Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2)

by Justin DePaoli

  The thick, seemingly endless vegetation of pines quavered below. Distant thumps sounded off like celestial drums. The colossi were getting closer, and Gynoth had come to terms with the fact that while his army was much improved, it would only trip up the giants, much like a moat doesn’t thwart an overwhelming army; it simply slows them down.

  Gynoth needed a secondary approach. It involved gods. Or at least things he had once thought were gods.

  “The Twins,” Gynoth said, thinking aloud.

  You keep coming back to them, Osseus said.

  “Because that’s where this all starts. If they are not gods, how do I explain their return from death?”

  If they are gods, how do you explain it?

  The jungle of pines made swishing noises as clumps of snow fell off strong branches and plummeted through a fan of needles. There were snaps too, and crackles. And then silence, a brief respite from the footsteps of giants.

  “Belief,” Gynoth told Osseus. “Gods thrive or not based on the belief in them. That’s what I theorized from studying the Twins. Yet they claimed they weren’t gods, but children.” He shook his head. “Children. It is plausible they lied.”

  For what benefit?

  “There isn’t one. I know—that makes it unlikely.”

  The Twins’ sorcery troubled him. A rebirth strips from you all but the core of your soul, stealing your desires and declining to return your aptitudes. Unless you were gifted breath by a sorcerer who’d tamed the restorative realm—as Baern had. The Twins had not been reborn in such a way, but neither were they risen by a necromancer. They were dead and then, without intervention, they were alive once more, intact as ever.

  A form of sorcery, Osseus suggested.

  “I’ve never seen sorcery like that. If the gods in these lands are as godly as the Twins claimed they were, then this is a godless land.”

  If not gods, they are something.

  “Indeed.”

  What do you intend?

  “I intend to kill one. See if its soul runs off into the realm of the dead as it’s supposed to. If so, I bring it back and I’ve a new servant. If I’m lucky, a new servant who retains its sorcery.”

  If not? If it does not enter the dead realm?

  “I only have a plan for if it does. You become overburdened with too many what-ifs.”

  And dead without enough. Leaders of the Conclave called themselves gods.

  “Well, maybe they are. Look. I see a cliff. I told you we would arrive, eventually.”

  The forest began to thin on either side, forming an increasingly severe point of green pines. Where the trees fell away to one side, there stood a hill that plunged and bounced back up, forming several humps and valleys that eventually skidded to a stop against a high-rising cliff of ice and moss and stone.

  Osseus descended to the base of the cliff, where the mouth of a cavern carved an opening inside. Gynoth consulted his map again. A long time ago, many hundreds of years, he’d come across this cavern and, like all caverns, waded inside. There he found a self-professed god, the thirteenth such god he’d discovered.

  Gynoth had gone on to find over eighty-six gods, all residing in caves and caverns. He’d marked their locations on his map, in case he needed them in the future.

  And now, he needed them.

  “Be ready to take flight,” Gynoth said, climbing down from the saddle. He jumped off, landing in hard, compact snow. He shuffled his way over to the cavern entrance and ducked inside without second thought. Hesitation would kill you in the end, he held.

  The cavern tunneled back farther than one would imagine, given the cliff it burrowed into was fairly small and shallow. Gynoth had long wondered if these godly caves were naturally made, or if the hands of men had crafted them.

  They all seemed too perfect, with rounded corners and pitched ceilings where the ground heaved. There were no useless crannies, no small nooks that nature is so fond of. In some of the caverns, that path would descend and twist and turn, leading deep into the crust of the earth. Those ones always seemed to imprison gods who were less stable than the others, a smidgen madder, a bit disconnected from the fabric of reality.

  “A veees-eee-tour,” said a feminine, almost childish voice. “It’s been so long. I count days, and days become weeks. Weeks become years. Years turn into generations. And then I start over again.”

  At the back of the cavern lay a formless shadow, an apparition that jerked violently upon seeing Gynoth. When it moved, chains clanged together.

  “Let me see you,” said the thing without a shape.

  Gynoth’s eyes soon adjusted to the encompassing blackness, giving knifelike angles and sharp-turning contours to the shadow. Considering the voice and figure, one could presume one was staring at a woman. A sickly, angular woman whose muscle had mostly deteriorated and fat no longer existed.

  “Let me see you,” she said again. “Please.” Stakes had been driven through her eyes, pinning her head against the cavern wall. Her arms were chained to iron rods jutting from the ceiling, and spikes had been pounded into her feet, flattening them to the floor.

  “Tell me,” Gynoth said, keeping a fair distance from her. “Are you a god?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Have you always been a god?”

  The chains clangored. “Hum. No, not always. A very long time ago I was not very godly. Godless, even. Yes, I was once godless. Why do you ask? And why have you come?”

  Gynoth took a step forward. The woman seemed to flinch in eager anticipation.

  “Let me see you,” she said again.

  “You have stakes driven through your eyes,” Gynoth observed. “And spikes in your feet. Presumably you have not eaten for several hundred years. How do you live?”

  She stuck her tongue out and said, “Gods don’t die, silly, silly man. I remember you. I remember your voice. You came here many years ago. Then you left. You didn’t even let me see you.”

  “Answer me and I might grant your wish.”

  “Mmm. An enigma I think you are. I answered you. Gods don’t die.”

  “Even if I slit your throat?”

  The woman did not answer.

  “I thought as much,” Gynoth said.

  “Clever and enigmatic. I see, I see. When they came for me, they wanted to punish me for my sins. I committed no sins. Do I look like a sinner?”

  Gynoth crossed his arms. “Few do.”

  “Hum. Well, I’m not. They drove stakes through my eyes, then she sealed the wounds and corked the flow of blood. She healed me. Healed! Ironic, isn’t it? She did the same to my feet. Gods can’t die of starvation, though it’s not fun to be hungry, is it? And we can’t die of thirst, but it’s torture, I think. She left me here, they left me here, forevermore. For-ever-more.”

  Gynoth took several steps forward. He could hear her licking the air, panting. “Who is she?”

  “The she-devil. Her name is Lusilia. Slit throats—hum. That’s a throat you ought to slit.”

  Another step forward. He put himself within a foot of her now.

  “You’re the goddess of water, yes?”

  “Um-hum,” she said. “Take a step forward, sweetie.”

  Half a foot away from her now. She lunged forward, but the stakes kept her skull pinned to the wall, and the chains snapped her hands back. “Hum. Close.”

  Gynoth fondled the handle of his dagger still sheathed on his belt. “What if I slit your throat, goddess of water?”

  An impish smile touched her lips. “Do you talk to all of your women like that? Or am I special?”

  “You’re an experiment,” Gynoth said. He lurched ahead, down to his knees. She wrapped her thighs around him, swung her tongue out, hissing and writhing.

  “I seeeeeeee you,” she said, panting and shaking uncontrollably. Then, she bleated. Her thighs fell away from Gynoth, and she wheezed deeply.

  Gynoth felt her blood spurting onto his arms, droplets splashing into his face. It was cold, not at all warm
like blood ought to be.

  The goddess of water attempted to speak, but all that came out was a meek gurgle.

  Gynoth wiped his dagger clean on his pants, then sheathed it again. He waited patiently for life to siphon out of the goddess. When it did, he withdrew from the realm of life and chased her tortured soul through the cosmos, into the land of the dead.

  At least, that’s what he would have done, had her soul departed and gone the way every soul ever had.

  Every soul has an aura, a heaviness of blacks and blues, or a featherlike lightness of oranges and reds—and all the colors and densities in between—and necromancers can sense them just as a bloodhound can sniff out a single elusive scent in a meadow of wildflowers.

  Gynoth did not sense her soul departing the living world—mostly because it hadn’t. It was still there, lingering without a body, trapped in purgatory.

  Gynoth reached out and touched it. The soul responded as most do, with utter subservience and a relinquishing of will. He fused it with the amethyst in his pocket, binding it with the large violet gem.

  Souls bound to inanimate objects are imprisoned there. They can then be tethered to and inhabit a body, but their will resides with the one who holds the inanimate object. Gynoth commanded the goddess’s soul to inhabit her body once more.

  A gasp. The woman picked her head up, made experimental movements with her lips.

  “A necromancer,” she said, then quickly, “my necromancer. Have you come to free me?”

  Gynoth lifted himself to his feet. He was taken aback by the subtle sense of volition in the woman’s voice. Risen did not question him, except Lairn, whose personality Gynoth had meticulously manipulated over half a century. They did as they were told, because they had no free will.

  “Tell me your name,” Gynoth said.

  “My name is Heinla; I’m afraid I do not know my last name.”

  “Will you do anything I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  Gynoth nodded, satisfied. “Good.” She still sounded different than most risen—livelier, happy even—but he chalked that up to the curious nature of her soul. He examined her bonds. “Heinla, you claim to be the goddess of water—show me.”

  “Hum. Free me, my darling, and I will.” As if the circular tips of the iron stakes that jutted from her eye sockets allowed her to see, she took notice of his hesitance and added, “These caves… evil things. Bad, bad, bad. They’ve been injected, mutated, turned from their natural beauty into something so, so terrible. They nullify the powers of the gods.”

  There was Gynoth’s answer as to whether the caverns and nooks that imprisoned every god he’d encountered had been formed by nature or by the hands of men. It seemed a bit of both.

  He considered his options, massaging his jaw. He had come here to free the goddess, but he hadn’t brought any tools with him. Although, he did have…

  “Osseus,” Gynoth called, walking back toward the cavern entrance.

  I am here, Osseus said.

  “I need you.”

  Inside?

  “Yes.”

  I’m unsure if I can fit.

  “Try. It’s important.”

  The chains behind Gynoth clanged. “Did you bring along a friend? Is he a man of death like you?”

  Gynoth was now convinced something had gone wrong in bringing Heinla back to life. Her disposition was too dramatically different from those he’d risen before. Her soul remained in the gem, which should have meant he owned her, but… it just didn’t feel right. Felt like he’d mucked something up, or he’d gotten involved with something he didn’t entirely understand.

  Still, if she’d cooperate and pledge herself to Gynoth’s cause, then it didn’t matter.

  The mouth of the cavern closed as a broad head inched inside, followed by a bony dragon frame. The light that had shined shallowly into the cavern had been plugged. There remained only the obliteration of complete blackness.

  “It appears that you can fit,” Gynoth said, staring at a vague mishmash of shadows creeping toward him.

  Barely, but yes. Osseus’s calcified spine scraped along the ceiling of the cavern, and the bones of his fingers hidden within his wings grated against the walls, shaving away rock dust.

  “Hum,” Heinla said, thinking. “A dragon. Is that what you have? I had a whelp as a pet once. Then he got big and bit me, and my momma put him outside.”

  “Take these chains in your mouth,” Gynoth said, fumbling in the darkness until he found the suspended iron links that bound Heinla’s hands. “Snap them.”

  With pleasure.

  That, Gynoth thought, is how a risen is supposed to act. Even so, dragons seemed to be unique unto themselves. Those who had given themselves to Gynoth had more personality than his human risen. They didn’t refuse orders, never came close to insubordination, but they seemed to be capable of greater thought.

  “Free!” Heinla squealed as the chains shattered and her hands fell into her lap. “So, so long. Do you know how long, Mister Necromancer?”

  “And the iron clasps here,” Gynoth said, ignoring her. “Doubt you’ll be able to snap those.”

  I will break them with my talons.

  Osseus clenched one clasp with his two front feet. He curled his menacing talons—long as daggers and as unbreakable as mountains themselves—around the iron, and he pulled at the clasp until it went pop and fractured. He did the same for the second clasp.

  “My feets, my feets!” Heinla screeched with delight. “Hum. How do you think I would look with stakes still in my eyes? Intimidating? Would I make the boys whimper when I approached, even the biggest and baddest of them?”

  Gynoth felt Heinla’s head and reached behind. There was barely any space, only enough for two fingers to fit between the back of her skull and the wall where the stakes were driven into. “How do you intend to leave without Osseus removing them?”

  “Hum. Well. I have an idea. The stakes are made of weak steel, alloyed only with copper. If your dragon can fit a nail behind my head, he can should be able to break off the ends with that mighty strength of his.”

  I’m not sure, Osseus told Gynoth.

  “Unless he’s a wittle whelp,” Heinla said mockingly. “Don’t worry if you must thrust my head forward. It will rip my flesh, but I won’t cry. I promise.”

  Gynoth shrugged. “Do it.”

  Tell her I’m sorry, Osseus said, batting Heinla in the head with his bony wings.

  “He gives his regards,” Gynoth said.

  “Tell him,” Heinla said, with a certain mad giddiness in her voice, “that I enjoy his touch.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s disturbing. Moreover, you told him yourself. He can hear both of us.”

  If you wish, Osseus said, unflexing his talon so it was horizontal, tell her I mate only with my own species.

  “I don’t wish,” Gynoth said. “Does it fit?” He considered that last question to be poor phrasing given the recent topics of discussion.

  “Oh,” Heinla said, then she grunted. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  I thought I broke her neck, Osseus said. A moment, please. There. I have—

  “Free!” Heinla screeched, jumping to her feet. She wobbled and fell into Gynoth. The necromancer had his arms crossed and didn’t bother opening them, so she face-planted into his chest, stumbled backward and crashed into the wall.

  He walked over to her, or where he guessed she had fallen, given the overwhelming darkness that blackened his vision. “Get up, calmly.” He held his hand out and Heinla took it.

  Back on her feet, she followed Gynoth’s footsteps. Osseus brought up the rear.

  The sky outside was its usual soupy gray, but Gynoth felt as if he’d stepped into the bosom of the sun itself. The abrupt transition from the cave to outdoors made the light feel as if it were giving his eyeballs a nice crusty sear.

  “Yum!” Heinla said excitedly, dropping to her knees in the snow and scooping
piles of the icy stuff into her mouth.

  She ate it and drank it, licked it and smeared it all over her face. Gynoth noticed for the first time she had matted, yarn-like hair.

  “It’s been so long,” she said, head tilted back in heavenly bliss, “but you never forget.” She looked at him, thick iron stakes as black as obsidian driven through her eyes. “Do you?”

  Gynoth put himself against the face of the cliff, a hand on the impeccably smooth maw of the cave. “How can you see?”

  “My senses are extraordinary, Mister Necromancer. All gods are blessed with such power. What you can only see, I can hear and taste and smell. Mm, especially now that I’m free.”

  Gynoth prepared himself for a temporary withdraw into the realm of death, just in case his newest risen wasn’t quite the servant he needed her to be. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill her again, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He needed her, after all.

  “Show me why they call you the goddess of water.”

  “With pleasure,” Heinla said. She got up on her ankles, squatting. Then she stood. “A little, or a lot? Shall I make it an impressive showing, or shall I offer you merely a window into the secrets I hold?”

  “I don’t fancy drowning in an ocean, if that’s what you mean.”

  Heinla giggled. “Yes, Mister Necromancer.” She walked away from the cliff.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I do not feel like drowning, either.”

  I believe we should move, Osseus said.

  Gynoth thought that a wise idea. He took about a dozen steps and then felt a splash of water on his neck. He turned, but never stopped moving away from the cliffs—this is the natural reaction of one who finds himself standing too close to a waterfall for comfort.

  A narrow rivulet of water poured over the cliff’s edge, falling to the ground like a liquid curtain. Slowly the channel of water thickened and widened, and its surface burbled with white, effervescent bubbles. Atop the cliff the water flowed, sloshing now, a violent current that frothed wildly until plunging off the cliff, roaring as it reached the end.

  The waterfall created a small creek—small for now—along the choppy hill where Gynoth stood. His boots were wet. Soon the water would rise to his ankles.