When Ravens Call: The Fourth Book in the Small Gods Epic Fantasy Series (The Books of the Small Gods by Bruce Blake (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📕

and he nodded. They faded behind the brush they'd used to hide them while the gray warriors raised the mystical veil, then stood. Teryk's knees creaked after having remained crouching for so long, but they loosened. As they crept away from the raging soldiers and dancing folk, he noticed the same wasn't true of Rilum; his companion hobbled for several paces before his gait evened out.

They picked their way deeper into the forest in silence, choosing their footing to keep noise of their passing to a minimum. Teryk considered it unnecessary. He assumed the small ones intended to dance before the wall as long as the men continued their anger, but he did it to help Rilum overcome his fear. They crept from tree trunk to tree trunk, hiding wherever the opportunity afforded itself until the men's fury and the gods' delight faded to a distant hum and disappeared. The prince wondered if it meant they'd gone far enough to distance themselves from it or if the sounds had ceased. He didn't voice this thought—one possibility might disperse the sailor's anxiety, but the other refresh it.

Birds chirped and sang in the branches high above them. Teryk tilted his head back, looking for a glimpse of the colored feathers they'd seen as they fled into the forest, but they eluded him. He spied the occasional bounce of a branch or rustle of needles as an unseen bird flitted from one place to another. Searching for them but not finding them, he recalled the creatures great and tiny accompanying the Small Gods in their flight. Where did they go? Did they hide somewhere amongst the trees with them?

Teryk returned his attention to picking his way through the underbrush. He hauled a deep breath into his lungs through his nose; the scents of wood and needles, of loamy earth, energized him, filled him with hope despite their situation.

"Do you know where we are?" He didn't look at his companion as he asked.

"Lost," Rilum replied and spit, his saliva spattering on a wide, green leaf. "Lost be where we are. In a land that shouldn't exist."

"What if we're not?"

"What are you talking of? We're wandering a place where no man's ever been."

"I thought the same at first. But you saw what happened: the horsemen, the Small Gods."

"Aye, I did. But if you think those be Small Gods, then you must've bonked your noggin."

Teryk frowned. He didn't recall knocking his head, but might it be possible?

"But what if they were? What if it isn't an undiscovered land, but a different time long ago?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how outlandish they sounded. Difficult enough thinking something transported them from the beach to the relative safety of the forest, but to an alternate age?

Rilum halted, grabbed Teryk's arm to pull him to a stop. He squinted at his companion, tilted his head. "You must have hit your noggin plenty hard."

"Look around. Does this not resemble our home? After seeing what happened, do you not recognize the Meadow of Exile?" Teryk swallowed as he said the words; the more he spoke, the more ridiculous the idea sounded. And he'd never seen the fabled place where the Small Gods' banishment from the Windward Kingdom occurred, merely been told of it in stories. But Rilum couldn't realize he but guessed, and the need to defend his statement compelled him to continue doing so now he'd started.

The sailor glanced around them, paused before answering. "I ain't heard of no Meadow of Exile."

"Legend says thousands of turns of the seasons ago, the men of what became the Windward Kingdom feared the Small Gods. They banished them to the Green to protect their families."

"If that's what we saw, it didn't appear no banishment to me. The gray fellers built a wall to defend themselves."

Teryk opened his mouth and inhaled, but stopped before speaking. Many turns of the seasons had passed since their nanny recited the tale—another one for their father to disapprove of if he'd known—but he recognized the discrepancy. In her story, the Goddess erected the green divide to protect her subjects, and she'd banished the other Small Gods to the sky for their actions. What they'd seen did not align with the myth.

Am I wrong?

"Ain't no way to move through time," Rilum grumbled and began walking again. "The more we stay here, the more likely we're discovered. If not by the wee gray ones, then by a hungry beast."

Teryk waited a heartbeat before following, staring back the direction they'd come. He saw nothing but trees and brush. His ears detected birds singing and fluttering amongst the branches, insects buzzing in patches of sunlight. The urge to retrace their steps, to make sure the wee folk survived the soldiers' attack threatened to overtake him, but he resisted.

I can't leave Rilum on his own.

The justification rang false. He turned his back on the forest separating him from the green wall and the gray men and followed his companion deeper into the unknown, hoping to find the truth of where they'd ended up.

***

They stood at the top of the bluff, staring at the rocky beach below. The long downward slope appeared treacherous, and he hoped the sailor wouldn't suggest traversing it. One of them might lose their footing and die broken on the boulders at its terminus. The prince glanced at Rilum, hoping to read intent on his face. His companion continued looking away, glaring along the finger of land protruding into the water.

Waves hurled themselves against it as if they did so to end their lives. The force with which they struck the rocky outcropping sent spray shooting straight up in the air, turned the surf to foam. Teryk had never seen anything like this; it exemplified the power of the sea he'd experienced when the storm ravaged the Whalebone, but this