The God King (Book 1) (Heirs of the Fallen) Page 24

He strained against Varis, trying to hurl him to one side. Varis fought to keep hold, veins bulging in his neck and brow, the muscles in his arms standing out like cables.

  Varis suddenly drove Kian’s skull against the edge of the portal. The stench of his scorched hair and skin filled Kian’s nostrils. Blood, cool compared to the fiery heat roasting him alive, began to dribble down his neck. Varis heaved forward again and again, trying to smash Kian’s skull to a pulp.

  Without warning, Varis rammed his dagger into Kian’s middle and stepped back, his features alight with triumph.

  Gazing numbly at the hilt of the dagger protruding from his belly, Kian fell to his knees. A sharper pain swelled in his heart. All that he and his companions had struggled to achieve had been a waste. I’ve failed them … I’ve failed everyone.

  His eyes widened as a blue glow drifted from his wound and his hands, and then spread over every inch of his skin. Neither Varis nor Peropis seemed to notice the delicate aura.

  Kian grew weaker. In his heart, it felt good and right that he should cast aside the powers of dead gods. Such as that should never have fallen into the hands of men.

  With a sense of peaceful surrender alive in his mind, Kian jerked the dagger free of his bowels. Then, using the last of his fading strength, he forcefully cast aside the Powers of Creation, thrusting them into the world. They were not his to hold, and neither were they Varis’s.

  What had been visible only to him exploded within the Golden Hall. Varis stumbled, looking this way and that, as the sky-blue radiance enveloped him, grew brighter, then began to fade until it was no more. For the first time since Kian had watched the youth enter the temple, Varis looked as he had, a highborn man-child full of pride, ambition, and discontent.

  “What have you done?” Peropis demanded.

  Laughing weakly, Kian clenched a fist to his belly and sagged to his side. “I returned what was never mine to keep. Seems that I also cut your boy off a teat that was never his to suckle.”

  “How!” she raged.

  Kian shook his head. “If I knew that, I’d have done it sooner, and saved the world a lot of trouble. All you and that shitting little runt at your side have ever done is steal what was never yours to take. Seems to me that’s over.”

  “No,” Varis muttered, looking at his hands. “It’s gone. All of it.” Varis rounded on Peropis. “I demand that you give me your full blessing! No more lies, no trickery! Give me the gift you promised!”

  Peropis glowered. “I warned you once to never make demands of me. I give what I will when and of my choosing, and I take what I will when I desire.” Her black gaze rolled toward Kian. “I offer you this final chance. Do you accept … godhood?”

  Kian blinked slowly, floating between death and life. He was neither king nor god, and he had never wished to be either one. “I’m a mercenary,” he muttered. “That’s enough.”

  With a howl of rage, Varis stalked toward Peropis.

  “Fool,” she said quietly. “You are useless to me if you cannot hold the Powers of Creation.” One of her flailing limbs caught him about the neck and hurled him into the portal. A roaring pillar of flame burst across it surface, and a filament of silvery light streaked from his body into the hellish place beyond Aradan’s throne room. Of his flesh, one instant he was whole, the next he was a charred husk.

  Peropis faced Kian. “A thousand deaths are only a taste of what I will inflict upon your wretched soul.”

  “I don’t fear you,” Kian answered, wondering why she didn’t kill him, and wondering if he had released all the Powers of Creation after all.

  “We are not finished, you and I,” she warned. “A new age has dawned, an age of power, an age of darkness and light. You have not won. The Mahk’lar are freed, the Powers of Creation have spread all though this wretched world, and I am alive. I will find one worthy of my gift, one who will accept all I offer. For you, Kian Valara, I will torment you all of your days. When I’m finished with you, I will hound your line.”

  She waited, but he was beyond answers. With a curse, she threw herself into the portal. A low groan, just at the edge of hearing, rippled through the Golden Hall, and the rip between worlds vanished. All went deathly still, and Kian rested his head.

  Chapter 36

  Kian opened his eyes to find Ellonlef looking at him. Over her shoulder, Azuri and Hazad peered down, as well. He smiled, and they smiled back.

  “A dream?” he muttered, his tongue thick.

  “It’s no dream,” Ellonlef said. Her grin filled him with joy. “We are alive.”

  “How?”

  “You … you filled us with life. We were dead, gone from this world, and you pulled us back.”

  Is that what I did? A heady thought, but one he didn’t want to dwell on. “Where were you?” Kian mumbled.

  “Paradise,” his three companions answered in unison, their combined voices melodic.

  “Or at least someplace like it,” Ellonlef added. “A place of light and warmth and peace.”

  “You’ll have to tell me that story, but later,” Kian said, for now wanting to revel in the certainty that they were alive and well. I will spend the rest of my days with her, he thought then, knowing it for the absolute truth. Of course he’d have to convince Ellonlef first, but he was ready for a new sort of challenge. Something that had nothing to do with pain and blood and steel.

  For a time, they traded easy smiles and said nothing. No words were necessary. Finally, Kian urged them to help him up, but found that he did not need their aid. He felt as strong and hale as ever he had. Even the wound Varis had given him was healed.

  After getting to his feet, a dozen soldiers of the Crimson Scorpion Legion surged through the main entrance, weapons at the ready. They halted at the sight of Kian and his small company. All the men dripped sweat and blood, their faces were flushed with the heat of battle.

  After a moment of tense silence, an order went up from behind the soldiers, and they parted ranks. Prince Sharaal Kilvar strode purposefully into the Golden Hall.

  Sharaal was a large man for an Aradaner. From his shoulders hung a thick green cloak edged in clothe-of-gold, and under this he wore leathers trimmed in sable. He looked like a northern huntsman, save for his dark top-lock. Kian had no trouble seeing the likeness between him and his son. It troubled him no small measure to note that besides their physical similarities, they shared a common highborn arrogance.

  “If you are protecting the murdering usurper,” Sharaal said without preamble, his voice deep and full of menace, “the tale of your agonies will haunt the sleep of Ammathor's children for an age.”

  After facing Peropis, Kian almost laughed aloud. Instead, he said, “Your son is dead, and likely dancing to Peropis’s tune in the Thousand Hells.”

  “My sons died on the mountain,” Sharaal corrected icily. “Varis, the shame of my loins, died to me when he slaughtered my father in a bid to steal the Ivory Throne." He glanced around. “Where is the traitor’s corpse?”

  Kian nodded at the charred husk curled at the place where Peropis’s portal to the Thousand Hells had been.

  Sharaal gazed on the blackened shape, his hard features quizzical. “How did this happen?”

  “The Blood of Attandaeus,” Kian said promptly. “The Nectar of Judgment.”

  The words were out of his mouth before he had time to consider them, having come from the memory of seeing Hya sprinkling dark red crystals around the wicks of her candles. He was not sure why he did not simply tell what had happened, the whole of it, beginning with the lost temple in the marshes, to Varis freeing demons into the world, and lastly about the Powers of Creation his son had stolen for himself. All he knew was that the lie was out, and that he felt disinclined to reveal the truth to this man. Such instincts had saved his skin before, and he relied on them now.

  “By blood or by water, by oil or by wine,” Kian explained further, “all liquids set the substance alight. In quantity, it burns through flesh or iron, and nothing wi
ll smother the flames before it is spent.”

  Sharaal considered this. “Such must have been the way of my father’s murder,” he said quietly. Then, unexpectedly, he burst out laughing. “To hear it told, the usurper used some manner of witchcraft. There was even rumor that he had raised an army in the west! Fools will believe anything,” he added, suggesting he had never believed anything of the sort. He turned a shrewd eye on Kian. “Tell me, Izutarian, how you came to be here, and why?”

  Kian doled out a measure of truth generously mingled with deceit. “Prince Varis employed me and my company to take him west, across the Kaliayth. Apparently the youth had read something about a secret substance—the Nectar of Judgment, as it happens—that could change the face of the world. Well, he found it. I only regret that his intentions were dishonorable.”

  Sharaal nodded. “Ever was Varis studious,” he said, apparently forgetting for the moment that he had disowned the shame of his loins. “Where his brothers found joy in the hunt and pleasuring themselves with maidens, Varis spent his days deep in the Hall of Wisdom, reading, always reading. Little did any of us know he was plotting evil, as well.” His eyes grew hard again. “Still, that does not tell me why you are here.”

  “After the prince slaughtered most of my company,” Kian said simply, “I followed him here, hoping to give warning to the Ivory Throne of his intentions, which he boasted of after attacking my men. As you well know, I was too late in bringing my warning. In the end, I faced Varis here. And here, his weapon turned on him.”

  Sharaal considered that for a time. “As a rule, I should order your execution for threatening a member of my House ... but, as I have said, my son died to me in his betrayal. That he perished by his own traitorous hand further absolves you of any guilt, and proves that the gods, though they hang scorched in the heavens, still mind the affairs of men.”

  No one responded to this. Most studied their feet.

  Of a sudden, Sharaal’s features took on a greedy aspect. “Of this substance, Izutarian, this Nectar of Judgment, I do not suppose there is any left or, perhaps, the means to make it?”

  Kian’s mind swam backward, recalling Hya’s words, “... imagine if you will, an ambitious and cruel man gaining this knowledge and using it for war. There would be no stopping him. ‘Tis better the secret of its making dies with me, than to sell it and swim in gold tainted by the blood of innocents—or ashes, as it were.”

  While Kian had never doubted Hya’s wisdom, he had not expected so soon to come across another man as ambitious as Varis. As for Sharaal’s possible cruelty, he could only assume that the potential was there, until he knew otherwise. Either way, to reveal where the substance had really come from would destroy his story and jeopardize Hya.

  Still looking at Sharaal, he also considered Peropis’s words to him. “A new age has dawned, an age of power, an age of darkness and light.” A small, quiet voice in the deepest reaches of his mind warned that that was no idle threat or boast.

  Kian held his hands apart and shrugged. “Alas, I’ve no idea where Varis gained that dreadful substance, nor the means to create it. I was but a humble servant in his employ, and not given to questioning His Highness.”

  Sharaal gusted a weary breath. “It is of no matter,” he said in a regretful tone that suggested otherwise, and turned on his heel. With all the regality of one bred to rule, he climbed the dais and sat upon the Ivory Throne, not reverently, as might have been expected, but as one who has long since grown impatient for the day of his rule to begin.

  The soldiers of the Crimson Scorpion Legion bent their knees and bowed their heads. Kian and the others were slower to show honor, but a sense of self-preservation commanded them to kneel, as well.

  “Rise and receive your just rewards, Izutarian,” King Sharaal intoned, sounding bored. That he had freed his city of his disloyal son’s rule, or that his father was dead, or that Ammathor was still besieged by despair and lawlessness, seemed to have no place in his heart.

  Kian rose and stood straight and tall, unsure what Aradan’s newest king might offer.

  Sharaal held his fingers near his face, idly studying the nails. “Rewards for loyalty to the Crown often involve titles and holdings. But the world has changed, grown darker and, of course, you are a northern barbarian. However, gold is desirable to both highborn and to rabble, and so you will have it in good measure. Enough, I dare say, to buy a kingdom of your own in Izutar.”

  Kian bowed his head in acceptance, noting that the suggestion of buying a kingdom sounded more like a command that he leave Aradan with all haste. That, he concluded, was fine by him. His opinion of the kingdom had not grown higher over the last grueling season.

  Sharaal looked up from his fingernails. “You may enjoy the King’s Palace this night, and refit on the morrow. Your immediate needs will, of course, be seen too. After that, I expect you and your companions to depart.”

  With that, the King of Aradan waved the small company out of his presence.

  All too happy to oblige, Kian gathered his companions and departed. He fully intended to flee Ammathor sooner rather than later, with or without the king’s promises.

  His intentions proved futile.

  Epilogue

  The snowstorm that heralded King Sharaal’s abrupt rise to the Ivory Throne and the death of his son became known as the White Death—a term previously used only by northerners of Izutar and Falseth.

  The deadly blizzard raged for ten days. Snow piled high throughout Ammathor, burying an already suffering city. During that bleak time, soldiers scoured both Ammathor and the Chalice in hopes of finding food, warm clothing, and anything that might burn. People by the hundreds froze by day and more during the dark watches of long brutal nights, never knowing the gradual and unexpected warmth in their limbs, or the resting peacefulness that closed their eyes, was death stealing near.

  During the first days of the new king’s rule, even as the storm raged, Sharaal gladly earned a title never before given a Kilvar sovereign. The Cruel. After he ordered the limbs torn from those he deemed traitors, he had their wounds cauterized, and commanded them thrown into the River Malistor. Thousands died. Aradaner soldiers and various highborn, men and women who had stood with Varis, whether against their will or not. That was the gentlest story Kian had heard.

  Those tales would surely survive beyond the king’s death, but they were not the darkest tales men would tell, far from it, only the most palatable....

  “When do you think it will end?” Ellonlef asked, her dark eyes turned up to a sky so void of color that even the falling snowflakes looked like dark, swirling spots.

  They had departed the palace two days before, but were only now just reaching the frozen banks of the River Malistor, what usually amounted to an afternoon ride. Thankfully, the snow was less deep down from the Pass of Trebuldar, but still deeper than any snow that had ever fallen at the edge of the Kaliayth Desert.

  All around, a flat blanket of white covered the land. To the south and west, the depthless sky brooded, growing darker by the hour. Another storm was coming.

  Warily, Kian had watched it building throughout the day. They would need to seek shelter soon. The road north would be long and hazardous, but none of his company wanted to stay in Aradan, even had King Sharaal allowed it.

  As it was, the king ordered all peoples not of Aradaner birth to depart his realm before springtime, or choose between the headsman’s ax or a life in chains. In the face of catastrophe, Sharaal had given his subjects foreign enemies to focus on and blame for their woes. Doubtless, when those enemies were gone, King Sharaal the Cruel would find other enemies for his people.

  “Are you listening to me?” Ellonlef asked, peering at him from under her hood.

  He blinked at her. “Sorry, I was busy freezing.”

  “We all are,” she laughed. “I asked when it would end. Winter, I mean.” Small cold flakes lighted on her brow and nose, and melted slowly.

  When will it end? Kian tried t
o mull Ellonlef’s question, but found it difficult. He adjusted the fur-lined woolen clothes he and the others wore, all gifts from Hya, who it turned out had been stockpiling various goods for many years. The old woman had given away most everything to those in need in the Chalice, and from the rest she had earned a ransom by selling her hoard to King Sharaal. After that, she left for the eastern border of Aradan, to the shores that people had already begun calling the Lost Coast. Kian and the others had tried to talk her out of such a treacherous journey, but she would have none of it.

  “There will be those in need,” she had said, “perhaps even a few Sisters of Najihar. At the least, people will need a healer.” To Ellonlef, she had explained, “If Pa’amadin favors me, I will begin rebuilding our order. As well, you should embark on such an endeavor to the north. We have had few Sisters venture to Izutar.”

  The old woman had departed them in the company of O’naal, of all people, and a few of his followers. After seeing the manner of King Sharaal’s rule, O’naal had wisely decided he should earn his way in friendlier realms.

  Hya never mentioned the Powers of Creation she had seen Ellonlef use to heal Kian, but he had noticed a curious gleam in her rheumy eyes every time she looked at either of them. Of course, he knew what she suspected was in fact truth. After he had saved Ellonlef, he had given her some measure of the Powers of Creation. In return, she had given those powers back after taking him from the Pit. Then, when he had tired to rid himself of those powers in the Golden Hall, his willing sacrifice had stripped Varis of his stolen powers, and filled Kian’s dead friends with life. Now, as Hya seemed to suspect, Kian and his companions all carried some portion of those powers inside themselves.

  “A new age has dawned,” Peropis had said, and he didn’t think that was a lie. Kian suspected that many in the world had been washed in the Powers of Creation. What would come of that was anyone’s guess, but Kian felt sure that some would wield their newfound powers for good, others for evil, and in time a new order would be born from the ashes of the old world.