His elation was tempered by one thought.
Ellonlef’s questioning had spawned a revelation in his heart, or at least a suspicion. Peropis, though she had not elaborated, had warned him that Kian was a true danger. In reversing the truth of what had happened at the temple, by blaming Kian and claiming that some measure of the powers of creation had stolen into himself, Varis believed he understood why Kian made Peropis nervous. The longer he considered it, the more he understood that some part of the powers of creation had indeed graced the mercenary’s flesh, giving him the ability to survive the fires Varis had used to try to turn him into a cinder, and to prevail against the root-serpent he had birthed by mere thought. It was the only answer that made any sense.
Unlike Peropis, however, Varis did not fear Kian. The bumbling warrior could not know what had given him his protection. He no doubt believed it was luck, or that his own prowess had spared him. Varis smiled wanly. Kian, with his secret now known to Varis, could pose no threat. Not in the slightest
Chapter 14
When Otaker saw the dead begin to rise and join the jubilant throngs, he leapt off the back of the wagon and ran as fast as his old legs could carry him, crying out the name of his lady wife. Ellonlef followed. Others came as well, those who had loved ones who had died in the keep.
Ellonlef felt as if she were caught in a frenzied herd of sheep, all bleating of “miracles” and “salvation” and the “blessed one.” What caught her unawares was that some part of herself responded in kind to their ecstasy, embracing the hope Prince Varis offered. Another part of her, however, reeled from what she had just witnessed. As a healer, she had seen men rise from apparent death, and as a scholar, she had read of similar accounts, but the frequency of those occurrences were rare and, in the end, often explainable. And yet, between one moment and the next, Prince Varis Kilvar had given back the lives and vitality of hundreds of men, women, and children who had been reduced to nothing save leathery skin and bones. Without question, the dead had been truly dead. Her mind shouted that it was impossible, even as her eyes made a liar of her intellect.
Ahead of her, Otaker wheeled into his chambers, and Ellonlef nearly slammed into him when he unexpectedly halted. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lady Danara regarded her husband with a flicker of recognition, but little else. For the most part, her gaze was as cold and blank as it had been when she was without the breath of life. She croaked a few unintelligible words.
Otaker rushed to her side and took her hand. Concern flickered over his features when he touched her, but just as quickly he looked into her face, seemingly dismissing his unease. “It is over, my love. It was just a dream.”
Danara fixed a disconcerting gaze on him, her voice thicker than ever. Her words were understandable, though the voice with which she spoke was not her own. “Where is the man who destroyed the veil between the living world and Geh’shinnom’atar? Where is the man who freed us from the Thousand Hells, he who will lead us.”
Otaker sat back from his wife’s emotionless expression, his mouth working soundlessly as he sought an answer.
“I do not think she means Kian Valara,” Ellonlef said quietly. Her heart’s rhythm had taken on a slow, heavy beat. If she was right, then that would affirm that Varis had indeed lied about his and Kian’s roles.
Lord Otaker cast her a nervous look, then turned back and gripped his wife’s shoulders. “I do not know of whom you speak, my love. Perhaps if you describe him?”
A muted expression of bliss fell across Danara’s features. “His are eyes that do not see, but he will never stumble for want of sight,” she murmured, her voice a wet rattle. “His heart does not beat, yet his breast rises and falls for want of breath. The blood of his veins flows as shipwright’s tar, black and hot, but without the promise of life. He is the one who dared pass through the veil to suffer the agony of death, and now lives again. The pale one, the Life Giver, once a man, now a god made flesh. Where is he?”
Ellonlef caught her breath, the triumph of confirming Varis’s lies paling in the light of Danara’s revelation: a god made flesh. Those words chilled her heart in a way she could not describe, made her flesh creep.
Otaker swallowed audibly at his wife’s description of Varis—a description he knew was one that she should not have known. “The one you seek, Prince Varis, is in the market square.”
“He is a prince no longer,” Danara said in a reverent tone. “He is a king of all men, the king of all kings. I must go to him. We must go to him … we must serve his will.”
Otaker again gripped Danara’s hand, but he might not have been there, for all the attention she paid him. She rose from the bed as if her limbs were not her own, pulled free of her husband, and retreated from the chamber, shuffling along at first, as if uncertain of the ground beneath her feet, then striding out with more confidence.
“I’m sorry,” Ellonlef said when the woman was gone, though it was not sorrow she felt, but formless, suffocating dread.
“For being right about mistrusting Prince Varis?” Otaker responded, gazing on the doorway through which his wife had exited.
“No, my lord,” Ellonlef said. She hesitated, not wanting to utter what else needed to be said. She assured herself that Lord Marshal Otaker was no fool, and that he had a heart of iron, besides. “I am sorry for the loss of your wife.”
His tears, which had so recently dried in the bright light of hope, began to flow again. “She is lost. They all are. Gods good and wise, what is happening, Sister? Each day the lands continue to rumble and tear apart, the Three are dead, the heavens burn by night, and into our midst comes a youth who can bring forth the dead from the torments of the Thousand Hells … but the risen dead are not the living who we once knew.”
Ellonlef could only shake her head. She had no answers and too many questions.
In the corridor, more people were following after Otaker’s wife. It was easy to tell between the resurrected and those who had come in with Otaker and Ellonlef. Those who had never known death looked torn between joy and confusion, a horrid mix of emotions that lent their faces a gruesome aspect. The revived walked without looking left or right, but instead focused their glasslike stares on the corridor ahead and beyond, as if they could see through stone to the man they sought waiting beyond the keep.
Soulless. The word drifted through Ellonlef’s consciousness, slid across her heart like a serpent of ice. She told herself that such an idea was nonsense, that these people were in states of shock.
But it was not true, and she knew it. Even Otaker saw the truth, though he did not want to see. Whatever had made them human was now gone.
Despite the distance to the market square, a rousing wave of cheers flooded to the keep, and the drumming of many feet and clapping hands vibrated the ground. Together, Otaker and Ellonlef moved to the balcony. From their vantage they could easily see over the keep’s outer wall to the market.
Torches and firemoss lanterns illuminated a boiling cauldron of humanity. At the center of that spectacle, once more elevated on the back of the wagon, Prince Varis Kilvar scanned the denizens of Krevar with a calm eye.
“They are his now,” Ellonlef said, speaking of the risen dead. “They will follow him to their death—their second death—if that is where he chooses to lead them.” As well, she knew that those who had not perished were his also. They had seen and received a gift of a miracle, and so would count that blessing as a debt they owed.
Otaker said nothing, only stared, gaze fixed on something far beyond the market square and Varis Kilvar.
At Varis’s side, Magus Uzzret was waving like a fool, shouting indistinct words to further enliven the throng. Knowing him as a reasoned man, his frenzied actions left Ellonlef nervous to the point of taking flight. She saw in Uzzret a man converted from absolute unbelief, to a man who worshiped a man in place of the gods. The same held for the denizens of Krevar. Still, it was one thing to see the townspeople behave with such abandon at the observance of a single
apparent miracle, and quite another to see Uzzret act so. He had ever been the image of calm, measured, even pompous sagacity. At least until the earth had split open and swallowed half of Krevar, and the Three had begun to burn.
Those things have changed us all.
And now, Ellonlef considered further, after the townspeople had died by the score, comes a man to perform the wonder of restoring life. No matter his intentions, or what had caused the changes in him, Ellonlef knew that Prince Varis Kilvar was more than a mere man.
But what is he? Could he truly be a god made flesh?
As if in answer, Uzzret suddenly bawled, “ALL HAIL THE LIFE GIVER!”
A cheering roar filled the night, punctuated by shouted praise and blessings. Varis accepted their adulation with an air of preeminence. Around the square, all but unnoticed, the resurrected gathered and stared. They stood like dolls, a gruesome imitation of life.
After several more moments, Varis raised his hands for silence. The quiet he sought was long in coming.
“My people,” he said when the clamor died down, voice carrying strong and sure in the cool night air. The throng exploded again, as if his laying claim to them filled some deep emptiness in their hearts with gladness. After they quieted once more, Varis continued speaking, but now in grave tones.
“I come to you not as your prince, but as a witness to your suffering. Some time past, I went into the kingdom searching for answers to troubling claims. I admit that I disbelieved the reports of Aradan’s distresses. How could the foundations of our great kingdom be crumbling? How could Aradan be dying and her people suffering, when Ammathor yet stood high upon the mountain, overflowing in gold and luxury, her lords wanting for nothing?”
Not a little grumbling met this statement, but Varis quickly went on.
“Once I passed beyond the protective shade of mighty Edaer’s Wall, I did not have far to look before finding that the long-ignored desolation of my people was true. As was your right—all of you here, and your brothers and sisters scattered abroad in every corner of the realm—you have, for a generation and more, pleaded for support to rebuild that which time and our enemies have gradually brought to ruin and despair. Instead of help, you received platitudes and promises as dry and dead as the dust that blows over the Kaliayth. Despite these affronts, you continued to bleed and die to defend the heart of Aradan.”
Now a constant low muttering filled the night. While those he had drawn from the Thousand Hells gazed at him expressionlessly, many of the rest now seemed angry with the prince and his House. He absorbed those ill-feelings with bowed humiliation. Ellonlef had listened intently, wondering just where the additions to Varis’s original tale would lead, but it was to Otaker which she paid the closest attention. A troubled frown pinched his brows.
“There is some truth to his words,” Otaker said slowly, as if doubting his own words. “Yet the people of Krevar have never felt like slaves or castoffs.”
Ellonlef was not so sure. “Perhaps, in their secret hearts, they believed that they were enslaved, and only needed someone to give them leave to voice their complaints.”
Before Otaker could respond, Varis raised his head to speak again.
“I come to you ashamed of the Kilvar blood that flows through my veins,” the prince said. “I am humiliated by my forbearers’ selfish edicts, those laws which have bound you to lives of thankless servitude. I see now the weariness of your souls and the bitterness of your hearts, for these troubles infect me, as well. Understand that I do not stand in judgment of you, for to judge you is to oppose the righteous awakening in myself. I see the evils that have been done to you and your children. These crimes must rightly destroy all the tethers of fealty to my bloodline.”
A few furious shouts now punctuated the mutters. Magus Uzzret drew himself up and cast a baleful eye over the gathered. “Let the Life Giver speak!”
That title served as a reminder of what the prince had done for them and their loved ones this night, and swiftly settled the crowd.
Varis placed a gentle hand on Uzzret’s arm and nodded his thanks. Even with the distance, the youth looked stooped by long, hard years. His was the perfect face of a martyr.
“My shame alone cannot amend the sins of my forefathers,” Varis called, “so I beg forgiveness for myself, one who has seen that he has long been your unwitting enemy. For my part, I vow to stand with you, now and forever.”
“Praise to the Life Giver!” someone shouted.
In moments, that chant reverberated around the market square. Where there had been anger, now there was again only hope and reverence. Varis scanned the faces, his own expression fierce, uncompromising. Shame and humility had vanished. After a long pause, his voice rose strong and defiant in the night. Impossibly, he even began to look stronger, as if merely breathing the night air gave him vitality.
“The Kingdom of Aradan stands on the brink, caught between the unimagined hope of new glories and the anguish of the old ways. In this moment, here and now, a choice must be made. Will you allow your enemies, and all their cohorts, to push you into the darkness and obscurity of a forgotten tomb?”
“NO!”
Prince Varis waited for quiet to fall again. In the still, he quietly asked, “Will you, then, stand with me against a secret and striving usurper who thinks to gain a failing kingdom for his own and shape it into a device of oppression worse than the one before it? Will you stand with me to topple the old kingdom, so that it might not rise against you again?”
“Yes!”
“All hail the Life Giver!”
“Then lend me your strength, and I shall lend you my authority, and together we shall right the wrongs done to you. We shall destroy this usurper and those who have sided with him. We will crush those who have greedily reaped from your toil and suffering!”
“All hail the Life Giver!”
“Our enemies will beg for mercy, but we shall not grant them peace. From the ashes of their pyres, a new age will rise, a new Aradan, a new world. I shall lead you there, and we will take for ourselves glories long denied us!”
“All hail the Life Giver!”
The raucous cheers went on and on, before a new chant went up.
“When, Life Giver?”
“When?”
“WHEN!”
“Soon!” he cried. “We will sever the collars from the throats of our brothers and sisters, and we will destroy our foes. Some of you will march east with me to Ammathor. Some will remain and hold this fortress, your home, until I return. The Ivory Throne, and all for which it stands, must fall and be rebuilt. Lend your strength to mine, and from us shall be born a new and golden age!”
“ALL HAIL THE LIFE GIVER!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
Chapter 15
While the chanting continued, Otaker led Ellonlef into the quieter reaches of his chambers. With a tired grunt, he fell into a high-backed chair. Scrubbing his scalp with a shaking hand, he cleared his throat.
“The Life Giver,” Otaker said hollowly, “wastes no time. In one stroke, he has subverted the mightiest fortress in the history of Aradan, and turned her people against the realm and the king—his own grandfather. Yet when he spoke to us, his ire seemed directed only at Kian. Now the prince has lain plans to strike at the very heart of Aradan and the Ivory Throne, as well. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“In your misery,” Ellonlef said gently, “you misremember Varis’s words. He spoke of destroying Kian and all who sided with him. As to his change of heart, well, he would not be the first leader to hide his true intentions in order to gain a foothold of trust.”
“As you say,” Otaker said, his eyes downcast and empty.
After a moment, he gave himself a vigorous shake and looked up, hurt, but not yet broken. “Varis named Kian a dangerous man with a desire to raise an army, yet from all indications, it is Varis who is building the army.”
“I believe,” Ellonlef said,
speaking of an idea that had slowly grown in her mind, “that Kian and Varis’s roles are reversed from what the prince told us. If so, then Varis not only brought the dead back to life … he also may have killed them by the same means he leveled against Kian—using the powers of the gods. In all of this, I believe Kian may well be a scapegoat completely unaware of Varis’s intentions.” She considered a moment, doubting what she said next, but needing to put voice the option. “In truth, Kian may not have had any dealings with Varis.”
“No,” Otaker said contemplatively. “By twisting the truth, and weaving Kian’s and his role into those lies, our young prince has shown us the man he fears most: Kian Valara.”
“Finding Kian could be a boon,” Ellonlef suggested, “if indeed he has some of these godly powers himself. But he is also a mercenary. I doubt personal honor will keep him from distancing himself from Aradan and Varis. For all we know, he could be back in Izutar already.”
“You are right, of course. That leaves us to spread the warning. Varis seeks the Ivory Throne, and he must be stopped, immediately. I will muster—”
With a raised hand, Ellonlef forestalled what she knew Otaker was about to say. “Some few of your men would turn aside from the allure they feel for Varis, but most will not. Since coming to Krevar, I have watched your people’s hardship as they scratched out a miserable existence for themselves, mostly without aid from the crown to which they have sworn fealty. Varis has already cut the tenuous threads of loyalty to the Ivory Throne and bound them to himself. Moreover, I am sure that all the risen dead are Varis’s until their last breath.”
She paused until Otaker gave a nod indicating that he understood that those devoted souls included his lady wife. She empathized with his anguish, but pressed on.
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