Varis looked to his grandfather and grinned in satisfaction. Simiis had backed a little way off, but now stood immobile, his dark features a sickly yellow pallor. Varis’s palm had seared a black print, from which rose tendrils of smoke. Pink wetness flowed down from that dread wound, leaving a string of inflamed welts.
“What are you!” Simiis shouted again.
Varis’s voice boomed through the Golden Hall. “I am the Destroyer of the Well of Creation and Geh’shinnom’atar. I am the coming king, emperor of the coming dawn. I am the god of men!”
He stepped forward and caught his grandfather’s face in his blazing hands. Infinitesimal black threads branched out under the king’s skin, burrowing like worms into his flesh and organs. Simiis’s screams became a single piercing note of agony. No matter how he struggled, he could not break free. The king’s cheeks sank inward, his once proud features contorted by a grotesque sneer.
Varis shoved the wilted figure away. Simiis staggered, weakly brushing his hands over his skin, as if to dislodge a stinging host of ants. By now, his howl had closed off to a rattling gurgle. He abandoned wiping at his skin and set his nails to work, clawing, digging, leaving furrows that steamed. Of a sudden, Simiis went still. His fingers rose to his throat, and his mouth yawned wide, loosing boiling clots of blood that gushed past his teeth and spattered on the marble tiles with a hiss.
His eyes, full of fear and uncertainty, rolled toward Varis. One of those orbs burst, then the other, leaving behind steaming sockets. Where corrupted blood had burst from his mouth before, now flames sprang forth. In three heartbeats, fire exploded from a dozen tears in his skin. In the span of time it took for him to pitch over and strike the marble tiles, King Simiis had been reduced to a husk of spent ash.
Varis gradually subdued the fires within himself and his radiance dimmed, until he again resembled a mortal man. The assemblage’s stark panic of moments before had been replaced by a soul-freezing distress so deep and terrible that a handful of the feeblest lay sprawled in death. Those who remained could not look at him, and shivered like stricken hounds. As if by some unspoken command, they pressed their foreheads to the floor, weeping vows of fealty.
Pleased, Varis made his way to the dais and climbed to its apex. He looked over the throne for a long, silent moment. By king’s law, no one save the king and the kingdom’s greatest craftsman could come this close to the Ivory Throne. Its beauty, even at arm’s length, was greater than he had expected, for many a wondrous thing lost its allure up close. With a reverence he felt through every inch of his body, he carefully turned and sat upon the sculpted seat. The Ivory Throne was his, and so too was Aradan.
Chapter 31
Kian rode ahead of Hazad and Ellonlef, alert for any sign of Azuri. The mercenary had ridden away from them a half turn of the glass earlier in order to scout the road ahead. The desert was bereft of activity, but Kian refused to let his guard down.
Food, more than anything else, ranked highest on their priorities. All kept an eye out for anything edible, be it desert quail, adders and lizards, or plants, of which there were few enough upon the Kaliayth. Kian had been hungry many times in his life, but this was the first time he could recall that his belly had begun to sink in and his ribs, normally covered with lean flesh, had begun to show prominently. All of them, even their horses, had taken on a slightly gaunt look. Despite persistent hunger, Kian took comfort that Ammathor was not so far distant that he and his companions would starve to death in the desert.
They had ridden from their last camp before sunrise, and now dawn was painting the desert a dirty, bloody red. Indifferent to the unending smoke, a few waking birds called from thornbush and shrub, sage and juniper. The lightly dewed vegetation added a heady aroma to the pungent reek of the burning Qaharadin, now far to the west. Kian did not want to admit that he was getting used to the way the smoke filtered the light of day into an ugly red-brown, but that was a lie. The idea of a blue sky and a golden sun had become a fading, dreamlike memory.
His movements weary, Kian looked back over his small company. Hazad was already sneaking sips from his dwindling supply of jagdah, while Ellonlef rode in stoic silence, just as she had the day before, and the day before that. His was a pitiful band, all the more because their hope of soon reaching Ammathor was a double-edged blade. Food and shelter might well await them, but there was also Varis and, quite possibly, their demise.
Facing forward at the sound of pounding hooves, Kian focused on a rider galloping toward them. He automatically reached for his sword, but the rider proved to be Azuri, who reined in, his tense expression suggesting that he had found danger.
“Did you find anything besides sand and goat droppings?” Hazad asked, easing his mount closer. Ellonlef did the same, her eyes over-bright with hunger.
Azuri nodded. “Men, just over the next rise.”
Kian’s eyes narrowed. “Bashye?”
“No. Pilgrims, following after a begging brother. They are camped right in the middle of the road.”
“Fools all, but harmless,” Kian said, relaxing.
Azuri did not look so sure. “These pilgrims are armed, and I judge that they are not new to the swords and bows they carry. They have the look of warriors.”
Kian again noted Azuri’s edginess, but this time he also noticed the man’s growing disinterest in keeping his skin and clothing clean and tidy. All of them were struggling under the strain of hard traveling across the desert, and their concern for what they would face in Ammathor only made matters worse. anything between was like salt in a wound.
“Even this close to Ammathor,” Kian reasoned, “Bashye pose a threat. I dare say it would be foolhardy for anyone, pilgrims included, to go about unarmed.”
“Perhaps,” Azuri answered doubtfully. “However, I suggest we string our bows and loosen our swords.”
“I agree,” Kian said, glancing at Ellonlef and wondering what to do with her, should trouble come.
“Do not worry about me,” she said, as if reading his mind, her eyes flinty.
Kian considered how she had faced the Bashye before, braving death with the abandon of a seasoned warrior, and nodded. Whether she would approve or no, he intended to remain close to her.
“Let us see what this Madi’yin and his followers are about,” Kian invited, and heeled his mount into a slow walk-there was no point rushing toward potential difficulties. Although the others did, for himself, he did not string his bow. For now, he reasoned that sword and dagger were enough. And if he had need of his bow, which he had skillfully repaired after a Bashye’s sword had cleaved it in two, then it was ready.
A mile farther on, they crested the hill Azuri had spoken of, but no pilgrims waited. On either side of the road, ruddy stone pillars, heaped boulders, and pale sand dunes marched off into the desert until they merged with the hazed north and south horizons. Of men, there was no sign. Nevertheless, Kian’s nerves tingled. For the first time in many days, he forgot about his growling belly, and found himself reassessing Azuri’s uncharacteristic disquiet. Unconsciously, he loosened his sword in its scabbard.
“A fair morning, brothers,” a man abruptly called, appearing from around a boulder resting at the edge of road. Squat and plump, his smallish head was bald, and he wore a forked, dusty black beard, the scraggly tips of which reached to the hempen belt of his grimy robes. A begging brother of the Madi’yin priesthood, no doubt.