Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
They waited for the shudders to die down. Finally, he got up and walked over to them on unsteady legs, looking like a risen corpse. He took his place next to Finn, and they resumed their trek.
They managed to take less than a dozen steps when Andora strode away from them into the snow, toward a magic whirlwind. A group of people appeared in the open. On one side, a woman in her late twenties held a boy, maybe two or three years old. She clutched the boy to her as if afraid someone would rip him out of her arms. Across from her, a group of six people waited, their faces grim.
Among the six, an older woman wore a gray robe with Troyan’s symbol on it, one triangle on the bottom, three on top. Troyan was the Healer, a Nav god who ruled over disease. His devotees healed the sick. Next to the healer, a young woman wore an amulet with Makosh’s twisted spiral—a seer, possibly an oracle.
“You must kill the child,” Troyan’s priestess intoned.
The mother of the boy hugged him tighter to herself. He had big blue eyes, chubby cheeks, and a head of reddish-blond hair. He almost looked like a bewildered kitten that was snatched off the floor in the middle of playing and now had no idea what was going on.
“He is barely three years old,” Andora said.
“He will be the death of all of us. The entire town will die,” Troyan’s priestess said.
“The child is innocent. At this point, he hasn’t done anything,” Andora repeated. “You’re asking me to take a life because of something you think might happen.”
“Will happen!” Troyan’s priestess pointed toward Makosh’s seer.
“It will come to pass,” the seer said.
“Last year your uncle, Sergei Ivanovich, predicted that the winter would be so cold, birds would freeze in flight,” Andora said. “Instead, you had record warm temperatures. Three years ago, you predicted that Red Rock Bridge would collapse. It is still standing.”
“This is different,” the seer said.
“Please!” The mother’s voice shook. “He’s just a little boy!”
“Their whole family are Lihoradka’s worshippers,” a man called out. “We should burn them all.”
Andora unsheathed her sword. “There will be no witch hunts.”
The man stepped back.
She turned to the mother clutching at her son. “I won’t let anyone hurt him, or you. Go home.”
The woman fled and vanished.
Andora faced the gathering. “I don’t care what you foresaw. This is America. We do not punish people because they might do something. You are presumed innocent until you’re proven guilty. I’m telling you right now, if anyone touches a hair on that child’s head, I will come back and make you regret it. Do not test me.”
Magic and snow swirled. A field of corpses filled the Glade. They slumped on the ground in contorted poses, their lips gone, their teeth exposed. Holes peppered their faces as if something had taken bites out of their flesh. Sores filled with pus split the remaining skin.
In the center of it all, a child sat on a heap of bodies. He had grown. He was maybe five or six now. His hair had turned lighter and more blond, and he had lost the chubby cheeks, but the eyes were the same, round and blue. He saw Andora and cackled.
“Do you like it?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for you. Oooh, poor baby me. So cute and adorable. And you, so fierce. ‘Nobody will touch the child, or I will come back and punish you.’ You stupid, stupid bitch.”
He grinned and kicked the nearest corpse, whose symbol of Troyan was still visible despite the pus and bodily fluids.
“Thirty-seven. That’s how many I killed. Thirty-seven. And you will be the thirty-eighth. But I’ll kill your soul first. Thank you so much for all your help.”
The boy raised his hand. A larger phantom hand overlaid his, its fingers long and bony, its claws dripping grayish slime. Lihoradka’s hand.
Behind him, bodies shifted. Corpses rose, their eyes glowing with greenish fire, like foul swamp lights.
Andora plunged her sword into the ground. He didn’t hear the incantation, but he knew whom she reached out to for help. Before you eradicated disease you had to contain it, and who better than a goddess who already held a grudge against the culprit?
Finn gaped at the iceberg sheathing the clearing. The ice was clear as glass, and within it, the boy hung unmoving, caught in mid-leap as he’d tried to escape. His frozen blue eyes brimmed with fear.
“This is how to do it properly,” Roman told Finn. “See, she freezes and holds. You need to work on the holding part.”
The iceberg melted, and fire spun through the glade, turning bodies into candles.
Andora returned. Her eyes were red. She didn’t say anything. She just stared straight ahead.
The tiny magic whirlwinds danced across the snow.