Suddenly, a clawlike hand clutched her shoulder, while another turned her face. Varis stared at her, rage and confusion warring on his monstrous face. “What are you doing?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Kill me if you will,” she gasped, “but you will not fill me with the corrupted life of the Fallen.”
“What are you talking about?” Varis demanded.
Ellonlef gazed at him through drooping eyelids.
“Answer me!”
Ellonlef motioned weakly toward the blank-eyed soldiers ringing them about. “They are all of them demons … cloaked in the flesh of men.”
Varis swung his head. His followers did not flinch or look away, only stared at him with sickening, mindless devotion. “They are men,” he hissed, “not demons. The Fallen are freed, yes, but these are men. They follow me because I have freed them from the horrors of Geh’shinnom’atar!”
“Have you never looked into their gazes after nightfall?” she asked. “Have you not seen how their eyes shine, like dull silver?”
“I do not see as-” he cut off abruptly, as if he had nearly revealed something he would rather not. He shook his head in denial. “You are a liar.”
“I killed one of those you sent after me, and it was no man,” Ellonlef insisted.
“Still your tongue.”
A suspicion, something she had previously considered, filled her fogged mind. “You do not know, do you? Kill one of them and see for yourself what you have given life to.”
“Do not listen to her, Master,” Uzzret urged, limping close to Varis. “She is naught but a deceiver, unworthy to look upon you, let alone bandy words with you.”
“I have use of her,” Varis said slowly. “As you will gain support for me from your brothers, so too will she garner favor for me among her sisters.”
“But there are others of her ilk, Master. Those, I’m sure, will be more pliable.”
“I have her, here and now. I will not waste the opportunity.”
“Master, please-”
“Stand away from me,” Varis snarled. He looked like a cornered beast.
When Uzzret did not move quickly enough, Varis shoved him away and moved to stand before one of the soldiers. Without a word, or any other indication of what he was about to do, Varis jerked the man’s sword from the scabbard and rammed the steel into his guts.
Ellonlef thought she might vomit at the sight of the impaled man’s wan smile, as he slowly sank to his knees. Varis stared, waiting expectantly for him to die. When he did, a sooty plume oozed from the wound and quickly dissipated. Then, as if the corruption of dead flesh had been held back since Varis had resurrected the man, skin sloughed off the rank meat beneath, and the corpse listed to one side and hit the sandy ground, bursting apart like an overripe melon. In moments, the remains had deteriorated into a pooling mess.
Varis staggered back, mouth hanging open. Ellonlef saw emotions crawl over his face, from fear to revulsion to bewilderment. He believed his own lies, she thought distractedly. He thought he could raise the dead, and that their devotion was a sign of thankfulness.
Varis suddenly spun and caught hold of another soldier’s chin. “Who commands you?” he rasped.
The soldier’s eyes rolled slowly toward Varis. “You, Life Giver.”
Varis let go and nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied, then an unreadable look crept over his face. He glanced back at the soldier. “Is there any higher than me?”
“Yes.”
Varis’s jaw clenched, as if to keep back the question he had no choice but to ask. “Who?”
“Peropis,” the soldier answered without hesitation, “the true and first daughter of the Three. At her command we have followed you, for she set you above us, in order for you to guide us to our destiny.”
“What does that mean?” Varis shouted, his voice shrill.
The soldier smiled broadly, showing true, if disturbing, emotion. “What once died has been reawakened. It is the place of men to serve or die, as the old order becomes new again in these ancient lands. Peropis, our queen, will reign again, as once she did. Soon, we all will serve her anew, as in the beginning.”
“She lied to me,” Varis muttered, features working with shock. “All of it … lies.” Ellonlef had never seen a man learn, all at once, that everything he believed was a deception.
“She lied,” he said again, as if unaware of those around him. “All of her promises, from the beginning … lies!”
Ellonlef watched, stunned, as Varis shivered with an immeasurable rage, then he began to swell. Veins, like thick black worms, bulged under his pale skin. His eyes grew wider, rolling from side to side in their sockets. His fingers clenched and unclenched, even as he spread his feet in a wide stance.
Ellonlef cowered back, unsure what might happen, fervently wishing she were anywhere else. From the corner of her eye, she detected movement. Turning, she willed herself not to cry out. In the distance, Varis’s entire army was looking on him with unnerving, glassy stares. Below their empty expressions, she sensed a guarded contempt buried deep within each of them.
Varis sensed it as well.
Without warning, he threw his arms wide. As one, the army cried out and surged toward him. Unbelieving, Ellonlef saw something being drawn from the army into Varis. She closed her eyes, thinking she was suffering a delusion. Yet, when she opened them, she saw the same faint, ethereal luminescence flowing from the thousands to the one. Flesh seemed to melt away from the many, even as they ran at Varis, their voices raised in demonic howls. Ellonlef cried out as the flesh of men was shredded by the demonic figures hidden beneath.
Varis’s bulging shape was glowing, and through rents in his skin, silver light streaked out. Varis opened his mouth as if to scream, but instead of words, fire shot forth to engulf his newfound enemies. Demonic flesh caught fire and burned bright. As the inferno raged, thousands of monstrous voices rose over the desert.
The mahk’lar closest to Varis were out of the deadly path of his fires, and they took the opportunity to leap at Varis. Before they could truly begin their attack, long dusty roots sprang from the sand, swarming over the bellowing demons, burrowing into their flesh. In the space of three heartbeats, what had looked like men became twisted knots of squeezing roots. From those tight weaves, black blood leaked and dribbled, and wisps of sooty vapor rose up. Varis scorched the bundles of roots, leaving only ash behind. Untouched, the essences of the demons coalesced into a seething black mass some distance away, then streaked from sight.
Instead of abating, Varis’s fury grew, and he unleashed it upon the world. The force of his inferno created great whirlwinds of sand and flame that rose up and up, coiling about each other until the sand became molten globs that rained back down upon the earth. Horses trumpeted in terror, and Varis blasted them as well. To the last, the demonic souls within the horses puffed out and vanished, fleeing into an unsuspecting world. Uzzret was running in the distance-and in the distance he died, a flaming candle in place of a man. He alone of Varis’s followers, was merely a man.