“You will understand my gift in time,” he said, all amusement gone. “Between then and now, I would prefer you were more docile.” His fist flashed, and Nesaea felt the blow only as a fleeting, thudding pain, then all the world passed beyond her sight….
“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!”
Those dark words swirled around her like living things, lighting upon her skin, defiling her flesh.
“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!”
The incantation echoed into oblivion, and Nesaea came around by increments, groggy, head pounding. She lay on some sort of table, its top molded around her body. Though she could not see it, she felt a pulsing, bulbous knot at her temple. What happened … where am I?
She blinked, thinking her eyes betrayed her, but without question a rough-hewn rock ceiling hovered a few paces above her. Spider webs and dust motes danced on hot currents rising from strange, silver-flamed torches ensconced around the grim chamber.
Chamber? she thought uncertainly. The last thing she remembered was coming under attack by plainsmen. “I will watch over you,” she heard the memory of herself say to someone … a man.
“I could ask for no greater comfort,” he had answered, with a breathless grin that quickened her pulse. Who …
… Rathe!
All came back in a rush-the battle, her capture along with Fira and Carnala, the slogging ride to Fortress Hilan.
“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!” came the dread incantation, spoken in a voice she now recognized: Lord Sanouk.
A creeping breath of ice teased her skin, and she knew that she had been disrobed. That concern became a mere curiosity when the torchlight lost a measure of its radiance. Nesaea sensed a presence rising below her, an upwelling of cold. Dread coated her bare skin in a greasy sweat-
Suddenly all went blacker than a starless night, and flashing horrors passed before her vision. Some suffocating substance poured down her throat, choking off her cries. Cold, jellied hands-dozens, scores-at once caressed and tormented her bare flesh, and a grinding voice filled her mind, stilling her heart. Hers was the torment of the beset and the ravaged, the countless victims of life’s follies and cruelties, all pressed into her being and made her own in a single instant-
Then a creature drifted above her, a devilish god of gangrenous flesh and goggling eyes, an abomination with the grotesque attributes of both male and female. The foul deity glided away and spoke to Sanouk.
“This offering is fit and timely,” the creature grated.
“Indeed, master?” Sanouk babbled excitedly.
“And now you must dig deeply into the bones of the world, make a thousand and a thousand tombs. Enshrine therein your offerings, for my ageless hunger has been rekindled. You will nourish my appetites unto your final, gasping breath steals from your breast.”
“But I cannot-”
“You will … unless you yearn to slake my hungers with the meat of your own soul?”
“No,” Sanouk murmured humbly. “I will do your will. Of course. Anything, master.”
“And so shall I grant your petty wants.”
“Thank you, blessed Gathul!”
“Ask of me what you will,” the god bade.
Instead of answering, Nesaea heard Sanouk jump to his feet, followed by a wretched mewling sound that drew her gaze. Disheveled, compliant and utterly broken, Carnala knelt before Sanouk, who stood as naked as his captives.
“What are you doing?” Nesaea said, her words slurring and thick. He was not the first man to beat her into unconsciousness, but she feared something else troubled her speech and wits.
Sanouk did not answer. Carnala shuddered as if stricken with ague, her alabaster skin slicked with sweat and dirt. From her neck hung a noose. Before Nesaea could protest, Sanouk yanked the tail of the rope, cinching the noose tight.
Carnala’s eyes bulged, her whimpering became a strangled hiss. For the first time since her capture, the shell of her terror broke and she fought. Her resistance came far too late. Sanouk dragged her kicking before a tall, narrow niche carved into the wall of the chamber. Stooping, he caught the girl in his arms and flung her into the bizarre grave. Face purpling, Carnala lurched forward-only to slam into a pearlescent gray barrier. Tongue protruding, she yanked at the noose, but it held fast. She threw herself at the barrier, mouth yawning wide to draw a breath that would never come.
Nesaea’s gaze swept around the chamber, finding a charred and flailing figure wreathed in flame, and an eyeless old man covered in bleeding wounds. Roaring fires entrapped the burning figure-Oh gods, it’s another girl! — and a faintly transparent wall of flowing blood entombed the old man.
Nesaea shivered in horror. “Please, do not do this!” she begged, mortified by the fleeting idea that she would do anything to avoid what had befallen the other three.
Sanouk faced her. Over his shoulder, a handful of blazing pits formed where eyes should be in Gathul’s face. “Alas, it’s already done,” Sanouk said with a greedy smirk.
“What is done?”
“Can you not feel the poison’s taint in your blood?
What poison? She nearly asked, but she already knew. Had not her fear and dismay been so great, the strange confusion and effort to speak would have alerted her earlier.
As though enlivened by recognition, the effects of the poison fell fully upon her. She tried to clamber out of the queer depression in the tabletop, but it held her fast. Her insides clenched violently, and her skin came alive with an awful crawling, burning sensation.
“I am … dying,” she rasped.
Sanouk touched the table, and a sucking noise sounded beneath her, even as the pressure on her limbs dwindled. He heaved her up off the table, and her head dropped back so that all appeared inverted. The table was an arcane, greenstone altar, its heart alive with dark, agitated shapes. With not a whit of care or caution, he tossed her into a nook in the wall-her tomb.
Struggling, Nesaea clawed her way to her feet and spun drunkenly. Already a barrier stood between her and Sanouk. He was laughing, but no sound came to her ears, save the pounding of her own heart and ragged gasps. She fell against the barrier, its color that of decaying flesh.
“Let me out,” she moaned, wishing for the first time in her life that she would die, for surely in death she would escape the wracking ills plaguing her body.
Sanouk cocked his head, making a mockery of trying to catch her words, then he threw back his head, laughing his silent laugh. As if seen in a dream, he departed.
Death did not come, but Nesaea’s pains increased tenfold, a hundredfold, more. She retched until blood replaced bile, her limbs quivered, and the poison gained potency every passing moment. Mind awash with the delirium of endless pain, she sank to her knees. Do not come, Rathe. For your life, stay away, she managed to pray, before delirium swept away her wits.
Chapter 13
Raining….
That recognition meandered through the valleys of Rathe’s weary consciousness, trying to reach the surface of greater awareness. He groaned, rolled over, and threw an arm over his head to block the drizzle. Half-asleep, he did not want to sacrifice even a precious moment of rest to worry over something so minor as a little dampness.
Warm, stinking rain….