LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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