James West - Reaper Of Sorrows

“You are to aid me in gaining my rightful place in the world,” he said, voice smooth as the rare vintage she had set aside.

“I care not about your place in the world,” Nesaea said, “or helping you achieve it.”

He smiled enigmatically. “You will,” he said, fingering the hilt of a serpentine-bladed dagger at his belt. “Soon, your part in my destiny will be all that you care about.”

“Do you mean to kill us?” Nesaea asked, wishing she had been able to hide the knife she had used to free Fira. Before being presented to Lord Sanouk, however, the soldiers had searched her and discovered it. Carnala moaned in horror at the question. There were worse things than death, Nesaea knew. She had suffered some of it across the Sea of Muika, on the isles of Giliron. Neither before nor since could she understand how a single year had passed so slowly, as it had while she served as a pleasure slave.

“What use would your death serve?” Sanouk asked.

Though he strove for a conciliatory tone, Nesaea detected a bald lie in his voice. Her gaze skimmed over the goblets on the table and landed on the tall bottle. If I am to die anyway ….

In one fluid motion, she caught the bottle about its neck, and flew at Sanouk with all the coiled fury of a provoked adder. With a surprised squawk, he flung himself outside of Nesaea’s swing, twisting away. The dense glass shattered against the stone wall, and she danced to one side, the dagger she had deftly plucked from his belt held in one hand, and in the other the bottle’s jagged remains.

Carnala wailed, bloodshot eyes rolling. Nesaea shoved the girl behind her, and whipped the wavy-bladed dagger under Sanouk’s nose. He leaped back, nimble as a dancer, and settled his feet in a relaxed stance. Unaccountably the brief, fearful surprise he had showed dissolved, replaced by amusement.

“Come any closer,” Nesaea warned, “and your place in the world will be the grave.”

“Indeed?” Sanouk drawled. He advanced, driving Nesaea and Carnala toward the stairwell. He smiled, prepared to utter some inanity, and Nesaea slashed the bottle at his eyes. Sanouk knocked it from her grasp, even as she raked the dagger across his face.

Lord Sanouk spun away, hands clutched to his face. Then, slowly, like a conjurer revealing a fine trick, he dropped them.

Nesaea shivered in dread at the impossibility before her. She had felt the steel slice his face to ribbons … but no wound marred his flesh, not even a pinprick of blood showed. He laughed at her shock, and the dagger fell from her nerveless fingers.

“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.