David Gemmell - Dark Moon

'Oh, please, my lord, save me!' wailed the girl tied to the altar table. Karis swung to look at her. She was no more than fourteen.

'Be silent, child,' ordered Sirano. Swinging to the tall bald sorcerer, he asked, 'Why has the ritual not yet been completed?'

'It has, my lord. That is, what is of interest.'

'Spare me the riddles, Calizar.'

'Observe, lord.' The tall man raised his left hand and began to chant. Red smoke flowed from his fingers, oozing out towards the milky beauty of the Pearl. As it came closer the smoke shifted, forming what appeared to Karis to be a large four-taloned claw which descended towards the Pearl. Just as the red smoke was about to touch the globe, a jagged spark of lightning lanced up. Blue fire exploded within the smoke, flaring in an intricate web of light. The red claw disappeared.

As the smoke faded, the sorcerer raised his right hand. The curved dagger he held flashed down, plunging into the young girl's heart. Her slender body arched up, and a strangled cry was torn from her lips. Calizar dragged the knife clear. A white cloud billowed from the Pearl and swept out over the murdered girl, masking her completely. The huge room filled with the scent of roses. Sirano watched with interest. Karis stood by, her distaste for the attempted sacrifice washed away by a sudden feeling of prescience as she stared intently at the child on the altar.

After several seconds, the white cloud rose from the girl and flowed back into the Pearl.

'No more, please!' wailed the child. Sirano stepped in close, his hand pressing down on the white flesh of her small breasts. There was not a mark, nor a speck of blood to show where the knife tore into her heart.

'How many times has this happened?' asked Sirano.

This was the fourth, my lord. The Pearl will not, it seems, allow a human sacrifice.'

'Fascinating! What do you make of it, Calizar?'

'It is quite beyond me, Lord Sirano.'

'Give me the dagger and cast the talon-smoke.' Calizar handed him the blade, then began to chant. The girl on the altar started to cry. Sirano smiled at her, and stroked her hair.

'Don't hurt me!' she begged him.

He did not reply. The red smoke closed around the Pearl, lightning and blue sparks came out once more in response.

'Now!' whispered Calizar.

Sirano turned . . . and slammed the dagger into the wizard's chest, driving in the blade up to the hilt. Calizar staggered back and then fell to his knees, his long upper body slumping forward until his brow thudded against the cold stone of the floor.

The white cloud issued from the Pearl, sweeping over the wizard. But as it touched him it recoiled and returned instantly to the globe, seeping through the multicoloured outer layer.

Sirano knelt by the corpse and pushed it to its back. 'I have no time', he said, 'for wizards who find new magic beyond them.' Rising, he turned to the other two sorcerers. 'Do you find this utterly beyond you?'

'Not at all, my lord. But it will require a great deal of study,' replied the first. His colleague nodded agreement.

'Good,' said Sirano. 'So what have we learned today?'

'The Pearl is sentient,' said the first sorcerer, a small man with close-set eyes and a long pointed beard.

'What else?'

'That we can establish some kind of control over it.

We made it heal the child. But if you will forgive me for saying so, lord, I do not - yet,' he added swiftly,

'understand why it brought the girl back to life and not my brother Calizar.'

'Ah, but I do,' said Sirano. 'Continue your work.'

'What about the girl, lord?'

'No more sacrifices for the moment. Give her ten gold crowns and send her home.'

Swinging away from them he led Karis back to the upper study.

'Well?' she asked him. 'Are you going to tell me why it saved the girl.'

'She was innocent,' he said.

'How does that help you unlock the Pearl's secrets?'

'It made a choice, my beauty. Don't you see? It is sentient. So we will offer it more choices. And very soon I will have more power than any man who ever walked this land.'

For six days Karis saw no sign of Sirano. At midnight on the seventh day a tremor ran through the castle.

Karis, who was lying in bed nursing a goblet of wine in her hands, leapt to her feet and ran to the balcony.

Bright lights were blazing from the highest rooms of the keep, and lightning forked up from the top turret.

Blocks of stone cascaded down to the courtyard below, some smashing through the stable roof.

The naked man who moments before had been lying alongside Karis moved out onto the balcony. 'His magic will kill us all,' he said, gripping the bronze balcony rail. Darkly handsome, his strong face now showed signs of fear. It was not an attractive sight, thought Karis.

'He says he is close to the secrets of the Pearl,' Karis told him.

Giriak swore. 'You told me that a week ago. Yesterday a section of the main wall came crashing down -

killed three of my men. He'll wreck the entire city if this goes on much longer. Have you seen the columns of refugees? They're leaving the city in droves.'

Karis shrugged. 'What do you care?' she asked him. 'He gives you gold.'

'I'd like to live to spend it.'

Another tremor struck, and a small crack appeared on the facing wall of the balcony. 'Son of a whore!'

hissed Giriak, leaping back into the main room. Karis grinned as she turned to face him. Holding out her arms, she gestured to him.

'Come!' she called. 'Make love to me on the balcony, before it falls.'

'Don't be foolish,' he urged her. Karis let fall the green robe she wore, her naked body glistening in the moonlight. Another tremor struck and the crack in the stone opened wider, tracing a thick black line all the way to the wall. 'Come in!' yelled Giriak.

'Come out,' she taunted. 'Show me you are a man.'

'You are mad, woman! Do you want to die?'

'Collect your clothes and get out,' she said, contemptuously turning from him and climbing to the bronze rail. Balanced delicately, she walked along it, feeling the cold, smooth metal beneath her feet. One more tremor and she would fall. She knew it, and a delicious sense of excitement swept through her. This was life! For some moments she stood there with arms raised.

Lightning swept up from the turret, followed by a clap of thunder that shook the foundations of the building. Karis lost her balance, then spun and launched herself back into the bedchamber, landing on her shoulder and rolling to her feet. Behind her the balcony sheared away and crashed to the courtyard below.

Karis shivered, then glanced around the room. Giriak had gone.

Gathering the wine jug and a goblet, she sat down on the round embroidered rug at the centre of the room.

Giriak was a disappointment. Like all the men she had known. Is it a fault in men themselves, she wondered, or merely a flaw in the kind of men I find exciting? Indeed, is the flaw in me?

Her father had maintained that it was. He claimed she was devil-possessed, and tried for years to thrash the devil from her. He would drag her from the cabin and tie her to a post in the barn. The words that followed were always the same. 'Recant! Open your heart to the Source. Beg for forgiveness.' Karis had tried all that, but it made no difference. If she proclaimed her innocence, he would beat her. If she admitted guilt and called upon the Source to forgive her, her father's rage would grow incandescent. 'You lie and mock me!' he would shout. Then he would beat her legs and buttocks with the birch until she bled. So she learned to stay silent through it all, head twisted, her deep brown eyes holding to his insane gaze.

There was no knight at hand to rescue the child, no hero to stride through the forest and pluck her away.

Just her and her world-weary mother, a woman old before her time, beaten down by the years and the cold fists of her husband.