As Kian’s potency began to wane, Varis seemed to grow even stronger. Then, after a blinding flurry of attacks and counterstrikes, Varis’s sword smashed into Kian’s, and the aged steel Hya had gifted to him proved no match against metal forged by the king’s smiths. Kian’s blade shattered like so much rotten ice, flying shards ringing dully against marble tiles. Kian hurled the useless hilt at Varis’s face. Varis contemptuously batted the projectile away and pressed ahead, unrelenting.
Wielding only a dagger, Kian fell back, gasping, sensing the sands that measured his life were coming to a swift end. As he fought on, wrath continued to fill him, replacing his sense of weakness. He cared not for his own life, but only the desire to exact revenge and deliver justice on Varis for all the evil he had done.
Kian’s fury proved impotent against Varis’s unrelenting onslaught. Moment by moment, Varis grew stronger, while Kian was left gasping, barely able to deflect Varis’s attacks.
Then Kian missed a step and staggered, exposing himself to any number of killing blows. Varis hesitated just long enough to flash a triumphant smile. It was then that Kian struck, taking advantage of the his enemy’s arrogance. Without hesitation, Kian rammed the dagger into Varis’s groin, pulled back, then plunged the steel into his chest. His third attack came from a hooking fist delivered, with all his considerable weight and desperate strength, to Varis’s cheekbone.
Momentarily stunned beyond the reach of his godlike powers, Varis fumbled his sword and reeled, black blood pouring from three separate wounds. Kian snatched up the fallen weapon and pressed his attack, but slipped in his haste to get at Varis, and slid across the polished floor on his knees.
Dazed but not yet out of the fight, Varis’s dagger flashed into view. He came at a run, blade whirling. Kian just managed to knock the dagger aside, driving it upward, and the tip raked his cheek and climbed into his scalp, clipping off a piece of his ear as it went. Blood poured in a hot scarlet wave over his face, but he felt nothing of pain. Still on his knees, Kian swung his new sword awkwardly but brutally. The edge of that keen blade parted flesh, and he instantly twisted his grip and reversed the attack, slamming the rounded pommel against Varis’s lips.
With a bubbling squeal, Varis fell back, bloody tongue pinched grotesquely through shattered teeth. With his free hand he clutched at his throat, a look of utter incredulity blooming on his features. Foul blood squeezed out through his clenched fingers-then began to pour.
Kian struggled to his feet, intending to finish Varis, but the grumble of breaking stone alerted him to some new danger. Before he could look a rough, snaky band wrapped about his neck. The smell of green wood assailed his nostrils even as he was lifted and tossed through the air like a child’s toy. He soared, flailing for some kind of balance, desperately holding onto Varis’s sword. He crashed down atop the great table centered in the Golden Hall, his bloody face leaving a wide crimson smear across the vellum map. In a floundering scrabble, he toppled off the table’s far edge. The breath exploded from his lungs when he smashed through a chair, leaving him to thrash about amid a tangle of broken wood and rich padding.
A gurgling wet hiss and the crash of chairs being violently thrown aside warned Kian that Varis was coming. Even as he fought to regain his feet, gulping each breath, he searched for a better place from which to defend himself. To his dismay, his wide stare locked on what had assailed him. A dark and malignant creation, skinned in a hide of tree bark, had burst from the floor and was writhing from side to side in his direction. Horrified, Kian recognized the thing for what it was-another root-serpent, covered all over with emerald eyes and hoary bark. This creature was not of the soil of the Qaharadin, but was just as deadly.
Kian threw himself clear as the dread serpent attacked. A splinter of fire gouged through his leg, a cutting blow that sent him flipping him through the air. He bounced and spun across the floor, gasping for breath that would not come. Kian rolled, swinging the sword in a desperate warding gesture. The blade chopped into the striking root-serpent, and a section as long as he was tall thumped to the floor. Varis’s creation recoiled, whipping back and forth, splattering greenish, stinking sap over Kian. As the root-serpent retreated, it wilted and blackened, afflicted by a swift rot. In moments, the nightmarish creature had become no more than an oozing mass sprawled across the floor.
Kian had gotten to one knee when Varis strode into view. Ebon blood covered his chest from the wound in his neck-but the wound was no longer there. He looked ready to say something, and Kian instantly drove the tip of his blade stabbing into Varis’s exposed knee, sinking deep into the joint. He gave the sword a violent twist, as if prying a stone from unyielding ground.
Varis screamed and fell atop his ruined leg, and his dagger flew from spasming fingers. Kian leapt to his feet and sent his sword into one of Varis’s glowing eyes. Rage and desperation gave him inhuman strength, and that wild thrust slammed through Varis’s skull and gouged into the marble tiles under his head. Varis went rigid, then began to thrash.
Kian wrenched the blade free and raised the sword high with the intention of hewing off Varis’s head, but in the next instant all was shaking and groaning, knocking him off balance. In a burst of consuming flame, the great map table folded in on itself, burning like oil-soaked parchment. Within a heartbeat, it had been reduced to a heap of ash. In its place a line of blinding light, like a seam cut into the fabric of reality, rose from the floor to the height of a tall man. As Kian watched in stunned silence, that seam flared wide, creating a portal that looked upon a realm of crimson flame and shattered black stone. From that unholy place strode a woman of such stunning beauty and immeasurable power that he collapsed to his knees in wonder.
Chapter 52
Kian shook his head against the vision and tried to stand, but he was made weak by the sheer enormity of the woman’s presence. She gazed impassively about the Golden Hall. To Kian’s stunned eyes she was a woman, but seemed so much more than mere human flesh. Long silver-white hair cascaded over her shoulders and managed to cloak her obvious and flawless nudity. She faced him at last, offering a smile that melted all resistance in his heart.
“You are stronger than most,” she said, her voice a seductive whisper. “For a season I have felt and watched you, tasted your strength of will upon my lips, savored it like the sweetest of nectars. You were not my first choice, yet now I see that you should have been. I will reward your strength, Kian Valara, if you will but let me.”
He had no idea of what she was speaking, but something in the way she said his name, with a mocking familiarity, sparked a deep memory. Someone else had spoken his name in that way. The longer he thought on who had spoken of him so, the less it mattered, until finally all concern faded … faded….
He returned her smile, unable to resist the swelling joy in his heart. All that had happened in the last few moments dwindled to nothing, save the coming of the woman before him. “Tell me of this reward,” he invited eagerly, feeling as if he were lost in some blissful dream from which he never wanted to escape.
“I can give you primacy,” she said, her tone harsher than before, and full of a desperate eagerness. “I would make you an overlord, ruler of child-kings, the high judge of subjects from a thousand realms. Do you take what I propose, or do you deny my gift?”
“Tell me what I must do,” Kian mumbled, finding it hard to concentrate for all the visions suddenly flashing behind his eyes. He saw a vast empire filled with impossible wealth, pleasures beyond count and imagination. And, too, worshippers singing paeans of honor and glory and praise to him alone. In these visions, there were no gods, no other kings, nothing at all but himself….