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) 📗

Mouth agape, he leaned forward, the two robed men allowing him the slimmest bit of movement. At first, he thought his eyes might have fooled him. He blinked hard to clear water and fear from them, but the scene before him remained unchanged.

Gone.

The bushes where Ailyssa had knelt, and then stood, lay flattened, a telltale sign of her presence. Nowhere did he see the woman who'd made the indentation in the brush, nor the animal on which she'd laid her hand.

"Dammit," Birk snarled and slammed the edge of his fist against the veil.

The long cracks shot across its surface again, as though it might break into huge, green shards. At the same instant, lightning streaked across the sky, turning twilight into day. Thunder assaulted their ears. The nameless man stared straight ahead at the spot where the woman who'd allowed him to understand had been. His heart ached at her absence, his mind reeled. Where did she go? Did she still live?

What in the name of everything holy was happening here?

XXX  Rilum – Long Ago

For a while, he wished he hadn't killed the men on the beach.

The sentiment lasted only a short time, then he remembered how their meat had sustained him for so long. After gnawing the last shred of flesh from their bones, he'd spent an indeterminate number of days wandering the shore, hoping to find more of their kind. Whether he'd have slaughtered them to eat or befriended them, he didn't know.

But no other men or beasts presented themselves, and hunger drove him back into the forest. The creatures of the sea stayed where they were and the animals of the woodland loathed the rocky seashore. So he came to be sitting atop a rotting log, its surface covered with moss intent on leeching every bit of moisture and nutrient from the wood before rot turned it to dust.

He raised the dead crow to his mouth. He hadn't killed it himself, though he wished he did—fresh meat dripping with warm blood always tasted so much better. He'd found the bird deceased on the forest floor. Whether it'd died because its time was up or because some predatory creature wounded it and abandoned it to die, he cared not. Either way, his grateful belly rumbled appreciation for its sacrifice.

The bird's black feathers tickled his lips. He opened them as wide as possible but couldn't spread them far enough for his three remaining teeth to tear a piece of its flesh off. He growled in the back of his throat, thick saliva sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and lowered his hand. With the other, he dug a nail—when did they get so long? —into its meat, slicing downward. He repeated the action beside the first incision, pulled a strip of food and plumes away from its breast. Fat white maggots spilled out, some landing in his lap, others bouncing off his leg to disappear into a crevice in the log or lost on the loamy forest floor.

He stuffed the crow filet into his gob, feathers, grubs, and all, forcing the chunk of sustenance between his lips with two fingers. When did it become so difficult to open his mouth? So much time, so many changes.

The rotten wood pressed against his ass as he sat, his jaw the only part of him moving as his last three teeth worked to tenderize the meat. When he swallowed—the piece as whole as when it'd passed his lips—the sharp spines of the bird’s feathers raked his throat, brought the flavor of blood to his tongue. He ignored it, plucked another strip from the bird, and forced it between his narrow lips.

As he chewed, he gazed out into the forest. Everything around him had taken on a gauzy, white hew in the time after he'd feasted upon the rocky shore. At first, he suspected a change with the world, but what began a mist became a fog, and now a gauze, and it stayed with him day and night, relentless.

When did it become so difficult to see?

XXXI  Danya - Reunion

They trudged over uneven ground, the trees dense enough around them Danya no longer knew one direction from another. The odd time the heavens peeked through the canopy of limbs above, she glimpsed stars dangling in the night sky. Before she and Teryk discovered the scroll, she gave little thought to the legends of the Small Gods. Now, whenever a dot of brightness sprinkled across the darkness did so much as shimmer, she wondered what it might mean. More than once she imagined she spied light streaking through the dark, always at the edge of her vision.

Evalal gripped her hand to prevent them from becoming separated as they followed Fellick, Ive trailing behind. She didn't doubt the stout man knew where they headed, but she felt less sure she wanted to go with him.

"Worry not, princess," Ive said as though he'd listened in on her thoughts. "We won't let anything happen to you."

"We're not worried," Danya replied and squeezed Evalal's hand like the girl needed reassurance, not herself. "I don't know where we are."

"Close, yes, Mr. Fellick?"

The stocky man offered no response. The younger girl looked up from watching her footing, met the princess' eyes. They peered at each other for a few moments, Danya searching her companion's expression for any sign of her thoughts.

What did the Mother of Death say?

Whatever she may have said, it appeared to give Evalal reason for calm. The princess opened her mouth, tempted to ask it aloud, but closed it without speaking. No matter how Ive framed things, she must assume they held ill intentions in their hearts.

The Seed of Life bounced against her thigh as she walked, struggling to slow her racing heart, unknot