In the Shadow of the Gods by Rachel Dunne Page A

“I have a present for you, once you’re done with them. Come find me.” She leaned in tantalizingly close, lips just brushing against his jaw, and then moved away, smirking again as she strode up the path behind him. Joros watched her until, from the corner of his eye, he saw Avorra trying to slip away. He set the twins marching forward again, and they went without grumbling now, resigned.
    They took him all the way to Raturo’s floor, where the wide space gave a perfect view of the great arch that led into the Ventallo’s chambers. It was hard to notice anything besides the two falling gods, but the twins didn’t even seem to notice their stone counterparts, walking instead to the two tunnel mouths leading farther down. There was the path leading to the Cavern of the Falls, which Joros had to visit fairly frequently for ceremonial reasons, and the other path led down to the sorts of rooms necessary to keep a large place full of many people fed and clothed and clean. Kitchens, baths, storerooms; the kinds of places Joros had managed to avoid, save when he needed cleaning. The children took the latter path, of course, strolling deep into the mountain’s foot, going lower even than the Cavern of the Falls reached. It was darker there, below where mostof the mountain lived, far removed from the labored gasps of life crawling through Raturo’s tunnels.
    The storeroom they took him to was near freezing, cold enough for his breath to make a cloud before his face. It was full of meat, carcasses hanging from the ceiling, dark pools of frozen blood dotting the floor. They wove through the room to a back corner, pushed aside a hanging pig, and knelt down before a pile of bones, shaved of their flesh. As the twins began to root through the bones, Joros felt a strange twisting in his stomach. The children were unsettling enough on their own, but there was something especially troubling about the casual carelessness with which they dug through bones and flesh and blood.
    The storage room began to slowly grow brighter.
    Through the tunnel they revealed, tight to the floor and barely big enough for a full-sized man to fit through, daylight stretched its fingers.
    There were a great number of things Joros hated, and the children being right was most certainly one of them.
    â€œSee?” Avorra said with a grin that was half superiority and half disdain. “Told you it was morning.”
    Joros stepped forward and took the smile off her face with the flat of his hand. The twins gaped up at him with matching expressions of shock, Avorra’s hand slowly rising to touch her reddening cheek. It took a great effort of will for Joros not to raise his hand again; he even managed to keep his voice low, calm and deadly, as he told them, “You will never come here again. You will never speak of this place.” He glared at them a moment longer, letting them soak in his anger. “Go. Now.”
    They went.
    When he was sure they were gone, Joros turned to regardthe tunnel. He would ask the right questions to the right people; he was confident he would know within the week who had thought of making a tunnel to discard refuse, who had been too lazy to drag carcasses up through the mountain to the gate. There would be proper punishments. But the tunnel . . . he wasn’t sure what to do about the tunnel itself.
    Carefully he rearranged the bones in front of the tunnel mouth, the sunlight fracturing against the far wall, dimming piece by piece until the storeroom was once again near dark, lit only by a single candle. There were always candles scattered throughout the mountain, since there was no other way of tracking time in the darkness. The initiates were constantly replacing them, precisely trimming and lighting them. Joros found himself staring at the flame much too long and shook himself, making his way from the storeroom and back up the path through the mountain. Not all problems had an immediate