When Ravens Call: The Fourth Book in the Small Gods Epic Fantasy Series (The Books of the Small Gods 4)

by Bruce Blake

  "My queen. Is everything all right?"

  His words registered but her anger continued pressing her lips too tightly together for her to respond. Her teeth remained clenched as her mind worked. How could her husband be so nonchalant about finding their children?

  It's not your husband who refuses to search harder, it is the king.

  She wanted to believe it, but the words rang with untruth. The monarch should express concern for the heir to the throne, at the very least, even if he considered the princess expendable. If Teryk didn't return, what did it mean to the future of the kingdom?

  A thought struck her so suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks. The queen's guard clattered to a halt behind her, near enough he'd come close to running into her.

  "He knows," she whispered.

  "Who knows?" Strylor scratched his ear. "Knows what?"

  She turned, not wanting to engage the man, but she needed to release her thoughts.

  "The king won't do anything else to find my children," she said between clenched teeth. She didn't look the queen's guard in the eye, choosing to direct her gaze toward the red carpet lining the hall floor. "I must take matters into my own hands."

  XXI Teryk – Goddess

  Teryk inhaled a sharp breath as though he'd been underwater too long. His eyelids jerked open and daylight blinded him; he threw an arm across his face to block it out until his eyes adjusted.

  His shoulder ached, his finger throbbed, the pain reminding him of the forest, the gray shapes. He wasn't in the woods anymore, he understood without seeing. Acrid smoke replaced the scent of loam and cedar. Instead of the chirp of birds and buzz of insects, fires crackled.

  Panic formed in Teryk's gut, swirling and expanding until it tingled along his limbs and threatened to choke his breath. He moved his arm away, forced his eyes open and stared up at a firmament marred by smudges of gray and black. Amongst it, the bright yellow sun glowed, its light perverted by the wafting smoke. It took a heartbeat for the prince to realize this wasn't sunlight—its glow flickered, its size grew. His memory skipped back to the black and white beach of the land across the sea, the balls of fire falling out of the sky. He leapt to his feet, every muscle and joint in his body protesting as though he'd been lying in a single position as the seasons turned repeatedly around him.

  A quick scan of the area revealed his location, yet it took longer for him to recognize it. This wasn't the courtyard he'd grown up with, full of gardens and lush grass, statues and the lone base of one ruined Pillar of Life. In this courtyard, two of the fabled monuments still stood while the others lay in ruins. Deep scars cut into the ground, churned the earth leaving no grass or gardens discernible, fires burned and smoke billowed. Amongst the crackle of wood consumed by fire, a screech filled the prince's ears, distracting him as it grew louder until he realized it was the fireball hurtling toward him making the sound.

  His legs sprang to action before his mind thought to tell them to do so. Two paces and his feet caught. He stumbled, shuffled forward three more steps on hands and knees before finding his footing again, rushed headlong only to skid to a halt six more farther, his escape cut off by the river.

  Steam rose from the rushing water and he noticed the heat surrounding him, pressing on his flesh. Sweat sprang to his forehead, dampened his clothes. Bits of debris floated past—chunks of wood, pieces of cloth, what might have been a detached limb. Teryk tore his gaze away, directed it back toward the fireball hurtling groundward, its swirling glow now too close and too bright for him to look at directly. He raised his arm, closed his eyes, and clamped his jaw tight, awaiting the impact meant to take his life and end the quest to fulfill his destiny.

  It hit with a thump severe enough to shake the ground beneath his feet and fill his head with a roar. A wave of heat washed over him, threatening to push him back, send him over the edge of the bank into the near-boiling river, but he held his place. The sound of fire increased until another noise added to the tumult, one Teryk recognized as the scrape of rock rubbing against rock. He lowered his arm, lifted his chin.

  The fireball had struck the base of a pillar, knocking a chunk free and impinging the integrity of the massive column. The remaining marble wasn't enough to hold the weight and it crumbled beneath the monument's mass. It tilted toward the river, falling like a tree, and Teryk followed its path, watching with an interest he couldn't have explained. Not until it neared hitting the ground did he notice the figure standing near it. He stared up at the chunks tumbling his way but made no move to avoid them, as though frozen in place. The prince opened his mouth to holler a warning but the crunch of the collapsing stone drowned him out, if his throat formed a sound.

  At the last second, the man raised his arms in defense—a useless gesture under the weight of the marble pillar. He folded beneath it like paper. Teryk attempted to leave his place and run toward him, though he realized he'd be beyond help, but he couldn't move. The steam rolling off the river and smoke from the multitude of fires burning across the courtyard swirled around him, held him back.

  A shape formed, the arms, legs, and torso appearing vaporous, and Teryk gasped.

  How did he get out from under the pillar?

  He held his breath, waiting for the man to come into view, expecting to find him hobbling, twisted, broken. His hands curled into fists, tightened until his fingernails dug into his palm.

  But no figure emerged. The steam and smoke continued swirling together, taking the vague outline of a woman's silhouette striding toward him. Teryk blinked hard, licked his lips and tasted the salt of his perspiration on them. Might this be a waking dream of his mother or Danya? No, not a dream—an energy he'd never experienced emanated from the shape, pressing against him like a physical thing demanding his attention. Sweat rolled down his forehead, collected on his brow, perspiration dampening flesh and clothing alike. He blinked again, wiped his arm across his head to remove the moisture and hoped for the vision to disappear along with it.

  It didn't.

  Instead, the silhouette moved closer, floating above the charred ground of the courtyard until a woman stepped out of the smoke as though she'd been present the entire time.

  Her hair fell past her shoulders, disappearing down her back. One heartbeat it appeared black as the night itself, the next a flash hinted at a flaxen hue. Her skin first shone smooth and pale, then became the color of singed sugar. As the prince watched, her features skipped from one appearance to another until he understood he didn't look upon a single woman, but all women.

  "What are you doing here?"

  He heard her words, understood their meaning, but it didn't seem she'd direct them at him.

  "Who... who are you? Are you real?"

  "Nothing is real and everything is." She stared at him, her gaze so penetrating it nudged the back of his skull. "There is what you perceive and what you believe. How did you get here?"

  "I... I don't know."

  Her face, hair, height, and body shape continued to shift as she stood before him. One moment short, pale, round, the next tall, dark, slender. Mane brushing her shoulder tops, hanging down her back, then her scalp shimmered smooth and bald before locks returned. Sometimes a countenance he recognized flashed by—his nanny, or a servant he'd seen in the halls of Draekfarren—but each disappeared before he knew for sure.

  Without appearing to take a step, she stood in front of him, standing too close. She raised her arm, laid a hand no him that at first had short, stubby fingers, then long narrow ones against his cheek. Instinct told him to pull away, but he couldn't. Didn't want to.

  "The beach," she said, eyelids sliding closed. "The meadow. The forest."

  She inhaled, and he involuntarily breathed with her. Acrid smoke singed his nostrils, burning wood and charred flesh. His stomach lurched.

  "They sent you."

  Her eyes snapped open and her hand dropped from his cheek and a piece wrenched inside him, as though she took a chunk of him along with it. He drew a shuddering
breath, hoping to fill the unexpected emptiness, and tasted the same sickening smoke. Unable to stop himself, he turned his head and vomited on the charred grass at the edge of the river. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he retched again and again with nothing in his gut to expel.

  He remained bent at the waist for a time, awaiting another bout of sickness, but his gorge settled. Like an old man not used to standing, he straightened, wiped wetness away on his sleeve. She stood staring at him, eyes blue, brown, hazel, green. Waiting for him.

  "Who are they?" he asked, finally.

  "You know who they are. Their legend was born that day. And today," she gestured over her shoulder, toward the wreckage at her back, "because of that day, the others are born."

  She stepped aside for him to see past her. Fireballs had ceased falling from the sky, but flames continued raging in the courtyard, blocking much of his view behind flickering tongues of fire and billowing smoke. As it drifted, he caught site of the fallen Pillar and a thought struck him.

  No living person in my time has seen the Pillars of Life.

  A shiver rattled up his spine, and he stared at the column, searching for the figure trapped beneath it until the drifting haze obscured it again. His gaze followed the break in the gray, shifting curtain until his eyes fell on another silhouette. He was certain it hadn't been there before.

  Twenty paces away, the thing was barely recognizable as a human. The figure's reddened skin shone with wetness; no clothing, no hair, nothing but crimson flesh pulled too tight over bone, features and distinctions smeared and gleaming.

  Burned.

  Teryk shuddered. What pain this person—male or female, the damage done made it too difficult to tell—must be in. The shape tottered its way across the courtyard, extending first one shaking foot, then another. The smoky veil parted before each step, allowing him to keep visual contact with his or her precarious journey. With each step, the prince expected the figure to tumble, dead or close to, but he or she pressed on, amended their path to avoid stumbling in a blackened indentation. Once past it, the burnt shape stopped beside the huge chunks of shattered stone he'd seen fall, smashed on the ground and across the bank of the river.

  Over dozens of seasons after the pillars fell, workers cleared the rubble from Draekfarren, save one piece, which remained in Teryk's time as a reminder. Many considered it a tribute to the Goddess and her strength, others a warning about the fragility of life. King after king promised to rebuild them—including his own father—but other things always stood in the way: war, money, a lack of skilled labor. Work to return them to their former glory never began.

  The figure dropped to its knees by the fractured pillar—beside the piece that survived in Teryk's life—shoulders hunched in defeat. Its body shook, sobbing, and the prince watched this once-human deformity lean forward, place its hand on the spot where the marble toppled on the first person he'd spied. Only then did he realize the ever-changing woman no longer stood before him. Here he remained, in a long-ago time, alone but for a body burned beyond recognition.

  His heart sped in his chest.

  Without knowing why he should, the compulsion to rush to the figure's aid overcame Teryk. He hurried from his spot by the river, weaving his way between smoldering bodies and chunks of rubble as he crossed toward the destroyed pillar. His soles thunked against the dead earth, scorched grass crunching beneath his heels as the stench of charred things invaded his nose. Debris forced him to watch his footing as he navigated what, in his memory, should have been gardens and lawns, not a burned space littered with detritus and devastation. But not just broken rock and shattered trees, many shallow indentations pockmarked the ground, each of them scarred to the dirt.

  He skidded to a halt a few paces before he reached the disfigured shape kneeling by the fallen Pillar. The person laid a red hand on the other pinned beneath the cracked marble—a pair of charred legs protruding from under tons of stone. No more recognizable than the tight-skinned being of weeping sores before him. He stood watching, hesitant to interrupt despite the urge to rush over that brought him here, and one of Nanny's stories returned to his memory. Given the time and place he found himself, he realized who the two people ruined before him must be: the priest and priestess.

  Rak'bana and Ine'vesi.

  She threw her head back and cried out toward the sky, startling him, the sound emanating from her burnt and dry esophagus more croak than scream. He reached out a tentative hand, as though it might offer comfort to her ravaged flesh and tortured soul.

  "Are you all right?"

  The ridiculousness of his question struck him as soon as the words left his lips. He thought to apologize for his lack of compassion, but the priestess stopped screaming and jerked her gaze from the sky, turned it toward him.

  "G... Goddess?"

  Teryk gaped at her, then glanced down at himself. To his own eye, his grubby clothes looked no different, made him look no more like a Goddess than ever. He opened his mouth to say so, but she spoke again, interrupting him.

  "I failed you, Goddess. See what my failure forced you to do."

  Tears rimmed her eyes, and he realized she wasn't looking at him, but past him—no, through him. He pivoted, the heel of his boot crunching on the charred dirt. Chill sweat prickled on his brow in stark contrast to the fires burning around the courtyard; a shiver found its way up his spine.

  "The scroll..." the priestess whispered from behind him.

  When he saw the mist forming on the far riverbank, he forgot she'd spoken.

  White as summer cloud, the fog roiled and moved in and around itself without progressing or receding, the billows of gray smoke nearby staying clear of it as though repelled by fear or some other unseen force. Teryk took two steps away from the kneeling priestess, his ears noticing she'd uttered more words, but his brain didn't perceive what she said. A rustle of sound behind him made him think Rak'bana may have found her way to her feet.

  As if responding to his movement, the mist expanded along the river's edge, moving and twisting, taking shapes only to dissipate as fast as they formed.

  Teryk continued toward it, the world around him forgotten. The crunch of his footsteps on burnt grass came to his ears from a long distance. The charred remains of the courtyard became nothing but blurs of darkness to either side of him. The mist mimicked him, moving closer. The prince hurried his pace, driven by a need to get nearer the fog, to see what hid within it.

  The vapor boiled to a stop, several tendrils of white swirling together at the front of it, forming shapes. They became arms, legs, torsos—two wispy forms materializing out of nothing. Teryk gasped and went faster. One shape would rectify itself into the woman he'd seen before, with the ever-changing face. But what of the other? The Priestess Rak'bana taken from this world to the next?

  A form solidified as the prince expected; he was too far away to see the woman's features, but it didn't remain static. He turned his gaze to the second misty silhouette, the swirls of vapor beginning to solidify like the first. Arms formed, flesh the color of the inside of a seashell, not the red, peeling skin he'd seen on the priestess. Legs came into view next, then a torso encased in leather armor. Finally, the mist forming the head began to darken.

  Though they remained too far away, Teryk reached out toward the shapes, as if being closer to them would... what?

  The thought fled him as his foot went over the edge of the riverbank. He plummeted into the steaming river he'd forgotten lay between him and the misty figures. The water scalded his skin. He thrashed and struggled, panic filling him, and his mind recalled his time in the sea, the monsters lurking within it.

  And then he sank.

  XXII Rilum – A Long Time Ago

  Sunlight forced its way through the crack between the fallen log and the ground on which it lay, found Rilum's face like a thief creeping into his space.

  The sailor groaned, rolled onto his back. His joints creaked and protested. His clothes stuck to him, pasted to his skin by m
oisture as easily his own sweat as it might have been dew. He inhaled through his nose, scenting the half-rotten odor of the log he slept under, the staleness of his own body. None of it made him want to open his eyes or climb out from beneath his hiding place, but he knew he couldn't avoid it for long. He felt a sense of duty toward the lad, prince or not.

  As the sleep cleared from his head and the reality—or unreality—of where he was and what had happened returned, Rilum Seaman noticed the dryness of his throat. He attempted to part his lips, found them gummed together, tried to use his tongue to force them apart, except it was glued to the roof of his mouth. Next, he went to crack open his lids but they were stuck, too.

  A bolt of panic lanced through his chest.

  What has this gods-forsaken place done to me?

  Forgetting himself, he jerked his upper torso forward and cracked his head against the log's rough bark. He groaned from behind his affixed lips, raised his hand to his forehead. His fingertips found the scrape with ease, but he couldn't tell if blood welled up within it or not as a sheen of moisture covered his entire body. He lowered his hands to his eyes, dug a knuckle into each to coax his eyelids open.

  A sliver of light squeezed its way through and he almost cried out, in both pain and relief. He resolved to prise them free a little at a time to keep from being blinded. When he regained the ability to see, he levered himself out from under the fallen tree.

  His spine protested as he stood, his knees popped, his shoulders ached. The thing he despised most about getting older was the way his body betrayed him bit by bit, each joint and muscle reminding him of his youth gradually left behind.