by D. P. Prior
Movement.
A silhouette standing from a chair in the red glow of one of the walls.
Then another, and another. Some she could only see out of the corners of her eyes, as she could no longer turn her head. The snout-masked dead, who’d spent an eternity in front of their mirrors, were rising and turning toward her, advancing with shuffling gaits, hands outstretched, reaching, groping.
One drew ahead of the pack, the oval eyes of its mask burning like embers. Poisonous fumes plumed from its snout. Tey willed herself to wriggle, to struggle, to fight her way free of the chair, but still she could not move. The creeping cold petrified her neck, seeped into her cheeks.
A masked face appeared right next to her. In the background, more silhouetted shapes pressing in. The snout of the mask brushed her face. The smell of dust and damp. It sniffed at her, like a hog snuffling for truffles, then with skeletal fingers, the creature raised its mask. A wave of rot washed over Tey as a dark maw opened. The stubs of broken teeth. A tongue thick with fur. Mouth crawling with insects. It pressed down over hers, and all went black.
***
Musk.
Musk and honeysuckle.
Tey knew that scent.
She opened her eyes to find Hirsiga looking down at her, mouth parted, white teeth glistening. The chair was reclined, as it had been when she’d fallen asleep. She was on her back, Hirsiga astride her. Naked. Her breasts were full and firm. Milky, as if they had never seen the sun.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Hirsiga whispered, nuzzling her cheek against Tey’s.
Tey gulped in air. Ran her tongue around dry lips, relieved it obeyed her. “What are you doing? Where are your clothes?”
Hirsiga dipped her head, smothered Tey’s neck with bites and kisses. Her scent was overpowering, cloying, but Tey was too drowsy to object. This time, it was the effect of the potion, she was sure of it. It left her warm and heavy and indifferent. She stared numbly up at the darkened ceiling as urgent fingers opened the front of her dress, slipped inside to stroke her breasts. Lips replaced them. Hirsiga’s tongue.
The fingers began a renewed assault, this time from the hem of the dress, traveling up Tey’s inner thigh, studiously avoiding her injured leg. The instant they touched her secret place, some inner fire blasted away her lethargy. No one had touched her there before. It made her think of what she had done to Snaith, but by comparison this was a gentle touch, skillful, almost tender; the touch of someone wanting to give rather than take.
But it was still a violation.
She rolled out from beneath Hirsiga, reversing their position, and let the Witch Woman assume control. Hirsiga gasped as Tey did to her what she had dared to do, gently at first, then with more force, greater urgency. She touched between Hirsiga’s legs, grinning at the moans she elicited. Heat blossomed there. Energy tangibly bled from Hirsiga, traveled along the lines of Tey’s scars, making them burn.
In her mind’s eye, Tey saw Hirsiga’s passion gushing into her well. Hirsiga’s hips began to buck, almost dislodging them both from the recumbent chair.
[Take her,] the Shedim said, inner voice tight with disgust. [Consume her essence.]
Tey sucked at Hirsiga’s throat. The bucking intensified, along with barely suppressed groans of pleasure. Tey’s teeth broke the skin. She tasted blood. Any deeper, and she’d have hit the jugular.
[Ready…] the Shedim said, and now there was eagerness in its tone. Hunger.
Hirsiga ground herself against Tey’s hand, gasping and shuddering. Spasms racked her frame. She shrieked.
[Now!]
Tey bit down hard, worrying at the flesh like a dog with a bone. Hirsiga’s shriek turned into a gargled scream. And Tey ripped her throat open. Hot blood filled her mouth, gushed over her face, the front of her dress. Incandescent heat flooded her well to bursting, leaving Hirsiga hollowed out and empty. Silent. Drained. Cold as the grave.
Tey could feel the Shedim squirming through her marrow. And she could sense her well, stretched beyond its limits, bubbling over with stolen energy. Its overflow pricked her skin with delightful jolts of pain.
The potion, the Shedim, the throbbing tide of power, all combined to make Tey rear up on her knees above the desiccated corpse of Hirsiga. She threw back her head and cried out. No words. No thoughts. Just an abrasive rush. A scouring surge. A cleansing howl.
And when it ceased, Tey knew she was already ravenous for more. Knew that was what the Shedim wanted. That it had her now. That she was halfway to being lost.
Her hands curled into claws, poised to rake her own skin, to gouge and gouge till she ripped the creature from her. But before she could start, a violet light winked on further back in the chamber, swiftly followed by another. A dog barked—Gulgath. Footsteps crossed the floor. She could tell it was Vrom before she saw him.
Shaking, she gasped in air then began to sob. What had she done? Hirsiga! Hirsiga was no more than a frigid carcass beneath her. Once more the feeling of satiety gave way to a choking constriction, leaving her bereft, alone.
“You!” she said, meaning it for the Shedim. “You made me do it!” And this time, she ripped at the skin of her breasts.
“Tey!” Vrom cried. He grabbed hold of her wrists, held her tight. “Tey, stop…” His voice trailed off as he saw the dead woman she was mounted upon. He took in the gore staining Tey’s mouth, the front of her dress.
“Vrom?” It was the Grave Girl speaking, choked up and trembling. “Do you love me? Do you love me, Vrom?”
[Him next,] the Shedim insisted. [Push yourself while you can. There is no limit to your well’s expansion. No limit!]
With scarcely a thought, Tey flooded her scars with the virulence of her well. On her wrist, Slyndon Grun’s vambrace burst with heat. Vrom screamed and let go. With the voice of the Witch Woman, Tey commanded the Shedim:
“Be silent!”
She expected a retort. Derision. Some kind of backlash. But there was nothing. Was the creature playing games with her? Or had it really fallen victim to the power of command? If so, how much control did the vambrace give her over it? What could she make it do? And could she force it to leave her?
“It’s blistered,” Vrom said, holding up his palm.
Behind him, Pheklus the Clincherman loomed out of the near-dark, the twin pools of violet light casting his sunken face into eerie shadow.
Beneath her dress, Tey’s maimed leg felt different. She rubbed at it through the fabric, felt its hard rigidity. Dread clenched her heart. She had to see. Had to know.
Gingerly, she climbed off of Hirsiga’s corpse and slid down to the floor, sat so she could inspect her leg.
Gulgath was on her in an instant, licking the blood from her face, panting and wagging his stumpy tail.
“Get it off me!” Tey snapped.
“Gulgath!” Pheklus said, and the dog went to his side, still slobbering and lapping crimson from his lips.
Tey’s heart was in her throat as she lifted the hem of her dress. Even in the low light, she could see the scales had returned. She ran a finger over them, traced their ridges. Her foot was black and swollen, a clubfoot with even darker claws. She glanced at Vrom, who was staring, wide-eyed. So, it was real this time. She wasn’t the only one who could see it. What was happening to her? Was it the Shedim? Was it causing her to change?
Pheklus stepped in for a closer look, and this time Gulgath seemed reluctant to approach. It might have been because of his master’s command, but Tey couldn’t help feeling the dog was disgusted by what she’d revealed.
“A knife!” Tey demanded. “Cut it off.”
Pheklus threw up a staying hand. “You know what it is?”
Tey squeezed her eyes shut. Tears leaked from their corners. How could she explain it? How much should she say? Nothing, the Witch Woman determined for her. These fools can’t help you. Deal with it.
“It looks necrotic,” Pheklus said, crouching down and reaching out with a finger. “May I?”
When Tey
didn’t object, he touched her leg, then recoiled. “Scales? What is this? Did Slyndon do this to you?”
Tey held his gaze. Pressure swelled within her. Pressure to say something, do something. Anything. The Grave Girl wanted to cry, beg for help, but she wasn’t to be trusted with things like this. Fear bred fear, turned you into a victim. Only the Witch Woman could be counted upon to know what to do, and she had her own way of doing things.
More power from her well. Heat from the vambrace. Another command, this one aimed at Pheklus.
“Forget that you’ve seen this.”
The necromancer bowed his head.
“And Pheklus: Vrom will be my apprentice.” Two against one, should it come down to it. She could tell from the reaction on Vrom’s face that this is what he wanted, that he’d reward her with loyalty.
And then the well ran dry. That couldn’t be right. So much power for so little? Three commands for a life?
Pheklus lifted his head. “Do you mind if I try something? It’s so seldom I get to practice on a fresh body.”
Tey looked at him blankly.
“May I borrow your apprentice to lay the corpse on the floor?”
So he’d acknowledged Vrom was hers now, but did that mean he accepted it?
Pheklus interpreted her silence as acquiescence, and had Vrom help him lower Hirsiga’s body to the floor. In death the woman seemed shrunken, a husk without a kernel.
As Vrom stood to one side, Pheklus snapped his fingers and Gulgath approached hesitantly, whining. The necromancer withdrew something from his robe: a palm-sized disk carved from bone. It was etched with lines which he did his best to conceal. He lay the disk on Hirsiga’s chest and placed his hand over it. His other hand he set atop Gulgath’s head then shut his eyes, concentrating.
Vrom glanced at Tey as dust motes coalesced around Hirsiga’s corpse, drawn like iron filings to a magnet. Gulgath whimpered and dropped to his haunches. A shudder passed along the dog’s body into Pheklus’s hand, sent a ruffle through the necromancer’s robes. His hand on Hirsiga’s chest stiffened, and the fingers splayed. Hirsiga bucked, a poor parody of how she’d responded to the Witch Woman’s touch.
The recollection stung Tey with shame, but she swiftly saw the reaction for what it was: a taboo attributed to the Weyd. The Weyd that was no-thing and also did nothing, as far as she could see. She withdrew into herself, asking whether she’d taken pleasure from what Hirsiga had done to her. None that she could recall. She remembered only numbness, then fire.
Dust motes swirled into a halo around Pheklus’s cowl, then streamed down his arm into Hirsiga’s chest. Dirty yellow light seeped from the bone disk beneath the necromancer’s palm. Gulgath flattened out onto his belly, panting, gasping for breath. He seemed to diminish before Tey’s eyes. Where moments ago he had been stocky and thickly muscled, she could now see the outline of his ribcage.
Hirsiga bucked again. A shudder rocked her corpse, then petered out.
Pheklus sighed and stood, pocketing his bone disk.
“Any more, and Gulgath won’t survive.” He looked intently at Vrom, who backed away. “Don’t worry. You’re not mine now,” Pheklus said. “I shan’t take of your essence. And even if I did, weak as you already are I doubt you’d survive. It’s hardly an achievement: the substitution of one life for another. What’s needed is more power, some kind of repository.”
A well, Tey thought. And an amplifier.
He didn’t know. But he knew enough to attempt to restore a dead woman to life. Perhaps if she worked with him… But that would mean giving up her secrets. And besides, Hirsiga had gotten what she deserved, as would anyone who touched her like that.
“Insects are easy,” Pheklus said, taking out the jar of powder into which he’d put the cockroach. “Rodents less so. But it’s people that really interest me. I had thought a fresher corpse might… Never mind.”
But he did mind. Tey could tell from his demeanor. Another hope dashed. Another failure. And she got the sense that a great deal hinged upon it.
Pheklus met her gaze. She realized she could see his pink eyes. The illumination in the room had increased once more, leaving the masked skeletons at their desks clearly visible. Tey shivered at the memory of her dream, then again at the thought of all that had happened since.
“I’m dying,” Pheklus said with great seriousness. “As are you, Tey. All of us. Everyone. Even you, Vrom. Right now, Gulgath is closer to death than the rest of us, but in every case, it’s only a matter of time.”
“You fear death?” Tey said. She meant it to be mocking, but there was a strain to her voice. She was too close to Hirsiga’s corpse for bravado, and she knew she could only convince herself she wanted to end her own life up to a point. She was a coward when it came to it. The bear attack was proof of that.
“What is there not to fear?” Pheklus steepled his fingers in front of his nose. “Death is an agency alien to this world. It had no part in the Crafters’ original creation. It is an invader, a cancer, just like the powers of corruption and decay. Don’t you feel it, this poisonous mire we live and breathe in every day?”
Vrom clearly didn’t, judging by the baffled look he gave Tey.
“Go on,” Tey said.
“Slyndon and I spoke about it often. He has books, you know, that detail the Gardeners’ ancient ruins in Necras. There are inscriptions, pictograms showing the Gardeners combating the oncoming tide of death, trying to restore the natural order. It was their role, you see, to tend the creation of the Crafters. Ultimately, they failed, and they withdrew from Nemus.”
“But where?” Vrom piped up. “Where did death come from? Theurig said it’s just the way of the world. All things decay and die.”
“Yes, yes, the will of the Weyd,” Pheklus said. “And it all sounds so plausible, doesn’t it? But just think: a world in which nothing died, in which we all lived forever.”
A madman’s fantasy, Tey thought. And I was worried about myself!
“We’d run out of space,” Vrom said.
Pheklus held up his hand. It was shaking. “Think what it must have been like before they came.”
“Who?” Tey said. Now she was interested.
“The Wakeful.”
Not the answer she’d been expecting.
“The sires of the Shedim.”
And there it was.
Creatures from outside of the world. Unnatural beings. Bringers of death and decay.
And they wanted her to restore them somehow, return them to the light of day.
“That’s crazy,” Vrom said to Tey, shaking his head. “You remember the stories Theurig used to tell us to keep us from straying from the village? Slyndon Grun said they were all made up. I believed them because I was a child, and naive. But this…”
Pheklus unscrewed the lid of the jar he was still holding, then plucked out the dead cockroach. He blew white powder from its carapace.
“Hold it,” he said.
Vrom looked at Tey.
“Do it,” she said. There was no need for the vambrace; he was only too willing to obey.
Pheklus placed the dead bug on Vrom’s outstretched palm. He then produced his bone disk once more, holding its edge against the cockroach.
“May I?” he asked Tey. “I’m sure Vrom has enough essence left to survive raising an insect.”
Tey inched closer, squinted to get a better look at the disk. Pheklus glanced at her, then covered the inscriptions with his fingers. But she’d seen enough to recognize the pattern, or at least some of it: like a smaller version of the pattern of her scars. Not quite the same, though. There were different arrangements of score marks here and there, and something extra: a tag-on pattern that she hadn’t had time to get a good look at.
She nodded, and Pheklus rested his hand on Vrom’s head. Vrom began to shake, and his teeth chattered. Dust motes swarmed around him, coalesced in his palm. The disk glowed an off-white this time. Vrom cried out as the cockroach twitched. It righted itself and scut
tled onto his arm, but Vrom swiped it onto the floor.
“How else do you explain the dead returning to life?” Pheklus said.
“Trickery,” Vrom said, watching as the cockroach disappeared beneath one of the desks. He looked green. About to vomit.
“The power of the Nethers,” Tey said.
That’s what the Malogoi would have said: demonic forces that shouldn’t be dabbled with. Of course, Theurig would have smiled smugly and claimed a more rational explanation. She wished she’d not shut the Shedim up. It would have been interesting to hear its thoughts on the matter. But whatever the case, Pheklus had restored a dead insect to life, and he’d almost done the same for Hirsiga. Or had he? Maybe Vrom was right, and it was trickery. How did she know the cockroach had really been dead and not merely incapacitated by the white powder? How did she know Hirsiga’s movements weren’t just lingering reflexes?
She glanced down at Hirsiga’s corpse, shocked to find Gulgath gnawing at a leg.
“Oh, don’t mind him,” Pheklus said. “Poor thing’s starving after expending all that essence.” He frowned down at the desiccated corpse then looked slyly at Tey. “Drained dry. Still, I’m sure Gulgath could use the protein. I can see why Slyndon took you for an apprentice. Your leg… What you did to this poor woman… You know things. Things the uninitiated shouldn’t know. Things the initiated don’t know. Slyndon and I were in cahoots over a great many things, and I still can’t tell if he was holding back. We knew the myths, we knew about the power of passion and pain. But you… I’m sure there are things you could teach us both. Well, not Slyndon, perhaps.” He gestured toward the shriveled finger around Tey’s neck. “But me.” Pheklus leaned in and sniffed at Tey’s dress. “I can almost smell it… Your puissance. Interred like a corpse, deep inside you.”
Tey was distracted by Gulgath muscling down a big chunk of flesh. Her stomach clenched, and she fought back the urge to be sick.
She grabbed her satchel from the floor beside the chair, took out a potion and gulped it down. It settled her instantly. Flooded her with warmth. She reached for another; stopped herself. There were only three left, and her need for the potions was growing as swiftly as her need to fill her well.