Kian stared open-mouthed at the portal, with its terrible landscape of heat-blasted rock and roiling fires. His enemy, that he had by turns fled and pursued, even as the world ripped itself apart, was dead.
“Fool,” Peropis said again, bitterly. Her features, all tentacles and swollen bulges of dark slick flesh, writhed with a malice so pure Kian feared that looking upon her visage would kill him, yet he could not turn away.
“I give you this last chance, Kian Valara, do you accept what I offer-godhood?”
“Never!” Kian snarled with the last of his strength. “Never would I take anything from your hand. I would rather die a thousand deaths.”
“So be it,” she said. “So be it. A thousand deaths are only a taste of what I will inflict upon your wretched soul.”
“I do not fear you,” Kian answered, though he did.
Something large and unseen struck him, like a hand created of air, and knocked him rolling across the floor. “You are nothing,” Peropis croaked. “Your thoughts and hopes are as a words upon a page to me.” Each step she took on her writhing appendages seemed to fall heavier than the last.
Your thoughts and hopes…. Despite his wounds, Kian made it to his hands and knees, even as another unseen blow threw him over the palace floor. He slapped against the tiles with a pained grunt. Slowly, for bones beyond count felt cracked or broken, he stood again. Groaning, he began limping toward Peropis, dripping blood from more places than he could count, his middle burning where Varis’s dagger had parted his insides, every footfall sending bolts of blinding agony through his limbs. But he did not fear, not now. With a dreamlike perception, he knew that the power of the gods was still flowing within him, building, seeking escape from his mortal flesh. What he thought he had discarded, was in truth a part of him, and ever would be.
He kept moving, even as the sharpness of his pains lessened. He touched the spot low on his belly where Varis had stabbed him and found only a tear in his tunic and drying blood. There was no wound. The observation, the meaning of it, flooded his mind with possibilities, ideas, strength. In moments, all that had been wrong with him was healed. On the heels of that revelation came another niggling idea. It flashed through his mind, even as he saw a pulsing blue aura spread out from his flesh. That radiance seemed to have a will of its own, and he cautiously added his own deepest desires to it.
Though she had no aspect that could be called human, Kian saw a flicker of doubt, perhaps even fear, spread across Peropis’s vile features. Unable to resist, and not wanting to besides, Kian flung his arms wide and loosed the tumultuous flood of energy within him, directing it deadly work with his mind. In an instant, like a flash of lightning with a deep clap of thunder, the radiant aura roared outward from his skin, from his bones, and from deeper still, from his very soul.
Peropis’s terrorized shriek battered against Kian, and the floor suddenly tilted as if he were drunk. Despite this, he stood firm as the throne room began rolling like sea swells. Cracks swarmed across the marble floor, crept up the magnificent walls. Peropis, Eater of the Damned, Queen of Demons and Ruler of Geh’shinnom’atar, fell into a crouch.
“So it begins,” she hissed, her thrashing shape seeming to shrink in on itself, growing darker and smoother, more human. “We are not finished, you and I,” she warned. “A new age has dawned, an age of power, of darkness and light. You have not won, Kian Valara. You have but glimpsed the opening door that has released the mahk’lar, and tasted powers never meant for mortal flesh.”
Before he could respond, she threw herself into the portal. A low, resonant groan, just on the edge of hearing, rippled through the Golden Hall as the aberrant rip between worlds vanished. All went deathly still, the blue aura vanished, the world ceased shaking, and Kian felt himself falling.
Chapter 54
Kian opened his eyes to find Ellonlef looking at him with concern. Over her shoulders, Azuri and Hazad peered down, as well. “A dream,” he muttered, his tongue thick.
“It is no dream,” she said. Her grin, hesitant yet glorious, filled him with joy. “We are alive.”
“How?”
“You did it,” she answered, a touch of wonder in her voice. “You filled us with life. We were dead, gone from this world, and you pulled us back.”
“Gone,” Kian mumbled, remembering with renewed horror the manner of their deaths. Despite himself, he asked the only question he could. “Where were you?”
“Paradise,” his three companions answered in unison, their combined voices melodic with a reverence that he could not fathom.
“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 his friends and Ellonlef were alive and well and with him. I will spend the rest of my days with her, he thought, knowing it for the absolute truth.
For a time they all basked in the glow of victory and friendship, trading smiles and saying 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 as hale as ever he had.
When he stood among them, he took in his surroundings. The throne room was a shambles, barely recognizable as the near legendary Golden Hall, but he did not have long to consider this before the great doors leading into the great hall burst open. A dozen soldiers of the Crimson Scorpion legion surged through the doorway, weapons held at the ready. They halted abruptly in the face of meeting only Kian’s small company, who stood their ground with a calm, peaceful self-assurance. 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 hall. Sharaal was a large man for an Aradaner, and Kian had no trouble seeing the likeness between him and his dead son. It troubled him no small measure to note that besides their physical similarities, they shared a common highborn arrogance in the set of their features. That aspect strongly suggested that had Varis thought to rise above himself under ordinary circumstances, Sharaal would have dealt with him just as harshly as he had intended to do now.
“If you are protecting the murdering usurper,” Sharaal said without preamble, his voice calm, 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 at that pathetic threat. Instead, he studied the man before him. From Sharaal’s shoulders hung a thick, green woolen cloak edged in clothe-of-gold, and from head-to-foot he wore leathers trimmed in sable. He looked like a northern huntsman. His dark top-lock was shot through with the first streaks of iron gray, and was held in place by a leather thong.
“Your son is dead,” Kian said flatly, “and likely dancing to the tune of Peropis herself.” His companions shifted at this, but none betrayed that they knew Kian’s words to be as true as any ever spoken.
“My sons died on the mountain,” Sharaal corrected icily. “Varis, the shame of my loins, died to me when he slaughtered my father, thinking to raise himself to the Ivory Throne. Where is the traitor’s corpse?”
Kian nodded to the charred husk curled amid a rectangle of ashes where the table had stood, just at the place where Peropis’s portal to the Thousand Hells had been.
Sharaal gazed on the blackened shape and the heaped ash, 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 of demons into the world, and lastly about the powers of creation his son had stolen for hi
mself. 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 will smother the flames before the substance 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 otherworldly 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?”
Still untrusting of this new king, Kian doled out a measure of truth generously mingled with deceit. “It was I and my company whom Varis employed to take him west, across the Kaliayth. Apparently the youth had read something,” he said vaguely, “about a secret substance that could change the face of the world. As it happens, he found it on that journey. I only regret that his intentions were dishonorable.”
Sharaal nodded. “Ever was Varis studious,” he said, forgetting for the moment that he had disowned his treacherous son. “Where his brothers found pleasures in the hunt and pleasuring themselves with maidens, Varis spent his day 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 … yet, 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, and 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. Besides that, his false tale needed to become accepted truth.
Still looking on Sharaal, he also considered Peropis’s words to him. “A new age has dawned, an age of power, of darkness and light,” she had warned. A small, quiet voice in the deepest reaches of his mind warned that a darkness unlike mankind had ever known was falling, and all that had happened since Varis stole the powers of deceased gods and released the inhabitants of the Thousand Hells was but the beginning of an age of trouble….
Kian held his hands apart and shrugged. “Alas, I have 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 swept over them, and they knelt as well.
“Rise and receive your just rewards, Izutarian,” 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 the 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 proved Kian’s assumption correct when he looked up from his fingernails. “You may enjoy the 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 the Golden Hall. He fully intended to depart 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 hitherto used only by northerners of Izutar and Falseth, and perhaps by the Whitehold savages, in their guttural tongue. 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 to death by day, and more during the dark watches of long brutal nights, never knowing the gradual and unexpected warmth in their limbs, 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 king-the Cruel-after he gave a command of such brutality that men would whisper of it around Aradaner hearth fires for years to come. Those tales would survive far beyond the king’s death, after bitter winters became commonplace to Aradaners, whose fading memories of southern warmth eventually became legend. Yet, the grim stories of Sharaal the Cruel 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 chain
s. In the face of catastrophe, he had given his subjects enemies upon which to focus and blame, and when those enemies were gone, he would find others.
“Winter, I mean,” Ellonlef added, a thick woolen scarf muffling her voice. Small cold flakes lighted on her brow and nose, and melted slowly.
When will it end? Kian tried to mull Ellonlef’s question, but found it difficult. Though he had been absent from his homelands many years, he was a child of the north, and he had readily adopted the garb of his homelands. Like the rest of his companions, he wore many layers of clothing: thick leather leggings lined with soft wool, a similar tunic with two more underneath, a thick fur-and-wool cloak with a deep fur-lined hood, and sturdy boots, stockings, and gloves-all gifts from Hya’s ample stockpile of once nearly useless items.
She had given away much to those in need in the Chalice, and from the rest she had earned a king’s ransom by selling her stockpile to, naturally, King Sharaal. After that, she left for the eastern border of Aradan, to the shores that people had already named the Lost Coast. Recalling the story of Rida’s fate, of the burning mountain that had fallen out of the sky to smash into those eastern shores, shattering the lands, and allowing the flow of molten rock to flow over shore and sea, 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 never had an Izutarian sister, and I should hope to see one before my spirit leaves this flesh.”
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 wisely decided he should earn his way in friendlier realms. Kian guessed that too few would follow O’naal’s path, to their grief.
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