The Chronicles of Varuk: Book One
Page 6
This was a most perplexing sorcerer, Varuk thought to himself. With a brush of his sword he swept the charms from the doorway. Then he opened the door and peered inside.
A candle that had nearly burned itself down stood upon a narrow bench, casting a wan, flickering light in the room. And shackled to the wall of the small shack was a tall, muscular man with unkempt hair and a wild look in his flame red eyes. Better looking than Varuk himself, that one noted with some chagrin. How would the man react when he learned the price Yannah had agreed to pay for his rescue? Varuk shrugged. It didn’t matter. “Raol Lumi?” Varuk asked softly.
The man nodded, looking up at Varuk with those disturbing, wild eyes.
Varuk felt uneasy under that gaze. Something about the man didn’t seem quite right.
Varuk struck off the chain binding the man to the wall. The man stood up and stretched langorously. The silver shackles on his wrists rattled loudly. Then he snarled gleefully, and faster than Varuk’s eyes could follow, he darted past Varuk, leapt through the door and disappeared into the night.
Varuk turned in belated startlement and looked out the door. It had only been a few seconds, but already Raol had made it across the field and into the forest. How could any man move so swiftly?
Suddenly Varuk leapt out the door and whirled, bringing his sword up until its sharp point rested against the neck of a man, pinning him against the wall of the shack. The man pressed himself flat against the wall, trying to draw away from the sword. Varuk only pressed harder, showing his willingness to slit the man’s throat, without hesitation. Never give a sorcerer even the slightest chance. So why did Varuk hesitate now? he wondered.
It was because the man didn’t look like a sorcerer, Varuk realized. The man was relatively young, perhaps in his early forties. And he had a kind, open face, one not twisted by the working of magic.
“Do you intend to kill me?” the man asked.
“You’re no sorcerer,” Varuk said. He had begun to realize that he’d somehow been duped.
“No, I’m a farmer.”
Varuk lowered his sword.
“Why did you let him go?” the man said tersely, rubbing the small stream of blood trickling down his neck where Varuk’s sword had pricked him. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“A girl named Yannah told me the man was her fiancé, and you were a sorcerer who’d kidnapped him.”
The man shook his head. “Yannah is my daughter. That ‘man’ has bewitched her: she’ll tell any lie, or do nearly anything, to get him back. He’s a slurteen, an evil spirit cloaked in flesh.”
Varuk cocked his head; he’d never heard of a slurteen.
“Barbarian,” the man muttered upon seeing Varuk’s blank look. Then: “They are demons that take human form to beguile virgin women. Drive them to commit various crimes, small and large. Eventually they deflower their victim and kill her immediately after.” The man shook his head. “This one managed to bewitch my daughter while I was at the market in Remikxia. I returned and found Yannah in our house, dining with a strange young man. I recognized him for what he was. But feigning ignorance, I managed to catch him off guard and drugged his wine with ratwort. The amount I used would have killed ten human men, but it merely sedated the slurteen. Fending off my daughter, who was enraged by what I’d done, I dragged the man to this shack and shackled him with silver manacles, for silver weakens slurteens.”
As they talked, the man had led Varuk to the house. They went inside, into the light. The man offered Varuk a glass of juice as he continued, “I’m no sorcerer, but I’ve dabbled lightly in the art magic. I know many charms and herbs. So I constructed charms and placed them on the shack, to keep the slurteen trapped within. I then had my brother take Yannah to dok Shibar for safe keeping, until I could determine what to do. She was in a terrible state, cursing and lashing out, determined to get to the slurteen. This was yesterday.” He looked up at Varuk. “Apparently she has escaped my brother.”
“Why didn’t you just kill it before it awakened?” Varuk asked as he drank the sweet nectar.
“Because he’d bewitched my daughter!” the man shouted. “Once a slurteen has a virgin in his power, a supernatural bond is formed. Killing him will kill her as well. To break his power over her, she must be deflowered before he gets to her. Due to the nature of the spell, she cannot be forced; her deflowering must happen with her consent. But she now desires only the slurteen.”
So, Varuk thought. She had no intention of fulfilling her promise to me.
The farmer took a heavy gulp of his juice, and a sob, quickly suppressed, shook his body. “Forgive me. I love Yannah dearly. She is the sweetest girl, and talking about her this way sickens me.” He sighed. “But it must be done, or she’ll be dead within the week.” He looked at Varuk. “Do you know, you look remarkably like the slurteen? In the dark, you could probably pass for him.”
*****
Varuk jogged swiftly through the dark night, back to dok Shibar. Irritation sat in his gut like spoiled milk. Yannah’s father had made it seem that losing her virginity to Varuk was the most hideous thing imaginable. “But it must be done, otherwise she is lost,” he’d said, as though he were making a great personal sacrifice by consenting to Varuk’s ravishment of her. But of the few women Varuk had ravished thus far, none had found the experience repulsive. Besides, he’d fulfilled his part of the bargain, made with a woman who had deceived him and had had no intention of keeping her end of it. It didn’t matter that she was bewitched. She owed him and he meant to collect, and to thoroughly enjoy himself in so doing.
It also satisfied Varuk’s sense of honor that he was working for a good cause. That he would enjoy the favors of a beautiful woman as a necessary task in the fulfillment of that cause made it even more satisfying.
Varuk increased his pace to a light run. He counted time by the sword slapping against his thigh. Time was of the essence. The slurteen would have begun searching for Yannah immediately after its release. It would be drawn to her like a moth to a flame. But, according to her father, the silver shackles that bound the slurteen’s wrists would weaken it, confusing its senses and thus slowing it down. Hopefully Varuk would be able to find Yannah and deflower her, thus breaking the slurteen’s power before it found her.
As he ran he wondered whether he could fool Yannah long to bed her. Even if he did somewhat resemble the slurteen and kept the candlelight low to enhance the illusion, wouldn’t she be able to sense that he wasn’t the slurteen? Surely she would, if her father hadn’t exaggerated the strength of the bond between her and the demon. An uncharacteristic apprehension ate at him as he ran.
As it turned out, he needn’t have worried.
He passed through the outskirts of the town and entered into the narrow, winding alleyways of dok Shibar. The night was quiet; the only sound he heard was a creaking made by the wooden walkways which spanned the dirty stone buildings above ground level as they swayed in the light wind whistling through the city.
At the end of a street, as he drew near to the inn where he had arranged to meet Yannah after he had rescued Raol, a chill raced up his spine. Shadows seemed to race past him and he imagined he heard a loud roaring wind. He whirled and looked behind him, bracing himself for an attack. But none came, and as he blinked the shadows were only shadows again, and the night was silent. He attributed the incident to imagination and continued until he reached Yannah’s door.
As he raised his fist to knock, the door was flung open. Soft arms reached out and led him inside. Yannah stood magnificently nude, the dim, flickering light of an oil lamp painting her skin golden. Varuk smiled, doing his best to imitate the feral smile that the slurteen had given him. A shadow crept through the doorway just as he was shutting it, but Varuk failed to notice. Yannah had reached past the waistband of his leather trousers. Her gentle caress transfixed him with lust. He quickly removed his clothing and pushed her insistently backward to the bed.
As he lay her down, positioning him
self, listening to her lusty encouragements, it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps she was responding to him so passionately because the slurteen was very close and that nearness had enflamed her. He looked up warily, cursing his foolishness. His eyes widened. The shadows near the door drew together and slowly coalesced, first taking on the vague shape of a man, then clarifying into the handsome, devilish features of the slurteen.
Bloodlust and the need to defend himself almost deflated his desire for Yannah. But her expert fingers wouldn’t allow that. Which saved his life.
As the slurteen gave a rageful howl and rushed toward the bed, its fingers elongating into razor-sharp talons, Yannah made union with Varuk. As she did so, she heard the enraged scream and took her eyes off Varuk. For half a second she saw the slurteen rushing at her and her heart filled with desire for it and she almost threw Varuk off her in rage. But the slurteen vanished almost as soon as she saw it, its substance dispelled back to the netherworld from whence it had come, and she quickly forgot about it as she felt the satisfying weight of Varuk above her. She gave herself over to him.
Near midday Yannah fell asleep in his arms. Varuk roused himself and pulled on his cloak and his loincloth. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. She had been as incredible as he had anticipated, and more. He strapped on his sword and quietly left the room and dok Shibar. He stopped by her father’s farm briefly to tell him that Yannah was free from the slurteen and would shortly return home.
Then he set off up the road, and as the farm faded into the distance behind him, he wondered what adventures awaited him in the days to come.
Books by Scott Reeves:
The Big City
Billy Barnaby’s Twisted Christmas
The Dream of an Ancient God
The Last Legend
Colony
A Hijacked Life
Phantoms of the Mind: Short Stories
The Bone Boy and Other Stories
The Dawkins Delusion
The Miracle Brigade: Episode One
The Chronicles of Varuk: Book One
A Crackpot’s Notebook, Volume One
Snowybrook Inn: Book One
Liberal vs. Conservative: A Novella
Graphic Novels:
The Adventures of Captain Bob in Outer Space