“What, what does this… have to do with...” somehow I managed to form the words.
She paused for a moment, letting her hand do the work of stroking me. It worked me in a steady rhythm, the alternating pressures of a masseuse. “Do not worry yourself. I do not do this with every prisoner I am handed.” Her laughter was indulgent. She squeezed my pulsing shaft with both hands, then rubbed them up and down furiously. “My, it does take some time to draw seed from you doesn’t it? Perhaps this will help.” Her hands reached under her massive breasts, lifted them like two powdered balls of firm dough, then brought them down, one on each side of my cock. She squeezed them together then began running them up and down my manhood. Gods, to be enveloped by her flesh made me reel. They were such vast flesh on them that they undulated like waves as they slid along my cock. She stroked them on me faster and faster. Here and there she flicked her tongue on the very tip of my cock, sucking at it like a fawn on a deer’s teet.
“You’re absolutely… mad…”
“You must trust me, Rothan. I could be doing far worse things to you, could I not?” Mirth rang in her voice. “You’re almost there. Cum for me, Rothan. Cum.”
I felt my cock begin to pulse. I was about to release. She slid her breasts off, clenched her hand around me and rubbed furiously.
“I’m going to—”
Just as I felt the shudder of climax run through my body, she clamped something down on my manhood. It was some kind of waterskin, I thought. But it was thick, almost organ like, and the color of salmon flesh. Seed poured out of me and into this vessel which was clamped tight around me. My hips thrust in short seizures even though I was bound.
“Any more and it might have spilled from my container,” Tiloshar said with a smile. She stood tall again, sealed her strange container—like closing a dead fish mouth—and clasped her robe around herself once more. “I must put this to use now.” She caressed my face. “I shall return when ready, my good wolf.”
I panted, still reeling with disbelief, waves of drunken pleasure still running over me.
“Perhaps it will help you rest easier if you know,” Tiloshar stopped at the door, “that I am not returning you to the Imperials at all. I am keeping you for myself.”
A sharp laugh leapt out of her as she left the room, and I was left there wondering if I was not in some drugged nightmare.
7
Several of her stitched creatures came for me eventually. They uncuffed me from the metal table and bound me in chains once more. This was madness I found myself in, but I recalled Lady Tiloshar’s words and had to agree that there were worse ways to torture a man. They took me back to the room with the four-post bed and the lavish furniture. A meal had been prepared for me. Several breaded fish, potatoes, gravy, sweet yams, a hearty soup and wine, lots and lots of bright red wine.
“Help yourself, Rothan the Fenrir,” one of the stitched goblin creatures said in an old, crusty voice. “Lady Tiloshar wishes you to be full of vitality.”
I was already eating by the time he spoke. The taste of salt, spices, nourishment on my tongue was nearly as pleasurable as anything Tiloshar had done to me that night. Nearly. I was famished. I ate and ate with no other thought than to go on filling the pit in my gut.
“I will… let you enjoy your meal,” the goblin creature said, aghast at my frenzied devouring of dish after dish.
When I finished, the metal trays clattered to the ground and I fell into bed on my silk sheets.
When I woke it was the black of night, then I remembered it was always night on this island of Black Tear. My thoughts turned to Tiloshar. It was hard to even think of her as a woman. Perhaps, in truth, she was not. She was a vampire after all, or a Sanguinar as she had called herself. Could she really be able to return One Eye to life even after she had given his mind over to the Empire in the form of an Idochron gem? Would this ‘copy’ she had of his mind truly be the same One Eye? I looked to my chamber. It was well furnished, with a plush white carpet on the floor. But this was to lull me into trusting her, was it not? I was bound in silver chains, true enough. But I felt much stronger than I had on the Dominion. I made for the door. Locked. Of course.
I found my dinner knife on the ground, then drove it into the lock. I worked it back and forth—I was not an expert in larceny. My arms shook as I put all my strength into the knife. The knife bent into a loop and cut my finger.
“Damn it!” The iron taste of my own blood was on my tongue as I licked my finger. “Well then, the old fashioned way it is.” I took two steps back then launched myself, shoulder first, into the door. Even without my Fenrir strength, the door went flying open.
I looked up and down the black stone hallway. It was empty save for flickering torches and bones strewn about like so much meaningless debris. Perhaps this was my chance to find One Eye and escape. Perhaps if I could overpower Tiloshar, I could force her to do as I willed and have her release both of us. First, I had to find a way to cut these True Silver chains that bound me. I could not rely on my Fenrir strength. Surely, there was another way.
My steps were practiced in silently stalking down corridors. I made several turns, feeling door handles as I went. Most were locked. I found one that was not, but all that was inside was a dilapidated dresser and some debris. Much of this castle had long fallen into disrepair. I heard scuttling footsteps approaching, some chittering words that I could not make out. I slid into an alcove that did not provide complete hiding. But combined with the shadows that fell over me, it was enough.
“The Lady likes the wolf man,” one of the stitched goblin-like creatures said. He seemed a sort of guard with a pole ax and an ill-fitting breast plate. The companion he walked with also carried a pole ax but was much larger and seems more a man that had been stitched together from old pieces. He wore a massive helmet and had a giant lobster claw for a hand.
“I hope the Imperials don’t get too mad if she really keeps ‘em.” The larger lobster-clawed creature spoke in a slow drawl.
“Don’t be stupid. The Lady knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“I hope soooo.”
This was my chance. My hand snapped out from the shadows, wrenching the larger of the two creatures into a bear hug. I slammed him into the wall so hard the breath shot out of him. The other goblin was so shocked that he recoiled in terror, holding his pole ax out as if he were swatting at a fly. I caught his weapon by the haft.
“Help! Help!” the blue goblin cried out as I snatched his weapon from him. Before he could escape, I wrapped my chain around his throat just hard enough that he struggled to breath.
“Keep on squealing and I’ll squeeze so hard your head will pop.”
The goblin only gave shuddering whimpers of assent.
“Good. You’re going to take me somewhere I can break these chains, then you’re going to take me to One Eye.” He whimpered and nodded. “Go then.”
I gave the chain some slack but kept it wrapped around him. He walked, trembling all along the way as he led me down a corridor. We turned and walked more until we came to a door. He reached for keys on his belt and unlocked it. We stepped inside and he pointed to various tools that hung on the wall.
“Good, that will do.” I took bolt cutters from the wall. It took me a moment to aim it just right. It was difficult to aim at just the right spot while my hands were bound by the very chain I was trying to break. “Damn it!” My hands were bound too close together. “You’ll have to—” I did not finish. When I turned to the goblin, it was Tiloshar who stood there in the room. Her eyes were fixed on me, and she looked ever regal in her long black robe and upturned hair.
“And after all the comforts I treated you to, you are still an uncourteous guest?”
I stood my ground, my legs setting themselves to spring at any moment. “What man does not seek to break his chains? What man does not want his freedom as well as his friend’s?”
“I have already promised you his freedom, yet you do not trust my word.”<
br />
“How can I?”
She considered me a moment as if she were growing exasperated. “Come, then.” She turned and made for the door. I hesitated a moment, but trying to break free of my captors had failed me lately. I followed her rustling cloak.
We made our way down the vast black corridors of the castle, up several flights of cavernous stairs until we came to a large room. She walked so gracefully, and with her robe covering her entire body, it was difficult to tell whether she even walked or merely glided along the corridors. She waved for me to enter the vast chamber. As I stepped inside, I saw many large glass tubes. These were larger than barrels, large enough to fit bodies in them. They held many bodies, each floating in a yellow liquid. They were all manner of shape and size. Men, women, Orc, Goblin, reptilian, pixie, stranger things still.
“These… are all corpses? Is that what you think will put my mind at ease?”
“Corpse is not the right word. There is life in them, of a kind.”
We walked along a long row of these tubes until Tiloshar came to a stop. She pointed at a glowing yellow tube. I looked to see what it contained. “One Eye!” My hand pressed against the cold glass. His naked body was floating there in the urine colored liquid. “Does he live?”
She walked closer so that the yellow glow of the tube reflected on her and turned her ivory skin to gold. “Karlstaff.” Her voice was soothing. “Karlstaff, wake up.”
He stirred, causing the liquid around him to stir and bubble. His remaining pupil was a strange black and covered the whole of his eye. Where his metal device in his missing eye had been, was now only a black empty pit.
“You see, he lives.”
“Release him, then!”
“He is not yet the same One Eye you knew. What remains of his mind is what is needed to carry out service to a master, nothing more.”
“That master is you.”
“Yes, but it will not have to be forever. He can be restored to the man he was. Come, I will show you something.” We walked out of this room of yellow flasks and into another. This one had a thick vault door which she opened by pressing some arcane runes inscribed upon the door. It opened with a hiss of released air pressure. We stepped into the dark room and at a wave of her hand, crystals along the wall turned the room bright. There were many metal shelves in the room, each holding row upon row of gems in their velvet display boxes. We walked along them, gazing at their scintillating surfaces. They were like the gems that Zyman had encrusted in his helm as well as the gauntlet he had presented to Eschellion. Yet these were all violet in color, unlike those Zyman possessed. Still, their brilliant glow, their precise cut structures were unmistakable.
“Idochron.”
“Yes, they are. Idochron gems each containing a mind full of memories.” Saying this, her hand grazed my cheek and turned me to face her. She was taller than any woman I had ever met, and so stood eye to eye with me in her high heeled boots. “Let me explain. Each box must either contain a gem and have no name inscribed on the box, meaning it is a raw gem with no mind in it; or it must contain no gem and a name inscribed on the box, meaning the gem has had a mind stored in it but has been given away to the Imperials; or it must contain both a gem and a name on the box, meaning I stored a mind in the gem and kept it.”
“I hardly know what you say.” What I wouldn’t have given for her to merely send me off to battle something rather than listen to more lore. “Talk plainly.”
“I will get to the point: look at this box.” She handed me the elaborate container.
“It is empty.”
“And?”
“It has no name inscribed on it.”
“Exactly. Which means a gem was stolen from me.”
“You have hundreds of these gems. Is one truly so valuable?”
“Don’t you see, Rothan? For all that I possess, I am missing something, something that not all my powers can replace. There is a void in me, an entire life taken from me.”
Finally, the wheels of my mind were churning. “You can’t mean… it was your mind in that gem?”
“That’s right, Rothan. That gem contained all my memories.” She took the empty box from me and held it up. “This is what I am now. Emptiness.”
My eyes rounded. “How can that be? How could you have lost your memories?”
“I do not know. That memory is lost along with the others.”
This had become all the more complicated. “How can you be… yourself then? How would you know… anything? Who you are? How to do any of the things you do? How to use your powers?”
“I do not know that I am myself. It is how I must live, always questioning if what I do is what the woman I used to be would do. Every time I have tried venturing beyond this isle for answers, I have been stopped by some powerful magic that cannot be broken, for I feel that the eternal darkness surrounding Black Tear is both a haven and a prison for me. As for my abilities, it is as if they are held in a different part of me than my memoires. I simply know how to use my various arcane powers, yet I do not know how I learned them or who taught them to me. I remember the past thirty years entirely. It is before that that my memories are utterly void.”
“Then in exchange for One Eye and my freedom… you want me to get your gem back for you, don’t you?”
“Yes, more than anything. I want to know who I truly am. So you must travel where the thief fled to and take it from the coward by whatever means necessary.”
“So for my freedom I must only find an unknown thief with no sense of where to find him! This is madness!”
“The thief is a woman. And I know where you will find her.”
“But how can you know this?”
“I will show you.”
8
We walked through onyx halls until we stood in a long, narrow black room. Its ceiling was arched as a cathedral’s. On the far end of it was some kind of metal sculpture. It was a large, reflective metal ring, large enough that five abreast could step through it. All along its metal surface were runes of a tongue I did not recognize.
“What is it, Tiloshar?” I turned to her.
“A gate.” She walked closer to it, her long black robe trailing behind her. I followed. “The Planar Gate that will take you to my gem, and its thief. You see, the earliest memory I have is a brown-haired woman stepping through that gate. It is a fraction of a moment, but I see it clearly. She seemed panicked, surely because I was trying to stop her. But the Planar Gate’s magic absorbed her, and as I am bound to this island, I could not follow. She must have stolen my memories somehow just moments earlier.”
“She must be some kind of powerful magic user to overpower a vampire like you.”
“Yes, I believe she is, for after she had escaped, I noticed I was battered, with many scorches and wounds upon my body. And this room had been nearly destroyed, some scars which are still visible.”
She glanced high up on the walls and I noticed that much of the room’s expert stonework was cracked, gouged, or riddled with craters. “Aye. It must have been a fierce battle.”
“Once she was gone and the Planar Gate closed, I was left here in this room, alone, with no explanation to who that woman was or how I lost my memories. There were no sentient beings anywhere on Black Tear, only mindless creatures I assume had been my creations at some point in time. I was truly alone. Perhaps that is why I began creating more creatures, trading with the empire for bodies and minds. Loneliness. What weakness.” She shook her head a little, a gesture which touched me somehow. “It was only years later that I realized a gem was missing from the collection, and deduced that my own memories must have been in that gem.” Her gaze seemed afar, and I began to feel what loneliness she must live in, to have no one in her life, not even herself.
“I begin to understand you, Tiloshar.”
“That is why you are the right champion for this quest. Because you will not cower, not even from a journey into Malfeon.”
“Malfeon, never heard of it. I
s it somewhere in the Jade Lands?”
“It is an entirely different world, Rothan, one of the outer planes. A place where humans are alien creatures.”
I turned to the gate, staring at its eerie steel. “You could be sending us to our deaths then. This plane, this Malfeon... could be a realm of endless fire, or an endless pit.”
“No, I have peered into it. It is no realm of fire, nor an endless pit. However, you are right that it is truly dangerous.
She led me out of the room and back down a stone corridor. I wanted to know more of the quest she would have me pursue, but curiosity about how she could carry on without memories overtook me. “Why do you do what you do then? Living here, creating mind gems, creating creatures. How can you?”
“It is all I know. My instincts, my abilities, my knowledge, this is all that is left to me. I am still a vampire, Rothan. Not only am I bound to this island, but the rest of the world is death to me, for the sun’s dominion is everywhere.” We stepped through ornate double doors into a room even more lavishly furnished. There was a large four post bed with filigree cornices, gossamer curtains hanging over it, cushioned seats, a circular table with glasses laid on it and a flask of wine.
“How can I trust that if I return your mind gem to you that you will let me and One Eye go? This castle, all these gems, they were not created in such a short time, certainly not in the thirty years you clearly remember. You are a vampire, and you must have been at these dark crafts of yours for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. For all I know, when you get your mind back you will remember how truly evil you are. And then perhaps you will have no reason to fulfill your end of the bargain. You may even do more horrible things with us than you already have.”
Wolf Blade: Chains of the Vampire Page 6