Glaring at Kian, he made a pushing motion, and the towering root-serpent arced skyward. A mouth had split open at its highest end, lined with sharp wedges of obsidian. It loosed a roar to water the eyes and slammed against the ground, splattering mud. With another of those monstrous cries, it rushed toward Kian, its girth plowing the earth, its scores of arms propelling it along at a terrifying speed.
To either side of the advancing horror, previously immobile Asra a’Shah scattered, their faces ugly with fear, their golden robes flapping in their haste. One of the dark-skinned men did not move quickly enough. A handful of lashing creepers caught him, twisted and tugged his limbs in different directions. The man howled and thrashed. With a grisly ripping sound, without slowing its advance toward Kian, the hell-spawned root-serpent tore the mercenary apart.
The mesmerizing spell of terror and awe broken, Kian and his companions lunged for cover. The root-serpent came on, until a whipping tail pulled out of the earth. A volley of Asra a’Shah arrows struck the beast’s flank, but did not slow the creature. Behind it, Varis washed fans of silver-streaked fire over the Geldainian archers, leaving behind only smoke and whirls of ash. Not even bones remained.
Kian jumped a rotten log and began veering side to side down a gentle slope. Fire splashed around him, searing trees, but missing him. Varis howled in frustration.
As the swamp thickened away from the temple, Kian slashed his sword at clutching vegetation. The beast on his heels closed the distance, tearing through the undergrowth without slowing.
Realizing he would never escape, Kian turned and brandished his sword. The root-serpent reared back, and Kian attacked. His flashing broadsword cleaved one of the creature’s arms, and then another. Where one fell in a quivering coil, two more took its place, bursting from the main stalk.
Forced into a slow retreat, Kian stepped, blocked, slashed. Over and over again. It was all he could do to keep the waving roots from grasping him. Splintered tips snapped and popped, tearing his jerkin and leaving burning cuts over his skin. All was a blur. Attack and counterattack, stroke and counterstroke. Running sweat stung his eyes, and his thick arms grew weak with the effort of swinging his blade. A terrible certainty flashed though his mind. I am about to die.
Of a sudden, the root-serpent smashed its head against Kian’s chest, knocking him into a tumbling roll down the slope. He splashed into a reeking bog and came up sputtering, and began splashing vainly to find his lost sword.
The root-serpent slithered down the hillside, battering aside trees and brush. But now it didn’t move smoothly. It lurched and struggled, as if growing weak. When it reached him, Kian lashed out with his fists. It was like striking a tree, and just as useless.
Roots pulsing with an unnatural heat swarmed over him. The stench of mold and rotted vegetation filled his nostrils. Thin roots wrapped him about, tightening … twisting—then they abruptly fell away and withdrew.
Kian floundered backward, warily eyeing the root-serpent. It lay quivering like a dying animal. Mold swarmed over its length, and putrid sap oozed from the wounds he had given it. By heartbeats, it rotted into a lifeless husk.
Kian did not waste a moment to ponder his good fortune. After digging his sword out of the muck, he cupped his hands to his mouth and cried words he had never before uttered. “Withdraw! For your lives, flee!”
Near and far, the order was frantically repeated. Retreating went against every instinct he knew, but it made no sense to waste lives against an enemy that he knew nothing about destroying. And the next root-serpent might not die.
Of Varis, Kian now saw him as an enemy, rather than a nuisance who had offered him a king’s wealth of gold for some grand expedition. Kian would protect a stranger for payment, and his friends for nothing, but either would face his wrath should they betray his trust. Varis had earned that fury when he had attacked Kian and the company.
Kian sloshed through the pool and scrambled up the slope, keeping as low to the ground as he could, bare inches from crawling on his belly. Peering through the screen of bramble, he found Varis on his knees, weariness carved into his wasted features. Like a physical manifestation of what bred behind his dead-white eyes, ebon streamers curled around him, wolves of smoke and spirit. Kian sensed that the real danger lay in those murky shapes.
Fleeing Asra a’Shah paid the prince and his dark companions no mind. Of Hazad and Azuri, Kian saw no sign. If they were alive—Kian refused to believe otherwise—they knew where to go.
With a last look at the youth and fighting off another wave of deep hatred, Kian began to run. As he made his way east, the world began to quake again.
Chapter 6
A steamy dusk was falling by the time Varis came around. He lay in the mud, exhausted. He could not have said how long he rested there before Peropis’s whispers filled his mind, urging him to rise. He gained his feet and stood shaking like a poisoned cur. One thing was clear, the Powers of Creation had nearly killed him.
In all directions, shattered trees lay atop one another. He vaguely remembered them falling as the world shook itself to pieces. Those trees still standing were naked of leaves, their limbs broken and twisted. Great slabs of broken stone leaned this way and that. He recalled them thrusting from the floor of the swamp amid geysers of stinking black water.
What he remembered clearest of all was the unbidden hatred he had felt for his enemies when he had come out of the temple. The source of that hate was lost on him, but it had a target—the Izutarian, Kian Valara.
Even now, loathing flared in Varis’s heart, and he wanted to chase the man down and make him … make him suffer. Yes, that sounded exquisite. If Kian stood before him, he would gladly torture the man to death, simply for the pleasure of it.
A loud gurgling noise drew his attention. He turned about like an old man, hissing at the pains wracking his wasted body. Where the temple had stood, now a spinning soup of black mud and floating leaves churned round and round in a broad pool. The edges crumbled into the whirlpool and were instantly pulled down. Varis eased farther away. He had no doubt the currents of this particular bog would take its victim to the bowels of the world, perhaps even to the Thousand Hells. He never intended to make that journey again.
Considering Geh’shinnom’atar, he looked about for the dark wisps that had followed him back from Peropis’s lair, but found no evidence that the souls of the Fallen were near. All were gone now, freed into the world. He wondered what effect the presence of demons in the realm of the living would have?
“You have done well,” Peropis said, her voice rising from the center of his mind. “However, you have much to learn, and you must learn quickly.”
Varis groaned in protest. “I’m tired. So weary....” The last syllable dwindled to a sigh, as he listed to the side and fell into a deep furrow. He sprawled there wheezing, almost too tired to breathe, and far too tired to climb out of the shallow grave.
Not a grave, he thought dully. This long trench marked the birthplace of his creation, a strange mingling of serpent and root, something he had dreamed of a few nights ago. He had no love of snakes, and after entering the Qaharadin Marshes it seemed he could not take a step without finding one. In his dreams of this damned swamp, the roots he walked over always became a writhing host of serpents. Somehow his fear had come to life, and he had sent it to destroy Kian.
“He must be destroyed,” Peropis whispered, as if hearing his thoughts. The uncertainty in her voice was unfitting for one so powerful as the Eater of the Damned.
“Kian will die soon enough,” Varis wheezed. “For now he is nothing more than an insect.” He almost believed it, except Kian had somehow defeated the root-serpent.
“The venom of some insects is deadly,” Peropis advised. “Trust that if Kian Valara treads the world much longer, he will become a formidable enemy."
“How?” he gasped. “He’s just a man, and I am more than that now.” In mockery of his words, when he tried to sit up his muscles quivered, and his hea
rt lurched in his chest. He fell back. “You promised me incorruptible flesh and an indomitable spirit, but I am weak as a kitten."
Ignoring him, Peropis said, “There is little time to deal with our enemy. What is of the utmost importance is that you heed my instructions. My time in this realm is short. My spirit needs rest.”
Varis found it difficult to concentrate. The world seemed to be sliding sideways to his strange eyesight.
“Calm your mind,” Peropis commanded.
He expected her to speak further, but instead of words, a cascade of images flashed behind his closed eyelids, racing faster than thought. At first he went rigid in alarm, but after a moment he relaxed and absorbed what he was seeing.
Varis drifted in the void of his own mind, like a speck of dust on the swells of a warm sea. After long moments he understood, on some level, that the knowledge filling him was some measure of the lost wisdom of gods. I have become a god, he thought randomly, if a god trapped in the weak flesh of a man. It was completely unfair.
A pulsing, shapeless presence gradually surrounded him. After a moment more of Peropis’s wordless guidance, he understood that that presence was the essence of all life. Plants had their own life, but even what resided in a great tree was miniscule compared to the life of a mere worm. The essence of life radiated outward from living things in silvery gossamer threads.
Tentatively, he reached out to take hold of the life around him, but the filaments shrank away. He scowled in irritation.
“Calm your mind,” Peropis intoned.
Varis was as far from calm as he could be. He had faced the horrors of the Thousand Hells, and he would take what was his. And so he did. He reached out with his mind, imagined himself yanking that shimmery essence from its previous owner and layering himself in its blessed warmth and power. Within that cocoon, his wounds rapidly mended. Strength swelled his muscles, thickened his skin, swept aside weariness. Varis gasped in ecstasy as he remade himself.
“That’s enough,” Peropis said sharply.
Varis was too enraptured with his own growing strength to heed her. He wanted to explore this gift, taste and feel it. He wanted to wield it.
“Enough!”
His eyes snapped open on a world that looked no different than it had when he closed them. But it was different, because he had changed, so much so. The strength of gods flooded him, and where the life of the world had struggled to flee from him before, now he refused to let it escape.
“Fool!” Peropis shrieked, driving a spike of agony into his mind. “You will destroy yourself!”
He winced away from the pain, angered. His thoughts raced. He could create life and he could destroy it, all on a whim. Nothing could stand before him. Not even Peropis.
Varis ignored her and wove not the threads of life, but the Powers of Creation. Roots twined together at his silent command, forming a woody seat that conformed to his every contour. At his thought, it lifted him upright, the weaving became more elaborate, until he found himself sitting upon a high throne.
Darkness lay thick over the swamp, but to Varis’s eyes everything was lit by an otherworldly glow. It lay everywhere, was in everything, and it was his.
He threw his arms wide. Like a dry sponge doused with water, he soaked in the pulsing glow, drew it deep. Where life existed, he ripped it away and took it into himself.
By heartbeats, the swamp fell deathly still, quiet as the grave. With the death of many thousands of minuscule creatures, he grew stronger, filled with the essence of life until he shone like the sun, like Pa’amadin himself.
Varis’s laughter exploded over the clearing, richer than ever it had been, reverberating outward through the swamp in crushing waves. At a stray thought, flames the hue of rainbows surged from his fingertips, and in the joy of its creation he swept them around in a wide arc, destroying already dead trees. Where he ruined, he created again, and destroyed again. Drunk with the bliss of so much power, his laughter became a roar that shook the ground.
Without warning, the tide of life coursing through his veins became an uncontrollable flood. The elemental forces continued to pour into him, but the outflow became a scant trickle. He tried to sever the torrent, but it filled him further, bloating him like a carcass in the sun.
One of his eyes burst, and a wriggling surge of maggots cascaded down his cheek. Even as he frantically scraped them away, a tender green shoot tore through the skin of his palm, growing rapidly. The shoot became twining roots that burrowed through the meat of his arm and into his chest. A bulge grew on his belly, swelling and writhing, then erupted in a flood of skittering beetles. They scurried madly over worms pushing out of his skin. He opened his mouth to scream, but a geyser of fire roared out of his throat and scorched a long gouge through the tattered forest—
Then Peropis was there, a transparent ghost. She let him suffer for a moment, and then drew close. Her eyes swam before his, growing wider, blacker, pulling at him, as if trying to drag his soul from his body. As suddenly as it began, the inrushing flood cut off, leaving Varis limp, his torn flesh oozing black blood, but free of unnatural growths.
“Open yourself again,” she commanded.
Varis did as he was told, though he would rather have not. This time it took a long while before his ravaged flesh mended enough for him to stand on his own.
“Enough,” Peropis said, and Varis immediately strangled the inflow. After looking him over, Peropis hurled him from his throne. He landed hard, knocking the breath from his chest. High above, shimmering like a vision, she gazed down on him with utter contempt.
Outraged, Varis rolled to his hands and knees, but one look at her told him to bite back his fury. One day he might rise against her, but for now he was little more than an acolyte, and she the Eater of the Damned. Better to bide his time and plan his vengeance.
“You foolish child,” she snarled, no longer beautiful, but hideous with rage. “You are still mortal. Mere flesh cannot hope to hold the barest fraction of the Powers of Creation. I trust you have learned this lesson well?”
Varis could not help but cower from her wrath.
“If you desire to be my counterpart,” she went on, “you will heed me at all times.”
He nodded fearfully.
“Stand before me!” she commanded.
Varis gathered himself and stood, no part of his face betraying his emotions. If you desire to be my counterpart, she had said. He had no intention of being her counterpart, or anyone else’s.
Some of Peropis’s wrath fell away. “Life, by its very nature, is the easiest power to manipulate, because it is already created. True creation, that of making something from nothing, is a thousand and a thousand times harder, and equally as dangerous. Especially for humankind.”
“I will succeed,” Varis boasted weakly.
Peropis smirked. “Indeed? The life you took, that of worms and beetles and twigs, even that was too much for your flesh to contain. That meager life recreated itself inside you and sought escape, as life always will when wielded by those who cannot control it.”
“Did I not create fire?” Varis demanded.
“A fluke,” Peropis said dismissively. “You were fortunate it did not destroy you utterly.”
Varis clenched his teeth and said what he knew she wanted to hear. “What would you have me do?”
“You’ve an army to build, and there are leagues to go between you and where it waits. On this journey, it would seem that there is also much for you to learn.”
“Why would I need an army?”
Peropis’s glower suggested that she had never been questioned, and would not tolerate it. After he was sufficiently cowed, she answered, “For now, you are too weak to do what must be done. When I deem you are fully ready, I alone will grace you with the ability to control the force of all life around you. In the meantime, you need the arms of men to protect you.”
“But you promised me—”
“Never think to make demands of me,” she interrupte
d. “I give what I will when and of my choosing, and I take what I will when I desire.”
Anger warred with yearning in Varis’s heart. Apparently his mistrust of her had been well-placed. He also recognized that time was on his side. He would grovel before her, as she obviously wished, but only until his own ends were met. I will grow powerful, more so than the Three ever were—mightier even than Pa’amadin!
“Forgive me,” he said aloud, bowing his head meekly.
Peropis smirked. “I have the means to deal with Kian Valara, and so I will do so in my own time. Your task, Prince of Aradan, is far more important. Heed me....”
Varis listened intently, and despite his growing distrust, he found Peropis’s words intriguing. But intriguing or not, she had made herself an obstacle to him.
One day soon, he would remedy that.
Part II
New Gods
Chapter 7
Thunder filled the world and the tower crumbled under Ellonlef’s feet. A scream tore from her throat when a massive sandstone block crushed her legs, pinning her to the stairs. Smaller chunks battered her head and shoulders. Dust billowed, clogging her throat. A growing shadow blotted out the thin light. Ellonlef looked up to see another huge block crashing down through the stairwell’s hollow center. Her mouth opened in terror and—
—Ellonlef sat up, hands batting aside covers and pillows. It took a few moments to realize she was safe. Sweat beaded her brow, dripped down her neck to dampen her linen shift. She gulped a deep breath into sore lungs, and sighed it out.
The harsh dust in her dream had been real, and left her throat and chest raw. The falling stones had also been real—she had lumps and bruises to prove it. But her death had not occurred the day prior.
She had run headlong down the stairwell, knowing she was near the bottom, but not near enough. Then, like a ragged mouth, an opening had appeared in the wall, letting in a wash of hazed sunlight. She had not hesitated to jump through the gap and into thin air. Rather than a long plummet, she had dropped a short way and landed on the wall walk. The tower had toppled in the opposite direction, sparing her from an early grave….
The God King (Book 1) (Heirs of the Fallen) Page 4
