Master of Sorrows (The Silent Gods #1)
Justin Call
Prologue
The woman’s screams faded, and a baby’s cry took their place. Sodar had been waiting for this moment. He smoothed his blue robes and followed close on Ancient Tosan’s heels, stepping inside the beige tent.
Sodar squinted once inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. No candles were needed at this hour, but a dark shadow still covered the room.
In one corner of the birthing tent he could see Ancient Tosan speaking with his wife Lana – one of the two witwomen assisting with Aegen’s pregnancy. It seemed she had caught the lean man before he could approach the new mother and her baby, and the priest was grateful that allowed him a moment with Aegen and her child. He stepped towards the middle of the tent and saw an older witwoman holding the sebum-slick babe, a blanket haphazardly wrapped around its body. Sodar quelled his instinct to sprint to the infant. Instead, he tempered his elation that Tuor’s line continued and approached the mother with a calmness that belied his excitement.
It had been a hard birth. Aegen was lying still atop the birthing mat, her pale face framed by sweat-soaked ringlets. Sodar didn’t want to wake the exhausted woman, but a sense of uneasiness poisoned his gut.
She’s not breathing, he realised.
In a flash, the priest was kneeling at her side. He shook her shoulders, first whispering and then shouting her name. A moment later, he felt Lana at his shoulder, her slick red hands on his wrist.
‘She’s dead, Brother Sodar.’
Sodar flinched away from the witwoman’s touch. He rubbed where her bloody fingers had made contact and felt the wetness smear his wrinkled skin.
‘Was it the child?’ He struggled to say the words as he turned to look at the babe. Tosan had taken the infant from the second witwoman – a bony grandmother named Kelga – and held the newborn in his hands, but instead of cradling it to his chest, Tosan held it out at arm’s length and stared in revulsion at the bundle.
‘Ancient Tosan?’
The slender ancient didn’t look up.
‘The child,’ Tosan said. ‘Sodar, he’s a Son of Keos.’
‘He’s what?’
Tosan held the infant out towards the blue-robed priest. ‘The child,’ he repeated, lifting the blanket, ‘is a Son of Keos.’
Sodar’s heart thudded in horror. The babe’s piercing blue eyes caught his attention – a mark of blessing from the god Odar – but saw nothing to warrant calling the child a Son of Keos. A wisp of light brown hair crowned the infant’s head, and he seemed unremarkable. Sodar’s brow crinkled and he was about to challenge Tosan’s judgement when the baby moved, waving his hands in front of him.
No. His hand. One hand.
‘Gods,’ Sodar swore.
Tosan covered the infant again. ‘Aegen carried the child. She was the vessel of Keos, and the vessels of Keos must be broken.’
Lana nodded in confirmation of her husband’s words, and the priest found his attention drawn to the witwoman’s bloody hands and then to the dead woman – and this time he saw it: a dark red stain pooling on the birthing mat beneath her skull.
They killed her, Sodar realised. They killed Aegen, and I wasn’t here to stop it.
‘Take this thing away,’ Tosan said, passing the infant to Lana. ‘You know what to do.’
The witwoman bowed, her brown braids swinging behind her back. ‘The beasts of Keos shall consume the Sons of Keos.’
‘Be certain you witness its death. The beasts won’t feed till nightfall.’
‘Ancient Tosan,’ Kelga said, stepping forward. ‘Lana may want to return to the Academy and your new daughter. I could take the infant to the woods.’
Tosan stroked his thin black goatee. ‘Lana?’
‘The witgirls can take care of Myjun for me while I’m gone,’ Lana said, wiping her bloodied hands on the infant’s sheepskin blanket, and then dipping it in the pool of blood. ‘But it would be good to have some company.’
Tosan nodded. ‘The Brakewood has never been a safe place. You would be well served to have a companion to share the night’s watch.’ He eyed the bloody bundle in Lana’s arms, then fastidiously wiped his palms on his grey-black cloak. ‘The father is also a vessel of Keos. Wait until he has been bound and then take the infant to the woods.’
Tuor, Sodar thought, knowing the blacksmith would be waiting outside to meet his child. I can’t abandon him … but I can’t save him and the infant.
‘I apologise for inviting you, Sodar,’ Tosan said, lifting the tent flap. ‘There will be no infant to bless this day.’ He paused, halfway out of the tent. ‘I think you should stay, though. It would be good for the villagers to see their priest breaking a vessel of Keos.’
Sodar lowered his eyes, schooling both his tongue and his temper. ‘Forgive me, Ancient Tosan, but I must decline. My strength is not what it once was.’
The ancient grunted, clearly unsurprised by Sodar’s answer, and left. Kelga sniffed and went about gathering up the blankets piled on Aegen’s birthing mat. Moments later, Sodar could hear Tosan shouting above the babble of the assembled crowd. The tent shuddered as quick hands dismantled it, and light flooded in as the tent collapsed around Sodar and the two witwomen. A few farmers began to separate the segmented tent walls, and suddenly Aegen lay exposed to the crowd.
‘Aegen?’
Less than a stone’s throw away, Tuor stared in horror.
‘Aegen!’ Tuor rushed to his dead wife’s side and gathered her up, pressing her limp frame to his chest. ‘Aegen, Aegen …’ he repeated, a talisman against the bloody truth in his arms.
Behind the blacksmith, Tosan approached with Winsor, the Eldest of Ancients, and a half-dozen masters from the Academy. The master avatars wore their traditional blood-red tunics, while Winsor wore the red and black chevron-patterned robes of a headmaster.
‘Bind the vessel of Keos,’ Winsor instructed. ‘Bind them and break them. We cannot permit their taint to spread.’
Tuor looked up from Aegen’s bloody corpse, searching for the child his wife had carried these last nine months. He spotted the sheepskin blanket in Lana’s arms just as Sodar stepped in front of him, blocking the babe from sight.
Their eyes met, and in those seconds the priest tried to convey all that he dared not say.
I’ll keep him safe. I promise. I will keep him safe.