And yet the young duke was nearly perfect for Sau’ilahk’s need.
Once Sau’ilahk had stolen the orb, Beloved had whispered that he must take it far from the southern territories. As he had fled north, he realized that what he sought next would be difficult to find. That obstacle had not occurred to him before in his obsession to merely find the orb of Spirit.
Sau’ilahk’s own flesh had long ago become dust. He needed a living body.
First and foremost, he needed someone young and beautiful. That went without question, for he had been so in his own time. Others had stared at him in awe, and he would have that again.
Second, he needed someone with enough power and position to hide, safeguard, and protect the orb until he found a way to make his new flesh immortal. He would not be cheated by Beloved again in asking for only “eternal life” ... and then watch his new flesh wither as his own body had.
Third, he needed someone who feared death over all else, for whatever reason—someone willing to believe anything for the prospect of eternal life. Such a man was not as easy to find.
Beloved had whispered again to Sau’ilahk: Go to the coast of Witeny, to Beáumie Keep.
How his god had known of this place had made Sau’ilahk wary. Was this another manipulation, trick, or task to be followed by another and then another? In the end he could not take the chance of ignoring his god, not since he had finally gained the correct orb.
With newly acquired servants, plied with promises and threats and one death as an example, he had sought out this unknown place and the young duke. The rest had been a surprisingly easy seduction, and Sau’ilahk had always been gifted in that.
“There has been a development,” Karl said, the tremor in his voice increasing. “The keep has been breached. We have strangers among us.”
I have been informed. Can you not send them away?
The duke stared at him. “Not easily. One of them is ... an old friend, not just of mine but of my sister.”
And he brought others?
Mild surprise, followed by a twist of frustration, rose on the duke’s pallid face. “Yes, an emissary from the guild ... with bodyguards. She is delivering books to my counselor, but I cannot turn her out into the night.”
Sau’ilahk pondered this and wondered about these texts. Perhaps Wynn Hygeorht’s arrival was pure coincidence.
The duke’s expression shifted again to desperation, and he whispered sharply, “We must finish! We cannot let this interrupt the work—our work. I want no more haunts in my dreams ... no more fear of retribution for what I did.”
Sau’ilahk would have smiled if he had a face that anyone could see. Karl Beáumie was as determined as Sau’ilahk to make the same body immortal and a vessel that could not be killed. He would never again fear death or what vengeful spirits lay in waiting on its other side.
“I cannot fail,” the duke whispered.
Sau’ilahk did not know the whole story, but he had gleaned bits and pieces over many passing nights. The elder duke had died by the hand of his son. Whether by accident, intent, or perhaps both in a moment of opportunity did not matter, for Karl Beáumie was desperate never to follow his father.
Shall we begin?
Duke Beáumie took a labored breath. With his left hand, he pulled off his right glove, exposing a grotesque transformation.
That right hand was deformed, slightly twisted in shape. The nails of his thumb and first finger had distended and yellowed, as if slowly changing to pale talons night by night. Patches of skin here and there up to his wrist were brittle, flaking, and sallow. In places there were hints of scales like a reptile’s. And in one spot tiny follicles of fur appeared to sprout, while two other places were almost downy in a sickly brown, like a fledgling that had not yet gained true feathers.
Sau’ilahk was unconcerned by such temporary imperfections. These were only side effects of their work together, and all such could be corrected in time.
Beáumie’s attention remained fixed on the orb. His features were flooded with both longing and loathing.
Sau’ilahk held out the thôrhk to the duke.Take the key ... my lord.
“We must accelerate our efforts,” the duke said. “Can we finish tonight?”
Nothing would have pleased Sau’ilahk more now that Wynn Hygeorht had come again. But he had no intention of failing for a lack of patience. The process of emptying the duke’s body of his spirit was a delicate matter. The essence of Spirit was an animating force that gave life to physical organisms. If the spirit was ripped out too quickly, rather than thinned and severed at only the final instant, the body might be uninhabitable.
It is best to give your flesh time for each increment of the transformation. Each small step toward immortality must stabilize before proceeding to the next.
With an expression of anger, the duke blindly extended his deformed hand, and Sau’ilahk placed the thôrhk—the key—into the man’s grip. Without even looking at his tutor, Duke Beáumie slid in toward the iron stand and the orb.
Proceed as I have taught you so far.
Beáumie reached out with his misshapen hand holding the key. Knobs at its open ends fit perfectly into two grooves in the protruding spike’s head. With a now-practiced ease, the duke lowered the key’s open ends around the spike’s head and slid its knobs along the grooves, and they settled fully into place. The key fit perfectly like a handle made for this.
Sau’ilahk merely waited, for the young duke had repeated this act many times. He knew the precise fraction to pull the spike enough to let a whisp of the orb’s power reach out for him, supposedly to strengthen the bond between spirit and flesh.
At least so he believed.
Even Sau’ilahk was uncertain how much of the orb’s power a human body could withstand all at once. This endeavor was only slightly less trial and error for him than it was for the duke. In fear of having to start over, Sau’ilahk would take no chances.
Karl Beáumie twisted the key handle one quarter turn to the right and then back, as Sau’ilahk had taught him—as Beloved had taught Sau’ilahk. He then rotated the handle downward until it was level with the floor, all without letting the key’s knobs slip out of place.
Sau’ilahk began to whisper a spell, a conjury, only in his thoughts. It was one that had taken him many nights like this to contemplate and construct, in order to control the specific effect the orb would now release upon the duke. But Sau’ilahk lost his focus as something changed in the young duke’s expression.
My lord?
Beáumie’s eyes twitched repeatedly as he stared not at the key under his grip but at the orb—at the place where the spike would separate from the whole. Some terrible longing filled his face, like ...
Sau’ilahk remembered being trapped for years—decades—in the cave of his burial.
In that first night of his death, some thousand years ago, he had not known that desiccation and small insects, which came to feed on his rotting corpse, would eventually free his eternal spirit. He had known only the torment of not being truly dead but trapped forever, unable to turn his head to see where stones had been piled in the cave’s mouth to inter his remains.
Sau’ilahk knew—saw—that desperation on Karl Beáumie’s face.
No!
The duke jerked the spike from the orb, and scintillating light filled the chamber as he screamed.