As his twisted creature kept watch over the wizardess, King Andreus Feravan woke and stretched. The dying light of a horizon-bound sun leaked through the heavy curtains covering his windows, and he smiled, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

  Beside him, his concubine whimpered in her sleep. Andreus reached over and gently stroked her brow.

  “Shhh,” he soothed, repeating the gesture. “Shhh.”

  She whimpered again, but drifted slowly into sleep. Andreus waited until her breathing had evened out, then slid softly from the bed. Turning to tuck the blankets in around her, he smiled, wishing he didn’t have more important matters to attend.

  Letting her sleep, he padded across the room to enter the adjoining office. His feet made no sound on the thick rugs of his bedroom floor, and the door swung smoothly closed behind him. The draperies behind his desk rippled softly as he passed, and he inclined his head in greeting.

  Good, he thought. The priests are waiting.

  Crossing to the wall, he touched the dragon statuette posed on a pedestal beside it before twisting its head to the right. With a well-oiled grind, the wall slid aside, letting him step through into the space beyond. Four priests slipped out from behind the tapestries behind his desk, and glided after him.

  Waiting until the last one had passed the statuette and entered the corridor with him, the king pulled on a heavy brass hook, jolting the lamp hanging beneath it. The walls closed with a soft thunk, and he turned to follow the priests down into the temple, to greet his eagerly awaiting god.

  When he reached the antechamber at the end of the concealed hallway, the king stepped into the scented steam of a great, communal bath. Other priests, devoid of their robes, were there already. They turned their faces to acknowledge him as he closed the door behind him.

  Checking the lock, the king surveyed the priests in return. There were eighteen in all, and he smiled at the sight of them.

  My lord’s power is increasing, he thought, removing the light robe he’d slept in. He could never have supported so many when we first began.

  His deity’s reply dripped with satisfaction. “But then I never had fresh blood on my lips and the despair of tortured souls every night.”

  The king’s smile broadened as he stepped, unclad, into the bath.

  “And tonight, my lord,” he answered, “You will dine upon the blood and soul and essence of one who, unknowingly, has tapped into the very plane of magic, itself.”

  He felt Walshira’s anticipation rise, like a swelling wave of hunger-blinded lust, which threatened to overwhelm his mind. Andreus resisted it, sending reassuring thoughts to his god that the feast would soon begin.

  When the god’s desire subsided enough that he was no longer in danger of being consumed, Andreus became aware of his grip on the bath’s edge. Only the strength of his fingers had kept him from sliding under.

  With a grunt of effort, the king pushed back the urge to send for one of the would-be sacrifices in order to blunt the god’s hunger, straight away, and then he urged Walshira to patience. Feeling the god subside, he ducked his head under the water, running his fingers through his hair, then lifting it clear to splash his way to the other side.

  One of the bath attendants rushed to his side as he emerged, offering him a towel folded neatly on a cushion. Andreus ignored him and strode toward a small, cell-like room, the attendant hurrying in his wake.

  There were preparations to make, orders to be given…a freedom to be paid for. With his thoughts lingering on payment, Andreus ushered the attendant into the room before him. His hands trembled with anticipation as he took the towel being offered and dried the steam from his skin.

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  The attendant waited until the king had thrown the towel into a corner, then offered him his undergarments, before lifting his gambeson from a stand in the corner of the room, then, with careful attention to detail, the attendant helped his master dress.

  When the attendant had assisted him in fastening his bracers, Andreus stepped back, and saw fear rise in the man’s eyes. Under the cover of his helm, the king smiled, knowing what the man saw. No longer did King Andreus Feravan stand before him, but High Priest Azdravan, first priest of Walshira the Returned.

  Granted, Walshira had yet to complete his return, but he had almost succeeded, and Azdravan would ensure he returned to the world in all his glory. Azdravan hadn’t known the Old One existed. He hadn’t even been aware there’d been a pantheon before the one that now ruled them.

  That had changed when Walshira’s presence had found him. The deity had revealed that before man had turned to gods of wealth and farming, mining and deeds done in the night, they had been more mindful of other things.

  Back then, the elements and the elementals that served them had been of greater importance than such petty trivialities as justice and childbirth, forests and fishermen, plague, pestilence and death. Back then, man had been known to appease the elements of stone and wood, water and fire, darkness, decay, and blood.

  Eventually, man had recognized…and learned to fear and respect the element of power.

  Unfortunately, by then the Old Ones had seen men starting to revere such concepts as love and justice, and those concepts associated with a trade. They had watched as men had called on gods governing safe journeys and children, motherhood, and the hearth…and they had observed the deities that formed in response to mankind’s demands.

  As elemental worship waned, the Old Ones had decided to absent themselves from the world, and grant the new pantheon the room they needed to grow, and as the new gods grew in power, few men followed the older gods and preserved their ways.

  “It is better,” the Old Ones reasoned, “for us to leave.”

  Only Walshira had objected. Even though his followers were departing to worship more finite aspects of power: wealth, assassins, rulership, royalty. When the vote was taken, he refused to leave, and the gods had imprisoned him so he could not interfere with the new gods’ growth.

  “But I created a window, in my prison, through which I could see, and then touch, what lay beyond, just a little. I found you.”

  “And I shared your beliefs,” the king had replied, remembering the conversation. “That the souls of men are yours to reap, and the gifts of rulership and control, yours alone to bestow.”

  “Which is why,” Walshira assured him, “You shall have the kingdom you know and all the lands beyond it.”

  Azdravan smiled.

  Eyeing his valet through the slit in his visor, Azdravan saw the man swallow convulsively—and fail to hide the faint revulsion he felt when he looked at the king’s imposing form. He noted the man’s swiftly suppressed shudder and the way the man’s hands trembled as he picked up the discarded towel and tossed it into the wash basket.

  With Walshira’s consciousness now bound to his own, Azdravan decided to leave the attendant free for the night, but marked him as one of the many he planned to grace his master’s altar.

  “Very soon,” he promised. “Soon, he will grace one of the pillars, and his cries, his fear, and his life’s blood will feed your power.”

  He did not add that the man’s sacrifice would also bring more power to his own hand. He did not need to. Walshira read the intention and rewarded the king’s promise with a promise of his own.

  “When I am free, you will rule my realms, and all will bow to you.”

  Fierce joy filled Azdravan as he left the room through a second door. This one led away from the baths into the dungeon corridor where the next sacrifices were housed. Two doors along, he paused, his attention caught by the sound of muffled sobbing.

  So, he thought, the wizardess can feel fear.

  Stretching a tendril of Walshira’s power through the door, he identified fear and despair both, and felt the god’s answering thrill of delight. Walshira was pleased. The wizardess’s apparent ability to resist had concerned him, but now? Now he knew she was ready for the harvest.

  Continuing down the corridor, the king kept the tendril active, letting it drift through the corridor’s walls and into the cells beyond. As he did, he was able to savor the varying degrees of fear, loathing and despair emanating from each of the occupants they passed.

  Inside him, he felt Walshira gathering the emotions to himself, and was reminded of a maiden, picking flowers in a springtime meadow. Laughter rolled through his head, laughter and anticipation.

  By the time his footsteps had reached the metal-bound doors at the corridor’s end, Walshira had decided the order in which the prisoners would be sacrificed…and the means by which the most fear could be garnered before their deaths. As he flung the doors wide open, Azdravan gave the orders for who was to be brought and when.

  His priests answered, fetching those prisoners he requested, and chaining them to the pillars in the temple proper. Alessia Mistlewood would be among the last. Walshira wanted her to hear the fear of those who went before her, and then she would be made the ceremony’s center-piece upon his altar.