Read Online The Godless by Ben Peek - Free Book Online

particularly bothered by that,” Essa muttered.
    The Captain of the Spine shook his head. “It was the right thing. The smart thing. A man like that fights with no pain.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Bueralan asked.
    â€œOur friend here can explain.”
    Beneath the gaze of everyone in the room, Zaifyr smiled faintly, and shrugged. “It was a Quor’lo,” he said easily; “a dead man possessed.”

 
    7.
    Â 
    Ayae considered running. The windows in the hospital were not big, but she was small enough to slip through and, even in the gown she wore, she believed that she could make her way down the warm cobbled road to her house and be gone before the first of the sun began to soak through the canopies of the mountains’ forest.
    But she had nowhere to go. If she went back to her house, once she’d pulled on old trousers and new shirt, found her boots and filled her pack, hiding what gold she had at the bottom, she would step to the doorway and simply stop. The dark shadow of the tree before her would offer no hint of direction, other than to point back into her house with its cut branches. It would urge her to stay. To stay in the place that was the only security she knew. A small spark of anger ignited in her stomach with the thought. She had not been born in Mireea, but it was her home.
    Her home.
    The door to the ward opened, revealing the two guards who stood straight and still as a large, hairless man stepped between them. Dressed in expensive red leather trousers and gray silk shirt, and wearing boots made from soft, supple leather, it was his hands that drew her attention. They were littered with scars. The succession of tiny white marks looked as if they had been made by a plague thousands of years old. His eyes, when they turned to her, were similarly afflicted, faint, white specks drifting over the pale gray iris, as if once a milky blindness had threatened him.
    â€œMy name is Fo,” he said, approaching her, his scarred hand held out to her. “I’m a Keeper from the Enclave in Yeflam.”
    Fo, the Disease. He looked neither sick nor afraid. Ayae shook his clammy hand and introduced herself hesitantly.
    She was aware that she was in the presence of a man who did not age, a man whose life was meshed in myth and rumor, but whose grip was firm. He was a Keeper of the Divine, a man who had been cursed—or blessed, depending on who spoke—with immortality. Fo also had the power to infect a living creature with illness, design and create new diseases, but offer no cure. He was one part of the Enclave, the organization that ruled Yeflam, drawing men and women into their city on the promise of utopia on the day they ascended.
    Still holding her hand, he sat opposite. “I hope you’re feeling better. The healer here tells me that you’re fine, but—well, let us just say, I like to see things myself.”
    â€œI’m fine.” Ayae attempted to pull her hand back, but could not. “Reila knows what she is talking about.”
    â€œReila is a fanatic: a ‘healer’ who would rather work with herbs and alchemy than magic, but who draws from her own blood when she must.” His voice was cool. “A year ago, a young healer came to Mireea to set up shop. He had a touch of the gods in him. A tiny curse, you could say, enough that he could mend a wound and intuitively pick up an illness. He was a rarity—a young man who wanted to help, and sought neither riches nor fame doing so. The Lord Wagan sent him back to Yeflam in chains two months after his arrival, as your same healer had him arrested and roundly denounced him in front of the Lord and Lady.”
    â€œHe killed two people.”
    Fo gazed at her, his gray eyes unblinking.
    Unwilling to be put off, Ayae continued, “One had a broken leg, the other a cancer in the stomach. Reila said he treated neither.”
    â€œAnd you believed her?”
    She had.