bowed and backed away. Ashhur turned his attention back to Patrick.

“What in the ever-living fuck did you do?” Patrick asked coldly.

“I did what was necessary,” answered Ashhur, even more coldly. “There are no more rules now, my son. I must protect my children.”

“This . . . ” Patrick waved his hand at the undead streaming out of the wall. “This is an abomination.”

“Is it any greater an abomination than the thousands of my dead children Karak has laid at my feet?”

Patrick felt his righteous fury beginning to falter.

“But at what price?” he asked. “What of allowing your children to mourn their dead? There is supposed to be
peace
after death. That’s what you always told us. Not . . . not
this
!”

“Their souls are safe in the afterlife,” said Ashhur. “I have raised their earthly bodies and nothing more. What you witness are empty shells.”

“But what about your children? What of their grief? How do you think they feel watching the corpses of their loved ones strolling about? Did you think of
that
?”

The deity looked disappointed. “One cannot grieve if one
i
s dead.
”

Patrick went to retort but held his tongue.
Good point.
Finally, after a long pause, he said, “But what happens when Karak returns? You know he will. Will your army of corpses help us then?”

“Karak will not have a chance to return.
We
will pursue
him
, even if we must chase him all the way to his own pathetic
kingdom
.” For a moment, it seemed like smoke curled out of Ashhur’s eyes, a sight that made Patrick shiver. “His army is in shambles, his lines broken.”

“But how can we, with all we’ve lost?” asked Patrick. He glanced over his shoulder at the decimation of Mordeina to prove his point.

Finally, Ashhur’s expression softened, and his massive fingers wrapped around Patrick’s shoulder.

“It is true we have lost much,” he told him wearily. “But should we allow my brother to gather himself and come back at us, we will lose
everything
. Karak began this war, and I will end it, even if I must empty every grave in all of Dezrel.”

C
HAPTER

29

I
t was risky to linger outside the Castle of the Lion, even during daylight hours. Sisters of the Cloth were constantly about, keeping close watch on the weary female populace as they shuffled through their daily routines. The Sisters seemed on edge now, presumably because over a hundred of their numbers had disappeared in previous months. They eyed everyone with suspicion. Civilians who appeared the slightest bit dubious were grabbed and dragged pleading into the castle for interrogation.

Over the seven days she had spent spying on the castle, Laurel Lawrence hadn’t seen a single one of them reemerge.

She was there again, sitting in a rickety chair by the side of the cobbled road, a seller’s cart filled with inexpensive baubles in front of her. The cart had been pieced together out of discarded lumber from crumbling houses; the trinkets had been collected from the belongings of those hiding out in the caverns beneath the Black Bend. Laurel was dressed in her Specter’s garb, a decrepit old woman with tangled hair and filthy skin. She made certain to look each passerby in the eye and call out in her false old crone voice. “Half a copper for a top! A quarter copper for a set of rings! One gold for the elixir of love!”

She had no such elixir, only a capped porcelain vial filled with cheap brandy, but she felt compelled to shout it anyway. With most of the street merchants offering at least one expensive, unbelievable item, it would have been suspicious if she didn’t. She also thought it a small rebellion to sell a love elixir in a city where there were so few men.

The weary citizens passed her by as always, bundled against
the co
ld. Only one woman stopped, a child hanging off each arm. There were heavy purple bags beneath her eyes and her skin was pale. One of the children was sleeping, his rosebud lips pressed against the woman’s neck; the other, a small girl no more than three, sat in the crook of her mother’s right arm, draped in an outrageously large fur blanket. Neither looked in Laurel’s direction.

“Ooh,” the little girl said, pointing at something on the table. Her fingers were sickly and white.

“Yes, Soleh,” said the mother, her voice sleepy. “Which one are you looking at?”

The little girl pointed more exuberantly. “The dolly. It’s pretty.”

“It is, Soleh. Very pretty.”

Laurel was taken aback by the sound of the girl’s name. While it was a relatively common practice for those in and around Veldaren to name their children after the First Families—she had even met a handful of people named Thessaly, the most forgettable of Clovis Crestwell’s children—she had not heard anyone utter the name of the former minister in quite some time. She took a step backward, gazing intently at the mother, but the woman showed no interest in meeting her gaze.

“I want, Mommy,” little Soleh said.

The mother finally lifted her eyes, and Laurel could see a hint of recognition on her face.

“How much for the doll?” she asked.

“Um . . . it’s . . . ,” began Laurel, but she quickly snapped her mouth shut. She’d forgotten her old crone voice. She cleared her throat and said, “two coppers” in a hoarse croak.

The woman squinted at her, cocked her head slightly, and then looked at her daughter. “I’m sorry, Soleh. We only have a half copper left.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid
, Laurel chastised herself inwardly.

Little Soleh’s bottom lip jutted out, and her eyes grew watery. “But I
want it
.”

“We can’t, dear.” Her eyes began darting left and right, her words in a rush. “Please, darling, don’t make a scene.”

“I want the dolly!”

The child’s display had caught the attention of the Sisters lingering nearby. The mother glanced up at them, fear washing over her face. “We can’t, Soleh. I’m sorry.”

The mother started to walk away. The child continued crying.

Laurel snatched up the doll and circled around the cart, this time making sure to limp the way the Specter always did. “Wait,” she called out, and the mother turned. The Sisters were approaching them now, and the mother’s eyes flicked in their direction.

“Here,” said Laurel, placing the doll into little Soleh’s reaching, needy hands. “No payment necessary—seeing the smile on your daughter’s face is enough.” She rustled Soleh’s hair while the girl gathered the doll to her chest and hugged it.

“Th-thank you,” said the mother.

One of the Sisters had reached them, a short girl with arresting blue eyes. Laurel backed away. The Sister placed her hand on the mother’s shoulder and stared intently at her.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry for the disturbance,” the mother said. “I was just out for some bread.”

The Sister nodded to her, then turned to face her approaching brethren. She held up her hand. The other Sisters inclined their heads and turned away, heading back to their posts. The mother breathed out a shaky sigh. The short Sister reached up and playfully flicked little Soleh under the chin before gesturing for the mother to be on her way.

“Thank you, thank you,” the mother repeated as she hustled down the road.

The Sister swiveled around and looked at Laurel. Those soulful blue eyes flicked to her cart, and Laurel immediately turned around and limped back toward it. The Sister fell in beside her.

“Thanks,” Laurel whispered out of the side of her mouth.

Lyana, her face obscured by her wrappings, said nothing.

When they arrived at the cart, Lyana performed the ruse of examining all of the baubles resting on the cart’s flat surface. She cast a quick look behind her before asking about what had happened in her hushed, childlike voice. She held up a small tome that was for sale, its leather cover layered with stains and dust.

Laurel leaned forward as if looking at the tome along with her. “Just a scared woman.”

“Why did she panic?”

“Because I forgot to disguise my voice. If she were caught and brought before the judges, we both know what would happen.”

The girl nodded, and Laurel could not suppress her shudder. It was eerie to see Lyana back in her wrappings. Sometimes she found herself wondering if her young companion would fall back into the thrall of her former order.

“How did you forget to alter your voice?” Lyana asked. “You’re always so careful.”

Laurel thought about telling her, but decided to lie. “I’m just tired. I’ll concentrate harder next time. We still have a few hours before it’s time.”

“Good.”

Lyana’s eyes glazed over, and she pivoted on the balls of her feet, carelessly tossing the tome back onto the cart before walking away. Again, Laurel felt unease. She knew it was an act, but still . . . when Lyana donned her wrappings, she became a different woman altogether.

The hours dragged by. Few customers approached her cart, their meager coin needed to pay the fish, meat, bread, vegetable, and medicinal sellers instead. That left Laurel with ample time to lose herself in thought. It hadn’t been an easy decision to start coming here, lingering just outside the castle’s portcullis in full view of the frozen corpses that still swayed on the wall. Laurel often felt like a sheep wandering into the lion’s den, causing her to wonder if this was worth the risk of exposure.

Of course it’s worth it. What else can we do?

The situation for those who railed against Veldaren’s new leadership had grown worse by the day. The fountain was now watched, and many who had helped those fleeing Karak’s law, including Ursula and Tristessa, the mother and daughter from the cobbler’s, had been executed before that very fountain, their heads lopped from their bodies while a broken populace looked on. No more communications reached the rebellion, no more stray Sisters, bandits, or other frightened souls entered their midst. The Sisters of the Cloth pressed closer and closer to the Black Bend, putting fear in the hearts of the masses. They began pulling the poor and downtrodden from their homes, hauling them away for judgment. The Judges also spread out their area of search during their nighttime hunts. They were simply getting much too close. Ten days ago the male lion had devoured one of the families living in a ramshackle building on the outskirts of the Bend itself. Those who resided aboveground in the Bend were frightened beyond belief, and though most topsiders didn’t know there was a settlement growing daily beneath their feet, Laurel knew it was only a matter of time before the caverns were discovered.

It had been Karl Dogon, King Eldrich’s bodyguard, who demanded action.

“The Judges may be the swords that stalk the night, and the Sisters the ax that rules the day,” Karl had said, “but the arm that wields them both is a single man. Joben Tustlewhite is the true ruler of this city. Were the mumbling priest out of the picture, it would
be left to the acolytes to carry on in his wake, and they are but boys.
The cowardly councilmen who remain in the priest’s employ would turn on them in a heartbeat and lock the Judges away for good. We need to kill him. How difficult can it be to take the life of a
single man
?”

As it turned out,
very
.

The mumbling priest spent his evenings in Karak’s Temple in the undeveloped far eastern corner of the city. Every morning just after sunrise, a carriage containing twelve Sisters would ride up to the temple to retrieve him. They accompanied him all the way to the castle. The priest would them remain in the castle all day, never once showing his face outside until an hour before sunset. Then he would reappear, again accompanied by twelve Sisters—it was impossible to tell whether they were the same twelve or not—and the wagon would carry him back to the temple, where the acolytes waited for him to arrive. The man was never alone.

For the last seven days, Laurel and her cohorts had charted
the man’s
movements, hoping that his routine would change. Yet, he always kept the same schedule, the time only shifting because the days were growing longer. At first they thought they could secretly place one of the former Sisters among them, perhaps Harmony or even Lyana, and slip a poison into the cup of cider and brandy they brought him each morning. Pulo insisted that was too risky, as a man of Tustlewhite’s importance would most likely choose his guardians carefully, perhaps even make them stand before the Judges to prove their loyalty. They couldn’t chance attempting the kill close to the castle, for with all the Sisters around, whoever did the deed would be subject to death or, even worse, capture. Also out was attacking the carriage once it reached the Road of Worship. Twenty men wouldn’t be enough to overpower the Sisters before Tustlewhite called the Judges, as Dogon claimed he could. Two hundred men could easily run through the Sisters, but the same problem remained: Should the priest summon the lions before he was killed, whatever size force they brought would be decimated.

And so they watched, and they waited, hoping to find an opening they could use. But it seemed the only thing going their way was the warming of the weather. It hadn’t snowed for almost three weeks now, and though there was still ice on the ground, the snow within the city was almost gone.

Laurel watched as the sun finally drooped near the horizon. The other sellers began packing up their carts, so she did the same. The exhausted women then shoved their wares along the road, flanked by the Sisters. One of them joined Laurel as well, and she needed to check twice to make sure it was Lyana. She breathed a sigh of relief and steered her cart around the corner, allowing the other street merchants and their tails to pull ahead of her. As usual, none seemed to even notice she had fallen behind. Someone always had to be the last in line, after all, and she appeared to be an old woman. By the time she rounded the corner onto South Road, the others were far ahead.

Once out of view of the castle, she and Lyana glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then hastily shoved the cart into a slender alley, cutting between an abandoned apothecary and a smithy. They slid open the side door to the smithy and pushed the cart inside, careful to not make much noise. Then Laurel stripped out of her heavy, beaten shift and fur jacket. The cold made her teeth chatter as she reached below the cart and slipped her arms into a padded jerkin.

“That’s better,” she whispered.

“Ready?” asked Lyana. Laurel turned to her, saw the girl’s expression shift beneath her wrappings. It looked like she was grimacing.

“Ready,” she said.

They shut the door and climbed to the top of the smithy, which allowed them a clear view of the castle and its walls. The roof was the safest place to be at this time of day, as the Sisters were now making their way home and no longer watching the city from above. The Castle of the Lion was just south of the great fountain at the hub of the city, and the area around it had at one time been densely populated. The buildings lining South Road were set close together, their roofs often separated by mere inches. Because of that, when Laurel peered over the edge, it was like gazing at a landscape of pointed clay dunes and flat drab platforms.

“He’s coming,” Lyana whispered.

Laurel narrowed her eyes at the distant castle and saw the wagon exit the portcullis, five Sisters hanging off either side of it. The driver, another Sister, cracked the reins, and the two horses pulling the wagon began to trot. They turned west out of the castle, heading their way.

“Let’s go,” said Laurel.

The two of them hopped from rooftop to rooftop, taking care to keep themselves out of sight, as the Sisters were still present on the streets. At one point Laurel slipped on a slanted roof, sending a clay shingle sliding over the side, where it smashed on the ground below. “Shit,” she muttered, her fingers tightly gripping the roof while she panted. No Sister came to investigate the noise. After a look from Lyana, they kept on moving.

The wagon was a half mile behind them, slowly lumbering along the road. Whenever it came upon another conveyance, the Sisters would stare menacingly at the driver until they gave room to pass. The sun dipped lower. In less than an hour, it would sink below the horizon, and the roars would begin.