Ivin vowed not to say a word until spoken to, but as they exited the town gates and climbed the steep road to the top of the cliffs, he couldn’t take it anymore. “Where’re the rest of the wardens?”
“Ahead.”
Brilliant. Ivin wanted to prod, make demands in the Choerkin name, but Pikarn had run with his Uncle Lovar and Kotin as boys and later at war with Clan Broldun. Stories spoke of him saving both of their lives more than once. Respect was mandatory.
They reached the top of the cliffs and passed the castle’s gates in silence. A granite boulder blackened by fire stood at the side of the road with a hole chiseled in its top, its face carved to read “In fire may loyalty be reborn”, a famous quote from the Book of Leds. Priests preached this to mean that the blasphemous dead who suffered the wrath of the Fire Lion, a manifestation of Sol, while serving penance in the Heretic’s Hell could prove their loyalty to the King of Gods and rise to the Seven Heavens.
At the end of the War of Seven Lies, Holkar Choerkin gave the words a more worldly meaning, strapping Lord Priest Imrok Girn to a stake on this same stone, setting him ablaze for the crime of rebellion against the clans. Every year since, a bonfire marked the occasion here and throughout the clans. This blackened rock, its words, its yearly fire, helped keep the wound between Church and clans raw. It was a tradition Ivin would end if given a choice.
The road beyond was bare rock rut-worn by wagon wheels, with sparse pines and shrub juniper, as well as patches of sedge lining their journey. Ivin spotted a hare now and again, but snow buntings with their trilling songs were more constant companions.
Pikarn broke his silence a horizon out of town. “We’ll meet up with the wardens at Merutven, then head for Ervinhin by way of Muollin.”
Ivin had visited Merutven once, an outpost with a stable and a small but impregnable tower, at least to a youngster’s fancy. Any other day he would look forward to this stop, with pleasant memories of a childhood summer, but Ervinhin dominated his thoughts. “Kotin mentioned a messenger.”
Pikarn pulled a stretch of jerky from his saddlebag and tossed it to Ivin. Ivin’s whiskey-stricken belly growled as he stripped a length to chew on.
“We were headed to shadow Istinjoln next week while hunting Colok. Then the mines crashed down; now, we got dead holies.”
“Dead Priests? Shadow Istinjoln?”
“Lovar said you were a religious boy, taking after your mother. You should know these things.” Pikarn grinned, specks of meat and spice in his teeth. “The Eve of Snows is coming. Lots of high and mighties coming in for the celebration. We already lost holies from Istinjoln. Don’t want no cursed Broldun holy losing their damned head and them muddlers blaming us, do we?”
“No.” Wardens were common in the area, and it made sense, but he didn’t swallow the hook whole. “A Colok attack?”
“Aye. The beasts slaughtered ’em all right. Poor bastards, one body wasn’t even found, as I hear it. A rider came in from Ervinhin, he traded mounts and rode straight through thirty-six candles. Dead holies put folks in a tizzy like that.” Pikarn chortled and spat. “Enard heads the Wardens in Ervinhin and he’s holding the messenger’s body long as he can to give us time to get close, but your poor winds held us back.” The clop of hooves quieted as they moved from stone to dirt road.
“I heard the Colok fed on a band of priests last winter.”
Pikarn grunted, pointed at the jerky. “Exercise your mouth with that, boy.”
Ivin bit into the hard meat, twisting and ripping. He hoped the rest of the wardens were more talkative. They wouldn’t arrive in Merutven until midnight, if then, so it would be a long stretch of silence. Or so he thought. His jerky finished, the Wolverine broke into a series of bawdy tavern songs that reminded Ivin his head pounded. He prayed for silence before the third verse, but the gods weren’t listening.
THEY ARRIVED at Merutven after shadows and dark ruled the land, and after a few candles’ rest in its lone tower, the wardens rode out before dawn on fresh horses. Thirty-two, including Ivin, rode in the company. The Wolverine rattled through most names with the speed of pounding hooves, but slowed when he got to those who rode closest.
“Modan Hiklar, my fist. You’d recognize him better if’n he bathed and shaved more than once a year.”
Modan replied, “I’ll shave and bathe twice when you stop shrinkin’ from age. He used to be tall as a Choerkin y’know, about a hundred years past.” Pikarn’s second winked as he shook Ivin’s hand, a gesture unsuited to greeting Choerkin-blood, but Ivin sensed only one man’s rank mattered here.
Behind the dirt and bushy black beard sat familiar blue eyes, he might’ve met the man at the Fost once or twice, but he knew his reputation: A stalwart of the Wolverine’s who turned down a promotion to head his own Warden Patrol. His notoriety also lay in spearing a priest who defied arrest on accusations of rape.
Pikarn pointed to the only woman in his patrol. “Puxele, we call her Little Sister, so no one gets the wrong-headed notion to try’n take a poke. Last one who did will limp ’til his end, and the other we buried.”
Petite, with a crooked nose and brown hair bundled above her round face, she smiled and rolled her eyes. “He weren’t dead when you stuck him in the ground.”
“Buried him all the same. Over there is Rinold, best godsdamned tracker this side of the Road of Living Stars. We call him the Squirrel. If’n you’ve lost your nuts, blame Puxele, and ask Rinold to find them.”
Short and thin, with a twitch in his right eye where an ugly scar marked him, Rinold laughed harder than the rest. “Good to meet you, Choerkin.”
“The big ugly bastard riding like a sack of potatoes is Suvarn. You might call him tater, but we ain’t found a name as sticks right yet.”
The man’s bulk was enough to give Kotin a wrestle; with cauliflower ears and a nose crooked in two directions, no doubt the man didn’t back out of fights.
Ivin said, “Call him Slick, then.”
Suvarn shrugged. “Nah, Slick done got himself killed last year, wouldn’t wanna take the pretty boy’s good name.”
Ivin found it fascinating most bore a nickname, yet everyone in the Fost and beyond knew not to call Pikarn the Wolverine. Then he feared what nickname he might earn, considering the spoilt turd comment.
Ivin rode on Pikarn’s left owing to his birthright as a Choerkin while Modan took the right flank. He felt them questioning his worth when he looked into the wardens’ eyes; the Wolverine had slotted him into the uncomfortable position of third in command without a day’s ride in experience. Nobody said a word, least not within earshot, but no doubt several eyes on his back figured another deserved his spot of honor.
They traveled at an ambling gait, stopping twice to graze the horses and refresh themselves before and after noon, and just after nightfall they arrived at Muollin, a village protected by a ditched palisade.
They dined on turkey stew and speltbread, and slept on straw-ticked mattresses. Never had such basic food and a lumpy bed tasted so good and commanded sleep so deep. Modan awakened him mid-snore and before sunrise with a blow to his foot. The man’s gap-toothed smile surrounded by ratty beard gazed on him with twisted pleasure.
“You’re piss poor in the saddle, but you snore with the best of them. Breakfast, then on to Ervinhin.”
That meant fewer miles but harsher road.
Ivin rolled out of bed, ate turkey stew and speltbread, which wasn’t quite the delicacy he remembered, and swung into the saddle of a fresh mount as the sun peeked over the horizon.
The Estertok Mountains grew as the day passed, great peaks of stone and snow looming over his future. The company pushed into the foothills midday and an icy rain fell long enough to soak a chill into their bones. Another day they might’ve taken shelter, but the Wolverine pushed on, determined to reach Ervinhin before storms destroyed any trail. The pace was brutal, but the horses ambled all day without a care for the rises and falls of the land. They reached their destination well
after dark.
Ervinhin was a black splotch twinkling with scattered lights amid a dusting of snow on the ground. The palisade walls were pine poles sticking five paces from the ground. The people took Colok raids as a serious threat this far north.
The stables were a welcome sight just inside gates. Ivin handed his reins to a stable girl, eased his right leg over his saddle and dismounted, damned near falling flat on his back. His ass and legs were numb. “Son of a bitch.”
The girl giggled. “Need anything from your saddlebags?” Ivin shook his head, and she led his horse into the stable.
Ivin followed his comrades into the dinner hall, steps high and stretching to regain his land legs. Supper came and went, but tonight the Wolverine kept him and Modan at the table instead of letting them find their beds. A boy poured mugs of mead, watered but still welcome, and they stretched in front of the hearth.
Pikarn finished his mug and ended the awkward silence. “Drain your drinks, boys, ugly work ahead.” He groaned to his feet and led them outside with a lantern in hand. The wind howled through the town’s dirt roads as they walked to a dark storehouse. Inside, the Wolverine lit a twist of straw with his lantern and ignited braziers hanging around the room.
Bodies lay displayed in the cold room, most wore robes denoting their holy status, but across the room stretched corpses clad in mountain gear, trappers or prospectors. Miners. A woman’s skull was caved in, and several eye sockets were black holes. One lacked a head, others their arms or legs, but every one lay as a remarkable display of sanguine brutality.
Ivin reminded himself to breathe before he turned blue. Dead people he’d seen, men killed in battle, a drowned woman at the pier, his own mother, but it failed to prepare him for this carnage.
The Wolverine pointed at holy corpses. “Eighteen bodies, plus the messenger we sent on to Istinjoln. Meaning?”
The quiz caught him offguard, it took a moment before he stammered up an answer. “We’re missing one; messengers travel with nineteen guards, one for each god of the pantheon.”
“The last time Colok struck a messenger’s group was a year back, same damned thing. Wrote it off, seeing as Istinjoln didn’t act like they were missing no one. Twice makes for a hell-kissing coincidence.”
“A captive, or they let one go on purpose?”
“Can’t say as I know.” Pikarn knelt and pulled back a robe. The dead man’s thigh lay ripped open, hunks of flesh missing. “Somethin’ ate on this one.”
Ivin muttered, “Godsdamned Colok.”
“Let’s see your arm, Modan.”
The man pulled up his sleeve to reveal a nasty set of bite scars. He put his forearm next to the dead man’s wounds
“My scars are Colok. This man’s wounds are too small,” Modan said.
Ivin scratched his ear. “Then what?”
“Care to test your chompers?”
The implication took a moment to settle. “You’re saying a man did this?”
“No bleeding at the bite marks, you notice. These gentlemen, and lady, were dead when eaten. Colok killed ’em. I don’t know what the hells done ate on ‘em, but it’s much like a man.”
Life on a tiny island was more sheltered than he’d thought. “Wakened Dead?”
“We thought the same first time ‘round. But the Wakened Dead are dumber’n eating water with a fork and easy to track. Plus, they don’t go eating folks already dead and cold.” He spun on his foot and pointed. “Now those miners, they’ve been eatin’ on while alive, and one poor bastard’s eyes got sucked out. Ever hear of a man capable of that?”
What the hells could do such a thing? No rival faction in Istinjoln, for certain. Still, if they found what creature mutilated these people, the situation led to clan and Church fighting a common enemy. Nothing would bring two foes to the table quicker. The Dævu were creatures of ice and snow who wiped out encampments without so much as a drop of blood left behind. “Wouldn’t be Dævu?”
Pikarn chuckled. “Who’s to say those things even eat? No, now you know what we’re facing: Nothin’ we ever heard of afore. The old man didn’t mention that, eh? But don’t go blaming him, some things a man gotta see himself.”
“Another name of a slave.” Ivin understood the result, but the perpetrator of such atrocities? He needed answers in order to put the pieces together and use them to his advantage. “Whatever they are, they need to die.”
The Wolverine laughed. “Now you sound like a Choerkin.”
Modan said, “The miners were killed a quarter-candle’s ride from the Ihomjo mine, folks helping in the rescue, and the priests weren’t far south of there in the Omindi, twice the chance to catch a trail.”
Meaning the hunt was on come morning. His heart fluttered with fear and excitement, a thrill similar to facing a skilled opponent in a dual, only here the blades wouldn’t be wasters. “I’ve never been more eager for the dawn.”
9
FACES
We tickle and we talk,
our lives gears in a clock.
Wink, blink, sink, and rise.
Wisdom wingless and yet it flies.
not You again. You aren’t here, no, no, not yet
but Do go away astray away anyway.
You aren’t here today
But yesterday, part of my tomorrow’s forever next.
damn your Craven Raven eyes.
—Tomes of the Touched
Thirteen Days to the Eve of Snows
Meris sat cross-legged amid the stars of Skywatch, afloat in the universe, pondering the hairline fractures in the bear scapula she’d used for Ivin’s divination. For the past four days her thoughts couldn’t escape the web of these cracks. The fortune should’ve been clean. It should’ve been simple. It should have been boring.
The bone spoke of many things, but nothing with certainty. The Choerkin would be at war soon, but with whom? The fissure in the bone that might have given an answer as it passed through war god Anzelok’s sword took a sharp turn into uncarved bone. Divinations didn’t do that, but this one had. It meant something, but it was impossible to decipher an answer from a blank code.
“Flummoxed, Meris?”
The voice boomed around her, echoing through the heavens with a power greater than her own. She scowled as she glanced across the empty stars, angry to be startled in her domain.
“Where are you?” She should be alone among the stars, with other oracles at the temple in prayer. No mortal should be able to sneak up on her, not here, in Queen Elinwe’s stars. For a moment, she considered that a god might have spoken to her.
“What about the bone gives you pause?”
The voice was mortal, she knew this as truth. The gods hadn’t spoken directly with their faithful since the Age of God Wars and their violent banishment from the world. Her vocation within the Church, reading the words of the gods in bones, rested on this truth. Still, no man should have been able to set foot in these stars without her knowing. Lord Priest Ulrikt himself might tread the sky without sounding chimes, but, he was in Istinjoln.
“Everything.”
A figure materialized in the unnatural distance of the open sky, walking, but it made no sound. Impossible in the stars where every step played a note of the universe’s song. She tapped the night sky with her fingers and bells chimed at her touch, escalating in pitch, their notes more perfect than any mortal instrument. This man must be a figment of her aging imagination, or a ghost. When the cowl covering the person’s face dropped, she realized it was neither.
An indistinct and shifting face gazed at her, a reflection in slow-moving ripples of a flesh-tone pond. Eyes, nose, and mouth curled and waved, changed colors and shapes, never feminine nor masculine in a pure sense.
Every Barefoot Postulant in their first year of studies for the priesthood heard the rumors of the Lord Priest’s Face. A man or woman so gifted with the arts of Fertility God Tulule’s Prayers of Life that they forsook their own features, living their lives in the guise of others. The
Face could be anywhere, molding their features into anyone to watch and listen.
Forty years ago a group of high priests had plotted Lord Priestess Sadevu’s fall. Testimony at their trial proved the group had been noose tight, speaking to no one outside their circle, but a nameless spy revealed their plot. Inquisitors tortured the conspirators and the lord priestess Sundered their souls, cursing them to walk the world until fading into oblivion. Tongues that dared speculate spoke of the Face, some even claiming to have seen a conspirator’s double. If indeed this was who stood before her, its appearance boded grave tidings.
Her saliva may as well have been a stone sliding down her throat. She stuttered. “Face of Ulrikt.” She prostrated herself on the floor of the heavens.
The Face’s chuckle shifted from masculine to feminine and back again. “Rise, Meris. I am neither a god, nor your lord priest, worthy of your groveling obeisance. We’ve met before, and I bowed before you, wearing a different smile.”
Meris rose to her knees, tried to look the Face in its eyes, but it unnerved her, and her gaze wandered to a distant constellation in the sky. “What can I do to serve you, Lord Face of Ulrikt?”
The person’s face contorted into what might have been a smile, for a moment at least. “All service to me is service to Lord Priest Ulrikt, and to Sol himself.”
“Of course. Understood.”
“Please, hand me the bone.” The Face took it from her outstretched hands and studied it. “This was smoothed?”
“Yes. I’m always prepared if a Choerkin desires a reading. It should have said nothing out of the ordinary.”
The person held it up to the stars, and Meris guessed he, or she, was looking through the holes and cracks. In her decades of divinations, this technique for reading a bone was foreign.
“Bontore did not send this message.”
“But—”
“Tsst!” The Face glared at her, or maybe it did, as a swirl of flesh later the expression more resembled crying. “It was not sent by Bontore nor was it meant for the Choerkin boy. This message is for you.”
Eve of Snows: Sundering the Gods Book One Page 9