River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

If there is an after this.

She’s a silent one, Sarvi says, meaning me. I must say I’m relieved. You’ll have to understand, Hanna, that so far only you and Death can understand me. The other unicorns do too, but they’re not as civilized as Gods and mortals can be.

Sarvi says this as if I should be flattered.

“I’m too scared to talk,” I admit.

Death makes another low, rumbling noise behind me, reverberating through my bones. “How freely she admits it now.”

We lapse into silence, though in my head I’m doing all I can not to freak out. We fly along, just under the cloud cover, the claw-like tips of Sarvi’s wings scraping the bottoms of the clouds, making foggy tendrils dance in our wake. Below us the scenery keeps changing. The dry and desolate plains end abruptly at cliffs that stretch up and up, the River of Shadows snaking below it. The cliffs keep getting higher, turning to mountains that are craggy and jagged, gleaming as if made of iron, a dusting of snow on the very peaks.

Then I see something that takes my breath away.

Right in front of us is an impossibly large tower that shoots straight up into the clouds, miles and miles wide, so wide that it almost curves over the horizon. The tower is made of shining stones that reflect the sky and rises up from a walled citadel of darkness, the structures barely visible.

“What is that?” I ask breathlessly.

“The City of Death,” Death says proudly as Sarvi curves around the gargantuan tower, flying at an angle that I’m sure I’ll fall from, with only the G-forces keeping me in place.

I quickly glance up at the tower as it disappears into the clouds. Then vertigo sets in and I shut my eyes, no longer wanting to see the rest. “Where does it go?”

“Into the heavens,” says Death. “Up there is Amaranthus. It’s where the best of the best go. Below it, at the middle, is the Golden Mean. Then where you see the citadel at ground level, that begins the Realm of Inmost, where the Inmost Dwellers are beholden. Inmost goes fathoms deep into the ground, almost as deep as Amaranthus goes into the sky. No surprise, considering how many…offenders there are.”

“You mean sinners.”

He clears his throat. “No. Not quite. We’re all sinners, little bird. Every one of us. To sin is to be human, to be human is to sin.”

“But you’re a God.”

“Gods are the biggest sinners of them all.”

“That sounds blasphemous to me.”

He chuckles warmly. “There is but one singular Creator, Hanna. The word God is too weak for them. Beneath the Creator are the Gods. We are victims to the same impulses, weaknesses, and emotions as anyone else is.” He pauses. “Does that disappoint you?”

“Considering I’ve grown up believing in only one God, whom I’m assuming is the Creator, then no. I’ve never given multiple Gods any thought.”

“But you’ve thought of Death,” he says with deliberation, an edge of excitement to his voice.

His words seem to sink into me. I open my eyes and they water as the high wind rushes into them, but the City of Death is behind us now. Ahead lie mountains taller than the ones before, covered in glaciers and thickly packed snow.

Death? Who hasn’t thought of death? It’s the first harsh lesson a child learns when they find a dead bird in their yard. It’s the devastation of having a beloved dog be put down. It’s the soul-crushing reality when a loved one dies.

There isn’t one life that is immune to death.

Death is for the living.

No blizzards on Mount Vipunen today, Sarvi’s voice rings out. Perhaps you’re in a better mood than I thought, sir.

Death makes another low grumbling noise.

You see, Hanna, Sarvi goes on, the weather in Tuonela is subconsciously controlled by Death. Unfortunately, he doesn’t care about this half the time.

“Sarvi. Shut it,” Death says.

When he’s happy, the clouds clear and the sun shines on the land, Sarvi goes on, clearly not shutting it. And the more that the sun shines, the better his chances of growing certain things, such as his beloved coffee. But he’s never happy, so the clouds and storms and snow persist. Personally, I don’t care, but it makes flying a lot easier when there isn’t so much cloud cover.

“Sarvi,” Death warns. “Just because she can hear you, doesn’t mean I can’t. Stop yammering about the weather and get us to Shadow’s End.”

Yes sir, Sarvi says after a moment. The unicorn beats its wings faster, which causes my grip to tighten as we pick up speed. Soon we’re cresting over the mountains and a whole new landscape opens up before me.

We’re at the very bottom of the land. If Tuonela were a continent, this would be the Cape Horn of South America. Here there are green pastures above dark gray cliffs dropping off to a rich blue ocean below, the waves churning with kelp and lashing at the rocks. It’s a formidable and harsh place where the clouds are the darkest and out along a narrow isthmus of rock and sodden pasture, lies a castle.

I have to blink a few times to really accept what I’m seeing. I don’t know if I had been imagining an actual castle this whole time, but now that it’s in front of me, I’m taken aback. It’s a castle alright, built on a narrow peninsula of rock, a long iron road snaking along the crest of land connecting it. The castle is huge and foreboding, like something from a dark fairy tale, or a nightmare, black as obsidian, both gleaming and matte, depending on how you looked at it, as if the rocks were made of smoked crystal and iron. There are impossibly narrow towers with dagger-like turrets rising hundreds of feet above the ocean, the castle comprising of two similarly sized structures connected by walls and walkways. Everything is sharp and pointing, as if the castle is a weapon itself.

It’s a place firmly rooted in the past and the future, a castle of this world and the next. It doesn’t just sit on that rocky outcrop, it waits. Like a cat on its haunches, it’s watching. Alive. Biding time before it pounces on the prey.

The question is, who is the prey?

Is it me?

Or is it everything living?

“I’ll take your silence as being impressed,” Death says.

I’m not proud enough to pretend otherwise. I nod, unable to find the words as Sarvi swirls down in sweeping circles, narrowing in on one turret. The pointed roof rushes up at us at increasing speed and I close my eyes just as Sarvi brings us to a stop.

I open my eyes to find us on a large slab jutting out from the tower, like a balcony with no railing. The ocean is at least a hundred feet below.

“We’re home,” Death says, swinging his leg over Sarvi and then holding his hands out for me, as if he were some gallant knight helping a fair maiden. I stare down at his armored hands, then glance at his shadowed face and once again I see a flash of white. Like the whites of someone’s eyes. My mind puts together a ghoulish image of a bare skull with round eyeballs placed in the sockets.

The disgust must be showing on my face because he drops his hands and growls and yanks the chain. Before I can react, I’m being pulled off Sarvi, landing in a heap on the cold stone platform.

Pain shoots up through my hands and knees and I’m wondering if I have enough distance between us to do some damage. I figure I could go for it, drop kick him right off the side like I did to his daughter, and maybe the gravity of this world will help me like it did the last time, but the only thing that stops me is that I’m attached to Death. Where he goes, I go. He’ll survive the fall—you can’t kill a God, as far as I know—but I definitely won’t.

And now he’s staring down at me, the electricity in his unseen gaze felt but not seen. “I think I just saw my future in your eyes,” he says quietly. “And I saw your future too. Think before you act, little bird. You’re not ready for flight yet.”

He raises his hand, the chain wrapped around it, threatening me.