“Say yes, my sweet!” he urged, driving into her. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful—!” Slut! Bitch! Whore! He growled in sweet agony as she bucked beneath him.
“I’ll think about it,” she said after a minute, once her breathing had become normal again.
He smiled his cruelty into the pillow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would try again. The stupid bitch would give in. Eventually. She was such a whore.
“Tell me how you managed this communication,” he said, looking away to breathe more easily. He stayed on her, crushing her. He knew she liked it. He had forgotten nothing from their time as lovers almost eight years ago.
“I will not,” she denied him. “It is but for you to delay. Marun was so very understanding about it. He comprehended exactly why Ugoth must be punished.” She squirmed beneath Ufrid’s body, enjoying the weight of him. Ugoth never stayed with her like this. He never held her after. “I will be your link to the sorcerer,” she went on. “When you leave with Ugoth, you can tell me everything he plans. Two small mirrors of power, Ufrid! Imagine! The value of such items! And the sorcerer just handed them to me as if they were nothing.”
Ufrid turned his head and stared at her profile as she rattled on. Malice had etched a grimace onto her face. The mad bitch. How had she done this? How had she communicated with Marun?
He lifted himself off her, his gaze hard. “Handed them to you? What did he do? Open a portal straight into this very chamber?”
“Ufrid? Are you jealous?” A smile of satisfaction played over her lips.
He was, but not of Marun. The man only used boys. Boys with flat bellies, flatter than her sagging gut. Gods! After her, he might try a boy. But he played along with her just the same. All he wanted was her link to the sorcerer.
“Was he here with you?” he snarled, pretending fury. He grabbed her neck with one hand and began to choke her.
“Ufrid! No!” she cried. “Oh!”
Easing his grip, he pressed his lips on her and ravaged her mouth. She groaned against him. He could feel her starting up again, but he was too spent to do anything about it. He groaned, but in sheer frustration over her obstinacy.
Meddling female! He pulled away and hissed some of his aggravation at her. “Give me the link directly, Eshaia! Do not soil yourself over this matter, my purest one. Let me see after it for you.”
“No! I will not.”
Ufrid snarled for real this time. He slipped from her bed.
“Don’t leave yet!” she protested, sitting up.
He refused to look at her, Ugoth’s used slut, so caught up in her petty world of insults and grievances she couldn’t see the truth anymore. She was stupid, a cow, and a treasonous bitch with a penchant for abuse.
A shallow bitch. She’d toss aside her objections over her children if he managed her right. He knew she would. She hardly ever bothered with them except to make certain no one thought her a negligent mother.
“He’ll be back from that whore’s house soon,” he excused himself and snatched his clothing up from the floor. “If it comes to outright fratricide, the Court of Peers won’t support either of us. I’ll come back. Next time he leaves, be ready.”
He pulled his clothing on and quit the room without a backward glance. Eshaia sagged onto the mattress. Just then he had reminded her of Ugoth. He had left her so callously, without a look of love before he shut the door. He was so much like his brother.
All the more reason not to tell him of the great mirror of power in the tallest keep of Durgven Castle. “How providential that this marvellous heirloom is such a well-kept secret,” Eshaia murmured and smiled nastily. “Not even Ufrid knows about it.”
But what did that mean exactly? Why hadn’t King Uthel thought to tell his youngest son of this immensely important artefact?
“Probably just a regrettable oversight. And of course Ugoth never tells Ufrid anything.” Fortunately for her.
But she knew of it—not from Ugoth, naturally. That boor would tell her nothing so significant. No, she’d wormed this out of a monk after mysterious services had been held at the top of the tower. She had discovered that an important ceremony had been conducted above—the chanting of powerful wards to protect a precious object—and that had been as much she’d gotten from the nervous eunuch of a man. She’d stolen Ugoth’s set of keys and gone up to see for herself.
Well, then. Now she had the power and means to see him pay for the years of unforgivable slights. Ulmenir didn’t need a boor for a king, not when it already had an Omeran queen.
She smiled, triumph transforming her features into an unforgiving grimace.
***
In his pavilion, mere hours from the border of Omera, Marun gazed without expression at the large mirror that stood uncovered near a canvas wall. He knew where the twin rested, and just this morning he’d seen the tower clearly for a second time, almost eight years after the first unwelcome sight.
“Only this time, I see an angry queen within it,” he spoke to himself. “A stupid, spoiled bitch.”
He lifted the goblet in his hand and drank. The fortified wine burned his throat. He ignored the hot sensation and swallowed a second gulp, staring at his immaculately attired figure in the mirror and remembering the first time he’d viewed the tower.
Recently he had taken to leaving the powerful object uncovered within a circle of warding chalked on the canvas floor. The arcane marks kept the unwelcome out. However, and though it was unlikely ever to happen, the spell marks wouldn’t stop what he wanted to let through the device, not monstrous beasts, the undead or dark witches. Those creatures he pulled eagerly into his sphere of influence.
But his tools of war weren’t likely to arrive through the mirror. No, only the monks of Saint Turamen would. The warding marks were for them, to keep that sect of insipid meddlers out. All but one of them.
“Brother Herfod!” he hissed. Damn him!
He swallowed the last of the wine in one great gulp, set the goblet down on the table and stalked out of the mirror’s range, moving off to the divan that lay to the side. He stared down at the latest pretty boy his people had found for him—beautiful red hair, but still not as beautiful as Kehfrey’s.
He knelt before the cowering naked child, grasped him by the hair and pulled his head closer. The child whimpered. Marun gave him the black kiss.
Throughout the pavilion shadows spun, whirling into the air from out of the earth. After many minutes, the child no longer whined. He lay limp within the sorcerer’s arms, his corpse as yet warm to the touch, his eyes wide with terrible blankness. Smiling, still playing with the boy’s flaccid genitalia, the Shadow Master turned the cadaver into a ghoul.
Deep beneath his kneeling body, fathoms below in the earth, she coiled, a rapturous presence of molten energy and crystal teeth, the entity that offered her vast power for his consumption. He felt her rumble with pleasure. She liked his gift. She adored children. She wanted more. He shivered above the ghoul, and his gaze fixed on the canvas across from him.
“Never give it everything it wants!”
The words echoed back to him from some distant past. His evil smile twisted and became a desperate silent scream. Beneath him, the child ghoul turned its head and smiled hungrily up at him.
“No more!” Marun whispered. “No more children!”
But you want them, his Dark Mistress said. They are your only solace now that Kehfrey is gone.
“Stop asking for them! Please stop!”
But it is you who asks for them.
“It is you who drives me! Please, you must stop!”
Smug retribution hit his psyche. You should have given me the boy when I asked!
“No!” he hissed. “Never!”
Then bring me another child, she commanded. And be certain his hair is red!
He bit back another desperate plea. He shoved the ghoul off his lap and rose away. “Get out with the others,” he bade it.
It tittered and crept forward instead. “Kehfrey! Kehfrey!
Kehfrey!” it chanted.
“Leave it go!” he shouted at his mistress.
I want another one! Now!
“Oh, gods! Have mercy!” he begged. “I can’t abide children!”
Can’t you? But you sniffed after one for seven years, my beloved Sevet.
“That was different! That was Kehfrey! He was different!”
Yes, yes, I know. You couldn’t resist him. He is possessed of some insidious power to attract, she scoffed. Bring me another child with red hair!
He bent half over, clutching at his head as if he wished to rip it off. “No! No! NO!”
The ghoul bumped into his shins and bit him. He kicked it aside and rushed from the tent, out into the meagre safety of daylight, but this day his mistress endeavoured to ridicule him openly. The abomination lifted the tent flap. The sorcerer whirled at the sound of canvas shifting. He eyed the dead boy balefully.
“Don’t!” Marun hissed at his goddess. “If you embarrass me before the army, I’ll walk away.”
The ground trembled, her laughter cold and pitiless. Then you at last turn your back on Kehfrey? You have no hope of regaining him without me.
“I have more hope of it than you!” he retorted. “Drop the lines to the ghoul that I may send it to the others.”
Do you think to command me, Sevet?
“If you will let me be nothing but this sinister man before the eyes of the world, then so be it,” he hissed, “but I will not also be your fool to ridicule openly. How does it serve you to let your army see me thus?”
He did not receive an answer. After a moment, he ordered the motionless ghoul to quit the tent and join the others of its kind. It departed without further resistance.
Fatigued from the spiritual struggle, he walked forward to re-enter the shelter, but a hail to the rear made him pause.
“Master Sevet.”
He turned reluctantly. No one named him Sevet other than another favourite of the goddess. A crone approached, a tall cadaverous woman. She led by the arm a small boy with red hair. Marun didn’t move as she walked forward and shoved the apprehensive child into the pavilion.
“The Mother wants a sacrifice,” the hag said, a thin smile of malice on her lips. “Give her it!”
“Do not think to order me,” he said.
“I don’t,” she said and withdrew, even yet smiling malevolence. “You didn’t do it right. She wants a proper sacrifice this time. Bugger the child and drain him, and she’ll let you alone another week.”
“If you ever bring another sacrifice at her behest, I’ll kill you,” he said.
She waved his threat off and continued away, contempt plain on her face. With a wrench of will, he twisted the lines of power beneath her feet. She stumbled and fell to the earth.
“I don’t need her to keep my threat!” he told his astonished victim. “I have sufficiently fed of her power to destroy you and any other hag in this coven! Never dare interfere between me and my mistress again!”
“It was she who demanded this!” the emaciated crone protested.
“Then think to say no!” He lifted the flap of the tent. “Get out!” he snapped at the child. The boy ran from the pavilion and raced on until he disappeared within the army.
The hag lifted to her feet. “What do you gain by refusing?” she said sullenly. “She’ll only torment you as she’s done before, until you relent and do as she bids.”
“That is not your concern,” he said curtly. “Leave!”
She left, casting a last grimace of dislike at him, but a hint of renewed respect showed in her eyes.
“Do you see that?” he said to his goddess. “If you would have me lead, then do not treat me as a dog to be called to heel.”
Again she didn’t respond, and the remaining day was good, but that night, when he had only begun to sleep, she whispered from her deep cavern and called for another sacrifice. For the next five nights, he had no rest, and when he tried to sleep in a wagon during the march, she haunted him in the day hours. Whenever his feet touched earth, he suffered the pain of a man crippled with arthritis throughout his body, though his health was sound and his bones straight and strong. At last, unable to fight any longer, he gave in to her demands and gifted her another child, this time as she wished it presented.
And he thought, in his worst moment, just as he always thought in his worst moment, that he saw Kehfrey in her great cavern of crystal teeth, only it wasn’t him really. It was someone else who looked like him, someone grown to adulthood, someone who seemed dead.
Marun shuddered into the corpse of his victim and yearned to join that still figure on the hot floor of the goddess’s antechamber, but the image faded, and he returned to the chill of the early morning air, to jerk away from the ghoul he clutched on his lap.
“Go to the others,” he croaked at it.
It rose and left obediently. He laid his head on the canvas flooring and wept from exhaustion and despair.
Chapter Four
“We want to see Brother Herfod!” Uma said firmly. “We want to see him, not this other fellow they keep sending. He never gets what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Uma was determined that His Majesty hear her petition, but she disliked the height from which he loomed over her, like some great beast that might leap down and rend her asunder. He sat astride his stallion, geared for war, his armour a shining black, his cloak a noble blue, a fascinating gryphon cloak pin staring down at her with a sapphire eye that mimicked the king’s cold stare. His helmet, fashioned to look like a gryphon’s head with the visor lowered, made him seem the human embodiment of the family crest. Uma was only slightly happier that the visor was currently raised. His gaze was just too predatory.
King Ugoth scowled at the leader of the white witches. She and half her coven had marched up and surrounded him on his way to his pavilion. “What other fellow are you referring to exactly?” he demanded. A scant week out from the capitol and he had nothing but trouble between monks and witches. Yesterday it was Samel. Today it was the leader of the cussed coven.
“Samel, I think,” Uma said, confirming his suspicion. “He’s a friendly enough fellow, but he just doesn’t catch on to what is needed.”
Ugoth stared around at the coven of unintimidated women. He found this circumstance, of being surrounded by forthright females, somewhat unnerving, but kept his features fixed in a grim frown to hide it. Samel had admitted experiencing something the same yesterday, only Samel had also asked that Ugoth order the women out of the army altogether. Ugoth had yet to learn why he was so insistent. Brother Samel had refused to explain himself.
With nothing solid to base the decision on, Ugoth had rejected the request, and Samel had almost burst with anger. Ugoth had been astonished and afterward realized the holy brother had been afraid for some reason, but further questioning had not resulted in enlightenment. Ugoth pondered the leader of the witches and wondered if she might be more forthcoming over the mystery.
“What exactly do you want, other than to see Brother Herfod? What do you need the monks to understand?”
“They aren’t getting it right!” Uma cried, and many of the witches nodded or verbalized agreement over this vague pronouncement. “When he was here, everybody got it. We knew exactly when to do what. The monks and the witches. We knew when a spell had to start and when a chant had to follow up to make it stronger. Now it’s just a mess! We need Herfod! He has an instinct for it.”
“An instinct,” Ugoth repeated. “Yes, he’s good at knowing what people want. Most of the time.” His horse began to prance. He settled it firmly. “I will send him to you as soon as he is found.”
“Found? Is he gone again? Oh! What upset him this time?”
“I did!” Ugoth snapped. He squeezed his knees and directed the stallion out of the circle of women.
Uma hastened from his path and watched him thunder up the hill to his pavilion. Zini came to her side and spoke what was on both their minds.
“How long h
as he been gone total, then?”
“Two weeks, I believe,” Uma answered, “though rumours have it that he returned a week ago, but stayed only long enough to marry off His Majesty’s mistress. There was apparently some sort of disagreement about the woman.”
“This is not good,” said a third witch. “Those two need to get their friendship back in order. This is the wrong time to be stubborn fools over some kept whore.”
Zini nodded. “We need Herfod back. It was so simple when he was here. Everyone knew what to do. It was like magic!”
Uma agreed. Yes, it had been like magic. Brother Herfod knew intuitively which monk to pair up with each witch. He knew how they must start their united spells and chants, and he knew how they should end them. It was never quite the same with any team. Power spiked differently for each monk as he prayed for divine assistance. Herfod apparently sensed the spikes and would adjust the witch to time herself accordingly or have the monk adjust to her. He had been simply indispensable.
And now Brother Samel said Herfod mustn’t work at all with them, even if they were to find him again. Well, she’d gone past Samel and straight to King Ugoth. She’d obtained the king’s word. She intended to hold him to it. Herfod had to come back. And soon. They would meet the enemy within weeks.
“Come on,” Uma said to her sister witches. “We will do what we can until Brother Herfod sees fit to return and do his duty to his king and country.”
Unhappy, unsatisfied, the witches followed her to their section of the camp.
***
Ugoth waited, tense and ill-humoured, while his squire tugged the fractious stallion away from the fluttering canvas entrance of the royal pavilion. The moment his way was clear, His Majesty stalked into the shelter, but stopped cold with his hand still lifting the flap.
There he was! That accursed monk! Standing in the centre of the large tent like a perfectly composed saint!
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