Godblind
Fantasy’s most anticipated debut of the yearThere was a time when the Red Gods ruled the land. The Dark Lady and her horde dealt in death and blood and fire.That time has long since passed and the neighbouring kingdoms of Mireces and Rilpor hold an uneasy truce. The only blood spilled is confined to the border where vigilantes known as Wolves protect their kin and territory at any cost.But after the death of his wife, King Rastoth is plagued by grief, leaving the kingdom of Rilpor vulnerable.Vulnerable to the blood-thirsty greed of the Warrior-King Liris and the Mireces army waiting in the mountains…GODBLIND is an incredible debut from a dazzling new voice of the genre.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Anna Stephens 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008215897
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008215910
Version: 2018-01-29
Contents
Map
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Cave-temple, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains
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.
