The GodSpill: Threadweavers, Book 2 Read online

  The GodSpill

  Threadweavers, Book 2

  Todd Fahnestock

  Contents

  Map of Amarion

  Map Detail

  Mailing List

  Pronunciation Guide

  Prologue

  1. Mershayn

  2. Mirolah

  3. Mirolah

  4. Mirolah

  5. Zilok Morth

  6. Stavark

  7. Mershayn

  8. Medophae

  9. Mirolah

  10. Mirolah

  11. Mirolah

  12. Medophae

  13. Zilok Morth

  14. Mirolah

  15. Mershayn

  16. Mershayn

  17. Mershayn

  18. Mershayn

  19. Mershayn

  20. Mershayn

  21. Mershayn

  22. Stavark

  23. Mirolah

  24. Mirolah

  25. Mirolah

  26. Medophae

  27. Zilok Morth

  28. Ynisaan

  29. Mirolah

  30. Medophae

  31. Mirolah

  32. Silasa

  33. Mirolah

  34. Stavark

  35. Mirolah

  36. Mershayn

  37. Mirolah

  38. Mirolah

  39. Elekkena

  40. Medophae

  41. Mershayn

  42. Medophae

  43. Mirolah

  44. Silasa

  45. Stavark

  46. Mirolah

  47. Mirolah

  48. Stavark

  49. Mershayn

  50. Bands

  Epilogue

  Reader Letter

  About the Author

  Excerpt for Threads of Amarion

  Also by Todd Fahnestock

  Copyright © 2018 by Todd Fahnestock

  ISBN: 978-1-941528-69-3

  Parker Hayden Media

  5740 N. Carefree Circle, Ste 120-1

  Colorado Springs, CO 80917

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Art credits:

  Cover design: LB Hayden

  Cover Graphic: © Rashed AlAkroka

  For Megan, who is always the first to enthusiastically raise her hand when I write something new, even after all these years.

  Mailing List

  If you would like to stay informed about upcoming book releases, giveaways, or enter contests I hold for readers, be sure to subscribe to my mailing list, Todd Fahnestock’s Readers Group.

  Your email will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  Pronunciation Guide

  Main Characters:

  Mirolah—MI-rȯ-lä

  Medophae—ME-dȯ-fā

  Mershayn—Mər-SHĀN

  Silasa—si-LÄ-sə

  Stavark—STA-värk

  Zilok Morth—ZĪ-lok Mȯrth

  Other Characters/Places:

  Amarion— ä-MĀ-rē-un

  Ari’cyiane— ä-ri-cē-ĀN

  Avakketh—ä-VÄ-keth

  Belshra—BEL-shrə

  Bendeller—ben-DEL-er

  Buravar—BYÜ-rä-vär

  Calsinac—KAL-zi-nak

  Casra—KAZ-rä

  Casur—KA-zhər

  Cisly—SIS-lē

  Clete—KLĒT

  Corialis—KȮR-ē-a-lis

  Dandere—DAN-dēr

  Darva—DÄR-və

  Daylan—DĀ-lin

  Dederi—DE-de-rē

  Denema—de-NĒ-mə

  Deni’tri—de-NĒ-trē

  Dervon—DƏR-vän

  Diyah—DĒ-yä

  Elekkena—e-LE-ke-nə

  Ethiel—E-thē-el

  Fillen—FIL-en

  Grendis Sym—GREN-dis SIM

  Harleath Markin—HÄR-lēth MÄR-kin

  Irgakth—ƏR-gakth

  Keleera—kə-LĒR-ə

  Lawdon—LÄ-dən

  Lo’gan—lȯ-GÄN

  Locke—läk

  Mi’Gan—mi-GÄN

  Natra—NÄ-trə

  Oedandus—ȯ-DAN-dus

  Orem—Ȯ-rem

  Rith—RITH

  Saraphazia—se-ruh-FĀ-zhē-ə

  Shera—SHE-rə

  Tarithalius—ter-i-THAL-ē-us

  Teni’sia—te-NĒ-sē-ä

  Tiffienne—ti-fē-EN

  Tuana—tü-ä-nä

  Tyndiria—tin-DĒR-ē-ä

  Vaisha—VĪ-shə

  Yehnie—YEN-nē

  Ynisaan—YI-ni-sän

  Vullieth—VƏL-ē-eth

  Zetu—ZE-tü

  Prologue

  Bands waited, watching the other dragons fill the translucent ledges above her. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for her. There were nearly a hundred of those ovoid ledges, bordering the enormous natural amphitheater in which she stood, lined with hundreds of dragons. The nearest were right over her head, close enough that Bands could reach up with her long neck and bump them with her nose. The farthest dragons were so small they looked about the size of her knuckle.

  In front of her was a half dome over the raised dais where Avakketh would stand when he arrived. Beautiful fountains of water spiraled up from spouts in the ground, rising until they reached each invisible ledge, where they flowed into invisible trenches, allowing the dragon spectators to drink while they watched. Because the ledges could not be seen, the streams of water looked like veins running through some translucent leviathan whose body was comprised of colorful dragons. There were orange dragons. Blue dragons. Silver dragons. Purple dragons. Black dragons. Different dragons of so many shades that no two seemed the same. There were no red dragons, of course. Red was the divine color, Avakketh’s color. No dragon had ever been born with red scales.

  There were, of course, dragons of multiple colors, like her. She saw Korducalikan, a black dragon with white patterns racing from her nose down her flanks. Her wings looked like forks of lightning. Biridirilaculalan and his family, several purple dragons with light spots, stood halfway down the amphitheater. Bands saw Vidilarrilan, a silver dragon with golden patterns like flames rising up from his claws. He was a childhood friend. She even saw her mother and father, with similar markings to her own. Father rested on his haunches, with his coppery body bearing yellow bands from his chin all the way down his long neck to his chest. Mother had coiled up like a snake, dark green with a light green stripe from her chin to her tail. Her glittering eyes watched Bands, though at first glance, she might have seemed asleep.

  Bands glanced over the hundreds of dragons that had gathered, and a familiar feeling of foreboding seeped through her. She had felt this feeling—like a tickle of snowflakes on the inside of her throat and belly—every time she and Medophae went into battle. Returning to Irgakth, land of the dragons, Bands had not expected a warm homecoming. She had expected to be reprimanded. She was an oddity, a deviant; she knew that. Most dragons looked upon humans as ants, barely worthy of attention. Bands, on the other hand, was fascinated with them. She enjoyed watching them, interacting with them. She had fallen in love with them as a whole. And she had fallen in love with a few in specific, a mating kind of love, the kind of bond reserved for two dragons who wished permis
sion to give birth. To most dragons, this was akin to what humans would consider bestiality.

  So Bands had expected to face consequences if she wished to re-enter the embrace of her god, like all the rest of her kind. She had hoped at least that Avakketh would reprimand her in private. That was obviously not going to be the case. That Avakketh wanted to see her in the amphitheater with every dragon in the vicinity invited did not bode well at all.

  As ever when she felt that cold, tickling feeling in her throat, she felt a sweep of calm come over her. Strangely, it was Medophae’s passion that taught her to do this. Whenever she sensed danger, she became icy calm, using those cool prickles and imagining them spreading throughout her body, bringing her a placid state of mind she could use to think, to strategize.

  In moments like this, she felt as though her eyes became a separate part of her body, as if they were floating over her head, seeing with a perspective that would allow no fear. She smiled slightly, thinking that her many fellows far down the ledges of the amphitheater looked like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. Dainty, fanciful, purposeless ephemera that flitted on whatever breeze was convenient.

  Such a thought would have been a grave insult to any dragon, so Bands kept it carefully to herself, cultivating the mirth that smothered her fear.

  She thought instead about what she had seen when she’d come north. Things had changed in Irgakth. There were young dragons she didn’t recognize. Dragons lived so long that they rarely asked Avakketh for the gift of creating a new birth. In fact, Bands had met almost every dragon alive before she went south to seek her fortune. But obviously, many had asked for this privilege lately. That meant something. She didn’t know what, but it meant something.

  Secondly, as she flew north, she noticed many other dragon cities that hadn’t been there before. Dragons were not known for change, but they had been industrious over the past centuries, and many of their constructs had been created using threadweaving, which meant Avakketh had been involved. Humans drew their threadweaving power from the GodSpill, the creative god force that had accidentally spilled from the Godgate millennia ago. Dragons drew their threadweaving ability straight from their god, Avakketh. When Bands had left long ago to explore the human lands, Avakketh had cut her off from his power, and she’d had to learn to threadweave like a human, pulling GodSpill straight from the lands, rather than from her god.

  At last, the ledges had been filled, and an odd quiet descended on the amphitheater. Bands turned away from the thunder of dragons to the front of the amphitheater, a red granite dais where Avakketh attended on his dragons when there was reason to do so. The smooth, black stone wall behind the dais shimmered, and Avakketh emerged through it like it was a waterfall. The smallest dragons were larger than most human houses. Bands herself was longer than two large houses, tip to tail.

  Avakketh was immense, easily five times Bands’s size. He could have lay down on the palace at Calsinac and crushed it. He came to the center of the dais, looming over her, surveying the assembled dragons like they might challenge him. Three white dragons came through the shimmering black wall and flanked Avakketh like dogs would flank a hunter. Each of them crouched, serpentine necks arcing up like a question mark, all focused on Bands. She recognized each of them, of course. One was even a childhood friend, Zynderilifakyz.

  “Randorus Ak-nin Ackli Forckandor.” Avakketh spoke her full name to the crowd without looking at her, and, for a moment, it seemed as if he was demanding that she pop up, raising her wing in the air to be counted.

  “My lord,” she bowed her head. “Your life is my breath. Your words are my commands. Your eyes, my vision. How may I serve you?” She spoke the ritual words of the dragonhood. Any dragon speaking to Avakketh was required to say these words when first addressed by their god.

  His huge, horned head lowered, dark eyes glaring at her. “You mock us,” he said.

  Her heart dipped. Even though she had known a reprimand was coming, the words hurt. “My lord, it is not my intention—”

  “It is your intention,” he cut her off. “You dare to speak the words of the dragonhood, when in fact you flaunt them with your actions. You claim that my life is your breath, but you have forsaken natural threadweaving for that aberration humans stole from the Godgate. My words have never been your command. Dragons are forbidden to live among humans, yet you prefer their company to the company of your own kind. You claim my eyes are your vision, but you refuse to see the humans for what they really are. You are a liar.”

  She bowed her head to cover her defiance. Yes, she had disobeyed him. Yes, she had come expecting a rebuke, but her anger flared inside her. Hadn’t he already punished her? Avakketh was behind the spell Ethiel had cast; Saraphazia and Tarithalius had deduced that much. No human, even one as powerful as Ethiel, could have imprisoned a god. But Avakketh could have. Avakketh had created that ruby, put it in Ethiel’s hands. Avakketh had trapped the brother he hated and punished an errant daughter who had disobeyed him. “I am sorry I have disappointed you, but I return with a completion of the penance you set upon me.”

  “You return as a traitor.”

  She looked up. She had seen a dragon reprimanded before. Avakketh should have demanded redress to the rest of dragonkind in the form of service. Sometimes for as much as a hundred years. This wasn’t to be a reprimand. This was something else.

  She tried to rise above her own thoughts, to consider this dispassionately, but she couldn’t. Her anger boiled and, behind it, fear. She had spent four hundred years longing for her beloved, trapped in an abyss with nothing but the constant droning of Tarithalius’s bad jokes.

  Avakketh watched her, his black eyes hard.

  “My lord...” She finally managed to find her tongue. “You...locked me away for four hundred and thirty seven years....” She glanced at the dragons surrounding her. None seemed the least bit compassionate. She thought of looking at her parents, but she couldn’t stand it if she found the same coldness in their eyes, so she avoided that side of the amphitheater. “Yes, I loved a human. Is that crime so horrible that it warranted four hundred years of my life?”

  “Was your crime so horrible...” Avakketh echoed the words. “If you understood what you have done...” His eyes flickered with a dark fire. “Loving a human is, in fact, a crime. A spine horse should not mate with a rat. It makes you low, a pitiable thing. But that crime I can overlook, distasteful as it is. What I can’t ignore is your threat to dragonkind.”

  “A threat, my lord? In what way have I threatened—”

  “Dragons were meant to think, Randorus, to create, to rule this world my sister Natra and I created. Your kind earned their ability to think. Humans, aath trees, whales, equines, all these were given sentience by Natra. They didn’t earn it; they don’t deserve it. Fine. I was willing to abide Natra’s undeserved gift, but when humans first wielded GodSpill, I knew it had gone too far. This was something Natra never intended, and I waited too long to destroy them. They created Daylan’s Fountain, an aberration that twisted the natural order of this world, tearing into the fabric of the great tapestry. This is what I call a threat, Randorus. Humans must be destroyed.”

  Bands’s mind raced. If he wanted to destroy humans, why hadn’t he done it? And how had she betrayed him? Avakketh said her true crime wasn’t loving Medophae, then what was? Bands had been gone for over three hundred years. She couldn’t have been a threat to anything, even if she wanted to.

  And Avakketh had been waiting. Why? If he wanted humans eliminated, why hadn’t he done anything? These past three centuries, humans were at their weakest. They had stopped reading, stopped accumulating knowledge, stopped creating. Tarithalius, the god of humans, was trapped in a gemstone. Even the threadweavers had been slain by Harleath Markin’s grand mistake. There was nothing that could possibly stop Avakketh. There was nothing...

  It all came together in a rush. Medophae. Avakketh was afraid of Medophae. And then she realized the trap hadn’t been to punish her. The r
uby Ethiel wielded had been meant to capture Medophae and Tarithalius, the two protectors of humankind, the only two who might be strong enough to fight Avakketh. But Bands had pushed Medophae out of the way. She had taken his place.

  Avakketh nodded, as though he could see her piecing it together. “Do you understand now?”

  “I saved him,” she said.

  “You did. You also brought him upon us,” Avakketh said. “Your wandering took you to the isle of Dandere, where mortals of the blood of Oedandus could be found. You brought him to Amarion, where he could mix with his god and become what he is.”

  “But that was good,” she protested. “He killed Dervon, who you despised. Dervon’s creations killed hundreds of dragons.”

  “Dervon was a god. Medophae is some stripling human. Did you really think I would condone a human killing one of my own family, no matter how much I hated him?”

  Bands couldn’t find her breath. Finally, she managed. “Then why wait at all? You’re going to have to face him eventually.”

  “Humans were devolving. If they were to take the path of the senseless equines, so be it. But now, they won’t. They have set the GodSpill free again, and I cannot allow human threadweavers to return.”