by Conner, Jack
Davril breathed out. “Come.” Ignoring the trembling in his fingers, he left the room, his guards escorting him at a reasonable distance, and Jeselri fell into step beside him. “It’ll be good to breathe the fresh air again,” Davril said. “Not to be locked up here in the tunnels.”
“I prefer the tunnels, actually,” Jeselri said. “My people have developed an intolerance for wind.”
“Then dividing up the city won’t be difficult when this is all done,” Davril smiled. “I’ll take the above-ground and you the underground.” He imagined himself in his Palace one day in the future, reading a book in the study when all of a sudden scuttling noises start issuing from below. “Or perhaps not.”
They continued through the winding halls, the ruins of ancient Sagrahab, and Davril noticed groups of people gathered together in the larger chambers, or in the wider halls, each bowing to a different altar. Sedremere was a city of a thousand gods, and each one seemed to have found its faithful amongst the rebels. Davril saw dead chickens on some of the altars, a dead goat on another, a sprinkle of flowers here, and a virgin being deflowered there.
They reached the area that had been reserved for the Order of the Serpent, and Jeselri accompanied him inside his magnificent suite. Jeselri himself occupied quite an extravagant suite himself some distance away.
Alyssa waited in the baths.
The bathing chamber was Alyssa’s favorite place in the High Priest’s suite, and Davril didn’t blame her. Massive, perhaps a hundred yards in diameter, it possessed a high, domed ceiling notched with sun-shafts. Sunlight, undiminished from having bounced down a system of mirrors, flooded into the chamber, sparking on still more mirrors, bathing the room in warm, splendid light, turning the chamber into glowing gold. And it was golden. Every pillar, every wall, shimmered with gold-leaf or was in fact cast from solid gold.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the gold that drew the eye, but the water. The majority of the room was sunken, so that there was only one wide, leisurely door-level walkway around the circumference of the room; beyond this border the floor dropped away into a series of pools and oases. Jets of water gushed from golden serpents’ heads and filled a small, steaming pool to the brim; the water cascaded down to more pools carved in the shapes of bowled leaves, and the water in these pools overflowed to run down a golden bas-relief of beautiful, naked, writhing women, the water shimmering on their jutting golden breasts and flowing golden hair, their eyes made of sparkling diamonds and their nipples gems. The water cascaded down those shimmering walls, flowed over those steaming pools, until finally it trickled down to the lowest pool, the central pool, where only the High Priest and his favored playthings would have been allowed, and there, her white skin glowing pink with the heat, and steam wafting across to conceal her, then reveal her, was Alyssa, naked and humming to herself, bathing.
Davril smiled. It was beginning to feel natural, him returning to her. Sareth was gone. Hariban was gone. There was no getting them back. But maybe, just maybe, Davril and Alyssa would get a second chance.
Clearing his throat, Jeselri said, “Perhaps I should leave you . . .”
“I won’t stop you.”
“We will meet later to discuss the attack in detail.”
“I’ll find you,” Davril promised.
Jeselri swept from the room, his guards following like trained shadows.
Davril dismissed his own guards. Alyssa’s stood on the walkway, their backs to the pools, giving their mistress privacy.
Davril shrugged off his robe, tunic, and unstrapped his sandals. Then, all but naked, he carefully descended via a golden stairway into the pools. Here all was the pounding and surging of water, steam and spray obscuring his vision, the warm droplets berating his skin.
Climbing down the narrow staircase, he moved slowly with his bad leg. A sharp pain coursed up him every time he struck it wrong, but he’d grown used to it over the years. The tricky part was not slipping on the slick stairs. The sunlight glaring off the gold and making the mist shine like glowing clouds disoriented him.
Dreamlike, he limped down those stairs, tearing away his loincloth as he went. With the steam caressing his skin, his pores opened, sweat beading from them. Heat flushed his face. From time to time he caught glimpses of Alyssa, humming and lathering herself below. He saw foam on her long, golden hair, a foamy strand curling around a jutting, round, pink-nippled breast. Her blue-green eyes flashed, her lips smiled. A cloud of foam glided down her slim belly, as though out of modesty, but then a passing jet of water dissolved it. Errant beads of foam still glistened on her blond mound.
Davril’s manhood led the way before him.
The lowest pool was of course situated in the mouth of a giant golden serpent, and the floor there was reddish marble, making the water, once Davril got close enough, look like blood, and the mist that roiled there pink and frothy.
He could hear her humming through the mist. She appeared not to have seen him. He smiled, ignoring a twinge of pain from his leg. At last he descended into that lowest pool, feeling the warm water on his legs, and breathed out.
At the sound, Alyssa turned, her eyes widening. “Davril!”
He laughed. “I didn’t really catch you by surprise, did I?” He waded forward, his member still leading. Pink froth beaded in the red-blond hair at its base.
She smiled. “Not quite . . .” Her gaze lowered. “What is that?”
“A present for the empress of Qazradan.”
He stepped closer, into the deeper water, and his member looked to be swimming in warm blood. Alyssa came toward him. She had been on the opposite side, in the shallower water, and now the churning, blood-covered fluid came to right below her breasts. He reached her, and his member pressed up against her stomach, angling upward. The contact felt so good he had to restrain himself.
She smiled wider and wiggled against him. She threw her lithe arms about him and embraced him, pressing his member more firmly into her belly.
“I can feel your heartbeat . . . down there,” she said.
“Alyssa . . .”
“Yes?”
He bent his head and kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm, and her tongue darted playfully into his mouth.
He grabbed her hips and hoisted her off her feet. She cried gleefully. Her legs opened, then encircled his waist. He found her moist, hot crevice and impaled her. Her tight flesh enfolded him, gripped him. He moaned. So did she. He pushed deeper. She squealed in his ear.
He pumped into her, slowly at first, then harder, harder. Faster. She gripped his shoulders and pressed her breasts against his chest. Her nipples were hard. Her lips pressed against his ear, and he heard her soft cries, felt her hot breath against him. She bit at his earlobe.
At last he could stand no more. He erupted inside her, and she trembled and shook against him, digging her fingers into his back so deeply blood wept from his flesh.
Gasping, with his member still inside her, he walked over to the side of the pool and leaned against the interior of the serpent’s mouth for support.
“Alyssa . . .”
She breathed in his ear, “No.”
He drew back. “What?”
She smiled. “I’m not Alyssa.”
He felt a vague trace of alarm, but he was so relaxed, so spent, that it was just an echo of what it might have been. She must be playing a game. Very well. She could be whomever she desired.
“Who are you, then?” he asked tiredly.
“Their leader.” Her gaze flicked over his shoulder.
Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. There were Alyssa’s guards, just dark shapes against the blood-red mist. Masked by the gurgle of water and Davril and Alyssa’s lovemaking, they had descended to the lowest pool—and were entering it.
Coming toward Davril.
No longer human, their gray-blue skin was misted with red foam, and their empty, dead black eyes stared from cold, fish-like faces.
Davril’s blood flowed cold, and his member’s
wilting accelerated. He tried to jerk away from Alyssa, or whoever she was, but she constricted about him, squeezing him, almost making him hard again. Even then her vaginal muscles kept him inside her.
“No,” he choked.
He turned back to look at her, even as he shoved and wrestled against her, trying to free himself. He didn’t want to look, but he had to know whom he was inside of.
Black eyes stared at him from a horrid, nightmarish face with wide, hard, perch-like lips, gulls fluttering at the neck, a crest rising from her slick grayish head . . .
“No,” he heard himself say, even as the Lerumites closed on him from behind.
“Yes,” she said, but now her voice was not Alyssa’s; it was a horrid, watery gurgle. And he was still inside her!
Violently, he tried to jerk away.
Water stirred nearby. He spun in time to see one of the Lerumites lift its arm, holding a spear, and bring it down on his head. Darkness claimed him.
She came to him, smiling. Lights danced to either side of her.
“My love,” she said.
“Yes . . .” His head swam, and she was little more than a blur. A beautiful, blond-haired blur. As she drew closer, she solidified, and he felt a wave of comfort at seeing her beautiful face. Alyssa. Her blue-green eyes flashed demurely. He blinked at her. Something warm and liquid rolled down his scalp and over his cheek. Sweat, probably. They had made love recently, hadn’t they? Everything was fuzzy, and he couldn’t quite remember . . .
She smiled and approached him. He could smell her, all jasmine and honeysuckle. She ran her fingers over his bare chest.
“Oh, Davril, you’re so handsome.”
Her fingers were light and soft. The lights in the room glinted off the pins in her golden hair, making her shimmer. “Beautiful,” he gasped. The world swam, but Alyssa was firm, solid. She was the only solid thing in the world. “My love . . .”
She smiled, and her teeth shone whitely. She was nearly naked. She wore only a thin, silken shift, white with gold embroidery. She pressed herself to him and laid her soft head against his chest. He tried to encircle her with his arms, but for some reason his arms were encumbered. And his legs. No matter. He just enjoyed having her near.
Was he taller than normal? He seemed to be floating off the ground.
“Oh, Davril, we need you,” she said.
“Anything,” he swore. His emotion made his voice thick.
“We need access to the room with the Jewel in it.” She tilted her face to look up at him, and her blue-green eyes were moist with tears. He so longed to hold her. Why couldn’t he move his arms? “We need the key to the room.” She gave him a knowing, cajoling, intimate smile. “Won’t you tell me where it is?”
He stared down at her, frowning. Slowly, very slowly, he shook his head. “Alyssa . . .”
“Please. Oh, Davril, we need it badly. I searched your rooms but couldn’t find it.”
The world began to take shape around her. He saw that he was in a high dark room, circular and much higher than it was wide, lit only by two raging braziers some distance apart. A man-size hole gaped in the center of the bowed floor. He tried to make sense of it.
Seeing his distraction, she kissed his chest. “Look at me, Davril. See how much I need you? I do, Davril. I do, my love. Just tell me where the key is. I know you have it. I know you hid it.”
He stared down at her, confused. Slowly, bits of memory began coming back to him.
“You . . . you’re not Alyssa . . .” He bunched his shoulders, tried to struggle free of whatever bond held him. Chains rattled. “Where’s Alyssa? What have you done with her?”
She drew back. “You’re stronger than most. We’re going to have to do this the hard way. Well, I’m prepared for that. It’s why I brought you here.”
He tugged his arms, then looked up, though doing so pained his neck. His wrists were in manacles, and he hung by chains from a protrusion above. Many protrusions jutted from the walls of the high chamber, row upon row of them. Most were shaped liked thorns, or fangs, countless rows receding up until the faint red light gave out. And the hole in the center of the floor . . . the gullet . . .
He was in the High Priest’s private sanctum, the room Davril had sealed off when he’d taken over the priest’s residence, and for good reason. Many had died here over the centuries, and it remained a dark and terrible place. The entire floor was shaped like the Serpent’s mouth, curved to imitate the mouth’s curvatures, complete with a gullet at the center and giant fangs sticking from the walls to either side of the door.
The closed door. Two tall figures stood to either side of it: Alyssa’s guards, or the fish-priests that had replaced them. Two more would stand on the outside. As for his own guards, he supposed they had been slain. At least Jeselri escaped.
He grimaced and focused on the one who had taken Alyssa’s face and form. “Where is she?” he demanded again.
“I will ask the questions,” she said. “None will hear your screams. None heard theirs.” She gestured to the endless rows of thick fangs receding above them. “Can you feel the ghosts clinging here? I can.”
He blinked at her. “What did happen here?” He had never understood the reasons for the protrusions.
“The High Priest impaled his victims on those sharpened spikes. Hundreds of them at a time would be arrayed, screaming, on those thorns above, and their bloods would drip on him as he prayed. Can you imagine the cacophony of all of them screaming at once, glistening on the walls like overripe fruit? And the smell. And yes, there was a smell. You see those spikes with the upturned ends? That was to prevent the guts from slipping off. You see, sometimes the High Priest did not impale his sacrifices but would make a small incision in their abdomen, unspool their entrails, and hang the victims by their intestines from those barbs overhead. There they would writhe and dangle by their own guts until the guts ripped and the bodies fell, and the reek of torn intestines filled the air, along with the stench of blood old and new. The High Priest wouldn’t mind. He would go on praying, occasionally shoving one of the bodies down the gullet when it got too ripe.” She smiled. “He slew many thousands here, slowly and painfully—as did his predecessor, and his predecessor before him. So, you see, this is the perfect room for what I am about to do.”
She held up a small, fine blade that glimmered in the vague light. “You will tell me where the key is.”
He stared at the blade. When he spoke, he tried to keep his voice from quivering. “Never.” He did not succeed.
Her grin widened. There was nothing of Alyssa in it now. “We shall see.”
The blade slashed down. Pain filled his side. He screamed, twisting away. He could not go far. He tried to kick at her, but his ankles were tied together and his legs were bound by chains to the floor. The Alyssa-thing just smiled at him. A few flecks of his blood had spattered her cheek, and her little pink tongue darted out and licked it up.
She slashed him again. Red swam in his vision, and the world receded. All that existed was the pain. She slashed again and again, and he was not even aware of his screaming until he felt the rawness in his throat.
At last, covered in dripping red droplets, the Alyssa-thing stepped back, panting. With an exhilarated smile, she said, “Now will you tell me where the key is?”
“Show me your true form,” he choked. “I can’t abide you looking like that. Show me your scales, fish.”
Suddenly her skin changed color, and she seemed to grow several inches. Dark color ran through her hair until it was auburn, and her nose grew longer, her lips wider. She’d become a beautiful, stately woman, not a Lerumite.
“I don’t . . .” Blood dripped down his scalp and stung his eyes. More blood dripped down his chest to tangle in his pubic hair, or run down his legs and drip off his toes. The world had gone foggy again. For a moment he thought he might be dreaming.
“I only took the form of a Lerumite earlier to needle you,” she said. “I am known by many names. You migh
t have heard me called Hiera.”
“Hiera . . .” It clicked. “The Lady of Asragot!”
“That is one of my names.”
I slept with a goddess. “It was you that began this whole affair. Your awakening . . .”
“When my flock had grown large enough, before your hounds could prune their numbers, I awoke and led them down into the sea, to sunken Nagradin, to the altar in His great palace. There their blood roused my Lord, the Great Uulos, who was then able to move the earth. Fires blossomed on the bottom of the sea, and continents shifted, and mountains rose from the deep, the mountains of Nagradin, which was once my home. I was one of those that fled with the Great One when His Circle betrayed Him.” Her eyes narrowed. “I can smell their taint on you now, Husan, and you should know that I’ll go harder on you for that.”
“You raised Nagradin . . .” He shook his head. “Don’t you realize Uulos is an enemy to us all?”
She smiled indulgently. “I’m not human. I merely took this form to ingratiate myself with the Asragotians before I put myself to slumber. They thought me a messiah, and so I was, of a sort. I will be unable to retake my true form until Master has devoured the Jewel. Then there will be nothing left to oppose Him.” Again she licked at a speck of Davril’s blood that had flecked her cheek. She stepped forward, and the blood on her blade dripped down her white fingers to spatter the floor. “Thus this form, at least for now. It’s time. Speak! Or suffer.”
He spat on her face.
She wiped the spittle from her cheek—and slashed.
For a while, his world became pain, and more pain. Fire raged through him, became him, and needles riddled his throat from screaming. He was conscious only of agony and the jade fire in Hiera’s eyes. She used not only her blade, but whips and pliers and white-hot pokers laid over the braziers. He was only vaguely aware of the pokers sizzling against his skin, though he did later remember the stench of his own flesh burning. And he remembered her laughter, her horrid laughter, shaking the walls.
At last, covered in blood and sweat, she stepped back, smiling in satisfaction. She called one of the guards over and whispered in his ear. The guard approached Davril, who was so delirious he didn’t know if he was awake or dreaming. But he felt the guard bite him plainly enough, though he was too exhausted to scream. The Lerumite took his blood, more than Davril thought he had left, then stepped back.