She buried the knife deep into the monstrous ghast’s back, and he shrieked in agony as he spun to escape his killer. Tanys lost her grip on the blade as his massive arm lifted her body with a backhanded blow that sent her flying across the room to collide with the Doctor, who was even now struggling to his feet. They both went down in a tumbled heap, sliding into the gaping maw of the pit below.
Tanys splashed into a thick warm pool of stagnant water that reeked of decay. She surfaced to find herself in a hellish lake of death. Bodies and pieces of bodies floated on the steaming surface of the water. Ghastly dead faces gazed up with unseeing eyes, dimly illumined by the thin rays of green witchlight that sifted down through the gaps in the filthy grating above. Tanys gasped for breath in the fetid air and kicked hard to keep her head above the surface. Her skin crawled as bits of rotting flesh touched her legs and bobbed away.
Suddenly, the Doctor surfaced behind her; a choking arm wrapped around her throat, as his free hand grasped a handful of hair, dragging her under once again. Her eyes shut tightly against the poisoned water, Tanys hammered her elbow back hard into his ribs. She felt one crack. The Doctor’s muffled cry of pain escaped in a column of bubbles as he released his hold on her and fought to reach the surface.
Tanys spun to face him and grabbed onto the straps of his apron, leveraging herself against his buoyancy. Planting a foot on his squirming shoulder, Tanys launched herself upward, breaking the surface with a tremendous splash. As she’d hoped, her momentum carried her far enough out of the water to thrust her fingers through the underside of the floor grating a few feet away from the opening through which she had fallen. She grunted in anguish as she hung, suspended painfully by her fingertips, waist deep in the pool of death.
The Doctor surfaced a few yards away, treading water beside the stone column that supported the dais and its machinery above. His yellow eyes burned hatefully from the shadows, watching Tanys as he gasped for breath. Above them, the lumbering steps of the blood-slave on the grate caused Tanys’ heart to shrink in fear.
“Slave!” the Doctor cried out, his voice edged with pain, “Turn on the machine!”
Tanys glanced around, desperately for sight of the blood-slave. She saw him then, bloody and stumbling, as he lurched toward to central dais.
“No!” She cried in alarm.
“If you have anything to say to your friend, you’d better say it quickly,” the Doctor gloated, “before she’s all gone.”
Tanys cried out with pain and effort as she released one hand’s grip to reach for another handhold, trying to drag herself toward the opening in the grate. The Doctor laughed bitterly as he watched her try vainly to stop his slave from reaching the control lever.
Then a new sound filled the chamber, a booming, grinding roar, as the slave threw back a lever with one powerful thrust of his massive arm. All around Tanys, the water began to roil. “No! You fool!” the Doctor cried out in a panicked voice, “Not that lever!”
The look of horror on the Doctor’s face told Tanys of the danger and instant before she realized its source. Somewhere beneath the fetid waters of the corpse pool, the gears of a massive machine lurched into action, pulling the dark water down into a swirling maelstrom that hungrily devoured the flesh of the dead. The churning currents tugged at her legs, white-hot pains shot through her fingers as she fought against the whirlpool’s lethal embrace. The Doctor screamed in terror, his long, pale fingers raking across the slick stonework of the central column, finding no purchase. The current ripped him free, and he disappeared beneath the foaming surface for a moment before resurfacing yards away, gibbering with fear.
A blast of steam and vaporized flesh erupted from the core of the grinder as the water level subsided down to Tanys’ knees. Her fingers throbbed, blood returning to them as the pull of the maelstrom lessened. She had almost managed to lift her feet clear of the water altogether when the swirling vortex carried the frantically struggling Doctor within arm’s reach of her. He seized on to her legs with strength born of mortal terror, and though she tried to kick him free, his grasp only tightened, threatening to pull her down with him into the jaws of the machinery below. Inch by inch, he clawed his way up her body, sobbing incoherently, his eyes filled with mad desperation. His arms locked tightly around Tanys’ waist, his babbling lips pressed hotly against the hollow of her hip.
The waters sank lower still now, revealing the writhing limbs of the dead, which had been imparted an obscene semblance of life by the machinery that drew them in and ground them into unrecognizable paste. The bodies clustered tightly around the Doctor’s legs as though seeking revenge upon their murderer. Dead faces and hands crowded him, seeming to pull him down as he struggled to keep his grip on Tanys. She roared with pain and rage as she strained against the dead weight of the ghast physician that stretched her body to its limits. His bony fingers dug into her hips, his face now between her knees. Fingernails raked painfully down her backside. His grip failed.
The Doctor shrieked horribly as his legs disappeared into the machinery below, and then his cries were drowned beneath the flailing limbs of his previous victims as they dragged him down into hell. Soon Tanys alone remained, hanging numbly above the bowl-shaped floor that sloped down into the gory teeth of the grinding machine below.
She could hardly feel her fingers at all now. Her arms shook with strain. She had no strength left to pull herself up, and she knew that, eventually, her grip would fail and she would follow the dead into the mouth of the machine. Tanys’ mind seemed to float free of her body, and the shadows closed around her. The chill of something old, unremembered except in nightmare, seeped into her bones. Visions splashed through her brain, blood on a cabin wall, fiery eyes, filled with hate and hunger, and her mother’s voice, singing.
It came back to her at once, a memory as clear as yesterday’s breakfast, though somehow she knew she had never recalled that scene until now. Looking out through little girl’s eyes, her father lay crumpled on the cabin floor, blood on his shirt. Dark things clustered close, devouring jaws hung open, bristling with teeth, but the demons’ eyes were fearful in the golden light, the light of her mother’s song. Tanys saw her there, radiant and glowing, no longer the dark-haired witch-woman of the forest, but something else, something old and powerful. Her voice was sad as she sang, a song filled with loss and pain, and rage.
Tanys’ mother turned then to look at her little girl for the last time, her green-golden eyes filled with inexpressible love. The last note of her song rang outward like the tolling of a thousand silver bells, ripping apart the shadowy demons that gnashed vainly against her shielding light. The pale moonlight that chased the tattered shadows from the old cabin found only the unconscious man and his hollow-eyed daughter within.
Tanys’ eyes opened slowly in the darkness beneath the bleeding room. Her weariness gone, lost in the memory of the song that had saved her life so long ago. Her hands moved almost without thought, swinging her body ever closer to the gap in the grating above. The cacophony of the machinery grinding beneath her seemed far away, unimportant. Warmth suffused her body. The pain seemed distant, trivial. Reaching the opening, Tanys swung her legs up, catching her heels on the edge and pulling herself up into the light of the room above.
The blood-slave’s body lay hunched across the lever that controlled the grinder mechanism, the Doctor’s knife sticking up from his back. Tanys calmly crossed to the body and wrenched the knife free, causing the corpse to topple backwards and away, pulling the lever back in the vicelike grip of the dead hand. The machinery stopped. Tanys looked to the table where Misha lay, pale and trembling, cheeks streaked with tears, her small breasts heaving with muted sobs, eyes brimming with relief.
Tanys quickly severed the bonds at Misha’s wrists, and the southern girl pulled her close in desperate embrace. Misha, fervently breathing Tanys’ name like a ward against evil, kissed her hard on the lips. Tanys held her tightly for a long moment before stroking back the girl’s tousle
d hair and smiling reassuringly.
“I thought you were dead,” Misha sobbed.
“I came back for you,” Tanys answered softly, and Misha’s eyes filled with happy tears.
Chapter 11
Misha still leaned weakly against Tanys as they made their way silently through the shadowy halls of the underdelv. They scurried like frightened mice through the pale light of a flickering witchfire torch hanging in a rusted sconce on the wall, finding concealment in the darkness beyond. A bit of old canvas had served as a bandage for Misha’s leg, once the needle point of the blood tube had slipped free of the small hole in the girl’s inner thigh. Nothing else of use could be scavenged from the bleeding chamber besides the Doctor’s knife which Tanys clutched tightly in her hand as she lead the way down into the depths of the blood-wizards’ labyrinth. They passed countless chambers, sealed by iron doors with small, barred windows. At first, Tanys glanced into these chambers, hoping to find some storeroom for clothing, food, armor, or weapons, but the few things she glimpsed within those bleak, blood-stained cells chilled her blood and made her feel sick. Eventually, she stopped looking at all.
The bare feet of the two women slipped quietly over the damp flagstones of the narrow, twisting corridors as they descended, ever deeper. Once or twice, Tanys pulled Misha back into a shadowy alcove where they huddled closely, trying not to breathe, as a patrol of guardsmen passed by, only a few feet away. And so they progressed, down spiraling stair and slippery stone ramp, until Tanys could no longer be certain how many levels beneath the surface they lay.
Just when she began to wonder aloud if the delv were not in fact bottomless, they found their path obstructed by a magnificent stone archway with a thick, crimson curtain stretched across it. She steeled her nerves against the unimagined horrors of what surely must await beyond and tried to prepare herself for anything. Even so, the chamber that lay behind the curtain proved something of a surprise.
Tanys and Misha slipped through the heavy curtain into the warm, sweet-smelling air of a vast and pillared chamber. Amber lamps illuminated high vaulted ceilings, painted with exotic frescoes depicting garish scenes of lust and depravity. The richly carved pillars seemed formed of writhing, naked bodies, locked together in passion, rising up from floor to ceiling. Between the pillars, piles of cushions and furs littered the floor, heavy with the scents of lovemaking and libations. A thick haze of incense and pipe smoke hung in the air, thrumming with the mournful trill of a distant harp.
Tanys and Misha crouched low, moving like ghosts between the pillars, seeking out the source of the music being played. The light grew brighter as they moved toward the center of the room, where a circular balcony overlooked a well-lit chamber below. Creeping to the edge, they cautioned a glance down between through the stone railing at the edge of the balcony.
A silvery fountain splashed and burbled in a broad pool below, its waters shimmering with pallid azure light. A score of young men and women bathed naked in the shallow waters of the pool. Here and there a girl writhed languidly, one taken from behind by a glassy-eyed boy, another moaning softly as a companion nibbled at her throat.
A carven onyx dais formed an island in the center of the pool, and rising from its polished black surface, a gleaming metal tree, wrought of sliver filigree, standing the height of a man. Its branches, sparkling with jeweled leaves, arced over the figure of a living creature possessing the upper body of a man and that of some wild beast from the waist down. The Satyr, head bowed and reclining in a bed of silken cushions, played upon a golden harp, fashioned in the shape of a broken hunting bow, and it was this mournful song that trembled in the misty air of the bath chamber.
Tanys drew back from the edge of the balcony and leaned close to Misha, whispering, “Who are they?”
“Blood slaves,” Misha answered flatly.
“Like the ones that served the Doctor?”
“These are apparently put to different uses by the blood mages,” Misha said.
“Will we have to fight them?” Tanys asked, readying her blade. The harem slaves should pose little threat, but she had never seen a satyr before and didn’t know what to expect of such beasts.
“I don’t think so,” Misha replied, “they are enchanted to serve their masters in a particular task. They may not even take notice of us if we walked straight past them.”
“There may be other guards.”
“That’s true,” Misha frowned in thought, “still, I don’t see any other way past. We can hope they will be summoned to their masters soon, and perhaps find a way to follow them unseen.”
Even as she spoke, from somewhere far below the bath chamber, the sound of a massive gong rang out, a deep, hollow, ominous tone. A collective sigh arose from the lips of the bathing blood slaves, and the harp’s song trailed away into silence. Edging closer to the balcony, Tanys observed the harem slaves climbing from the pool and assembling themselves in a ragged half circle before the an enormous demonic face, its mouth agape, carven in the far wall of the lower chamber. A sudden, moaning blast of wind erupted from the stone demon’s mouth, blasting the naked bodies of the blood slaves. They stood, immobile, arms spread, their hair whipping like pennants in the unnatural wind, till at last they moved away, their bodies dry as desert sand.
Tanys urged Misha to action, and they quickly found a spiraling marble staircase leading down from the bedchamber to the baths below. Slinking low and silently, the two women descended carefully, keeping their eyes on the slaves who now huddled closely to pass through a narrow stone archway leading into a smaller chamber from whence emanated a warm golden glow. Tanys’ eyes scanned the bath chamber, finding no obvious threat. The harem slaves stood with backs turned to the intruders, oblivious to all, and the Satyr slumped motionless on his cushions, the shaggy curls of his auburn hair tumbled over his down-turned face. His harp lay silent beside him.
The last of the harem slaves passed through the narrow archway, and the bath chamber fell utterly silent, but for the quiet burbling of the tiny fountains that fed the pool. Tanys hated the thought of moving in the open, but could see no other way to follow the blood slaves but by crossing the open floor between the stairs and the archway. Screwing up her courage, she took Misha’s hand and moved to follow the slaves.
“You’ll never make it,” a man’s voice called out suddenly.
Tanys froze, knife in hand. The satyr had spoken the words. The creature’s shaggy head rose to face them, revealing the handsome features of a young man with a short cropped beard and sparkling brown eyes set in a deeply tanned and wildish face that seemed most out of place here in the depths of the sorcerers’ delv. Small curving horns peeked through the wavy curls that spilled down his forehead. His broad shoulders straightened as he set aside his harp and stood before them, arms at his sides. The muscles of the satyr’s chest rippled with untamed power beneath the curly brown hair that covered his body, fine and soft over his manlike features, coarse and thick over his shaggy loins and goat-like legs.
He tossed his head back with a deep, sonorous laugh as Tanys pushed Misha back, brandishing her knife defensively. With a small shake of his right leg, he set to jingling the long silver chain that stretched from beneath the mound of cushions under the jeweled tree to an iron cuff banded around his ankle, just above his glossy black hoof. “I am no willing threat to you, dear ladies,” the satyr spoke, his voice soft and warm, “merely a shackled plaything of the dark gods that keep me here.”
“Vella no-durain,” Misha spoke, making a strange sign with her hands and bowing her head slightly toward the satyr.
“Vello no-dureka, chia,” the Satyr answered with a similar gesture of greeting, “Thelas Vin Haru’Luk, Prince of the Ebon Marsh, bids you welcome.”
“Tanys Raven-Hair and Misha Heart-Bound cast ourselves upon your mercy,” Misha answered respectfully, “Will you help us, good prince?”
The satyr’s eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze playing over the bodies of the two girls standing war
y and naked beside the bathing pool. A broad smile creased his face as he spoke, “And what aid could I render two such beauties so well-girded for battle, unless you would cross the sea and join me here on my island. But a moment longer to look upon your graceful forms, and I shall surely unsheathe my sword and join you in battle.”
Tanys blushed hotly. The suggestive thrust of the satyr’s hips left little doubt as to which sword his jest referenced. “We have no time for fool’s banter,” she hissed.
The Satyr’s eyes flashed dangerously at her tone, but Misha placed a hand on Tanys’ shoulder and spoke soothingly, “forgive us, noble prince of the world-wood, we are distraught with fear for our master’s life and would seek him most urgently.”
“Your master?” the satyr asked, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“A sorcerer…” Misha said.
“Of no small power,” the satyr interrupted, “They’ve been hammering at him for days down there. He must be very powerful indeed!”
“Carathan!” Misha gasped.
“Where is he?” Tanys demanded loudly.
The Satyr paused a moment, his eyes shifting to follow his thoughts. He answered then, urgently and low, “Free me, and I will take you to him!” He held his hands out imploringly as he knelt at the edge of the dais.
Tanys looked to Misha who nodded affirmatively. They carefully stepped down into the warm waters of the bath and waded through the waist-deep pool toward the central island. Tanys approached the satyr cautiously, her knife ready, but he made no sudden movements. This close to him, she could almost feel the raw power of his muscles, flexing in their desire for freedom. His scent was a faint musk of autumn leaves and broken earth, a warm, dreamy haze that tugged at the edges of her reason. His breath snorted hotly through flared nostrils and his eyes followed closely as her knife moved toward the chains binding him to the jeweled tree, but still he remained motionless.
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