Quester dismissed her with a wave. “Don’t worry about the boy. Mite is bringing him to his mother, since she’s obviously all he has now.”
“And what do we do?”
“We wait here until Mite returns. You’re in no shape to travel, so we’ll wait until morning, when the Judges go back to the castle to sleep.”
Laurel spun, looked below, where the lions were finishing their meal, and then at the strange man with the bells and horned beard.
“Who are you?” she asked, totally bewildered. “What do you want with me? And how could you possibly know who that boy is?”
Quester pulled a coin from his pocket and began flipping it between his fingers.
“As I said, I’m the Crimson Sword, sworn protector of House Connington.” He bowed low to her. “My employers require your audience, and I was instructed to bring you to Riverrun to meet them. It took a bit of bribery and alcohol to find out where you’d gone and when you’d be returning, but we’ve found you at last.” He smirked, and even that sidelong look was stunning. “Milady, when it’s safe to travel, I’d like you to accompany me and my pets to Riverrun, where Romeo and Cleo are waiting. It seems the three of you have oh so very much to talk about.”
CHAPTER 13
Patrick’s legs ached, but still he put one foot in front of the other. He followed at his god’s heels as Ashhur marched north, leading their wandering nation into an unnamed settlement, the last before they rounded back south. Their destination was a hamlet that resided just outside the border of the Forest of Dezerea, nestled in the surrounding hills. There were grazing deer everywhere, and the trees were the tallest Patrick had ever seen. The place was idyllic, especially given that spring now had a firm grip on the land. The air had warmed and the flowers awakened, as had the leaves of the coniferous trees. Summer was still a few weeks away, but its scents filled the air.
They set up camp in a vast gulley, countless people pounding stakes into the ground and erecting their temporary shelters. They had been traveling for weeks since leaving Grassmere, moving away from the Gods’ Road, and Patrick was nearing the end of his rope. The going was rough and painfully slow, and the procession of lost souls that followed him and Ashhur had started swelling immensely now that the deity had stopped leaving anyone behind. The entirety of the many villages and settlements they came across were added to the growing mass of human flesh. Patrick had to guess there were at least a thousand score traversing the land, maybe twice that, flattening the grasses of eastern Paradise and devouring all the sustenance they could find as they went. The mere sound of all these people performing the duties to keep themselves alive and comfortable was deafening. Patrick’s head was throbbing. All he wanted was to lie down and rest his weary bones, but a giant hand grabbed his shoulder as he drove a tent stake into the ground, and he knew his desire would go unmet.
He turned around and saw Ashhur standing there, towering over him. There was a strange look on the god’s face.
“Come, Patrick,” he said.
“Where?”
“To the settlement.”
“Now? How far is it?”
Ashhur pointed toward a steep, moss-covered hill. “Over that rise.”
“Great,” he said with a sigh.
Ashhur and Patrick left the rest of the flock, climbing the nearby hill atop which the deity assured him more of his children lived. When they arrived, they found a land that had come under recent strife. The trees were scorched, and the tents and crude huts that had served as shelters were trampled and torn. The commune was small, less than a mile wide, but there were no living souls to be seen. The only sign of human presence was a plume of smoke rising from behind a copse of giant evergreens.
They pushed into the forest and discovered a clearing. Patrick’s heart beat more quickly in anticipation. The brightness seemed to fade as they moved forward, partly due to the vast amount of lingering smoke. In the center of the clearing was a huge, smoldering structure. The walls and roof were still standing, though blackened and flaking, and the iron nails that held the building together were hot to the touch. Something inside still burned, sizzling and popping.
Against his better judgment, Patrick kicked the barn’s barred door while Ashhur lingered behind him. The boards were so thoroughly burned that the door seemed to disintegrate, filling the air with dust and ash. He covered his mouth and stepped through the portal, the hiss and sputter much louder now that the barrier had been broken.
What he saw inside made him fall to his knees.
There were at least two hundred corpses in there, most charred, some still cooking. Flesh was melted, bodies fused together, tangles of blackened arms and legs that looked like some hideous demon from the underworld desperately clawing for freedom. Some were piled over each other by the door, others in a scorched mass toward the center. There were floating embers all around, a few glowing, most gray, everything devoid of life. Brittle clumps of blackened debris crunched underfoot with each uneven step he took. His nostrils itched with the scent of burnt flesh.
He fell to his knees, billowing ash all around him. His hand slipped down and his fingertips found a charred rope, and when he glanced around him, trying to keep his eyes from absorbing the countless twisted and screaming faces, he found many more bits of burnt rope. The picture grew clearer.
The people had been herded into this barn against their will. Then the barn had been barred and set aflame from the outside. The inside had been stocked with bales of hay, which had caught fire easily once the flames climbed over and under the barn walls. The barn had been constructed solely for this purpose. They were burned alive, he thought. Some rushed the door, trying to get out, while others huddled in the center, probably praying for their god to save them. They were men, women, and children, and they died screaming, they died screaming, they died…
Patrick heard a screech and turned around to see Barclay, the youth who had taken to spending long, annoying moments with him on the road, squatting in the doorway. Patrick rushed out, gathered the boy in his arms, and gently held him. Ashhur, who had kept a slight distance, considered him with a tilt of his head. Patrick opened his mouth, but nothing would come out. His god’s glowing golden eyes brightened, and the deity lumbered forward, ducking down to peer into the smoking barn.
Suddenly a thought took root. Iron nails. There was very little production of iron in Paradise, certainly not in a crude settlement such as this, yet the doors had been secured with iron nails. Karak’s Army was still in pursuit of them, which left but one possibility. The nearby forest, and the kingdom within, was filled with elves who had so far remained out of the war. Or had they? Patrick thought of the deceased Bessus and Damaspia Gorgoros, slain while they knelt for morning prayers. Perhaps Neldar wasn’t the only kingdom that wanted to see Paradise burn.
A moment later Ashhur retracted his head from the door. His expression had gone blank, and his chiseled jaw hung low. He didn’t scream; he didn’t fly into a fit of rage as he had in Haven; he didn’t run toward the trees to punish the elves who bore responsibility. Instead, what he did was worse. He collapsed to his knees, still facing the barn.
And the god wept.
It was a disconcerting experience, hearing a deity cry. The sound was like the pounding of rain on stone mixed with the trumpeting of a hundred thousand grayhorns. Ashhur’s sobs were the ebb and flow of the tide, the rumble of thunder in a rainstorm, the pull and crack of a great earthquake. His body shook as tears clear as water from a mountain spring cascaded down his godly cheeks. The sound summoned others from the sprawling camp below, and soon the clearing was ringed with a multitude of confused and sickened people, all watching the god who had made their existence possible. His hopelessness was echoed in the uneasy murmurs of the crowd.