More than once she had accompanied Lord Marshal Otaker along Aradan’s western border from Krevar to Yuzikka to El’hadar and back, but never had she journeyed into the Qaharadin. One day she would, and in so doing would have the claim of being the first of her order to do so. That particular trek would come just before she returned home, likely in late winter, when it was not so blindingly hot. Though common folk believed Sisters of Najihar were trained mainly to study, give counsel, and serve as healers, the truth was that they were adept in everything from history to warfare to personal combat. A Sister of Najihar could take care of herself in nearly all situations, and the order rarely produced fools. Ellonlef did not count herself a fool, and surely not enough of one to leap at the chance of going blindly into the Qaharadin.
A breeze, dry as crypt bones, with just a hint of the day’s coming heat, rustled the pages of her journal. She lifted her face to the desert’s breath, eyes lidded. Through long lashes, she noted the moons again, and felt a tickle of dismay wriggle up her spine. Opening her eyes, her heart leapt into the back of her throat. A trembling hand crept to her neck, a cry of shock fighting to get past her clenched teeth.
The eye formed by the Three was rapidly changing. Memokk was sinking into the breadth of Hiphkos, and the edges of the amber moon had become a dark red-and-black aura. All across its face jagged lines were spreading, like cracks in an eggshell. By heartbeats, Attandaeus fell into the combined crumbling girth of Memokk and Hiphkos.
Far below and behind Krevar’s protective wall, others began to notice what Ellonlef was witnessing. At first only a few frightened voices rang out, then more, as the denizens of Krevar became aware that something terrible was happening. As the faces of the Three became a solid mass of what could be nothing less than fire and ash, men’s shouts and women’s screams mingled horribly.
“This cannot be,” Ellonlef said, her voice harsh with disbelief.
Something at the periphery of her vision caught her attention. On the far side of the world it seemed, a filament of blue light lanced skyward. Almost as soon as seen, it vanished. Then came a violent quaking. Out in the desert a crack split the land, rapidly spreading south toward the fortress. As it widened and lengthened, the shuddering of the earth increased, and dust churned into a rising wall. The crevasse slashed across a road, swallowing a shrieking crofter, his vegetable cart, and team of lowing oxen.
As the world broke far below Ellonlef’s perch with a snarl of rupturing stone, her hands dropped to the sandstone sill and held on for dear life. The grinding sound filled her mind and body, made her teeth ache and her eyes water. Like a blow from a titan’s axe, the gaping wound in the earth opened under the fortress’s northern wall and continued across the enclosed town, scattering terrorized folk, and consuming others. A heartbeat later, that section of Krevar’s wall folded in on itself. Sandstone blocks the size of houses shattered and crumbled, falling down and down. A yellowish gray dust cloud billowed upward, quickly obscuring the destruction. The Sister’s tower shivered like a dying animal, then began listing sideways. Ellonlef screamed, but her voice was lost under the weight of the earth’s terrible, stony cry.
A year! she thought wildly. Just a year left—
The tower’s sliding motion came to an abrupt, jarring halt. Ellonlef sailed through the air and slammed against a wall. A foot to one side, and she would have soared out of a window and plummeted to her death. Although the tower’s pitch was not severe, Ellonlef clawed her way up the wall like a lizard scuttling up the side of a cliff, ripping her nails in a frantic bid to gain her feet. Once standing, she rushed across the floor’s slope to the doorway, longing more than anything to see the stairs waiting beyond.
She had just reached the doorway when a tingle of warning raced over her skin, a stealthy pressure, so slight as to barely disturb the fine hairs upon her arms. The pressure grew by the moment. She wanted nothing more than to escape the tower before it collapsed and buried her alive, but she had to look and know what was coming.
From the far-off haze of the marshes came a wave that shimmered like heat escaping a hot oven. The wave quickly passed the bounds of the swamp, spreading out over the desert like ripples in a pond. The pulse of air closed faster than she could imagine, booming like thunder as it slammed into the tower, shaking its stones.
Eyes stinging from flying grit, Ellonlef wheeled even as the tower began to crumble with a deep, grating moan, and ran down the twisting stair through the tower’s failing heart. She knew that she would surely perish, but still she ran.
Chapter 4
Varis remembered the instant agony of blue fire melting the flesh from his bones … but, somehow, now he was whole. He fought for breath that would not fill his lungs. Pain savaged every particle of him, as a rushing black pressure seemed intent on squeezing his body into the size of a thimble. Time’s passage stalled, leaving him to suffer an eternity in every moment.
Through the mind-bending torture, he felt another sensation, that of hands, cold and covered in jellied corruption, sliding over his skin. From the tips of each finger sprouted claws seemingly of blazing red iron. The bright heat of those fiendish daggers plunged deep, roasting his eyes in their sockets and scorching his tongue to a twist of blackened leather. The talons sank into his entrapped spirit. What he thought he knew of misery was lost as those claws, bit by bit, ripped apart his very soul. Under these grim ministrations, he found his voice. The force of his shrieks burst from his throat until all that remained were keening hisses.
The plummet ended abruptly. One moment he was falling, being torn apart through an infinite void of terrible lightlessness and crushing pressure, and the next he smashed against jagged stone. Every bone and organ in his body exploded. And still he was aware, unable to die, able to feel and see, to hear and to taste, to smell and to live and to suffer.
Far above, like a solitary star in the night, hung a point of pure, blinding radiance. He imagined Pa’amadin, the silent God of All, gazing down at him with scorn and pity—
Suddenly, shadowed creatures ringed him about, blotting out that terrible point of light. Their eyes and gaping, mocking mouths roiled with flame, no two creatures the same. Some were small, impish. Others stood tall, if hump-backed and covered in horns and dripping spines. In the crimson light cast by their burning eyes, their skin was black, reeking of death and sickness. None had the limbs of men, or even of any beast Varis had ever seen. The Fallen … mahk’lar … demons! his mind gibbered, recalling Peropis’s words.
The imps began to dance about, cursing his name in a language of the vilest hate, while one brutish figure bent over him. With three of its dozen thrashing, tentacle-like arms, it lifted him to its chest in a bizarrely maternal way. Varis cried out in gratitude, thinking the horrid creature meant to spare him from further torments.
The creature’s drooping lips spread around a maw of glowing fangs. A revolting gurgle of mirth resonated in the demon’s chest, and the imps danced in a greater frenzy to the morbid delight of that vile laughter. From behind the creature’s teeth, a hundred tongues flashed out, long and snaking, burrowing into every opening of Varis’s body. The tongues dug recklessly through his eyes, swarmed up his nose and filled his mouth. More came and more still, forcing their way inside, eating, devouring all that he was.
The heaviness that had assailed him now pressed into his pores, filling every hollow and nook of his wriggling remains, swelling him. Then, like an engorged leech crushed under a boot, he burst asunder. The demonic host fell on his quivering gobbets of meat, gorging themselves. And through it all, somehow, Varis felt and saw, until absolute blackness fell over him.
The darkness faded away, brightened slightly. As if waking from a nightmare, Varis scrambled to his feet. He stood whole and unblemished atop a pillar of rough stone. All around him, as far as he could see, burned a turbulent ocean with flames of every hue. It was beautiful, but atrocious in the same instant. A steady wind drove the inferno and chapped his naked skin, dried his
eyes and tongue. But that mild discomfort, after what he had already suffered, was like the cool kiss of morning fog rolling off a placid lake.
He took a careful step to the edge and looked down into the sea of colorful fire. Far below, the imps and hulking shapes of his tormentors stood upon islands of stone. They did not dance now, nor laugh or ridicule. Instead, they writhed and wailed in the heat of the undying furnace, their corrupted shapes melting away, only to be instantly replaced and consumed again.
“The greatest mercy I could offer them,” Peropis said at Varis’s back, “would be but one drop of water … or freedom, of course.”
Varis spun, expecting the worst terror yet. Instead, he found a stunning creature. To his eyes she was a woman, but somehow she was not. In her pale flawlessness, she was more than mere flesh. She stood taller than he, her nakedness cloaked in the fall of her long, silver-white hair.
With a seductive grin, Peropis took a step toward him and he caught an enticing glimpse of her bare hip, the outer swell of one rounded breast. His already parched tongue withered further. Her utter perfection twisted his mind, as if he were trying to comprehend the exact number of stars in the heavens, or the grains of sand on not one but every shore spread over the face of the world. Tears of blood dripped from his bulging eyes, but no matter how hard the muscles in his neck strained, he could not look away.
As she stepped closer, Peropis’s grin became a broad smile. One long-fingered hand reached out and she gently wiped away his bloody tears. Then her fingers gently cupped the back of his neck and pulled him near. Her lips on his were ice, yet soft and reviving. Her tongue slid smoothly, deliciously past his lips, tasting him, then sank deeper. In that moment, Varis knew no human woman would ever again satisfy him, and he cared not.
Fear and desire warred within him.
Desire won out, destroying his reason.
His hands, shaking with anticipation, swept aside her downy hair, moved down her shoulders, spread over the gentle curves of her hips, then drew her close. Without a hint of resistance or rebuff, she pressed against his searing flesh. A shiver rippled across his skin at her touch, and he thought he would go mad with desire. In that moment, he was hers … but not without a small measure of reservation. He understood her power over his body and senses made him weak, and that he could not allow such a weakness to exist in his heart. Despite his slight resistance, her persuasion still compelled him.
She knelt and leaned back, drew him down atop her, impervious to the baking heat of the stone beneath her. Varis cried out as they joined together, becoming one flesh. When his bloody tears came again, she kissed them away. When he kissed her in return, he tasted his own blood on her tongue. He did not care. He relished the flavor, hungered for it like a starving man. He greedily sought that sweet bouquet, and she offered it up as a flower weeps nectar. His passion soared and raged, and when his release came, he felt as if liquid silver were pouring from his loins.
Struggling for breath, he gazed into her eyes. Black through and through, those eyes stared back, shinning like wet obsidian. “You have survived my testing, Prince of Aradan,” she said. “You have taken your gift.”
Varis nodded mutely, vaguely knowing she did not mean the gift of her body.
“In you is now contained a measure of the powers of chaos and creation, of all life and death.”
Her eyes grew larger then, dragging him into their bottomless depths.
He did not try to resist.
“The world will be ours,” she whispered, “but first the battle must be joined, for all that the Three gave up and hid away is soon to be released fully into the world. Go, my prince, and remake all that the Three abandoned in their foolishness.”
Varis nodded again, captivated, yet suddenly uneasy about what she was saying. She had not previously mentioned anything about measures of the powers of creation, nothing about chaos, nor anything about him sharing the world with her… .
His thoughts drifted. Looking into her gaze was like falling into a lightless sea, and he was beginning to lose himself, his questions.
Peropis’s voice came again, now as a dwindling sigh. “So, too, shall my kindred find their long-awaited freedom.”
She drew his head down as if for another kiss, but instead of meeting her lips, he felt as if he were dissolving, being rendered from flesh to liquid, and that distilled essence spilled into her eyes. A rushing sound filled his being, growing steadily louder until it became a roar. The dark pressure returned, propelling him not down or inward, but up and up. When he could not bear it anymore, the crushing weight vanished in an explosion of light—
Varis found himself standing within the confines of the lost temple, feeling at once confused and panicky. The smoking shards of the basin, the Well of Creation, once covered by collected powers of dead gods, were scattered around his feet. Where the basin had been now roiled with some boiling, black fluid. Of the nacreous veil, there was no sign. Overhead, a perfect circle had been cut through the dome, the edges clean and smooth as glass. The rest of the dome, and the walls of the temple, were crumbling.
He flinched at a stealthy touch and found monstrous, inky shapes swimming around his legs, caressing him with vaporous fingers. Her kindred, he thought, the mahk’lar … demons freed. As he watched, many of the spirits flashed through the crumbling temple walls, unhindered by stone. Others flew up and out through the hole in the ceiling, vanishing from sight.
Blinking, he realized that all he saw was in shades of gray. More importantly, though, a sense of long-sought power swelled inside him. Moment by moment, that sensation increased. It was her gift, the powers of creation forsaken by the Three. His head and eyes began to ache for want of release of that power.
A sudden, violent rolling of the earth knocked him off his feet. He lay on his side, gasping. With his ear pressed to the stony floor, he heard a low, steady grinding noise rise from the bowels of the earth. Or is it from the Thousand Hells?
A stone fell from the ceiling, striking him on the head. With a pained curse, he struggled to his feet. Gingerly, he touched the ragged wound on his scalp, then held his bloodied fingers up for inspection. The blood—his blood—was black to his eyes, but that did not concern him as it might have. What did bother him was the thin, pale skin stretched taut over the bones of his fingers and hand. It was as if he had been sick near unto death, and all his color and flesh had been eaten away. As the trembling of the world increased, he glanced at his nakedness, shocked to see how wasted his legs were. But not just his legs. All over, his bones pressed out from under tight, pallid skin.
“What affliction is this?” he rasped. No discernable answer came, but he knew he had to escape the crumbling temple before it fell in atop him.
When Varis strode out of the temple, he instantly cowered back from the sunlight lancing through his eyes into his brain. Through slitted lids, he saw yelling men scrambling like disturbed ants over the quaking ground. All around, trees swayed and whipped, as if shaken by a giant’s hand. Varis barely noticed. As within the temple, the whole of the outside world filled his vision with shades of gray, save the once golden light of day. That radiance shone like white fire.
Someone pointed at him, shouting to be heard over the grumbling of the earth. Varis sensed danger, not from the pointing Asra a’Shah, but from somewhere else. He found a trio of men who had not seen him emerge from the temple. Two were hunched over a third sprawled on the ground. On the instant, he knew the source of danger: Kian Valara. Why the Izutarian mercenary posed a threat did not matter. All that did matter was that Varis knew he needed to destroy the man, with haste.
Varis’s hands flexed, power and an unbidden hate rising in him, bubbling out, like lightning bursting forth from jet black clouds. He could not contain it, nor did he desire to. In that moment all was clear. He began to wield his newfound power, ineptly, but deadly all the same.
Chapter 5
Kian’s spine arched until only the back of his head and his heels w
ere digging into the damp soil. A thousand icy needles stabbed into his skull, and tiny crabs seemed to be feasting on his skin. He wanted to scrape them away, but could not control his arms.
“Do something!” Hazad roared.
Azuri slid into view, gray eyes searching Kian’s face. “Breathe,” he said evenly, “you are suffocating.”
If it had not been true, and had he not felt as if he were dying, Kian might have laughed at the request. Instead, he took the advice. Cool wind rushed into his lungs and, as if an elixir had been poured down his throat, all his paralyzing agonies vanished. He went limp and lay gasping. Before he could ponder what had happened, the world heaved upward and shuddered. Trees swayed and creaked; limbs snapped and fell to the forest floor. Shouting Asra a’Shah had gathered in the clearing about the temple, many of whom were trying to calm the lunging horses.
“Hazad,” Azuri said, his tone as calm as if asking for a glass of wine, “get that fool of a prince out of the temple.”
Hazad gave a last concerned glance at Kian, then leapt up. He moved no farther. “Gods good and wise,” he breathed. “I think he has come out on his own.”
Azuri looked toward the temple, eyes widening.
Feeling better by the moment, Kian lifted his head. A man stood in the doorway of the temple, his skin whiter than that which lay under the garments of the three northern-born mercenaries. The man was naked and hairless, emaciated to the point of death. A gash showed on his bald scalp, and from it flowed some black substance.
Blood … what manner of man has black blood? Kian thought uneasily.
No matter how impossible it seemed, the man standing before the temple bore a strong resemblance to Prince Varis Kilvar. Part of Kian denied this, but another part knew he was looking at his charge. Stranger still, swirling patches of oily darkness poured out of the temple. A few of those figures stayed near the prince, others streaked deep into the swamp and out of sight. Where they passed near Asra a’Shah, men screamed in revulsion.
The God King (Heirs of the Fallen (Book 1)) Page 3