Prophecy of Gods and Crows

Book 1: Clan of Shadows

by C.D. Britt

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

Welcome to Ifreann...
... once known as Hell's Gate.

Bryndis Kenneally is an anomaly, which is saying something when you live in a place once called Hell.

Despite being born into a family of healers, she is unable to follow in their footsteps since disturbing visions overwhelm her with almost every human touch.

With few allies at her back, she keeps her head down… until a freak sandstorm brings more than she bargained for—a man of shadows who seeks retribution, a crow that follows her everywhere, and two strangers who appear inside the locked gates of Ifreann.

Two strangers with a message for Bryndis and her friends.

But will these strangers be her end? Or will they be her salvation?

Either way, she knows one thing is for certain.

She can no longer pretend to be a normal woman among a town looking for witches to burn.

Book one in the Clan of Shadows series, a dystopian paranormal fantasy series with elements of Celtic mythology.

TW: sexual content, religious trauma, religious cults, witch prosecution, domestic violence, abuse (past and present by family member), emotional abuse, scenes of war, and death.

 

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Release date: June 6, 2023

Publisher: Phoenyx Publishing

Print pages: 373

Content advisory: Trigger Warnings: · sexual content · religious trauma · religious cults · witch prosecution · domestic violence · child abuse · emotional abuse · scenes of war · and death

Sample

Chapter 1

Bryndis Kenneally had just slipped between the cool sheets of her bed as night relinquished its hold on the small desert town. The sun was just beginning its trek across the sky as it broke over the horizon, but the familiarity of another day ended when the warning horns rang instead of the typical church bells that announced the beginning of morning service.

The only reason for the city guards to sound the horns was one that made her heart pound as her skin grew clammy. Running to her window, she tripped over her bed sheet, catching herself on the sill and earning a splinter in her palm for it. Her concern was not about the small pain, but about what was happening on a much larger scale down on the street below. Something that rarely happened in their small town, and the last time it had, she’d lost her entire world.

The stifling heat radiating from her window did nothing to stop the chills moving along her skin as she took in what the horns meant.

The gate was opening.

Looking through the dirty window, sand having accumulated along the panes, she watched as the last true member of her family, her cousin Jace, stepped out of the church doors.

Just as her father had done ten years ago.

Her mind moving back and forth between two very different times in her life, she watched Jace, the town doctor, donning the same gear her father had to make the same trek.

The exact same type of mask her father had worn ten years ago on his final journey past the gate slipped over a different face. In a tribute to their god, the leather bull mask was adorned with brass horns that glinted in the sun and one glass eye blacked out in tribute.

That same mask now covered the face of the man who was the last of her family.

Her throat tightened as the same brown hood went up over his blond hair, taking all that identified Jace from the rest away as he became a symbol of the end of Bryn’s world.

Identical to what her father had once worn and died in.

The town scrios, the leader of the Church of Baleros, stepped up next to her cousin and nodded as he affixed his own mask, before pulling the hood of his brown cloak up to cover his salt-and-pepper hair.

The two vastly different-looking men were now indistinguishable from each other after having donned the religious regalia.

Uniformity was the town’s unofficial motto.

The town religion forbade anyone or anything to stand out, which was why their entire world was painted in the dullness of brown and gray. To be different in their community could very well get someone killed should the town decide a person was acting or standing out at the behest of a demon or witch.

Bryn pressed her fingertips against the glass, tracing the path her cousin walked as she prayed. Not to the god that the town would have her worship, but to some unknown higher power. There had to be something, some deity, who was more than what this town indoctrinated their youth to worship.

Someone who welcom

ed everyone, not just their chosen few.

She watched as the two men, her cousin and the scrios, turned as one and began to walk down the main road of the town. Saints’ Road.

A road she’d walked herself only hours ago.

A road that had a duality to it just as the town itself.

During the day, it was the road the pious walked upon.

A place where families walked the streets for twice-daily church services as their children danced around their parents’ legs. The livestock were moved by ranchers from one side of their town to the other all while shopkeepers pushed their wares.

People like Bryn were forgotten about during these times since there was no place for her and her ilk in the town of religious perfection.

At night was when the sinful, as named by the righteous, roamed Saints’ Road, and Bryn was one of them through no fault of her own.

It was her “fits” as her father referred to them that earned her the title of witch and made her life in Ifreann dangerous, the possibility of them choosing to burn her at the stake always there. Her safety precarious in such a mercurial town.

The day her father made a promise that she would take over his role as doctor when she hit maturity was the day her fate was cemented.

With the first sickness came the fact that it was all too obvious she wasn’t a born healer.

Not when she touched a patient and went into a seizure. At least that was what the town saw and what her father had led them to believe.

No, when she touched a sick patient, she saw and felt their death if their demise was imminent.

People began to grow curious as to why when she touched a person and went into a “fit,” the person soon died.

The whispers grew. Narrowed eyes started to follow her.

The town proclaimed

her a witch and that word alone was enough to have her burned at the stake. Her fear grew with every move the town made toward her in the following years.

People would leave bones out in front of the clinic. Smaller versions of the stakes the witches of old had been burned on would be erected near where a patient had died after one of her fits.

It wasn’t safe any longer to try to heal the people of the town, not that she was great at it otherwise, and all too soon it wasn’t even safe enough to walk among them.

So, Bryn took to walking Saints’ Road at night with the other sinners.

Looking to the gate as Jace neared it, memories of the sickness that had caused the gate to be permanently closed to the outside world flooded her thoughts.

Now, only traders were allowed to leave once they had been issued a royal permit by the governor of Ifreann. While they did still trade with the other towns under King Bres, lands known as the Drystan Territories, they were never allowed to venture outside of those areas to other countries not under the king’s rule.

Since they paid their tithe and worshipped the sanctioned religion, they were allowed to be mostly self-governing. Especially since King Bres was too focused on the countries that rebelled against his rule, sending out his bloody assassins, aptly known as wraiths because of how they became shadow and death while in combat.

The rebellious countries, as the church described them, were the reason for the sickness in the first place. Their sinful behavior created the need for unbelievers to be punished, and so their god created the disease. The wicked fell to it, and any devout who died must have been secretly wicked.

The god of Ifreann apparently did not take kindly to those who refused to follow Ifreann’s religion and king.

Though Ifreann had a dark history all its own.

Ifreann had been a red-light district long ago, back when it was called Hell’s Gate, and some of that darkness still clung to the buildings like shadows

. The town having been around since before the collapse of the world as their ancestors knew it.

Bryn found her own irony in the name since the church taking over had made most days in Ifreann a literal hell for her.

Back when it had been Hell’s Gate, people had freely roamed the streets day and night, finding pleasures of the mind and flesh.

The survivors of the Collapse rebuilt the town known for sin in the world left over from the destruction. They changed the names of the city and buildings, putting the church in the center of town next to where one of the most infamous brothels once stood, in an attempt to disabuse the citizens of its hellish past. The church worked hard to erase the sins of their ancestors.

Outside the gate of Ifreann wasn’t much better.

It had once been a place where trees and water had been at one time plentiful, before the desert took hold, choking out the natural life that had once thrived. Nestled between two large rock formations, Ifreann was a desert with only brown and oranges as far as the eye could see. Cacti being the only color to break up the monotony.

Mother Nature reclaimed the world the humans had used and abused. Just as the scientists of days long ago had warned she would.

That mixed with the lack of color made the town seem even more hellish than saintly with the stone walls surrounding them day and night, and gates that rarely opened.

The same rusted, worn gates made of brass and wood that stood tall and proud day after day in the hot desert sun at the front of Ifreann.

Once a welcome, and now a warning.

At some point after the Collapse, Ifreann had once been a shining beacon in the desert for those in need. A walled fortress for wanderers who were lost in endless sand, desperate for a place to rest where heat and predators would not ensure their deaths. Where desert sickness would not bring their minds close enough to the edge of madness, resulting in death all the same.

Those same walls that encased the small town had been built to keep the worst of the desert out, but now that included outsiders, travelers not born to the

 people of the town or brought in before they closed the gates for good. Bryn was lucky enough to have made it past the gates before the town’s paranoia had shut them off from the rest of the world.

Today they would open for something other than a small outfit of men leaving to trade since the horns never went off for such an event.

No, the horns were a warning for everyone to stay inside.

The sound meant that at some point overnight, the city guards had found people not of the town standing at the front of the gates.

Which meant her cousin was walking the same path to possible death that her father had taken years ago, and Bryn was trying to contain herself. Grabbing and folding her hands in her musty curtains, she bit her lip, a tear slipping from her eye as the last of her family who cared for her passed by her window.

The scrios and the doctor. Two men to both represent and govern the wellness of the town, spiritually and physically.

Jace, as the doctor, was needed to verify the people were not sick or, if they died, were not contagious past death. To make sure the horrible disease that had killed so many not that long ago would not make its way through their small population yet again.

Arioch, as the scrios of the Church of Baleros, was there to make sure the disease of sin was unable to make it past the gate.

Jace had stepped in as healer when she failed, and now she watched the consequences of her ineptitude. Her chest tightened with fear and guilt at what he took on for her sake.

I should be the one walking to my potential end, she thought.

Jace and Arioch made their way to the very gate no one was allowed to pass through without permission. The city guards took up formation behind the two figures, their faces covered only by cloth, with a uniform of jeans, flannel, and a wide-brimmed hat. They held their rifles at the ready as the gate slowly began to open. The wind and sand that had been beating against them all day and night found its way along Saints’ Road in a sigh of relief from nature itself.

Each of the men steadied themselves against the relentless wind, bending at the waist to find their center of gravity as the desert pushed its way past the now open gate.

Watching as the scrios covered his eye and bowed low to the ground to make the hor

ned sign of Balor in the sand, Bryn rolled her tear-filled eyes.

Why did they need to be sandblasted to do the prayer for a safe return to their fortress unharmed? When she had dared to ask once before, the answer had been that doing what was difficult showed one’s obedience.

Bryn figured it just made them idiots not to do it beforehand when the wind was far calmer and the poor city guards were not struggling to keep themselves steady.

The guards widened their stances, their heads down not in prayer but to protect their faces as the scrios stood. His prayer ended while the wind howled in anger around him.

It seemed Mother Nature did not care for his god and was making her displeasure known.

As they began walking as one, in uniform and posture, she watched her cousin walk through the gate with the city guards at his heels just as her father had.

A mirror image of the memory of her youth.

The gate, just as it had that same day, slowly closed behind them, cutting her off from her beloved cousin who was as close to her as a sibling. The only other family member was her aunt, who despised her on a good day. There was no love lost between the two of them.

Closing her eyes, Bryn let her tears break free and roll down her cheek as she promised herself her cousin would be fine.

Logically she understood that, but emotionally she did not. A war between the mind and heart.

A sensation rolled over her skin like silk, her eyes popping open and her hands moving to see what could have caused such a reaction. Nothing physically was there, but a relentless tug in the back of her head pulled at her.

Something deep inside her said that although he would come back unscathed,

thing huge would follow him home.

Bryn suddenly wished her visions could see more than death in a person’s immediate future.

Chapter 2

The desert heat did nothing to help with the smell of the dead.

Securing the bandanna over her mouth, Bryn tried not to gag at the stench of rotting and decomposing flesh, made all the worse by the sun.

While she was all too happy her cousin had made it back home in one piece several hours after he left through the gate, she wasn’t pleased when he told her it was time for her to get to work on her day off.

Death waited for no one, he’d said, exhaustion evident on his face as he turned to his own apartment to clean up and rest.

Only to show up minutes after she’d arrived at the pyres to help.

Some clean cuts on the bodies that had been outside the gate showed a fight—with knives, not bullets—which usually indicated that rovers, people who pirated in the desert looking to steal supplies from travelers, had done the damage. Sadly, with the state of decomposition, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. From the linen clothes and lack of jewels, they were most likely traders. One of the most dangerous jobs in the world now, as her uncle found out himself long before she came to Ifreann.

Used to handling one body by herself when they lost an elder or someone to a sickness, Bryn was overwhelmed by the ten bodies the city guards had moved in from outside of the gate. She supposed she should be happy that the guards carried them in at all and left them next to the pyres for her, but no one wanted predators hanging out on their doorstep, which a pile of bodies would certainly cause.

She dreaded transporting the bodies of the deceased . . . especially in such a decayed state. That would have been a long, smelly trek for her.

Bryn had done it before when a body hadn’t been found for a week. Unpleasant was beyond an understatement in describing that aspect of her vocation.

“How long was this one left in the sun?” she wondered aloud as she secured the dead to a board with rope.

“Not long,” Jace said from behind her, startling her from her musings.

Turning, she took in the bags under his eyes and pale skin from lack of sleep and nourishment. He’d been staying with an ill child night after night, and yet they had made him go out to check the bodies anyway.

It angered her he was in such a state, but she had only herself to blame for not being the healer Ifreann needed.

How her cousin was able to tell a sickness had killed them or something else, she had no idea. They had not been killed on the steps of the gate, but far earlier if their horrid state of decomposition could attest to anything. It always made it far too difficult to determine their death, yet Jace always managed to be right.

Bryn didn’t mind Jace’s help since she wouldn’t find herself in a “fit” in front of him like she had when working as a healer. A person who had already passed on didn’t trigger her episodes.

Her first fit came at the young age of four, when she saw her uncle’s death. Jace’s fath

er was a trader, and when she told her father that her uncle would die at the hands of rovers, he’d laughed it off as the musings of a young, creative mind.

When they had brought her uncle’s bullet-riddled body home, her father’s eyes had met her own, his full of fear and panic. Grabbing everything they owned, he moved them south, telling her that she was not to speak about what she saw. That her seizure had done some sort of damage to her developing brain and that he would find a way to fix it.

She was the sole reason her father had taken her from her birth home. Bryn figured that deep down he knew medicine wouldn’t fix his defective daughter. Perhaps religion could, and where was there a more religious place than Ifreann? A perfect place to exorcise demons.

Yet nothing had been fixed or cured by moving to Ifreann.

Now she was a failed healer with no aptitude for healing and a history full of unknowns, finding her calling working with the dead instead of the living.

It was, unfortunately, something that made her even more of a pariah since death was a taboo subject in the town. To speak of it, to even think of it, was to bring it upon your household. That was why they burned the dead since to have a cemetery was to invite death.

Bryn found peace in death because the dead never called her a witch, said a word against her, or whispered loud enough that it was obvious she was meant to hear. She felt comfortable among them as she prepared them to cross over into wherever one went when they died.

Something that in a town full of religious zealots made her little better than the imaginary demons that they prayed for protection from.

Witches.

Women born with magic and mayhem in their blood. Able to bring wrath and death down on the small town with their innate abilities.

While she held no true power, she knew where she fell on the town’s spectrum of good and evil.

Had her father’s closest friend not been Mr. Rafferty, the governor of their small tow

n, she was sure she’d be dead by now. Keeping to the streets at night, letting people forget about her, was all that kept his job safe since too much interaction with her could doom him as well.

If only she could leave these walls, but she knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t leave her cousin or her close friends since they were the only allies she had in life.

They were as much her family as Jace, but still, they didn’t know her secrets. No, all her secrets died with her father.

“Why are you here? This is my part of the job,” Bryn asked as she moved again to remain downwind of the smell as the wind changed directions. Even though the walls surrounding the town kept out most of the high winds and sand, it wasn’t foolproof. “He is past your expertise unless you are able to raise the dead. You did your job in making sure they weren’t diseased, now go get some rest.”

“I have not been summoned to any bedsides, so why not help?” Jace asked as he moved to assist in lifting one of the heavier male bodies from the ground and onto a board, grunting at the weight.

Snorting, Bryn turned to her cousin, his cheeks pink more from the lie he just told than the elements and exertion.

“Your mother is on a tear throughout the clinic, isn’t she?”

Sighing, he put his hands on his hips as he hung his head.

“It’s horrible. As if sin is some airborne disease, and she needs to rid the town of it. I was just stopping in to put away my bag; the moment she saw me, she lit sage and started praying . . . loudly. Obviously, the sin is all over my clothes and bag.” Lifting his head, he rolled his eyes as he reached for the cloth on the cart and used it to wipe his hands, blood and dirt staining it.

She tried to swallow the bile, making sure her own gloves were secured.

The sight of blood made her sick to her stomach, which was yet another mark against her as a potential healer. If a body came in from the desert having been feasted upon by scavengers, it was all she could do not to pass out working the pyres.

Her fear of blood was ammunition for her aunt to taunt her with, as if her aunt truly

 needed anything to assist in her cruelty.

After her father had died, leaving her at her aunt’s mercy, Aunt Mallory’s disinterest in Bryn had turned to loathing. Bryn learned quickly to make herself scarce as a form of self-preservation.

It was yet another of Bryn’s secrets that even Jace knew nothing about.

His mother was abusive emotionally and physically, and yet the woman was seen as one of the most pious in the community for her undying faith and loyalty when she was pure evil behind closed doors.

The worst part was there was never anywhere truly safe for Bryn to turn to. Maybe she had friends with some power around town, but her aunt was engaged to a man who was the second most powerful in their community through the church. His own position was right behind that of the scrios, and the only one higher was King Bres himself.

Everyone would believe her before they would Bryn, and if her aunt ever used that against her, proclaimed her a witch, her life was forfeit.

The sound of hoofbeats in the sand broke her thoughts, and she turned to see the town sheriff heading their way on his horse. His loyal hound, Finian, running alongside the equine, bouncing around dangerously close to the horse’s hooves.

Finian, the beast of a dog, was covered in black and gray brindle fur and almost as big as the horse itself, coming up to its shoulders.

Every human might have given a wide berth to Bryn, but Finian caught sight of her and barreled down, aiming his huge body in her direction.

“Brace yourself.” Jace laughed as the hound knocked her to the sand, the air leaving her lungs on impact as Finian covered the parts of her exposed face with slobber.

“He used to strike fear in the hearts of most men until you, Bryn,” she heard the sheriff grumble as he stayed his horse next to them, its hooves kicking up dust as it stomped in agitation at having to stop. She imagined the white horse running through pastures, free as the wi

nd, not caged in this dull, sandy tan town with barely any leg room.

The horse shook its head, eyes rolling toward the fire, and aggressively chomped at its bit as Justin, the sheriff and their friend growing up, patted its neck. His touch calmed the horse enough to where it settled its hooves on the ground, no longer kicking up dirt, but its eyes kept rolling.

“Your beast has been tamed, Justin,” Jace joked as Bryn rolled out from under Finian when he did his happy dog dance over her, barely missing a paw to the face. A sizable enough paw that should it manage to land on her nose could easily break it into pieces due to the one hundred and sixty pounds of dog behind it.

“It’s Sheriff when I am on duty, Jace, you know this.” Justin looked down at Bryn, his lips tilting into a slight smile at the sight of Bryn’s attempt to escape Finian’s adoration.

Justin was one of the few who didn’t act like she had the plague when he was near her, and while there were not a lot of people who looked fondly upon her, he did. It was a breath of fresh air to catch sight of him in a crowd or when he was patrolling at night alongside the city guards.

It also didn’t hurt the man had a smile that shone almost as bright as the sun, something Bryn would never admit out loud. That and she’d had the biggest crush on him growing up. Following her cousin and his friends around, she’d mooned over him for years until one of the other friends in their group decided she was his and not Justin’s.

Her crush over the young soon-to-be sheriff went down in flames when the governor of their little town’s rebellious son caught her in his sights. Declan Rafferty was not one to let his prey get away, and it didn’t hurt that Bryn was more than happy to be hunted and caught by the man.

Justin became a close friend instead of a love interest. A choice some days she wished she could go back in time and remedy.

“Founder’s Day dance is tonight, and I am making it an official mandate that you both attend,” Justin warned, cutting into her thoughts as he steadied his horse again.

Turning back to face him, Bryn narrowed her eyes at the sheriff as he gave her a smile t

hat was all mock innocence. Since she and Declan had broken up months ago, Justin seemed to have made it his life’s goal to get them back together.

Not knowing the why of the breakup gave the man hope his friends would remedy the relationship, but she wouldn’t tell anyone. It made both her and Declan look like fools. After four years together, he had kissed another woman. A girl who’d been one of Bryn’s biggest tormentors when she was young.

Ava Stevens, the baker’s daughter and pride of the town.

Bryn’s nemesis.

Embarrassment and heartbreak renewed in her soul as she tried to push the thought away again.

“Pretty sure you cannot mandate that, Sheriff,” Jace replied, grabbing the cart by its handles, and moving it parallel with one of the bodies. Only three more left and they could call it a day. ...