Anna Stephens - Godblind

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2017

Copyright © Anna Stephens 2017

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008215897

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008215910

Version: 2019-08-14

For my Uncles, David and Graham.

I wish you could have seen this.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Dedication

Rillirin

Corvus

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Mace

Crys

Tara

Galtas

The Blessed One

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Crys

Gilda

Mace

Corvus

Crys

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Tara

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Gilda

Crys

Durdil

The Blessed One

Mace

Rillirin

Dom

Durdil

Galtas

Durdil

Tara

Crys

Corvus

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Gilda

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Galtas

Durdil

The Blessed One

Dom

Tara

Rillirin

Dom

Mace

Galtas

Tara

Gilda

Mace

Rillirin

Tara

Mace

Corvus

Dom

Crys

Dom

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Galtas

Gilda

Rillirin

Durdil

Corvus

Gilda

Dom

Galtas

Crys

Dom

Crys

Mace

Durdil

Mace

Tara

Rillirin

Mace

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Tara

Durdil

Crys

Rillirin

Corvus

Epilogue: Dom

Preview of Darksoul

Acknowledgments

Also by Anna Stephens

About the Author

About the Publisher

Rillirin stood at the back with the other slaves, all huddled in a tight knot like a withered fist. Word had been sent days before, summoning all the Mireces’ war chiefs from the villages along the Sky Path, drawing them to the capital to hear the Red Gods’ Blessed One. Whatever They had told 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.