She made a supreme effort to roll over onto her belly. If she could only move a little, she could crawl away from the middle of the floor, then… why, then nothing, she supposed. The part of her that was still rational realized it wasn't likely to matter, but she needed to try. It was better than simply accepting her fate, no matter how inescapable it was.
Her limbs trembled. The effect of the vapor was wearing off. She felt a thrill of excitement, of lunatic hope, and then the first bat found her. Cold as the zombies' fingers, its claws dug into her chest for purchase as its fangs sought her throat.
As it sucked the wounds it had inflicted, the rest of the flock descended on her, covering her like a shifting, frigid blanket, the bats that couldn't reach her shoving at the ones who had like piglets jostling for their mother's teats. Scores of icy needles pierced her flesh.
Had she ever imagined such a fate, she might have assumed that so much cold would numb her. Somehow, it didn't. The assault was agony.
The bats tore at her lips, nose, cheeks, and forehead. Not my eyes, she silently begged, not my eyes, but they ripped those too, and then she finally passed out.
Tammith woke to pain, weakness, searing thirst, and utter darkness. At first she couldn't remember what had happened to her, but then the memory leaped at her like a cat pouncing on a mouse.
When it did, she decided Xingax couldn't possibly have intended to create the crippled, sightless creature she'd become. The experiment had failed as he'd warned it might.
"So kill me!" she croaked. "I'm no use to you!"
No one answered. She wondered if she actually was alone or if Xingax and the Red Wizards were still present, silently studying her, preparing to put her out of her misery, or-gods forbid! — readying a new torment.
Suddenly she was frantic to know, which made her blindness intolerable. She felt a flowing, a budding, in the raw orbits of her skull, and then smears of light and shadow wavered into existence before her. Over the course of several moments, the world sharpened into focus. She realized she'd healed her ruined eyes, or if the bats had destroyed them entirely, grown new ones.
It suggested that Xingax's experiment hadn't been a complete failure after all, but she appeared to be alone nonetheless. Her captors had deposited her in a different chamber, a bare little room with a matchboarded door. Up near the ceiling, someone had cut a hole, probably connecting to the ubiquitous system of catwalks, but if the aborted monstrosity was up there peeping at her, she couldn't see it.
Which, she recalled, didn't necessarily mean he wasn't. He'd concealed himself easily enough when taking stock of the new supply of slaves. She wheezed his name but received no reply.
She supposed that if she did constitute some sort of glorious success, and he wasn't here to witness it, the joke was on him. But in fact, she doubted it. The Red Wizards had managed to stuff a little magic into her, enough to preserve her existence and restore her vision, but accomplishing the latter had left her even weaker and more parched than before. She stared at the myriad puncture wounds on her hands and forearms, willing them to close, and nothing happened.
At that point, misery overwhelmed her. She curled up into a ball and wept, though her new eyes seemed incapable of shedding actual tears, until a key grated in the lock of the door. It creaked open, and an orc shoved Yuldra through and slammed it after her. The lock clacked once again.
Tammith extended a trembling hand. She knew the other captive couldn't do anything substantive to ease her distress, but Yuldra could at least talk to her, clasp her fingers, or cradle her, perhaps. Any crumb of comfort, of simple human contact with someone who wasn't a pitiless torturer, would be better than nothing.
Yuldra flinched from the sight of her ravaged body, let out a sob of her own, wheeled, and scrambled into a corner. There she crouched down and held her face averted, attempting to shut out the world as she had before.
"How many times did I take care of you?" Tammith cried. "And now you turn your back on me?"
Nor was Yuldra the only person who'd so betrayed her. She'd spent her life looking after other people. Her father the drunkard and gambler. Her brother the imbecile. And what had anyone ever done for her in return? Even Bareris, who claimed to love her with all his heart, had abandoned her to chase his dreams of gold and excitement in foreign lands.
She realized she was on her feet. She was still thirsty, it was a fire burning in her throat, but she'd shaken off weakness for the moment, anyway. Anger lent her strength.
"Look at me," she snapped.
Her voice was sharp as the crack of a whip, and like a whip, it tangled something inside of Yuldra and tugged at her. The slave started to turn around but then shook off the coercion.
"Fine," Tammith said, stalking forward, "we'll do it the hard way."
She didn't know precisely what it was. Everything was happening too quickly, with impulse and fury sweeping her along, but when her upper canines stung and lengthened into fangs, their points pressing into her lower lip, she understood.
The realization brought a horror that somewhat dampened her rage if not her thirst. I can't do this, she thought. I can't be this. Yuldra is my friend.
She stood and fought against her need. It seemed to her that she was winning. Then her body burst apart into a cloud of bats much like the conjured entities that had attacked her, and that made the world a different place. The sense of sight she'd so missed became secondary to her ability to hear and comprehend the import of her own echoing cries, but the fragmentation of her consciousness was an even more fundamental change. She retained her ultimate sense of self and managed her dozens of bodies as easily as she had one, yet something was lost in the diffusion: conscience, perhaps, or the capacities for empathy and self-denial. She was purely a predator now, and her bats hurtled at Yuldra like a flight of arrows.
Rather to Tammith's surprise, given Yuldra's usual habit of cringing helplessness, the other slave fought back. She flailed at the bats, sought to grab them, and when successful, squeezed them hard enough to crush an ordinary animal, wrung them like washcloths, or pounded them against the wall. The punishment stung, but only for an instant, and without doing any real harm.
Meanwhile, Tammith clung to the other thrall and jabbed her various sets of fangs into her veins and arteries. When the hot blood gushed into her mouths, she felt a pleasure intense as the fulfillment of passion, and as it assuaged her thirst, the relief was a keener ecstasy still.
Before long, Yuldra weakened and then stopped struggling altogether. Once Tammith drank the last of her, the bats took flight. They swirled around one another, dissolved, and instantly reformed into a single body, now cleansed of all the wounds that had disfigured it before.
That didn't make the remorse that came with the restoration of her original form any easier to bear. The guilt fell on her like a hammer stroke, and she felt a howl of anguish welling up inside.
"Excellent," Xingax said.
She looked up. The fetus-thing had been watching through the hole high in the wall, just as she'd suspected, and had now dissolved the charm that had hidden him from view.
"I believe that with practice," he continued, "you'll find you can remain divided for extended periods of time. I'm confident you'll discover other uncommon abilities as well, talents that set you above the common sort of vampire."
"Why didn't you answer me when I called to you before? Why didn't you warn me?"
"I wanted to see how far instinct would carry you. It's quite a promising sign that you managed to manifest a number of your abilities and take down your first prey without any mentoring at all."
"I'm going to kill you," she told him, and with the resolve came the abrupt instinctive realization that she didn't even need to shapeshift to do it. His elevated position afforded no protection. She dashed to the wall and scrambled upward like a fly. It was as easy as negotiating a horizontal surface.
Partway up, dizziness and nausea assailed her. Her feet and hands lost their ability to adh
ere to the wall, and she plunged back to the floor. She landed awkwardly, with a jolt that might well have broken the old Tammith's bones, though the new version wasn't even stunned.
As the sick feeling began to pass, Xingax said, "You didn't really think we'd give you so much power without insuring that you'd use it as we intend, did you? I'm afraid, my daughter, that you're still a thrall, or at best, a vassal. If it's any comfort to you, so am I, and so are the Red Wizards you've encountered here, but so long as we behave ourselves, our service is congenial, and we can hope for splendid rewards in the decades to come."
CHAPTER EIGHT
30 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin
Delhumide gleamed like a broken skeleton in the moonlight. The siege engines and battle sorceries of the ancient rebels had shattered battlements and toppled towers, and time had chipped and scraped at all that had survived the initial onslaught. Yet the Mulhorandi had built their provincial capital to last, and much remained essentially intact. Bareris found it easy to imagine the proud, teeming city of yore, which only served to make the present desolation all the more forbidding.
He wondered if it was simply his imagination, or if he truly could sense a miasma of sickness and menace infusing the place. Either way, the gnolls plainly felt something too. They growled and muttered. One clasped a copper medallion stamped with the image of an axe and prayed for the favor of his god.
Having cajoled them this far, Bareris didn't want to give them a final chance to lose their nerve. As before, enchantment lent him the ability to speak to them in their own snarling, yipping language, and he used it to say, "Let's move. "He skulked forward, and they followed.
He prayed they weren't already too late, that something horrible hadn't already befallen Tammith. It was maddening to reflect on just how much time had passed since he'd watched the Red Wizards and their cohorts march her away. It had taken him and the hyenafolk a while to reach Delhumide. Then, for all that the gnolls had scouted the general area before, Wesk Backbreaker insisted on observing the perimeter of the city before venturing inside. He maintained it would increase their chances of success, and much as Bareris chafed at the delay, he had to admit the gnoll chieftain was probably right.
As they'd gleaned all they could, so too had they begun to plan. After some deliberation, they decided to sneak into Delhumide by night. True, it was when the demons and such came out, but even if the horrors were in fact charged with guarding the borders of the ruined city, it didn't appear they did as diligent a job as the warriors keeping watch by day. Bareris hoped he and the gnolls had a reasonable chance of slipping past them unmolested, especially considering that though creatures like devils and the hyenafolk themselves could see in the dark, they couldn't see as far as a man could by daylight.
He and his companions picked their way through the collapsed and decaying houses outside the city wall then over the field of rubble that was all that remained of the barrier at that point. The bard wondered what particular mode of attack had shattered it. The chunks of granite had a blackened, pitted look, but that was as much as he could tell.
The gnolls slinking silently as mist for all their size, the intruders reached the end of the litter of smashed stones fairly quickly. Now they'd truly entered Delhumide, venturing deeper than any of their scouts had dared to go before. A cool breeze moaned down the empty street, and one of the hyenafolk jumped as if a ghost had ruffled his fur and crooned in its ear.
Wesk waved, signaling for everyone to follow him to the left. Their observations had revealed that shadowy figures flitted through the streets on the right in the dark. Occasionally, one of the things shrieked out peals of laughter that inspired a sudden self-loathing and the urge to self-mutilate in all who heard it. Bareris had no idea what the entities were, but he was certain they'd do well to avoid them.
The intruders turned again to avoid a trio of spires that, groaning and shedding scraps of masonry, sometimes flexed like the fingers of a palsied hand. The facades of crumbling houses seemed to watch them go by, the black empty windows following like eyes. For a moment, a sort of faint clamor like the final fading echo of a hundred screams sounded somewhere to the north.
The noise made Bareris shiver, but he told himself it had nothing to do with him or his comrades. Delhumide was replete with perils and eerie phenomena; they'd known that coming in. It wasn't a problem if you could keep away from them, and so far their reconnaissance had enabled them to do so.
That luck held for another twenty heartbeats. Then one of the gnolls deviated from their course by just a long, loping stride or two, just far enough to stick his head into a courtyard with a rusty wrought-iron gate hanging askew and a cracked, dry fountain in the center. Something had evidently snagged the warrior's attention, some hint of danger, perhaps, that demanded closer scrutiny.
The gnoll suddenly snarled and staggered, tearing at himself with his thick canine nails. At first Bareris couldn't make out what was wrong, but when he saw the swelling black dots scurrying through the creature's spotted fur, he understood.
The gnolls had fleas, a fact he'd discovered when he started scratching as well, and the parasites on the outlaw in the courtyard were growing to prodigious size. Big as mice, they swarmed over him, burying their proboscises and heads in his flesh to drain his blood. Bulges shifted under the gnoll's brigandine as insects crawled and feasted there as well.
A second gnoll rushed to help his fellow, but as soon as he entered the courtyard, he suffered the same affliction. The two hyenafolk flailed and rolled and shrieked together. Their fellows hovered outside the gate, too frightened or canny to risk the same consequence.
Bareris sang. Magic warmed the air, and he felt a sort of tickling as his own assortment of normal-sized fleas jumped off him. He then charged into the courtyard, and the enchantment radiating outward from his skin drove the giant parasites off the bodies of their hosts just as easily. With a rustling, seething sound, they scuttled and bounded into the shadows at the rear of the space.
He still had no desire to linger inside the crooked gate. For all he knew, the influence haunting the courtyard had other tricks to play. Fast as he could, he dragged the dazed, bloody gnolls back out onto the street, where the spirit, or whatever it was, couldn't hurt them any further. At least he hoped it couldn't, because they needed a healer's attention immediately if they were to escape infirmity or worse, and in the absence of a priest, he'd have to do.
He chanted charms of mending and vitality. The other gnolls looked on curiously until Wesk started grabbing them and wrenching them around. "Keep watch!" the chieftain snarled. "Something else could have heard the ruckus or hear the singer singing."
Gradually, one gnoll's wounds stopped bleeding and scabbed over, a partial healing that was as much as Bareris could manage for the time being. The other, however, appeared beyond help. He shuddered, a rattle issued from his throat, then he slumped motionless. Meanwhile, the survivor sat up and, hand trembling, groped for the leather water bottle strapped to his belt.
"How are you?" Bareris asked him.
The gnoll snorted as if the question were an insult.
"Then when you're ready, we'll press on."
"Are you crazy?"
Bareris turned and saw that the speaker was Thovarr Keentooth, the long-eared gnoll he'd punched during their first palaver.
"You said you knew how to get us in and out without the spooks bothering us," the creature snarled, spit flying from his jaws. He apparently meant to continue in the same vein for a while, but Wesk interrupted by backhanding him across the muzzle and tumbling him to the ground.
"We said," the chieftain growled, "we'd do our best to avoid the threats we knew about, but there might be some we hadn't spotted. This was one such, and you can't blame the human or anyone else for missing it, seeing as how it was invisible till someone stepped in the snare."
"I'm not talking about 'blame,'" Thovarr replied, picking himself up. "I'm talking about what's sensible and what isn't. T
here's a reason no one comes here, and-"
"Blood orcs do," Bareris said. "Are they braver than you?"
Thovarr bared his fangs like an angry hound. "The pig-faces have Red Wizards to guide them. We only have you, and you talk big but don't keep us out of trouble."
"Enough!" snapped Wesk. "We're soldiers again, and soldiers expect to risk their lives earning their pay. If you don't have the belly for it, turn back now, but know it means the rest of us cast you out for a coward."
That left Thovarr with three options: obey, leave his little pack forever, or fight Wesk then and there for his chieftaincy. Apparently the first choice was the most palatable, the perils of Delhumide notwithstanding, because the long-eared gnoll bent his head in submission. "I'll stick," he growled.
They dragged the dead warrior's corpse into a shadowy recessed doorway, where, they hoped, it was less likely anyone or anything would notice it. There they abandoned it without ceremony. Bareris had dealt just as callously with the mortal remains of other fallen comrades when a battle, pursuit, or flight required immediate action, and he had no idea whether gnolls even practiced any sort of funerary observances. It wouldn't have astonished him to learn that they ate their dead as readily as they devoured any other sort of meat or carrion that came their way. Still, he found it gave him a pang of remorse to leave the creature unburied and unburned, without even a hymn or prayer to speed its soul on its way.
Maybe it bothered him because Thovarr was essentially correct. If Bareris hadn't used magic to undermine the gnolls' better judgment, they would never have ventured into Delhumide. His friends from more squeamish-or as they might have put it, more ethical-lands might well have deemed it an abuse of his gifts.
But his present comrades were hyenafolk, who boasted themselves that their kind lived only for war and slaughter, and Bareris was paying them a duke's ransom to put themselves in harm's way. If he'd sinned, then the Lord of Song could take him to task for it when his spirit knelt before the deity's silver throne. For now, he'd sacrifice the gnolls and a thousand more like them to rescue Tammith.
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