Varis abruptly stood away. “I’ve suffered this fool’s insolence too long! Lash him into the chair.” In a harsh whisper he added, “Know that the memory of your agonies will fuel my sweetest dreams for the whole of my existence.”
Finished with taunting, Kian said, “Better to admit that you do not know if you are the stronger of us. That doubt, boy, will never leave you. No matter how far you rise, or how long you live, you will always wonder if I could have destroyed you, given but half a chance. That uncertainty will hound you all of your days, it will decide your vile actions against those you see as enemies. You will die bitter and spent. And on the day of your death, your downtrodden and enslaved subjects will tear down all your glorious monuments, sing thanks to whatever gods remain, and wipe your memory from the minds of men.”
“I am immortal!” Varis screamed.
Kian smiled darkly. “The fate of all men is to wither and die. You may run from the grave but, in time, death will find you.” He hoped for the world’s sake that this was true.
As Varis backed away, looking uncertain, four priests came forward and cut Kian down. Next they stripped off his garb with sharp knives, none too careful of slicing his bruised skin. The high priest raised his arms. “The condemned will speak no further, unless to scream for mercy, which shall not come unless granted by the Life Giver.”
“I will never scream or beg,” Kian growled.
“Silence!” the high priest shrieked, as the others threw him into the chair. Blunt spikes gouged his bare flesh, and he ground his teeth together. I will not cry out, he vowed to himself, distantly wondering if he could remain steadfast.
The priests fastened straps tight about his ankles and wrists. Kian remained still, for every movement, even a fraction, caused the chair’s steel teeth to bite all the deeper. I am an Izutarian, he thought, desperately trying to strengthen his resolve. I am a son of the frozen north! his mind raged, even as a pair of his tormentors drew short-handled scourges from the folds of their robes.
He glowered at his captors, giving them a moment’s pause. Then the first scourge fell with an insignificant crack, parting his skin with ease. A hissing gust of breath rushed past Kian’s teeth as a sensation of ice and fire washed over his nakedness. Leather and steel-barbed tongues tasted him again, and this time he made no sound.
Angered by his silence, one after the other, the priests set-to with malevolent vigor. The scourges snapped and tore in a frenzy, flaying skin to expose muscle, then lurid glimpses of bone. Kian bucked against the restraints at each blow. He clenched his teeth together to the point of shattering them, yet he did not make a sound.
The flogging went on, marking moments that seemed to have no end. In short order, blood spattered at each blow, dripped in gruesome arcs when the many-tongued whips reared back, surged forward, and slashed down yet again.
The flames of Kian’s agony rose higher and higher, until he thought he would go mad. His jaws ached to howl in protest, and part of him wanted to beg for mercy, but he refused himself that release. Soon, freshets of blood ran freely over his torso, and every muscle quivered with strain and anguish. When hooked barbs caught in his flesh, the priests dragged their implements free, ripping away bits of skin and meat. On and on, the scourges hissed and cracked, as the priests panted, sweated, and struck again. Kian’s blood began to patter under the chair with a sound like slow rain. Only when the steel barbs sank into his ribs and held, forcing the priests to stop in order to dig them free with blunted daggers, did Kian’s will break. His wordless scream filled the hall, a howl that savaged his throat.
The scourging abruptly ceased. For the barest moment, Kian thought it was over.
“Turn him,” Varis commanded softly.
Shaking like a leaf, Kian could only stare in confusion. The priests gaped, their inaction voicing doubt.
“Do as I bid,” Varis demanded, “or by turn, each of you will suffer his fate!”
The priests struggled to unbind Kian, for his blood made every surface slick. He did not resist-could not have, even if he tried-as two priests pulled him from the chair, and held him suspended between them. Another cranked a wheel at the back of the chair, and the contraption soon became a flat rack. Unlike before, they did not throw him down, but eased him onto the torture device with a gentleness that seemed to infuriate Varis. Kian groaned when his torn body settled over and around the stubby spike embedded in the heavy frame. In the flickering torchlight, Kian saw his blood had pooled on the gray stone floor tiles, and he wondered in a blessed daze how much more he could lose before he simply expired.
“Begin,” Varis said.
The priests again faltered, looking among their number, as if these abuses were far beyond what even they considered reasonable. Under Varis’s unrelenting stare, they commenced. Kian screamed until all comprehension fled him. In the black that followed, he searched for and found an infinitesimal source of light. He embraced it, took into himself some measure of strength.
When next he grew aware, he heard a gasping priest say, “He is near death. Surely his failings have met with enough … of this. Shall we bind his wounds?”
Kian floated in delirium. The blood that had flowed so freely before had slowed to sluggish trickles, as if little remained in his veins.
“Spike him,” Varis ordered, his breath harsh with diabolical need. “Hammer the steel deep. Ruin him.”
At those words, Kian’s mind again moved into the void within his soul, where that comforting light waited. He seemed detached from his flesh, released from the bindings of pain, and he drifted up, now observing the proceedings with a mild indifference. The priests, muttering quietly and passing looks hidden from Varis, reluctantly turned Kian once more. He felt nothing, his body mercifully numb. Only the hitching rise and fall of his chest suggested he still lived.
A priest pulled one of the steel spikes from its seat with a tremulous hand, and pressed it against the middle of Kian’s forearm. He turned toward Varis again, and Kian absently noted bright tears glinting in the well of darkness under the man’s hood. Varis jerked his head violently at the delay. Kian thought he saw anger bloom in the priest’s deep-set eyes and, as he raised the large hammer clutched in his fist, his gaze never left Varis’s.
Varis did not seem to notice. His attention was on the length of steel held in the priest’s grasp, its tip creating a dimple in Kian’s bloodied arm. As the hammer fell, a rushing sound filled Kian’s head, an unnatural wind that carried the ethereal substance of his soul into absolute blackness.
Chapter 39
Ellonlef came awake with a start. For a moment she did not know where she was or why. Above her, a cracked and soot-smudged ceiling of mud brick and rough wooden timbers hung seemingly a mile away. Her breath steamed in quickly fading puffs. Then, in a stroke, it all came back to her. She sat up, expecting to see Kian, Azuri, and Hazad, but only found Hya. The old woman was still sitting in her chair, as if she had not moved from the night before.
“Where are the others?”
Hya snugged her blankets tighter under her chin. Her rheumy eyes fixed on Ellonlef. “Kian left soon after midnight. The other two went after him at dawn.”
“Left … where?” Ellonlef asked, fearing she already knew the answer.
“To the palace, to face Varis. He bid me tell you and the others not to come after him. Those two Izutarians dismissed me out of hand. I expect more respect from you.”
Ellonlef threw off her blankets and scrambled to her feet. “I cannot-I will not-abandon him!”