“What is happening there?”
An anger he could not quite put into words coated the back of his throat and burned all the way down his gullet.
Ambrose gave him a confused look but slid to his side in silent support as the ghuls turned and shuffled back to address him.
“We are late,” Imrah informed him curtly. “If you wish to peruse the shops, you will have time once you have your audience with—”
“I don’t want to shop, I want to get answers,” Milo snarled. “Is that a slave market?”
Milo had of course heard of such things, degenerate places in savage lands where people were traded like livestock. To see something that resembled such barbarism, only with the purchasers being fanged and gloam-eyed horrors like the ghuls made something rebel inside of him. He couldn’t say why this was the bridge too far, not with all the horrible and alien sights they’d seen already, but he found his feet planted in the middle of the broad street, and he would not be moved.
Imrah looked at where Milo was pointing, then glanced at Fazihr, who nodded in a most vulture-like fashion as he stepped forward.
“It is no slave market,” Fazihr said, uncurling his claws. “Though what it is will not in truth make you any happier. If it helps, I will tell you that those creatures, the goyisch, though they resemble your kind, are little more than animals.”
Milo felt a tremor inside him, somehow certain of the answer before he asked it.
“If it isn’t a slave market,” he said, tasting bile at the back of his throat, “what is it?”
Fazihr looked at Imrah, who nodded.
“It is a meat market,” he said, hands splayed apologetically. “Something like the butcher shops you humans frequent.”
Milo felt the lead weight in his stomach plummet toward the ground. He wasn’t sure if he was about to be sick, storm the abominable place, or attack Fazihr. For a long heartbeat, he stood rooted to the spot as the triptych of choices spun in his head.
You wanted more, his own voice whispered in his head. No one ever said you’d like it.
“Magus. Milo,” Ambrose whispered at his shoulder. “It sours my stomach too, but let’s not do anything rash. We just got here, and we both still have a lot to learn, you even more than me. Before we start overturning tables, let’s make sure we know which temple we’re in.”
The full effect of the biblical analogy was wasted on the religiously illiterate Milo, but the big man’s calm voice broke the back of his anger. It slunk into a dark corner of his heart to fester, but Milo felt its stranglehold loosen.
“This isn’t how I expected things to turn out,” he confessed to his bodyguard, not caring that Fazihr could hear. “This is not the kind of place I thought I would…”
Ambrose rested one strong paw on Milo’s shoulder and gave an affectionate if painful squeeze.
“I know,” he said. “Things rarely turn out the way we hope. But you have one advantage most people don’t.”
Milo let out a sigh and rolled his eyes.
“I’m a witch,” he muttered as they followed Fazihr, who had turned without comment to walk with Imrah again.
“Not much of one yet,” Ambrose chuckled. “Besides, that’s not what I was talking about.”
“Do tell,” Milo remarked dryly, exercising all his will not to look back at the downcast creatures, the goyisch, one last time.
“At least you were told that you’d be learning from monsters,” the big man said with a sweep of his arm at Ifreedahm. “Most folks don’t find out how awful their mentors are until it's far too late for it to matter.”
Milo’s shoulders sagged as he pulled out a desperately needed cigarette and the requisite match. The honest flame of the lucifer seemed a pale, puny thing before the unnatural light that bathed the city.
“Sometimes, Simon,” he said, taking a deep drag as he shook out the match, “it feels like my whole life is a study in too little, too late.”
It was Ambrose’s turn to roll his eyes.
“Young people,” he sputtered, shaking his head. “Always so dramatic.”
9
An Audience
Milo had a sneaking suspicion that their travel through the rest of Ifreedahm had been modified to make certain the two humans didn’t see anything that might spark more delays.
With Imrah leading the way, they soon left the wide thoroughfares and slid among the alleys and side streets until they came to a broad stair that descended to a lower level of the city.
“It will be quicker, and there will be fewer chances for interruptions,” Fazihr explained as Milo and Ambrose paused at the top of the stairs. “Truly, we should have traveled this way upon first entering the city, but I would have thought you’d appreciate being spared more darkness. I understand it is uncomfortable for your kind.”
The steps descended into shadow, and Milo had to admit that as bizarre and awful as the city was, he didn’t relish more tunnels with their smothering darkness.
Still, getting to the Bashlek’s court quickly was just fine with him. A growing desire to learn what he had to, rather than all he could, had been growing in Milo, and the quicker he got things started, the sooner he could leave.
“Let’s just get this over with.” He grunted as he shifted the lamp so he had a hand on each horn and its green light shone down the steps into the dark passageway.
“Quickly,” Imrah urged from just beyond the light, and Milo followed, feeling as though they were traveling down the moss-floored tunnel again.
He quickly learned the Underpassage of Ifreedahm was far less peaceful than the quiet, steady seclusion of the tunnels that led to the ghul realm. The skull lamp shone on worn walls and floors, their surfaces pitted and scored, and a few times, he spied great, many-fingered cracks on the floor. Occasionally these uneven places nearly turned his feet underneath him, and only Ambrose’s steady hand kept him from pitching forward.
In the untouched blackness beyond the lamp’s light, the impression of many creatures moving swiftly and quietly nearby could not be ignored. Ghuls seemed naturally cat-footed, but there were so many of them that they could not be completely silent. There were other noises of movement as well, rustlings and flutterings that Milo would not dwell on. At irregular intervals, there was an eruption of ghul speech, sometimes soft and insistent, other times sharp and combative, but it always set Milo’s teeth on edge. Once he felt something pass within inches of his arm, moving so quickly it was only a dark, spindly blur. He heard the awful torn-jugular sound of ghul laughter echoing behind him, growing fainter with maddening slowness.
His nerves deadened to the terror of the Underpassage as time dragged on, but Milo was becoming more and more aware of his discomfort. Since the interruption of his sleep and the abductive introduction by the ghuls, they had been walking for several hours, and he was tired and sore. After taking no fewer than three twisting turns that led deeper under the city, Milo began to wonder if Imrah really did intend for them to see her father.
He was just about to raise the question when they rounded a bend in the upcoming passage and stood before a baroque door made of worked bronze and set in a wall of the same dark, gemlike stone as the central citadel. In front of the door stood two ogrish ghuls, their blind heads crowned with glowing ridged helms that nearly scraped the ceiling. Their huge hands were encased in scalloped gauntlets, and around their necks hung thick chains from which several glass orbs dangled. In the light of the skull lamp, something noxious and hungry seethed within the glass.
Both guards, nostrils flaring, bowed deeply to Imrah.
“The Bashlek’s guest has arrived,” she stated in a voice that presumed attention and obedience. “He had word sent that he and his consort were to be taken to the southern antechamber of the court in preparation for their audience.”
Both creatures bowed again, then in unison, they slapped their metal-shod hands to the gate and rumbled a single bass note.
The door swung inward with a groan on he
avy hinges.
“Consort, eh?” Ambrose chuckled as they moved toward the yawning portal. “You’ll have to let me know if that’s a promotion or demotion after this is all done.”
The interior of the ghul citadel was a strange combination of bleak and alien that left Milo vacillating between shock and near boredom until they reached the antechamber.
They moved through labyrinthine corridors that all seemed very much the same, little more than passages of dark stone smoothed and shaped to inhuman aesthetics. Their odd, slanted design was at first unsettling, but as his mind accepted the foreign geometries, they blurred one into the other. Even the pale-blue witchlight that illuminated the place could be accepted as commonplace.
That lasted until they came to a gallery of bas reliefs full of strange and sometimes animated art or passed a room where an unliving servitor was busying itself with a menial task. Then the reality of where he was came crashing back in, and Milo was torn between disgust and dread fascination.
By the time they arrived at the antechamber, a circular room with several low couches and tables, Milo was thankful for a place to sit and compose himself before meeting the ruler of the city. One of the goblin ghuls was waiting for them when they arrived, and it displayed a maddening combination of excitement and irritation at seeing them. It rubbed its knobby hands together as it eyed Milo and his lamp before pulling a puckered look at Imrah.
“Mysuchastate,” it gibbered in a breathless string of sound. “Maimedandsmellingofthesurfacewhatwillyourfatherthink.”
Imrah held out her stump of a wrist and examined it as though just remembering what had happened to her hand.
“If he notices, I will be shocked,” she replied tartly. “But I have a regenerating salve and all the necessities. Go let him know we are about to be announced, and I’ll get things sorted.”
The simian ghul gave an irritated little prance as it made its way to a door opposite the one they’d entered.
“Notlikelynotlikelyatall,” it sing-songed as it capered. “Andyou’llstillstinkofthesurfacenomatterwhatyoudo.”
Imrah’s jaws clacked in irritation, and the shrunken ghul gave a shriller rendition of a ghul laugh before tugging the door ajar just enough for it to slip through. In the room beyond, voices echoing in a great hall could be heard.
“This will take a minute,” Imrah explained almost apologetically, then paused to look Milo up and down thoughtfully. “Actually, you might want to watch this.”
Milo looked at Ambrose, who shrugged, and together, they stepped over to the ghul princess.
“Perhaps you will learn this someday,” she said, then, reaching her clawed finger to her collarbone, she dragged a line that split her inky skin and tugged away a loose flap.
Milo and Ambrose swore in shock and horror, drawing Imrah’s startled eye. Seeing the faces of the two humans staring at the flap of hide she’d sheared from her body, she gave a derisive snort.
“Be silent and learn,” she hissed irritably, then pulled hard on the flap.
Milo heard a familiar rending sound akin to what he’d heard in Room 7 with the shade, but instead of a crawling nest of darkness, there was a gray-skinned body beneath. In truth, the exposed flesh was nearly identical to what he’d already seen, only a different color and less slimy-looking.
With a start, Milo realized the skin of ghuls was some kind of shell, a skin-tight coating, and what he was now seeing was Imrah’s naked flesh. The revelation sparked what was left of his underdeveloped decorum, and Milo wondered if he should look away.
When Imrah reached inside her skinsuit, he was glad he hadn’t.
There was a clink of glass, then she drew out two vials with wax stoppers, one containing what looked like pale splinters, while the other was a deep bronze color. The vials were small enough they both fit in her hand, but Milo found it hard to believe there was enough room in her snug garment for such items to fit unnoticed. His disbelief was compounded when after looking over what lay in her hand, she palmed the glass containers and fished out another vial full of what looked like ink.
Imrah, her skin suit flapping open, turned to Milo as she shuffled the vials into her other hand.
“Each of these is part of a formula for a regeneration ritual,” she stated, holding them up for Milo to get a good look at. “How much and what combinations, you will learn with time. Initially, you will need to follow strict recipes to avoid...accidents. However, once you understand the basic principles, there will be some variations and improvisations available.”
Milo, realizing he was being taught magic on the fly, nodded to show he was paying attention and not wondering about ghul conceptions of nudity, and more troublingly, sexuality.
“This is not your mortal chemistry,” she said as she gave the vials a shake. “All the reagents in the Underworld will do you no good if they are not commanded to obey, bound by will and intent.”
She raised the vials to her mouth, and with one practiced motion, tore all three wax seals free.
“Necromantic alchemy uses the essence left by once-living things to interact with magically-charged ingredients,” she explained, passing the open vials beneath her nose with a sniff. “It is art and science, as well as conquest. The finest ingredients can be wasted without essence to fuel their transformation, and even with the essence, an unfocused mind will not be able to control their reactions.”
She displayed her teeth in a Ghulish grin.
“For the weak or timid, what should heal could turn to poison in an instant,” she explained, then threw back her head and emptied all three vials into her open mouth.
As Milo watched her shudder, he heard her utter a word in the ghul tongue, and he felt...something. Some internal pressure from Imrah thrumming against his mind. For the briefest of seconds, he experienced, not sensations, but impressions of sensations. A thrill, then yearning, and then pain. It was almost dizzying how quickly one bled into the next, and as he wrestled with them, he lost his sense of time and location for a moment.
As such, when he heard Ambrose’s voice, he woke as though from a deep sleep, struggling to remember where he was and how long he had been there.
“Well, that’s quite the trick and no mistake.”
Milo started and saw that Imrah’s mutilated arm now boasted a skeletal hand that smoked and hissed. Before he could recover from the shock of the new appendage, before his very eyes, the vapors began to contract and congeal into her ash-colored flesh. In the time it took to utter a profane exclamation, Imrah possessed a complete hand.
As if to show off, she raised that newly formed hand to her mouth and licked her thumb with her black, wormy tongue, then drew the flap of her skinsuit back into place. The new moistened thumb pressed the torn corner into place, and there was a soft cracking like flesh over a fire. When she drew her hand away, her black suit was whole, and within a blink of an eye, it had crawled over her regenerated hand.
“This is what lies within your grasp, Magus,” Imrah said as she curled and uncurled her hands in a demonstration.
The door to the Bashlek’s court swung open, and the shrunken attendant thrust his head in.
“Youraudienceisbeingannounced,” it chirped. “Bestgetoutthere.”
Milo had stumbled halfway to the door before claws closed around his arm.
“Take this.”
Milo turned around and felt the skull lamp pressed into his hands.
“You might need it,” Fazihr said, sharing the least reassuring smile Milo had ever seen.
“Welcome, Magus,” Bashlek Marid rasped from his throne. “I trust your introduction to my realm was a tender one.”
Despite sitting high upon a throne on an elevated dais, the ghul monarch’s gravelly whisper carried down so that it felt as though Milo was within arm’s reach of the old predator.
That was exactly what Marid was: a predator.
Years in the Dresden war orphanage had honed Milo’s instincts about such things. Even as a young child, those
who survived in such environs learned very quickly to distinguish between predator and prey. This understanding grew very quickly to the realization that these roles were fluid for most, with the average individual acting as predator or prey as events unfolded and they were given or denied opportunity. Anyone could fall upon the broken or be fallen upon, but the true predators and true prey never changed, one always hunting and the other always running scared.
One look at the venerable monster−the tilt of his head, the flex of his claws−told Milo everything he needed to know.
“Yes, thank you, uh, sir.” Milo fumbled. “On behalf of my commander and the, uh, German Empire, I would like to extend my thanks.”
“Your gratitude and that of your people is noted,” the Bashlek replied as he leaned back on his throne, smoothing the crimson mantle and stole he wore. “We are glad to be the first to extend a hand of friendship in your kind’s first steps onto the path of true civilization.”
Voices rustled around the hall, ghuls whispering and scheming in the tiered galleries lining the audience chamber. The braziers hanging in a row from the high vaulted ceiling did not spill their cool light far beyond the center of the room, so Milo could only guess at the expressions of hundreds of eyes watching him. A quick flutter of panic stirred in his stomach to have so many eyes on him, but he squashed it ruthlessly.
There was only one set of eyes he needed to worry about right now, and that set scrutinized him minutely after tossing out a barb tucked into his magnanimity.
Milo nodded, allowing himself half a smile so the Bashlek knew he was in on the game.
“Great Bashlek, I am eager to begin learning,” he declared, pitching his voice so it was clearly heard by everyone present. “Knowing that humans cover the whole of the earth, yet we still have so much to learn fills me with...excitement for the days to come.”
Marid inclined his head slightly as he sank deeper into his throne, acknowledging Milo’s riposte even as he displayed unconcern.
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 10
