Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 16

  Sure as the sky above the Ancient Lands was gray and depressing, that was a sign.

  Lavery wiped away some more snot and hurried that way. He dashed through snow only ankle-high in some places and lumbered through the thicker stuff piled up to his shins.

  Atop the hill, he grasped the sign with both hands. It said this:

  Food for the hungry

  Rest for the weary

  —>

  He read it again. The words looked to have been burned into the wood. As for the wood itself, it appeared freshly cut, taken straight from a lathe that morning. There wasn’t even any snow on it.

  Lavery thought this strange, but the promise of food pushed him onward. The arrow led him to another sign, some two hundred paces thataway.

  Bountiful baskets of bread

  Soft silk sheets

  —>

  Maybe the Ancient Lands weren’t as dead as Lavery had thought. He followed the arrow on the sign, sledding down a severe slope on his butt. He counted his steps and, at one hundred fifty, became concerned when he did not see a sign in the distance. He looked this way and that, and suddenly it was there—fifty paces in front of him.

  How could he have missed that before? It was blatantly obvious—a huge, wooden sign sticking five feet out of the ground.

  Crest the hill

  And reap!

  —>

  Lavery sniffed the air. It smelled like charred wood. He removed a glove and cautiously touched the blackened letters on the sign. They were warm.

  He glanced back, up the hill from which he had come. He could no longer see the sign that had been there. Not because the distance was too great, but because it was no longer standing.

  He remembered what Haren had told him: Mind each step you take in the Ancient Lands, and keep your wits about you.

  Sorcery? Was that what these signs were? Sorcerers weren’t all bad, Lavery knew that. He himself could be considered a sorcerer by some standards. Maybe a sorcerer lived in these parts and kept a watchful eye out for travelers, helping them pass through such a rugged and unforgiving land.

  The alternative was possible, he reminded himself—the sorcerer could be evil. But why? Lavery doubted anyone carrying anything of value traveled this way, so what could be gained by misleading and thievery and all those sinful deeds?

  His stomach growled, and it gnawed. If he didn’t get food soon—he was beginning to think his father had misspoken about the three-week mark—he’d die. Or at least have no energy to continue.

  “Well,” he said aloud, talking to the sign, “if there really is food over there, I’ll be able to stock up and reach Coraen. I could always take a quick look, right?” The sign didn’t reply, but Lavery imagined it nodding agreeably. “If I don’t like what I see, I’ll leave. Easy as that.”

  Bundled up in furs that wrapped around furs over linen undergarments, Lavery shuffled toward a chopped-off-at-the-knees hill. A small mound, really. He crested it without struggle, and stopped. Came to a dead-as-a-frozen-corpse standstill. His mouth fell agape in utter awe.

  At the bottom of the hill stood a vast foundation of stone built up to three feet in height, arranged in the shape of a rectangle. It was big enough to fit all of Valios inside; maybe even all of Valios and all of Haeglin.

  And it shined. It glimmered, as if the belly of this great manor had conceived within it the sun itself. Stalks of green grass—green as the finest emeralds dredged up from the deepest mines—swayed inside the walls. There was shrubbery too, and trees with healthy bark the color of chocolate, their boughs bearing apples and oranges and pears.

  Lavery ran toward those walls so quickly he nearly tumbled down the hillside. When he reached the first sets of stone, his mouth formed a little O. He shouldered off his mostly empty bag of supplies and tossed it over the wall, then hefted himself up and over.

  Warmth radiated from all around him, felt like it oozed from inside him. He removed his furs, setting them on the crisp grass, then surveyed his surroundings.

  How could a place like this possibly exist in such a desolate, dreary land? It was like a desert oasis with frozen water and icicles forming on nearby cacti. It didn’t seem real.

  Outside the walls, snow fell. Bitter winds blew, coughing up white, dusty drifts. Lavery was now convinced sorcery had had a hand in crafting this manor. But why? The answer, if it was even important, would have to wait. Lavery was starving.

  He foraged handfuls of raspberries and elderberries and winterberries, popping them into his mouth as he walked from bush to bush. They were huge and juicy, exploding with sweet flavor. There may have been more satisfying feelings in life, but Lavery didn’t know what they were and couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt more pleasure than at this very moment. Every bite, every swallow was divine.

  He climbed trees and tossed apples to the ground, climbed down with fragile, plump oranges in the pocket of his shirt, and collected armfuls of pears. He ate a couple and placed the rest in his bags, then took a stroll through the manor.

  There were several cottages, their roofs made of straw and their walls of fired mud. A small pond lay at the center of the manor, its water clear and full of happily swimming fish. Lavery didn’t know how to fillet a fish, but he figured it couldn’t be too difficult. For now, though, he was full and happy and quite content, so he sat at the edge of the pond and dipped his toes into the warm water.

  He yawned and considered napping. But a faraway noise widened his eyes. It was a strange noise; a whirring of sorts. And then came a booming metallic thud, as if a steel door had been slammed shut. The ground beneath Lavery throbbed with a second thud, and a third.

  He listened intently, but wished he hadn’t. He never had liked the sound of screaming.

  Lavery found himself clutching spikes of grass like a newborn reflexively grasping her mother’s finger. He’d questioned if the thudding came from beneath him like it felt. Maybe it did. Maybe it was simply a vibration from far away. But the screaming? That was directly under him.

  Scrambling to his feet, he chewed his nails and argued silently with himself about what he ought to do. Leaving this perfect, dreamy estate to go back into the bitter cold where nothing grew and nothing lived made Lavery shiver and filled him with dread. But this place wasn’t natural. It wasn’t normal. He wasn’t meant to be here.

  Mind each step you take in the Ancient Lands, Haren had said. And keep your wits about you.

  “I need to go,” Lavery said to the pond, as if the fish were his audience. He remained still, not acting on his decision. The whirring began again, and then came a raspy hiss, not unlike the susurrations from a blacksmith’s forge as he pounds the bellows and fans the flames.

  “Maybe I should stay,” he told the fish. “Life is an adventure, right?” He’d heard that somewhere. Maybe one of his friends in the Valiosian tombs had said it. “I could learn about this place, how it began… maybe how it ends.”

  Against his better judgment and in contrast to all the little voices inside his head telling him to go, to flee—he Walked into the past. The Madness of Departure gripped him. It was a feeling that seized every Wraith Walker. It was a vise that tightened his chest, a pair of talons that burrowed into his mind. An overwhelming desire to abandon his Walk took root inside of him and sprawled throughout.

  The years spun by. Tens and twenties and hundreds. The deeper into the past Lavery ventured, the more difficult it was to maintain his momentum, and the more intense the Madness of Departure became.

  Lavery didn’t understand the grueling specifics of why the Madness of Departure seized him upon every Walk into the past, but it can be explained thusly: Time does not like to be manipulated. It is, after all, the imperator of life. Time makes you young and it makes you old, it bores you and it ends you, and nothing can stand up to it. Nothing can stop it.

  No one and nothing with absolute power accepts a challenge to its authority. But Lavery Opsillian was determined and carried with him an unyielding pe
rseverance and fortitude.

  The Madness of Departure felt like it was strangling him, filling him with an overwhelming need to pry himself away, to step out into whatever year it was. But he did not. He forced Time to bend to him, to allow him into its early chapters that’d been sealed since those days had passed.

  Lavery was now a thousand years in the past. One thousand. He could hardly breathe. His eyes would pop soon, he was sure, and the pressure squeezing his spine and chest would flatten him like a pancake.

  The majestic manor before him fell away, and he reversed the years until it once again appeared. He heard voices and saw shadows. It was then his Walk began, one thousand and twenty-two years in the past.

  He felt rough brick against his palm. The cottage he’d hidden behind in the present was not such in the past. It was a triangular-shaped building now, its roof two panes of sloping slate that culminated in a severe point.

  “We’ll flow warmth across these lands, brothers,” said a man cheerfully.

  Lavery heard a squeak and a squeal, and a squeak and a squeal. One gave way to the other and then sounded off again. He flattened himself against and edged along the brick wall, till he came almost to the front of the building. There he witnessed six wheelbarrows as long as caskets and equally deep. They were being pulled by six men with huge, veiny shoulders and muscular chests. Geometric tattoos in various shades of blacks and violets covered their faces.

  Lavery realized he was shivering. He could barely think, he was so cold. Snow fell in clumps on his hair, and the tips of his fingers turned purple. He wouldn’t be able to stay here long, but the answer to how this exotic winter oasis had become a haven for warmth and life itself seemed so close; he was on the edge of a discovery.

  The screeching of squeaks and squeals continued, got louder even. They came from the tiny wheels of the wheelbarrows that struggled to roll along in the thick carpet of snow and ice.

  “Do not worry,” said one of the men as the bed of his wheelbarrow rocked. “You will be the gods of fire.”

  “A worthy sacrifice,” another said.

  The men were sixty feet away now, close enough that Lavery could almost see what goods they were hauling. Just a little more and his eyes would see over the rims of the wheelbarrows and into the deep beds.

  A little more.

  He waited with bated breath, propped up on the tips of his toes by unrelenting anticipation. He blinked the snow out of his eyes and waited.

  A moment later, disgust replaced anticipation. He staggered back, toward the rear of the building. There were people in those wheelbarrows. Living people. Rope bound their legs and arms, and their mouths were stuffed with wads of cloth.

  He wished to end his Walk. Nothing good could possibly come of watching an execution, and that was exactly what would happen to these poor prisoners, he knew. Positive outcomes didn’t exist for the enslaved and ensnared.

  Curiosity kept him from leaving. You will be the gods of fire, one man had said. That sounded like the profession of a cult leader, to be sure, but these were the Ancient Lands. Sorcery had a foothold here. Maybe it had even been born here, for all Lavery knew. Were these poor prisoners somehow tied to the manor’s present warmth?

  That was a question Lavery couldn’t allow to go unanswered. So he waited in the rear of the brick building, listening for what direction the lumbering men would take. Better to follow from behind, after all.

  The droning of squeaks and squeals sounded nearer. The crunching of cumbersome footsteps immediate, as if they were on the other side.

  A door screeched open, and Lavery heard an echo of boots pounding against croaking floorboards. An ear to the wall told Lavery they’d gone inside.

  “They’ll sing ballads of your valor here today,” said one of the men.

  “Today and forevermore.”

  “Hear, hear!”

  “Hear, hear!” erupted a cacophony of boorish voices.

  The squeaking and squealing ceased. But still it sounded like the men and their prisoners were on the move; footsteps grew more distant, and voices became muddled and garbled. Lavery waited for a while, until he could hear nothing more, and then he went around to the front of the building.

  He stared in through an open door, at a mostly empty room with a couple barrels and boxes reinforced with iron bands and rivets. The luster of snow outside poured in, illuminating the room in a soft white glow.

  Lavery pushed himself tentatively forward, casting aside feelings of doubt and fear. Floorboards whimpered and moaned, idling him until the reassuring sound of silence returned.

  At the end of the room lay a conspicuous copper handle bolted to the floor. He pulled at it, and up came a square framing of floor—or, as it were, a trapdoor. A series of stone steps in pristine condition, as if they were recently laid, led underground.

  Lavery placed a foot on the first step, and his foot dissolved. The room he was in vanished too, and so did his hands and the wooden floorboards. A frantic bolt of lightning raced between his eyes, and pinpricks of light stabbed into his mind.

  He gasped, threw his hands up to his face. He felt warm again, and why wouldn’t he? The past had spat him out and returned him to the present. Or, more accurately, he’d retreated from the past. He had his trained subconscious to thank for that—the part of him that still wholly existed and remained aware in the present. When it heard strange, unidentifiable or potentially dangerous noises, it yanked him out of his Walk.

  Lavery leaned against the rear of the cottage that had, apparently, once been made of brick and built in the shape of a triangle and resembled this present-day cottage about as much as grass resembles sand. He breathed slowly, gathering his bearings and collecting himself from his Walk.

  A cursory take of his surroundings revealed no immediate danger. He listened for what his eyes couldn’t see, but he didn’t hear—were those grunts?

  He held his breath and plugged one ear—he’d been told doing so would heighten his senses—and heard a jumble of groans. They came from within the cottage, along with plodding footsteps.

  Moments later, there was a creak. Lavery guessed a door. He sidled along the cottage wall, to the corner. A man with bulging shoulders and tree trunks for arms merged into his vision, walking toward the pond. Five others joined him, their shapes identical. They looked similar to the men Lavery had seen during his Walk. Well, not really similar, but rather exactly the same.

  That can’t be possible, Lavery thought.

  The men plunged their immense fists into the pond, snatching up several fish in one go. They bit off the heads and spat them out, then held the decapitated fish like chicken wings and feasted on the meat.

  “Love me the young ones!” said one of the men. “Melts on your tongue.”

  “Bah,” said another. He snapped a bone off a now-meatless carcass and used it to clean his teeth. “Not enough meat on ’em. Big ones fill ya, and they keep ya filled.”

  “Well, brothers,” announced a third with a belch, “it’s time to rest. Tomorrow we cook with embers.”

  “Here’s to tomorrow!” said a fourth, throwing his fist into the air. “A feast from the gods themselves.”

  More fists were raised. “Hear, hear!”

  “Hear, hear!”

  The men went their separate ways, toward stone huts spaced out by fifty or so feet. Once Lavery was confident they were inside and not coming back out anytime soon, he went around to the front of the cottage.

  The everlasting sunlight, or whatever light it was that burnished this manor in a constant golden glow, bled into the open cottage. Shattered brick lay on the floor, dusty and cobwebbed. Crooked shelves hung on the walls, exposed nails jutting from all directions.

  Heart slamming in his chest, Lavery crept inside. There was no good reason to be doing this besides a childlike curiosity. He felt guilty for putting himself and the whole Wraith Walker Order—if that even existed—at risk because he wanted to uncover one little secret of a land that had th
ousands. If one of the men saw him… well, that would be it. They’d likely kill him, or harm him in ways such that his legs would be of no use ever again.

  But as he waded into the chalky air of the cottage and breathed its mold and mildew, the excitement and passion of adventure pushed him onward. Whatever had happened to that brick building—and why—Lavery didn’t know. But the cottage had seemingly replaced it, which meant maybe the trapdoor was still here. Whatever lay beneath was still here.

  Chunks of brick rolled over and clattered as Lavery slunk along. Near the far wall lay a patch of wooden flooring cleared of debris. The glint of a copper handle made Lavery almost choke on his breath.

  He grasped it, took one last look at the doorway, then pulled. The trapdoor opened upward. Lavery crouched and started down the steps, easing the door closed behind him.

  A blast of heat washed over him. It felt like a broiling, muggy heat—a sticky vapor after a summer rainstorm. As he went farther down, the heat changed from wet to dry and from intense to unbearable. Also, an orange glow undulated along the walls.

  Lavery searched blindly for the next step and almost tumbled down however many remained. He threw a hand against the wall, catching himself before that happened. The step below was only half of one, and so too was the step below that, a pattern that repeated itself for as far as Lavery could see the stairs uncoil downward.

  He descended more carefully, slowing his pace and keeping his eyes at his feet. Stone crumbs crunched under his boots, whether from the missing portions of stairs or from the now-deteriorating walls he couldn’t say.

  Sweat poured down his face and slickened his neck. His arms were wet, his shirt soaked. Each breath felt like he was inhaling steam straight from a boiling pot. He wasn’t sure how much farther he could go.

  But then he heard the groans, and he knew he had to keep going. Something—no, someone—was down there. They might need his help.

  Probably they did.

  He rubbed his face vigorously with his arm and looked to the shallow ceiling as if it were the heavens. His eyes stung with sweat. His lips felt dry and brittle. The groans sounded closer, so he lowered his head and told himself he was strong. He was twelve years of age! Boyhood was a relic of his past, and he’d prove it.