The high priest added a teardrop of vitriol to a beaker of boiling blood-red liquid, as the acolytes, using spatula and scoop, added powder to a flask and stirred the fires. Then they held still, waiting.
Inside the tubes, the vapors thickened to a yellowish mist and surged toward the bizarre culmination of the apparatus, a bronze tube as thin as a straw. At its tip, a drop of liquid gathered slowly, then fell into a clear-glass vial no bigger than a baby’s cup. It was one-third full of a turgid vermilion elixir.
A joint in the tubing near the middle of the maze came loose. Mustard fumes whooshed into the room, and drops of the precious elixir splashed on the table, sizzling.
“Fix it!” Tiyy shrieked.
The three men pounced on the break. The acolytes picked up the hot tubes in gloved hands and fitted the joint together. The high priest quickly coated it with a mixture of clay and straw, then propped the tubing on a stand for added support. They watched it for a moment, and the fumes swirled, continuing through the joint without escaping.
Tiyy relaxed slightly, then turned sharply as a heavy wooden door swung open beside her, and Schraak emerged. A low guttural growl followed the small man out of the door, and Tiyy grinned with a surge of power, knowing the sound came from the magnificent Barbarian she now held prisoner in the adjacent cell. Schraak stopped, facing her, and bowed as he spoke.
“He won’t eat or drink, your magnificence. And I cannot remove the horned helmet.”
“Leave it,” she said breathlessly. “The prospect of a masked lover pleases me.”
“Lover?” The worm’s eyes were startled. “But… but he is not strong enough! The heat of your sacred fire will bum his flesh. Kill him!”
“He will be made strong.” The wantonness in her eyes was gaudy.
Schraak was stunned. “You’re… you’re going to feed him the black wine? Make him a Lord of Destruction?”
She nodded.
“But he’s only a man!”
“Yes, but a man like no other there has ever been before.”
“But he stole the master’s helmet! He must die!” She shook her head, and the bristling spears of her yellow hair shivered. “The master did not mean him to die, but to serve. And he will.”
“But… but if he wears the helmet while you embrace him, he’ll…he’ll…”
“Perhaps,” she said, and her voice trembled with a mix of fear and anticipation. “I know the danger. It will be like embracing the master’s flame, but soon now, very soon, I will be ready to take that risk.” Shuddering, Schraak looked about the laboratory. The high priest was gently taping a tube where the fumes inside appeared to be blocked, and they tumbled apart, flowed forward. One of the acolytes was coaxing a syrupy glob of elixir along another tube by passing a dish of fire under it, and the other one, having unraveled a parchment yellow and flaking with age, was reading an ancient word formula aloud.
Tiyy said, “You should pray for their success, Schraak. Because if they aren’t successful,” she put her scorching eyes on him, “you are going to crawl back into the ground where you came from.”
He staggered back a step.
“You failed me a second time, worm. You brought me the carcass of an Ikarian savage, not the girl!”
“But… but it was her blood! It had to be!” he stammered. “I saw her aura!”
She nodded. “Yes, it was her blood. The carcass was clotted with it. But did you look at her carefully? Was she the same young, finely made girl you once saw in Bahaara?” He hesitated, and she knew he had not checked the body carefully. “I thought not.”
“Forgive me,” he pleaded, “I was so anxious to…”
“Arrrrggg! If you had used your head, we could have saved hours. As it is we’ve spent most of the day removing the dried flakes and dissolving them, coaxing them back to life.” A flicker of fear passed behind her eyes, and her breath quickened. “If her Kaa is as strong as the serpent queen claimed it was, it will still be alive. But if it isn’t!”
The threat in her tone made him groan, and he drew a soft cloth from under his belt, dabbed at the scum gathering on his eyebrows and lips. Then his quavering voice asked, “Is… is there enough?”
“Nearly,” she said. “The vial is almost full.”
He glanced at the clear-glass vial collecting the vermilion liquid, sighed with some relief and turned to his queen. “I’ll order the hunt to begin again. The girl will not escape a third time.”
“There is no need for that,” she said.
His eyes widened, not understanding.
A grin blossomed on her florid heart-shaped face. “Once the Barbarian is in my control, I will send him to hunt her. That way her capture is assured. No one who threatens the master can hide from the horned helmet.”
The small man nodded and again dabbed at his face with the soft cloth.
The high priest moved to the end of the table and stood beside the filling vial.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Tiyy growled.
The high priest allowed three more drops to fall into the vial, then closed the spigot. Using both hands, he lifted the tiny vessel and brought it to Tiyy. She straightened regally and shrugged off her leopard-skin wrap, clasping the vial with both hands to her nude body. Her only garments were a sheen of heat and a narrow leopard-skin apron.
Taking a deep breath she followed the high priest to the black stone altar at the deepest portion of the laboratory. They mounted its three circular steps to a cube of shiny obsidian at the top. It measured three feet high, coming to Tiyy’s waist, and supported a large ball of black stone which rested in a perfectly matched depression in the top of the cube. Tiyy set her feet apart for balance and held the vial out in front of her, her arms fully extended. The priest wrapped his arms around the black stone ball, gathered his strength and rolled it aside. A shaft of white light, no bigger around than the Nymph Queen’s small finger, shot up out of a small hole at the center of the depression. It speared straight up, splitting the darkness like a knife.
The high priest, holding the heavy stone ball against his chest, backed away from the blinding light, averting his head.
Schraak and the acolytes cringed behind the laboratory table.
Tiyy held her place.
The muscles along her arms pulsed and rippled, and her clenched fingers squeezed tightly around the vial, as if it were trying to escape. The shaft of white light had ricocheted off a mirrorlike polished black rock set at an angle in the ceiling and descended into the mouth of the vial. There it stirred and heated the elixir, and whiffs of dark smoke emerged from the mouth like fingers of the dead.
Moisture formed around Tiyy’s parted lips. Her temples dripped sweat. Her breasts and belly heaved. Her legs corded with muscle, but she held still, fighting to keep the vial in place. Then she wavered, weakening, but still held the vial in the light’s path. It churned and rocked inside her grip. Vermilion fumes spewed out of the mouth and flowed up the sides of the beam of white light, coiling around it.
The savage nymph’s face flinched with a smile, and she stepped back, cradling the vial against her breasts. The white light bounced off the stone steps, caromed across the room and hit the far wall, exploding in a hundred tiny beams that shot and spiraled through the chamber.
An acolyte was burnt on the cheek. Flasks and tubes were split and cracked. Streaks of fire broke out on the shiny walls where the light passed over it. Schraak took a blow on the hip and fell to the floor groaning and clutching the wound, his grey flesh smoking beneath his thick fingers.
Tiyy ignored the streaking light. She drew the vial to her lips, and poured the elixir into her mouth. She took it in gulps, feeling it bum her stomach. Glowing with pleasure, she licked her lips as power spread like a contagion into her soul.
Schraak, flinching and ducking bolts of light, cried to her, “Stop it! Stop it!”
Tiyy glanced over a naked shoulder, watched a flask explode in a blaze of light, then saw Schraak on the floor pleading with her. One of
her acolytes was sprawled unconscious across him, his tunic on fire. She glanced at the base of the altar. There the high priest lay on his back still holding the stone ball in his arms. The white light had hit the ball and driven the heavy stone into his chest, crushing him.
With tyrannical casualness, Tiyy dropped the vial, and it clattered down the steps as she turned and faced the altar. Hesitation flashed across her large eyes as she watched the spear of white light streaking up in front of her, its glow turning her orchid cheeks a pale pink. Then she took a breath and boldly thrust a hand over the shaft of light, about a foot above the hole in the black cube.
The white light came to an abrupt stop against her palm, and the shafts bouncing about the room dissipated, vanished.
Schraak shoved the acolyte’s body off, and rose to his hands and knees, staring at his queen with dumb awe.
Her hand had turned to white light, and the light was advancing up her arm. It edged past her elbow and became diffused, mixing with the lustrous walnut of her skin. Then it slowly retreated back down her arm. When it passed her palm, it seemed to flash through her fingers, then departed from her body. For a long moment her hand held steady against the shaft of light still spearing up out of the hole, then trembled with effort, battling it. Her body rippled muscularly under her dark flesh, and beads of sweat trailed down her glossy sheen. A shaft of black light slowly emerged from her palm at precisely the point where the white light hit it. The black light edged down into the white light, forcing it down and down, until the white light vanished back inside the altar stone.
“The ball,” Tiyy whispered harshly. “Quickly!”
Schraak and the surviving acolyte came to their feet and hurried to the altar. They hesitated at the sight of the dead high priest, then crouched over him. They took the ball away from his clutching arms and heaved it onto the edge of the altar. Tiyy removed her hand, and the ball rolled into place before the white light could again show itself.
Grinning with giddy power, Tiyy moved to a shelf, almost trotting. She plucked a vial of Nagraa off of it with each hand, glanced back at Schraak’s exhausted body sitting on the step of the altar and shouted, “Get up, you worthless lump. Bring the keys!”
She hurried through the open door by which the dwarf had entered, passed through a narrow passage with earthen walls and stopped short in the open door of a small stone cell facing the Barbarian.
Thirty-Seven
DARK GODDESS
Gath, lit by guttering lamp light, hung lifelessly between chains at the back of the cell. His arms were fully extended and his legs spread apart, with shackles binding his wrists and ankles. They were chained to the side walls so that he was suspended clear of the stone floor. His helmeted head hung between his shoulders, and tiny bites speckled his body, which was pale under its sun-darkened blood smeared flesh.
Slowly the helmet lifted, and the shadowed eyes behind the eye slits studied the savage nymph.
Nearly naked, breathing rapidly and glistening with the heat of some hard effort, she held two vials in her fists. A small slick man came out of the tunnel behind her and stood obediently to her side. He was shaking so badly that the ring of keys in his hand jangled noisily.
Gath growled, low and instinctively, and a smile lifted the nymph’s cheeks. She said, “Welcome to Pyram, large one. I am Tiyy, the Nymph Queen, and high priestess of Black Veshta. I presume you have heard of me?” Gath made no reply, and her eyes thinned. “I like that. I am partial to proud, defiant men, and you are easily the proudest of the lot. That’s why you are still alive. I am going to give you a chance to see who you prefer… me or the girl.” Gath pulled on his chains but could summon little strength, and the shackles cut into wrists and ankles, causing the drumming pain to throb loudly against his skull. He became dizzy and his eyes closed, fire flooding through his brain into his eyeballs. When he reopened his eyes he knew they glowed with fire.
Tiyy had advanced to within three feet of him, and her body was flushed, instinctively responding to his heat with its own.
The helmet tried to turn away from her, but Gath would not let it, and watched her warily.
“I am amazed,” she said quietly, “that the man inside you still refuses to submit to the helmet. I would not have believed it possible if I was not seeing it with my own eyes. But I am glad.” Her words purred with pleasure and power. “I have never made a Lord of Destruction from a man before. There was never one strong enough. Until now.” Gath thrashed violently against his chains, flames shooting from the eye slits, and Schraak had to sit down to keep from falling. But Tiyy did not move or flinch, only waited until he sagged helplessly in place, his chest heaving and dripping sweat and blood.
Slowly she circled him, holding the two vials in one hand, touching his arm and back and wrist with gentle fingertips, then reappeared facing him. His blood glistened on her thumb. She studied it thoughtfully and tasted it, then said, “It is written in the scrolls of the ancients that one day a man will walk the earth with the power to bring down nations and raise up mountains, to remake the earth until north is south and the deserts are blue seas. A man of such courage and strength that where he walks the legends will walk.” Her voice became breathless with anticipation. “A man greater than kings and magicians who is made from both good and evil… a man whose heart’s love is capable of bringing the White Veshta back to life, and whose seed of lust can make the chosen of the Master of Darkness into the Black Veshta incarnate.”
He hung silently in place, glaring.
“Do you know what that would mean? Have you any conception of the measure of power such a man could unleash?” She shook her head. “I doubt it. They are beyond even my imagination. But the man I can imagine, and measure… and you are that man.”
Gath laughed at her, small and bitter and short. She smiled in reply. “Save your laughter, large one. We will soon see which one of us is right. You, the next Lord of Destruction, or me, the Nymph Queen of Pyram.” Her smile sank back into her savagely beautiful face. “You see, I am the chosen of the Lord of Death.”
Cold terror ran through Gath’s veins, and he thrashed against his chains.
Once more she waited until his strength was wasted, then used her teeth to uncork each of the vials, spitting the corks on the floor. With black light spearing from the vials, she lifted them to his face, saying, “Raise your head.”
Despite Gath’s efforts, the helmet obeyed, and she emptied a vial into the mouth slit. He gulped and choked, trying to reject the bitter taste, but a heat rushed through him and the helmet took control. It whipped his head about in a frenzy of hunger, then held still as she poured the second vial into him. The helmet jerked and drops of the thick black wine spattered and sizzled on its hot metal. She stepped back, tossing the vials aside, and the helmet leaned for her, its flames licking hungrily at her body.
She laughed throatily. “You see who he wants now, Schraak?” She untied her scanty apron and dropped the leopard skin to the floor. Slowly, flames flickered under her walnut flesh, centering in her breasts and groin, then spread throughout her body until she looked like molten fire sheathed in the body of a woman.
Gath writhed against his chains, reaching for her. Fire consumed his eyes, and he could scent the heady perfume of her youth and heat, but then it became vague and distant, and she seemed suddenly immense, a cloud of undulating flesh that pressed into him. He felt as if he stood atop a mountain, and that the mountain was his own body. It was moving beneath him like quaking earth. Utterly beyond control.
“It’s no use, you are mine now.” Her voice whispered the words, and the whisper was deafening. Then she snapped, “The locks, worm. Quickly!”
The small man bolted to his feet and unlocked the chains. Gath could feel his mountainous body drop free and land solidly on the floor. The noise and impact dizzied him, and when his head cleared he saw Tiyy’s smile as she whispered to the small man, “Don’t bother with the chains! Get out!”
The little
man did not have to be told twice, and was out the door before she finished, slamming it behind him.
The Nymph Queen undulated like fire, and the mountain moved. Chains rattled through iron loops in the wall, coming free, and clanged to the floor. His arms reached for her, massive hands spanning her waist, and he hauled her violently into his arms, the lengths of chain flailing and clanging against wall and floor. The mountain had more strength than his imagination could have fashioned, and the heat inside it was volcanic. Impatient. Fire wanting to mate with fire.
“Yes! Yes!” she groaned. “Now! Now!”
He crushed her to him, and her legs straddled his hips, the fires merging as she took him standing, in the manner of the Dark Goddess, consuming and defeating him in the manner water defeats the sword.
Then his mind was gone, and there was only bone and muscle and sensation.
Thirty-Eight
PYRAM
The four riders emerged from the hills side by side, crested the ridge together and simultaneously reined up in the shadows of a spreading oak. Their tunics and cloaks had been redesigned by the hard night trail, and were decorated by thorns, dust and sweat. Their faces were vivid with the rouge of exhaustion and drawn with reckless smiles. Mouths were parted, lips cracked, and the lids of their eyes were red against bloodshot whites. But they sat erect in their saddles, as if with one backbone, like actors eager to battle tempest, fire and flood for center stage.
Brown John was in the middle. Cobra was on his right, and Jakar, with Robin riding behind him, on his left.
Seagulls floated against the grey sky overhead, silently working the cool sea breezes. The same breezes ruffled their cloaks, cooled hot cheeks and filled heaving lungs with heady satisfaction.
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