The God King hotf-1

by James A. West

  Trailing shouts rapidly overtook the riders and passed them by. Heads turned at the cries and the sound of hooves pounding over the dirt street. As if of one mind, men and women in ragged garb closed ranks. Some stood unarmed, others bore cudgels or the odd spear or sword. Kian did not balk. With a roar, he kicked his horse into a full gallop. Hazad and Azuri voiced their fury, and he knew they were with him. A quick look told him Ellonlef was still safe, her features resolute.

  As he looked back around a spear thrust at Kian’s face, and he viciously hacked off the rusted tip. Another man tried to snatch his stirrup, and he slammed the flat of his blade against the attacker’s skull, dropping him like a stone. If he could avoid dealing death, he would.

  As the horses picked up speed, those blocking the way began to reconsider; those who thought too long, Kian rode down. Erstwhile assailants flew in screaming tangles of arms and legs.

  And then they were through, the shouting crowds falling behind. They continued at a gallop, making hard turns and wild charges down streets and alleys, until the Chalice and its people began to look like Kian remembered it.

  He slowed at the crossing of two streets, gauged which way had the least amount of people, then turned in that direction. Here, the longtime denizens of the Chalice only gazed at them with mild interest. The foursome was marked, to be sure, but any danger would come from the shadows, not head-on.

  Kian reined in before a tavern with a hanging shingle on the stoop displaying a large, frowning green eye. Around them, the Chalice looked much the same as it had the last time he had been here, when meeting Varis to discuss his journey. Better had he wandered into a winehouse and guzzled jagdah until he was blind, than to have sold the skill of his sword for highborn gold. Regardless, Varis would have found his way to the Qaharadin. And, too, Kian would never have met Ellonlef, now sitting astride her horse gasping, her eyes wide. Thankfully, she appeared uninjured. He looked away before she noticed his scrutiny.

  From a dozen different doorways, the music of zither and cymbals played a dozen different tunes, all drifting out into the street, and birthing another song altogether. Disharmonious as it was, that song blended easily with drunken laughter and the banter of trulls and their prospective clients. It did not seem to Kian at all odd that life in the Chalice should be going along as it always had. In the Chalice, there was no time to care about the end of the world, for here, every day was the end of the world for someone.

  “Gods!” Ellonlef blurted when she caught her breath. “I would never have believed good folk could turn brutish so quickly.”

  Azuri, looking over his shoulder to ensure they had not been followed, said, “Do not judge them too harshly. They are hungry, terrified, uncertain. Some few of them learned hard lessons this night.”

  “Such as?” Ellonlef asked, obviously more shaken by an attack from commonfolk than she had been after the Bashye had run her to ground. Kian envied her innocence in this aspect of the manner of men. He himself had seen too much butchery in his life to believe that a dark beast did not lurk in the hearts of every man, woman, and child. Most often that beast remained hidden, restrained by morality, but in times of great peril it crawled from its lair to do unspeakable atrocities.

  “They found out that cunning and audacity often bests sheer strength,” Kian answered for Azuri.

  Ellonlef gave him a quizzical look, as if trying to see into his mind. Kian returned her scrutiny with a bland expression. While he did not know exactly how he would use the tools of cunning and audacity against Varis, he wanted neither Ellonlef nor Hazad and Azuri to suspect he was planning anything that did not include them. Ellonlef’s lips parted, and he feared she was about to speak aloud the question he wished to remain hidden, but a clamor drew their attention.

  “Touch me not, you reeking pile of dung!” Harsh laughter followed the insult, mingling easily with the rowdy music and general clamor of the Chalice.

  A group of three lordlings gathered in a semicircle around a legless beggar propped against a wall. Vibrant linen robes hugged the men’s torsos and flared out below broad belts woven of gold or silver. In the fashion of the eastern kingdom, the lordlings disdained common Aradaner top-locks for side-locks, and wore waxed chin beards shaped into ebon daggers. After spewing oaths and spittle, the lordlings set upon the beggar, kicking and stomping until he was a bloodied mound. To the cheers of onlookers, they all urinated on the huddled man, brazenly stole his few copper saarqs from an overturned clay cup, then sauntered up the street, trading lewd jests with a pair of trulls leaning out of an upper window.

  “Do something,” Ellonlef snapped, glaring between Kian and the others.

  “No,” Kian said, pointing at the beggar. “Watch and learn how the Chalice takes care of its own.”

  A double handful of leprous-looking men emerged like roaches from an nearby alley and gathered around their fallen compatriot. Only, he was not fallen-bloody and battered, yes, but not nearly as injured as he had behaved. Nor was he legless, as evidenced when he tossed aside his soiled blanket and got to his feet. Staring after his attackers, face puffed and bloodied, the man looked nothing like the cowering cripple they had set upon. His eyes burned with malevolence, as he motioned his fellows forward with a dagger half as long as his forearm. The music of the street seemed to grow louder, and nearby trulls squealed with an almost sinister glee that was missed by the strutting lordlings. Like brown, grimy shadows, the beggars closed on their prey. No one raised a warning cry, no one so much as blinked in alarm.

  Such is life in the wolves’ den, Kian thought, as the beggars pounced. In less than three heartbeats, the lordlings were dispatched, their blood spilling into a rank gutter. Moments later, the beggars had dragged the corpses into a dark alley to loot their victims, before casting them into the sewers.

  Ellonlef stared in shock. “Does no one care?”

  Kian shook his head, sorry for her distress. “Here, justice is done, if wearing a different, crueler face than what you might see in the court of a king.” Hazad and Azuri shot him an accusing look, but he ignored them. “In the Chalice,” Kian said, “men die each day with the sound of laughter in their ears. Such is it everywhere.”

  “Where is your friend?” Azuri asked, attempting to distract Ellonlef.

  She looked away from the scene of wanton murder, her eyes dry and hard. “We go to the Street of Witches.”

  Chapter 34

  “You take us to a witch?” Hazad gasped, drawing a few looks from passersby.

  Not a season gone, Kian would have chided his friend for his irrational fear, but no longer, not since Varis’s actions had given truth to what most folk believed to be superstition and myth. Most witches were but charlatans, using gibberish words, herbs to cloud the mind, and potions to make breathtaking smokes in an effort to dupe desperate folk into handing over coin for some secret knowledge. While he believed that held mostly true, now he had to admit some witches might well have secret wisdom and ability.

  “Hya is no witch,” Ellonlef said, “but she lives among them posing as a pyromancer. Though it is said she is quite skilled, she is in truth a Sister of Najihar.”

  “Still, it is not safe,” Hazad countered. “Only fools have dealings with witches.”

  For the first time since coming to the Chalice, Ellonlef grinned. “You need not fear women who grind herbs and gaze at leaves to scry the future. As for Hya, she is a gentle old woman who has secretly served the Ivory Throne for three score years. Come, I will guide you.”

  Hazad did not look convinced, but he followed. Kian wondered if Ellonlef was as sure as she seemed, or was simply hoping for the best. Azuri, was always, seemed outwardly indifferent, although it was evident that he was keeping a sharp eye for troubles. Kian was glad of his friend’s diligence, for he sensed danger all around, felt it closing in, as if hunting.

  Ellonlef led them on a zigzagging course through the Chalice. At every turn drunken laughter, music, and revelry filled the air. Nearly naked wo
men danced or made love for coin, merchants of illicit goods sold to both poor and rich, and assassins laid plans over watered wine. Where shadows abounded music and laughter died, drunkards slumbered on middens and down alleys, and motherless urchins sought food of any sort, be it kitchen scraps or rats.

  When at last they came to the dim street Ellonlef sought, they wandered up and down it twice, before she halted them with a raised hand. “It appears she has moved … or passed. She was old a decade gone.”

  A flicker amid a pocket of deep shadows caught Kian’s eye. A robed woman sat on a stool a few paces away, looking directly at them with recognition in her stare. Without glancing away, she struck steel to flint. Sparks caught in the tinder below a mound of dried dung, setting it alight. A small, soot-streaked pot hung on a shaft above the rising flames. In the growing luminescence, Kian noted a collection of clay pots and small, dried animals laid out on a dirty swatch of pale cloth.

  “Witch!” Hazad warned, his eyes bulging.

  Kian guessed she must be an inept hedge witch, to be sitting out on the frosty street instead of within one of the nearby hovels. If not quite beautiful, she was handsome. Her only flaw was a pink scar running diagonally over her neck to the spot where her ear should have been. Her eyes bored into him, poking and prying, and he realized the recognition he had seen was for him alone.

  When it became obvious she would not speak first, Kian said, “We seek Hya. If you would, please direct us to her shop.”

  She answered in a straining hiss. “And long years have I have sought the man who put the blade to my throat, yet still I have not found him. Why should your search be easier?”

  “Hya is a pyromancer,” Kian persisted irritably. After this night, his patience was exhausted. “She keeps her shop on this street. If you know the woman and the way, point it out.”

  The witch smiled with small white teeth, and her eyes glinted with knowing amusement. “I have seen you in my sleep, Izutarian, every night over this past season. You come to destroy the Life Giver, but that way is a road of pain and failure. A new age has been born … an age of unending night.”

  Kian struggled to keep his face placid. “Who are you?”

  The witch’s smile vanished as if it had never been. Without answering, she leaned over her now bubbling pot, and began muttering in some guttural tongue. Her hands crawled over the implements of her craft. She broke off a cluster of withered flowers and tossed it into the pot. Smoke billowed, spreading quickly. In moments, as if in testament to her unnatural power, a reeking fog shrouded the entire street.

  Kian and the others leaned forward with a collective gasp.

  Sweat now dotted the witch’s reddened cheeks and brow. Strands of silvery hair hung in listless ribbons from her skull. Her chants became a peculiar, one-sided conversation, as she rocked forward and back … back and forward. Something dark leaked from her flaring nostrils. Tears fell from eyes alive with the fire’s weak flames, eyes gone black through and through. Suddenly her utterings climbed to a wordless wail, and she arched her back and faced the heavens. Something writhed under her skin, then a vaporous darkness began oozing from her pores.

  “Mahk’lar!” Kian warned, drawing his sword.

  Before anyone could react, the inky substance pouring from the witch’s skin coalesced into a vaguely human shape and flew at Kian. The specter knocked him from the saddle, left him wallowing in the street. By the time he clambered to his feet, the demonic apparition was gone.

  As the demon’s for began to lift, Hazad and Azuri spun their horses in tight circles, searching the shadows. Ellonlef vaulted out of the saddle and ran to Kian, who was scrubbing his palms over his arms in disgust. It felt as though someone had sloshed a bucket of living eels over him. Ellonlef grasped his hands in hers, stilling his frantic motions. Her touch, no matter how ridiculous the notion, seemed to cleanse him. She pushed up his sleeves, but found nothing amiss. Then she looked into his eyes.

  “I was wrong to urge you to come here,” she said quietly, urgently. “I beg you, leave. We must all of us leave. Ammathor, I now know, was lost even before Varis took into himself the power of the gods. And should you perish to preserve this wretched place, the world will grow darker all the sooner.”

  Despite her forbidding words, Kian’s heart swelled. Azuri had suggested he might be smitten with Ellonlef, and he had avoided answering. In truth, no matter how unlikely it was, he loved this woman before him … but Varis was all he could afford to focus on. Not even a mahk’lar could shift him from his purpose.

  “I cannot turn aside,” he said for her ears alone. “Whether you urged me to come or not, whether Aradan is more depraved than all other kingdoms or not, I must face Varis.”

  Ellonlef dropped her gaze. “You are right … but I wish it were not so.”

  “Let us find Hya,” Kian said, yearning in his heart that he could flee with Ellonlef and his friends, but knowing he could not.

  Chapter 35

  The foursome again searched down the silent street and back up the other side, before Ellonlef finally spotted a familiar sign that she had previously missed. A little way down a dead-end alley, hanging from loops of frayed rope, was a sign of rough wood, upon which was painted a licking flame held in an open palm. While she had seen the sign before, its location was different.

  Ellonlef bade Kian and the others to wait as she dismounted. She looked up down the street, seeking but finding no immediate danger. A cold if gentle breeze brought to her ears the sound of distant music and bursts of laughter. The Street of Witches might be asleep at this hour, but the rest of the Chalice never rested and, moreover, seemed indifferent to the devastation that had befallen the world. She could almost imagine that all she had seen was a terrible dream. Her steaming breath gave proof of that lie, as well as the queer stars overhead.

  She cast a furtive glance at Kian, remembering his lips on hers, a warming recollection that seemed distant and dreamlike, and yet clear as if that kiss had just passed. Her face flushed at the memory, as it always did. She had not known how much she wanted to kiss him until he had acted first. And then she had not wanted him to stop, no matter that Hazad and Azuri had been watching intently. In truth, the future husband Mother Eulari had chosen for her, the comely fisherman Sadrin Corron, could have been present, and Ellonlef would have been untroubled. At that moment, the entire world could have ringed them about, and she would have been overjoyed that all knew the truth of her heart … a truth she had hidden from herself since the moment she saw him come out of the darkness to fend off the bloodthirsty Bashye.

  And now, here you stand, at the stoop of the woman with knowledge that will surely lead the man you love to certain death. Ellonlef had advocated that Kian face Varis, shamed him to it, in truth, which meant that if she lost him, then the blame fell to her. Yet, had he refused, then they never would have kissed in the first place, and the memory of him would have been only a fancy she seldom, if ever, considered. Had she let him go his way, she would have done her best to pass on the word of Varis’s intentions to any who would heed her, and then been away to Rida, where she would have lived out her life, for good or ill, with Sadrin Corron….

  Ellonlef abruptly pushed the thoughts away. She could go round and round the rest of her life, and never find a perfect balance between what could have been and what was. All that mattered was that Kian would face Varis, and she must do all she could to ensure that Kian survived that battle. If she failed in that-

  Ellonlef swallowed, but could not dislodge the sudden knot in her chest. Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, lest misery overwhelm her, she moved to the rickety door under the swaying sign.

  Hya’s new shop had been built onto the back end of a charred mud-brick building that tickled her memory. After a moment she recalled that the burned-out building had served the old woman the first time Ellonlef had met her. Thinking on that past meeting, she hesitated before knocking.

  Nearly ten years had passed since she came
to Hya, a meeting ordered by Mother Eulari. The old woman had not welcomed Ellonlef as a Sister of Najihar, but rather as an irritation that needed to be addressed, if only to be rid of her all the sooner. Ellonlef and Hya had both known why Mother Eulari sent her: Sisters of Najihar did not remain in any one place longer than the customary ten years, yet Hya’s stay far exceeded that, and by her own admission she had no intention of ever leaving. Mother Eulari wanted to know the why of Hya’s resistance.

  After cups of tea and inane pleasantries, Ellonlef had put the question to her. Hya’s answer was to smile darkly and declare, “I’m not leaving the Chalice. I am needed here far more than I am needed in either Rida or the rest of Aradan. I made that choice when your mother was yet on the teat, and Mother Eulari herself was no older than you are now. If Eulari does not like it, then she can command me to forsake our order, and I will-but here I will remain.”

  In the end, Mother Eulari had granted Hya her wish, and as far as Ellonlef knew, the old woman was still serving the Najihar Order, if by her own rules.

  After finding an area reasonably free of splinters, Ellonlef knocked on the door. When that drew no response, she pounded until she heard a steady grumbling from within. A bolt rattled and the door creaked open, revealing a milky eye shining in the pale yellow light of a firemoss lamp. That squinting orb glared for a moment above a wizened gray face, then flared wider.

  “You,” Hya said, her voice raspy with age. She opened the door farther, allowing the pungent scent of sulfur to assail Ellonlef’s nostrils. “Well, child, what do you want? Come to drag me off to some backwater kingdom, have you?”

  “No,” Ellonlef answered. The last few years had bent Hya greatly, and whatever womanly shape she might retain was lost under layers of bulky brown robes.

  “Well,” Hya grumped, “if you have come to beg scraps, I’ve none to give. Taken to eating rats, myself. Tasty, they are, with the right spices-though, of late, even salt is hard to come by.”