James West - Lady Of Regret

His sword swung, faster than Nesaea thought possible, so fast the dagger in her hand did not so much as twitch.

“No!” The order came, sharp and sweet, just as Rathe’s sword touched Nesaea’s neck and stopped. A shiver coursed through her, as a thin hot trickle ran over her skin.

Arms shaking, Rathe glared hatefully, not the man she had known. The golden woman who had captured Nesaea moved beside him, her skin and hair aglow. At her touch, Rathe drew back, taking his blade with him.

To Nesaea, she said, “I am Wina, mistress of Ravenhold, and I can give you eternity,” she said calmly, as if Loro and Fira’s battle did not still rage behind her.

Nesaea’s lip curled. “Keep it.”

Wina cocked her head and reached out. Nesaea leaned away from a hand oozing the same blackness that had infused Rathe’s eyes. Wina’s fingers unfurled, revealing an eight-sided amulet set with a pulsing black gemstone. Icy currents and coiling ebon threads reached out from that stone, seeking like blinds worms.

“Gods and demons!” Loro cursed in the distance, and Fira yelled, “Watch out!”

Wina twisted round, fingers closing reflexively, as Rathe moved to protect her. Nesaea leaped to her feet. Wina’s head came around, her lips parting to cry a warning. Nesaea’s sword sliced down. Where razor-edge steel met the woman’s wrist, skin and bone gave way. Wina’s warning became a piercing shriek, as her severed hand fell to the floor. That scream rose to a howl of terror when a nightmarish creature charged out of the shadows. The beast rammed Rathe aside, crashed headlong into Wina, tumbling her head over heels down the dust-choked corridor.

The creature charged past Nesaea and stopped over Wina. It reared up on hind legs, its bulk twisting and swelling, as it changed into something unimaginable.

Rathe wallowed on the marble tiles, groaned, shook his aching head, confused as to how he had come to be on his back, looking up through a shroud of thick haze. Last he remembered, he was fighting off … Wina!

Hands slapping air, he sat up, kicked his feet against the floor until a wall guarded his back. He reached for his sword hilt. Not in the scabbard. The sharp point of a blade poking his neck sharpened his focus. He glanced up slowly, found a beautiful woman staring murder at him. His eyes went wide. “Nesaea?”

Blood trickled from her swollen cheek and puffy lips. More ran down the side of her neck, wetting a tumbling fall of midnight waves. She looked almost as untidy as Yiri and Horge.

“Feeling better?” she asked, tone as dangerous as he remembered it. “Or do you still want to cut me to pieces?”

Everything that had happened since coming into the keep worked its way to the forefront of his mind, came as flashes from a fevered nightmare. His mouth worked. “I … never meant … I was not myself.”

Furious grunts and squeals mingling with horrible, guttural words, pushed all that aside. His gaze found a lumpy shape, broad as it was tall, standing over Wina. The girl looked different, not so beautiful as before, not so radiant. The otherworldly glow that had suffused her skin and hair had vanished. Now she was just a young woman in pain, cradling the bleeding stump of her arm to the waist of her tattered silken dress. The thing between her and Rathe leaned over, grasping with long fingers tipped in ragged nails. Wina scrambled out of reach, screaming.

Rathe slapped the sword off his neck. “We must help her.”

Nesaea glanced that way and back. “Why would I? She put me in a cell, intending to turn me into one of her pets.” A ripple of distaste flickered over her features.

Rathe quickly dragged himself off the floor, retrieved his sword lying nearby. “It was the Wight Stone, it … takes you. I felt its power in me, changing me, as it must have changed her.” That was the simplest way he could describe what he could not fully understand.

Nesaea’s stare did not soften a whit. “For now, I’ll trust your judgment, though I know not why I should.”

Rathe moved toward Wina, creeping up on her attacker-an old woman, best he could tell, naked, dirty and gray. She lumbered forward, yellowed nails reaching for Wina.

“Hold!” Rathe warned.

A rheumy-eyed hag turned, all of pallid and hanging flesh, save at her throat, where a great purple scar reached ear to ear. “Think you to command me, Scorpion ?” She rasped. But how could she know him?

“Who are you?”

“She came first as a beast,” Nesaea cautioned, anger replaced by troubled wonder. “A yak, I believe such creatures are called.”

Rathe searched his mind, found an image of a black and shaggy creature running him down. Samba? No. Surely that was a poisoned vision created by the power of the Wight Stone. But it was not. Somehow, the hideous old woman was also Samba the yak.

The woman snorted, and her pink tongue darted to lap spittle from cracked lips. “Think you to stand between Mother Safi and her vengeance? Many crossed me before I went into the Abyss. Never a one lived long enough to make penance. Now that I am returned, more will pay for their betrayal.”

“Safi?” Rathe said, incredulous. “You died-” he glanced at Wina “-by her hand.”

“Aye, but my spirit lived on,” the woman cackled, making her hanging slabs of flesh jiggle.

Farther down the corridor, beyond Safi and Wina, stealthy shapes slithered low across the floor. There came a violent flapping rustle, and the shapes grew and rose up, curtains of undulating darkness. From this emerged Yiri and Horge. Wina shrank away, moaning. They passed by Rathe and Nesaea, and joined the old woman. Yiri looked a corpse, cheeks wan, eyes hollow. Horge was as frightened and fidgety as Rathe had ever seen him.

“Here walk the darkest of sorceries,” Nesaea warned.

“Mama?” Horge said in disbelief, face slack. If he was pleased to see his mother alive, it did not show.

“Horge, my wee, craven son,” Mother Safi snapped without a hint of love. “Gather what was stolen from your dear mama. ‘Tis yonder, clutched in that dead hand.” When he did not move fast enough, she landed a meaty palm to the back of his head. “Quit pissing down your leg, and do as I say!”

Hunched and whimpering, Horge scuttled to retrieve the hand that held the amulet.

“Do not touch it!” Wina snarled, all timidity gone. A monstrous sneer twisted her face. “She’ll turn us all to her bidding.”

Horge halted, staring about in confusion. Rathe beckoned to him, but the scrawny wretch hunkered lower, shivering in his skin.

“Do as I say,” Safi growled. She turned a baleful eye on Wina. “And you shut your sniveling gob. Had you died like a good girl, the curse of the Stone would no have fallen to you and yours.”

Wina drew a belt knife, a gleaming steel tooth. Blood pattered down from the stump of her other arm. “Most all were dead by the time I returned, rotted by the plague you set upon Ravenhold. Murdered for what, some petty affront by Lord Gafford? This night, I’ll finish what you and I began, what he should have done, instead of granting you freedom.”

“No,” Yiri said, dark eyes going to glowing crimson. “This night you will die.” She raised her hands, fingertips throwing emerald sparks. Her teeth flashed as she muttered strange words, and those sparks coalesced into a fist-sized ball of fire.

“No!” Horge cried. “You cannot force the spirit to your will. It will destroy you, sister! That’s what it wants! ”

Yiri stepped toward Wina, the crackling ball growing large as a head.

“Scorch the meat from her bones!” Mother Safi cried with maniacal glee.

“The girl is beyond our help,” Nesaea said against Rathe’s ear, hauling him down the corridor.