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.
Laurel and Lyana didn’t follow the road directly to the fountain; instead, they veered off to the right, heading for the residential sections that sat in the elbow between South Road and the Road of Worship. The buildings were spaced farther apart here, forcing them to descend and walk on the road, but it was actually safer there than it had been on the rooftops. With nearly three-quarters of Veldaren’s residents now gone, either to Karak’s Army, beneath the Bend, or to the grave, the place was nearly deserted. It was also the area where some of the Sisters resided during the night, which meant they would be free to move as they pleased until just before sunset.
Soon the houses ended, and the foundations of unfinished buildings and stacks of rotting timber peppered the landscape. Laurel and Lyanna kept far out of sight, dashing through the field a good half mile away from the Road of Worship. Here the snow was still present, and they ran through the tall grasses, recently uncovered by the thaw, to hide their approach. On the distant road they could see the wagon lumbering along behind them, the Sisters peering out, hands cupped over their eyes to block out the low-hanging sun.
Finally, after running for nearly forty minutes, they arrived at Karak’s Temple. It was an unseemly rectangular structure, five stories high and black as midnight. The onyx lions outside its front entrance were captured in mid-leap, their mouths hanging open in an eternal roar. Lyana grabbed Laurel’s hand, pulling her across the field and toward the building. The wagon was close, almost close enough for the Sisters to see them. Once they reached the small thatch of evergreens that stood on their side of the road, Lyana helped Laurel climb one of the trees before bounding up effortlessly after her.
Finally at a vantage point where they felt it safe to watch without risk of exposure, they sat still and waited.
The wagon pulled up in front of the temple as acolytes stepped outside. The mumbling priest got out of the wagon, what remained of his white hair flapping in the breeze. He pulled his cloak up over his head and approached the boys in red robes. The acolytes escorted him inside. The door closed. The Sisters piled back into the wagon, the driver turned it around, and they plodded away.
The same as every other day.
The sun dipped even lower, half of it now obscured by the mountains to the west. Laurel glanced up at the red lines streaking across the sky. A riotous roar shook the air, vibrating the branches of the tree they were in, knocking bits of ice to the ground. Still she held on, staring out at the blackening structure. She had to remind herself to breathe.
“Laurel, we must go.”
“Not yet,” she replied.
Darkness slowly descended over the land, the last rays of light making the windowless temple look like it was constructed out of living fire. Nothing was happening. Nothing at all. The lion roared again, and Laurel heard it echo all around her.
“Laurel, please. Roddalin will be here come morning. Our time is over.”
Laurel’s head snapped around, and she stared at the girl. “Not yet.”
“We must. The Judges will work their way toward the Bend. If we are not there before then . . . ”
Laurel reached out and grabbed the girl by her wrappings with both hands. “Listen to me, Lyana. We must do this. There has to be something we haven’t seen. Something, anything . . . ”
“Even if there is something, how would we know? The temple has no windows, Laurel!”
In her panic her voice rose, and Laurel placed a hand over her breast to calm her.
“I don’t know, Lyana. But I need to watch, I need to try. Please allow me that. None have stayed this late already, which means we are seeing things others haven’t.”
“Even if that is nothing?”
“Even so.”
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Lyana huffed and sat back against the branch. She unwound the wrappings from her head, gradually revealing the pretty young girl beneath, the girl that looked so much like her grandmother, the dearly departed Soleh Mori. Laurel found herself staring. She’d grown fond of the young sprite. After all, they had so much in common. Neither had a family any longer. All they had was each other.
She was so focused on Lyana that at first she thought the sound that reached her ears was a trick of her imagination. But then she saw Lyana’s eyes widen, and she turned around, inching forward on the branch until she could see the whole of the temple clearly.
The top of the structure rose above their spot in the tree, and it was from there that the sound originated. It was the singing of a plethora of innocent voices. She saw outlines on the roof of the temple in the dying light, and many flashes of red.
It was the acolytes, marching in a circle as they sang Karak’s glory.
She squinted, confused, and then strangely, in the center of the temple above the massive door, a single shutter opened. There stood the mumbling priest, Joben Tustlewhite, breathing in the cold night air. Laurel could see everything inside the room—the bed, the cupboard, the candles, and a writing desk against the far wall. She looked on as the priest turned away from the window, went to the desk, and sat down.
Still, the acolytes sang on the roof.
Lyana was suddenly beside her, head poking out of the branches. “What’s going on?”
Laurel threw a hand over her mouth and shoved her to the side, almost losing her balance and falling out of the tree in the process. She held her breath as Joben stood up, came to the window, and peered out into the oncoming blackness. When he saw nothing, he returned to sit at his desk.
Putting a finger to her lips, Laurel pointed to the ground. Lyana got her message and silently descended the tree, making sure to help Laurel along the way. It was times like these that the last surviving member of House Lawrence ridiculed her own childhood love of girly things. Had she shadowed the boys for even half her youth, she would be much better prepared for the deeds before her.
Their feet touched ground, and they waited a few moments as the acolytes continued to sing. As one song ended, another started. When it became apparent that they wouldn’t be stopping soon, Laurel and Lyana crept back along the tree line and then began running, praying that the boys were too intent on their praise of that bastard Karak to look down and notice them.
None did. They passed by Karak’s Temple and continued to head east, then north into the forest bordering Veldaren, their footfalls crunching much too loudly in the thin layer of icy snow. The sky was completely dark now, the stars shimmering overhead. It was only when the temple was the size of a child’s block behind them that they chanced stopping. Lyana whirled in place, searching for signs of the Judges, and Laurel doubled over and coughed.
“What was that?” asked Lyana.
Laurel spit a wad of phlegm and wiped a stray strand off her chin, which in turn removed some of the caked-on mud that assisted her Specter disguise.
“That, Lyana, was our opportunity,” Laurel said with a tired smile. “Now let’s get going before the lions find us. We need to talk to Pulo and King Eldrich. We have a priest to kill.”
CHAPTER
30
After a while, it was hard for Ahaesarus to tell the difference between the walking dead and their living counterparts—other than those missing limbs, that is. They all had the same blank expressions on their faces, moved with the same hunched, uneven gaits, and were covered with equal amounts of filth. If not for the tears shed by the living and the gaping wounds marking the flesh of the shuffling corpses, they might as well have been one and the same.
Over the last four days, Ahaesarus had taken a rough count of the reanimated dead that stood guard outside Mordeina’s walls. Their numbers included four thousand soldiers of Karak’s and sixteen thousand of Ashhur’s children. The remaining three hundred and twenty-nine were Ahaesarus’s brothers in servitude. They towered above the rest, majestic even in death, their skin pale and their clothes tattered. Of the original thousand that had been saved by Celestia and Ashhur when the winged demons descended on Algrahar, only one hundred and eighty-three remained living. Ahaesarus thought of the destruction he had witnessed during those fateful days, of the screams of his family and the ripping of steel through flesh, and it came to him that everything had come full circle. His second life had become just as anguished as his first. In his dark moments before sleep, he wondered if it all had been worth the trouble for him and his brothers.
Of course it was. We helped create Paradise. We helped forge peace.
Yet now that peace was gone. Now Paradise was in shambles, Karak setting fire to the countryside as he fled back to his kingdom across the river. The eastern sky glowed red day and night. All of it, ruined. And for what? What remained now that all safety and prosperity was gone? He looked down at his right leg. Beneath the thick fabric of his breeches, there would be a white scar there, encircling his calf entirely, a reminder of a wound that would have been mortal had Ashhur not been there to mend him—though the god had been too weak, too overly strained, to heal him completely. He flexed the leg, and felt the dull ache of pain in his bones. It was a sensation he knew would follow him to his death, whenever that happened to be, and loathing churned in his gut.
There is justice. There is retribution.
He heard a familiar pleading voice above the murmur of beseeching sobs and looked up. The living citizens of Paradise were weaving their way through the wall of undead, seeking out their loved ones as they had been for days now. He scanned their numbers, searching for the voice he’d heard, and found Judarius standing above the other undead, his dark hair matted and clumped in greasy tendrils, his face a mask of ruin. Azariah was standing before him, grasping his dead brother’s hand. The shortest Warden muttered words of a long-forgotten prayer, an entreaty to Rana, the god of their long-dead world. It was a prayer Ahaesarus knew well: “Treaty of the Fallen,” an appeal to the god of Algrahar to watch over the souls of the deceased. Ahaesarus had spoken those words many times in his former life, when he had been a priest in the Temple of Forever Light. He gulped down the bile that gathered in the back of his throat and began walking.
By the time he reached Azariah, the Warden had released his brother’s cold, dead hands. Azariah’s eyes were downcast, his arms crossed over his chest. The long white robe he wore was splotched with mud and dried blood. Azariah had spent much of the last four days among Mordeina’s wounded, mending bodies and souls alike, and Ahaesarus wondered if this was his first trip outside the walls. He placed a hand on the shorter Warden’s shoulder. He wanted to say something comforting to his colleague but couldn’t think of the proper words.
“He often surprised me,” Azariah said without looking up.
“How so?”
Azariah shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. “Back home, Judarius was a ruffian. Callous, belligerent, full of anger, and always drunk. All he ever wished to do was fight, and it was only when Father had had enough of his antics and sent him to the Citadel that he harnessed his anger. Judarius took to the teachings of Rana’s paladins, and he calmed. He was only forty-three when he was christened a knight of the Order of the Two Suns, the youngest ever given the title.”
Ahaesarus looked down at his friend, stunned. “He was accepted into the knighthood? He told me he was simply in the honor guard of Rana’s Shrine.”
“That is because his past shamed him,” said Azariah, gazing back up at the ruined face of his undead brother. “The knighthood was his penance for his past sins. If not for his misdeeds, he would never have been sent to the Citadel, and the paladins would never have taken him under their wing. To him, the title he bore was a constant reminder of all those he had hurt.”
“That is surprising. I never knew Judarius to be sentimental.”
“He was. To a point.”
The short Warden fel
l silent, staring down at the ground and shuffling his feet. Finally he lifted his head and looked over at Ahaesarus once more.
“Do you know why he never created a knighthood here in Paradise?” Azariah said. “I asked him once. ‘The concept of a knight might be noble, but by definition it teaches a life of violence. I would never form a knighthood here, for I see no use in it. I do not see the need for this young race to ever learn about violence at all.’ Those were his exact words.”
Ahaesarus thought of the battle, of the violence consuming their new world.
“Do you think he felt that way at the end?” he asked softly. “He fought valiantly; he fought viciously. He seemed to think he was made for it.”
Azariah shrugged and gestured toward his brother. “He was, and he did, but you would have to ask him. And I think you might find it difficult to pry the answer from his lips.”
Azariah then turned away from Ahaesarus and began walking through the crowd of people, both living and dead. “We will be leaving on the morrow,” Ahaesarus called out after him. “Will you be joining us?”
“No.” Azariah stopped and turned, facing him again. “My place is here, among my students. As I have told you before, this world needs healers as much as it needs warriors, perhaps even more so. Our roles have shifted, Ahaesarus. My brother is dead. You are now the warrior, as he was. I . . . I am now the priest, like you once were.”
With that, he turned and approached a throng of fifty youngsters huddling before the wall of the dead, focusing on two in particular: a tall boy and girl with sandy hair and flesh a shade darker than the others around them. If Ahaesarus remembered correctly, their names were Barclay and Sharin Noonan, siblings who had traveled with Ashhur when the god trekked from one corner of Paradise to the other, collecting his children and bringing them here to Mordeina. Both the youths’ cheeks glistened with tears as they stared at one of the standing dead men, most likely their father. Ahaesarus looked on as Azariah touched the dead man’s forehead, whispered a few words to the grieving youths, and then wrapped his wide arms around them. He guided them away from the swarm, heading for the holes in Mordeina’s walls.
Blood Of Gods (Book 3) Page 36