When he came back into the sleeping chamber she was pulling on her tunic. She gave him one look of stark terror, and he saw that her aura was shredded. She stumbled to the door, pulled it open and scuttled into the passage. The sound of her running feet receded.
He felt the first twinge of pity for her, but he recalled all her heinous crimes and it fell away. Then he thought: But she has made retribution in small part by teaching me how I must deal with her mistress, the great witch.
Day after day and week after week, he waited patiently for the invitation from Eos that he knew must come. Then, one morning, he awoke with the familiar sense of well-being and expectation.
'The witch is summoning me to her lair,' he told himself. On the terrace overlooking the lake he ate a frugal breakfast of dates and figs as he watched the sun break through the morning mist and clothe the walls of the crater with golden light. Apart from the servants he saw nobody: not Hannah, Rei, or Assem. He was relieved by this: he did not trust himself to come face to face with one of them so soon after the revelations contained in the scroll from the secret room. Nobody
accosted him or attempted to restrain him when he left the building and set out for the gates of the upper gardens.
He walked slowly, taking his time to assemble and review his forces.
The only reliable intelligence he had about Eos was the description Demeter had given him. He was able to run over it word for word as he walked. So complete were his powers of recall that it was as if the old man was speaking to him again.
If she is threatened she can change her appearance as a chameleon does, Demeter's voice said in his ears, and Taita remembered the manifestations he had encountered at the grotto: the imp, the pharaoh, the gods and goddesses and his own self.
Yet vanity is among her multitudinous vices. You cannot imagine the beauty she is able to assume. It stuns the senses and negates reason. When she takes on this aspect no man can resist her wiles. The sight of her reduces even the most noble soul to the level of a beast. Taita cast his mind back to his sighting of Eos in the operating room at the sanatorium. He had not glimpsed her face through the black veil, but such was her beauty that even unseen it had flooded the room.
Despite all my training as an adept I was not able to restrain my basest instincts. Demeter spoke again, and Taita hearkened to him. I lost the ability and the inclination to reckon consequences. For me, in that moment, nothing but her existed. I was consumed by lust. She toyed with me, like the winds of autumn with a dead leaf. To me it seemed she gave me everything, every delight contained in this world. She gave me her body. Taita heard again his tormented groans as he went on: Even now the memory drives me to the brink of madness. Each rise and swell, enchanted opening and fragrant cleft . . . I did not try to resist her, for no mortal man could do so.
Will I be able to do so? Taita wondered.
Then Demeter's most dire warning echoed in his head: Taita, you remarked that the original Eos was an insatiable nymphomaniac, and that is so, but this other Eos outstrips her in appetite. When she kisses, she sucks out the vital juices of her lover, as you or I might suck out the juices from a ripe orange. When she takes a man between her thighs in that exquisite but infernal coupling she draws out of him his very substance. She takes from him his soul.
His substance is the ambrosia that nourishes her. She is as some monstrous vampire that feeds on human blood. She chooses only superior beings as her victims, men and women of Good Mind, servants of the Truth, a magus of illustrious reputation or a gifted seer. Once she detects her victim, she runs him down as relentlessly as a wolf harries a deer.
As she has done to me. Taita reflected.'
She is omnivorous. Those were the words of Demeter who had known her as no living man ever could. No matter age or appearance, physical frailty or imperfection. It is not their flesh that feeds her appetites, but their souk. She devours young and old, men and women. Once she has them in her thrall, wrapped in her silken web, she draws from them their accumulated store of learning, wisdom and experience. She sucks it out through their mouths with her accursed kisses. She draws it out from their loins in her loathsome embrace.
She leaves only a desiccated husk.
The witch's minions, Hannah, Rei and Assem, had regenerated Taita's missing organs for one reason only; to enable Eos to destroy him, body, mind and soul. He crushed down the terror that threatened to rise like a tidal wave and sweep him away.
I am ready for her, as ready as 1 can ever be. But will that be enough?
The gates to the gardens were wide open, but as he stood in front of them a hush fell over the crater. The soft wind died away. A pair of bulbul shrikes that had been calling a duet to each other fell silent. The high branches of the trees froze and remained as motionless as a painting against the blue canopy of the sky. For a moment longer he listened to the silence, then he stepped through the gates.
The earth moved under his feet. It trembled, the branches of the trees quivering in sympathy. The tremble became a harsh juddering. He heard rock groan under his feet. A section of the crater wall split away and fell with a roar into the forest below. The earth tipped under him like the_ deck of a ship caught in a gale. He almost lost his balance and reached1 out to grab one of the gate's bars to prevent himself being cast down.
The wind rose again, but it came from the direction of the imp's grotto.
It swept over the tops of the trees and swirled round him in a vortex of dead leaves. It was as cold as the hand of a corpse.
Eos is trying to intimidate me. She is the mistress of the volcanoes.
She commands the earthquakes and the lava rivers that flow up from hell. She is showing me how puny I am in the face of her might, he thought. Then he shouted aloud, 'Hear me, Eos! I accept your challenge.'
The trembling of the earth ceased, and once again the mysterious hush fell over the crater. Now the pathway lay clear and inviting before him. When at last he passed through the gap between the tall boulders he heard ahead the chortling of the waters that flowed out of the grotto.
He pushed his way through the screen of greenery and stepped into the clearing beside the pool. All was as he remembered it. He took his
customary seat on the grass with his back to the fallen tree-trunk, and waited.
The first warning he received of her approach was an icy breeze that tickled the back of his neck, and he felt the hair rise on his forearms. He watched the opening of the grotto and saw a fine silver mist billow from it. Then a dark figure appeared through the mist, coming down the lichen covered ledges towards him with stately grace. It was the veiled woman he had last seen in Hannah's rooms, dressed in the same voluminous, translucent robe of black silk.
Eos stepped out of the silver mist, and he saw that her feet were bare.
Her toes peeped out from under the hem of her robe, the the only part of her that was visible. They were wet and shining from the spring water that spilled over them, small and perfectly shaped, as though carved by a great artist from creamy ivory. Her toenails were pearly bright. Those feet were the only part of her body he had ever laid eyes on, and they were exquisitely erotic. He could not tear his gaze from them. He felt his manhood swell, and stilled it with an effort.
If she can affect me thus with a glimpse of her toes, what chance have I of resisting her if she reveals the rest of herself?
At last he was able to lift his eyes. He tried to see beyond her veil but it was impenetrable. Then he felt the touch of her regard as though a butterfly had landed upon his skin. She spoke, and he caught his breath.