Whom the Gods Fear (Of Gods & Mortals Book 3) Read online

  Cass felt more at home sitting at a rough-hewn wooden table in servant’s quarters of Faylendar’s castle than she ever did at any of the many ornate tables, burnished with smooth coats of lacquer lavished over intricate carvings, that she was infrequently called to in the extravagant dining areas meant for royalty and their guests. The table she was at was solidly built, meant to withstand hard service over long years, but lacked any of the unnecessary stylishness of those in the grand halls. It reminded her of sharing meals in the many pubs of her wild youth. She ran her hand over the uneven surface, softened not by a craftsman’s loving attention to detail, but by years of heavy use, and wondered at how that girl she had been had come to be the woman sitting at this table. She didn’t notice Selina come into the room, her mind so deep in thought. It had been more than a week since the day on the plains when she regained her memory, and the sensation of wandering through her own past was still disconcertingly foreign and familiar at once. For Cass, it felt like years— such was the burden of her thoughts.

  “Is he still coming to you at night?” Selina’s voice interrupted Cass’ thoughts. She looked up, startled anyone else was in the room.

  “Oh, mother. I didn’t hear you come in,” Cass said, avoiding the question.

  Selina sat down next to Cass and took her hand. Selina’s hands felt cool and delicate pressed against to her own rough, calloused hands. Selina’s finger picked out the heaviest scar from the many that crisscrossed the back of her adopted daughter’s hands, tracing it all the way round in a nearly complete revolution.

  “I remember this one,” she said. “I remember bandaging it for you while Driscol fretted incessantly over my shoulder. He was worried you’d lose your hand. That we needed to see a powerful healer. I was worried as well and had it been anyone else, I would have heeded his advice. But you’ve always healed fast, even from grievous wounds.”

  Selina looked up from her daughter’s hand. She brushed her fingertips across Cass’ forehead, letting her palm come to rest on her brow.

  “This wound too, will heal in time.”

  Cass took Selina’s hand and pulled it away from her head.

  “Well, time is one of the many things we seem to be running short on,” Cass said gruffly as she stood and moved to the empty fireplace, “along with gods to tell us what in all of Tanavia is going on. They seem to be in unusually short supply around here now, save for the one…” She busied herself starting a small fire to avoid meeting Selina’s eyes.

  Selina knew her daughter well enough not to press the issue. Cass had let her know, in her own oblique, deflecting way that, yes, Oshia was still troubling her dreams and no, she didn’t want to talk about it. She decided to change the topic.

  “The old gods will regain their strength soon enough. The air is so full of portent that it doesn’t take a seer to feel a change is coming. It’s already started. Driscol has been bringing back stories he’s gathered from warriors at the pub… they’re not good. Some of the new gods have been appearing. After all these years of indirect manipulation from the shadows, they are making their presence known again. They’ve been demanding sacrifices. Punishing any of their followers who failed to pray to them daily. And…” Selina paused, wondering if she should burden her daughter further when she was still struggling to come to terms with her tenuous mental state. But she knew Cass would hear about it from Driscol eventually, so she plunged ahead. “It’s beginning to get violent on the streets. Some of the new gods’ acolytes have been hunting down and beating anyone who dares openly worship the old gods. It’s only a matter of time before the old gods retaliate.”

  Cass grimaced. She was dismayed, but not surprised by the news.

  “It will only get worse,” Cass said, chipping viciously at a flint to spark the fire. The tinder caught, and she started to feed it small twigs. “I’ve also seen…When I was near Urgana, looking for Patch, the night after I found him… I saw a great fire in the distance. I thought it must have been a harvest celebration. I could smell the feast they were cooking, so I headed towards it. No warrior in their right mind would pass up a free hot meal out on the road. But I lost my appetite when I got close enough to hear the screams and realized they weren’t cooking food. I ran then, as fast as I could toward them, but by the time I was close enough to see… the screams had stopped. The pyre was so bright and high, I could barely discern the corpses from the wood. And all about the bonfire, people were dancing in a frenzy, screaming to their god to take notice of the infidels they had dealt with. I didn’t think it was wise for me to get their attention. I went back and told Patch he had to flee the area and take his brothers and sisters with him. That it wasn’t safe anymore. I hope he listened. I think he must have. He didn’t seem very keen on the idea of getting cooked.”

  The fire took hold around a particularly dry branch and rapidly licked it up. The sudden flare made her flinch as she recalled that night. The smell of the fire made her momentarily queasy. She tried her best to ignore the feeling, looking away from the fire and back to Selina, hoping to shake the lingering vision.

  “Have you seen what we need to do next?”

  Selina stood and walked over to the hearth. She took the log Cass was still holding from her hand and fed it into the fire.

  “Not about this, no. Not exactly. I’ve seen dark, blackness, all around your feet. Everything is black. There is nothing, no land, no water, no people. It’s a land made of nothing, if that makes any sense. I know it isn’t much to go on, but it’s the vision I’ve had almost exclusively since you came back, whenever I’m near you. All I ever see is you and the blackness. Except…”

  “What?” Cass asked.

  Selina settled herself on the hearthstone next to Cass.

  “There is one other vision. I’ve only had it a few times. You are in a place the opposite of the black place. In every way possible. It’s so full of life, this place. And there is a strange jeweled staff in your hands. I can hold nothing more of the image. It is the strangest sensation for me. Normally my visions are clear and steady. This one, it’s fleeting and foggy. And I’m afraid of it. It scares me. It scares me more than anything I’ve ever seen. And I can’t tell you why. I don’t know why. The vision itself, it doesn’t seem scary, you seem fine, resolute and brave and safe. And yet… I am so afraid I wake up screaming. Every time.”

  Cass stared at the flames as she thought. She rubbed her arms with her hands, trying to feel warm but unable to chase the chill away from her skin. She felt this way since her return to the castle, since she saw the pyre in Urgana.

  “Can you describe the staff?”

  Selina shivered as she tried to remember the vision. Even thinking on it brought about a sense of undefined terror.

  “I only remember that the staff looked as if it was made from a storm. The wood looked like the sky itself on the day of creation…”

  Selina trailed off and her eyes became glazed over, her small pale hands clenched into fists. Cass reached out and gripped her mother by her shoulders, bringing her out of her stupor. Selina’s eyes cleared and she looked at Cass, her face weary from the effort.

  “That’s an interesting way to describe something,” Cass said half smiling. “You’re pretty well preserved for a gal that saw the skies of creation.”

  Selina rolled her eyes and clucked at her daughter as she pushed herself up onto her feet. It cheered her to hear Cass joking again. It gave her hope that Cass was pulling herself out of her mental quagmire.

  “That vision might be just what we were waiting for,” Cass said standing to join her. “I’ve seen a stick like that before. I wouldn’t have described it being quite so grandiose, but from a certain perspective… it sounds about right.”

  Selina smiled, happy to have been some help to her daughter. Cass just wasn’t at her best when left to idle with her thoughts.

  “You have a plan then?”

  “Yeah. Gotta get everyone together first. Make sure they all know what’s what be
fore we head out and that it’s Cass’ plan of action. Sometimes they forget and then someone else gets the credit and the song never mentions my name.”

  The great central garden behind his castle was barely large enough to contain the dragon that loomed over Callan and the modest table the crew sat around. The Ambassador, as Callan, Cass, and the rest of the group had come to call him, since he had never offered them a name of his own, tightly tucked his wings against his sides, curled his tale around his body, and bunched his limbs underneath him, yet he still scraped deep gouges into the walls when he moved. Several crenellations, victims of previous draconic flexing, now lay deeply embedded in the ground at the base of the walls. Most of the scrupulously arranged and tended hedgerows and flowers were even know being pressed flat, somewhere underneath the behemoth—a point, and expense, Callan had made sure every one of them had heard about repeatedly. Sometimes Cass wished Callan hadn’t, in the years she had lost to Oshia, taken such a hands-on role in managing his kingdom. His fiduciary focus was her fault, according to what Callan’s counselors said when they thought she couldn’t overhear them, constantly bemoaning her influence over Callan and wistfully recounting the days before he had met her, when he’d been interested in little more than fine wines, fashion, and being entertained. These days, he was intimately involved in every detail of running his kingdom down to rattling off, repeatedly, the cost per trampled square foot it would cost to bring his garden back to life, let alone the distributed havoc the Ambassador’s fellow dragons were wreaking on the rest of his country. Cass knew it was because Faylendar’s bank was the source for the expense account the warriors had access to over the last couple years, and she thanked Callan whenever she could. She just wished Callan didn’t need to be so fixed on every penny he spent to help them out. But, Cass knew it was but a minor gripe, and certainly one she could live with.

  Cass watched Callan’s face twitch in a new muscle tick he had acquired since the dragon had taken up residence in his garden days ago.

  “Can’t we just, I don’t know, send a delegate to him somewhere he’d be more comfortable?” Callan asked her, nodding in the direction of the Ambassador, which was almost every direction due to his all-encompassing size. “I know of a fine spot in Chulpe he and the rest of his lot could roost, and the Ambassador could just pop over and consult with us when he needs to. Besides, King Oaten really raked me over the coals on our last trade agreement…”

  “You’re back on speaking terms with Oaten? After the troll…incident, I was sure he wouldn’t have anything to do with you for some time.”

  Callan couldn’t hide his smirk and his eyes twinkled when he looked at Cass. It was a rare moment when she didn’t see annoyance cross his face when looking at her.

  “I will remember that insufferable twat holding that troll rectum until my dying days. It may be for that memory alone I will be forever indebted to you warriors.”

  Just as he spoke, his face darkened again. A large chunk of the ancient stone wall crumbled into the garden as the dragon once again shifted. He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips trying to will the anger away.

  “But, of course, he can’t just cease trading with us. It’s too beneficial for Chulpe. But we are being… taxed at a much higher rate than before for Chulpe exports. I just figured, the mountains are more suitable to our new friends, and of course, Oaten would hate it. Which is a nice side benefit.”

  “Sure, I could ask him,” Cass replied, looking the Ambassador over. No matter how much time she spent with him, she was still dazzled by his beauty. His scales weren’t just black—they seemed almost devoid of light, save for the smattering of brilliant, star-like specks that somehow projected the illusion of the scales being a translucent window into a pocket of space embedded far beneath their surface. At least, Cass assumed it was an illusion. She couldn’t wrap her mind around how the dragon, as large as it was, somehow contained a sky’s worth of stars and space inside its bulk. She dragged her attention away from the Ambassador and back to Callan.

  “But I don’t think you’d actually want that. I am fairly certain that they are the only reason we haven’t seen the kind of problems your neighbors are currently contending with,” Cass finished.

  They’d been hearing from other kingdoms for days now that the new gods were mobilizing in almost every city of any significant size, yet Faylendar remained, so far, unmolested. Cass refrained from sharing everything she thought about their current arrangement with the dragons—that she was certain the dragons weren’t staying to protect Faylendar’s people out of any sense of obligation or friendship, merely convenience, and that they were more than likely planning to move out of the city soon. Cass could only assume that their departure would serve as an irresistible invitation to the new gods to move in. I had been close to a week since the old gods had been released from their imprisonment. Cass was shocked at how quickly the new gods had mobilized and cause so much chaos in such a short time. She didn’t want to spring the fear that Faylendar would be next on the god’s agenda as soon as the dragons left onto the increasingly fraying king just yet.

  She asked the crew to assemble in the garden to discuss with the Ambassador what to do next. They all knew time was running short. Every day teeton birds flew in with messages from warriors around Tanavia describing increasingly disturbing outbursts of violence among the cities they were in; fighting in the streets, temples being burnt to the ground, sacrifices—the unrest among the people was growing, and the new gods were sowing the seeds quickly before the old gods could retaliate properly.

  “Sorry to keep you all waiting,” Nat said, breathing heavily as he came into the garden and took his seat, the last of the group to arrive, “The page only just found me. I was out in the…”

  A rumbling shook the ground as the Ambassador moved his head toward the group. He spoke, his voice booming into the courtyard, setting every bird for miles around to flight at the sound.

  “I’m glad you humans have finally decided to act. We tire of waiting,” he said.

  Cass leaned back in her chair and sighed, “Well, I guess our planning won’t be very secret. Too bad, secret plans are way more fun than normal plans. And they usually come with cloaks. And daggers.”

  “I could use a new set of daggers,” Gunnarr chimed in.

  “Does it really matter?” Callan cut in. “I mean, they are gods after all. Would they really not be able to overhear us if we were just really, really quiet?” His wife, Melody, patted him on the arm comfortingly.

  “Well, I didn’t want to frighten all of the citizenry,” Cass said staring at the high walls around the garden. “The only thing more dangerous than a fanatical populace is a scared one.”

  “It’s a bad time to be on the side of the old gods. I heard they killed everyone within sight of the temple of Timta in Chulpe,” Viola added, “and then set a watch outside of it, and take anyone who even glances toward it. No one ever sees those people again,” she shuddered.

  “This is but a preamble to what they will eventually do,” the Ambassador said, his voice a bit less booming, which surprised Cass. She hadn’t expected him to pay much attention to their concerns, but he was clearly making some effort. “You have some time. Not much, but some. A scattering of days. When the ones you call old gods regain their full power, the true fighting will begin,” the Ambassador said.

  “That seems unusually precise. A few days? How can you be so certain that they are about to ratchet things up? How can you know they aren’t, even now, about to pounce? A miscalculation here could be devastating,” Cass said disbelievingly.

  “It is the nature of things,” the Ambassador’s voice rumbled lowly. “This is not the first time the gods have warred. We have seen it before. They most often strike first at the followers. It is akin to a verbal insult between two mortals, or perhaps a small slap, meant to irritate the other side into more extreme action. Soon they will take a more direct hand, instead of working through their followers. This s
tage is the one I speak of coming next. Your old gods, they are flexing their wings even now. I can feel it. Soon the first battle will erupt. Eventually it will turn to them killing each other. That we are sure of. It will start with one. Then it will quickly escalate. Until finally there are only a few left. Those few will destroy everything that remains, if they are allowed to.”

  “Why? Once they’ve won, why would they destroy everything?” Nat asked. It was a question on most of their minds.

  “A god cannot be completely destroyed. When one dies, its…” the Ambassador paused, clearly having trouble finding a word that could convey its full meaning, “…will. It’s consciousness. It’s… essence ceases to be, but the power it commanded remains. At the moment of their death, that power flows to the nearest concentration of similar power. In most cases, this is the god that has just killed them. But the gods are not infinite vessels for such power and can rarely hold more than their original allotment without ill effect. By the time that only a few remain, they will have claimed far too much power. They are not vessels built to contain such power. No vessels we know of can. It will destroy them, eventually, but before it does, it will corrupt their minds, driving them into a destructive frenzy. Then they will destroy everything and when nothing of this reality remains, the power will turn back on them and they will destroy themselves. Then we will be left to guide the world into the next era.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cass said, trying to take in everything the dragon was saying. Most of the time she had spent with the creatures over the last several days, they remained terse and uninterested in conversation. Cass worried that his newfound courtesy in explaining the ways of the gods could only mean that their time had grown truly short. “So we don’t allow them to live then, is that it?”