The God King hotf-1

by James A. West

  Kian pushed forward, as if driving against a strong wind. One step, then another. The closer he came to Varis, the stronger the force of the roaring flames pushed back against him. Around his feet, white stone began to blister and blacken, then melt like wax.

  When he stood within an arm’s length of his foe, Kian was able to see the uncertainty on Varis’s godlike face. Kian bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. He could almost taste the fear coming off Varis. With a shout, Kian lashed out with his sword. At the last possible instant, Varis lurched backward, lost his footing, and fell to his backside. The fires died with a blustery, swirling gust, leaving Kian standing unhindered over the king. And still no arrows fell, no guardsmen showed themselves, suggesting that Varis’s followers might not be so loyal after all.

  “You’ve goaded the wrong man,” Kian said coldly, the tip of his sword pricking the hollow of Varis’s neck, producing a tiny droplet of ebon blood. This was what Kian had hoped for, that although Varis could wield the power of gods, his flesh was as weak as any man’s. And because of that weakness-the same that rested within Kian’s own flesh-he would be able to destroy Varis.

  Kian tensed to thrust the sword through the new king’s neck … but hesitated. In that moment, Varis again had the aspect of a youth, a boy afraid for his life, wretched in his weakness. In the icy vault of Kian’s mind, he remembered Varis slaughtering the Asra a’Shah outside the temple, and all the dead in Krevar, those Varis had destroyed and turned into demons, and all the piled corpses in Aradan-men and women and children that a good king would have aided.

  “This night, you die,” Kian growled, burying any sense of pity he held in his heart.

  Varis’s fear dissolved into a merciless grin. “Truly?”

  Varis bellowed something, even as Kian fell into a crouch. A soldier was coming at him with a spear held low. As Kian twisted to meet this new enemy, he heard a whooshing sound. He barely registered the attack before the butt of a spear, wielded by an unseen attacker, slammed into the base of his neck. A flash of lightning seemed to crawl across his vision before a wall of solid darkness fell over him. His cheek met the scorched cobbles, but he felt no heat. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and shoved his hands under his chest, fighting to regain his feet. All the world was dark and ringing. Muted voices seemed to come from afar. Kian instinctively knew the situation was dire, but he focused only on standing. That was all he could think about. He had to stand and defend himself. He would not die like a whimpering puppy. He had to-

  The spear fell again, crashing into the side of his head, and he knew no more.

  Chapter 38

  When Kian came awake, he groaned at the splitting ache deep inside his skull. It took a moment to understand that his arms were stretched high overhead, and that he dangled some distance off the ground. It took a moment more to realize that he was no longer outdoors. He glanced up, slowly, the movement sending thudding waves through his head, making his stomach clench in revolt. Without question, he had been beaten while unconscious. The numerous pains all along his stretched body, and the taste of blood on his tongue, told him that much. One of his eyes did not seem to be working, and for a moment he feared Varis had gouged it out … but no, he could see, just. He forced his swollen eyes as wide as possible.

  In a circle around him, backlit by guttering rush torches, five men clad in hooded crimson robes muttered and tossed herbs on top of smoldering braziers. Sweetly fragrant smoke hung heavy in the dark hall. The priests, Kian saw at once, were of the Order of Attandaeus, the Watcher Who Judges. He surmised that he was in the infamous Gray Hall, where the kings of Aradan harshly judged the worst enemies and criminals of the realm.

  The high priest, marked out by the golden threadwork trimming the hem and cuffs of his robe, approached Kian, his face hidden in the shadow of his hood. Where his features were cloaked, his smoldering eyes reflected the hall’s thin light. In a deep voice, he asked, “Do you wish to beg atonement for your sins against King Varis Kilvar, the realm, and the gods?”

  “Aradan is lost and the Three dead,” Kian countered, voice thick with blood. “And your precious king is a murdering usurper.”

  The priest’s stare went white around the edges. “Your pain will be exquisite, dog, and your blood will sanctify this, the most blessed of places in Aradan, and will mark the dawning of a new age of righteousness.”

  Kian began to laugh, though he found nothing humorous in the priest’s words. Quite the contrary. “Varis destroys life wherever he finds it. Do you think you and your fellows will fare any better, should you misstep?”

  The priest backed away, features twisted with rage, but absent of any doubts Kian had hoped to instill. “Let the Watcher Who Judges reveal this man’s sins, and let the Life Giver’s judgment be fulfilled!”

  “Life Giver?” A hundred agonies rippled through Kian, as bitter laughter bubbled from his chest. The priests just stared. Apparently, he alone found humor in the bleak irony of the priest’s last words.

  “In a moment,” Varis said, moving before Kian, clad now in crimson robes.

  Kian’s laughter dried up as he took in the face hovering a little below him. “You have donned the mantle of king and priest? It seems you cannot make up your mind about what role you play.”

  “This is no game, Izutarian,” Varis said tightly. “Rather, as a god among men, I am everything to all people.”

  “You are nothing to me,” Kian said.

  “Oh, but I am. I will be you tormentor, your judge, your executioner … after a fashion.”

  Kian closed his eyes, striving for calm. He would die, just as Ellonlef and the others had said, and all for nothing. “You are a charlatan,” he said flatly, hoping that Azuri and Hazad had sense enough to take Ellonlef far from Aradan. It was a feeble hope, but all that he had.

  “We shall see.”

  Varis motioned to his servant priests, and four of them moved into a pool of deeper shadows. After a moment, the clank of iron and the rattle of chains filled the small hall, followed by the ponderous racket of heavy wheels slowly grinding dust and grit into the floor tiles. He watched with growing alarm as a brutal device lumbered out of the gloom under the straining muscles of the four priests. At first he was not sure what he was looking at, but in time he recognized the machine as a kind of chair. Stubby spikes jutted from every inch of the bracing that made up the headrest, back, and seat. Wheels, pulleys, levers, and coarse leather straps with studded buckles were affixed to each piece of framework. Holes had been bored into each arm, and steel spikes rested in a few of the holes, the heads rounded from pounding.

  “Do you like it?” Varis asked lightly from behind Kian, as if he wanted to see the appalling implement emerge from the darkness from Kian’s point of view. “It was last used over five hundred years gone. One of my forefathers deemed it too cruel, and his progeny agreed with him. In time, it was forgotten. Until now. This night, it will taste blood again.”

  “Are you too weak to face me with your own strength?” Kian taunted.

  Varis glided in front of Kian, his stare smoldering. He leaned in close, voice pitched so only Kian could hear. “You flatter yourself, Izutarian, if you think I would lower myself to the position of battling you, as would common men. You are an insect before me, albeit one that has proven it can unwittingly resist my power. Despite this undeserved blessing, the blood seeping from your wounds proves that your flesh is as weak as any man’s.”

  “Even your own?” Kian growled, wishing he could get his hands free, if only for a moment. That was all he would need to end this, here and now. It was a moment, he understood all too well, that he would never be granted … and one, in his mercy, that he had already squandered.

  “I am a man no longer,” Varis announced.

  “I’d forgotten, you are a god,” Kian muttered sardonically. “Well, if you want me dead, then why not the headsman?”

  Varis’s eyes blazed. “I will bring you pain because I hate you,” he hissed. “I
have hated you since I came out from the temple. You are an aberration. More, the world must know that I alone am indomitable among all men. Your inability to resist the suffering that I bring upon you will serve as the testament to that truth.”

  “A handful of godless priests represent the world?” Kian asked in mock astonishment, looking around the near empty hall. “I believe you need to convince yourself, more than world, that you are the stronger of us. I name you weak and petty, unworthy of a crown, or even a croft.”

  Varis abruptly stood away. “I’ve suffered this fool’s insolence too long! Lash him into the chair.” In a harsh whisper he added, “Know that the memory of your agonies will fuel my sweetest dreams for the whole of my existence.”

  Finished with taunting, Kian said, “Better to admit that you do not know if you are the stronger of us. That doubt, boy, will never leave you. No matter how far you rise, or how long you live, you will always wonder if I could have destroyed you, given but half a chance. That uncertainty will hound you all of your days, it will decide your vile actions against those you see as enemies. You will die bitter and spent. And on the day of your death, your downtrodden and enslaved subjects will tear down all your glorious monuments, sing thanks to whatever gods remain, and wipe your memory from the minds of men.”

  “I am immortal!” Varis screamed.

  Kian smiled darkly. “The fate of all men is to wither and die. You may run from the grave but, in time, death will find you.” He hoped for the world’s sake that this was true.

  As Varis backed away, looking uncertain, four priests came forward and cut Kian down. Next they stripped off his garb with sharp knives, none too careful of slicing his bruised skin. The high priest raised his arms. “The condemned will speak no further, unless to scream for mercy, which shall not come unless granted by the Life Giver.”

  “I will never scream or beg,” Kian growled.

  “Silence!” the high priest shrieked, as the others threw him into the chair. Blunt spikes gouged his bare flesh, and he ground his teeth together. I will not cry out, he vowed to himself, distantly wondering if he could remain steadfast.

  The priests fastened straps tight about his ankles and wrists. Kian remained still, for every movement, even a fraction, caused the chair’s steel teeth to bite all the deeper. I am an Izutarian, he thought, desperately trying to strengthen his resolve. I am a son of the frozen north! his mind raged, even as a pair of his tormentors drew short-handled scourges from the folds of their robes.

  He glowered at his captors, giving them a moment’s pause. Then the first scourge fell with an insignificant crack, parting his skin with ease. A hissing gust of breath rushed past Kian’s teeth as a sensation of ice and fire washed over his nakedness. Leather and steel-barbed tongues tasted him again, and this time he made no sound.

  Angered by his silence, one after the other, the priests set-to with malevolent vigor. The scourges snapped and tore in a frenzy, flaying skin to expose muscle, then lurid glimpses of bone. Kian bucked against the restraints at each blow. He clenched his teeth together to the point of shattering them, yet he did not make a sound.

  The flogging went on, marking moments that seemed to have no end. In short order, blood spattered at each blow, dripped in gruesome arcs when the many-tongued whips reared back, surged forward, and slashed down yet again.

  The flames of Kian’s agony rose higher and higher, until he thought he would go mad. His jaws ached to howl in protest, and part of him wanted to beg for mercy, but he refused himself that release. Soon, freshets of blood ran freely over his torso, and every muscle quivered with strain and anguish. When hooked barbs caught in his flesh, the priests dragged their implements free, ripping away bits of skin and meat. On and on, the scourges hissed and cracked, as the priests panted, sweated, and struck again. Kian’s blood began to patter under the chair with a sound like slow rain. Only when the steel barbs sank into his ribs and held, forcing the priests to stop in order to dig them free with blunted daggers, did Kian’s will break. His wordless scream filled the hall, a howl that savaged his throat.

  The scourging abruptly ceased. For the barest moment, Kian thought it was over.

  “Turn him,” Varis commanded softly.

  Shaking like a leaf, Kian could only stare in confusion. The priests gaped, their inaction voicing doubt.

  “Do as I bid,” Varis demanded, “or by turn, each of you will suffer his fate!”

  The priests struggled to unbind Kian, for his blood made every surface slick. He did not resist-could not have, even if he tried-as two priests pulled him from the chair, and held him suspended between them. Another cranked a wheel at the back of the chair, and the contraption soon became a flat rack. Unlike before, they did not throw him down, but eased him onto the torture device with a gentleness that seemed to infuriate Varis. Kian groaned when his torn body settled over and around the stubby spike embedded in the heavy frame. In the flickering torchlight, Kian saw his blood had pooled on the gray stone floor tiles, and he wondered in a blessed daze how much more he could lose before he simply expired.

  “Begin,” Varis said.

  The priests again faltered, looking among their number, as if these abuses were far beyond what even they considered reasonable. Under Varis’s unrelenting stare, they commenced. Kian screamed until all comprehension fled him. In the black that followed, he searched for and found an infinitesimal source of light. He embraced it, took into himself some measure of strength.

  When next he grew aware, he heard a gasping priest say, “He is near death. Surely his failings have met with enough … of this. Shall we bind his wounds?”

  Kian floated in delirium. The blood that had flowed so freely before had slowed to sluggish trickles, as if little remained in his veins.

  “Spike him,” Varis ordered, his breath harsh with diabolical need. “Hammer the steel deep. Ruin him.”

  At those words, Kian’s mind again moved into the void within his soul, where that comforting light waited. He seemed detached from his flesh, released from the bindings of pain, and he drifted up, now observing the proceedings with a mild indifference. The priests, muttering quietly and passing looks hidden from Varis, reluctantly turned Kian once more. He felt nothing, his body mercifully numb. Only the hitching rise and fall of his chest suggested he still lived.

  A priest pulled one of the steel spikes from its seat with a tremulous hand, and pressed it against the middle of Kian’s forearm. He turned toward Varis again, and Kian absently noted bright tears glinting in the well of darkness under the man’s hood. Varis jerked his head violently at the delay. Kian thought he saw anger bloom in the priest’s deep-set eyes and, as he raised the large hammer clutched in his fist, his gaze never left Varis’s.

  Varis did not seem to notice. His attention was on the length of steel held in the priest’s grasp, its tip creating a dimple in Kian’s bloodied arm. As the hammer fell, a rushing sound filled Kian’s head, an unnatural wind that carried the ethereal substance of his soul into absolute blackness.

  Chapter 39

  Ellonlef came awake with a start. For a moment she did not know where she was or why. Above her, a cracked and soot-smudged ceiling of mud brick and rough wooden timbers hung seemingly a mile away. Her breath steamed in quickly fading puffs. Then, in a stroke, it all came back to her. She sat up, expecting to see Kian, Azuri, and Hazad, but only found Hya. The old woman was still sitting in her chair, as if she had not moved from the night before.

  “Where are the others?”

  Hya snugged her blankets tighter under her chin. Her rheumy eyes fixed on Ellonlef. “Kian left soon after midnight. The other two went after him at dawn.”

  “Left … where?” Ellonlef asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

  “To the palace, to face Varis. He bid me tell you and the others not to come after him. Those two Izutarians dismissed me out of hand. I expect more respect from you.”

  Ellonlef threw off her blankets and scrambled to her feet. “I
cannot-I will not-abandon him!”

  Hya proved more nimble that she appeared, and in a blink was at the younger woman’s side, her grip strong on Ellonlef’s arm. “You will heed me … at least until we know if he succeeded or not. Sit, break your fast, and wait until Azuri and Hazad bring word.”

  Ellonlef reluctantly sat down on the rickety stool she had sat on the night before. Hya jammed a crust of bread into her chilled hands. She nibbled at the bread, but it tasted like dust on her tongue. The wait was long in coming.

  An hour after the day had given up its light, and the sun had gone back down, Hazad entered the shop, followed by Azuri. The sun-browned faces of both men held a pinkish cast from the bitter wind. It was not their colored cheeks that drew Ellonlef’s gaze, rather the haunted look in their eyes. She wanted to question them, but the words would not come. In that instant, a hundred possibilities flashed through her mind, each new one worse than the previous.

  “Varis tortured Kian near to death,” Hazad said hollowly.

  “We have little time,” Azuri added grimly.

  “Where is he?” Ellonlef heard herself ask, afraid to know. The answer was beyond her worst fears.

  “The Pit,” Azuri said, after Hazad made the attempt and choked on the words. “We have it from men we know and can believe that priests of Attandaeus loaded him into a cart just before dawn, and delivered him to the Pit soon after.”

  “Gods good and wise,” Hya rasped.

  Ellonlef’s blood went to ice. “We must free him before-”

  She cut off, unable to voice the atrocities that he would surely be facing already. The Pit was a place for lawbreakers condemned to death, though not a clean and swift death promised by the headsman’s blade. Those sent to the Pit were unrepentant beasts at the least, and insane, often as not. In that underground warren, in the absence of light, the darkness of their souls compelled them to acts vile beyond words. Most did not survive long-and Kian, doubtless insensible from his wounds, had been there for hours.