The pair bowed again.
Fuming, Tiyy turned back to the platter of vessels. They were of translucent green bottle glass and corked. Inside each of them, a little finger severed from a human hand floated in thick liquid that churned of its own accord, as if alive.
“You pick one,” Tiyy said testily. “They all look ugly to me.” The high priest nodded, and her head snapped up. “But if I don’t like it, I’ll have you gelded.”
The priest, swallowing his wrinkled lips as if to stop himself from replying to her petty outburst, bowed obediently and rejoined the others.
Tiyy grumbled huffily after him, saying, “It better not hurt either.”
The high priest did not react. He and the others assembled bottles and cutting tools on a platter, then all three returned to the bed. Two held the platters while the high priest bowed, revealing the three red circles painted on his bald head, then kneeled alongside the pillow supporting the young queen’s hand. His assistants extended the platter to him, and he removed a thin steel knife, set it beside the hand.
The priests began to pray, and Tiyy again covered her head with her free arm, trying to block out the sounds. But she couldn’t, and looked up, shouting, “Stop it! I’ve said all the prayers that need to be said. Just do it. Finish it!”
She hid her head again, and the priests dipped their heads, went to work, moving quickly and in harmony.
Using wooden tweezers, the high priest removed a bright yellow Panka tarantula from a bottle and placed it on the vein in the crook of the elbow of Tiyy’s extended arm. He poked at it until it bit her, and she screamed sharply. But she held still. The high priest put the spider back in its bottle, then sat back on his heels watching the arm.
It swelled slightly around the bite, and a yellow-grey jaundiced rash quickly spread out from the bite, reaching for her wrist, then her fingertips.
When Tiyy looked up, her stomach convulsed at the ugly blight on her flesh, and her head teetered sickly. When the nausea passed, Tiyy tried to move her fingers, three times. She could not. “It’s ready. I can’t feel anything.”
The high priest bowed in acknowledgment. Then, in a high-pitched falsetto required of him when speaking to the high priestess, said, “Forgive me, Oh beloved breaker of hearts, for putting my worthless knife into your sacred flesh.”
“Aaughh!” she snarled. “Stop that intolerable squealing and talk like a man. There’s going to be no more of that nonsense around here. Now cut it! Just cut it, and get it over with.”
Instinctively he bowed again, picking up the knife, and one of the assisting priests slid a square of hard black-enameled wood under the white cloth. Holding her hand down with his free hand, the high priest, with a deft cut, made an incision above the knuckle connecting the finger to the hand. A thin red line showed where the cut had been made, and Tiyy’s lower lip thrust forward, her eyes filled with tears. She turned and glared at Schraak and Baskt.
“You see what you’ve done? I’ll never be the same again. Never!”
Coolly and swiftly, and using practiced cuts, the high priest removed her little finger and set it on the white cloth, while holding the bloody stump high in the air. An assistant opened a bottle containing a floating finger and removed it. The liquid from the bottle was heavy and glutinous, and clung to the digit, which wiggled and squirmed with life. Using napkin after napkin, an assistant removed the sticky substance and then ran the finger between his own, wringing the fluid out of it. The third time he did this, the finger stopped wiggling. He then held the new finger in place against the stump. The high priest felt about the joints of hand and finger, fitting them as he did, then took a long vampire worm from the other assistant. It was no thicker than silk string. He threaded a needle with it and thrust the needle through the Nymph Queen’s smooth brown flesh, joining the knuckles of hand and finger with the living thread. The vampire worm promptly began to attach its body to the living bone and flesh around it. The high priest then sewed the flesh together with thin strands of monkey gut which had been treated with Tiyy’s own magic, so that it would eventually merge with her flesh.
Tiyy, who had watched the entire operation, was sweating profusely when it was over and shaking from forehead to toes. When she looked up, the high priest, who had gotten off of the bed, handed her a small vial of black wine which she had previously prepared for herself. She took it in her good left hand and downed it hurriedly, the black light glowing on her pouting face.
Immediately her normal healthy color began to return to her arm, and then spread into her hand. Before it reached her fingertips, the ugly stitching around her knuckle was already beginning to disappear.
She held her finger up, watched the last stitch fade away and laughed with giddy relief. She abruptly sat up on her knees, holding her hand to her face, and wiggled her finger, studying it with rapt attention.
Suddenly she frowned savagely, thrust her hand at the priests and shouted, “It’s ugly! It’s the worst choice you could have made. Look at it! Look what you’ve done to me. Just look!”
The priests looked.
“I hate it,” she screamed. “It’s fat and wrinkled! And the nail is square and thick. Arrrgghhh!” She sank back on her heels. “You’ve destroyed me.”
She looked at her finger one more time, then let herself fall on her back, and spread out on the leopard-skin holding her hand as far away from her as possible. Her quarrelsome breasts heaved angrily, and their nipples grew hard and red. Her face was turning the same color, and her eyes were thin and dark. Suddenly she sat up angrily and demanded, “Give it to me.”
The priests looked at her, not understanding.
“My finger,” she screamed.
The high priest moved toward the now bloody white cloth, and she shouted, “Never mind.” She scrambled to the cloth and snapped up her severed finger. She held it against her heaving breasts possessively for a moment, suddenly afraid. Then she raised it alongside the new one and groaned fractiously.
“It’s horrible!” She bent her new finger and straightened it several times. “And stiff! Heavy! And too small! It doesn’t match the others. Everybody’s going to notice! They’ll know it’s not mine as soon as I enter the throne room.” She glared at the priests. “It makes my flesh crawl. It’s… it’s like a stranger has invaded my body. Who did it belong to anyway?”
The high priest started to reply, but hesitated, his face turning pale.
“Tell me!” she demanded. “Was it some filthy savage? Is that what you’ve done to me?”
“No, no, my queen,” the high priest said quickly. “It… it was a… a slave girl.”
“I know that,” she snarled. “What was she before that?”
“A… a…” The priest drew himself up, gathering control. “She had no tribe. She… she was a mix of many tribes.”
“Aarrghh! A mongrel.”
“But she was young, your holiness. Only thirteen. That is why it is so small. But this was intentional, so that it can grow according to the dictates of your own body. By tomorrow, or the day after, it will be almost perfect.”
Tiyy frowned and sank back, looking from her original finger to the replacement. “Thirteen,” she mumbled. “Well, all right. I’ll wait, but if it doesn’t look any better by tomorrow, I’ll geld all three of you. Now get out!”
The priests bowed, backed up the nine steps required by ritual, then departed swiftly.
Tiyy drew her legs up under her, and sat looking at her new finger from all sides. After some of this, she looked up at Schraak and Baskt, and said, “You’ve put me to a lot of bother, do you know that? And pain!” She held up her new finger. “Not to mention this… this piece of filth! And at a time like this! When I am looking better than I have in over a hundred years, maybe even my best!”
They bowed agreement, and she said peevishly, “Oh, stop that! You haven’t the slightest idea of what I’m talking about. You don’t know how I feel. You couldn’t. You’re not capable of it.”
“You’ve tried to ruin everything, and almost have, but that is all over now! Now that I can show myself to my people again, I’m taking charge.”
Baskt started to protest, but she cut him off. “Don’t interrupt me, Lord Baskt! You’re the one who should have taken charge of the army when I grew weak, and strengthened it, rebuilt the castle fortifications, filled our coffers with silver and gold.”
“We have gold,” Baskt said.
“I know that,” she snapped, “but we won’t for long! You two are going to spend it. All of it, if that is what it takes.” She lay over on a hip and smiled at them with malicious amusement. “I’m sending both of you into the desert, to En Sakalda. The hottest and most miserable spot in the desert, even for lizards, I’m told. The flies and sand and heat there can turn a man into nothing but an itching, pus-filled lump of rash within weeks… to say nothing of what they can do to a shark and worm.”
Their eyes thinned with terror.
She smiled cruelly and continued, “I need an agent in En Sakalda. An agent of prestige and importance who is well known, like yourself, Lord Baskt. Because soon now, En Sakalda’s slave pens will again be teeming with life.” Her tone had begun to ring with an authority that was twenty times the age of her flesh. “I have sent out my slavemasters to buy young girls of high spirit and great beauty, as many as they can. With them, and the new formulas I have concocted, I can sustain myself for years just as you see me now… and have strength left over to manufacture all the black wine I will need to put my kingdom back in order.”
Their eyes doubted her, and she snapped, “Don’t argue with me. I am telling you a simple fact. As I told you, my powers are not completely or permanently restored, but there is now enough magic in my smallest finger,” she held up the severed finger, “for both of you to see the invisible aura of virtue that surrounds this girl called Robin Lakehair. Do you understand?”
They did not.
“Dolts,” she said irritably. “All you will have to do is eat it. Then, when you look upon her naked body, you will have the power to see her aura yourselves.” Baskt and Schraak stirred unnaturally, beginning to understand, and their grey cheeks grew hot.
She laughed and waggled the finger at them. “That’s right! You would like to chew on me, wouldn’t you?”
They did not reply, but their cold empty eyes said yes.
“Well, you’re going to get your chance,” she whispered crossly, “but you will pay for it dearly. I have instructed my slavemasters to send out word, to every corner of every land, that I will pay handsomely for every girl fitting this Lakehair’s description. I’m offering a reward of a thousand crogan to the man who brings her in. But it could be months, even years, before she is found and brought to En Sakalda, months and years for you to sweat and blister in the sun. Eventually she will arrive, the greed and lust of Black Veshta will see to it, and when she does, you will place her little finger in one of those bottles,” she pointed at two corked jars on a table beside them, “and her blood in the other, and deliver them to me.”
Schraak stammered, “You… you cannot mean this, O breaker of hearts!”
“I mean it, worm. In addition to the girl, I want soldiers purchased, enough soldiers to bring the regiments and castle garrison up to strength. And I want that bitch, the Queen of Serpents, found and put in chains. She’s more to blame for my problems than any of you. And I want the one called Death Dealer who stole the helmet. I want them all, and you will stay in En Sakalda until the slave hunters you employ bring them to you.” She hesitated, then added, “Oh, yes, also have the slavers find and bring the Grillard bukko who picked the girls you stole. He sees something in young girls that I cannot, something which my Kaa hungers for.”
Baskt said flatly, “We will die in En Sakalda.”
“He’s right,” blurted Schraak. “Our flesh can’t stand heat for any length of time.”
“Do not lecture me on your pedigrees, dolt. My magic made you what you are, and it has now altered you so that you will survive the desert heat, painfully and torturously, but nevertheless survive.”
She spread out languorously and smiled temptingly, holding the severed finger lightly and running the tip over an erect nipple. Then she laughed and tossed her severed finger on the floor in front of them, saying, “Now eat!”
Baskt hesitated, then snapped up the finger and thrust it into his mouth, biting it in half. He swallowed his piece whole and tossed the remaining portion to Schraak. The dwarf stuffed it into his mouth and truculently began to chew. He had the portion with the fingernail, and it made a small clicking sound when his teeth dismembered it.
“Now leave!” she said fretfully. “The first deliveries of girls should arrive by the time you reach En Sakalda, and I’m sick of looking at you.”
Before they were out the door, she was screeching for her servants to bring her her finger-rings and paints. She had to hide her wretched new finger before anyone saw it, and she intended to do it in a manner that would celebrate her regenerated youth, by adorning herself like the goddess of demon lust and creation, Black Veshta. It had been so long since she had even dared to try, and she was just bubbling inside to look expensive and savage.
When her servants arrived, she had her nails redone to match the orchid pink of her cheeks, then did her nipples in the same color. That was certain to take their eyes off her hands.
Twenty-Four
SLAVERS
The lean dark muscular nomad stood unseen in the deep shade of a craggy outcropping of red-ochre sandstone, as erect as his spear. His naked body was stained with vermilion mud except for his member and a wide stripe across his face. They were covered with black tattoos, in accordance with his name. He was the slave trader Amadak, the notorious Black Terror of the Wadi Staboulle.
He was the darkness that violated the sun-bright sands which formed the desert, the Body of Black Veshta, and his reputation was known to the very tips of its far corners. But he was obliged to defend it daily, because he had named himself.
His expression was ponderously grave, and his pose needlessly majestic for a man no one could see. But if a man was truly horrible, then he was horrible at all times. Consequently, the thin white slits of his desert eyes clearly showed that his mind was actively contemplating magnificently horrific acts of slaughter and sexual depravity, even though what lay before him was a simple job of work.
The outcropping of rock which concealed the slaver thrust bluntly out of a massive sand dune four hundred feet high. At the base of the dune, the sand feathered out onto the wide undulating tongue of flat hard desert that wound between the dunes. The Wadi Staboulle. Hot wind, rushing out of the belly of the desert, was using the narrow depression of the wadi as a road, and sand rode the wind. It glittered like gold in the mid-day sunlight, and slashed and swirled around a huge horse-drawn wagon plodding west.
An oversized, muscled lout wearing a loincloth held the harness of the lead horse with one hand and the leash of a saddled stallion with the other. He was dragging the reluctant animals forward. An older white-haired man, chained to a big-breasted woman, led the other lead horse, and a handsome young man and a girl guided the remaining two. The lout plodded ahead mindlessly, despite the growing threat of a sandstorm. But the others staggered uncertainly and looked about in desperation for some cover to hide within.
The Black Terror of the Wadi Staboulle remained motionless, measuring the two female prey as they came closer and closer. When they passed directly below him, he smiled with great significance and, touching his member, belly and mouth, offered up a silent prayer to sacred Black Veshta for the blessing she was bestowing on him.
The women’s plain tunics had been ripped and tom by wind, sand and thorn bush. Only rags and tatters covered their su
n-darkened bodies, and his trained desert eyes, even at such a great distance, could see that Bigbreast was at the culmination of womanly beauty and that the girl was at the threshold of perhaps even more wondrous delights of the flesh.
Amadak could not restrain a small smile. Black Veshta’s sandy body was delivering forth two morsels of flesh of uncommon beauty, and delivering them to him at the same time her high priestess had offered great rewards for just such beauty. The timing could not be accidental. The Black Terror of the Wadi Staboulle was being rewarded for his hideous acts, and realizing it, his black member came erect, not in anticipation of sensual pleasures or murder, but of gold.
The slaver glanced back through the rocks at the shadows of his men and their camels. They squatted beside their spears, bodies as naked as his, but painted black. They would be ready when the opportune moment arrived. He looked back at the wagon.
The outlanders were coming out of the east. This meant they had not passed a well in two or three days, and had been on the trail for at least five, but probably more. They were undoubtedly lost, as there were no maps of this part of the desert except for the one he carried in his head, and their parched staggering bodies said clearly they were out of water and starving. Weak. They could not withstand his raiders. Nevertheless, the Black Terror waited. In the desert, strength must be used with economy, and soon he would have to exert no more effort than it takes to attach manacles and chains to wrists and ankles.
He looked to the east and watched the black cloud of sand swell, coming faster now, then put his eyes back on the strangers.
Whitehair and Bigbreast had joined the Lout, and were now talking excitedly, gesturing with alarm at the advancing cloud. Lout, dragging the horses forward, ignored them. There was a strange red glow about his face, as if he had a raw rash, but it seemed to flicker. Bigbreast moved in front of him, blocking him, and his arm swept her aside as if she weighed less than the chain binding her to Whitehair. She fell hard, rolled, and the chain dragged Whitehair down on top of her. The pair struggled back to their feet, as Girl ran forward and took hold of Lout’s arm, talking rapidly and pointing back at the dark cloud. The sand was swirling thickly now, pelting them, and Girl flinched and covered her face with an arm. Still Lout pulled forward, and the sandy fingers of the sandstorm reached for the wagon.
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