The Gods of Men

by Barbara Kloss

  It was the one mineral that could effectively kill some of The Wilds’ cursed, like shades, and, conveniently, only Ventus and his Silent had access to it. Where they gathered it, and how it’d come to be in their sole possession, no one knew. Ventus bestowed nightglass in exchange for tithes, claiming the Maker entrusted nightglass to him to give to the people as he saw fit.

  Sable didn’t understand how people like Tolya and Mikael could follow the same god as a creature like Ventus. She’d asked Tolya about it once. Tolya’s only response was that man often claimed god’s will to disguise his own, and she’d urged Sable to get to know the Maker for herself and make up her own mind. Regardless of Tolya’s particular view and urges, Sable didn’t want to know the sort of god whose servants evangelized through fear and brutality. Unfortunately, she still had to deal with that god’s servants.

  Tolya had always given the tithe when Ventus came to town. “My tithe is for the Maker,” Tolya had said. “Not that creature who claims to follow him. Nevertheless, I am accountable for my part.” But Tolya hadn’t risen from bed in two weeks.

  Ventus had almost passed out of view when the wagon creaked to a halt. The wind stirred, and Ventus’s cowl slowly turned in Sable’s direction.

  The windchimes silenced. Sable ducked behind the post of their front porch and held her breath until the clip-clopping resumed. With a slow exhale, she slipped inside, shut the door, and loosed a tight breath.

  By the wards, this timing was awful.

  Sable set the lavender and shears on the table and stepped into Tolya’s room.

  It smelled sour this morning.

  Sable walked to the window. “Good morning,” she said softly, though Tolya didn’t respond. The window’s hinges creaked as she pushed it open. “Ventus is here.”

  Still no response.

  Sable sat on the edge of the bed, gazing at the old woman. Tolya might’ve been a nasty herb to swallow at times, but she was all Sable had. She brushed a lank strand from Tolya’s forehead.

  Tolya had trained her well enough to assume the role of healer over Skanden and all of The Wilds, but despite Tolya’s intentions, Sable doubted the people would accept her. A Scablicker. Many of them only tolerated her for fear of the old woman. They needed their healer, and they’d respected Tolya, but what would happen to Sable once Tolya passed on? The Wilds still needed a healer, but would that be enough? She thought of Velik. No, it wouldn’t—not for some.

  The only safe place for an Istraan was in Istraa, and though her heart yearned for the desert, she could not go back there.

  By early evening, when Sable decided she couldn’t put off tithing any longer, she grabbed the amount she and Tolya had set aside, put on her cloak, and headed toward the small temple in the dark. A heavy fog had settled in Skanden, turning everything damp and dreary and cold. Even the lantern flames shivered inside their glass cages. Sable hurried to the town’s square, keeping to the shadows. She hadn’t gone far when she noticed the small crowd gathering at the edge of the square.

  Sable ducked into an alleyway and climbed a two-story wall, careful not to draw notice. Her hand slipped a couple of times, because the fog made everything slick, but she eventually made it to the rooftop and crept to the ledge.

  In the mist, the temple looked like a tear in the world, its doors a gateway to hell. A glow pulsed from the square, where one of Ventus’s guards held a torch, and shadows danced upon the crowd. Ventus stood before them, his two Silent flanking him, and at Ventus’s feet sat a low basin. A device used to collect blood.

  Sable crouched on the roof’s ledge, watching as three guards dragged a man forth.

  Mikael.

  She cursed and gripped the roof’s edge, scanning the crowd for Kat and Jedd, but she couldn’t find them. Jedd had lived, miraculously. Kat had sent a note, because Sable hadn’t dared check on him after what’d happened with Velik.

  The guards shoved Mikael before the bowl. One of the Silent stepped forward, a wicked nightglass sword gleaming in hand. The crowd was quiet, the square silent as a tomb.

  Ventus stood before Mikael. “Any last words?” He didn’t speak very loudly, but the power of his voice filled the square.

  Mikael did not answer.

  “This is the third year in a row you’ve insulted the Maker with your refusal to tithe,” Ventus said. “Your life is forfeit.”

  Third? How had she not known this?

  Ventus’s cowl turned toward his Silent.

  The night held its breath.

  In a glimmer so swift, the sword came down, severing Mikael’s head from his body.

  Sable flinched and looked away, but she could not stop seeing. Over and over, Mikael bent over the bowl, the streak of nightglass. The blood. She gripped the ledge so hard, wood splintered her palm.

  She hated the gods.

  She hated what men did in their name.

  And, most of all, she hated that she was powerless to stop them.

  Sable looked back to see the guards dragging Mikael’s body away. The head, however, had been left in the basin.

  She forced herself to look. She owed Mikael that, at the very least.

  Ventus pulled a nightglass dagger from his robes, dragged the edge over his palm, and sliced it open. He squeezed his hand into a fist, and blood dripped onto Mikael’s head. He then pushed up his sleeve, revealing a pale arm covered in black glyphs. Using Mikael’s blood, Ventus painted along his own forearm, lips moving as he did so. His writing pulsed white, and Mikael’s head caught fire. Unnatural white flame licked at the fog, and the crowd stepped back with a gasp.

  Fury boiled through her, and a great gust of wind ripped through the courtyard with so much force, it almost snuffed out Ventus’s fire. Ventus’s cowl tilted up and turned toward where Sable crouched upon the rooftop.

  Startled, she slunk back, deeper into the roof’s shadows.

  And waited.

  Finally, Ventus turned, his Silent followed behind, and the three of them disappeared into the temple. The heavy doors closed, and Ventus’s guards took position in the square.

  Sable waited until the crowd had mostly dispersed, then wiped her hands on her cloak and climbed down from the rooftop. Her boots landed softly, and she crouched until she was certain no one had spotted her before crossing into the courtyard.

  Beside the basin, she paused, gazing down at the white flames that would burn the duration of Belfast, long after Mikael’s bones turned to ash. “I’m so, so sorry,” Sable whispered through clenched teeth.

  Sorry wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

  She glared at the temple, hating every piece of it and wishing she could burn it to the ground, then strode past the guards. Their eyes followed, but they made no move to stop her.

  She had a tithe to give.

  And really, what was she against Ventus and his Silent?

  The door opened silently as she pushed it in. The chamber beyond was dark, softened slightly by wall sconces and a candelabra standing near the far wall, where Ventus was kneeling in prayer before a statue. The statue had been chiseled from the same black material as the basin outside, sculpted in the shape of a world resting on a man’s back while four giant, vulture-like birds raked at it, their enormous wings spread wide. It depicted the Maker and how he carried the world forward, rescuing it from adversity. But Sable saw only claws tearing at the world, making it bleed and leaving deep scars behind.

  Ventus lifted his head, but he didn’t turn.

  Sable.

  The word pierced her thoughts, clear and powerful. Sable expected it, but the intrusion always startled her. Ventus’s strange power was understood as being one-directional: he could speak into a person’s mind, but he couldn’t draw someone’s thoughts back to him. Sable kept her thoughts clear regardless. She wouldn’t take chances.

  “Master Ventus,” Sable said sharply, taking a step forward. She couldn’t see his Silent, but she sensed them there like spiders in the shadows, weaving silk around her and
trapping her inside. “I’ve brought our tithe.”

  Ventus stood and turned to face her, and Sable suppressed a shudder. The light cast haunting shadows upon his pale face, deepening the hollows of his cheeks and the pits of his eyes. He looked like some sick perversion of humanity.

  Where is Tolya?

  “She’s not feeling well.” Sable took another step, pulled the pouch from her cloak, and dropped it unceremoniously in the small offering bowl. It landed with a tinny thud and a jangle.

  Ventus watched her, silent.

  She turned to go.

  You and I aren’t so different, healer.

  Sable paused and glanced back.

  He took a small step forward. Inhuman black eyes shone from the depths of his cowl.

  We both tend to our gardens, culling the weak and the dying so that the strong may thrive.

  “Is that how you justify it?” she snapped. She should have left it, but the image of Mikael was too fresh in her mind.

  Ventus studied her. Weak trees do not yield strong fruit, healer. I trust you know this.

  Sable didn’t trust herself to speak further, so she said nothing. She didn’t trust herself to think, so she thought of lavender. Of letting it dry and harvesting seeds. Of next year’s sowing, how much space she would give them and where they would grow best.

  The silence stretched. Ventus’s spiders crawled in the shadows around her, weaving their sticky web, and the light flickered and dimmed.

  Sable thought of her euctis, how it survived stubbornly in a climate it was not designed for. How it would survive next year too, because that’s what it did. It survived. Year after year.

  At last, Ventus pulled a nightglass dagger from the depths of his robe and set it on the small table standing between them.

  You have the Maker’s blessing. You may go.

  Sable took the blade, shoved it in her belt, and forced her steps steady as she left, slamming the door behind her.

  8

  Nine days had passed since Jeric, Braddok, and Gerald had left Skyhold. The first six of those days had been spent riding through Corinth and skirting Davros’ eastern edge, then sneaking past The Fingers before finally reaching the infamous bridge that linked The Wilds to the Five Provinces. Built even before the time of Azir Mubárek, The Crossing spanned impossibly high over the Rotte Strait, connecting two crests of a magnificent gorge, as if mankind had defied the gods by connecting two landmasses the gods had intended to keep separate.

  Today’s masons couldn’t replicate such architecture, nor fathom it, and somehow it’d successfully prevented creatures of the ancient world from meandering into the Five Provinces.

  It was also a godsdamn frightening bridge to cross. Jeric wasn’t afraid of heights, but that bridge challenged even his constitution.

  After crossing the bridge, they navigated The Wilds’ savage landscape for three days, riding along a narrow thread of dark earth that wove through the forest like an artery. Skanden wasn’t far from The Crossing, but they’d been advised to travel strictly by daylight, and this far north, the sun didn’t hover long. Jeric would’ve ignored the advice, but on that first night, which they’d spent in a small town called White Rock, they’d heard the distant and unearthly howls. One, in particular, had made Jeric’s skin crawl.

  “Shades,” the innkeeper had called them when he’d inquired the next morning, whispering as if pure mention of the creatures might make them appear.

  “Shades?” Jeric had repeated.

  The innkeeper had nodded. “Used to be men, but then the shadows claimed them. Now they’re hunters of men. They only come out at night. That’s when they see best. Just make sure you’re behind a village wall by sundown, and you’ll be fine. The wards keep ’em away.”

  Jeric was skeptical of the tale, and the wards, for that matter, but he was a tactical man. One didn’t challenge a predator when the environment suited its strengths; therefore, he’d leave the night to the nocturnal.

  However, the days weren’t exactly bright. The trees stood taller than anything Jeric had ever seen in the Blackwood, effectively blotting out the sun, and an eerie fog settled over everything. He’d traveled through fog plenty of times. In Corinth, the clouds nestled often in the valley at Skyhold’s feet, trapped there by the sharp rise of mountains at its back. Once, the fog had grown so thick, he’d ridden all the way from Skyhold to Flen with only his intuition to guide him. Fog had never bothered him before.

  It bothered him here.

  This fog had eyes—a consciousness—but every time he looked, he found nothing but shifts of vapor, twists of gray. Tricks, he told himself, but he couldn’t shake his unease.

  “I gotta take a piss,” Braddok said.

  Jeric brought Saskia, his horse, to a halt. Her ears twitched, and he gently rubbed the space between them. These woods made her restless too.

  Braddok walked his horse a little farther ahead and stopped.

  “Again?” Gerald stopped his horse beside Jeric. “Maybe this healer should check you out. Something’s wrong with your pecker.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that. Trust me.” Braddok winked. “But if she wants to check… by all means.”

  Gerald snorted. “She could be hideous.”

  “Nothin’ a few pints can’t fix. Besides, we can’t all be as picky as our Wolf. Give this healer a few pints, she might even take care of your pecker.”

  Gerald rolled his eyes, and Braddok dismounted with a chuckle, turning away from them to handle his business. Gerald looked to Jeric for solace but found none. Jeric watched only the fog, his senses tuned to the world around them.

  “You know,” Braddok said over his shoulder, “I’m beginning to think that blacksmith in White Rock pulled one on us. Three days in these woods, and we’ve seen nothing but fog.”

  “I wouldn’t be so eager to meet anything else,” Jeric said quietly.

  “I’m not.” Braddok climbed back into the saddle and urged his horse forward. “I’d just like to see how this nightglass works.”

  “Assuming it works,” Gerald said, following after.

  “Always a skeptic,” Braddok chided.

  “A realist.”

  “A rutting pain in my arse.”

  Jeric gently rubbed Saskia’s neck to comfort her, then nudged her after his men.

  “It’s a shame we didn’t keep the nightglass from those Scabs,” Braddok said, admiring the nightglass dagger he’d pulled from his belt. “Didn’t have this craftsmanship, but it would’ve saved us a pretty crown.”

  “Hagan can afford it,” Gerald said.

  Braddok glanced back at Gerald as if he were an idiot. “Yeah, and we could’ve spent those crowns on something—”

  A howl echoed in the distance.

  Saskia tugged against the reins, and Jeric steadied her with a gentle hand.

  Braddok sat upright, slipping the dagger back in its sheath. “Some kind of wolf?”

  “Hopefully,” Jeric said, studying the fog. It swirled and deepened, creating soft shadows and fluid silhouettes, teasing his eyes. Night was almost here.

  “Shouldn’t we have reached Skanden by now?” Gerald asked.

  They should have, but it was difficult to gauge distance in this fog, and Jeric didn’t know the landscape.

  Suddenly, Saskia bobbed her head against the reins. Her ears twitched, and her left ear pinned on the trees. Jeric sat forward, his senses prickling with premonition. It was the stillness before battle, when earth and trees and sky held their breath. It was the pause before fate pulled and power shifted, when present became past, and future stretched into the present. It was when the gods set destinies in motion.

  “Wolf?” Braddok glanced back at him.

  Gerald watched him too, silent as he reached for his bow.

  “Run,” Jeric snarled, gripping the reins tight. “Now.”

  His men didn’t hesitate. Jeric galloped after, glancing back just as a dark shape melted from the fog and started boun
ding down the road after them.

  Its shape was distantly human, its proportions too long, too awkward. It sprinted on all fours with incredible speed, and the fog clung to it, shadows shifting and obscuring its lines. Jeric had never seen anything like it before.

  A shade. It had to be.

  Gerald fired a bolt behind him. The bolt struck the shade’s shoulder and bounced off.

  “Did you use nightglass?” Jeric yelled.

  Gerald cursed and dug in his quiver. Another shade melted from the shadows, right behind Braddok.

  “Brad, behind you!” Jeric called out.

  The shade, which was easily the size of Braddok’s horse, caught pace with Braddok and swiped. Braddok jerked his horse away just in time. Jeric ripped the nightglass dagger from his wrist strap and threw. The shade reared back for another swipe, but Jeric’s blade struck true, right in the back of its head. The shade yelped, staggered, and skidded face first in the dirt. It didn’t get up again.

  Jeric relaxed a little. The nightglass worked. He suddenly wished they’d filled their saddlebags with it.

  The first shade barreled after them with a deep and menacing snarl.

  “Come on, you rutting demon,” Braddok growled, throwing his own nightglass dagger.

  The shade leapt into the air—higher than any normal creature could jump—and the blade whizzed beneath. The creature landed fluidly upon all fours, its pace uninterrupted as it sprinted after them. Jeric grabbed his second—and last—nightglass blade from his belt and threw it at the shade. It dodged to the side, skidded across the ground, and launched itself at Braddok’s heels.

  Jeric cursed. He was out of nightglass. Braddok scrambled for another weapon.

  “Gerald, get your head out of your quiver!” Jeric yelled.

  But even as Jeric spoke, an arrow whirred. The shade yipped and collapsed to the ground in a violent fit of convulsions.

  “The tips were stuck!” Gerald defended.

  “I told you that you shoved too many godsdamn arrows in that quiver!” Braddok yelled back.

  Howls echoed from all directions, dissonant and cruel.

  “Where is that rutting town?” Braddok shouted.