Godblind

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

Copyright © Anna Stephens 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008215897

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008215910

Version: 2018-01-29

Dedication

For my Uncles, David and Graham.

I wish you could have seen this.

Map

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Dedication

Rillirin

Corvus

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Mace

Crys

Tara

Galtas

The Blessed One

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Crys

Gilda

Mace

Corvus

Crys

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Tara

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Gilda

Crys

Durdil

The Blessed One

Mace

Rillirin

Dom

Durdil

Galtas

Durdil

Tara

Crys

Corvus

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Gilda

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Galtas

Durdil

The Blessed One

Dom

Tara

Rillirin

Dom

Mace

Galtas

Tara

Gilda

Mace

Rillirin

Tara

Mace

Corvus

Dom

Crys

Dom

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Galtas

Gilda

Rillirin

Durdil

Corvus

Gilda

Dom

Galtas

Crys

Dom

Crys

Mace

Durdil

Mace

Tara

Rillirin

Mace

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Tara

Durdil

Crys

Rillirin

Corvus

Epilogue: Dom

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

RILLIRIN

Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods

Cave-temple, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Rillirin stood at the back with the other slaves, all huddled in a tight knot like a withered fist. Word had been sent days before, summoning all the Mireces’ war chiefs from the villages along the Sky Path, drawing them to the capital to hear the Red Gods’ Blessed One. Whatever They had told her, it was important enough to bring the war chiefs to Eagle Height as winter set in.

Rillirin glanced towards the Blessed One with an involuntary curl of the lip, and then lowered her head fast. The high priestess of the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood, spiritual leader of the Mireces, was a remote figure, lit and then hidden by the guttering torches, her blue robe dark as smoke in the gloom, face as closed and beautiful as Mount Gil, rearing harsh and impassable above Eagle Height.

The altar was stained black and the temple reeked of old blood. Most of the Blessed One’s sermons ended with sacrifice, with a slave writhing on the altar stone. Rillirin shrank in on herself, staring at the floor between her boots. She had no desire to be that slave.

‘Come first moon we will enter the nine hundred and ninety-fifth year of our exile,’ the Blessed One said, her voice hard as she paced like a mountain cat before the congregation. King Liris stood at the front among his war chiefs, but she pitched her voice to the back of the temple so it bounced among the stalagtites hanging like stone spears above their heads. All would hear her this night.

‘Almost a millennium since we and our mighty gods were cast from the land of Gilgoras with its warm and bountiful countries to scratch a living up here in the ice and rock. Driven from Rilpor, harried from Listre, exiled from Krike.’ Cold eyes swept the warriors and war chiefs thronging at her feet as she listed the countries where the Red Gods had once held sway. ‘And what have you accomplished in all those years?’ Her voice cracked like a whip and the men flinched, hunching lower beneath wrath as sudden as a late spring storm.

‘Nothing,’ the Blessed One spat. ‘Petty raids, stolen livestock, stolen wheat. A few Wolves dead. Pathetic.’ Her teeth clicked together as she bit off the word. She raised her left hand and extended her index finger. It commanded a rustle of fear from Mireces and slave alike as she let it point first here, then there. She didn’t look where she gestured, as though it wasn’t attached to her, or as though it was driven by a will other than hers, a will divine.

The choosing finger. The death finger. How many times had Rillirin felt the brush of its sentience across her nerve endings, wondering if this, now, was the time of her death? It suddenly stilled, its tip pointing straight at her, and Rillirin’s vision contracted to its point and her breath caught in her throat. Stomach cramping, eyes watering, she forced herself to look past the finger into the Blessed One’s eyes, and saw the calculation there.

She wouldn’t dare. Liris would never allow it. Would he?

The finger moved on.

‘You disagree?’ the Blessed One demanded when Liris dared to look up. Challenge heated her eyes, tilted her chin up, and the Mireces king met her gaze for less than a second. ‘No, you would not. You cannot. Each year you swear your oaths to the Red Gods, sanctified in your own blood, promising Them glory and a return to the warm plains, swearing you will restore Them to Their rightful dominion over all the souls within Gilgoras. And each year you fail.’

Her voice dropped to a silky whisper. ‘And so the gods have chosen the instrument of Their return.’

Liris was sweating. ‘You have seen this?’ he managed.

‘The Dark Lady Herself has told me,’ the Blessed One confirmed, her smile small and cruel. ‘There are those in Rilpor who are of more use to Her than any man here.’ She swept her finger across the crowd and they leant away from it. ‘There are those in Rilpor who hate and fear us, and yet who will do more for our cause than you.’

She accompanied the words with the finger, and for a second it pointed at Liris’s heart. The threat was clear and men slid away from him as though he were plagued. The sacred blue of their shirts was dull under the temple’s torches, blackening with fear-sweat at their proximity to death.

Rillirin felt a bubble of shock and then sickening fear. What would happen to her when Liris’s tenuous protection was gone? I’ll be unclaimed. She hated Liris, despised him with everything in her, yet he kept her safe from the depradations of the other men. Kept her for himself.

Liris threw back his shoulders and drew himself up to meet his fate, but then the finger jerked on amid a growing babble of noise. Rillirin breathed out, relieved and disgusted with that relief in equal measure.

The Blessed One hissed and drew all eyes back to her. ‘Our gods are trapped on the borders of Gilgoras like us, but They weave Their holy work inside its bounds nonetheless. With the help of my high priest, Gull, who lies hidden in the very heart of Rilpor, They draw one to Them who can finally see Their desires fulfilled.’ She bared her teeth. ‘Know this now, and rejoice in the knowing. The gods’ plans are revealed to me, and soon enough to you. Begin your preparations and make them good. Come the spring, we do not raid. Come spring, we conquer. And by midsummer, we will have victory not only over Rilpor but over their so-called Gods of Light as well.’

She raised both arms to the temple roof. ‘The veil can only be broken by blood: lakes and rivers of blood. We will shed it all if it will return our gods to Gilgoras. Our blood and heathen blood, spilt together, mixed together, to sanctify the ground and make it worthy for Their holy presence. We shall have victory, you and I,’ she shouted, ‘and the Red Gods, the true gods, will be well pleased.’

Rillirin pushed forward, trying to see Liris’s face, to see whether he knew as much as the Blessed One appeared to. They’re going to war against Rilpor? They’ll be slaughtered. The shadows in the trees will do for them, and the West Rank. Her mouth moved in something that might have been a smile if she could remember what one felt like.

Amid the cheers and cries of exaltation to the gods, the Blessed One dropped her arms to her sides, before the left rose once more, dragged by that weaving, ever-moving finger.

‘You.’ It was a single word whispered amid the tumult, but the silence fell faster than a stone. All eyes looked where she pointed, not to the slaves, but to the warriors and women of the Mireces, born and raised within the gods’ bloody embrace. ‘The Dark Lady demands Mireces blood in return for Mireces failure. She demands a promise that we will stand with our new ally to the gods’ glory, that we will bleed and die for Their return. A promise that we – that you – will not fail Them again. The gods choose you. Come and meet them.’

Liris’s queen rose to her feet, her lips pulled back. She threaded her way through the crowd with small, stumbling steps, breath echoing harsh in the orange light. Rillirin watched her, her guts swamping with relief. You poor bitch, she thought, and then tried to burn out the pity with hate. Rillirin rubbed her stinging eyes, swallowing nausea. Bana was a Mireces and she deserved to die. They all did. Every one of them, starting with Liris and with the Blessed One next. She was pleased Bana was being sacrificed. Pleased.

‘Your will, Blessed One,’ Liris said as the mother of his children reached the altar and looked back at him, for a kind word or a demand for her release, perhaps. Her face rippled when she received neither. The Blessed One smiled and, tearing the woman’s dress down the front, bent her back over the altar stone; the queen’s soft, wrinkled belly undulated as she panted.

‘My feet are on the Path,’ Bana shrieked, and the Blessed One’s knife flashed gold as it drove into her stomach.

Gods take your soul to Their care, Rillirin thought despite herself, her fists clenched at the screams. Yet she didn’t know to which gods she prayed any more, those of Blood or of Light. None of Them did anything to help her. She looked away as the Blessed One dragged the knife sideways and opened Bana’s belly, her other hand pressing on her chest to keep her still. Bana’s screams echoed and re-echoed and the Mireces fell to their knees in adulation.

The slaves knelt too, and one pulled Rillirin down to the stone. ‘Are you stupid?’ he hissed. ‘Kneel or die.’ Rillirin knelt.

Liris’s face was stony and closed as Bana shrieked out the last moments of her life. He stood as soon as it was done and the Blessed One had completed the prayer of thanks. The blood was still running and his war chiefs still knelt in prayer when he shouldered his way through his warriors. Before Rillirin could get away, he reached out a sweaty paw and grabbed her by the hair.

No no no no no no.

‘Come on, fox-bitch,’ he snarled in her ear, hauling her towards the exit. The slaves melted from their path like snow in spring, eyes blank or calculating – her perceived power was something many of them coveted – and the temple rang with Liris’s rasping, angry breath, the pat-pat-pat of blood, Rillirin’s muffled whimpers.

Rillirin stumbled up the slick stone steps from the temple, bouncing from the walls in Liris’s wake, and when they reached the top Liris shook her until she squealed. He cuffed her face and dragged her through the longhouse and into the king’s room, threw her at the bed and dropped the bar across the door.

‘Lord, you must not,’ Rillirin pleaded, on her knees, one hand pressed to her stinging scalp. ‘The Blessed One said that you should not touch me, not for three more days. I’m still sick.’

Liris flung his bearskin on to the floor and brayed a laugh. ‘You’ve had a pennyroyal tea to flush my seed from your belly because you don’t deserve a child of mine. You’re a slave, not a consort, and you’ll do as you’re told.’

‘Honoured, please,’ Rillirin tried as he advanced. She scrabbled away on hands and knees, the weakness a blanket slowing her reactions. He can’t. Bana’s still warm, he couldn’t want – Liris pulled her to her feet by one arm and dragged up her skirts, blunt fingers hard against her thigh. The stench of his breath caught at the back of her throat. It was clear that he did want.

Rillirin squirmed and thrashed, but he was too big, too strong. Always had been. ‘No,’ she screamed in his face. ‘No.’

Liris jolted back in surprise, piggy eyes narrow. His breath sucked in on a whoop of outrage, and Rillirin clenched her jaw and screwed up her eyes. Stupid. Stupid!

She was convinced the punch had broken her jaw, and the impact with the stone floor sent shards of white pain through her shoulder. Black stars danced in her vision. Blood flooded her mouth and her shoulder was numb with sick, hot agony.

Liris picked her up and slammed her into the wall, one hand around her lower jaw, grinding the back of her head into the wood. ‘Bitch,’ he breathed. ‘While I normally enjoy our little games, I’m not in the mood for your spite tonight. You do not answer me back, you hear? You. Do. Not. Answer. Back.’ Each word punctuated by a crack of her skull on the wall. ‘You live because I will it, and you will die when I decide. Tonight, maybe, if you don’t please me. Or on the altar to ensure our success in the war to come. Or after I give you to the war chiefs for sport. When I choose, understand? You belong to me. Now keep your fucking tongue behind your teeth and unclench those thighs. I’ve a need.’

The tears were coming and Rillirin willed them not to fall, glaring her soul-eating hatred at him instead. A wild, suicidal courage flooded her. ‘Fuck you,’ she wheezed.

Liris’s mouth popped open and then he leant back to laugh, huge wobbling gasps of mirth. ‘I’ll break you, fox-bitch,’ he promised and his free hand dragged at her skirts again.

Rillirin worked her fingers around the knife hilt digging into her side, slid it out of Liris’s belt even as he forced her legs apart, and jammed it in the side of his neck. He looked at her in disbelief, hands falling slack, and Rillirin pumped her arm, the blade chewing through the fatty flesh and widening the hole in his neck.

Blood sprayed over her hand, her arm, her face and neck and chest, great warm lapping waves of it washing into the room until his knees buckled and he went down. She went with him, knife stabbing again and again, long past need, long past his last bubbling breath, until his face and neck and torso were a mass of gore and torn flesh.

Red with blood, red as vengeance, Rillirin spat on his corpse and waited for dark.

CORVUS

Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods

Longhouse, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Corvus, war chief of Crow Crag, paced below the dais. Lady Lanta, the Blessed One and the Voice of the Gods, sat in regal splendour beside the empty throne. The other war chiefs fidgeted on their stools and benches.

The Blessed One would not reveal more of the gods’ plan until the king was present, and the king was not one for stirring himself unnecessarily. Still, the sun was high even this late in the year and Corvus would bet Lanta was as impatient as he. A full-scale invasion with only months to plan; an ally within Rilpor they could use to their advantage. The idea warmed his belly. Invasion. Conquest. A chance for glory such as there’d never been, for Corvus to put his name, and Crow Crag’s, on the lips of every Mireces and Rilporian alive. And yet Liris lounged in his stinking pit like an animal.

The other end of the longhouse was crowded with warriors, complaining bitterly about the storm that had blown in. Slaves hunched and scurried to their chores, and Corvus’s lip curled in disgust as an old man tripped and spilt his tray of bowls across the floor. Dogs lunged for the scraps, fighting around the man’s feet and legs, scrabbling through the ragged furs piled up to keep off the chill.

Corvus kept pacing, fists clenched behind his back and face schooled to patience. He glanced at Lanta, sitting remote and inaccessible as the very mountains, and fought the urge to shake the information out of her, to slap it from her. The Blessed One is not as other women, he reminded himself. She’ll wind my guts out on a stick if I touch her. Despite his own warning, he glanced at her with a mixture of irritation and hunger. She didn’t deign to meet his eyes.

‘The gods wait for no man. Not even a king.’ Lanta’s voice was honey and poison and Corvus noted how the other war chiefs froze at its sound. ‘There is much to discuss.’

Edwin, Liris’s second, jumped up. ‘I’ll go, Blessed One,’ he said and scuttled down the longhouse to the king’s quarters at the end, his relief palpable. They all wanted to settle this and get out from under the Blessed One’s eye. Bana’s death hung in the air like the scent of blood.

Corvus had completed two more circuits below the dais before the yelling began. By the time the others had struggled out of their chairs, he was at Lanta’s side with drawn sword, ready to defend her.

‘The king,’ Edwin screeched as he shoved back into the longhouse. His hands were bloody. ‘The king has been murdered. Liris is dead!’

For a moment Lanta’s calm cracked, and Corvus would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been looking at her instead of Edwin squawking like a chicken on the block. But then the mask was firmly back in place. Corvus’s sword tip drooped on to the dais as Edwin’s words sank in. Corvus opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at the men gathered like a gaggle of frightened children below him, backs to the dais, eyes on the far door. They were bursting with questions for Edwin, but none seemed keen to approach him.

Lanta picked up her skirts and strode the length of the longhouse, bursting through the door to the king’s quarters and slamming it behind her before anyone could see. Edwin stood outside it, staring at his hands in disbelief.

Liris is dead and the Blessed One is with the body. Eagle Height has no king. Eagle Height is vulnerable.

‘Gosfath, God of Blood, Dark Lady of death, I thank you,’ Corvus whispered. ‘I swear to be worthy of this chance you have given me. All I do is in your honour.’ One of the chiefs turned at the sound of his voice, his mouth an O of curiosity.

‘My feet are on the Path,’ Corvus said, completing the prayer. He took three steps forward, raised his sword, and started killing. The king was dead. Long live the king.

CRYS

Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

North Harbour docks, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘I will have you know I am the most trustworthy man in Rilporin. No, not just in the capital, in all of Rilpor. And these cards are brand new, picked up from a shop in the merchants’ quarter a mere hour ago. Examine them, gentlemen, hold them, look closely. Not marked, not raised, even colouring, even weight. Now, shall we play? A flagon, wench.’

Crys clicked his fingers at the pretty girl hovering in his eyeline and plastered a wide grin across his face. He’d been watching this pair for the last hour, and now they were just drunk enough to be clay in his hands.

The men watched suspiciously as he cut and shuffled the cards, fingers blurring, and dealt them with a neat flick of the wrist only slightly marred by the fact the cards stuck in or skittered over the spilt beer. They’d be ruined, but he’d just buy more. What was the point in gambling if he didn’t spend the money he won? He slapped the remains of the deck into the middle of the table, scooped up his cards, examined them, swallowed ale to hide his glee and breathed thanks to the Fox God, the Trickster, patron of gamblers, thieves and soldiers. He was all three, on and off.

The faces of his fellow players were so wooden Crys could have carved his name into them, but the man to his left was tapping his foot on the floor. Man to his right? No obvious tell. No, wait, spinning the brass ring on his thumb. Excellent, he’d dealt the cards right.

‘Five, no, six knights.’ Crys opened the betting and tinkled the coppers next to the deck. He smiled and drank.

‘Six from me,’ Foot-tapper said.

Ring-spinner matched him. ‘And from me.’

Crys made a show of looking at his cards again, squinting at the table and his opponents. ‘Um, two more.’ He added to the pile with a show of bravado that sucked them right in. He leant back in his chair and scratched the stubble on his cheek, fingernails rasping. He’d better shave before tomorrow’s meeting. He’d better win enough to buy a razor.