Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

With it held high in her left hand and her sword naked in her right, Samaire had trod that ever-turning passage in quest of Cormac mac Art.

She was well past the remains of the slain monster serpent when, though she felt no breath of wind, her torch made a windswept, snarling noise-and went out.

Instantly clutching cold hands fell upon her.

She fought. Back she jammed her feet and elbows, and she attempted to cut behind her at him who held her in the darkness. Yet she succeeded not in slashing him. The blows of her elbows and heels he took without letting go, and in silence. An arm came over her “shoulder and across her neck, where it pressed and steadily forced up the chin she strove to clamp down in protection of her throat. Another arm enwrapped her at the waist, and a powerful hand clamped viciously.

As if her silent assailant knew her thoughts, that hand leaped away when, with care for herself, she brought her sword down to slice at it. With a jolt as of a bar of steel the hand slammed into her wrist, and clamped. She moaned. The sword fell into the dust. Then the hard-chested man behind her had inveigled his arm under her chin, and it continued to clamp.

Long she held her breath and struggled without panting to free herself. At last the air had to be expelled from her seemingly bursting lungs-and the arm across her throat prevented her drawing another breath.

She knew that she made hideous sounds. Her head grew enormous. Pain like ice grew until it owned her chest. Her ears reported a roaring that she knew was not there, and a redness seemed to grow in the darkness, and Samaire knew that she was beginning to die.

Samaire began to shiver, almost violently.

Not to be able to speak, even to cry out or know her killer or the reason for her death! She felt tears ooze from her eyes. The trickles were first warm, then cool on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge, her staring gaze like claws scratching at the dark in an effort to tear it away. Growing weaker and weaker, she writhed helplessly and strove to cry out.

She heard her own sounds; tiny hints of voice emerged from her gaping mouth, pitiful sick-chicken noises. Her skin goosefleshed.

The darkness was gone. There was only the deep glowing red that seemed to undulate and pulse like visible heat before her staring, aching eyes. She shivered again. Her intestines seemed to knot themselves.

Desperately, ridiculously, she tried to fight death from powerful hands that could not be fought.

The breathless woman felt herself go absolutely limp throughout her body; felt the tickly trickle of perspiration down the insides of her arms and her flanks; felt the oozing dampness on her forehead and between her breasts. She felt the numbness coming.

I… die.

The thought made her angry. She was dying, dying at the hands of a grimly silent and unknown coward who would not face even a woman, but somehow took away her light and then seized upon her in the dark, from behind, and continued strangling her thus until there was no longer any need.

More anger than fear Samaire of Leinster knew, and then she knew nothing.

Consciousness, full of throbbing pain, seeped back to her. There was an ache in her head, which felt enormously swollen, a dull throbbing that increased in tempo and volume when she moved it. She strove now to dispel the confusion within that aching head, to think. Surely this was not death. Surely pain ended with death.

He but choked me into unconsciousness, then ceased, and I began to breathe again. Another thought followed close: How long ago? How long have I… slept?

She was aware of a pressure against her forehead. She could not account for it. Am I lying face down? No… no… I stand…

Slowly, finding it an effort, she peeled open her eyes.

Before her was a wall of stone. She stood leaning against it. Her head scraped the smooth surface as she turned it to left and to right. Gone was the darkness; no less than two torches burned. The flickering flame sent dancing ghost-shadows about her, upon her. Her body ached. Her chest hurt and breathing came hard. She tried to think about that, seeking the cause with a mind that refused to work properly but oozed along the thought process like honey poured in January.

Her body was constricted. She was not lying down. Yet-an she had been unconscious, asleep, how was it that she was standing? Each limb ached and quivered. Blinking again and again, she looked at herself in the flickering yellow light of the two gums. Her cheek rubbed smooth stone as she turned her head this way and that.

Samaire saw that both her modesty and her freedom were gone.

She was both bound and naked.

Though she was hardly in possession of the full awareness and reasoning powers choked away from her, the confused captive was aware that she was still in the passageway beneath the castle. Somehow… yes: she was bound to the very wall itself. How… how possible… Spikes, driven into the stone?

She had no idea. She could not see her wrists. But she was bound, and she was in worse than discomfort.

Her ribs felt crushed by the tautness of her body, stretched and flattened, the skin drawn tight over each several rib because her arms were drawn up and out and made fast. Her breasts pressed against the stone worse than uncomfortably; they were naked and vulnerable and the stone was cold. She felt her heart pounding, felt the ache in her limbs, and she felt the fluttering in her bare stomach with her laborious breathing.

Awareness increased. Pain sharpened her senses, hastened her return from near-death to full consciousness. Nevertheless, thinking remained an effort of conscious will.

She took stock of her situation, like a barely-competent steward tallying the master’s holdings. And she would again be master of her own body and brain…

She was bound facing the wall, standing close against it with her arms dragged out at worse than right angles to her body, so that she formed a living Y. Almost rigid were her arms; the binding at the wrists she could not see were almost without slack. Relief came from the simple completed chore of discovering how it was she had stood while unconscious. To such had she been reduced, a heady appreciation of the simplest realization.

Samaire Ceannselaigh wondered how long ago she had been secured thus. How long had she stood sagging against the unyielding wall in a way that in creased the terrible strain on her arms and shoulders? -and back, she realized, and chest, and tautened stomach…

Slim, smooth-muscled thighs quivered. Realizing only now that they were braced wide apart and that her knees were pressed against the cavern wall, Samaire thought on that. No intuitive leap aided her; she was forced to labour through the entire thinking process.

Aye. Her wide-braced legs lowered her posture, and thus added to the burden of her arms. She willed aching muscles to serve her. They complained. She winced and a little groan escaped her when she straightened, bringing her legs together. Gods be thanked, they were not bound!

Other sinews shrieked, for now her elbows were able to bend, however slightly, and every long-strained muscle in each arm hurled icy stabs of pain along its length and into her torso. Her shoulders burned. Both hands remained bound above the level of her head.

And then it occurred to her, with the return of full intelligence and ability to reason, to wonder. About the torches, about the who -she wondered where he was, and that thought was like a cruel hand that clutched at her stomach from within.

Her mouth was open to call out. She reconsidered, and compressed her lips.

Not knowing who had strangled her into unconsciousness and bound her here, or why, she held herself in check. There was determination upon her not to be some pleading quavery-voiced captive. She was Samaire of Leinster, she was a weapon-woman of Eirrin, and she did not speak until she knew she could trust her voice and had chosen her words.