He brooded down at his fists, the flame of his hatred smoldering down to smoking embers that would never quite die, and thought.
There were only two possibilities, he told himself at last. Either all his brothers must die, leaving no other claimant of the blood to challenge him, or else Bahzell, Farmah, and Tala must die.
Neither solution was perfect. If he had his brothers murdered, they must all die in the same hour, and his father with them, for only one person in Navahk could profit by their deaths, and Churnazh would know it. Yet even if all four of his brothers-yes, and his father, too-perished, too many who remembered how Churnazh himself had butchered his way to the throne might seek to emulate him. A crown prince rapist believed to have murdered his entire family would be too weak and tempting a target for someone to pass by.
But if he settled for killing Bahzell-assuming he could find the Sharna-cursed bastard-and the bitches, he would have to hope his father lived for a great many years. If Bahzell died, he would become one more dead enemy, not a taunting reminder of failure, and Navahk had been taught to respect men whose enemies were all dead. And if the sluts died, then the living symbol of his crime would die, as well. Passing time would erode the certainty of his guilt, give Churnazh’s countercharges the chance to sink in, but it would take time. It would take years, more maddening years in which he would be denied his proper place, still crown prince and never ruler.
And he must have all three of them, for as long as any of them breathed, their very lives would keep the tale alive. All of his enemies must perish to put time on his side . . . and perhaps there was a way. One not even Churnazh guessed at. Nor would he, for if he should ever suspect what allies Harnak had taken, he would rip out his son’s heart with his own bare hands.
Harnak nodded, ruined face twisted in an ugly smile, and looked back out the window. The sun was well into the west. Once darkness fell, he had a call to pay.
The single horseman trotted quietly down the brush-choked valley. There was no road here, only a trail of beaten earth, and his horse’s hooves fell with a dull, muffled sound. The slopes to his left cut off the moon, drowning the narrow way in darkness, and something inside him basked in the black silence even as his horse snorted and tossed an uneasy head.
A mile fell away, then another, as he threaded his way into the twisting hills. Few came here, even in daylight, for the nameless hill range had an unchancy reputation. Of the few who came, fewer still departed, and even Harnak’s carefully chosen bodyguards-clanless men, outcasts who owed all they were or ever could be to him-had muttered uneasily when they realized his destination. They always did, and he’d sensed their frightened relief when he ordered them to stop and await his return. None of them knew what he did on his rides into the hills, and none cared to know, for they’d seen him come this way with prisoners tied to their saddles, and he always returned alone.
The rough trail rounded a final hill and ended against a high, blank face of stone, and his nervous horse curvetted and fought the bit, flecked with the sweat of panic, as he drew rein. He snarled and leaned forward to slam his balled fist down between its ears, and the beast squealed and went still.
Harnak grunted in satisfaction, dismounted, and tethered it to one of the stunted trees that grew in this place. He drew a golden amulet from the neck of his tunic as he approached the featureless stone slab, then spat on the ground with an odd formality and folded his arms to wait.
Seconds dribbled past, then a full minute, and then his horse whinnied fearfully and jerked against its tight-tied reins. Sullen green light glowed within the stone, growing brighter, stronger, with the livid emerald glitter of poison. The rock seemed to waver and flow, wrapped in its unnatural translucence while the venomous light threw Harnak’s shadow down the valley behind him like a distorted beast, and then, sudden as a falling blade, the light vanished-and took the barren stone hillside with it.
The opening before Harnak was . . . wrong. Its angles followed a subtly perverted geometry, none of them quite square, and the carved likeness of an enormous scorpion glared down from above it. Flickering red torchlight spilled out of the bowels of the hill, and a cowled figure stood framed against the glow, arms folded in the sleeves of its robe as it bowed.
“Welcome, My Prince.” The deep voice was human, not hradani, yet Harnak returned its bow with a respect he showed no other mortal.
“I thank you, Tharnatus, and beg leave to enter your house.” Not even the lisping sibilance of his missing teeth hid the deference-even fear-in the prince’s voice, and Tharnatus straightened.
“Not my house, My Prince,” he replied, as if completing a formal exchange, “but the House of the Scorpion.” He stood aside with a gesture of invitation, and Harnak bowed once more and walked past him into the hill.
The passage drove deep into the earth, its stone walls dressed and smooth, far more finely finished than anything in Churnazh’s palace. Arched side passages intersected it at intervals, and the faceted chips of mosaics glittered between them in the torchlight. Things of horror ruled those mosaics. Bat-winged nightmares stormed through screaming warriors, snatching them up, snapping off heads and limbs with chitinous jaws and pincers like battle-axes. Other shapes, more obscene still, slithered through opulent temples, hungry eyes afire as they crept and flowed and oozed toward altars where maidens fought their chains in shrieking terror. And above them all, half-hinted and half-seen like some hideous cloud, stalked the huge, flame-eyed scorpion, and on its back was a manlike shape that trailed horror like waves of smoke.
The central hall led onward to a larger chamber, circular and domed with natural rock polished to mirror brightness. Torchlight danced about them like a globe of swirling blood, and double doors, carved with the same images which had haunted the mosaics, loomed before them. Tharnatus thrust them open and went to his knees, then to his belly, as the sweet stench of incense rolled out over him, and Harnak fell to the floor behind him.
The prince lay motionless, disfigured face pressing the stone, until Tharnatus rose once more. The priest gazed down at him, then touched him with a booted toe between his shoulders, the gesture of an overlord to a servant.
“Rise, My Prince,” he intoned. Harnak rose and bent to kiss the hand the priest extended, then straightened as Tharnatus gestured him into the inner sanctum that proved not all gods had chosen to ignore the hradani.
The sickly-sweet incense was stronger, drifting in thin, eddying clouds, and the Scorpion of Sharna, god of demons and patron of assassins, crouched above them. The enormous sculpture towered over a stone altar, carved with blood channels and crowned with blood-encrusted iron manacles that gaped empty . . . for now, and Tharnatus and Harnak knelt side by side to press their foreheads to that hideous stone before they rose once more.
“So, My Prince!” the priest said more briskly as they completed their obeisance. “How may the House of the Scorpion aid one of its own?”
“You’ve heard the stories, I suppose?” Harnak knew he sounded surly, and surliness towards a priest of Sharna was dangerous, but his shame goaded him. Tharnatus regarded him in expressionless silence for a long moment, then let it pass. Harnak was heir to the throne of Navahk; even Sharna’s anointed could allow an occasional edge of disrespect when the Demon Lord had his pincers deep in a future ruler.
“I have, My Prince-assuming you refer to those concerning a certain palace servant and a prince of Hurgrum.”
“I do.” Harnak folded his arms, and his scarred and broken face was grim. “Between them, the slut and Bahzell-” he made the name a curse “-pose a threat to me and to my position. They must be eliminated.”