James West - The God King

With a crackle of thunder, a nacreous veil flashed into existence over the large granite basin, casting the chamber in a cold dead light. Prince Varis Kilvar stifled a fearful shout as the rumbling peal faded, replaced by demonic howls that burst through the luminous shroud and soared into the murky heights of the ancient temple’s domed ceiling. A shiver crept over his shaven scalp, rippled the muscles of his lithe figure, as those perverse cries slithered and crept over rotten stone with mindful purpose. Only a deep and abiding hunger rooted him to the spot, that which had first compelled him to journey to this wretched place. Fighting waves of dread, he waited and watched.

Rising from pale, dripping slime that covered the floor and walls, the moist reek of ancient death permeated the stuffy air. The gloomy vault of decayed stone was no place for the living. He glanced fully at the basin, which an ancient tome named the Well of Creation. The tattered book claimed that within the basin’s depths, waiting eons for someone to claim it, lay a source of power greater than any mankind had ever imagined … a power never meant for mortal hands. Old books said many things, some false, some not, but the woman of spirit, her voice heard clearly within his mind, had affirmed the tome’s claims.

Ignoring the unclean noises still eddying through the stagnant air, Varis edged closer to the Well of Creation. Long had he waited and planned for this moment. Moreover, he had driven cold steel into the beating hearts of more than one magus in order to safeguard his secret ambition. All the while, he had mistakenly believed the nameless temple and its lost treasure would be a thing of beauty, majesty. Instead, he found darkness and decay. No matter. He would not flee. He would take what he had come for, what was his .

A figure shifted under the veil, a vague outline of some … thing .

Varis swallowed nervously, unable to keep his hand from reaching out. His fingertips came within a hair’s breadth of brushing across the malformed face pressing up against the underside of the iridescent shroud. The lumpen features turned, slowly, drawn to the living warmth of his flesh. The creature’s toothless maw gaped wide and, at the last possible moment, just as those misshapen jaws abruptly snapped shut, Varis jerked back, lips curled in disgust.

Frantically scrubbing his hands together, it crossed his mind that the tome had not mentioned anything other than the Well of Creation resting within the lost temple, certainly nothing about a shimmering veil, or a demonic host lurking beneath it. But then, neither had that ratty volume mentioned the woman of spirit, she who had filled his head with grand visions of what he would become.

As if drawn by his thought, the woman’s voice filled the temple. “You stand at the threshold between two worlds, where no man ever has before.”

Varis flinched, eyes wild and searching, but finding nothing he had not already discovered. He had not heard the woman since he departed Ammathor. Yet, like a barbed hook gouged into the ethereal flesh of his spirit, her promises had pressed him into the company of uncouth warriors, dragged him across countless and searing leagues of desert, deep into a vast swamp, and finally here, to this place, this temple that held within its befouled core the key to his destiny.

“You stand within arm’s reach of all you desire,” she went on, as always her tone enticing beyond all reason, “yet you hesitate. Have you reconsidered my offer, Prince of Aradan?”

Prince of Aradan. Coming from her that title sounded more like a mockery than an honorific. Varis continued to search the shadows. Besides himself and a rat sharing a corner with a great spider on its web, there was nothing living within the temple. He could not see her now, and never had, but her presence pressed hard against his being, more so than at any other time since she had first spoken to him in the deepest subterranean reaches of the Hall of Wisdom.

“I assure you,” the spirit woman added in a low purr, “if you take what I freely give, you will gain boons greater than any man has ever imagined for himself.”

“Is your gift a blessing … or a curse?” Varis asked the spectral voice.

He had thought long and hard on the journey about just what she promised: power unchecked, absolute domination of friend and foe … immortality . Yet he was no fool. Niggling doubts remained. If her gift was a blessing then why had no others ever taken it in hand? Why had the knowledge of the Well of Creation been hidden away until it was forgotten and lost, save a single shred of evidence that he had chanced upon in an obscure book? What dangers awaited him, should he take what she offered?

Another face bulged under the veil, this one of angular features and long, ragged fangs. A fresh chorus of malevolent cries filled the dim chamber. Like wet tongues, those voices crawled through the shadowed temple, eagerly wriggled over Varis, seeming to savor the taste of his skin.

She spoke again. “If you were but a crofter who preferred grubbing in the muck to sustain your existence, then my gift would be wasted on you, a bitter curse. Yet your beating heart sings to me the song of unquenchable desire, a longing for supremacy. For you, Prince of Aradan, what I offer is the highest blessing you will ever receive. Freely accept what I give … and the power of gods will flow through your veins.”

Varis’s pulse quickened, but he tempered his eagerness. Life at the king’s palace had taught him that free gifts were often rife with hidden dangers and strings.

“These tortured creatures,” he said, sweeping his palm over a crablike shape, “were they once men who learned too late their folly of trusting a … a voice in the night?”

Cool feminine laughter raised a rash of gooseflesh over his skin. “Do these abominations look like men? No,” she answered for him, “of course not. These were never human. They are the Fallen, the mahk’lar , the children of the Three. They are, Prince of Aradan, what men name demons. I admit, the meaning of that word is fitting.”

Varis’s stomach clenched violently at her revelation, despite that she had spoken casually of the Fallen, as if such were of no matter. While the knowledge of the existence of the Well of Creation might have been all but lost, the Fallen were a source of nightmares and countless dark tales.

“Why are they here?” Varis asked, unable to hide the quaver in his voice. “It is taught that the Three imprisoned their first children in Geh’shinnom’atar , the Thousand Hells.”

“So they did.”

“But if this is the Well of Creation, then….” Varis’s unspoken question dwindled away.

Her silence lingered, weighing on him, before she finally spoke.

“When the Three learned that the evil of their children was growing too great to control, they destroyed them and imprisoned their spirits within the Thousand Hells. As a penance to their own creator, Pa’amadin, the Three made a race of gentler beings- mortal men -who are but weak creatures forced to rely upon their limited wit and the pathetic strength that rests in their limbs.

“As a final act of contrition, the Three devised the Well of Creation and forsook their own power-a choice that ultimately led to their demise. The veil you see before you is the manifestation of that collected power, all that remains of the Three. Since that time, those energies have served as the capstone to Geh’shinnom’atar , ensuring that the Fallen remain imprisoned.”

The Three are dead? Other than ceremonial acts, Varis had never been overly pious, but the idea that the Three, who were worshipped in Aradan and most southern realms as living gods, were in truth dead, shook him to his core. It took no imagination to understand that the unveiling of a secret such as that would destroy much, from the halls of power down to the common man.