The tower’s sliding motion came to an abrupt, jarring halt. Ellonlef sailed through the air and slammed against a wall. A foot to one side, and she would have soared out of a window and plummeted to her death. Although the tower’s pitch was not severe, Ellonlef clawed her way up the wall like a lizard scuttling up the side of a cliff, ripping her nails in a frantic bid to gain her feet. Once standing, she rushed across the floor’s slope to the doorway, longing more than anything to see the stairs waiting beyond.
She had just reached the doorway when a tingle of warning raced over her skin, a stealthy pressure, so slight as to barely disturb the fine hairs upon her arms. The pressure grew by the moment. She wanted nothing more than to escape the tower before it collapsed and buried her alive, but she had to look and know what was coming.
From the far-off haze of the marshes came a wave that shimmered like heat escaping a hot oven. The wave quickly passed the bounds of the swamp, spreading out over the desert like ripples in a pond. The pulse of air closed faster than she could imagine, booming like thunder as it slammed into the tower, shaking its stones.
Eyes stinging from flying grit, Ellonlef wheeled even as the tower began to crumble with a deep, grating moan, and ran down the twisting stair through the tower’s failing heart. She knew that she would surely perish, but still she ran.
Chapter 4
Varis remembered the instant agony of blue fire melting the flesh from his bones … but, somehow, now he was whole. He fought for breath that would not fill his lungs. Pain savaged every particle of him, as a rushing black pressure seemed intent on squeezing his body into the size of a thimble. Time’s passage stalled, leaving him to suffer an eternity in every moment.
Through the mind-bending torture, he felt another sensation, that of hands, cold and covered in jellied corruption, sliding over his skin. From the tips of each finger sprouted claws seemingly of blazing red iron. The bright heat of those fiendish daggers plunged deep, roasting his eyes in their sockets and scorching his tongue to a twist of blackened leather. The talons sank into his entrapped spirit. What he thought he knew of misery was lost as those claws, bit by bit, ripped apart his very soul. Under these grim ministrations, he found his voice. The force of his shrieks burst from his throat until all that remained were keening hisses.
The plummet ended abruptly. One moment he was falling, being torn apart through an infinite void of terrible lightlessness and crushing pressure, and the next he smashed against jagged stone. Every bone and organ in his body exploded. And still he was aware, unable to die, able to feel and see, to hear and to taste, to smell and to live and to suffer.
Far above, like a solitary star in the night, hung a point of pure, blinding radiance. He imagined Pa’amadin, the silent God of All, gazing down at him with scorn and pity-
Suddenly, shadowed creatures ringed him about, blotting out that terrible point of light. Their eyes and gaping, mocking mouths roiled with flame, no two creatures the same. Some were small, impish. Others stood tall, if hump-backed and covered in horns and dripping spines. In the crimson light cast by their burning eyes, their skin was black, reeking of death and sickness. None had the limbs of men, or even of any beast Varis had ever seen. The Fallen … mahk’lar … demons! his mind gibbered, recalling Peropis’s words.
The imps began to dance about, cursing his name in a language of the vilest hate, while one brutish figure bent over him. With three of its dozen thrashing, tentacle-like arms, it lifted him to its chest in a bizarrely maternal way. Varis cried out in gratitude, thinking the horrid creature meant to spare him from further torments.
The creature’s drooping lips spread around a maw of glowing fangs. A revolting gurgle of mirth resonated in the demon’s chest, and the imps danced in a greater frenzy to the morbid delight of that vile laughter. From behind the creature’s teeth, a hundred tongues flashed out, long and snaking, burrowing into every opening of Varis’s body. The tongues dug recklessly through his eyes, swarmed up his nose and filled his mouth. More came and more still, forcing their way inside, eating, devouring all that he was.
The heaviness that had assailed him now pressed into his pores, filling every hollow and nook of his wriggling remains, swelling him. Then, like an engorged leech crushed under a boot, he burst asunder. The demonic host fell on his quivering gobbets of meat, gorging themselves. And through it all, somehow, Varis felt and saw, until absolute blackness fell over him.
The darkness faded away, brightened slightly. As if waking from a nightmare, Varis scrambled to his feet. He stood whole and unblemished atop a pillar of rough stone. All around him, as far as he could see, burned a turbulent ocean with flames of every hue. It was beautiful, but atrocious in the same instant. A steady wind drove the inferno and chapped his naked skin, dried his eyes and tongue. But that mild discomfort, after what he had already suffered, was like the cool kiss of morning fog rolling off a placid lake.
He took a careful step to the edge and looked down into the sea of colorful fire. Far below, the imps and hulking shapes of his tormentors stood upon islands of stone. They did not dance now, nor laugh or ridicule. Instead, they writhed and wailed in the heat of the undying furnace, their corrupted shapes melting away, only to be instantly replaced and consumed again.
“The greatest mercy I could offer them,” Peropis said at Varis’s back, “would be but one drop of water … or freedom, of course.”
Varis spun, expecting the worst terror yet. Instead, he found a stunning creature. To his eyes she was a woman, but somehow she was not. In her pale flawlessness, she was more than mere flesh. She stood taller than he, her nakedness cloaked in the fall of her long, silver-white hair.
With a seductive grin, Peropis took a step toward him and he caught an enticing glimpse of her bare hip, the outer swell of one rounded breast. His already parched tongue withered further. Her utter perfection twisted his mind, as if he were trying to comprehend the exact number of stars in the heavens, or the grains of sand on not one but every shore spread over the face of the world. Tears of blood dripped from his bulging eyes, but no matter how hard the muscles in his neck strained, he could not look away.
As she stepped closer, Peropis’s grin became a broad smile. One long-fingered hand reached out and she gently wiped away his bloody tears. Then her fingers gently cupped the back of his neck and pulled him near. Her lips on his were ice, yet soft and reviving. Her tongue slid smoothly, deliciously past his lips, tasting him, then sank deeper. In that moment, Varis knew no human woman would ever again satisfy him, and he cared not.
Fear and desire warred within him.
Desire won out, destroying his reason.
His hands, shaking with anticipation, swept aside her downy hair, moved down her shoulders, spread over the gentle curves of her hips, then drew her close. Without a hint of resistance or rebuff, she pressed against his searing flesh. A shiver rippled across his skin at her touch, and he thought he would go mad with desire. In that moment, he was hers … but not without a small measure of reservation. He understood her power over his body and senses made him weak, and that he could not allow such a weakness to exist in his heart. Despite his slight resistance, her persuasion still compelled him.
She knelt and leaned back, drew him down atop her, impervious to the baking heat of the stone beneath her. Varis cried out as they joined together, becoming one flesh. When his bloody tears came again, she kissed them away. When he kissed her in return, he tasted his own blood on her tongue. He did not care. He relished the flavor, hungered for it like a starving man. He greedily sought that sweet bouquet, and she offered it up as a flower weeps nectar. His passion soared and raged, and when his release came, he felt as if liquid silver were pouring from his loins.