Gates of the Dead Read online

  She gestured toward the clouds above and as she did the rains started in again, thick, fat drops that chilled the skin.

  “What would you recommend?”

  “Forget Torema. Gather your soldiers, your trusted ones, and get to your ships before everyone realizes that the city is doomed. And it is. You know it as well as I do.”

  “And would you have a place on one of those ships?”

  “I find safety is the finest currency known to any living being. I’d be there. Invite me and I’ll stay by your side and keep you safe. Leave me behind and I’ll find another ship to call my own.”

  Stanna looked down to the docks, far below. The waves were crashing harder now and most of the boats, large and small alike, lifted with those waves and stayed safe, while the docks themselves were battered and half-submerged.

  “Only decide soon, Hillar Darkraven, before the fates decide for you.”

  Chapter Two

  First the Gods

  The He-Kisshi

  The sky raged. The storms seethed. The winds roared and the rain dropped in fat globules that hit like rotten fruit and soaked everything they touched in a matter of seconds. Lightning peeled back the clouds and thunder roared its fury into the skies above Torema.

  And in the heart of that furious conflagration the He-Kisshi roared, too.

  Eleven of the Undying wailed their fury and sorrows into the air, suffering a loss that none of them had ever thought possible.

  Their sibling was dead. Uthl-Prahna would not be reborn, would not come back, would not be saved, no matter how much they might beg for a return of one of their own. An Undying had died, and there was no removing the great wound that bled into their beings as they considered the loss.

  One of the voices they’d always heard was gone. Just gone.

  Murdered by Brogan McTyre.

  Worse still?

  One of the gods was dead. Destroyed. Cast down by McTyre and the god he’d touched with his very being.

  Oh, his death would be the greatest triumph of their existence.

  They looked down upon Torema from their places in the clouds and wailed their sorrows into the furious storms.

  Torema did not care. The humans had no love for the gods or their servants: they feared them, as had always been the case. Uthl-Prahna had cast its fury over the world on several occasions, and was the first to work as the executioner of the gods, when the need arose. Of all the He-Kisshi, certainly it was Uthl-Prahna who tracked the deviants best. It had sought and found Brogan McTyre and, in the end, had paid the price for that skill.

  Murdered by the very creature it sought. The song of the He-Kisshi no longer sounded the same, no longer had the proper balance. The Undying roared and howled their agonies out and then threw those very sorrows down upon the city, shattering the skies with brilliant lances of lightning and crashes of thunder that could never equal their suffering.

  Far below them the humans fled, trying to find places to hide from their fury. The desire to kill them all was a living thing, but they knew better. They could not simply kill the beings below them. The gods had decreed that the humans had to suffer before they could die and already the First Tribulation was ruining them.

  Ohdra-Hun looked to the west and saw the growing crowds of humans, thousands upon thousands, that gathered there, seeking a way to force themselves upon the city. From this distance they looked like a puddle growing at the edge of the city, but it knew that would not last. The mass of people would, when they were certain of their leaders, move and try to crush Torema. To the north was more of the same and to the east as well. Different factions, and though it did not study their actions, it understood humans well enough. Blood would flow across the hills and streets of the city in the very near future. The deaths would come hard and fast, and the gods would feast on every death that happened, even those not directly meant for them. That was the advantage of gods: their actions set other actions in motion and in the end those new actions worked as well as proper sacrifices. They were not as satisfying, but they were just as effective. The living would gather and fight and the dead would feed the needs of the gods long enough for them to finish their work. This land, this place, was destined to die and in the dying would once again serve the gods.

  In the process, all those who had ever wished harm on the He-Kisshi would die and that was enough for them. They would savor the end of the humans here.

  There were other places with humans. There would always be more fodder, but there were only eleven of the Undying left.

  Down below them the winds howled, and the seas surged and threw themselves madly at the places where the humans dwelled, and the mortals below them trembled and knew fear.

  The He-Kisshi saw this all and knew it was good.

  Harper

  Laram and his red-haired love held each other as the ship rocked beneath them. The waiting was the hardest part.

  Mearhan Slattery clutched Laram’s beefy arms as if he were the only anchor she could find in the whole of the world, and at that moment it might well have been a true statement. Harper watched the way they held each other and allowed himself a thin smile.

  It wasn’t a time for romance or merriment, but a time for worlds to end and civilizations to crumble.

  The ship moved, as the waves grew worse. The first mate called down from the top of the ship to get directions and Harper looked at the Slattery girl again. “Mearhan, which way?”

  The girl shook. She was scared and had every right to be terrified out of her mind, but that wasn’t a luxury they could consider. The young woman was a Scryer, a messenger for the gods. They’d taken her with them so that they would know what the gods wanted and could be prepared. She could pass on the words of the gods and she could hear them when they spoke, but there was little control over how the words came to her and apparently the gods were being unkind of late. They did not speak so much as they screamed.

  The gods were furious that Brogan McTyre and his cohorts were still alive. As one of those cohorts, Harper was glad to disappoint, but he also knew that all of the men who’d helped Brogan in his time of need were being hunted, with an eye toward making them replacement sacrifices for the failed attempts with Brogan’s family. Four deaths, twenty deaths, it hardly mattered to the gods as long as they were indulged.

  A few hours earlier Mearhan had fallen over, screaming in agony. She’d thrashed and moaned and would likely have clawed her own eyes from her face if Laram and a few others hadn’t restrained her.

  When she could finally be calmed and had recovered from her fit, Harper got the words from her lips that one of the gods was actually dead. Murdered. She spoke only in a whisper and only to him. That was for the best. The people around them might not have received the information well, and no one wanted to let the crew of the ship know that they were hunted by all five kingdoms and the gods themselves. Well, the remaining gods, at least.

  The gods were saying that Brogan was close by and that was important. More important still was that they meet up with him as quickly as possible, and thus the urgency for moving into the open sea from the bay of Torema. There were armies, several of them, looking for Brogan and his companions. If they found them, no matter how good they might be at fighting, the sheer numbers of people hunting them would overwhelm any possible skills and they’d be taken to offer up to the gods.

  Even their friends and the people who would usually aid them would turn on them. Why? Because the gods were ending the world and if Brogan and his companions were not offered up as sacrifices, none of the people they knew would have a place to call home any longer. Loyalty was a lovely thing, but so was staying alive.

  Mearhan looked his way with misery in her pale blue eyes. “Head south. There are three ships on the waters from Kaer-ru. The one you want is sporting a red sail.”

  Harper smiled, nodded, and walked toward the ladder. “Red sails. Find it, please.”

  Lendre smiled and his head bobbed up and down rapidly.
Harper trusted him not at all. He smiled back just the same.

  “Thank you, Mearhan. Get rest if you can. We’ve a long path before us.”

  And so they had. First they had to reach Brogan, preferably before he made it to Torema, and then they’d likely be sailing directly into the storms to the north in an effort to find the gods. The Gateway was the only place Harper had ever heard of that led to the gods, and even that knowledge was mostly rumor. A few small facts, and a great number of tales told in secrecy by his father who, like Harper, had worked for the gods in one capacity or another for most of his life. Had the man been alive, Harper suspected his father would have either disavowed him or killed him. One does not betray the gods, after all, but Harper had no choice. Brogan McTyre and his family had cared for Harper after his bloodline passed. They’d been like blood and one did not betray blood.

  Again guilt twisted at his guts. He’d been jealous on several occasions of Brogan’s perfect wife and lovely children. He’d made his half-hearted bitter prayers to the gods that they balance things out. He’d wanted to have all that Brogan had, a family and the love of a good woman, but it had never worked out. There was a part of Harper that wondered constantly if the gods had taken Nora and the twins and even young Braghe as an answer to his prayers. What a horrid thought. How very like the fickle gods to answer exactly the wrong prayer and see it as simple convenience.

  He would never know the answer, of course. Was it his wishes that brought an end to Brogan’s family? Only the gods knew for certain and they had never spoken to Harper even once in his life.

  Once on the deck Harper took a moment to look around. The Kaer-ru islands were visible in the distance. Between here and there were close to fifty vessels moving across the ocean. Most of them were headed toward the islands and away from the bay and the vast overflow of people facing the apocalyptic storms coming their way. That was inevitable and if Harper could have found someone to bet against he would have gleefully spent his entire fortune betting that it would only get worse. The reason he’d flat out purchased the ship he was standing on was because he knew the rest of the ships in the bay would be leaving and heading south. It was that, or die. The land was gone. There was nowhere left to go but to the sea.

  And nowhere to go on the sea but to the south if a soul wanted to avoid the raging oceans.

  There were other lands. Harper knew that, but had no idea where they might be. Captain Odobo claimed he’d been to all of them. That was a lovely thought, as they might need to flee the gods and in so doing they’d need a new land, if not an entirely new world.

  The red sail was visible on the waters between the Kaer-ru and the ship.

  Harper stood on the deck and watched as the ship came closer. He never quite stood still and his eyes looked everywhere they could to make sure that all was well with his world.

  Well, as well as could be when the world was being murdered.

  Captain Odobo came closer, followed by his shifty second in command.

  “I say your friends are there. The one you worried about the most, he is with them.” Odobo spoke casually about the situation.

  “I have my doubts.” Harper shook his head.

  Odobo reached into his purse and pulled out four small coins. They were enough to pay for a night with the very finest whores at the finest of the brothels in Torema. “Fancy a wager?”

  “You’re on,” Harper smiled. He could play along.

  They waited together and Odobo spoke to his second in their native tongue, one of the few with which Harper was only passably capable of communicating. He spoke most of the major tongues in the land, but the Kaer-ru had small islands as cities and states and while they were often familiar there were differences. He was fairly sure he was called a fool at least once, but had no reason to show that he knew that. Instead he gazed at the approaching barge. It was large enough to survive the harsh waves and that was a good thing, as some of the surges were enough to throw unfortunate fools from the decks where they stood.

  Not too much later Harper had to hand over his coins. The form of Brogan McTyre was impossible to miss. His clothes belonged to Desmond, but the stance, the expression, and the flaming red hair all belonged to Harper’s best childhood friend.

  There was something different about the man, though at this distance Harper couldn’t have begun to guess what it might be. He was the same height, the same heavily muscled build. His eyes were as brooding as they had been since his family was slain, and his expression was just as it always was these days, a grim set to his mouth that bordered on an angry scowl.

  There was a thing standing near him. It was not human, though it stood like a man. It was not wooden in nature, but the skin resembled bark that had been smoothed and oiled with only a modicum of efficiency. It stood taller than Brogan by most of a foot and it turned its head with quick motions, almost birdlike in their stuttering speed. There was much to see in Torema and he doubted that anyone in the city had ever seen the like, which meant in turn that the creature had probably never seen Torema or anything quite like the coastal city that was currently drowning in humans and their waste.

  Brogan saw him, and smiled. The expression took a decade away from the man’s features. Harper would have given nearly anything to keep that joy on his best friend’s face. He knew well enough that there was nothing he had that would mend what Brogan had been through; he’d been there, hadn’t he? He’d watched as the family of the man who was his brother in many ways was murdered and he’d helped with the revenge.

  It wasn’t the blood. Harper had killed more people than he could recall. He’d seldom felt a bit of guilt over it, either. Raiders tried to take the caravan and he cut them down with arrow or blade as he saw fit. It was what he was paid for and he knew well enough that the very same men would have killed him given the chance. They might not have liked it any more than he did, but sometimes life required that you deal in death. It was the nature of the world and few knew that better.

  He’d dealt with the Grakhul and the He-Kisshi before the latter came for Brogan’s family. He’d taken their coin and served them as best he could when they required his services. Just like his father before him.

  That was the part no one talked about. Old Volkner had always sneered at him when he was growing up. He understood that working for the Undying was not the sort of work a man did without getting stains on his soul. The bastard had known his father well enough. They’d shared more than a few drinks, and after his father passed, Volkner had stared at Harper as if he were the very essence of evil distilled into something dark.

  Volkner and a lot of his ilk had always looked at Harper as less of a man, solely because his family was born into work and servitude with the He-Kisshi. Sometimes the Undying needed to get information they could not achieve on their own. Nothing to do with the sacrifices – that was why the Grakhul existed. Harper and his family, for generations back, had made deliveries to the Undying. They’d captured notes on some occasions and on others they’d sought and found rarities that the He-Kisshi needed for whatever reason. If there had ever been a dire need for any of what he’d found and delivered, it was a surprise to Harper.

  Trinkets, most often. A ring found in a flea market, or a lock of hair to take from someone’s bedroom in the night. There was usually an element of risk, yes, but the He-Kisshi did not hire the members of Harper’s blood for their more dangerous abilities. They hired them to purchase, or steal, and then deliver, nothing that was more valuable than a memory. It might be that those who lost the items missed them. It might be they never noticed. Whatever the case, the Undying wanted those things and paid well. Sometime in the past they started dealing with Harper’s family.

  Harper shook the thoughts away and looked at Brogan again. There were strangers with him, though none stranger than the tall thing that stood at his side. And Anna Harkness was with him, too.

  Anna, whose husband, Desmond, was not with them and might well no longer be alive. Harper had seen
friends taken by slavers. He had no notion if they were alive or dead and no way to find out.

  Telling Anna that Desmond was among the captured would not be a pleasant task.

  Odobo called out to his helmsman and waited as he smoothly steered the ship around in an arc and then raced alongside the other vessel.

  Brogan looked up at the higher deck where Harper stood and smiled again. “Come to get us?”

  “Oh yes! It’s time we were on our way, my friend.” He looked away for a moment to the vast black clouds rising in the north, to the brilliant flashes of lightning that danced inside them. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  Crewmen from the ship tossed ropes down to the low-riding barge and Odobo spoke to his counterpart on the other vessel. In moments the two ships were joined together and Brogan and Anna were the first to climb between them, scaling a plank that was dropped from one to the other.

  As soon as Brogan was on the deck, Harper walked over and hugged his brother hard. He nodded to Anna, conscious as ever of the fact that Desmond – even when he was away and possibly dead – was a jealous man and a fearsome opponent.

  “Desmond was captured, Anna. He was taken by slavers.” He did not hide the facts. He did not lie to her. He wanted to soften the blow, but that had never truly been his way. “We don’t know where he is, or if he is alive.”

  Anna looked hard at him and slowly nodded her head. “Time will tell. For now there is nothing we can do about the situation in any event.” Her voice barely shook, and her lower lip hardly trembled. She looked away, irritated at what must have surely been a mote of dust in her eye. Truly she was a strong woman. But he’d known that all along.

  Brogan spoke softly. “First the gods. Then we find Desmond. You have my word, we will find him if he is alive to be found.”

  Brogan looked away, studied the clouds, his eyes shifting and squinting as if he might find some secret hidden in the depths of that massive storm.