Ruthless Gods (ARC)

by Emily A Duncan

  And the inside of this place—this temple—didn’t make sense. The ceiling was too high, and an impossible to miss, massive doorway suddenly stood before him.

  That he knew not to enter. It instilled a dread horror within him that he couldn’t quite shake. As if he knew, utterly, totally, that behind this door lay madness.

  The door parted. Serefin took a step back.

  Oh good, he thought.

  The voice that came from the dark depths was deep, guttural, horrible. It was as if burning coals were being held against his ears while something unforgiving raked its claws over his bones, splintering them into shards.

  His left eye was bleeding. A distant realization. The warmth dripping down his cheek.

  There had to be a better way than this.

  But Serefin knew there wasn’t. Not after what Malachiasz had done.

  “Treated with kings before, I have. Dead kings whose bones have petrified at the forest’s edge. Old, insignificant bags of rotting flesh that call themselves humanity. And you dare stand before me, in my hold, at the edges of my domain, barely a king, no more than a boy. I know. I see. There is nothing you can hide from me, Serefin Meleski, son of Izak, son of Bogumił, son of Florentyn. You wear the touch of death upon you. How long, then, until it is your bones I toss to the edges of my forests?”

  Serefin froze. Power was shredding his edges the longer he stood before it.

  All his ease of disbelief when dealing with Velyos didn’t serve him here. Whatever this was . . . this was different. Vast and ancient and uncomfortably, terrifyingly real.

  “Don’t disturb my solitude with your irritating mortal words,” the voice continued. “We can make a deal, you and I. You need power to kill the meddler. I want the meddler dead.”

  “How fortuitous,” Serefin croaked.

  A hand, massive and taloned, and so much greater than anything Serefin could fathom, slammed out. And another, and another, until dozens of clawing, bleeding hands were desperately trying to escape. Pulling, tearing, rending at the doorway, struggling to get out while the massive, incomprehensible power emanating from within only heightened. A vastness that Serefin was so very, very small before.

  “How fortuitous, indeed.”

  One of the hands grabbed Serefin and yanked him into the dark.

  Twenty-Two

  Nadezhda Lapteva

  Cautious and careful is Zvonimira, for her light can be a balm but it can also be destruction, and there are those who would take her light from her.

  —Codex of the Divine 35:187

  Nadya was abruptly shaken awake by Parijahan.

  “Get your things, we need to go,” she said. Her dark hair was a mess, as though she had barely slept.

  Nadya was out of bed in an instant, ready to flee. Her sides hurt and she moved carefully, afraid of pulling her stitches again. “What is it?”

  Distant voices shouted in Kalyazi, and she knew deep in her core the voices meant battle. But they were still in Tranavia. How could that be?

  “Feeling better?” Malachiasz asked, suspiciously cheerful, when Nadya entered the main room.

  “Did Kostya come back?” she returned.

  A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. “He did.”

  Relief flooded her. Nadya hadn’t expected him to return. She moved to the window. She couldn’t see anything, but she knew all too well what she was hearing.

  “Your friend tried to kill me last night.”

  Nadya glanced sidelong at him. “Oh. Did he succeed?”

  Malachiasz frowned. “No?”

  “You don’t sound sure about that.”

  “Well, I was until you asked.”

  “A shame, really, that he failed,” she said, with more bite than she intended.

  He nodded, not appearing offended. She sighed and dropped the curtain.

  “We’re all about to die, anyway, so I suppose it’s moot,” he said.

  “Has Kalyazin pushed the front into Tranavia?” she asked uncertainly. She knew the war had been shifting; Kalyazin had rallied. But the front had never moved into Tranavia before. What had given the Kalyazi the means to accomplish this?

  She had been in Tranavia for too long.

  Malachiasz shrugged. “Kalyazin and Tranavia have both suffered equally significant defeats recently.”

  He had returned to gazing out the window, unaware of her watching him. He was a little less destroyed than he had been appearing, like he had slept for an hour or so despite the dramatics. His black hair was tied back, throwing the lines of his face into sharp relief. He was wearing his old military jacket and there was a pang in her chest at the loss. But it couldn’t really comfort her anymore.

  “Some Vultures have been on the battlefields,” he continued, oblivious.

  Nadya stared at him. He caught her incredulous expression.

  “I have the control of only half my order,” he said. “This is not by my hand.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “How do you know of the defeats?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it.

  “You’re lying.” Of course he was. Of course. “You can’t know everything and yet also remember nothing since the cathedral,” she said, voice low. There was movement at the doorway. Kostya.

  Malachiasz lifted an eyebrow. “Waiting to catch me in a lie?”

  “It’s all you do.”

  A rueful smile pulled at his mouth. “Serefin left a whole stack of military reports behind. Rashid has them.”

  The tension leaked out of her.

  The smile went cold. “Comforting to know how thoroughly you distrust me.”

  “You don’t deserve my trust,” she said. “Not when every word you’ve ever said to me was a lie.”

  He lifted a single curl of hair from the nape of her neck. She shivered, wishing she hadn’t missed that piece when braiding. “Not every word,” he murmured. His expression grew distant. “They’re getting closer. Time to go.”

  Nadya turned, made eye contact with Kostya, and immediately pushed past him, shouldering her pack. She heard his voice as she was leaving the house, heard Malachiasz’s soft reply, but wasn’t able to make out the words.

  She couldn’t imagine anything those two had to say to each other could possibly be good.

  She stuffed her hand in her pocket, running her thumb over her string of prayer beads. It couldn’t act as a necklace until she found a new cord and she couldn’t shake the feeling that a bead was missing even though every time she counted she ended up with the correct number.

  It was still dark outside and it sounded like the nearby battle was happening to the southwest.

  “Keep us from being noticed?” Parijahan asked.

  Malachiasz pushed his sleeve back, a cut already bleeding sluggishly down his forearm as he tore a page out of his spell book.

  Nadya found it oddly relieving to watch him use blood magic the normal way. Utterly heretical and perfectly banal. He could probably cast magic without his spell book entirely. It was upsetting to think on.

  His head tilted back and his whole body seemed to relax into itself, his magic growing thick in the air around them. It was worse than before, darker. But she had been living with it underneath her skin for so long, she had been desensitized to it.

  When his eyes opened they were pitch black. Nadya frowned, glancing at the others. Her hand wrapped around the hilt of the bone voryen. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking him down to her level, pressing the point of her blade against his throat.

  He froze. The air was strange and wrong, suffocating.

  “This will be the last time I hesitate, Malachiasz,” she murmured. Her voryen pricked his skin, drawing a thin trickle of blood. His flesh parted, a mouth with razor teeth opening against the cut she made. He jolted, gasping, eyes blinking clear. She let him go and he brought a hand to his throat, bewildered.

  She grabbed his wrist and lifted his other hand. His nails
were long iron claws. He frowned, flipping her grip over so the bone knife was visible.

  “We don’t need the Vulture. The blood mage will do,” she said.

  He ignored her. “Where did you get that?” he asked, voice low.

  Parijahan shoved between them and startled him. “We’re going north,” she said shortly. “Stop wasting time.”

  Rashid loped after her. Kostya followed without looking at Nadya.

  “Did that hurt?” she asked, trailing the blade over his forearm. A muscle in his jaw fluttered. She carefully slid the tip of the blade down against his inner arm, parting the smallest sliver of flesh. Blackened decay bloomed up his arm from the point of contact.

  He hissed through his teeth, yanking away. His hand moved over the cut. “What is that?”

  Nadya ran her thumb down the flat of the blade. She hadn’t really considered it since Pelageya had given it to her, but now that it was in her hands, Malachiasz’s blood dripping lazily down the edge, she could feel how alive it was. How it had tasted his blood and wanted more.

  “A relic, I think,” she said thoughtfully.

  There was a decided wariness to the way he kept his hand over his arm, a frown tugging at the tattoos on his forehead.

  “How does one kill a Vulture?” she mused.

  Genuine hurt flickered over his face before it shuttered away. “Ready to finally kill me now that you have something that might do the deed?”

  “Did you think my other threats were false?”

  “Nadya, it’s hard to be truly frightened of your threats when your Kalyazi voryens are merely an inconvenience.”

  She regarded the bone knife in her hands. “But this might . . .” she murmured.

  “You would kill me so easily,” he said, a tremor in his voice that Nadya wasn’t expecting. He failed in hiding how truly wounded he was by her thrill of finding a weapon that could harm him.

  “It wouldn’t be easy,” she whispered. “Even though it should be.”

  He shook his head and started after the others. She was slow to follow. She hated this.

  “If you’re going to complain the whole time, monk,” she heard Malachiasz say in his thickly accented Kalyazi when she finally caught up, “the army is right there. Go cry to them.”

  Kostya snapped. He lunged for Malachiasz, who merely sidestepped, grabbed his arm, and wrenched it behind his back.

  “Let’s put the past behind us, shall we?” Malachiasz said amiably. “I am, of course, rather put off by how you’ve been treating our dear cleric here, but I don’t want to involve myself in your petty religious squabbles.”

  Kostya looked murderous. His gaze caught Nadya’s and before he dropped it she saw something she was too hopeful to believe was regret.

  “I will kill you,” Kostya practically growled.

  “You tried that and ruined a perfectly good shirt,” Malachiasz replied dryly. He winked at Nadya. The tension between them dissipated now that he had a new target. “Cut it right through the chest.”

  “You tried to stab him?” she asked incredulously.

  “I did stab him!” Kostya said. “He’s unnatural, Nadya.”

  “What a bleeding revelation!” Malachiasz said. He dropped Kostya’s arm and kicked him, knocking him to the ground. He stepped on Kostya’s back. “And a vast understatement. We don’t have to get along, you and I, and I’d prefer if we didn’t, but if you try anything like last night again, I will kill you and then Nadya will be cross with me.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Nadya said.

  “See? And then no one will be happy. If you wish to go, go. If you’re going to stay then work out your fanatical zealotry soon, please, so the rest of us can get back to trying to stop this blasted war.”

  Nadya knelt down and smoothed a hand over Kostya’s hair. “Kostenka, for the sake of the friendship we had—have—I can’t continue with this,” she gestured a hand between them, “whatever this is.”

  Malachiasz took his foot off Kostya’s back. Parijahan huffed, irritated, and started walking. Nadya waved the others away. They would catch up. Malachiasz stared at her before loping off after the Akolans.

  Nadya sat down next to Kostya. She rested her cheek on her fist and sighed.

  “I know, all right? I know it doesn’t make sense that Malachiasz is here. I am sorry for what you suffered at his hand. But, Kostya, we’re not in the monastery anymore. Things aren’t as simple as us versus them.”

  Kostya lifted himself to his knees and spat out a mouthful of dirt.

  “But things are as simple as good and evil.”

  “Are they?” Nadya thought about the voice, about her dreams filled with monsters. She wasn’t so sure anymore.

  The desperate way Kostya looked at her was a stab to the heart.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m not who you thought I was. I can’t fathom what you’ve been through and you can’t do the same for me. But Malachiasz was right. You can leave. I won’t hold you to me. I got you out of the Salt Mines but there’s no debt to be repaid. I missed you, Kostya. Every day since the monastery fell I thought of you. I never imagined that I would have you back alive. But . . .” Her hand lifted to her neck and fell when there were no prayer beads to hold onto. Kostya winced. “If our paths have led us apart, I won’t force you to remain around him.”

  “But—” Kostya’s voice wavered. “You’re choosing him?”

  Nadya stared at him, uncertain what to say and knowing she had to do it fast. The voices in the distance were growing closer.

  “When you are a half divine, half mad creature who can get me through the Dozvlatovya Forest to the Bolagvoy temple, then we’ll talk,” she said, bumping her shoulder against his.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he muttered.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “But right now, that’s all there is. I need to set my path to rights and I need him to do that.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  She shrugged. “I needed him to get to Tranavia to kill the king and I need him now. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way it is.”

  He let out an agonized sigh.

  “I’m done sitting here, trying to convince you when there’s a skirmish at our backs.” She stood up. “If you choose to leave, I understand. If you want to come . . .” She shrugged ruefully. “I would like that, Kostenka. I don’t expect you and Malachiasz to get along. Hells, I don’t get along with him. But I do think it’s worth listening to the Tranavians sometimes.”

  Kostya scoffed.

  “The whole reason this war hasn’t ended is because no one will listen to each other,” she finally said. She turned to catch up with the others. “Though Malachiasz really isn’t worth listening to on a good day. Such a heretic.”

  The journey was strange. Nadya couldn’t shake the constant feeling that they were being watched. Like her, Malachiasz was perpetually on edge, his eyes darting at every shadow. At least Nadya hoped that was why. She didn’t know how she would pull him back a second time.

  It was for him to pull himself away from becoming the monster, and she wasn’t certain he wanted to.

  She avoided him as they traveled, sticking by Kostya, who was making an effort to remain civil, thankfully. It was exhausting enough to be around Malachiasz, who mostly spent his time with his head buried in his spell book. Nadya was curious to know what he was trying to figure out, but sensed she wouldn’t like the answer. Things settled into a fragile kind of peace. This journey would be a long one, and they all seemed to recognize that constantly biting at each other was only going to make it insufferable. It was almost comfortable, almost like the journey from Kalyazin to Grazyk, a lifetime ago. Nadya and Malachiasz’s arguments never spiraled past trivialities. Kostya had cooled and seemed to enjoy Rashid’s company.

  Nadya knew it would never last, and that the only reason things weren’t growing worse was because they were pushing their pace so hard that they were all too
tired to fight.

  But passing into Kalyazin from Tranavia was like breathing fresh air for the first time in months. The moment Nadya was back on Kalyazin soil something inside her settled and came to rest. She relaxed.

  She didn’t want to call it hope, but it was good to be home. Even if the world was falling apart.

  But it was so cold. It should be summer already. How would anyone survive? The monastery had always relied on what little they could grow in the perpetual chill of the mountains, and what Rudnya donated to them, but for the rest of the country things must be growing desperate. This would be a killing blow for Kalyazin, never mind the war.

  There was a monastery in Takni’viyesh, nestled within the woods. From there, a long stretch of forest cut through the heart of Kalyazin, leading up to the northwesternmost point they were trying to reach. It would be unwise to make the journey all the way through the forest—especially with the eyes of once sleeping monsters upon them.

  Nadya had only seen flickers out of the corner of her eye. The antlers of a leshy. The cut of black cloth and singular, gleaming eye of a likho. And other, darker creatures long shunted away into myth and fable that Nadya knew with growing certainty weren’t so false.

  But the monastery was a bastion of calm in the midst of the dangers of the forest. High wooden walls surrounded the complex, and yet as they advanced, Nadya grew inexplicably terrified.

  Would this monastery feel like home? Or would it feel alien and strange to the person Nadya had become? This was a very bad idea, she suddenly decided.

  Someone leaned out over the top of the wall as they drew closer. Kostya squinted up, an odd look on his face.

  “Is that—”

  He didn’t have the chance to finish as the figure disappeared. The gates opened shortly after. Nadya glanced at Kostya, confused.

  A giant of a man with a long graying beard, sharp, dark eyes, and brown skin strode out past the gates. He wore a sword openly at his belt.