The Realms of the Gods (The Immortals Book 4) by Tamora Pierce

Author:Tamora Pierce [Pierce, Tamora]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2009-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Later in their travels that day, as they ate lunch by a stream, the ground shook. Two sounds tore through the air. The first, Daine and Numair agreed later, was that of an iron door being slammed. The other, hard on the heels of the first, was undeniably that of a drawbridge being slowly, ponderously lowered.

Daine and Numair covered their ears, to no effect. When the booming echoes faded, she checked Leaf and Jelly. Both were shrinking, shivering blobs.

“Oh, my goodness,” Broad Foot remarked sadly. “So it’s come to that.”

“Come to what?” Daine asked, rubbing her abused ears.

“Follow me.” Broad Foot waddled to the stream, Daine, Numair, and the darkings right behind him. Leaning over the water, he breathed on it. An image—or rather, three images—grew on the surface.

The first, before Numair, showed the walls and ramparts of Port Legann from high overhead. A colossal spotted hyena gnawed on a tower, then on a siege engine outside the walls. Under her, around her, even through her, humans surged in battle. Was the hyena a ghost? Raising a muzzle that dripped blood, she gave the stuttering, eerie cry that made her kind so feared. Pricking cat ears forward, Daine also heard a distant, dim roar: human voices shouting and the clang of swords, shields, and armor.

In the water before the duckmole, Daine saw wheat fields. Cattle and sheep grazed nearby, herded by children and dogs. Over everything, in a form as sheer as the hyena’s, slunk a yellow, mangy, cur dog. He was little more than a skin-covered skeleton, as unhealthy an animal as Daine had ever seen. He took bites from everything: grapes, wheat, apples, herd animals. As he bit, things began to shrivel.

Daine looked at the water image in front of her, and shivered. It showed Corus, the Tortallan capital, with its crowds, rich marketplaces, and temples. A giant, ghostly rat crept through the streets, thrusting his nose into windows and doorways. He licked a man who was making a speech in front of the stocks: The man began to cough. A woman brought him a dipper of water; he could barely drink it. Two men helped him to sit. The ghosts of tiny rats flowed from his mouth, landing on those who had gathered around him.

“Slaughter has been out since May,” Broad Foot said. “Malady, though, and Starvation—what you heard were the gates to their dwellings being opened.”

“The Three Sorrows,” whispered Numair, making the Sign against evil on his chest.

Daine copied him in the Sign; her skin prickled. Leaf curled around her neck to see. Now it rubbed its tiny head, with its green hat, against her cheek. Jelly had vanished into Daine’s pocket when the three images had appeared in the water.

“They are the siblings of the gods,” the duckmole explained. “Their appearance causes great changes, many for the good—”

“I doubt the ones they kill think so,” murmured Daine. She looked at the duckmole, thinking hard. It was one thing to ask the badger for help, another to ask the duckmole.

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