The Darkness Comes (The Second Book of the Small Gods Series) Read Free Page A

long, curved, yellowed, and cracked. Kuneprius hesitated. The baby stirred again, squeaked in his sleep.
    “Come, boy.”
    Kristeus gestured with his fingers and Kuneprius found his feet carrying him the short distance to the middle of the room, despite not having asked them to do so. He passed the baby into the High Priest’s hands and the child’s eyelids fluttered open. Kristeus regarded the babe for a moment, then lay him on the floor and bowed his head, words whispering from within the hood. Kuneprius resisted the urge to fidget.
    Time crawled. The apprentice glanced away from the child, saw the herbs hung on the spikes were fresh, the floor swept, the walls free of soot from the tapers’ greasy smoke.
    Someone comes in here.
    The baby gurgled and the air in the room grew warmer on the lad’s skin. Kuneprius snapped his gaze back to the High Priest and found the man looking at him instead of the baby. He shivered despite the rising temperature.
    “You have done well, apprentice. I have seen the coming of this child and you have done what needed to be done to make it so. Henceforth, you are Brother Kuneprius.”
    The boy’s eyes widened and a flutter of pride pushed aside the nausea gripping his midsection. Never had an apprentice been named Brother before reaching their fourteenth turn. Eight seasons yet remained before Kuneprius reached that age. He thought it must be expected of him to respond, so he parted his lips to thank the High Priest, but Kristeus raised a hand, stopping him before he spoke.
    “You will no longer be part of the liberating expeditions.” He slipped his hands under the baby, his long nails scraping on the wooden floor. “From this time forward, you have a much more important role to fulfill.”
    Kristeus picked the babe off the floor, held him up as though examining a ripe melon rather than gazing on a living thing. Kuneprius wondered if the High Priest viewed everything in this manner, but put the thought from his mind. The air in the room prickled against his skin, standing the short hairs on the back of his neck on end. His sight wavered and, for an instant, he saw flames raining from the sky, trees burning, a river boiling. The hallucination disappeared as quickly as it came.
    “Henceforth, you will be caretaker to the child,” Kristeus said, raising the baby into the air. “For you have brought to me Vesisdenperos, the sculptor. The one born to ensure the return of the Small Gods.”
    The sweat on Kuneprius’ brow went cold.

I Horace - Pig and Small God
    Once upon a time, Horace were a Seaman, and a First Man to boot. One in a long line o’ men what spent their lives plyin’ the dangerous waters off the Windward coast. But Horace had enough o’ sailin’ and stopped bein’ a First Man, stopped bein’ a man o’ the sea, and called himself Tailor, but that weren’t really him. Now, ol’ Horace weren’t nothin’ but porthole clenchin’ afraid for his life with a lump o’ shit in his breeches.
    The small gray man scowled at the one-time sailor, his bony arms crossed in front o’ his narrow chest. If it weren’t for his talkin’ and movin’ ‘round, a thin’ such as him might’ve been mistook for a hunk o’ clay.
    Horace’s lips opened and closed in a manner resemblin’ a fish yanked outta the sea and left on deck to suffocate. Life givin’ breath didn’t come no easier to him’n it’d do for that fish neither, with a creature escaped from the Green standin’ in front o’ him and a broken rib pokin’ him ev’ry time he drew air. Instead o’ words, he merely gasped and tasted the singed flavor o’ his burnin’ pig leg and the embarrassin’ odor o’ fear soilin’ his britches.
    “Where is Thorn?” the gray man demanded.
    “Th…th…th…” Didn’t make no sense, but Horace couldn’t manage nothin’ else at that partic’lar time.
    The angry and distressed expression on the miniature man’s gray brow deepened, his voice grew louder.
    “Where