Read Online The Pagan Night by Tim Akers - Free Book Online Page A

harsh in Malcolm’s skull. He woke before it was light and slipped from his bedchamber, shutting the door on his wife’s gentle breathing. Sorcha would never forgive him if he failed to say a proper goodbye, but he would rather not trouble her with his discomfort.
    He dressed in darkness, then snuck down to the doma. There he prayed twice, once to each of the gods in the doma, and once more, before dawn came, hidden in the hallowed shrine from which the castle took its name.
    The dome of the shrine was low and arched, the rough stone barely taller than a man at its highest point. The air was dank and still. A low wall ringed the icon at the center of the shrine, and a runnel in the solid stone of the floor led to the icon, a memory of the time when a natural stream ran through to wash the blood away. As with all holy things of the old days, this shrine had once been open to the sky. Generations past the Blakleys bricked it over as the first sign of their devotion to the new religion. Since then the castle called Houndhallow had been built above the dome, to be the seat of House Blakley’s modest realm.
    In the center stood the shrine itself, an uncut block of dark stone, and perched on that was the head of an enormous hound, forged from blackest iron. The jaws of the hound gaped open, larger than a man’s chest, and the eyes were black pits. Oil lanterns sat in the hollows of the eyes and flickered, while thick, inky smoke smothered the air. The jaws were stained in ancient blood, stains that continued down the rock and onto the floor. The first Blakleys had been vicious men, brutal in their zeal for the dark spirit that the iron hound represented.
    The head was surrounded by a dry moat that had in the past served as both a fountain and a fire pit. The stone wall of that moat served as a kneeler, worn smooth by generations of supplicants, all of them praying to different gods for different reasons.
    And there, his head in his hands, knees bent before the symbol of his family, Malcolm Blakley, duke of Houndhallow, prayed.
    “I expected you to still be in bed,” Sorcha Blakley said from the door. She was dressed in a simple robe, her long brown hair laced in gold and amber, bound in a thick braid that reached to her waist. The hound’s flickering eyes struck sharp shadows across her tired face.
    Malcolm relaxed into his pose of supplication, the sound of his wife’s voice draining tension from his shoulders. Still, he didn’t stand.
    “I have too much on my mind for sleep,” he said.
    “A tired mind makes mistakes,” she murmured.
    He sighed and then, creaking, turned and sat on the kneeler. He laced his fingers together. He looked like a hunter taking a breath in the woods, resting before he moved on. Nothing like one of the greatest heroes of the Reaver War, duke of Houndhallow, faithful son of the Celestial church.
    “I have little enough choice in the matter,” he said. “I can’t make sleep come, no matter what I try.”
    Sorcha sat beside her husband and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
    “You must try to rest, my love,” she said. “This trip will ask much of you. Your body is not what it once was, able to sleep in the saddle and fight in the morning.”
    “Oh, gods, woman. I know my limits. My knees won’t let me forget the price they’ve paid in my service.” He stretched out his legs, rubbing life into them. “It’s my heart that seems to have found its limit.”
    “Nonsense. I know of no deeper heart,” Sorcha whispered.
    Malcolm sat quietly, staring at the sooty wall, rubbing his hands together. Eventually, he turned to his wife.
    “I do not like the taste of this task,” he said simply.
    “No?” she said. “You go to Greenhall, to celebrate the Allfire. What is distasteful about that?”
    “You know as well as I. Greenhall has never been friendly ground. It’s no kinder during the Allfire.” Malcolm sighed and rubbed his face. “To Tenerrans, at least.”
    “Surely you won’t