James West - The God King

Knowing further delay would only breed doubts, he turned and climbed the ladder. At the top he came to a trapdoor, eased it open, and scrambled up into surprisingly cold darkness that smelled of old dust and rat droppings. He paused there, sword drawn, idly wondering at the chill. It seemed that Varis cared not if the palace wanted for heat. Pushing that aside, he concentrated on the unlighted surroundings. No enemies showed themselves, all was quiet-too quiet, given that Varis’s father was marching on the city. To Kian’s mind, servants and soldiers should have been making ready, their actions loud even behind the walls. Instead, he heard nothing save his own heartbeat.

Kian searched the darkness until his hands found the cistern O’naal had described. A moment more, and he had the hemp handle of a small firemoss lamp in hand. He pulled the cork from the lamp’s top, used a dipper to pour water into the opening. Within heartbeats, the lamp began glowing with a bright amber radiance. He waved it over the opening. Azuri popped into view after several moments, followed by Ellonlef and Hazad.

“Where do you expect Varis to be?” Ellonlef asked, a touch breathlessly. Fear did not shine in her dark eyes, but rather expectation.

Kian could see Varis in his mind’s eye. “He will be resting his scrawny backside on the Ivory Throne.”

“How do we get there from here?” Hazad muttered.

Kian looked this way and that, trying to imagine what waited in the gloom beyond the radiance of firemoss, wondering if he should call on O’naal for direction. Just as he was about to call down into the vault, he became fully aware of a strange sensation that drew his attention in a particular direction. Or, rather, he considered, repelling him was a better description. After a moment’s consideration, he knew Varis waited that way. Following that feeling, Kian nodded to the left, his insides queasy at the mere thought of going that direction. “There,” he said through gritted teeth.

Letting his feet, heart, and churning insides guide him, Kian and his band moved through dark corridors different from the underground warrens in that the dusty walls were smooth, straight, and made of granite and mud brick, rather than haphazardly hewn from bedrock.

Every step he took the more his guts roiled, as if sensing some foulness, a black poison. He was not sure if it was his mind playing tricks, or if it was some acquired instinct grown strong from his dealings with Varis, but he had little choice but to trust in those sensations. After some time spent creeping through the dark, Kian abruptly halted and raised the lamp.

There before his face, set into the wall, was a small panel of wood with a delicate knob attached to its center. They had passed several of these peepholes along the way, but unlike all the others, this one had small hidden door that let into the room on the other side, the room, Kian’s instincts told him, was the heart of Aradan, the Golden Hall.

He handed off the lamp with a quiet word to hood the light. Azuri used his cloak to do as bidden. Once darkness fell, Kian grasped the tiny wooden knob. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he gently eased the panel to one side along an age-worn track, revealing a pinprick of light that shone in the dark like a star hung in the heavens. Leaning close, Kian peered through and looked upon the Golden Hall, the throne room and seat of power of Aradan since the fall of the Suanahad Empire. Because of the hall’s renown, Kian had little trouble indentifying what he saw.

Shadows dominated the hall for the most part, the only light coming from a few firemoss globes nested in golden tripod lamp stands. The Ivory Throne itself sat atop a high dais. Its sapphires and fire opals, set in the tusks and eye sockets of the strange beasts that made up the great chair, seemed to glint with menace. A massive table was centered in the hall, with what appeared to be a huge map covering its surface. Of Varis, he was surprised to see no immediate sign, but he sensed that the youth was near, perhaps just out of sight. In absolute silence, Kian waited, if only because he felt he should.

But that was a lie. The real reason, which was hard to admit, was that he feared the disturbing sensations gripping his heart, and the very real threat and remembered pains of what Varis had recently ordered done to him. Looking back over the last season, he realized something had always been just out of sight, waiting, marking the perfect time to attack. Strangely, he did not feel that Varis was the source of that particular threat.

Even as this thought passed through his consciousness, a door opened and closed, and a muffled greeting filled the hall. Then the newly arrived messenger began speaking. Kian pushed all other considerations aside and listened.

“Lord Marshal Yagaal,” came Varis’s voice, “what word of my father’s attack?” There was more than a hint of annoyed boredom in the young king’s tone, as if the idea that his own father would seek to launch a strike against Ammathor, and by extension his own son, was but a trifling thing, a buzzing fly that needed shooing.

Yagaal moved into view at the head of the great table. He swept back his flowing cloak of green and gold, knelt, and bowed his head. Varis seemed to materialize from nowhere, clad in scarlet robes, as he had been in the Gray Hall. “Enough groveling, Yagaal,” Varis snapped. “What word do you bring?”

Yagaal stood, the planes of his face made stern by shadow. When he spoke, his tone was clipped, as if delivering a message that left a foul taste on his tongue. “The Chalice is burning, from one end to the other. The rabble have gone mad, razing and looting at will. Sometimes they attack our forces, other times Prince Sharaal’s, and more often than not, each other. So far, this chaos has stalled Sharaal’s advance. But, Sire, the Crimson Scorpions under his command are the finest legion ever fielded. It is only a matter of time before they put down the Chalice hordes and your forces, and begin driving against Ammathor and the palace. Those you command cannot hope to do more than delay your father’s march by perishing slowly.” This last seemed more a question than a statement, as if Yagaal wondered what, if anything, Varis had in mind for defense or counterattack. The king’s answer appeared not to please Yagaal.

“So be it,” Varis said dismissively. “Let my rebellious father and his traitorous army come. What else have you?”

Yagaal’s nostrils flared in anger, his whole body rigid. What he said next suggested a discontented anger had been building in him for some time. “Pardon, Sire, what else would you have of me? My men, who have been starving for weeks, despite your promise of bread, are being slaughtered by their brothers-in-arms as we speak-men I have trained, men I have fought beside against the kingdom’s enemies, men who believed and feared you … and here you sit, safe in the palace, commanding the hunt for a particular Izutarian, even as Ammathor falls down around your feet. I, and my men, were fools to trust your lies … kingslayer .”

The last word hung in the air. Whispered though it had been, it served as a final, defiant cry to the rest. While Kian had never served Aradan or any other kingdom in the capacity of a sworn soldier, he understood all too well that men of such rank as lord marshal did not rise so far without a strong sense of discretion. The absence of such prudence in Yagaal surely meant that those under the lord marshal’s command had reached a point that they would no longer fight for their usurping king.

Silence held, even as wrath twisted Varis’s features into a mask of contemptuous hatred so deep as to be felt. His eyes changed from dark to glowing white, and too his skin grew luminescent. Yagaal shifted his weight, made to back away, then went still. He looked determined, if trembling in fear, and his hand fell to his sword hilt. His was the face of a man who knew he was about to die, but who knew as well that his would be a righteous death.