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

by James A. West

  Her brush with death would stay with her, as would the destruction of the moons, the death of the Three. Can gods die? It was a question she had never entertained, and did not want to right now.

  She turned her thoughts to helping Lord Marshal Otaker and the people of Krevar. As for the other consideration, maybe when the skies had cleared of the persistent dust, she would look up and see that the Three were as they always had been, instead of a burning mass of fire and ash.

  Nothing will ever be as it was, a cruel voice spoke inside her. The thought had been prevalent since the world had ceased shaking. Tremors still came, frightening even the hardened souls of Fortress Krevar to shouts of fear. Another thought followed, and was just as true. All is changed, all is lost.

  Ellonlef shook that away and swung her legs out over the edge of the bed, scolding herself for behaving like a terrified child. Tragedy had come, but she was alive, as were so many others. While the faces of the Three had been destroyed, she still had purpose. The gods would take care of themselves.

  She poured water into a washbasin, stripped off her sweaty nightclothes, and set to gently rubbing a damp washcloth over her scraped and bruised skin. She had almost finished when her door banged open. Ellonlef yelped and jerked a large towel off a nearby rack to cover herself, then turned a glare on the intruder.

  Lord Marshal Otaker stood gaping at her as if he had never seen a naked woman before, which would be difficult to believe, considering that his wife of over two decades had given him two sons and three daughters.

  “Ellonlef—ah—Sister Ellonlef, I never—” he cut off, blinked like a sand owl, and spun on his heel and showed her his back. He wore his customary closefitting robe of snowy linen, and over this a steel breastplate embossed with the Silver Fist of House Racote. Like all Aradaners, his skin was dark as an old root, seemingly made darker by an iron gray top-lock that fell from the back of his clean-shaven scalp. Usually he had a stately demeanor, but this day he seemed out-of-sorts and one step from total exhaustion. For him and the rest of the people of Krevar, a long day had been followed by a longer night since the massive quake had leveled half the city.

  “You never what?” Ellonlef snapped, more out of embarrassment than anger. She tossed the towel away and hastily drew on a long shift.

  He began muttering some garbled response. Likely, he was more humiliated than she was.

  “Lord Marshal,” she interrupted. “Tell me what’s so urgent that you barged into my chambers without knocking.”

  “Are you...?” he started to look over his shoulder, then jerked his head back to the front.

  She bit back a sharp comment. “Yes, I am covered. Be at peace.”

  Otaker turned cautiously, but would not look her in the eye. He stared somewhere just past her ear. “I came because, well—the short of it is, you are needed. Last night my men dug out scores more injured. Most can be seen to by their families or Magus Uzzret, but others need your touch, not that crusty old vulture’s.”

  “Give me a moment,” Ellonlef said.

  Otaker nodded his way out the door.

  Ellonlef quickly dressed in her order’s white robes, wishing they were black. After another day of applying poultices, compresses, and bandages to battered victims, she would look nearly as bad as them before it was all over.

  She joined Otaker, and they made their way through the keep’s dim corridors. More than once they had to step over a broad crack in the floor, or duck under support timbers jammed between floor and ceiling to prevent a collapse. Despite the damages, most of the building seemed intact. Doubtless it would have to be rebuilt, but for now it would serve, as it had for generations. The same could not be said for the rest of Krevar.

  After the first quake had opened up the crevasse that crushed the northern wall and the Sister’s Tower, more tremors had flattened half the town and most of Krevar’s outer walls.

  While Otaker’s concern for his fortress was understandable—it had taken four generations of House Racote to construct the defenses—Ellonlef was more worried about the number of shattered families. Few if any had escaped untouched. Even Otaker had tasted despair when his eldest son had been pulled from a heap of rubble. Ellonlef had treated the boy and knew he would live, but he would never heal completely.

  Outside, the day was as hot as ever on the Kaliayth, but the lingering pall of dust made the day oppressive. They picked their way to the market square, passing workers set to clearing the roads and digging out the dead and wounded.

  Before they were in sight of the open square, the smell hit them, a mingling of wood smoke, sweat, and blood. If not for that last, it might have seemed like any other day. A dull racket met their ears, that of bustling midwives, able mothers, and any soldier who had fought in past battles. Ellonlef had her skill as a healer, but it was those folk who were making a difference. Without them, many more would have died by now.

  Ellonlef prepared for the coming rigors. Men and woman and children would die this day, while others would lose mangled limbs to sharp blades. Of all the things Ellonlef had been trained to do, healing was the most trying for her. She was adequate, but seeing the look in a once strong man’s eyes when he learned that some part of him would be lost forever, or telling a women that her child would never wake up, flogged her spirit.

  As Ellonlef and Otaker were two of the most recognizable people in Krevar, Magus Uzzret had no trouble spotting them approaching the tent-filled market. He wore deep blue robes and a woven silver belt common to the Magi Order. His head was bald as an egg, but he sported a small white chin beard.

  As they drew near, he looked askance at Ellonlef. After nearly a decade, he still only trusted her and her order roughly half as much as she trusted him and his. From the beginning, the Magi Order had taken offense at the Ivory Throne using the Sisters of Najihar as spies or, for that matter, relying on them at all.

  “Lord Marshal. Sister Ellonlef,” Uzzret said, inclining his head to each. “The day has already grown too short for the work that lies ahead.”

  He led Ellonlef and Otaker to a tent marked out by the most moaning and weeping. Without a word more, he left them to see to another errand.

  “If you need anything,” Otaker said, “or if Uzzret makes a nuisance of himself, send a runner to me.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and turned away.

  After three steps, he turned and said, “Forgive me for this morning. I should have asked permission to enter your quarters. I forgot myself.”

  “It is understandable and forgiven,” Ellonlef said, already turning her mind to what needed to be done.

  “I hope one day soon you will seek out a good man and husband.”

  Ellonlef blinked at him. “Why would you say that?”

  Otaker gave her a wan smile. “Because you are a beautiful and capable woman. I would hate for you to grow old without the pleasure of having a special man at your beck and call.”

  Ellonlef burst out laughing. “I’ll have to ask Lady Danara if she feels the same as you do.”

  Otaker merely shrugged. “She does. My wife noticed long before I did. But if not for this morning, I would have no idea just how—” he cut off, spun on his heel, and left her there. The first soldier Otaker saw, he began bawling orders, sending the poor man running for his life.

  She allowed herself a moment of secret pleasure at his awkward compliment, then dismissed the entire conversation. She pushed up the sleeves of her robes, tied back her waves dark hair, and set to work.

  Straight away, she saw to at least a dozen people cradling broken limbs. She called for a runner to replenish her dwindling supply of splints, strong wine, and swatarin, a potent herb used to induce deep sleep—or, if you were one of the Madi'yin, the begging brothers, to bring on visions.

  All became a blur of setting bones, cauterizing and bandaging gashes, pouring boiled wine into wounds oozing corruption, and removing those limbs beyond help. While each procedure seemed to take long slow hours, the day fled faster th
an she would have thought possible.

  The wounded kept coming. She stopped counting after she had helped two dozen. As dusk fell, the numbers began to dwindle, but were still steady. An hour before midnight, they ceased coming at all. By then, Ellonlef’s robes were smeared with blood and dust, and she was weary to the bone, but she had a final task ahead of her.

  After collecting a firemoss lamp to light her path, she strode from the market square. The water-soaked firemoss, stuffed in the glass sphere of the lamp, gave off a comforting amber glow, but nothing looked as it had, and she ended up backtracking several times.

  When Ellonlef finally came to the scatter of rubble where the Sister’s Tower had toppled, she gazed about, wondering how she had managed to escape alive. The remains of the tower lay before her like the carcass of a giant whale.

  Moving to one side, she scanned around, wondering where to begin her hunt. Searching by day would have served better, but she knew weeks might pass before she had any hours of daylight to call her own.

  She walked back and forth, holding the lamp high by its woven hemp handle. Soon she found the crushed wicker chair she had been sitting in before the first earthquake had shaken the tower. But she was not interested in finding chairs.

  An hour had passed without any luck, when a man cleared his throat. She turned to see Magus Uzzret regarding her.

  “Looking for this?” he asked, holding up her tattered journal.

  Ellonlef scrambled down off the debris. “Yes,” she answered guardedly. She had never written anything damning in the book, but an uninformed reader might come to a very different conclusion upon skimming her honest assessments of the people she lived amongst.

  Uzzret handed it over, then looked eastward. “Nothing will ever be the same,” he muttered, voicing her earlier thoughts.

  “No, it will not,” Ellonlef agreed. She gazed at the journal’s tattered leather cover, and guessed Uzzret had probably read all she had written. If those words troubled him, he gave no sign.

  “As you know, the Magi Order does not hold with the existence of gods,” he said. “Yet we recognize that others do. The destruction of the Three is sure to cause much anguish.”

  Ellonlef looked up. “The faces of the Three may be destroyed,” she said, “but that does not mean the spirits of Three are dead. As well, the Creator of All, Pa'amadin, will heal the lands and the hearts of men.”

  “Your blind faith is astonishing,” Uzzret mused, stroking his small white beard, his dark eyes patronizing. “I would expect more from you Sisters.”

  Ellonlef imagined yanking out that ridiculous tuft of whiskers by the roots. “It is you who are wrong, Magus.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” he countered smoothly. “Maybe, as you say, your Silent God, Pa’amadin—a god of notable indifference, in deed and name—will come and rescue the world.” He peered around in the darkness behind Ellonlef's lamp. “Best I can see, it would appear that, as usual, he has abandoned the world. How can you put your faith in a being who readily hides his face from his beloved?”

  “Perhaps,” she said tiredly, “we can speak of this later.” There was simply no reason to waste her breath trying to convince him of the ultimate goodness of Pa’amadin, or that of any of the gods. They could argue back and forth endlessly, and never reach an agreement.

  Uzzret gave her a self-satisfied smirk, obviously feeling he had won some battle, and left her alone.

  Ellonlef sat down on a block of sandstone. She stayed there until the ruined face of Hiphkos rose over the eastern horizon. Seeing what was left of the Goddess of Wisdom, Ellonlef wished she had not remained out of doors. Instead of a cool, comforting blue, Hiphkos’s light shone upon the world through a face of boiling fire and ash. Of Memokk and Attandaeus, they might never have existed. In their place was the odd glittering band spread like a crown around the ruin of Hiphkos.

  “All is changed,” Ellonlef said quietly.

  As if to mark the moment, a fiery cascade of falling stars slashed the night. The tears of Pa’amadin, Ellonlef thought, wondering if the god she held in the highest esteem actually wept, or was merely sending the signs of some greater destruction yet to come.

  Chapter 8

  After convincing the Asra a’Shah guards standing watch that he was not something they needed to poke their arrows into, Kian trudged into camp escorted by Ishin, the leader of the Geldainian mercenaries. For a moment he doubted what his eyes showed him. Men, horses, food cooking in a black iron pot over a fire. Simple things, but things he had thought he would never see again.

  “You look terrible,” Hazad said.

  “What, no welcome kiss?” Kian asked with a weary grin. There had been times on his long march when he felt he was the only living man striding the broken face of the world, the only man to watch as burning stars streaked across the sky in such numbers as to turn it a lurid orange.

  Hazad sat Kian down on a rock near the campfire. Dense smoke rose above the flames, burning the eyes but keeping the swarms of stinging insects at bay. Azuri shoved a plump waterskin into Kian’s hand.

  “It’s—” Azuri began, as Kian eagerly sought to quench his thirst. Instead of water, liquid fire filled his throat. "—jagdah,” Azuri finished.

  “Damn me!” Kian rasped, coughing. He made to hurl the spirits away, but Hazad caught the skin with a sour expression.

  “Are you mad?” the big man asked. “Folk have been killed for lesser offenses than tossing out perfectly good jagdah.” To ease his affront, he took a long pull for himself.

  “Water,” Kian gasped. “I’ve been running through this damned swamp for days now, living off black slime and grubs.”

  “Grubs?” Hazad said in revulsion, and immediately poured another generous slug of jagdah down his throat.

  Azuri smirked. “You should have found a horse.”

  “A horse!” Kian laughed darkly. “How could I, when the lot of you cowards rode away with them?”

  Azuri rolled his eyes. “It was you who called the retreat. If you were too slow to find a proper mount, whose fault is that?”

  “Take this,” Ishin said in his thick Geldainian accent. He handed over a fresh waterskin and a wooden bowl brimming with broth and globs of pale meat.

  Kian gulped the water, then tucked into the stew. At the first bite, he flung the bowl aside and began retching. Afterward, he wiped his lips with a shaky hand and thought sure he had been poisoned.

  Ishin glared at Kian, the whites of his eyes prominent against his black skin. With a curse, he snatched the bowl off the muddy ground and joined a group of his fellows on the far side of the fire. Gesturing at the empty bowl, he spoke to them in harsh tones, all while eyeing Kian. Two of the golden-robed warriors frowned and nodded in agreement, but the others laughed and offered Kian sympathetic glances.

  Azuri flicked an invisible speck of dust from the immaculate sleeve of his fine green coat—how the man stayed clean in a swamp was beyond Kian. “Now you know why I gave you jagdah first. It has the delightful effect of killing the taste of anything you eat afterward.”

  Hazad took a third pull of jagdah. “Should have been here last night,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Ishin charred a big pile of something. I’m guessing it was sheep dung.”

  “Gods!” Kian cried, wrenching the skin of spirits from the big man. After two gulps, the taste of the stew was gone. “Is there nothing else to eat besides—”

  “Sheep shit and snakefish stew?” Azuri said mildly.

  Kian’s throat spasmed. “Anything but that.”

  Hazad handed him a dirty cheesecloth bag. “Salted meat should do.”

  Kian stared at him with disgust. “After all I have done for you, and you hold back?”

  Hazad shrugged. “I held back on everyone, as it happens, save our prissy companion here. He looked so pitiful, I had to share.”

  Azuri sniffed irritably.

  Grumbling, Kian pulled out a thick slab of dried beef and stuffed it into his mouth. As
he gobbled it down, sucking water between bites, Hazad began fretting. Kian went ahead and emptied the bag. When he was done, he grinned broadly. “That was most excellent, friend.”

  “I hope you enjoyed it,” Hazad said dryly, “since it was the last of anything edible. As we are days from any settlement, it’s now starve, or suffer Ishin’s cooking.”

  Kian formed a map of Aradan in his mind. “Fortress El’hadar is nearest.”

  “Best not go there,” Hazad said uneasily. Few men willingly ventured to El’hadar, what with its Black Keep and the half-mad lord marshal who ruled it.

  “El’hadar is maybe three days ahead, and right on the edge of the marshes,” Kian countered. “Yuzzika is easily a fortnight south and east from here. I don’t see as we have any better choices.”

  “Then El’hadar it is,” Azuri said.

  In the following silence, Kian began counting heads. There were far fewer than had set out from the King’s City of Ammathor with Prince Varis.

  “Since the first night,” Azuri said, watching Kian make his tally, “you are the only man to have returned. We sent out search parties, but they have found nothing. With you, there are now twenty-four of us.”

  Kian sighed heavily. He had never lost so many men under his command. Letting his head droop, he scrubbed fingers through his matted hair. Of course, he had never commanded men against what could only be considered a sorcerer out of a children’s tale. In his mind, he saw Varis casting his deadly fires, and that freakish root-serpent tearing from the earth. Tomorrow would be soon enough to speak of what had happened.

  “Do we have enough bedding to go around?” Kian asked.

  Hazad nodded. “Come, and let father Hazad tuck you in.”

  “As long as you do not try to swaddle my bottom,” Kian snarled.

  Chuckling, Hazad led him away from the bonfire to a small clearing filled with a few open-walled tents. Within each were raised beds made from cut branches lashed together with vines.