Blood Of Gods (Book 3) (59 page)

Another form then appeared above him, blocking the sun.
Patrick
raised his eyes and saw the man with one eye. His sword was sheathed, the horned helm wedged beneath his arm. The man gazed down at him, his lips pursed.

“You saved my life,” he said coldly. “For that I am thankful.”

Patrick went to reply, only the man turned away before he could say anything. He picked up the twisted elf’s two black swords and headed toward a small gathering of soldiers without another word.

“Charming fellow,” Patrick said.

“He is one of Karak’s most faithful,” said Ahaesarus, watching the man as he and his mates wandered away. “It drips off him.”

“Good for him,” Patrick said. His vision began to get blurry. “But say, Ahaesarus, did you come to save me or let me slowly die?”

The Master Warden chuckled and placed his hands on Patrick’s midsection. “To tell you the truth, I am not certain this will work,” he said, his eyes peering at the spot where the gods had warred.

“Well try, anyway, or let me go.”

Ahaesarus nodded and began to whisper words of prayer. His hands glowed with holy light. Patrick felt the warmth and comfort of Ashhur’s healing magics course through him and leaned his head back on the soaked cobbles. He began to grow tired, but before he closed his eyes, he looked one last time at the place where Ashhur and Karak had fought, where the blood of gods had been spilled before a bolt of lightning swallowed them both, along with Jacob Eveningstar, the child of two gods.

“Ashhur, where did you go?” he asked aloud before he lost
consciousness
.

C
HAPTER

52

R
achida’s surviving band of sellswords tried to scale the stumpy new hillock as the winged horses approached, but the steep incline and their armor made them clumsy. Her men slid down the rocks or tumbled head over heels. Rachida herself attempted no such foolish measure. She had just seen a demon turn into a precipitous pile of rocks, elves stare up at the sky as if listening to some unheard diatribe and then half of them fall screaming to the ground, and now winged horses flew over the horizon. No, she was going to stay ready for whatever came next.

“Quester!” she shouted over the din of flapping wings and shrieking elves. “Pox Jon, Turock—get the men moving! Forget the winged horses. We have our own.”

The Crimson Sword was but a few feet away, gazing undecidedly at the writhing, warping elves, and the brash young sellsword began barking orders to the others wearing Karak’s armor. Pox Jon and Decker, who’d been trying—and failing—to scale the mountain, ran past her to where the few horses they had remaining lingered, held six reins per hand by others of their party. Turock and his spellcasters gave the collapsed elves as wide a berth as they could. She was impressed by the restraint they all showed, not gawking in awe at the flying horses.

But then again, the earth itself had just risen up and swallowed a demon. Dark wonders were becoming surprisingly commonplace.

The others began hustling after her, armor clanking and boots stomping the ground. Rachida waved them past, keeping a wary eye constantly on the fallen elves. There were so many, possibly more than a thousand, both males and females among them. Their bodies swelled and twisted, their skin changing color. Rachida didn’t like that one bit.

She liked it even less when they stood up.

Her men were still filing past when they did so. With the new hillock creating an obstruction on one side, the cliff on the other, and so many forms packed in the two-hundred-foot area in between, the soldiers who had yet to cross the threshold stood no chance. The altered elves, their upper bodies bulky, their incisors sharp, shook their heads as if waking from a dream. That only lasted a brief moment. They roared in voices raspy and bestial and proceeded to lash out at the closest things to them—her men.

Her soldiers had weapons, whereas most of the beasts didn’t, but the men were vastly outnumbered and ill prepared for the brutality of these new, savage things. The beasts leapt at their prey two, three, four at a time, biting faces, ripping at necks, bludgeoning with their fists. “No!” Rachida exclaimed. She went to draw her Twins but came away with only one. She’d forgotten that she’d given one to the Quellan who had taken charge during the demon’s attack. One would have to do. “Quester—with me!” she screamed. With the shortsword in hand, she charged into the melee.

In the art of swordplay, if Moira was the gymnast, Rachida was the dancer. She flowed like water through the madness, on her toes, each part of her body moving in harmony. She spun away from greedy claws, ducked beneath snapping mouths, pirouetted around her would-be murderers. Her sword was an extension of her hand, its blade going exactly where she wished it. She flicked her wrist, severing a throat, then slid to the side, raised her free hand up, and brought her other arm around, spearing a female beast in the chest. Each time she twirled, she grabbed the collar of one of her men, shoving him toward safety. Some of her men made it; others were swallowed by the riotous horde of gray flesh.

Quester appeared by her side, the young man’s forked beard colored red now, but not with dye. He was elegant in his own right, his longsword looping around, easily cutting away at the unprotected creatures. “There are too many,” he called out. Strangely enough, he almost sounded gleeful about it.

“I know!” said Rachida, dipping her shoulder and stabbing upward, impaling a beastly elf through the chin.

“Retreat or die fighting?”

“Retreat,” she called back.

The two of them backed away slowly, a constant flurry of motion as they kept space between them and the beasts that wanted them dead. They were soon joined by Talon Blackwolfe, who hacked away in his own special, belligerent style, his greasy, dark hair flopping about him. The three of them gathered up men as they went, until it was a group of twenty that cut their way through the homicidal host. The beasts surrounded them, pressing in on all sides. Their strength seemed to grow with each passing moment, as did their threshold for pain. Rachida slashed one across the belly, only to have it run at her again while its intestines trailed behind.

“I’m sorry, Moira,” she muttered as she gutted yet another
former
elf.

“Get down!” she heard Turock scream.

The largest fireball Rachida had seen since Karak decimated the Temple of the Flesh soared over her head just as she ducked. It struck the ground and detonated, sending dead soldiers and flailing gray-skinned beasts tumbling into the air. The smell of scorched flesh filled her nostrils. Smoke began to choke out the space they fought in.

“Hot damn!” Turock shouted.

The beasts surrounding Rachida’s pack began to thin out, when another fireball, slightly smaller this time, soared overhead, setting even more of the beasts aflame. The former elves stared at the flames, their deep-set eyes wide with fear. “Now!” Rachida ordered. With Quester in the lead, they shoved their way through those who remained. Men still died, but more of the beasts did now. A ray of lightning as thick as Rachida’s body struck those off to the right, making their bodies shake and smoke and finally explode, sending more of the twisted elves over the cliff.

Finally, the beasts fell away from them. Rachida turned and ran toward the line where Turock stood with his sixteen spellcasters. The looks on each of their faces were of pure glee, Turock’s in particular. The strange, red-haired man hooted as he began launching fireballs with each hand, one after the other, killing beasts and shoving the rest back.

The survivors dashed past the spellcasters and huffed their way to the other side, away from the cliff where the narrow and flat grassland spread out. Rachida glanced up. The last few winged horses descended to the peak of the new hillock and lifted off mere seconds later, a pair of elves on each of their backs. She watched them glide south, out over the ocean, and spin around, sailing back over their heads as they flew northeast. She then brought her attention to Turock. The spellcaster and his students seemed to be running out of strength, their magical attacks weaker and weaker. Not that it mattered much. Only a handful of twisted elves remained. The rest had fled around the other side of the hillock and disappeared into the forest.

When it was over, Rachida gathered her remaining men into ranks and took a rough count. Barely half of the eight hundred who had made their way south from Drake remained.

“We lost so many,” she said, to which Talon dipped his head in respect.

“Fewer men, fewer greedy hands grasping for my gold,” said a gleeful Quester Billings. The Crimson Sword winked at her. Rachida scowled but said nothing. A sellsword was a sellsword. He was simply living in a world Karak had built, owning the ideals Karak believed in. There would be no changing that.

She approached the spellcasters last. The group of them was gathered in a tight circle, talking enthusiastically among themselves. Rachida tapped Turock on the shoulder, and the man spun around, his eyes wild with excitement.

“Did you see that?” he exclaimed as he followed her away from his apprentices. “Did you fucking
see that
?”

Rachida nodded. “But how? I thought you said your magic was limited?”

“I know, and it was. By Karak’s wilted prick, I thought I’d used up all I had fighting the demon! But it was a good thing I was spent, because had I not . . . ” He trailed off.

“The fireball would have been much bigger?” Rachida asked.

“Indeed. And then who knows how many of your people would’ve died.” The odd man laughed. “Hell, I might have blown up that mound and freed the beast again if that had happened!”

“Somehow, I do not think that likely,” said Rachida.

“Probably not. However, this changes things entirely.”

“How so?”

The man grinned. “Why else would magic be suddenly rendered powerful where once it was weak? My teacher, Errdroth Plentos, told me once that all magic lost potency once the brother gods came to Dezrel. So if now that magic has returned . . . ”

“Then the gods no longer walk the land,” she finished for him. For Rachida, the thought was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
Be careful what you pray for
and all. “How do you think it happened, if it did?”

“Who knows?” Turock said with a shrug. He then pointed at his fellow spellcasters. “And I don’t rightly care. Just think on this, Rachida, my wonderful slice of the heavens. Let’s say the gods are gone. How many men and women do you know, in Neldar and beyond, who are practiced in the art of magic?”

She shrugged. “You, I suppose. And your students.”

“Exactly,” the man said with a wink as he proffered his pointed cap. “And some of the elves, of course. Which, if my grasp of numbers doesn’t fail me, will make me a very, very sought-after man.”

“I suppose it does.”

“You just remember to save some of that gold your men keep talking about for me. I think you owe me that much.”

Rachida frowned and walked away while Turock laughed, not liking that statement one bit.

An hour later, the cavalcade began the long march north. Rachida lingered behind, staring from a distance at the new hillock, the smoking divots in the earth, and the litany of corpses heaped on the ground. It was a quiet moment. She closed her eyes to pray for the souls of the dead, but suddenly realized that she didn’t know
to who
m to pray.

“Is the great Rachida Gemcroft feeling introspective?” she heard Quester ask.

Her eyes opened. The young sellsword was beside her, the blood in his forked beard now dried. It flaked off as he ran his hand through it. The handsome man smiled deviously at her.

“Should you not be watching over my charges?” she asked him.

“I handed the reins to Blackwolfe. The man’s eager. Has potential. Could make a good sellsword one day.”

“Perhaps.”

“Anyway, what happens with grimy Talon doesn’t truly concern me. What I would really like to know is where we go from here.” He laughed. “Do you wish to remain in Paradise and build a new life for yourself?”

She chuckled. “Fuck Paradise. I do not think I like it here.”

That elicited a laugh from Quester as well.

“As a matter of fact,” said Rachida, “I have a sudden, burning desire to march back to Neldar. Hopefully, I have someone there waiting for me, someone I haven’t seen in far too long.”

Moira’s image flashed in her mind, her icy blue eyes, her silver hair, her slender body. Rachida felt warmth spread through her.

Quester nodded. “So we find a way around the river and head east, then?”

“No. We ride back to Conch and sail back to the Isles of Gold.” She looked at her last remaining Twin, its cutting edge stained brown. “I miss my son, and I have a very special gift for my husband too.”

“That, and you still need to give us our gold.”

“Yes, that too.”

They laughed together and turned their horses about, heading toward the rear of the convoy as it plodded over the hills.

C
HAPTER

53

I
n the aftermath of the gods’ disappearance and the deaths of the twisted elves, the people stood in shocked silence. It seemed even the dying chose to still their tongues. Laurel felt a sort of deflating in the air, as if the souls of every living being who remained on what had once been a battlefield had been stripped of their wills. Soldiers of Karak and Ashhur, Sisters of the Cloth,
Wardens
from the west—all simply gawked at everything around them, confused as to what they should do next.

Laurel approached the battlefield from behind, walking slowly alongside the wreckage of what had been Karak’s most glorious creation. The Castle of the Lion’s three towers were a heap of rubble that filled up nearly the entire courtyard. The stables to the rear of the castle were buried under a mound of gray stone. The ground had fractured, and heavy stones had begun to slide down into the earth, collapsing into the dungeons and tunnels below the castle. The thirty-foot wall was in pieces as well; only three short sections remained standing.

As Laurel placed one foot in front of the other, she scanned the ruins. Shredded bits of tapestry, pinned below the chunks of stone, flapped in the breeze. There were iron cookware and brass candleholders strewn about, crushed and useless. In places, blood seeped from below the jagged boulders—all that remained of those who had hid within the castle during the battle. Laurel hoped Zebediah and Marius, the betraying members of the Council of Twelve, were among them.

Somehow, she had a feeling they hadn’t been.

King Eldrich walked to one side of her, Lyana Mori to the other. The king’s hands were shaking, his eyes bulging in disbelief as he took in the scene.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “She did it. Celestia banished them.”

“Where did they go?” asked Lyana.

Laurel swallowed hard. “I don’t know, Lyana. I don’t know.”

Together, the three of them crossed through the area where once
the portcullis had stood. There was a rotten stench in the air. The
only sign that there had once been a wall and portcullis here was a single onyx lion, its rear half pulverized. Laurel shuddered and
turned her head away from the thing. Lyana’s hand slipped into hers.
King Eldrich cleared his throat.

“What do we do now?” he asked. His voice sounded far away.

“We keep going,” she told him.

Countless eyes turned to them as the trio walked onto the bloody cobbles outside the destroyed castle wall. A group of men decked in bloodied armor stepped aside, allowing them to pass. One among them Laurel recognized—Malcolm Gregorian, the scarred former Captain of the Palace Guard. Malcolm’s good eye shimmered with tears as he looked at Laurel, but there was no recognition in
his gaze
. The large man turned away, his massive sword strapped to his back and a pair of black blades dangling in his hands. He shook his head, looking just as lost as the men around him.

Laurel passed them by, allowing herself to patiently look upon the
area where the battle had taken place. Corpses were
everywhere
—men, women, Wardens, and horses—grotesque reminders for those who’d survived the ordeal of what had just passed. She wondered if any of them were Pulo or Moira, or any of the other poor souls she had grown to love over the last year of her life. Whether they were or not, she knew that if they weren’t disposed of soon, this area would be nigh uninhabitable.
Such a cold way to think,
she thought. It was obvious no one shared her feelings. The people simply milled about, slowly breaking out of their stupors. The wounded were treated. Wardens, themselves appearing weary and mystified, knelt before those whose injuries were most dire, seemingly without care for which god had spawned them. Laurel looked on as a soft
yellow
glow rose up from one of their hands. The blood-drenched Warden stared at his fingers as if shocked that this should happen. Another Warden, a towering sort who walked with his head held high, leaned over his brethren and offered reassuring words. When he stood, the comforting Warden looked Laurel’s way and nodded. Laurel returned the gesture.

A great murmuring could soon be heard, a thousand whispered conversations happening at once. The survivors began gathering in small groups. It was difficult to tell who was who, what with all as drenched in blood as they were. Laurel wondered if the men out there knew one another, or if they were simply looking to the closest person to them for comfort. She shrugged and walked on.

Farther along the square, as the street leading to the South Road narrowed, Laurel found a small cluster of Sisters gathered before the front stoop of a coin lender’s store. Their wrappings red and heavy, they had their arms around one another as they sobbed. Laurel held out her hand, halting Eldrich’s and Lyana’s progress.

“Why are we stopping?” asked the king.

Laurel put a finger to her lips and watched.

The men who walked down the road paid the Sisters no mind, wandering mindlessly toward the main throughway in a steady stream. Some tugged injured horses behind them, the only things of true value left on the battlefield. Only one individual, a woman, seemed to notice the Sisters. The woman took a pin from her hair as she weaved between the ambling men, and out fell a nest of
red-blond
curls. Laurel had never seen hair that color in her life aside from the poor girl who had once hung from the castle wall.
A woman from Paradise,
she thought. The red-haired woman approached the Sisters and knelt in front of them, placing her hands on the backs of the two closest to her. The Sisters turned to her, and allowed the new woman to join in their embrace.

“What are we watching?” asked Lyana.

“Healing,” said Laurel.

The woman from Paradise leaned back from the embrace and faced one of the Sisters. Her head tilted to the side, and she smiled sadly. Reaching up her hands, the woman began undoing the wrappings around the Sister’s head, slowly revealing a shock of auburn waves, a pair of light green eyes, a thick nose, and full lips. The girl uncovered was young, thirteen at the most. The redhead leaned forward and rustled the girl’s hair before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Behind the two, the rest of the Sisters began removing their wrappings as well.

“It’s symbolic,” she told King Eldrich.

“What is?”

“The removing of the bandages. They represent servitude. Once they come off, the allegiance to Karak ends. Look.”

She pointed toward the meandering crowd. Now that the
Sisters
had uncovered their faces, the men drifted toward them,
offering
embraces and sincere words, comforting them as they would
any othe
r.

“They’re allowed to care,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they are from Veldaren, or Felwood, or Gronswik, or Omnmount, or even Paradise. It doesn’t matter which god created them. They are hurting, they have lived though a nightmare, and they require comfort. The gods be damned.”

Lyana gasped.

“I would watch your tongue, Laurel,” said the king.

“Why? We have no reason to any longer.”

“But we don’t know where the gods went. They might
come back.
”

To that, Laurel laughed. “You heard the goddess. They aren’t coming back.” She waved her arm out toward the departing masses. “And everyone knows it. We feel little because we turned our back on our god long ago. But these people? They fought for their deity, were willing to die for him. You can see the pain of loss in each of their eyes. They’re alone in a world where the gods once walked among them. As are we. Faith will be given new meaning now. So will what it means to be human.”

“Karak got his wish after all,” whispered Lyana.

Both Laurel and the king looked at her.

The girl continued, her tone childlike and timid. “Karak always said he wanted us to be free. That he wanted us to think for ourselves and make our own way.” She looked up at Laurel with pleading eyes. “Do you think he meant for this all along?”

Laurel’s heart broke for her.
All she’s suffered in his name, and still she loves him.

“Who knows, Lyana?” she said. “Perhaps he did.”

It was the easiest lie in the world to tell.

King Eldrich squinted and stepped off the bloodstained slate walk. “And this peace . . . do you think it will last?”

“No,” Laurel replied, sidling up beside the drawn-out man and slipping her arm into his. She didn’t fail to notice the way the king’s breathing hitched when she did so. “The shock will pass, and life will go on. We’re human. We err, we fight, we cheat, we steal, we kill. We’ll do just as we’ve always done, only now we do it rudderless.”

“And what of Paradise?” asked Eldrich. “Ashhur is gone as well, which leaves another rudderless nation in our midst, one that has been ravaged by war.”

“I think Paradise is the least of your worries, my Liege. There is too much to accomplish here.”

The king nodded solemnly and faced the departing mob. The weary soldiers greeted him with esteem as they walked by. “And what do I do?”

“You go among them. You talk to them. You
inspire
them. You’re the king of this land, no matter who it was that named you. And with no one to pull the strings, no one can rightly call you a
puppet
.”

“I don’t have the tools, Laurel. I don’t have an army. I don’t even have a
castle
.”

“You have something more than that. The people have known you as their king for nine years now. They recognize you as such. You
must let those who would question your leadership see the
real you
.
And as for a castle, you have the Tower Keep. It might not be as lavish as the Castle of the Lion, but perhaps that’s what you require. Someplace practical. Someplace easily defensible. Someplace as ugly as the sins of the human soul. This is now a new nation, with new rules and new laws, laws that you will help inscribe. You have everything you require to become not just a king, but a
great
king.”

“Not everything.”

“No?”

“No,” Eldrich said with a wink. “A great king needs a great queen, after all. I’ve heard all the Wardens’ stories say so.”

Lyana giggled and covered her mouth. As for Laurel, all she could do was shake her head and smile.