Abruptly the Old One looked away. “You are right, woman. He fights against yielding.” He cast Ian aside. Ian collapsed, sinking to all fours. “I do not want your leavings,” he heard the Old One say. He could not tell whether the words were spoken aloud or only echoed in his mind. “You have sucked at this one. Take him away.”
Asharti bowed and snapped, “To me, slave!”
Ian dragged himself to her side, unsure whether to regret his rejection. Would the Old One have killed him immediately, or would he have tormented Ian in ways even more foul than Asharti’s? Asharti picked up Ian’s rope, bowed once to the figure on the throne, now vibrating with energy. She backed from the room, Fedeyah behind her and Ian scrambling after them.
The vortex was open. They thrust through to the passage beyond, their two remaining lanterns swinging wild shadows on the wall, up the sloping corridor, into the treasure room. Here Asharti stopped abruptly and motioned to Fedeyah.
“Take enough to fuel our war against men,” she growled. “But don’t look at them. We can have them broken up in Marrakech.”
Fedeyah retrieved several small leather sacks from the sleeves of his burnoose and quickly scooped handfuls of the huge stones into each, pulling the strings tight. Asharti pushed through the farther door with Ian in tow. They ran up the next passage, Ian gasping, until they reached the antechamber with the two huge ibis-dog guardians.
In the echoing hall Asharti again halted. She bent double, wheezing, laughing with reckless abandon. “Fedeyah, I have done it! Ancient blood! Already I feel it burning in my veins!” Straightening, she fairly shone.
Ian stared at her. She had taken but a single drop of the Old One’s blood, yet already he could detect a difference in her. It was as if the angles of her face were smoothed. She was made of alabaster, glowing from within. It was sheer power that lit her eyes and her flesh.
“I am alive!” she hissed. “One drop and my power is doubled. Where will this end?”
She flung aside her cloak. Ian saw her nipples beneath her gossamer gown, tense with excitement or desire. She cast about the chamber, her gaze roving over the hieroglyphics and the guardian statues. Her eyes came to rest on Fedeyah, who studied her anxiously. “Life flows in me, Fedeyah,” she whispered, stalking up to him. “I have never regretted the loss of your manhood more. You alone are of my kind. Yet you are useless as a consort.”
Fedeyah contracted, though he kept his features almost as impassive as the Old One’s. Asharti hurt him and his pain made no difference to her.
She turned, holding her arms out, mirth bubbling up through her chest and her throat into a rich laugh. Her gaze fell on Ian, moved on, paused, and returned. Their glow changed its character. “Life flows in me,” she repeated slowly, “and must be released.”
Ian shook his head in dumb resistance. “Must go . . .” he managed. Not here! Not now! Her eyes glowed more intensely than he had ever seen them. He fell to his knees on the stones.
“Goddess!” Fedeyah cried. “We must go from here. Suck him dry once we are away. . . .”
“The Old One’s blood excites me, acolyte,” she murmured, never taking her eyes from Ian’s body. “I must have release. I am starved for several kinds of nourishment.”
Ian felt his member rise at her unspoken command. He shook his head ever so slightly. It was a measure of his misery that he found the will at all.
She bore down upon him, dropping her lantern to the floor with a metallic clang. It lit her features from below, revealing the demon in her. Looming over him, her eyes pulsed red. He raised his face, his cock throbbing. She bent to kiss his forehead, trailing her lips to his temple even as he moaned his dismay. He swayed on his knees. She moved her lips down toward his. Her newly enhanced power washed over him, making the great stone statues spin. She touched his lips, taking his lower lip in her teeth. Ian, in his turn, took her full lower lip in his own mouth and sucked at her. Her instructions were there in his mind.
“Worshipped One!” Asharti jerked back, Fedeyah’s hand at her shoulder. Ian’s teeth cut Asharti’s lip. The tang of blood blossomed in his mouth.
Asharti shrieked in fury as she rounded on Fedeyah. “You dare to interrupt me? She gave the Arab a backhanded swipe that sent him reeling. Then she froze and turned.
Ian licked his lips. Her blood was bitter copper.
Asharti’s eyes went wide. She stood as still as one of the guardian statues for a long moment. Then anger suffused her. “You have ruined everything!” She raised a hand that could decapitate him. He did not cringe away. Let her kill him.
Slowly, she lowered her hand. She began to chuckle. The laugh crescendoed to a hysterical cry, reminiscent of the hyena. Ian felt her spell break. His will was his own.
“Why bother?” she managed around her fountain of laughter. “The slow death of a new one will punish you more surely.” She reached for his rope, casting a resentful glance at Fedeyah. “We will go. And you will both be punished.”
Twelve
Ian knelt, naked and shuddering, in the sand at the edge of the open desert with the rock of Kivala at his back. The sky was pink with coming sun. Fedeyah stood beside him, silent. The caravan prepared to depart. Asharti already reclined in her litter, the silk hangings tied tight against the dawn. Drivers whistled and clucked. Camels rose to their feet, ungainly packs of water and food swaying up. The four bearers shouldered the litter. The eastern horizon paled from pink to pearl.
Asharti had not called him to her litter, though she had been closeted there for the better part of an hour. She had overcome her desire. As they stumbled back through the wash, Ian had felt fever growing in him. He alternately sweated and shivered. By the time Asharti goaded the caravan into furious preparation, Ian wavered on his knees on the verge of collapse.
At the last minute, she had barked a single order to Fedeyah. “Leave him.”
It meant his death, of course. No man could survive in this godforsaken land, naked and sick, without food or water. The only water besides the oasis three days ahead was probably the pool deep in that chamber of horrors. Ian would rather die than return there.
Death should be a relief. Had he not craved death for months? Still, he could not help but rail against the injustice of her anger. Whose fault was it that he was not virgin to bloodletting and the Old One had not wanted him? He had not bitten her lip intentionally, either. He watched the caravan recede. The moon still hung in the lightening sky, a ghost of itself.
Yet was that the real reason the Old One had rejected him as Asharti’s gift? In the instant he had dared to look into those old eyes, he had felt some kind of connection to that incomprehensible being. Was it a mutual recognition of suffering? Some common railing of the spirit against the iniquity of the world? Something so alien, so powerful, could not connect to a human slave. He must have imagined it. The whole journey into the earth now seemed unreal.
What was real was his imminent suffering and death. Worse, both Fedeyah and Asharti believed his fate was to be even more horrible than dying from exposure and thirst. Asharti had promised him exceeding pain as punishment for his inadequacy and his transgression.
He looked up at Fedeyah, who stood beside him gazing after the object of his fruitless longing over centuries. Fedeyah carried his own punishment with him, as Asharti must know. The caravan moved off southwest along the cliffs. Fedeyah took a breath and turned to Ian. Ian saw that he had a bundle under his right arm.
“English,” Fedeyah said, and then paused to gather himself. “Does a man deserve the death she has planned for you?” He asked himself, not Ian. “If we had not spoken of England, of her, you would be only another animal to me. I would not be tempted to defy her.”
Ian waited, silent, for Fedeyah to say more.
Fedeyah threw down the bundle in front of Ian and stalked away. Over his shoulders drifted the words: “Protect your body from the sun. Drink sparingly. It may be enough to see you through the sickness. Don’t look into the stones. We are
for Marrakech.”
Ian watched him break into a trot to catch up to the caravan, burnoose flapping. Ian surveyed the bundle with bleary eyes and plucked at the fabric. It was a burnoose, a single leather water bag, and a small leather pouch on a sling. He opened the tiny sack, caught the glint of diamonds, and jerked his gaze away. The honking cry of the camels faded. The figures grew small, until they might be anyone. Ian’s heart sank. A burnoose, a single water sack, and some useless diamonds—if Fedeyah meant to give him a chance to live he might have done better.
The red rim of the sun peeked over the horizon. Its first rays stabbed Ian’s naked body like a thousand needles. The flash blinded him. He cried out and fell to the ground, writhing. His lungs could not find air. His veins were on fire. His skin seared. The sun! How could the first weak rays of dawn cause so much pain? Shade! He needed shade. Groaning, he raised his head. The ravine! He dragged himself into the deep shade of the ravine wall. The cool of the rock against his back soothed his blistered flesh. He lay there gasping, still unable to open his eyes more than a slit. Then the shivering began again as fever racked his body. He couldn’t think. He could only lie in the sand, arm flung across his eyes, teeth chattering.
Hours passed. Sometimes he was delirious. But he was brought forcibly to his senses as fire stabbed his hand. He jerked it into his body and chanced to crack his eyelids. The shade of the wall was retreating as the sun rose higher. His hand had been touched by sunlight. He shrank against the stone. At noon he would be burned alive.
What to do? The burnoose! He raised his head. It lay some ten feet away in the center of the ravine. It might as well lie across a river of fire. Could it save his flesh? It must, or why would Fedeyah leave it? He looked around through slitted eyes. No stick, no miraculous shepherd’s crook he could use to reach the burnoose. He stared at the oat-colored fabric and the burgundy threads that striped it. He had wanted death but not death in such excruciating pain. He imagined his skin cracking, cooking in the sun. He must be a coward. If he was to avoid that death, there was one choice. He must suffer the sun just long enough to lunge for the burnoose.
He could not take time to think. The shade shrank moment by moment. Sucking in his breath, he gathered himself. No matter how painful it was, he must keep moving. He must reach that burnoose. He lurched into the sun. Immediately the stabbing rays coated him with pain. He was blinded; his flesh seemed to bubble. His joints screamed. He scrambled across the sand, slowing with every second he was exposed to the toxic light. Cloth beneath his hands, he clenched and heaved himself backward, gasping. Each movement took an aeon as he struggled toward the narrow band of shade. He brought the fabric up over his shoulders and felt the searing flame subside. Weakly he scrabbled toward the rock wall.
Shade’s cooling darkness touched first a hand and then, as he dragged himself against the wall, his head and shoulders. Moaning, he drew his body into a ball under the burnoose.
How he survived the noon he did not know. He huddled under the burnoose shivering with fever, his flesh seared from those moments in the sun. The very texture of the fabric against his tortured skin was hell. Sometime later, he realized the sun was creating shade on the far side of the ravine. He pulled himself, under the rasping burnoose, through sand that scraped him raw toward the other side, and collapsed, unconscious.
Night. The cool desert air crept under the fabric of the burnoose and roused him. He managed to throw off the fabric and lay there, semiconscious, staring up at the stars. The fever was worse. The sheen of sweat on his body left him victim to chills. The sky was cold and closed against him, the stars distant, the moon not yet risen.
Ian was thirsty, thirstier than he had ever been. His body screamed as though it had passed through fire. Asharti had condemned him to this suffering. Damn her to hell!
He breathed, riding the pain. His thoughts skittered to the water sack Fedeyah had left. The thought of water, flavor indescribable, relief incalculable, filled him. If he could make it to the water . . . Impossible! He didn’t have the strength to move. He’d die as Asharti meant him to die.
He rolled his head and saw the horn of the moon peek over the shoulder of the ravine. Let her win? Hatred stoked a fire in his belly. He had wanted to die to escape her. But she was gone. Was he so much a slave at heart that he would let her kill him in absentia? Fedeyah said the water sack might last him long enough to live. Fedeyah thought it was possible.
He rolled onto his side. His teeth began to chatter. He reached for the burnoose and pulled it over his head. Several strips of fabric tumbled from the folds. His tongue was a thick, dry lump in his mouth, like cloth. The water sack was . . . twenty feet away? It might as well be a mile. But not impossible, he told himself. Not impossible. Grunting, he rolled onto his belly. He shoved himself over the sand—one couldn’t even call it crawling—sand and fabric torturing his burned skin. Slowly, with pain he did not think he could bear suffusing his body, he dragged himself forward. He had to reach that water skin.
He clutched the sueded leather like the prize it was. He jerked the cork from the mouthpiece, raised it to his trembling lips, and squeezed the sack. Instead of the cool purity of water, blood gushed into his mouth. He swallowed convulsively, coughing. Blood? Blood? He spat into the sand and retched, but he did not bring up the blood. It coursed into his gut.
His shaking stopped. Strength suffused him. He felt . . . whole. What was this? He rolled to his back. The pain of his burnt flesh receded a little. The stars were brighter now, or his sight had cleared. The moon rose over the ravine like an enigmatic smile. It was as if life ran in his veins.
Now, while he had the strength, he had to get back to the ravine wall. He struggled to his hands and knees. He glanced to the sack that held no water. Revulsion filled him. Yet it was the blood that banished the fever and pain. He knew that. Blood. Fedeyah had left him blood.
Realization enveloped him. He was as they were. He needed blood to live!
Ian scrambled back into the ravine as though he could escape the meaning of that water sack. It could not be! He would not let it be! His brain darted over all that had happened. Asharti wanted the Old One’s blood to increase her power. Ian’s teeth had torn her lip. The taste of her blood, her fury, her laugh when she said he would die the death of a new one all swirled before him in a kaleidoscope review.
It was true. He had gotten her nature through her blood. Despair flooded him. He clutched his knees and rocked. A keening sound issued from a throat newly moistened with blood. The evil had infected him. He was more her slave than ever. She had condemned him to death and left him. And he should die, if he was destined to be as she was. Let the sun come and burn him to a crisp! He’d rather die than be as they were. He sobbed and railed against the fate that let the Barbary pirates fall upon his ship, let Fedeyah buy him for Asharti, brought him to this lost city with its horror lurking underground. Self-pity tore at him.
The stars wheeled, uncaring, over his despair until dawn painted the promise of light over the eastern horizon. His tears were gone. Emotion had drained away. He was a dry husk, shaking with chills. The fever was returning, just as the sun would soon return. Then he would remove the burnoose, walk out into its deadly rays, and let it burn him to death. It was all that was left to him. But as he sat there, a small thorn niggled in his gut. What galled him was that she would have won. Just as she mastered Fedeyah, she would hold him in thrall until he did what she wanted—died a dreadful death. And he was going to apply her punishment himself. Some part of him rebelled one final time.
Fedeyah could make other choices. He didn’t have to follow her. It was his weakness that he did follow. Then, too, Fedeyah was different from Asharti. He did not kill the slaves who fed him. Could Ian not be different, too? He had been thoughtless in his youth and profligate, but he had reformed, and joined the diplomatic corps to return some value for his life, to country or to his fellow men. He had not been an evil man. Could he not reform again?
B
ut this infection, this disease he had of her, might change his essential nature. A thought struck him. If it was a disease, might it not be cured? Doctors were doing marvelous things these days for conditions that had long been mysteries. A draught of some herb and he could be stripped of the consequence of Asharti’s blood. Perhaps it was the fever in his brain that made it seem possible, even likely, that a good English doctor could cure him. But he did not want to throw away the chance.
He did not want her to have won.
The sun would be up in another hour or two. Ian pulled up the hood of his burnoose.
He had to get to an English doctor.
He glanced to the water sack. Beside it lay the leather pouch that held diamonds. His resolve hardened inside him. To have any chance of thwarting Asharti’s revenge or escaping what she had made him, he would need both sustenance and the means to get help. He must avail himself of both Fedeyah’s parting gifts.
He needed blood to survive. So be it, for now. He looked around for the ragged strips of fabric that had fallen from the burnoose. They were half-buried in the sand. He shook them out and wrapped his feet and hands. Pulling the burnoose around him, he stalked out into the desert. He would do his walking at night and huddle under the burnoose in the daylight, his eyes wrapped with the remaining strip of cloth.
Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] Page 19
