David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

Roddalin’s lips parted as if he was about to say something, likely a bit of ill-timed wit, but only a feeble whimpering left his mouth.

The priest began to pace, the Judges’ eyes following him, though their bodies never moved.

“The flesh is a funny thing,” Joben said, staring at the floor. “On its own it is innocuous, simply a shield for what lies beneath, but that also makes it the most important substance in the universe. Flesh feeds the beasts of the wild; flesh holds our insides within our bodies; flesh both quells the desires of men and leads them to betrayal.”

“Betrayal,” said both lions at once.

“Flesh is also a great teller of truths,” the priest continued as if the lions hadn’t spoken. “It reveals all our past iniquities, like living memory. Should you be cut by a blade, a scar will remain. Should a woman be unfaithful to her husband, her inner flesh will be marked by another male’s entry. We forget sins with ease, but the flesh remembers; the flesh bears its marks, an undeniable truth. Yet if you strip it away, the pain will bring forth the forgotten memories, the lying tongue made to speak without lies.” The priest stopped pacing and finally looked up at them. A broad smile stretched his lips. “And the flesh of the guilty is the easiest to strip away, as my masters will surely show you.”

“Guilty,” said Lilah.

“Flesh,” said Kayne.

Roddalin took a deep breath and somehow found the nerve to speak. “How?”

“It matters not.”

“Why are you yammering and not getting busy with the killing?” asked Jonn. Though his words were confident, his body shill shook.

“Because Karak is just, and Karak is fair,” the priest answered. “Just like all betrayers of the faith, you will be given the chance to repent before the Final Judges. They will seek out the faithfulness in you. . and tear the impure flesh from your bones.”

Roddalin and Jonn exchanged a look, then glanced at Pulo. The man who had once been the captain of the Palace Guard frowned at them, but still he nodded. His free hand snaked behind him, grabbing Laurel’s.

“Pulo, what-”

Before she could finish her statement, Roddalin and Jonn bellowed at the top of their lungs and charged into the room, swords raised. The priest never moved to defend himself. As Pulo whirled around and shoved Laurel down the hall, she couldn’t help but watch as a pair of blades arced downward for Tustlewhite’s bald pate. They never reached their mark, for the Judges were upon them, leaping over the priest’s head and knocking both men over with powerful swipes of their oversized paws.

Laurel saw no more, for she was running, Pulo dragging her along. But she heard, yes she did. Heard bones breaking. Heard flesh tearing. Heard her friends screaming.

Heard lions roaring.

Down the stairs they flew, seeking the door and desperate for the safety beyond. Fear clawed at her throat, and she thought there was no way she would reach it in time, but then the door to the temple was before her. Pulo grasped for the handle, but there was nothing but an empty hole where it had once been. His eyes widened in horror and he shoved her aside, hands searching all over the enormous surface, seeking a way to get it open.

“No, no, no !” he said. His fingers dug into the crack where the door met the frame, but nothing he could do would make the door budge. Finally, he started flinging his body against it, hoping to break it open with his weight. Laurel swallowed her fear and joined Pulo in trying to get the door open, hoping two bodies were better than one.

Still it refused to budge.

“This temple offers no escape for you,” Laurel heard Joben say, and she turned to see him emerge from around the corner. “Just as the caverns beneath the Black Bend hold no safety for your fellow blasphemers.”

The female lion rushed past him, her golden skin soaked with blood. Laurel screamed, and Pulo turned just in time to see Lilah leaping toward him. He fell to his back, jabbing his sword at the beast, trying to keep its snapping jaws at bay. Its claws raked down his chest, shredding his leather armor and opening gouges in his flesh. Joben Tustlewhite shook his head in disappointment as Kayne joined his side from the staircase, Jonn’s severed arm hanging limp in his mouth.

Seeing the look on Joben’s face, and hearing Pulo’s continuing cries of terror, urged Laurel to act. She scampered to her feet, only to be knocked back down again when the temple door suddenly swung outward, and a long, heavy object was thrust inside. The wide lance, the object she’d run into, thwacked against the female Judge, causing Lilah to leap off Pulo, hissing at the now opened door.

The lance retracted, and two Sisters of the Cloth entered the temple, one large and one small, covered head to toe in wrappings and each carrying a pair of curved daggers. The large one reared back and tossed her dagger at Lilah just as she was readying to leap, the spinning blade striking her dead on in the nose and sinking in deep. The lion squealed and roared and swiped at the hilt sticking out of her face. The cry of distress angered Kayne, whose glowing eyes expanded in fury when he saw his injured mate.

“False faithful,” he roared from his blood-soaked snout. Jonn’s arm flopped to the carpet.

Hands fell on Laurel’s shoulders, tugging her across the floor. She looked up to see Lyana’s familiar deep blue eyes peering out at her from the gap in the wrappings. The priest was shouting. Laurel struggled to her feet, feeling lightheaded, and heard a woman scream. She looked on in horror as the large Sister, Harmony Steelmason, met the charge of the lion head on. She slashed with her dagger, scoring tiny cuts that seemed to do no damage as she leapt around, pushing her large frame to move in a way that didn’t seem possible.

“No!” Laurel shrieked, and almost ran toward her, but a firm hand gripped her by the back of her bustier, choking her of breath and will and ripping the skimpy garment in the process. She was hauled outside, slipping and sliding on the icy staircase. She fell to the side and had to grab onto the rear leg of one of the onyx lion statues to keep from tumbling down the stairs.

The door slammed shut a second later, and that sound was followed by Harmony’s screeches. Laurel stared straight ahead in shock, her mind racing.

“Laurel, we must go!”

She turned her head and there was Lyana, a badly injured Pulo leaning on her. The girl’s wrappings had come undone around her head, and bits of dark hair sprouted out like so many dead saplings. Much to Laurel’s shock, thirty other men and women stood at the bottom of the stairs behind them. Most of them were those Laurel had brought to the caverns beneath the Black Bend.

Inside the temple, Harmony had ceased her screaming, joining Roddalin and Jonn in death. The lions roared, the sound shaking the door of the temple. Laurel didn’t need to be told what to do next. She slipped around Pulo’s other side, threw his opposite arm over her shoulder, and together she and Lyana hauled the wounded man through the snow and toward the wood. The others who had come with the two former Sisters hacked away at the statues of the two lions with mauls, rocks, and anything else they could get their hands on, until the onyx bases broke. They grunted as they heaped the two statues in front of the closed temple door. After that, half of them stayed behind, fear in their eyes while they held their weapons at the ready, while the rest rushed toward Laurel and Lyana to help with Pulo’s wounded form. From atop Karak’s Temple came a series of gasps as the acolytes, their song long finished, stared down at them as they fled.

For the first time since the brothers Connington had opened her eyes to the sins of her god, Laurel began to pray. Only this time, it wasn’t to Karak.