James West - The God King

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.

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!”

Hya proved more nimble that she appeared, and in a blink was at the younger woman’s side, her grip strong on Ellonlef’s arm. “You will heed me … at least until we know if he succeeded or not. Sit, break your fast, and wait until Azuri and Hazad bring word.”

Ellonlef reluctantly sat down on the rickety stool she had sat on the night before. Hya jammed a crust of bread into her chilled hands. She nibbled at the bread, but it tasted like dust on her tongue. The wait was long in coming.

An hour after the day had given up its light, and the sun had gone back down, Hazad entered the shop, followed by Azuri. The sun-browned faces of both men held a pinkish cast from the bitter wind. It was not their colored cheeks that drew Ellonlef’s gaze, rather the haunted look in their eyes. She wanted to question them, but the words would not come. In that instant, a hundred possibilities flashed through her mind, each new one worse than the previous.

“Varis tortured Kian near to death,” Hazad said hollowly.

“We have little time,” Azuri added grimly.

“Where is he?” Ellonlef heard herself ask, afraid to know. The answer was beyond her worst fears.

“The Pit,” Azuri said, after Hazad made the attempt and choked on the words. “We have it from men we know and can believe that priests of Attandaeus loaded him into a cart just before dawn, and delivered him to the Pit soon after.”

“Gods good and wise,” Hya rasped.

Ellonlef’s blood went to ice. “We must free him before-”

She cut off, unable to voice the atrocities that he would surely be facing already. The Pit was a place for lawbreakers condemned to death, though not a clean and swift death promised by the headsman’s blade. Those sent to the Pit were unrepentant beasts at the least, and insane, often as not. In that underground warren, in the absence of light, the darkness of their souls compelled them to acts vile beyond words. Most did not survive long-and Kian, doubtless insensible from his wounds, had been there for hours.

“We have a means to get in,” Azuri said hesitantly. “A man who has owed Kian a favor for some years, serves as a guard.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“You could die … we all could,” Hazad cautioned. “Varis has soldiers scouring the city for all of us. The standing order is to see us to the Pit as soon as we are found.”

Ellonlef did not falter or balk. “Tell me your plan on the way.”

Hya’s face was grim. “Whether he lives or not, you must return here. Like these Izutarians, I know those who walk the shadows, those who can get you out of the city and to safety.”

Ellonlef impulsively hugged the old woman, then followed Hazad and Azuri out into the black alley. The air was colder than any she had ever felt, and low clouds shoved east by strong winds obscured the stars.

“Snow will fall before first light,” Hazad predicted, as they hastened toward the heart of the Chalice, carefully keeping to the deepest shadows. As promised, patrols were out in full force.

“A good snowfall may serve us,” Azuri said. “Folk hereabout have blood thin as wine, and the colder it gets, the less they will want to be away from a warm fire.”

“Then I hope for a storm, even the White Death,” Hazad said.

“What is that?” Ellonlef asked, the mere name chilling her heart. She did not really want to know, but neither did she want a prolonged silence to fill her mind, allowing considerations of what Kian faced.

“The White Death is a fierce storm that blows out of the Whitehold,” Hazad said, creeping along. “Like the godless savages who live in those icy wastes, the storms that come out of their lands are deadly. Winds come first, cold enough to shroud a man in hoarfrost and turn his flesh black. Snow follows, stabbing at you like small daggers, and building to the height of a man. If you are caught outside without shelter, death falls swiftly.”