AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Arioch, as the scrios of the Church of Baleros, was there to make sure the disease of sin was unable to make it past the gate.
Jace had stepped in as healer when she failed, and now she watched the consequences of her ineptitude. Her chest tightened with fear and guilt at what he took on for her sake.
I should be the one walking to my potential end,she thought.
Jace and Arioch made their way to the very gate no one was allowed to pass through without permission. The city guards took up formation behind the two figures, their faces covered only by cloth, with a uniform of jeans, flannel, and a wide-brimmed hat. They held their rifles at the ready as the gate slowly began to open. The wind and sand that had been beating against them all day and night found its way along Saints’ Road in a sigh of relief from nature itself.
Each of the men steadied themselves against the relentless wind, bending at the waist to find their center of gravity as the desert pushed its way past the now open gate.
Watching as the scrios covered his eye and bowed low to the ground to make the horned sign of Balor in the sand, Bryn rolled her tear-filled eyes.
Why did they need to be sandblasted to do the prayer for a safe return to their fortress unharmed? When she had dared to ask once before, the answer had been that doing what was difficult showed one’s obedience.
Bryn figured it just made them idiots not to do it beforehand when the wind was far calmer and the poor city guards were not struggling to keep themselves steady.
The guards widened their stances, their heads down not in prayer but to protect their faces as the scrios stood. His prayer ended while the wind howled in anger around him.
It seemed Mother Nature did not care for his god and was making her displeasure known.
As they began walking as one, in uniform and posture, she watched her cousin walk through the gate with the city guards at his heels just as her father had.
A mirror image of the memory of her youth.
The gate, just as it had that same day, slowly closed behind them, cutting her off from her beloved cousin who was as close to her as a sibling. The only other family member was her aunt, who despised her on a good day. There was no love lost between the two of them.
Closing her eyes, Bryn let her tears break free and roll down her cheek as she promised herself her cousin would be fine.
Logically she understood that, but emotionally she did not. A war between the mind and heart.
A sensation rolled over her skin like silk, her eyes popping open and her hands moving to see what could have caused such a reaction. Nothing physically was there, but a relentless tug in the back of her head pulled at her.
Something deep inside her said that although he would come back unscathed, something huge would follow him home.
Bryn suddenly wished her visions could see more than death in a person’s immediate future.
Chapter 2
Thedesertheatdidnothing to help with the smell of the dead.
Securing the bandanna over her mouth, Bryn tried not to gag at the stench of rotting and decomposing flesh, made all the worse by the sun.
While she was all too happy her cousin had made it back home in one piece several hours after he left through the gate, she wasn’t pleased when he told her it was time for her to get to work on her day off.
Death waited for no one, he’d said, exhaustion evident on his face as he turned to his own apartment to clean up and rest.
Only to show up minutes after she’d arrived at the pyres to help.
Some clean cuts on the bodies that had been outside the gate showed a fight—with knives, not bullets—which usually indicated that rovers, people who pirated in the desert looking to steal supplies from travelers, had done the damage. Sadly, with the state of decomposition, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. From the linen clothes and lack of jewels, they were most likely traders. One of the most dangerous jobs in the world now, as her uncle found out himself long before she came to Ifreann.
Used to handling one body by herself when they lost an elder or someone to a sickness, Bryn was overwhelmed by the ten bodies the city guards had moved in from outside of the gate. She supposed she should be happy that the guards carried them in at all and left them next to the pyres for her, but no one wanted predators hanging out on their doorstep, which a pile of bodies would certainly cause.
She dreaded transporting the bodies of the deceased... especially in such a decayed state. That would have been a long, smelly trek for her.
Bryn had done it before when a body hadn’t been found for a week. Unpleasant was beyond an understatement in describing that aspect of her vocation.
“How long was this one left in the sun?” she wondered aloud as she secured the dead to a board with rope.
“Not long,” Jace said from behind her, startling her from her musings.
