Thaumatology 10 - The Other Side of Hell

by Teasdale, Niall

  Oona just gave her a smile and walked out through another door. Ceri shrugged and drained her wine glass. The effect was more or less immediate; her nipples tightened into hard buds and an insistent throbbing began in her loins. ‘Pet?’

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’

  ‘We’re going to retire too.’

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’

  ‘Don’t expect to get much sleep.’

  Lily stifled a giggle. ‘I was hoping you’d say that, Mistress.’

  Day 28

  Lily opened her eyes and looked up at the canopy over her head. It was brightly lit; the sun had to be quite high, the long dawn over and done. She had expected Ceri would wake her before then, but they had been engaged in fairly enthusiastic physical exercise for three or four hours before finally collapsing into the bed to sleep. She smiled. The entire castle had to have heard Ceri coming for ten minutes out on the huge balcony.

  Hoisting herself up on one elbow, Lily turned to look at Ceri, and froze. The sorceress was white as a sheet, her chest was not moving. She looked dead, except that Lily could still feel her; a tenuous trickle of sensation still crept over their link. Lily reached out and touched her shoulder, and drew back sharply. Her skin was ice cold.

  And there was something else…

  ‘I could not have someone as powerful as her in my kingdom.’ Lily’s head snapped around at the voice from the bedroom door. Oona stood there, dressed in white, with four guards behind her. The guards had crossbows. Lily was fast, but dodging four crossbow bolts was a little beyond her abilities. ‘Please don’t try using your auras, dear. I’ve learned to my cost what Lorril can do. You would not believe how many Horgs I’ve lost. The helmets are enchanted to resist your charms.’

  ‘What have you done to my Mistress?’ Lily asked. Her pupils burned red despite the information that it would be useless; she was angry.

  ‘My, we are loyal, aren’t we? She’s sleeping. Very, very deeply. It’s an enchantment one of my relatives invented. She used to coat the venom on apples, but I prefer putting it in a drink. It seems to take longer to work, but apples are such a cliché.’

  ‘Wake her up.’ The command came out as a growl.

  ‘I don’t believe I will. Guards, take her to my chamber. Chain her to the wall. I’ll deal with her later.’

  Two of the men moved forward, still covering Lily with their bows. One of them twitched the crossbow to indicate she should get up. With no other option, but the hope that one would become available, Lily slowly climbed out of bed and allowed herself to be escorted out of the room, passing Edmond as he minced in. He flinching as she glared at him.

  ‘Ah Edmond,’ Oona said when she saw him, ‘what are we going to do with her? Do we have any of those glass coffins left?’

  ‘No, Majesty. We ran out two summers ago, and you fed the glass maker to your mirror the year before that.’

  Oona sighed and wondered why she was surrounded by such incompetence. If she were honest with herself, it was because she kept killing the competent ones, but she was never honest with herself. ‘Well, just leave her there for now. I’ll think of something eventually. No one else will.’

  ~~~

  The guards had tethered Lily to rings mounted in the queen’s bedroom wall which left her with her arms stretched up over her head and her legs splayed and off the ground. The cuffs were leather, and padded, but they left her whole weight on her wrists and she would have given a lot for the nice, comfortable suspension cuffs she had in the dungeon back home.

  She suspected the exposed positioning was nothing do to with any erotic plans Oona might have had. With her feet off the floor it was next to impossible to get any leverage. She had tried pulling on the ropes, but they were too strong and she was in a lousy position to apply her strength. Someone rather less flexible than her would likely have been in more pain too; the guards had taken considerable pleasure in seeing how wide they could stretch her legs, but they were nowhere near Lily’s limits. On the other hand, it was going to get uncomfortable after a while since she could not move an inch.

  What was bothering her most about the situation, however, was the feeling she was getting from the bed. More particularly, from the canopy over the bed. Something with a lot of magic was up there; a really powerful enchantment of some sort or other. It was, she thought, fae magic, and not the kind in her ankle chain. This was something dark, malign. Why on Earth did Oona have that hanging over her bed?

  ~~~

  The answer was a long time in coming. The queen finally returned to her room when the light was leaving the sky. Lily expected her to say something, or do something. Torture, sex, light conversation, she had no idea what, but Oona simply ignored her captive. Frankly, Lily would have welcomed the torture; she had almost no feeling in her arms and thighs, and pain might have jolted her into life.

  The Sidhe walked calmly around the room as if Lily was not there. Her dress was slipped from her shoulders and allowed to lie in a puddle of fabric on the floor. She sat at her dressing table and brushed her own hair; Lily was a little surprised there was no handmaid to take care of that. One hundred strokes of the brush before bed. It was like a scene from a Bronte Sisters novel or something. Then a basin was used to wash. She was delicate about it, carefully wringing out the excess water from a cloth and using it to clean her body. Lily might have found it erotic if her position had been different.

  Dried off with a towel, Oona laid herself out naked on the bed, stretching languidly, and then looked up at the canopy. ‘Mirror, mirror, above my bed, tell me who do I need dead?’

  Kinky. A mirror over the bed. Lily had suggested it once to Ceri in a moment of silliness. Ceri had declined.

  There was no audible reply, but apparently the mirror had said something since Oona replied to it. ‘I’m not going to kill her yet. She’s different somehow. A normal Lorril would have changed to suit my desires once her mistress was gone. There’s something special about her, I can sense it.’ There was a pause while she appeared to listen. ‘Yes, I know we can’t sleep until she’s dead. I’m not stupid. Haven’t I destroyed every intruder in these lands for the last two thousand years?’ Another, shorter pause. ‘Exactly. Tomorrow I shall try out her skill and show her to you. And if she does not please me, you will have her soul.’

  Lily watched as the queen settled herself to sleep. However you looked at that one-sided conversation, it did not really look that good.

  Day 29

  Lily was woken by a hand slapping her face. She struggled to open her eyes and focus on the face in front of her. It seemed to be Oona’s.

  ‘Wake up, you stupid little creature. It’s time for you to go to work.’

  Definitely Oona. Lily was dimly aware that someone was lifting her down from the wall. Well, that was nice, but she was going to be utterly useless until her arms and legs developed some feeling.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I’ve figured out what to do with your mistress. On careful examination it appears that she’s a human. A powerful human, but still a human. A human bitch whore just like the ones my husband loves so much. So I’m going to give her to him. I told a little lie, you see. He did not exile me, the Seelie Court did, after I cursed him. He’s in the dungeon, what’s left of him. He’s little more than an animal now, but he still likes human women. He tends to break them after a while.’ Lily let out a low growl; it was all she could currently manage. ‘Don’t worry, we can watch him start on her sleeping body together. I want to see if you are worth keeping first.’

  Lily slumped to the floor, her limbs trembling, and lay there while the pain began as blood rushed back into places it had had a lot of trouble getting to. She was so going to turn Oona into hamburger.

  ‘You can go,’ Oona said, ‘I’m quite capable of handling one Lorril.’ There were footfalls as the guards left. At least Lily figured they had been guards lifting her down. There was the sound of doors being closed. ‘However, no sense in being silly.’ Lily felt her ar
ms being pulled behind her back and ropes being tied around her wrists. That left her face down on the lush carpet and unable to really see anything happening in the room. She heard the queen wandering about, the bed creaking, and then silence.

  When, finally, her limbs were back in a working state and the pain and tingling had subsided, Lily rolled over and struggled to her knees to find Oona stretched out on the bed, legs spread lewdly and with obvious intent.

  ‘Come on, girl, I don’t have all day. Prove your worth or be fed to the mirror.’ Lily got to her feet and started toward the bed. ‘Oh,’ Oona added. ‘I should avoid looking upward for more than a heartbeat if I were you. It’s hungry.’

  Lily flicked her eyes upward and saw it, the dark mirror. It was like a huge slab of obsidian, polished to a perfectly mirrored surface. Even with such a short glance it felt as though the thing was pulling on her, wanting her to look longer and lose herself in it. She looked down quickly and smiled at the queen. It can’t be this easy. She can’t be this stupid. Or is she just that over-confident?

  ‘Come, Lilith. Show me how special you are.’

  Without her hands, Lily was at something of a disadvantage, but she was pretty sure that she could win this little battle. Balancing on the edge of the bed, she leaned forward, running her tongue down the length of Oona’s inner thigh. The shudder which ran through the queen’s body was encouraging. The other thigh got the same treatment and the queen gave a little moan. Lips met lips, then Lily’s tongue slid out. Oona tasted of honey with a bitter edge. The tongue became more insistent, probing and teasing, and Oona began to squirm. And Lily went to work, finding the little nub among the folds of flesh and concentrating on that. It took time, with only her mouth, but Lily could feel the tension rising in the queen’s body, the energy building in her Tantric median. Just a matter of time now. Almost there. There was a slight hesitation, a hint of resistance, and then the power began to flow and Oona was writhing on the bed, her mind flooded with the most exquisite, frustrating, agonising pleasure.

  Lily kept feeding. By the time she had pulled enough power from the witch to bring herself back up to full strength it had become something beyond the need to incapacitate the woman. Now she was feeding to assuage her hunger, a hunger which seemed to have no end. After thirty minutes the queen’s breathing began coming in ragged gasps, the moans became frantic. Her body bucked, trying to pull away, but Lily kept her face pressed against Oona’s sex, kept the energy flowing.

  Finally, screaming with the effort of letting go, Lily pulled away and Oona’s climax crashed over her. A mortal would undoubtedly have died, their heart rupturing with the effort of powering an exhausted, over-stimulated body. Oona lay still on the bed when the thrashing had finally subsided, but her laboured breathing indicated that she was still alive. Moving quickly to the dressing table, Lily found a pair of silver scissors there and managed to work them around to cut at her ropes.

  Oona was stirring, even as Lily’s bonds finally gave. The queen would be weak, maybe unable to work magic, but she could still scream. Lily grabbed the chair from in front of the dressing table, took two steps forward, and swung it upward into the canopy of the bed. Her entire body shuddered at the impact and the sudden wash of energy which accompanied it. Oona did scream, but it was more like a wail of incredible loss. And then a shard of broken mirror dropped from above and lanced through her throat, and the scream cut off in a gurgle.

  Somewhere above her Lily heard a low rumble. The room was at the top of one of the castle’s spires, so where was the rumble coming from? Her gaze shifted toward the sky outside the window and she saw the crack. The sky was cracking, like some sort of shell. It almost made sense of the entire place, but she had no time to think about that now. She bolted for the door just as it burst open. Edmond, looking horrified, and a guard. Edmond’s eyes widened further as Lily ducked low, under the line of aim of the guard’s crossbow, came up in one smooth action, and slammed the pair of silver scissors, point first, into the guard’s throat.

  ‘What have you done?!’ Edmond wailed.

  Lily whipped around, the base of her fist slamming into the major-domo’s jaw like a hammer. ‘Not enough yet,’ she said as he keeled over.

  The guard had an odd dagger-like weapon, elongated and un-edged, and with long, angled crosspieces with made it look like a fork, what looked like fae glyphs etched into it, and his crossbow. The melee weapon resembled a Japanese sai, now she thought about it. Lily took both, moving quickly, but without running, out of the queen’s chamber to the stairs. There were two guards at the bottom of the long, circular staircase, but they were shifting about, confused, and they did not see Lily until the crossbow bolt sprouted from the left-hand one’s back. The other turned, raising his bow, but he was just in time to see a naked, angry, half-succubus diving down at him with a ready hand weapon. Lily’s fall was broken by the man’s body. Her sai’s fall was broken a second later by his armpit. He let out a shriek, and then lay still. Lily got to her feet, took another sai, and kept moving.

  There were other servants and guards, but none of them seemed concerned about her now. Panic was starting to set in and Lily could not blame them. The rumbling had grown into a deep, throaty roar. Something very bad was happening outside. As Lily got to the room they had been assigned she saw cracks starting to appear in the marble of the walls. Picking up her pace, she ran the last few steps into the room and began grabbing their belongings, stuffing them into the pack she had been carrying.

  Ceri was still on the bed, lifeless and pale. Whatever magic was failing and taking the castle with it, the enchantment on Ceri was not part of it. Oona had said that the spell was borrowed from someone else. Presumably the queen’s magic was dying with her, but not this spell. Lily slung the pack onto her back and stepped over to the bed. If she had to carry Ceri out it was going to take too long.

  Apples… I’m hardly Prince Charming… Leaning forward, Lily placed a single, rather chaste, kiss on Ceri’s lips and straightened up.

  There was a pause just exactly long enough for Lily to think she was being stupid, and then Ceri stretched and yawned. Her eyes opened and she smiled up at Lily. ‘Hey. You’re up before me, that’s a first. It was a helluva night.’

  Letting out a half-sob, half-laugh of relief, Lily bent forward again. The kiss was considerably less chaste this time and she broke it by pulling Ceri out of the bed. ‘We have to go. Right now!’

  Ceri looked and sounded confused. ‘Lil? What’s going on?’ She looked around in time to see the balcony breaking off the side of the building and collapsing into the courtyard below. ‘Okay, never mind that, you can tell me later.’

  Outside things only looked worse. The bright summer sky above their heads had deep ruptures running across it as though it were painted on a dome. There was nothing visible through the cracks aside from darkness and, as they watched, a huge section of sky broke away, tumbling down from high up on the dome to crash into the spire the queen’s chamber was in. The roof caved in and the spire’s walls cracked from top to bottom like egg shell. The whole of the queen’s reality had been supported by her magic, and the magic of the mirror, and now that support was gone.

  Ceri’s gaze swept the area and she pointed to the right and up the slope. ‘There! Head that way.’ Lily looked in the direction Ceri was pointing. Ceri had seen the distorted field lines, but Lily could see what she was talking about; there was what looked like a hole in the shell of the world around them. There had to have been a similar hole on the side they had come in from, but back then it had been invisible, a perfect blending with the outside reality. Now it was plainly obvious.

  The alarming thing was that the hole seemed to be getting both closer to them and smaller in size as they ran toward it. By the time they were diving through the gap it was barely three feet across and shrinking rapidly. The light coming through from the fae realm they had just left grew dimmer as they lay, panting, on the rough track. Then, with a sound like a cave col
lapsing, the hole closed behind them and they were left in the silent darkness of the forest.

  ‘I think I have gravel-rash on my tits,’ Lily commented into the silence. Ceri giggled. ‘It’s not funny!’ Lily asserted, and then started giggling.

  Ceri looked around at where Lily’s voice was coming from. Strangely, despite the darkness of the forest, she could dimly see Lily lying on her front, propped up on her elbows. There was a shape beside her which looked like Ceri’s staff. She reached for it, and was about to cast a light spell when she realised that she could see Lily almost perfectly. A few seconds later they could see quite clearly and they sat up, watching, as the forest began to fill with dappled light.

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Ceri said after a few minutes. ‘The whole “darkest forest” thing must have been part of Oona’s defence mechanism.’ She looked at the pack Lily had taken off and put on the ground beside her. ‘Are my clothes in there?’

  Lily nodded. ‘Uh-huh. You know, people are going to notice this.’

  Ceri was digging in the pack. ‘Yeah, I guess, but we’ll be out of here and gone before anyone figures out what happened. I hope.’ She pulled the black dress she had worn to dinner with Oona from the bag and raised an eyebrow at Lily.

  ‘What? She’s not going to miss it, being dead and everything.’ Ceri continued to look at her. ‘You look good in that dress!’

  Ceri shook her head and went back to looking for more appropriate clothing.

  Shoshteffrif, Day 30

  Their anonymity for turning the Darkest Forest into the “Nice Place for a Summer Walk” forest lasted right up until the point where they walked out of the trees. A small crowd of det from the local village had gathered at the edge where the path went in and, on seeing two strangers emerging, they drew the conclusion that Lady Ayasha had driven the dark enchantment from the forest. Ceri had been on the verge of telling them that Lily had been the one responsible when Lily had piped up ahead of her.