Darkness Weaves (27 page)

She tittered at the expression of absolute horror frozen on her captive's face. "But as I remember, you never did care much for Efrel, did you? Efrel was too dark a spirit to meet favor in your dear little thoughts. Well, that's forgiven--all is forgiven--because you're going to make it up to me now."

She stared intently at the fragile beauty of M'Cori. "M'Cori will be spared the fate I had planned for her father. Pretty M'Cori, you shouldn't be frightened of Efrel. No flaying knife shall caress lovely M'Cori's soft skin. Ah, you always were so beautiful a child, weren't you? Some even claimed more beautiful than I was. Beautiful child, let me see more of you!" Savagely, Efrel's hands clawed out at her captive and tore away the silken shoulders of M'Cori's gown.

M'Cori jerked back from her clutching fingers. "Efrel! Why are you doing this to me?" she stammered. "I have never wished you harm! I was promised I would be treated as an honored prisoner. Instead you chain me in your dungeons--threaten me with torture!"

Efrel cackled wildly. "Torture you? No, no--rest assured that I won't harm one hair of your golden body. Oh, no! But as you will learn, pretty one, I have every right to examine all your beauty."

She swayed before her captive, like a serpent before a hypnotized bird. "Do you know what I have planned for you, dear M'Cori? Not torture, I promise you.

"Have you ever studied the arts of the occult sphere? Sweet M'Cori, you're trembling. How careless of me to forget--your bright little world revolves around happier pastimes. M'Cori has always lived in a flower garden world--her life is a game of adventures and childish laughter. So it is not strange that you should show such revulsion toward sorcery.

"For Efrel it was otherwise. I was far younger than you, beautiful child, when first I ripped a virgin's heart from her breast and offered it to a howling demon from the world beyond night. But M'Cori read foolish love poetry, instead of blood-stained grimoires. Withal, we might be sisters for the nearness of our ages--but you frolicked in the sunlight, while Efrel danced in sulfur-lit darkness. Yet I wonder if you could stand here in my place--dreaming the dreams of hatred and vengeance that I know--had it been M'Cori, and not Efrel, that Netisten Maril gave to the bull. My gods spared me to fulfill my curse. Would yours have done the same?

"Still I see only horror in your eyes. Sweet M'Cori only feels compassion for pretty things. When you saved a struggling butterfly from his webbed prison, M'Cori darling, did you ever shed a tear for the spider you thus left to starve? Have you ever thought, dear child, what you might have become had our lives been reversed? Would you feel sympathy for the spider, had you been born a child of night? Had there been dark Pellin blood in your heart, instead of tepid Netisten blood--perhaps lovely M'Cori would have learned to chant spells, rather than to recite sugary poems. Perhaps M'Cori would have abandoned her flower gardens to the conqueror weeds and spent her nights poring over cryptic lines paged on human skin.

"But I was speaking of sorcery. If your childhood had passed like mine, perhaps then M'Cori would know of an ancient spell of transmigration. She might know that through certain magics, the soul can be excised from its earthly body and projected through the cosmos, that through patent sorceries a captive soul may be stolen from its natural breast and imprisoned within another body. She might even know how to perform the difficult spell through which the human soul may be exchanged from one body to another--wrested from its corporeal form and imprisoned within the body of the adept. "Efrel knows such a spell, pretty one."

Efrel swayed closer to her cringing captive. One hand lifted her chin, the other slipped the torn gown away from M'Cori's shoulders. The girl's face was blank with frightened wonder.

"Now do you understand why your body interests me so? Dear M'Cori, you stare at me so innocently--without comprehension. Must I tell you what your naive mind refuses to accept?

"Your body will soon be my own."

She laughed with insane pleasure at M'Cori's scream of horror. "Yes! Yes, my lovely one! That is why I've spared you from these instruments of crude torture. No harm shall come to pretty, pretty M'Cori. Because before very long your body will be mine, and your spirit will be trapped in this shattered hull that once was Efrel! Think of the irony of it! Maril's own daughter--imprisoned within the mutilated flesh he had lusted for and then destroyed. And the woman he had doomed to a hideous death--alive and beautiful once again in his own daughter's body."

Numb with fear and shock, M'Cori watched the sorceress fall to the floor in maddened laughter. In a half-faint, she huddled in her chains and watched as in a dream while the cavorting, taunting madwoman hopped about her, tearing away her clothing and greedily pawing over her body. Efrel's scarred face giggled inches from her own. Sharp nails clutched at her bare flesh. Torn lips whispered intolerable demands and promises into her ears.

M'Cori tried to crawl away, but chains fettered her wrists and ankles. She tried to struggle free, but the sorceress's mad strength was too much for her. Her screams were lost in the shadows of the hidden chamber. Her garments were in shreds now. Efrel's hands crawled over her naked flesh. She was pinned beneath the sorceress's writhing body, naked now as well. Tattered lips caressed her face, sucked at her lips, bit her breasts. M'Cori moaned in revulsion as Efrel forced her legs apart and bent her helpless body to serve her lusts.

Sick with loathing, M'Cori writhed helplessly beneath the bestial assault of the raving sorceress. Her soul shriveled with the horror of it--as a wave of evil crushed her to the stones, smothered her sobbing breath. Pain and nausea and shame shook her violated flesh in great paroxysms. She felt herself falling into a deep black well, and somewhere in the nightmare came oblivion.

Sometime later, when M'Cori awoke, she was unable for a moment to orient herself. In her hollow weakness, it seemed for a space that she still lay tossing in the delirium of a fever-dream. Then she saw the dark stones, the chains, the torn clothing, her scratched and bruised flesh--and knew that the nightmare was reality.

Groggily she sat up, praying that the scene of horror might yet dissolve into fragments of dream. The walls did not waver, and the sickness remained. Weird odors filled the air; bluish lights flickered in the darkness. Looking about, M'Cori saw that she now was chained in the center of a great circle.

An evil laugh drew a gasp from her. "Back with me so soon, my darling?" Efrel jeered. "Was it passion that made you faint beneath my tender caresses, pretty child? Touching modesty from one who is not even a virgin."

She laughed cruelly and bent to examine a large parchment-paged volume. Around her were stacks of other strangely bound works of varying stages of antiquity--along with jars and vials of paints, chalks, incenses, and the dubious powders and elixirs of her black art. From the vast quantities of occult paraphernalia the sorceress had drawn together, it was evident that Efrel was at work on some great necromantic project.

"You look interested," sneered the sorceress. "Well, you should be. After all, this spell will be of no little personal interest to you, won't it? Besides, this is a very intriguing spell--and a most difficult one, as well. I shall need a few days just to get everything in readiness to begin the actual conjuration. But I have prepared well for this triumph, so you won't be inconvenienced too long. A few days are nothing to one who has already suffered a lifetime of agony and shame as this crippled monster your father made me.

"Poor pretty M'Cori, I hope the delay won't tire you. But we shall find ways to amuse one another from time to time, you and I. And if you find yourself bored, just take a last long look at your lovely body. You may find your new one a considerable change."

M'Cori stretched out on the cold stones and sobbed wretchedly.

"I don't know why I don't cut out your black heart!" snarled Lages, by way of greeting.

Kane shrugged. "For the same reason that you agreed to this meeting. Because you want to see M'Cori again--and you know that if you don't act quickly, you won't like what you'll see."

He waited for that barb to sink in. Announcing that he intended to mop up Lages's guerilla force without delay, Kane had sailed for Thovnos almost immediately following his last meeting with Efrel. With him Kane had brought a good-sized force loyal to him--former pirates and brigands, mercenaries, and a few ambitious adventurers like Imel. The Thovnosten renegade Kane left in Prisarte, to gather more men and to stand ready at the Pellin stronghold when he returned. Efrel, Kane learned, had withdrawn into her hidden chamber, with the command that on no account was she to he interrupted. Her action boded ill for M'Cori, but was perfect for Kane's designs. Finding where Lager and his hand were holed up was not too difficult for a man of Kane's resources--although arranging a meeting had been more of a problem. Desperation and the tempting possibilities of Kane's proposal had caused Lages to take the risk. They had arranged to meet in an isolated region of the great forest that covered much of Thovnos. Here they each brought fifty men along with them--well armed and suspicious of traps. Kane guessed that Lages probably had many more within calling distance--but then, so did he.

"I assume you understand what I'm proposing," Kane prompted.

"Your emissary was clear enough," replied Lages sullenly. "Only tell me why I should trust you? Regardless of the legends they tell of Red Kane, you've done enough to our Empire in the past year to make the name of Kane a curse for centuries to come. I know you have no scruples against luring me out of hiding--then springing a trap and slaughtering us to a man."

"That's true enough," Kane conceded graciously. "You'll have no reason to trust me. Only consider: I found out where you and your band were hidden easily enough. If I really wanted to destroy you, I would simply have brought up the large army at my command, encircled you, and wiped out every last one of you. And by doing so, I wouldn't have had to risk my own neck trying to hold a conference with you.

"And now consider this: Efrel has your friend M'Cori--and you can be sure the witch has something most unpleasant in store for her. Efrel would probably suspect my treachery, in fact--if she weren't so preoccupied with her captive.

"Oh, I don't think she's done too much to her yet!" Kane interjected, to halt an outburst from Lages.

"She's going to make whatever she does to her last a long time. Probably only mental anguish to start with--nothing that will leave physical scars. I've seen that Efrel likes to savour her games. But you can be certain that you'll have to act pretty damn fast to save M'Cori--and skulking around here in the hills isn't going to accomplish anything. Besides, if I can't make an ally of you, I'll have no choice but to wipe you out myself."

Kane leaned forward earnestly, pressing his advantage. "Actually my men and I would be hunting you down even now, if I had not discovered that Efrel intends to dispose of me as soon as I have destroyed all resistance to her rule. The witch's treachery went too far when she plotted against me.

"Moreover, I've grown disgusted with her methods--with these hideous sea demons she has formed a pact with. Despite the lies you've heard of me, I only entered Efrel's service to command her military forces--the same as any mercenary general would do. Black sorcery and wholesale massacre sicken me--to say nothing of the unhallowed bargain the witch made with the Scylredi. I sold her my sword as her general, not wizard--and I fight with weapons of steel, not inhuman magic. I'm through fighting for that madwoman--even if I weren't certain of her plot to kill me once I've done her work.

"So here's my proposal: I want Efrel dead. You want Efrel dead. You help me, and together we'll accomplish this. In return, you'll get M'Cori back again--and, if you pledge loyalty, I'll let you have Thovnos back as well. Of course, I'll retain the throne of Emperor for myself, and establish my seat of power on another island."

"All very logical but I still can't trust you!" Lages growled, thinking how long he would allow Kane to usurp the Imperial Throne.

"So? Take a chance. All you've ever backed were losing causes. Staying here in the hills is only going to get you killed. Throw in with me, and you'll end up with your girl and a kingdom to rule. You know that it's a better deal than Netisten Mari1 ever really planned to give you."

Lages bristled, but turned it over at length. Really there was little choice--and he knew it. It was a madman's gamble, but Kane was his only hope. "All right," he concluded. "I'm in with you. But if this is a trap, Kane--I warn you..."

"I knew you could listen to reason," congratulated Kane, grasping his hand. Lages knew a flash of déjà vu. "Now we've got to make plans fast."

On a dark night some five days after his departure from Thovnos, Kane sailed into the harbor of Prisarte, his fleet crowded to the gunwales with almost a thousand Imperial soldiers. Together with another seven hundred of his own men left with Imel in Prisarte, Kane calculated he had strength enough to take Dan-Legeh by stealthy attack and hold it until the city grew accustomed to his being in command. No one noticed anything amiss, as the soldiers disembarked from the warships in the darkness. It appeared at first glance as though Kane had returned from a normal campaign.

Quickly Kane met with Imel and informed him of Lages's alliance. The renegade filled Kane in on developments since his departure. Imel was enthusiastic.

"I've brought over as much support as I dared. I could have gotten a lot more, but it would have risked discovery. They'll back you once you make your move. Only the Pellinites, will stay loyal to Efrel, I think. After all, to most of the men Kane is their leader--not some mad sorceress in Dan-Legeh.

"So far there's been no trouble. Efrel hasn't been seen for days. Word has it, the witch is still locked up in her secret chamber with M'Cori--only Lord Tloluvin knows what sort of torments the girl has endured in this time. And most of the Pellinites are still too busy celebrating to pay attention to what's going on. We should take the place with ease."