The God King hotf-1

by James A. West

  Hya continued to direct their course but she was flagging, growing confused, and more often than not led them down alleys that ended at brick walls. After taking a long, deliberate moment to get her bearings, Hya eventually led them to the mouth of yet another alley, this one cluttered with all manner of crates, pallets, and wine casks. To Kian, it looked like any of the other places she had led them, and his heart began to sink.

  Unperturbed by the skeptical faces surrounding her, Hya nodded in satisfaction as she peered at the broad doors end of the alley. After a moment of contemplation, she advised, “If things go wrong, do not hesitate to kill every last one of these wretched fools.”

  “I thought they were your trusted friends?” Hazad blurted.

  “This night, I have seen the true manner of friends in the Chalice. We can trust no one. Besides, I never said that I trusted them, least of all the man I seek.”

  Chapter 47

  The sound of approaching riders grew loud too quickly. Kian and the others sprinted down the alley as far as they dared, then threw themselves behind any available cover. Kian ended up sheltering at the back a wobbly pyramid of casks. Through a gap he saw a passing rider-one of the House Guard, by his green and gold cloak, and presumably a lead scout-glance down the alley, then abruptly jerk on the reins, his horse skidding to a halt. Leaning over, the warrior stared at the ground. The storm had provided cover before, but now marked out Kian and the others by the fresh tracks left in their wake.

  For a heartbeat it seemed that the guardsman would ride on, but then those trailing behind him, along with their leader, came into view and drew rein. There was a long moment of conversation, then all eyes turned to study the alley. All wore the green and gold cloaks of the House Guard, marking them as Varis’s men.

  The leader, a master of spears by the triple-knotted scarlet cord of rank on his shoulder, kicked his mount past the scout. Sword already in hand, he raised it up. “Show yourselves!”

  Kian gritted his teeth in frustration. There was simply no time for this nonsense. He tensed, then stood in one smooth motion, his own sword bared and ready. Borrowed though it was, and dull besides, it felt good in his hand. “I am the one you seek, though it would be best if you moved on, and told the demon-spawned fool you call king that you could not find me.”

  “Such is not my desire,” the master of spears said. By the glint in his eyes, he had given himself over to Varis’s rule heart, body, and soul. Without question, Varis had promised much to those who remained loyal.

  With a shrug, Kian thumbed the edge of his sword; it was sharper than it looked. “Come for me then, and learn the bitterness of your own death sooner than you might have otherwise.” The man’s glare shone with hatred. “Take him alive for the sport of King Varis!”

  At once, a handful of guardsmen surged forward, not one with a look in his eye that suggested they had any intention of following their leader’s command to keep Kian alive. As Kian settled into a guarded stance, ready to cleave spirit from flesh of the first fool to attack, a clamor went up behind him. Ellonlef screamed, and before Kian could look about, rough hands caught his shoulders and hauled him backward. Both Hazad and Azuri spewed curses. Hya said nothing. Kian struggled in vain, heels dragging through the snow. He only ceased when the pair of heavy doors slammed shut on the night, barring the storm and Varis’s henchmen from sight.

  Just as Kian was recovering his footing, the hands supporting him withdrew, and he tumbled to the dusty floor. At the same instant, a dozen or more steel arrowheads thudded against the closed doors. A few punched through, sending splinters flying. As his captors backed away, two other men, one stocky and the other merely fat, hacked the intruding arrowheads away with short swords, then hastily dropped a thick wooden beam into a set of iron brackets to bar the doors. Even as the hooves of the warhorses began pounding the doors, the men placed two more beams into brackets set lower and higher than the first.

  Kian jumped to his feet, sword slashing in a tight, deadly pattern to ensure no one came too near. Besides the shouts and thuds from without, the warehouse was silent. Two score rough men and women holding torches aloft stared at Kian and his fellows with a mingling of curiosity and contempt. Overhead, a dozen or more skinny children sat upon sagging rafters, eyes overly wide in their hungry faces. Stacked everywhere in the storehouse were towering mountains of everything from bolts of silk and wool, to casks of ale and wine and jagdah, to bound bushels of dried firemoss and swatarin. This last filled the air with a heady fragrance.

  A tall thin man draped in ratty, pale green robes stepped forward. He peered at the newcomers over a nose that was long and sharply hooked. After a quick study that ended on Hya, he offered a humorless and wholly unwelcoming smile full of small, pegged teeth.

  “O’naal,” Hya said, “it appears that you are my rescuer this night. Such is a change from the many times I have had to tease life back into your veins.”

  O’naal’s narrow-set black eyes were twin points of night that showed much cunning and little mercy. In a light, mocking voice, he said, “Sister Hya, as I have promised before, I am forever in your debt. However, these others … well, they are strangers to me, and so must be deemed trespassers. While the Chalice is a den of unlawfulness, it does have its rules and consequences-as you well know.”

  Hya harrumphed. “They are with me, you scrawny wretch. The big one is Hazad, the pretty one is Azuri.” She nodded at Ellonlef then, “She is a fellow Sister of Najihar. The last is Kian. They … we … I need your help to gain access to the palace.”

  At the mention of Kian’s name, O’naal’s long face grew thoughtful. “I had heard that our new and great king had given over an ice-born barbarian of that name to the Priests of Attandaeus for torturing. After they had their way with him and sent him to the Pit, a pack of rabble-rousers somehow managed to set him free. While the story of getting free of the Pit is hard enough to imagine, what I find even more unbelievable is that you could be that same man, who was said to have been tortured near unto death. Unless, of course, the priests of the Watcher Who Judges have gotten soft with their ministrations.”

  “It is enough to say that I was tortured, and that my companions ensured my escape,” Kian growled. “Now, it is in your best interest to help us, and the sooner the better.”

  O’naal turned his head. “Help you? I’m afraid that may be difficult.”

  Kian’s sword was still firmly in hand, but unless he intended to kill O’naal, and then die with his friends, it was useless. “Then why did you spare us?”

  O’naal frowned at the thuds against the door. “As I said, I am indebted to Hya, and it so happens that I despise being a debtor. That, now, has been seen to by my estimation … yet this other task, well….”

  “You expect payment,” Kian said in disgust, but closed his lips on anything else. Recompense, even if coerced, was acceptable if it meant he could get to Varis.

  “I’m glad we see things the same,” O’naal said. “And if I am not promised the proper degree of compensation, I expect King Varis will reward me with both gold and a vision of your head on a pike.” A few hard chuckles met this.

  Before Kian could utter a word, Hya asked, “What is your price?”

  “One hundred aridols,” O’naal answered promptly. “And mind that they are minted in the image of our befallen Simiis-his grandson, it seems to me, might well be the sort of sovereign to mingle gold with brass, and take the head of any honest man who voices a concern.”

  “Thrones have been bought for less,” Hya said evenly, “but you will have it. You have seen but a tenth part of my wealth, which I have earned over the years, so you know I can pay. Now, lead us to the palace by your secret ways.”

  “I suggest you and your followers join us,” Kian said, thinking he would rather have the scoundrel at his side than at his back, where the temptation to betray him might become overwhelming. “If you do not come along, you will surely die.”

  O’naal burst out laughin
g, a queer, high-pitched giggle. “And how, exactly, would that come to pass?”

  “By the very hands of those you pulled us from. What’s more, this shelter is doomed. If it has failed to catch your eye, the whole of the Chalice is burning-”

  “It’s true!” a young boy high in the rafters shouted down. “I just seen the Boar’s Belly catch!”

  Kian let that sink in and then went on, more grateful for that child’s shout than the boy would ever know. “By dawn, those who have not fled will be dead … or in chains, marching to some slave mine. Every step of the way, your backs will taste the lash. Better that you stay close to me and out of sight, until I kill Varis.”

  Behind Kian, the booms continued at the doors, and the first cracks were showing in the timbers. O’naal glanced at the doors with growing concern on his gaunt features. A loud cracking noise decided him.

  “Very well,” he said, almost choking on the words in his haste.

  “I suggest we all depart,” Kian said.

  “All?” O’naal repeated. He turned and waved his hand. “These are Chalice folk. They can make their own way, and be happier for it.”

  Voices rose in protest, and O’naal blanched. “All, then,” he consented.

  Not wasting time, he then called several men to his side, and they bowed their heads together. After a moment, his underlings ran into the shadows farther back in the warehouse. O’naal glanced at Kian and the others with something close to hatred pinching his lean features. Kian slammed his sword into its worn scabbard and smiled pleasantly. The rogue turned away with a snort.

  From the darkness came the strident squeal of rusted hinges opening. O’naal spoke with unconcealed disgust. “Come, my people, we are about to taste the lavish splendor of the palace.”

  He motioned Kian and the others to follow, gliding along like a ghost, as the gloom gradually swallowed them into a well of murk. A moment later, O’naal vanished from sight, seeming to sink into the ground. Before Kian could say anything, a fat man covered in layers of grime stood at his side bearing a torch. The flickering light showed a small black square in the floor. Around the hole sat several stacks of crates. The hidden door itself had several rolled rugs roped to it, the tattered ends far overreaching the edges of the door. From the underside of the door, a chain descended into the gloom.

  O’naal’s voice floated up from far below. “Get down here, you sister-loving fool! I do not fancy having rats gnaw at my ankles, while you stand there gawking.”

  The torchbearer hunched his shoulders at the insult, but tossed the torch down with something more shrewd turning his lips than an idiot’s grin. O’naal squawked, then cursed in anger. Quietly snickering, the filthy rotund man clambered down the ladder, indifferent to the verbal abuse hurled his way.

  Ellonlef gave Kian a look that seemed to ask if he was sure this was the road he truly wanted to take, and he nodded in answer. Dropping her eyes in acceptance, she followed Azuri and Hazad. Kian came after, carefully descending the shaky ladder into the underground passage.

  It took some time for all of the Chalice folk to make their way down, but those last moved much faster than had those before, compelled by the crashing racket above.

  “They are almost through the doors,” the last man warned from his perch on a rung just below the opening in the floor, even as he hastily lowered several bundles of unlit torches. After, he closed the trapdoor with a boom. Amid a cloud of sifting dust the man scrabbled down, coughing as he came. Kian guessed the carpets strapped to the door would hide the passage, at least for a while, and then only if the guardsmen were lax in their search.

  “Until a moment ago, only those I trusted the most knew of this passage,” O’naal said to Kian and Hya, grinding his teeth.

  “Given that you will live out this night with your head still attached to your neck,” Kian said, “the death of your secret is worth it, wouldn’t you agree?”

  With a doubting scowl, O’naal turned and snatched a torch away from the soiled fat man, and moved deeper into the tunnel. Kian and his companions joined him, with the rest of the rabble coming after. Soon, all the shuffling feet kicked up a gritty fog, giving the torches yellowed auras, and forcing all to wrap whatever scraps of cloth were available around their mouths and noses.

  Kian strode along in silence. Varis waited ahead. One or the other of them, perhaps both, would die this night. No matter what happened, he was ready. He did not see Ellonlef’s frequent, troubled glances in his direction. He had a purpose, a destiny some fool of a poet might say, and on that he rested his thoughts and his will.

  Chapter 48

  The underground passages wandered about like a nest of serpents, randomly wending this way and that in no obvious pattern or purpose. Near on a thousand years gone, they had been gouged from the bedrock beneath Ammathor by slaves seeking any precious stone, silver, and gold. Kian was grateful that he could recall little of the Pit, for while the warrens were separate, they were of the same nature.

  After perhaps an hour, O’naal led them into a large vault and moved to a ladder that climbed twenty feet or more before vanishing into the heavy blackness beyond the torchlight. He motioned to Kian.

  “There is a trapdoor above. Open it, and you’ll find yourself in a secret corridor within the palace walls-it’s as much of a warren as these tunnels, but they offer access to the whole of the palace. Few know of those ways anymore, so you have little fear of being found out … but, of course, caution is always in order.”

  “You are not coming?” Kian asked.

  “No, he is not,” Hya said in answer, “and neither am I. This is your task, and that of your companions. Should you fail, there is nothing anyone can do.” O’naal arched a speculative eyebrow at that, but did not ask what the old woman might mean.

  Hya took Ellonlef’s hand. “I will not try to turn you away from this task, but I beg, please be careful. There are too few of us left to risk even one.”

  Ellonlef offered the woman a reassuring smile.

  “Throughout the passage are peepholes that you can use to find your way,” O’naal said. “As well, there are firemoss lamps near the top of the ladder, along with a cistern of water to set them alight.”

  Kian looked about for a brief moment, seeing the many faces peering back. He then glanced at his companions. “Wait here until I signal you.”

  “Just as long as you do signal us,” Azuri said. “Do not get it into your mind to again go alone after Varis.”

  Kian nodded gravely, though he silently cursed his friend’s insight. In truth, however, he knew he would need them. He felt confident that the powers of creation he had gained back when Ellonlef healed him were enough to fully protect him from Varis, but he could not know if they were enough to best the youth. The most he could hope was that his small company would be able to confound Varis enough to lay deadly snares for him, perhaps draw him into a battle of flesh and steel.

  Knowing further delay would only breed doubts, he turned and climbed the ladder. At the top he came to a trapdoor, eased it open, and scrambled up into surprisingly cold darkness that smelled of old dust and rat droppings. He paused there, sword drawn, idly wondering at the chill. It seemed that Varis cared not if the palace wanted for heat. Pushing that aside, he concentrated on the unlighted surroundings. No enemies showed themselves, all was quiet-too quiet, given that Varis’s father was marching on the city. To Kian’s mind, servants and soldiers should have been making ready, their actions loud even behind the walls. Instead, he heard nothing save his own heartbeat.

  Kian searched the darkness until his hands found the cistern O’naal had described. A moment more, and he had the hemp handle of a small firemoss lamp in hand. He pulled the cork from the lamp’s top, used a dipper to pour water into the opening. Within heartbeats, the lamp began glowing with a bright amber radiance. He waved it over the opening. Azuri popped into view after several moments, followed by Ellonlef and Hazad.

  “Where do you expect Varis to be?”
Ellonlef asked, a touch breathlessly. Fear did not shine in her dark eyes, but rather expectation.

  Kian could see Varis in his mind’s eye. “He will be resting his scrawny backside on the Ivory Throne.”

  “How do we get there from here?” Hazad muttered.

  Kian looked this way and that, trying to imagine what waited in the gloom beyond the radiance of firemoss, wondering if he should call on O’naal for direction. Just as he was about to call down into the vault, he became fully aware of a strange sensation that drew his attention in a particular direction. Or, rather, he considered, repelling him was a better description. After a moment’s consideration, he knew Varis waited that way. Following that feeling, Kian nodded to the left, his insides queasy at the mere thought of going that direction. “There,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Chapter 49

  Letting his feet, heart, and churning insides guide him, Kian and his band moved through dark corridors different from the underground warrens in that the dusty walls were smooth, straight, and made of granite and mud brick, rather than haphazardly hewn from bedrock.

  Every step he took the more his guts roiled, as if sensing some foulness, a black poison. He was not sure if it was his mind playing tricks, or if it was some acquired instinct grown strong from his dealings with Varis, but he had little choice but to trust in those sensations. After some time spent creeping through the dark, Kian abruptly halted and raised the lamp.

  There before his face, set into the wall, was a small panel of wood with a delicate knob attached to its center. They had passed several of these peepholes along the way, but unlike all the others, this one had small hidden door that let into the room on the other side, the room, Kian’s instincts told him, was the heart of Aradan, the Golden Hall.

  He handed off the lamp with a quiet word to hood the light. Azuri used his cloak to do as bidden. Once darkness fell, Kian grasped the tiny wooden knob. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he gently eased the panel to one side along an age-worn track, revealing a pinprick of light that shone in the dark like a star hung in the heavens. Leaning close, Kian peered through and looked upon the Golden Hall, the throne room and seat of power of Aradan since the fall of the Suanahad Empire. Because of the hall’s renown, Kian had little trouble indentifying what he saw.