Curse: The Dark God Book 2 by John D. Brown

life,” the Creek Widow said.

8
    The Queller
    BEROSUS WATCHED THEM work on Black Knee’s leg for a moment. He watched Talen. The boy was a fledgling Glory not attached to any Sublime Mother. That is what he’d felt when he probed the boy. It was impossible, but there he stood.
    If the Sublime of this Glory had been killed and consumed by one of her sisters, that sister would now hold the reins. So that meant the Sublime who had started Talen had not been consumed by a sister. Something else had killed her. And that posed another puzzle because if the Sublime of this fledgling Glory had died, it was impossible the one enthralled would survive it. Lesser thralls had been known to survive the breaking of their bonds. But those bound directly to a Sublime Mother did not. So what was going on here?
    Before he’d been killed, Rubaloth the Skir Master had communicated through the bond he held to the Glory of Mokad. He’d communicated across a sea. Over such distances the link was always tenuous and difficult, but the Glory of Mokad had insisted he’d felt another Sublime Mother when Rubaloth had died. A Mother that had the power to raise a son of Lammash, although Berosus doubted that report.
    Rubaloth had been a powerful Divine—one of Mokad’s mightiest Skir Masters. And he’d died in this place.
    Berosus had been here two weeks now. Two weeks to study the sleth. They were using weaves of might, but none were in the pattern of any of the houses of Kains he knew. There were no Guardian Divines, no tethered skir, no Fire sacrifices. There simply were no signs that would indicate an enemy Mother was here, controlling this human herd.
    It would appear the sleth claims were true. But who here was so mighty as to overthrow a Mother?
    He was going to have to be careful. He was going to have to watch his back. True danger walked these shores.
    But that wasn’t necessarily bad. In fact, the thought of it brought a rising joy. There was no bitter without sweet. No light without darkness. No peace without fear. And it had been some time since he had felt fear. It made him feel alive.
    He felt for the Glory of Mokad across the sea. There is no Sublime Mother here , he reported.
    He waited, listening intently, trying to shut out the banging of the carpenters in the fortress and the soldiers practicing their forms. The faint distant reply came: Queller, you will destroy everything that has been infected .
    It was the Mother of Mokad that replied, not the Glory. He felt the wonderful thrill her attention always brought.
    Save what you can of that herd. The rest we shall lay up in store against our need.
    It shall be done , he replied.
    He waited for more, but the tenuous link faded.
    The Queller—that was her nickname for him because he, better than any of the other Divines, could quell a rebellion. Better than any other, he was the one that could restore order to a herd and make it productive. She had sent him to clean this mess up. And that’s what he would do.
    His first business was to secure Talen. You didn’t want a fledgling Glory running about as a loose end. That could come to no good. Once Talen was secure, he would identify who it was that defeated the Mother. And then he would begin the harvest.
    It was going to be a big job—tens of thousands of souls. A small sleth nest could be useful at times in managing a herd or in attacking another Mother’s holdings. He himself had infiltrated one branch of the Hand and directed them as the Mother saw fit. But this army Shim was raising was a pestilence.
    Ideas and knowledge spread like disease. In these situations, you couldn’t just kill the leaders because the infection didn’t end there. No, in these situations, it was best to simply destroy them all.
    He took in a great breath of air and surveyed the fortress around him—the candidates, the cooks over by the fires, the soldiers upon the walls. Harvest wreaths hung above doors and on posts, remnants from last night’s