When Ravens Call: The Fourth Book in the Small Gods Epic Fantasy Series (The Books of the Small Gods by Bruce Blake (books under 200 pages txt) 📗

"What are you looking at?"

He didn't answer, continued staring as though enthralled, nor did he move in the slightest. The prince worried he might be ill, or worse. After everything they'd been through, his companion falling into a trance did not stretch his imagining. A heartbeat away from grabbing Rilum's arm and giving him a shake, the sailor spoke.

"The Devil's Cock."

Teryk inhaled a sharp breath, but neither at the sailor's choice of words nor any recognition of what he meant. The disconnectedness of his response gave the prince fearful pause.

"What? What are you talking about?" He returned his gaze to his companion's face, prepared for a nonsensical answer, sure an unseen, malicious force had usurped his tongue, if not his entire being.

Rilum raised his arm and extended his finger toward the natural jetty.

"The Devil's Cock," he repeated, making no more sense than the first time. "On a map, it's called the Finger of the Goddess. Them who've sailed for any bit of their lives know it a thing of the devil. It marks the start of the turn."

Teryk stared out at the waves crashing against the rocks. Rilum may have continued speaking but, if he did, the prince didn't hear what he said. He knew nothing of Devil's Cocks and Goddess' Fingers, but he knew of the turn and what it meant. Somehow, they'd been transported from the land across the sea to their own Windward Kingdom.

They'd returned home, to another time, trapped in the Green.

***

Night fell faster than it should have. The sky went from bright blue to indigo, gray, then black in the time it took the companions to find a sheltered place to lay for much-needed sleep. The sunset horizon didn't shift color except to darken; no pinks or purples or reds, simply light, then not. A half-moon hung listless, surrounded by far fewer twinkling stars than Teryk expected. He blamed his imagination; doing so proved easier than accepting they'd traveled to an age before the banishment of the Small Gods. The thought made it difficult to trust anything his eyes surveyed, anything his mind believed, anything he perceived to happen.

Perhaps I'm asleep and dreaming.

But did muscles ache in a dream? His stomach gurgle and complain? He didn't recall either happening in his sleep before, but strange things can occur while one sleeps.

Teryk watched Rilum curl into the crevice under the fallen log they'd chosen for shelter. He settled in on top of the bed fashioned of moss and leaves, making himself comfortable in the way of a man used to discomfort. Since identifying the landmark recognized from so many of his journeys, he'd said little; it confirmed an impossibility he wanted to believe less than did Teryk. The realization reduced him to grunts and single-word responses.

Fatigue burdened the prince, too, settling into his limbs and threatening to drag his lids closed, but he resisted the urge to crawl under the log with his companion. Their proximity and the shelter itself would provide him warmth from air cooled by the fall of night, but the prospect of insects, spiders, and vermin hiding beneath the tree deterred him. He crossed his arms, hugging himself against the chill, and leaned against it instead. His plan: when the weight of sleep became too much, he'd succumb, too tired to care if a mouse crawled over his shoe or a spider across his hand.

Despite his exhaustion, slumber refused to calm his mind and relieve him of his worry. His eyes darted toward every sound hidden in darkness and thick brush. The wind in the trees or the movements of small animals explained them away, but the rationale didn't pacify him.

Soon after Rilum disappeared beneath the fallen log, the soft rumble of his snores disguised any other sounds. Teryk inhaled; the forest smelled different at night and held more dampness in the air. The sharp tang of cedar softened, the earthy scent of loam becoming more prevalent. He concentrated on these things and the sound of his companion's slumber to distract himself from place and predicament, and how they'd arrived at the Green, in this time.

Memories of the gray figures dancing before the eerie wall they'd created came to him. He saw jagged lightning shoot across it with each strike of sword and axe, recalled the enraged expressions of the men on the other side. But for the colors they wore and the style of armor and weapon, they looked no different from himself, his father, Trenan. If not for the strange magic they'd seen, he and Rilum might have been home.

But how do you travel through time?

An impossible question without a likely answer, leaving one explanation: it wasn't real. Teryk determined he must be dreaming, or drugged and hallucinating.

Maybe I'm dead.

If so, death differed little from living.

He pushed himself up from the log, wiped the ass of his breeches to knock away dirt and moss and slivers. He took a pace back from his sleeping companion and the vibration of his snoring grown so much in volume it threatened to shake the fallen tree. Two more paces and it faded; the relative silence of the night overcame Rilum's dissonant breath. With teeth clenched tight enough to knot the muscles in his jaw, Teryk moved farther from the makeshift shelter. The woods drew him as though he sought an answer amongst the trunks of trees and green foliage of brush.

No chance of finding any there.

Another pace and exhaustion filled his body, weighed on him like it touched his soul. His already slow gait faltered and halted, thighs aching as if full of wet sand, and his knees trembled, then folded. He collapsed to sit on the bare patch of earth beneath his feet. His eyelids slid closed, snapped open, slid closed, snapped