The God King hotf-1

by James A. West

  Otaker began nodding his head, the dazed expression leaving his eyes as he cast away doubt and despair to think on a line of attack, his greatest strength. “I will send the warnings, but if Varis did actually murder all those he later raised, strength of arms will not be enough,” Otaker said. “A messenger must go out, someone to ride with all haste for the northern border, and if necessary, beyond to Izutar, in order to find Kian.”

  Ellonlef considered the cheering throngs in the market square. “How will you know whom to trust to deliver such an important message?”

  He gazed at her. “There is only one answer. With Uzzret turned, and most if not all of my men ensnared by Varis’s wiles, you are the only one in whom I can put my faith. Though I despise the choice for the danger it places you in, it is you who must go. As you well know, Sisters of Najihar live and watch all lands in secret, even Izutar. If it comes to it, with the aid of your sisters, you will be able to track Kian.”

  “We should go together,” Ellonlef countered. She hated to admit fear, even to herself, but the Kaliayth was no safe place for any lone traveler. Besides the natural hardships of the desert, made all the worse since the world had begun to destroy itself, there were the loose-knit clans of the Bashye, who raided caravans at every chance, and attacked outposts with impunity. A rider alone amongst roving Bashye would be as a tethered lamb before a pack of wolves. And more, she feared what might happen to Otaker should he remain alone in Krevar.

  Otaker shook his head. “I must stay close to Varis, gain his trust, seek out his weaknesses, and pass that knowledge along. As well, I may be able to find a few of my men who remain loyal to Aradan, and myself. If fortune favors us, perhaps I can find a means to stay Varis’s hand or, as a last resort, eliminate him as a threat.”

  Ellonlef saw problems upon problems and dangers beyond count in his plan, but she also saw that he was right. What he had not mentioned, but what she knew in her heart to be true, was that Otaker would not leave his wife and children.

  Reluctantly, she nodded in agreement.

  “We have no idea how fast Varis will act,” Otaker said, “but we must assume that he will bar all the gates from those who might turn against him. You need to ride as soon as possible. Along the way, I would ask that you act as my voice to give authority to my missives. The lords marshal of Yuzzika and El’hadar must understand that my warning is no twisted prank.”

  “You know these men better than I,” Ellonlef said. “Will they believe?”

  “If not by my word alone,” Otaker said gravely, “you must make them believe.”

  Ellonlef did not bother asking how she was supposed to do that. All she had was the truth, and that would have to be enough. Looking at their plan in that light made her fully realize just how fragile it was, how prone to failure.

  Otaker closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “We must prepare for war to defend the kingdom from itself. The sooner Varis’s insurrection is stopped, the better. With any luck, this madness will have ended before Tureece or any other of Aradan’s enemies hear of it. If not, while Aradaners battle Aradaners, the realm will be set upon from all sides and torn apart.”

  More than before, Ellonlef imagined a rising tide of troubles washing away Aradan, but she kept the pessimism to herself. “I must prepare to leave.”

  “Take only water, food, and weapons enough to see you to Yuzzika,” Otaker said. “I will give you a string of my swiftest mounts.”

  Within half a turn of the glass, Ellonlef had loaded her limited supplies on six of Lord Marshal Otaker’s finest mounts and departed Krevar through a secret passage that travelled well under a section of the collapsed wall. Beyond Krevar, her way was lighted faintly by occasional streaks of golden-white fire streaking across the belly of the night sky, and by the waning face of Hiphkos, which burned a dull, ashen red.

  Not wanting to alert any watchers to her flight with the sound of galloping horses, she kept on at a sedate pace. She rode north until coming to the gouge in the earth that had ripped across the border road and swallowed down that hapless crofter the day Krevar had been torn apart … presumably the day that Varis had become more than a Prince of Aradan, became more than a man. A god made flesh.

  A few miles beyond Krevar, the crevasse divided, forcing her to ride due east for several leagues. Behind her, Krevar was lost to the darkness. After several hours, Ellonlef began to lose hope that the deep crack in the earth would allow her to find a route leading back to the north, but within another hour it began to shrink in size. An hour after that, the split had faded to a mere ditch. By then, what remained of Hiphkos had settled behind the western horizon, leaving the ever-present trails of fire to streak from east to west across the dark face of night.

  She knew she had spent far too long trying to navigate around the crevasse, and a nagging worry told her she would have to make up for that lost time as soon as possible. There would be no sleep or rest anytime soon, at least not until she found Kian.

  At some point, she halted and surveyed the sunken scar in the desert floor. She dismounted, cut a long branch from a tough bush, and slashed her knife blade down its length to rid it of inch-long thorns. She left the horses where they were and walked to the long, shallow depression. With her makeshift pole, she jabbed at the dirt to make sure that a hidden trap did not wait just below the surface. After she had poked along several paces of its length, she strode closer and pressed down with her foot. Sand and stone shifted, but it appeared solid enough to cross.

  She climbed back into the saddle and edged the horses forward, listening intently for any sound that might signal a collapse. None came, and she kicked the mounts into a plunging canter down and over the depression. Other than her mount’s hooves sinking deep into the disturbed, sandy soil, the crossing was uneventful.

  A hundred paces beyond her heart was still pounding, but she breathed easier as she steered to the north. The land lay dark as a tomb ahead of her, and she tried to think only of her mission, instead of the many dangers waiting ahead. She had the prevailing sense that she was riding not to find the man who could stop an uprising, but rather to escape certain death at the hands of living a demon loosed from the Thousand Hells cloaked in the flesh of a prince.

  Otaker, she thought desperately, why did you not come with me?

  But she knew well his answers: he must learn what he could of Varis’s power and intentions; he had his wife and children to consider; and he must uphold his own role as a lord marshal. As he had known his path, however unpleasant, so too she knew the path she must take. North toward Izutar … north to Kian Valara.

  Chapter 16

  “Answer your master!” Uzzret roared, the tendons in his neck pulled taught by his ferocity.

  Otaker felt as if he were looking upon a stranger, rather than the man who had served him for over a score of years. Despite the command, he did not answer.

  At the prince’s almost offhand order it had taken two guards-men who had been dead, Otaker noted straight away-mere moments to reduce the lord marshal to a battered heap. He now lay gasping and shuddering under the stabbing agonies of broken ribs and other hurts. The two guards stared blankly, not breathing hard at all. They would kill him, or skin him alive without hesitation, if Varis so commanded them. “ … we must serve his will,” Danara had said. This time, his shudder had nothing to do with pain.

  “Answer the Life Giver,” Lady Danara said, her croaking voice similar to that of all the resurrected. There was something to that, he knew, a disconcerting unity, but he had not the time or presence of mind to consider it.

  At Danara’s sides stood their children, their eyes swimming with the same unnerving emptiness as hers. Where Uzzret’s betrayal angered Otaker, seeing his own children join Varis left a chill in his breast, smothering his desire to live.

  Otaker continued to hold his tongue. Doubtless, he would die this night, which had not been part of his plan in the least. But he had no intention of telling them when or by what road Ellonlef had
departed. More importantly, he would not tell them why. He steeled himself against the tortures that surely must come.

  Carefully, he ran his fingers across the swelling bulge that was already closing one of his eyes. Hot trickles of blood leaked from his nostrils and over puffy lips. His tongue probed a loose front tooth and, with the slightest effort, dislodged it from its socket. He spat it out, along with a mouthful of blood.

  Otaker glanced between his interrogators, struggling to focus. His head was splitting, and he was having a hard time not rolling to his side and vomiting. He had already tried castigating them for traitors, but that had achieved nothing. Delaying the inevitable was all that was left to him.

  “I did not know that Sister Ellonlef had left the fortress until you told me. I do not suppose, Uzzret,” he said accusingly, “that your addled mind has considered that she might still be within Krevar’s walls?”

  Uzzret’s self-righteous indignation melted away in a blink, and he glanced furtively at Varis.

  From a skull-like countenance, Varis’s bulging white eyes stared down at Otaker. “As we both know, lord marshal, she is most assuredly gone … along with six horses.”

  Otaker did not openly react to Varis’s uncanny accuracy, but his muddled thoughts sharpened in bemused horror. How can he know such exact details? Otaker and Ellonlef had been careful when gathering what she would need for her mission. And before they had moved into the stables, they made sure that Varis was still holding forth over his new followers. There had not even been any guards manning the collapsed walls when Ellonlef departed. Otaker had been positive no one had spied their activities. And yet….

  Varis smirked. “You wonder how I can know so much, lord marshal? Suffice it to say, I see and know many things. It matters not if you tell me where she is going, for I know this already … and why.”

  “If you are so wise,” Otaker snarled, “then why beat the answers from me?” The one joy Otaker cradled in his heart was that while Varis spoke of Ellonlef’s departure with near omniscience, he had not yet mentioned the two messenger hawks Otaker had managed to send off. He wished he had been able to send others, but wishing for things that could not be was a game for fools.

  Varis hesitated for the barest moment, and Otaker was sure that he saw doubt flicker across the prince’s face. When Varis spoke, the words rang with lies. “You have been beaten for your insolence … and to prove the truth of who I am to any who have lingering doubts of my claims. I have found deceit in your heart, lord marshal, and now so have those gathered here. Sadly, for your sake, your continued resistance and deception have proven that you cannot be trusted.”

  “A charlatan dares name me a liar?” Otaker laughed until he fell into a fit of coughing.

  Varis’s expression hardened, and the enthralled looks of his followers fell away to reveal masks of inhuman fury. Otaker nearly cried out when he saw his wife and children looking at him in the same manner. Then, as if obeying an unspoken command, everyone save Varis set upon Otaker, kicking and striking him on all sides. None spoke, none raged, only their eyes told the tale of their wrath.

  Otaker tried to resist, holding his arms up around his head, curling into a tight ball, but the battering only increased. Someone shouted for them to stop, but in his agony, he did not realize it was he himself who was crying out. The last thing he heard, a secretive and deadly noise below all that shouting, was the sound of steel sliding free of a leather scabbard. The last thing he felt was that same icy steel slamming into his chest, past his ribs, and into his fluttering heart. Ride, Ellonlef, he thought, eyes glazing over in death, ride!

  Chapter 17

  Pleased and not a little stunned that his followers had acted at his merest thought, Varis strode forward, pushing aside the guard who had stabbed Otaker. The prince searched for the glimmer of luminosity that marked the lord marshal’s life force, but it was gone. Needing answers, despite what he had told Otaker, Varis drew the strength from those in the chamber, letting it flow through him and into Otaker’s corpse. Distantly he heard gasping, then choking, and finally the heavy thuds of his underlings falling to their sides, as the strength of life was torn from their bodies.

  Yet the lord marshal did not reawaken. No matter how much life Varis forced into the corpse, Otaker did not stir. To Varis’s eyes, it looked as if he were trying to fill a sieve with a glowing silver fluid, and that fluid was simply draining away and dissipating.

  When it became obvious that Otaker was well and truly dead, Varis cut off the flow with a curse, and began pacing. Scattered across the floor, the only person still conscious was Uzzret, and him just barely. Varis did not bother to help him, not yet. He needed to think, and did not want the distraction of the man’s fawning.

  Varis left the room and moved to the same balcony where he and Uzzret had earlier found Otaker. As he had then, Varis scanned the eastern horizon. The glow of living things was miniscule out on the desert, from the faintest threads emanating from bushes and dry grasses, to the brighter but still faint glow of lizards and vipers and desert-dwelling birds roosting for the night. Of Sister Ellonlef and the horses with her, the shining pillar of light of her being that he had seen earlier burning amongst so much darkness, there was nothing. She was gone.

  When he had last looked for her, she had been just at the edge of his sight, moving due east. He concluded that she was riding for Ammathor, which dictated that he had to intercept her before she could warn the Ivory Throne of his intent. While he could easily destroy every citizen of the king’s city and then resurrect them, that was not what he wanted. He desired more than a kingdom full of mindless puppets over which to rule. Any man could lay claim to a field of stones and declare them his worshipers, but he needed people to worship him in truth-though it mattered nothing to him whether they heaped adoration on him out of fear or desire.

  He turned back to Otaker’s corpse with a scowl, wondering why his powers had failed to draw the man back from Geh’shinnom’atar. Was it another secret Peropis had kept from him?

  He shook his head in irritation. More than ever, he acknowledged that he needed to move quickly and decisively. There was so much he could envision doing with the powers of creation, but there was no time to waste in learning. He could take life from the living world and sustain himself. As well, he could take a person’s life and then restore it … but perhaps he could not raise those who had died by another’s hand, as seemed to be the case with Otaker? Ultimately it did not matter. If he had to personally slaughter a thousand men, then revive them in order to have an army, then he would. Soldiers, to his mind, were more puppets than men already.

  In time, Varis found himself considering how Kian had managed to take into himself the powers of creation, unwittingly using that power to shield himself. This led to another more troubling consideration. Were there men and women who had taken in enough of the powers of creation to create life, steal it away, raise the dead, and more? In the future, could there be other contenders to his rule?

  For every answer there were hundred more questions without answers. Varis shook them off, sure that deeper understanding would come in time. For now he would use the strengths he understood to take Ammathor, all of Aradan, and more. Once his rule was secure, he would destroy all of his enemies-Peropis, Kian, and any others who harbored the power of dead gods within them.

  He looked again at the people strewn across the floor, and pulled life from the living of Krevar, just enough, and emptied it into Uzzret and the others. One by one, their flesh grew fuller and flushed with the heat of living blood. One by one, they were roused, and turned their eyes upon him. All except Uzzret, who had barely survived but survived all the same, gazed at him with a disconcerting, breathless worship.

  “Life Giver,” they murmured, over and over again, until it became a low, croaking chant. The tone of their words disturbed Varis, albeit only a little. He could not be sure, but he sensed something in their inflection, a guarded mockery. He abruptly shook his head, s
ure he was imagining things.

  Uzzret got to his feet, never raising his eyes. “Master, forgive me.”

  Varis frowned. “For what?”

  Uzzret scanned his sandaled feet as if trying to find the answer. “For … for displeasing you?” he said, making it into a question.

  Varis did not have time to coddle the man. “We must prepare to depart this heap of blasted stones. Assemble my Chosen.”

  “M-master?” Uzzret stammered, his old bones shaking. “Are we not all your chosen?”

  I liked him terrified better than fawning, Varis considered. Focusing on the question, he said, “Only those I freed from the Thousand Hells will have the strength to travel with me. As for you, I will sustain you. The others I will leave behind to secure this portion of my kingdom. They owe me their lives, as well as the lives of their loved ones.”

  Uzzret seemed to relax upon learning he was among those who would travel with Varis. “Very well, Master, but is such haste necessary? Should we not plan?”

  “The opinion of the Sisters of Najihar has great sway with the Ivory Throne-too much, I have always thought. I cannot wait for Sister Ellonlef to reach Ammathor, where she will doubtless warn the enemies of my ascension. Whether she is captured or killed, I care not, but she cannot be allowed to reach Ammathor ahead of me. I will send riders out immediately to search for her. The rest of us depart at dawn.”