She sobbed in helpless rage as the dagger fell from her trembling fingers to clatter on the scorched stones of the arena floor. The other blade remained clenched tightly in her left hand.
“You’ll only need one knife for what you have to do,” Vriene said. A moment later, he released her from his control to let her sag forward on hands and knees, gasping for breath.
“Damn you, Vriene,” Tanys panted.
“We are all damned here, Tanys,” Vriene laughed, “You just haven’t realized it yet. Now get to your feet and make your choice.”
Tanys looked up at him, weary with fear. “Please,” she said, “put me in the ring… call your demon and let it have its way with me if you want… just let Naietta go.”
“Oh, you will all face the Traveller tonight, Tanys,” Vriene said, “your crimes demand it! The choice you have to make now is just the first of many dark entertainments I have in store for my noble guests.”
“Please,” Tanys moaned, “I’ll do anything…”
“Yes, you will,” Vriene said. Then he gestured toward Naietta again. “You, girl, show us all your pretty face.”
Naietta’s hand lifted to pull the hair back from her face, looking up with a sleepy smile as she turned to let the leering throng see her.
Tanys wept with hopeless rage.
“Look at the princess, Tanys,” Vriene said, pointing his cane toward Anavaiel who sat, trembling, with her hands over her face, “I’m sending her home alive one of these days… just think of what they’d say about her, if I sent her home with you having carved the smile off of her face?”
“Damn you, Vriene!” Tanys gasped.
“You can still save the princess, Tanys,” Vriene said, a mockery of genuine concern in his eyes, “I’ll make you a deal… if you can get the serving girl’s face off in one piece, I’ll set the princess free tonight. I give you my word.”
The dinner guests laughed again.
“Damn you, you monster!” Tanys sobbed.
“Last chance,” Vriene said, rising to his feet again and lifting his ruby-topped cane before him.
Tanys hung her head in defeat, weeping raggedly.
“Very well then,” Vriene sighed, “I’m sorry, princess… you were quite beautiful.”
“No!” Tanys gasped, “I’ll do it.”
“Ah,” Vriene said, raising his eyebrows, “Much better.” He settled back into his chair to watch as Tanys walked toward Naietta with stilted steps, switching the black dagger to her right hand.
Tanys reached out with her left hand to stroke Naietta’s long hair as the scarred girl stared back at her with an expression of incomprehension on her face.
“Oh… one more thing,” Vriene said, leaning forward and blowing a puff of air across the ruby of his cane.
The warm tingle of magic washed over Tanys’s body, and she felt Naietta’s skin grow hot beneath her touch. Tanys watched in wonder as the multitude of pale scars that laced Naietta’s face and breasts faded away and the sparkle of reason returned to the girl’s beautiful brown eyes.
Naietta blinked as if waking from a dream. She gave Tanys a confused smile.
“Tanys?” Naietta said.
Tanys gasped in disbelief, and Naietta’s hands flew to her lips in astonishment. The girl probed with her fingertips, finding her missing tongue miraculously regrown. She cried out in wordless joy, overwhelmed by Vriene’s gift.
“How?” Naietta wept, “Tanys, how?”
“I’m so sorry, Naietta,” Tanys sobbed, raising her black dagger, “I’m so sorry!”
Tanys plunged the dagger into the girl’s heart, withdrawing it quickly to turn the blade upon herself. She never made the second thrust.
Vriene’s domination drove Tanys to her knees again with the tip of her bloody dagger poised above her breast. Tanys’s arm shook with effort as she fought against the demoniac’s possession of her body, trying to drive the blade into her own heart and free herself forever of his control. She looked at Naietta who stared back at her with a look of bewildered pain on her face.
“Tanys?” Naietta gasped, falling to her knees beside her on the floor with her bright lifeblood staining her linen dress red.
“Forgive me…” Tanys hissed between clenched teeth, moaning in defeat as her fingers splayed open, letting the bloody dagger fall to the floor.
Naietta fell dead beside it.
Tanys wailed in despair, shutting her eyes against the sight of what she had done.
Silence filled the hall as Tanys gasped for breath again. Then came the sound of a pair of hands clapping slowly together.
“Oh, well done, Tanys!” Vriene laughed, “Well done!”
At his nod, the other ghasts joined in with hesitant applause and nervous laughter.
“Son of a bitch… I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you,” Tanys shuddered.
“I admire your spirit, Tanys,” Vriene said, “but you leave the job unfinished…” He breathed across the tip of his cane once more, and Naietta’s body convulsed in the pool of her blood on the floor.
Naietta cried out as the wound in her chest sealed closed again, and she sucked in a gasping breath, her eyes rolling in terror.
“Now, if you are finished trying to outwit me, Tanys,” Vriene said, “you can do what you know you have to do.”
Tanys’s body slumped to the ground as Vriene returned control of it to her. She reached out to take Naietta’s hand, and the two of them crawled together, their white clothes dyed red with Naietta’s blood. They held each other, weeping.
A ragged howl of rage erupted from nearby as Brynn leapt atop the table and charged toward Vriene.
Vriene whipped his cane in the beastmaster’s direction, and a gout of red flame shot from the ruby tip, sending the stunned beastmaster flying backward with his shirt singed from his body.
Vriene laughed with delight, but then started in surprise at the princess Anavaiel lunged at him with a silver fork clutched tightly in her dainty hand. He gave her a mocking chortle as he casually backhanded her into insensibility.
“Anyone else care to have a go at me?” Vriene chuckled, sneering at Tanys who had snatched her blade up again in the confusion and now writhed in the bondage of his possessing will.
Vriene threw back his head and laughed again. “Oh, this is far better than I had hoped! This is far better than… Fuck!”
The demoniac doubled over in obvious pain and reached up to claw at the back of his collar with a bewildered expression on his face. He screamed hoarsely as his back arched in a convulsion.
Vecca’s bitter laughter filled the room as the bruised ghast woman rose to her feet, facing the paralyzed demoniac.
“Feed, my children!” she shouted, “Feed on his fucking flesh!”
Vriene’s eyes went wide with horror as red ants swarmed up from beneath the table to cover his body.
"Vecca, you bi..." Vriene cried, his words turning to a muffled scream as ants clawed their way into his open mouth.
Tanys vaulted atop the table that stood between her and Vriene, the blade in her hand whistling toward his ant-covered face.
An explosion of orange flame threw her backwards into the ring again. She looked up through the haze rising from her singed hair to watch Vriene writhing as flames engulfed his body.
“No!” Vecca cried, lunging toward the burning man, reaching as though she meant to choke the life from him with her bare hands.
Vriene raised his flaming cane and Vecca pitched over backwards suddenly with jets of cherry red fire pouring from her eyes and mouth. Her body skidded across the tabletop, spasming in her death throes.
Vriene screamed in wordless agony as the fire burned the last of the ants from his body. The flames died away then to reveal raw pink flesh reforming beneath the crackled black crust that had been his skin and clothes. His eyes grew back just in time to blink in astonishment at the sight of Tanys’s dagger hurtling toward his forehead.
Vriene moved with inhuman speed, bringing the rub
y-headed cane up defensively to stop the dagger from plunging into his brain. The hall rang with a sharp retort as Tanys’s spell-worked blade struck the jewel point first. Shards of black steel and red gemstone flew in every direction, leaving Vriene, all pink muscle and glistening fat, holding the sundered ruin of his magic cane.
“No…” Vriene whispered, staring at the ruined cane with a sick look on his newly reformed face.
A steaming death-rattle poured from the lipless jaws of Vecca’s incinerated face as her slender body surrendered her spirit at last.
A dry hiss sounded throughout the room, and then people began to scream as Vecca’s ants boiled up from beneath the tables to attack the party guests.
A smell like rotten milk wafted across the floor of the pit, and Tanys looked back to see a smoky outline forming near the doorway.
“No… no…” Vriene murmured, his eyes locked on the demon that was even now taking shape inside the smoke.
“Naietta, we have to get out of here!” Tanys gasped, grabbing the girl by the wrist.
Naietta offered no resistance as Tanys hauled her to her feet. Tanys pulled her toward the back of the room and then hesitated, turning back as she realized that her one remaining dagger still lay where she had dropped it upon entering the room.
Tanys released Naietta’s arm and ran back toward the entrance. She stooped quickly and snatched up the fallen dagger even as a glassy-hooked arm raked out at her from the stinking cloud of the Traveler’s half-formed body. Shards of glass scattered across the floor as the hook split the tiles at Tanys’s feet.
She leapt back, clear of the demon’s reach. Then her eyes fell on the senseless body of Brynn who lay at the foot of the nearby table.
She ducked beneath a glassy scythe that cut the air above her head, reaching Brynn a second later.
“Get up!” she yelled, seizing the injured beastmaster by the hair and shaking him.
Brynn moaned in pain, his eyes fluttering open. His gaze focused on her in confusion for a moment, and then his eyes went wide as he saw what was behind her.
“Fuck!” he screamed hoarsely, scrambling backward on the floor away from the demon.
Tanys pulled him even further away as she turned to look back herself.
A ghast woman, her body covered in ants, staggered in agonized delirium away from the table, only to be cut in half by a swing of the demon’s glass shard arm. The demon let out a hissing laugh as it advanced slowly across the floor toward the nude demoniac who was no longer its master.
Vriene seemed to shake himself from a trance of fear, and a small smile curled his thin lips. He reached down and picked up his wine cup to take one last sip. He brought it to his lips and then looked down to find it empty. He broke into a fit of laughter, shaking his head as he cast the cup aside. He lifted his head and gave the demon a crazed smile as it advanced upon him.
“I promised you something special, didn’t I, Traveller?” Vriene laughed.
Sooty drool poured from the glassy beak of the glass demon as it took another step toward Vriene, savoring the moment of its revenge.
Tanys’s eyes went to the unconscious form of Princess Anavaiel who lay, unmoving, with her golden hair spilled across the tabletop between Vriene and the demon. Naietta had already run to the far side of the room and watched in blank-faced horror as the demon passed her by.
“Can you get those doors open?” Tanys asked Brynn, nodding toward the black doors at the front of the chamber.
The beastmaster grunted in pain as he pulled his hand away from the raw patch of scorched flesh on his chest. “No,” he gasped, “…the back way, behind the curtain.”
Tanys looked up to see where several of the party guests were making good their escape via the exit Brynn had mentioned.
“Go,” she said, dragging him to his feet and shoving him toward the curtains.
“What the fuck?” Brynn gagged as a faceless ghast lurched toward him with his bony hands, dripping ants, stretched out imploringly.
“Oh, yeah, Vecca’s dead now,” Tanys said, “Watch out for ants.”
“Oh, shit,” Brynn coughed, kicking the devoured man out of his way.
“Meet you outside!” Tanys cried, already running for the far wall.
Naietta flinched away, when she saw Tanys coming toward her. The look of fear in the girl’s eyes broke Tanys’s heart.
“I’m sorry, Naietta,” Tanys said, “I was trying to save you.”
Naietta blinked and then nodded, letting Tanys take her by the arm again.
Tanys pulled her away from the wall and wheeled her around, away from the smoking demon, and pushed her toward the other side of the room. “There’s a way out through the back,” Tanys said, “I’ll be right behind you.”
Naietta fled toward the exit, sobbing with fear as she dodged the grasping arm of a man who lay dying on the floor, his legs already stripped to the bone by Vecca’s ants.
Tanys had to leap atop the table to avoid a pool of ants that spilled across the floor below. She danced lightly across the tabletop, crushing a wriggling insect beneath her bare heel as she tried her best to avoid the ones that were crawling toward the meat-laden plates abandoned by the guests.
She felt a chill go through her as she saw an ant trying to feel its way through the princess's golden tresses as she even now struggled to regain consciousness. The demon, now within arm’s reach of the princess had not yet taken notice of her, so fixated was it upon Vriene who stood, calmly accepting whatever fate awaited him.
The demon turned its beaked head sharply to face Tanys as she sprang forward to seize Anavaiel by the shoulders.
“Don’t mind me,” Tanys said. She groaned with effort as she dragged the princess clear, just as the demon’s claw split the table where she had been a moment before.
The demon hissed, spitefully, but made no move to pursue as Tanys hefted the princess over her shoulder and hastily retreated.
Tanys glanced back once to see Vriene, his clothes burned away, offer his body up to the rage of his former slave. He shuddered in mute supplication as splinters of glass slowly sank into his naked flesh, and tears of blood ran from his gently closed eyes.
Tanys spared him no further thought as the living carpet of ants closed quickly upon her. She rolled across the tabletop, dragging the princess with her. She knocked platters and cups and wriggling ants from the table as she rolled off onto the smoky patch of floor just behind the glass demon. She gasped in pain, finding one of the creatures clinging to her upper arm by its jaws, pinching her savagely through the tough silk of her bloodstained bodysuit. She flicked its body away with the tip of her blade, though its severed head still gnawed her flesh between its jaws.
Ignoring the pain, she hauled the princess with her toward the last patch of the floor not covered with devouring insects.
“Tanys?” Anavaiel sighed, regaining her senses at last.
“We have to go,” Tanys said, cursing as an ant sank its mandibles into the side of her right foot. She staggered toward the black doors, kicking brutally at the wall until the ant was little more than a wet jumble of legs and blood.
Vriene screamed then at last, a wordless howl of unending torment, as the demon began to implode, sucking the doomed demoniac with it, back into whatever hell awaited the man to whom Tanys had mistakenly sworn her allegiance.
As she watched him being torn apart before her eyes, Tanys silently vowed that she would never again call any man master, not even to save her own life.
The demon disappeared with its prize, blasting the room with a tremendous shockwave of stinking air that threw Tanys and the princess against the wall.
Stunned, Tanys shook her head to see that the demon’s parting blast had swept the floor momentarily clean of Vecca’s ants.
Now!” she cried, pulling Anavaiel with her as she ran toward the fluttering curtains at the back of the room.
She found Brynn, unconscious again, lying on the floor in a small antechamber beyond the cu
rtain. Naietta knelt beside him, and Vael with her. A trio of Vriene’s faceless serving girls cowered in the corner of the room, still holding trays of drinks, their sheer dresses stained with the wine spilled by their fearful trembling.
“What happened to him?” Tanys demanded, pointing at Brynn with her dagger.
“He’s hurt,” Vael answered.
“I know that,” Tanys said, “Get him up. We’re getting off this island!” She gave the faceless serving girls a look of pity and then added, “All of us.”
Vale nodded, stooping to lift the unconscious beastmaster and struggling with the man’s weight. Naietta moved quickly to help him, and, together, they were able to lift Brynn’s body between them with his arms across their shoulders. They followed Tanys and the princess toward the door at the far end of the room.
“Come on!” Tanys shouted to the serving girls, but they made no move to follow.
“Come with us!” Vael cried, “The Master is dead! We are free now!”
One of the faceless girls shook her head, and the three of them retreated toward the curtains leading back into Vriene’s theater of death.
“No!” Tanys cried, “Not that way!”
The three girls turned and fled away into the main chamber, and Tanys groaned in frustration.
“Let’s go,” Tanys said, leading the others away, even as the screams of the serving girls echoed from the chamber full of swarming ants.
They emerged into a hall that rang with distant cries of terror.
“I guess Vecca’s pets are running loose everywhere now,” Tanys sighed.
“Where do we go?” Vael gasped, his only eye wild with desperation.
“We have to make it to the sea beast,” Tanys said, “Brynn can control the thing and get us off the island.
“Where is… Jorva?” Naietta rasped, evidently still getting used to having her tongue again. She looked almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Jorva’s safe,” Tanys said, grateful for the look of relief that washed over Naietta’s pain-haunted face, “I’m going to get him next.”
“I’m going too,” Naietta said.
Tanys nodded.
“What do I do with him?” Vael asked, sagging under Brynn’s weight as Naietta released her hold on the man.
The Isle of Torment Page 17