The trio stared after him, none willing to take the first step.
Visibly shaken by the degree of grime and corruption all around them, Azuri said, “This is madness. Why would Bresado be down there?”
“I have heard it told that Bresado favors tormenting captured Bashye in the bowels of the keep,” Hazad offered with a shrug.
“So you think,” Azuri said sarcastically, “that while the fortress was being assaulted by gods know what, Bresado would have retired to the cellar to persecute prisoners, instead of defending his people?”
“From what I’ve heard of the man,” Kian said, “I can believe it.”
“See there?” Hazad said accusingly.
Azuri’s eyes narrowed at Hazad. “You are nothing but a great, hairy child.”
“By now, Bresado is most assuredly dead,” Kian said, stooping to retrieve the candle. “While I doubt he retreated to torture anyone, I am more sure that he would have fled the lost battle to secure his hoard. Such is the way with most Aradaner highborn who value gold more than their lives. The sooner we find out what happened here, the sooner we can depart—but after we collect whatever treasures Bresado has tucked away.”
“Right now,” Azuri said, “it seems to me that you are saying gold is more important than our lives.”
“We will need coin to refit anywhere we go,” Kian said. “Besides, the dead are no threat.”
“Demons are,” Azuri retorted.
“Stay here if you will,” Kian said with a stubborn set to his mouth, trying not to consider how often Azuri was right about most everything. In truth, he only pressed on because he felt compelled to understand what was happening.
He crossed the landing to the stairs and started down. Despite Azuri’s reservations, the man followed, with Hazad hard on his heels. The air grew cooler with each downward step. After a hundred steps, dampness began to collect in the joints between undressed stone, and leaked over niter-crusted walls. Soon after, the trio were easing themselves down crumbling steps made treacherous with pallid slime. Kian did not have to look over his shoulder to know that Azuri was pinching his shoulders together to avoid touching the walls, and wincing in abhorrence at every step.
After another hundred steps, the stairwell ended at a low archway. Beyond, a long double line of torches ran through a chamber so vast that the light failed under an oppressive murk. At the end of the torches, an array of oil lamps set haphazardly on a trestle table held open a wide gap in the darkness. Within that space sat the bulk of a man thrice the size of Hazad.
“Is that Bresado?” Azuri asked.
“If not,” Kian said in a hushed voice, “then he has a twin matching the descriptions I have heard of him.”
“So much for him being dead,” Hazad said.
“And so much for collecting his gold,” Azuri said under his breath. “Unless you plan to do murder for it?”
Kian did not answer. He was suddenly wondering whether he should turn himself and his friends around and leave. Bresado took that option away.
“Join me,” Lord Marshal Bresado Rengar ordered, his voice sounding more clogged with phlegm than the boy’s had been. Clad in robes of black and red leather, Bresado slouched in a throne of a chair behind the table.
Footsteps echoing, Kian led his companions, unconsciously hurrying from one set of torches to the next. On either side of the guttering flames, just seen in the gloom, rusted chains and manacles hung from the ceiling. Barrels, their staves ruptured with decay, spilled all manner of rusted, wicked-looking irons and pincers. The misery of old suffering hung in the air like a stench. Kian was almost happy to come into the greater light offered by Bresado’s lamps. Almost. The problem was that Bresado was somehow worse than anything they had yet seen, even counting Varis and the demon within Fenahk.
“My lord—”
“I’ve been expecting you, Kian Valara,” Bresado interrupted in his clogged, wheezy voice.
“Expecting me?” Kian muttered under his breath, his blood going cold. He did not wonder how the man had named him, for along with wealthy merchants many Aradaner highborn knew of him, as his services were widely sought. But Bresado would have had no idea he was coming to El’hadar, for coming here had been happenstance prompted by Varis’s attack. Thinking it safest, he chose not to respond to the lord marshal’s claim.
Despite the chilly air, Bresado’s shaven scalp glinted like a large wet egg, from which hung a thin, greasy black top-lock. Just out of reach of his thick fingers, in the center of the tabletop, was an inlay of the charging boar of House Rengar. Its ruby eye, Kian concluded at once, held more reason than did the lord marshal’s own squinty black stare.
“My lord,” Kian said, “what has happened here?”
Bresado grinned, rotted teeth leaning in all directions. “Death has happened here.”
“What manner of death?” Kian insisted.
Bresado squinted. “After the world shook and the faces of the Three died, the heavens began to burn. From that burning, death came on a foul breath out of the Qaharadin. Creatures, the mahk’lar, nightmares of shadow and hate, scaled the walls. In all their weakness, men fought, but in the end the mahk’lar glutted themselves on the living blood of the savaged.”
With a madman’s bemused stare, Bresado studied Kian and the others, offering no further explanation. He suddenly began to chuckle, then doubled over in a fit of retching. After a moment, he cleared his throat and spat on the floor. As he straightened, Bresado licked his lips slowly, like a drunkard savoring the taste of his own vomit.
“It is again as it once was,” he said mysteriously, “as it should have always been. But we were betrayed by the most high, and too, by our own makers.”
“We?” Kian asked, decidedly uneasy.
“Yes,” Bresado sighed, glazed eyes surveying the darkest shadows as if he could see into them. “We are the first race of creation, come again to these ancient lands. We who once died in the flesh have reawakened and been loosed from Geh’shinnom’atar.” His stare refocused abruptly, and turned on the three men before him. He smiled. “It is the place of men to serve or die, as the old order—the First Order—is rebirthed.”
“We will get no answers from this madman,” Azuri said in a gasping whisper.
Kian was not so sure Bresado was mad, and he suddenly found himself thinking of Fenahk. He knew he should order a retreat, but a disquieting uncertainty had ensnared him. He was not a man for prayers, but he could not help but send a plea to Pa’amadin asking for protection.
Bresado’s eyes rolled slowly toward him, as if reading his thoughts. Like a mouse before a serpent, Kian could only look back. During Bresado’s long, unflinching study, which had grown as blank as the boy’s had been, he sucked at the stumps of his teeth, making a squelching sound. “We often hope for things that cannot be, isn’t that so, Kian Valara?” He spoke the name like a curse.
“I suppose all men do,” Kian answered, caught off guard by the odd question, his voice sounding distant and hollow to his ears.
Bresado leaned forward, belly oozing over the wide leather belt girding his befouled robe. His head turned this way and that, as if he were looking for something lurking beyond the light. “I know what you hope for, Kian Valara, and all men like you … men who are so sure of themselves and their strengths. But you will never gain what you seek.”
“What is it that you think I seek?” Kian asked distractedly, a sense of danger and alarm building in him. Although he knew it was past time to leave and ride for Izutar, and be shut of Aradan and whatever curse had befallen these lands, he could not seem to make his body do what it desired.
“You seek to supplant the master of the mahk’lar, the Life Giver! But you will die. Fortress El’hadar, the first home of the Fallen, will be your crypt.”
“I know of no one named the Life Giver,” Kian said. “Of demons, I leave them to Peropis, the demon whore of the Thousand Hells.”
Bresado’s eyes flared and he lurched out of th
e chair with an explosive grunt. “You dare speak so of the Queen of Geh’shinnom’atar?” he hissed, even as his huge hands grasped the table’s edge. With far more strength than his flaccid body suggested was possible, he sent the massive furnishing flying to its side with a thunderous boom. Oil lamps exploded against the floor and burst into a whooshing roar of flame. Still frozen, Kian watched the inlaid boar’s ruby eye shoot out and bounce into the shadows beyond the light, leaving behind a small dead socket in the wood.
“You will die!” Bresado said. In an impossible show of strength, he bent and lifted the massive table up over his head.
Roused by sudden alarm, Kian’s sword came into his hand. He began moving away even as Bresado hurled the table at the trio. Freed now from invisible bonds, Kian scrambled to one side, his boots slipping on the slimed floor. The table smashed down and the old wood burst apart in a shower of splinters.
“Rats will dance among your bones!” Bresado raged.
Kian was preparing to attack the man when Azuri shouted a warning. Frantically looking around, Kian felt his bowels go to water. The darkness beyond the torches had come alive with indistinct shapes, all writhing and lurching toward the light.
“Come, my children,” Bresado invited, “and take your fill.” He looked as if he had more to say, but at that moment his skull cracked apart, disgorging a flood of grave worms and a gush of something like boiling pitch. From that horror, something else struggled to get free—
“Run!” Kian ordered.
The trio had not sprinted half the distance back to the stairwell when the creeping darkness on either side of them spilled into the light. Forced into a tight, three-sided formation, Kian and the others pressed forward against a host of creatures no larger than children. But these were not children, they were living nightmares born of Geh’shinnom’atar.
Kian swallowed as an abrupt understanding flooded his mind. He had thought something strange about the scenes of death in and around the fortress, and now he knew what it was. All of the dead had been grown men and women. Save the boy who had guided them, he had seen no children among the corpses. And the reason gathered around him. The demons of Geh’shinnom’atar, the mahk’lar, had taken the bodies of El’hadar’s children for their own, twisting them into horrors.
The demons scrambled forward, long talons scraping over the stone floor. Focusing on the nearest one, Kian’s sword arced down, cleaving deep into a wedge-shaped, spine-crested head. Where steel struck, a faint spark of blue fire burst forth. An instant later, black flesh parted, releasing a smoky plume. The demon’s mouth gaped wide in a chittering howl, showing a deadly collection of obsidian fangs. Three-fingered taloned hands rose up on crooked arms, and the mahk’lar fought to rip the blade free. Kian wrenched his weapon loose and quickly slashed out with a sidearm blow to the demon’s neck. Before hitting the floor, the body and the severed head began melting, but an inky shape within escaped and blew apart to flutter in the air like a collection of black, vaporous moths.
Everything became a blur of chaotic motion, even as a bedlam of human shouts and demonic howls filled the chamber’s vast gloom. Kian and the others slashed and stabbed wildly at every shape that barred their way, steadily driving toward the stairwell, which would be more readily defensible—if it were clear. As the battle raged, Kian felt a queer sort of pressure filling him, seeking release. He did not know what that pressure was anymore than he understood the tiny flares of bluish fire that sprang from his fingers to the hilt of his sword and raced down the edge of his deadly steel.
Talons raked across his chest, leaving searing furrows, and he pushed aside all thought, save staying alive.
Somewhere nearby, Azuri screamed.
Desperate to help his friend, Kian violently hacked at another monstrous face before him, barely registering that the demon’s eyes shone like dull silver coins in the faltering light. One eye winked out under his assault, then he drew back and stabbed the other glowing orb. A brutal kick sent the dissolving creature rolling. With the briefest respite, he wheeled, searching for Azuri.
The mercenary lay face down on the floor, thrashing about in a bid to dislodge a mahk’lar from his back. Hazad stood over him, entangled by another demon, swinging his blade like a man warding off angry bees. Ducking Hazad’s frantic swings, Kian grabbed at the freakish thing on Azuri just before it could bury its long teeth into his neck. Its flesh felt cold and dead, and his fingers sank deep into the spongy meat of its shoulder—but not as deep as his blade sank into its midsection. The sword pierced ribs and burst out the other side. As all the others before it, the creature did not bleed, but rather melted, loosing putrescence and puffs of soot.
Leaving Azuri to get up on his own, Kian caught hold of the skull spines on the demon trying to devour Hazad’s face. With all his strength, he wrenched its head back. Hazad recovered quickly, brought his sword up, and rammed the edge against his assailant’s neck—the vicious attack barely scored the black skin. The wound, slight though it was, was enough to release the smoky substance beneath. With an oath, Kian hurled the thing away before it could dissolve in his hands.
And so they fought, every step as grueling as sprinting a mile up the face of a mountain. While Azuri and Hazad’s blows did not so easily dispatch their foes as did Kian’s, they were not ineffectual. It flashed through Kian’s mind that the same had been true during the fight with the demon that had taken Fenahk. There was no time to consider this however, for to turn his mind from the struggle would mean his death.
At long last, they reached the blessedly empty stairwell. Kian did not hesitate to shove Azuri and Hazad ahead of him. “Run, both of you!”
“You cannot fight them alone,” Hazad retorted, but Kian pushed him off.
“There is barely enough room for one of us to fight, let alone three. GO!”
Following Azuri and Hazad, Kian backed up the steps, slashing back and forth against the tide of stalking horror. For him, killing the mahk’lar was not so difficult, at least when they came one at a time. But they did not come alone, rather they bound forward in surging waves.
Soon, ragged gasps were searing his lungs and throat. Sweat poured into his eyes, blurring his vision, and each step was precarious on stone coated in slime. But he could not stop fighting, no matter how terribly his arm and shoulder ached. To rest, even for a moment, would mean his death—an end like that which had come to the denizens of El’hadar, eaten alive and torn limb from limb at best, or at worst possessed by demons and remade into something inhuman. He could not imagine what happened to such a man’s soul, nor did he want to.
After a seemingly endless period of time, the light of the chamber’s torches faded, and the only visible target were dozens of pairs of silver eyes, and monstrous faces lighted by the flares of blue fire arcing from Kian’s defensive strokes.
Hazad and Azuri shouted their encouragement behind him, ineffectual spectators in a deadly game. Kian fought past the deadness in his limbs. Still, his powerful swings grew weaker, less effective. He drew his dagger and used both weapons to stab and slash at the closing demons.
Not long now, he thought with a black calm, and abruptly stumbled backward and sat down hard. Seemingly of its own will his sword came up. Fangs shattered against steel, and the blade rammed deep into the creature’s throat.
“We’re at the door,” Azuri called urgently.
Kian pulled his sword free, but there was no strength left in his legs. Strong hands jerked him to his feet and dragged him from the stairwell. When Hazad shoved him aside, Kian fell against the wall, gulping each breath. Between the two of them, Azuri and Hazad slammed and barred the door. On the far side, a terrible howling went up, and heavy thuds shook the door in its frame. The mahk’lar might have begun as beings of spirit, but they were now creatures of flesh, and could not simply pass through solid barriers.
“This door will not long hold,” Hazad said, his voice rumbling in the dark.
Kian let the two men help him along t
he shadowed ways. When they reached a crossing corridor lighted by scant daylight, the sounds of splintering wood echoed behind them, propelling them onward.
When they finally came to the doors leading into the courtyard, dusk was old and ready for the grave of night. And there waited the boy, off to one side of their horses. Not far back the way they had come, a tumult of howls went up. The boy, eyes glinting in the thin light, smiled broadly. Something pale and slender wriggled out from between his lips.
“We are leaving,” Azuri snarled. “Stand aside!”
The boy’s narrowed eye were black, through and through. “Noooooooo—”
Azuri’s dagger flipped through the air and slammed into the boy’s throat. The child floundered backward, gagging on a mouthful of black blood, then pitched over and started quivering, seemingly shaken from within, as if something were trying to flee the dying flesh.
“Gods good and wise,” Hazad rasped. “He was but a child!”
Azuri leapt into his saddle. “And I suppose where you grew up children bled black and had worms squirming out of their mouths? He was another demon, fool!”
Hazad looked back and forth in confusion, his wits seemingly fled.
Kian moved in close and grasped his elbow. With gentle pressure, he led Hazad to his horse, and helped him climb up. “That was no child, my friend,” Kian said. “It was as Azuri said—another of the mahk’lar.”
Hazad nodded absently, gaze flickering from shadow to shadow. Kian did not like to see such confused fear in his friend’s gaze.
“There can be no doubt any longer,” Azuri said, his voice low and ominous. “Varis somehow freed the Fallen from the Thousand Hells.”
“We make for Izutar,” Kian said. “These fool Aradaners can reap the troubles sown by one of their own sons.”
“The outpost of Oratz is but twenty miles south from here,” Azuri said. “Though it is the wrong way, we must refit. And while I agree with you about these Aradaners and their troubles, it would be the right thing to at least give them some kind of warning about what they will soon face.”
The God King (Heirs of the Fallen (Book 1)) Page 13