Whom the Gods Hate (Of Gods & Mortals Book 2) Read online

  Whom the Gods Hate

  M. M. Perry

  Whom the Gods Hate

  Whom the Gods Hate

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Some stories feature heroes who are the epitome of bravery, intellect, and strength—flawless individuals that are idolized by all who hear of their inspiring deeds of selfless bravery. The heroes of these tales are the standard by which we measure ourselves.

  This is not one of those stories.

  Chapter 1

  She looked down at her hands for the hundredth time, wondering again at the tangle of scars crisscrossing them. They meant nothing to her. She had no memory of how any of the countless wounds that had left these marks had been made. One evil looking slash in particular, spanning the distance from her thumb all the way around to the opposite side of her wrist, seemed liked the remnant of a blow she should certainly remember. She traced it with her finger, concentrating hard as she peered into the great blank canvass that was her memory, but she could not remember how it had gotten there no matter how hard she tried.

  A sudden shout from a short way off brought the woman instantly out of her musing. She had not been simply idle, ruminating over her lost memories, for the better part of an hour. She had been keeping watch on the clothesline behind a nearby cottage, waiting for the villager who had been hanging laundry to go inside. The shout had come from inside the cottage, someone calling for the laundress. She watched the villager gather up a basket, which looked empty to her, and trundle back into the cottage. She waited, concealed amid the brush at the forest’s edge, just a little while longer. She needed to be sure the woman had finished her work at the line. When after several tense minutes had passed and no one emerged from the cottage, the naked woman darted like a rabbit from her cover and up to the clothes line. She yanked off the most worn pair of trousers and threadbare tunic she could find and then darted back into the tree line. Though she might not know who she was, or how she had gotten here, she did know that stealing from these people was wrong. Although, she thought as she pulled on her pilfered trousers, it was less something she knew and more something she felt because right now, she knew very little. She had decided, long before she’d rushed up to engage in her act of larceny, that if she must steal then it would be that which would be missed least. She hoped clothes as worn as these were wouldn’t be too much of a loss to these people.

  As she pulled the tunic on over her head, she was already moving away from the house, making her way back to the small cave she had found earlier. She brushed her filthy hair out of her eyes as she began the short trek back.

  When she had first awoken—naked, cold and alone high up the mountainside in the untamed wilderness—she had panicked. She ran without thinking, unable to ascribe a source to the overpowering fear that hounded her, yet certain that she must escape it. She had taken just a moment to catch her breath to lean up against what she thought was an ordinary patch of stone. At least, what she had taken for a wall. Everything from the jutting shelves of mutely colored fungus protruding from the surface to the numerous insects scuttling away from her movement led to her believe just that, it was a stone wall. That was until it began to move under her shoulder.

  She tilted her head to see the lumbering body of something large and quite possibly dangerous turning a small, round head toward her. The word ogre flitted across her mind and was gone before she was able to recall what that word meant. She didn’t stop to ponder her sudden flash of memory, nor wait long enough for the beast to round on her and show her its face, instead darting away from it at full speed, careening pell-mell through the scrub as fast as her bare feet could take her.

  Since then she’d been more calculating and measured in her actions, making and then acting on very short-term plans that she could manage in her frightened state. As she achieved each minor goal—escape terrible death at the hands of a monster; find a quiet, secluded place to stop running from said monster; make sure the secluded place isn’t harboring anything else that wants to eat you—she found she was able to reduce her hysteria a little.

  Her first plan that extended beyond the next few minutes was to find a shelter, one that would be warm enough to keep her from freezing once night fell, and hedge against the very likely chance that she wouldn’t just stumble across a bundle of clothing here, wherever this place far above and north of the middle of nowhere was. She finally found a suitable cave, small, and at least currently, uninhabited, just below the frost line. Shelter obtained, her next step was to find a nearby source of water. Unlike with her quest for shelter, where the nature of the mountain had worked against her, it actually helped her finish off this quest in a short time, as its slopes were veined with many small streams, filled by the constant melt of the snowcaps further up the mountain. She found a brook not fifty paces from her shelter. Once she’d set into the rhythm of working towards her own survival, the tasks she set herself provided something concrete she could cling to amidst the chaos of not knowing who she was or where she had come from. The panic slowly ebbed from her mind as she focused on each task; finding something to eat, making a fire, and finally finding some clothing.

  She found it both maddeningly frustrating yet simultaneously comforting that, although she had no idea where she’d learned to fend for herself, she at least remembered how to do it. When she’d finally come far enough down the mountain to find the small village, she had considered approaching them and asking for help. No sooner had she had that thought than the overpowering, unascribable fear welled up in her again. For all she knew, these people were the ones who had left her alone, naked and without her memory, up on the mountainside in the first place. No, she’d decided, better to err on the side of caution and fend for herself for now than to trust in these strangers, and hope that her memory would return.

  As she’d reflected on her situation, she’d made her way cautiously back up the mountain, taking care to leave as little sign of her passing as possible behind her while also remaining alert to her surroundings. It wouldn’t do to have secured her survival, at least in the near term, only to get eaten. Had she simply ran back up the mountain, she could have been back to her little cave far more quickly. As it was, it took her nearly two hours to get back. She pushed aside the brush she’d piled up at the entrance to hide it, squeezed inside, and then pulled the concealing pile back across the opening. She tended to her small fire pit, feeding it with a handful of tinder and then starting in on the grueling process of starting her fire with nothing but wood.

  Half an hour later, a small fire warming her and her survival ensured for the short run, she felt the bile rising in her throat, the acrid taste of fear filling her mouth again. Without something to distract her, she found herself unable to ignore it. She crawled to the mouth of her small cave and took in several slow, deep breaths of cool air, trying to force her heart to slow.

  “What next,” she said aloud, desperately seeking something to do to push the panic away. At least this time she didn’t start at the sound of it, as she had when she’d first awoken. Then, even her own voice had been a stranger, as foreign and unknown as the mountain she found herself on. She’d quickly reacquainted he
rself with her own voice, keeping herself company for the last couple days as she foraged, talking through her tasks.

  Next, she decided, was doing something about how filthy she was. A new task set to focus on, she was able to push the fear back a bit. She left her shelter and made her way to her brook. There she found the small pool that she’d created by digging a series of deep trenches along the sides of the brook, which had contributed in no small part to her currently grimy state. When she’d left her task, the pool had been filled only with muddy water. Now she was gazing down at a clear pool with several tiny fish darting around inside it. She wasn’t interested in them at the moment. She knelt at the pool’s edge and considered her reflection. Her face looked dirty, and her dark blonde hair was so muddy it was almost brown. Grey, frightened eyes looked back up into hers. She put her hands into the icy water and cupped them, bringing a handful of the brisk, clear water up and then splashing it across her face. She was cautious, cognizant that the process of cleaning herself too quickly might bring on a chill, so it went very slowly. Over the course of an hour, taking breaks every few minutes to return to her fire, warming herself while tending it, she managed to shed most of the grime that she’d accumulated over the last several days. But she was in no hurry. The process itself was what she wanted, more than making herself clean again. It was just something else to do; some other thing to occupy her thoughts, if even for a short while.

  Once she finished, she was again left with only her fear and the terrifying thoughts that she had no idea who she was. She knew, or at least she felt, that she needed to get back somewhere, although she had no idea where that somewhere was. She had an unshakable sense that someone out there would be missing her. Someone would be upset at her absence. The idea of that bothered her. There was another problem as well. She couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she tried, what had happened to her. But she knew it hadn’t been an accident. Someone had done this to her—left her alone, naked, and without her memory. She knew it in her bones. When she let herself feel the fear for just a moment, she could trace it back a little—enough to know that there was someone at the other end of it. Yet she could no more name that source of malevolence than she could herself. She wondered if she would even know her nemesis if she stumbled right into them.

  She made her way over to an area of her cave that very purposefully looked no different from any other. She carefully dug into the dirt there, eventually unearthing a palm sized lump. Holding it in one hand, she ran her thumb across the surface, wiping it free of mud and dirt to reveal a smooth, amber stone beneath. The woman considered it for a while, brushing off the rest of the grime that clung to it before putting it in the pocket of the trousers she was wearing. She stood, brushing off her trousers, and headed to the cave’s entrance.

  “Let’s hope we aren’t walking into trouble,” she said, before venturing out.

  Nat grunted as he lifted the last crate up onto the ship. He wiped his hands ineffectually on his tunic, removing none of the grime that carrying the heavy cargo from the docks to the ship had ground into his palms. Despite this latest example of all the hard labor that Gunnarr had put him through as part of a customized and guaranteed effective training regime, or so he told Nat, his arms never did gain the girth he had hoped for. Though he’d gained some bulk since he’d started under Gunnarr’s tutelage, his arms remained annoyingly thin and wiry compared to most warriors. He felt them even more inadequate when sparring with the huge Braldashadian, Gunnarr, which left him feeling like a fresh sapling striving to reach up and overtake a great oak. Though he still sometimes, as now, looked down at the corded knots of muscle in his adamantly reedy arms and wished they’d plump up maybe just a bit, he’d stopped letting the imbalance of brawn between him and his master truly bother him some time ago. Travelling together for the last two years, Nat and Gunnarr had been through more rough scrapes than any other warrior they’d met and more than once it had been reedy, spry, and acrobatic Nat that had been the one to save their lives, and not the Braldashadian giant. This had given him a level of confidence no amount of muscle could.

  Nat ran his fingers through his curly, light-brown hair. He had let it grow out a bit to the point he looked shaggy– not out of any sense of style, but because he just couldn’t find the time stop at the barber anymore. He actually wasn’t all that crazy about the length of his hair. When it was short, it was easier to keep clean and presentable, not to mention providing one less handhold for an opponent to take advantage of. He was sure by now he must look like he was storing the world’s most unkempt bird nest atop his head.

  His brown eyes scanned the docks, double checking to make sure he had gotten everything aboard. His lean face had lost the youthful plump it had had when he first joined up with Gunnarr. Thanks to his hard labor wrought physique and growing reputation as a young warrior who could get things that needed doing done, he no longer had trouble attracting the attention of women. His problem now was attracting the right kind of attention. He’d even had a brief fling with one of the barmaids at Swords Aplenty this spring, but once the initial rush of excitement and emotion had worn away, he found it overall to be unsatisfying in a way he hadn’t expected. They’d parted amicably enough, and the girl had found herself a new swain by the end of the season. But since then, Nat found himself looking at every girl he happened across with a much more critical eye, and though many of them seemed capable of stirring the embers of his passion none ever touched his heart. So he remained apart from them all, always polite and ready with a jest, but never taking any of them to bed. Gunnarr had assured Nat he was just young, and that it would get easier with time and experience—that in all the wide world there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of women he could find love with, if only he chanced to meet them. Considering their current long standing quest, Nat found himself doubting the huge man’s word.

  They had been searching for Cass for over two years. They knew precisely where she was, the Temple of Oshia. The problem was, no one could get there anymore. It seemed Oshia had closed up shop once he had gotten what he wanted. They had spent their time searching for help among the most powerful and knowledgeable people Gunnarr had ever met or heard of. Despite crisscrossing the continent, they hadn’t made much progress in finding a way to get back to the temple. But Gunnarr was a man driven, and Nat’s own sense of fealty towards Cass was second only to Gunnarr’s. Gunnarr and Cass had, after all, unhesitatingly accepted him as a warrior in training under their tutelage when he had nothing to recommend that he even merit their consideration.

  His sweep of the docks complete, Nat walked up the gangplank onto the ship. He found Gunnarr standing near the helm, looking over a sea chart. Nat never grew unimpressed with the man’s size. He was well over six feet tall. His broad shoulders and thick arms were deeply tanned from the long stints they’d spent at sea recently. His hair was very fair, almost white, and fell to his shoulders. His eyes were the color of his homeland, the cold blue glacial islands that made up Braldashad.

  Gunnarr had taken Nat there last year. Nat felt even tinier than normal among all the sturdy Braldashadian people towering over him. At dock, there were more than one hundred Braldashad getting ready to go out to sea. Nat soon realized that was as many Braldashad as he was ever likely to see together. In the frigid landscape, resources were scarce, and the people there knew they could not survive poaching each other’s food, wood and other necessities, so homes were spaced far apart. It was only when they gathered together to launch an expedition that they congregated in any great numbers.

  While visiting Braldashad Nat discovered, with some shock, that Gunnarr was not the biggest of his race. He saw a handful of Braldashad who stood at least a full head taller than the great warrior Nat travelled with. Even the Braldashadian women were imposing, their height easily besting that of the average man where Nat hailed from in Faylendar. Nat wondered why more of the formidable Braldashad did not choose to become warriors, as Gunnarr had. It didn’t
take him long to realize why.

  Though brave and fierce, the Braldashad preferred their isolation. Warriors were required to be among the people who needed their help. Having lived in the seclusion of the Braldashad islands all their lives, most Braldashadians, already terse to begin with, would fall silent and grow anxious when around too many other Braldashadians they didn’t know, let alone people of other lands. They were certainly not used to the chattiness of the people who lived in cities.

  Gunnarr looked up at Nat as the young warrior’s shadow fell upon him.

  “Everything’s been loaded onto the ship,” Nat said cheerfully.

  Gunnarr nodded and gestured toward the maps.

  “I’ve never travelled to Xenor before. Unlike Cass, I never had a reason to. So I’m bringing a guide along on this trip, someone who has travelled there many times.”

  Nat’s face filled with a look of puzzlement.

  “Why would anyone go to Xenor many times?”

  “Apparently, there is a type of fish that lives along the coast that is highly valued by some. This man claims that he’s been fishing the waters along the Xenor coast for years,” Gunnarr said as he folded his sea charts carefully and then tucked them into a small chest bolted to the deck near the helm.

  “You believe him?” Nat asked.

  Gunnarr looked at Nat and a grin spread across his huge face.

  “You’ve learned so much in the last two years. Before, you would have taken this man at his word, without a second thought.”

  “That was before a woman tried to turn me into a toadstool while we were asleep. It was also before that sweet old man took all of our gear and we had to spend the next two weeks hunting him down. It was also before that horse we bought turned out to be a land selkie who tried to take our coin purses while we bathed. I think I may, finally, have learned a lesson about not being too trusting,” Nat said crossing his arms.