by David Wise
And then it was over.
Abruptly, the animal's entire posture shifted, from one of menace to one of submission. It slumped and lowered its eyes. Then it turned and vanished the way it had come, but in silence.
But as it vanished, Von Kharkov felt the Beast within himself begin to stir.
"No!" A strangled cry ripped at his throat.
"What's wrong?" The woman's voice came to him from a great distance, even though, as he turned, he felt her hand upon his arm.
He shook his head violently. He couldn't speak. He dared not. In his mind, he heard the Beast snarl. What was happening? There had been no voice in his mind, no command that the Beast come forth! There had been only that brief, intense link, and the Hunger had begun to rise.
The Hunger had come upon him countless times before, but not like this, not without a command from his master! And here he had no master! It should not — could not be happening!
But it was!
But he could control it!
Here, without Dakovny or another like him commanding the Beast to come forth, he could stop it in its tracks, just as he had the panther! In Darken, knowing he could not disobey his master, he had never dared resist the transformation. He had invariably surrendered, abandoning both resistance and consciousness as if simply going to sleep. He had let the Beast assume control as his body began the change. Only when his human form returned had he awakened, his consciousness returning from whatever dark recess it had hidden itself in.
But now he would not retreat! He would not give in! He would fight, as he had fought — and beaten! — the panther.
Instead of letting his body drop to all fours when the transformation had barely begun, he held himself rigidly erect. But even as he did, he felt his body begin to change. His skin started to itch unbearably, then burn, and the fire went deeper and deeper until his very bones were aflame.
Had it always been like this? he wondered. Was this what he had blanked from his mind all those hundreds of times before? Or was this only the result of his resistance?
Why was it happening?
He lurched uncontrollably, his arms flailing the air for balance. The bones in his legs, still aflame, softened and shifted and bent and formed new joints. The flames concentrated in his hips, then, and his whole body bent forward, as if pressed by a gigantic hand.
And he fell.
Reflexively, his arms — now his forelegs — took the weight.
His whole body erupted in a new wave of agony, as if his flesh were being eaten from his bones with acid.
And then the flame engulfed his face, and the world melted and ran like candle wax as his eyes were transformed. When the fire faded and the world solidified again, the jungle shadows were no longer places of concealment. To the eyes of the Beast, they were bright as day.
Looking up, he saw Malika. Her eyes were wide in terror, yet she stood before him as if frozen. "Go! Run!" he tried to scream at her, but only a snarl of the Beast emerged.
But that was enough. Whatever spell had held her was broken. She turned and ran, vanishing into the jungle as quickly as the panther had moments before.
Then the change was complete. As he emerged from the flames of the transformation, the Hunger was unbearable.
The Beast sniffed the air. Malika's scent was unmistakable, as were the sounds of her flight.
No! I will not allow you to do this!
But the Beast ignored him, as if he did not exist. It stood silently for a moment, as if savoring what was to come.
Then it padded after the fleeing woman. Its pace deliberate and unhurried, its step lighter and surer than Von Kharkov's had ever been, it unerringly followed her trail. Desperately, Von Kharkov struggled to rein the Beast in, but it paid no more attention to his efforts than it would to a light spring breeze. He couldn't even be sure it was aware of his existence.
But Von Kharkov was aware of the Beast, excruciatingly so. He could feel its muscles ripple as it padded on, could feel the dirt beneath its paws, could smell the jungle scents that assaulted its nostrils.
But most of all, he could feel the Hunger.
A Hunger he could not overcome.
Ahead, the scent and sound of the fleeing woman grew stronger.
He could not save her.
Or himself.
And then he was upon her.
And the real nightmare began as the Beast's jaws — his jaws — closed on living flesh.
It was like a thousand other awakenings: the blood, the shredded flesh, the feeling of satisfaction giving way to self-loathing.
But this time it was not an awakening. This time, he had not lost consciousness — had not been able to lose consciousness for even an instant. Instead, he had lived through it all, experienced every grotesque horror of the Beast's feeding frenzy.
And every detail was gouged deeply and permanently into his memory.
He could not forget a moment of the horror, could not force it out of his thoughts for even a second. Nor could he forget — or forgive — his own helplessness to stop it.
Fool! his inner voice exploded. You were wrong! What the Mists held was worse than your wretched existence in Darken!
In a daze, he found a stream to wash the gore from his human form, but nothing could remove it from his mind.
After what seemed like an eternity of aimless wandering, he fell asleep on the jungle floor from sheer exhaustion, but even then, he gained no relief. His dreams, his nightmares, were virtually the same as his waking memories, yet more horrifying.
And even more real, more vivid.
Again and again he relived what he had done. And each time Malika died, her memories spread over the surface of her mind, just as her blood spread over the remnants of her body, and while the Beast devoured the flesh, Von Kharkov unwillingly devoured her mind, absorbed her very soul, until he knew his victim more intimately than he knew himself.
And then he was forced to kill her again. And again.
After the dozenth — or perhaps the hundredth — time, a new memory began to emerge from the horror.
He had done this before, the memory said. To this same woman or to another very like her.
Not here in this jungle world the Mists had thrown him into.
Not even as Dakovny's slave in Darken.
But somewhere else, in a lushly furnished apartment in a city whose name and country he couldn't even guess at.
And with that amorphous memory taking root in his mind like a gangrenous wound, he awakened. The jungle still surrounded him. The scent of blood once again clung to him like a poisonous shroud, renewed and strengthened by the nightmare.
As if triggered by his return to consciousness, a pocket of Mists pulsed into existence barely a dozen yards in front of him. He felt a physical chill as it swirled before him, thickening until it was as opaque as the jungle around it.
Abruptly, the Mists took on a reddish tinge, and for a moment he was certain it was Malika's blood diluting the m and that her tortured body would be deposited at his feet when the Mists retreated.
But it was not the dark red of blood, he realized a moment later. It was brighter, a crimson so intense it almost glowed.
A crimson that, like the jungle, triggered an inexplicable feeling of familiarity. And horror.
Then the Mists were gone, vanishing as quickly as they had come.
A man stood before him, his black-bearded face knotted in anger, his overweight body wrapped from neck to toe in a robe of brilliant crimson.
A name leapt out of nowhere into Von Kharkov's mind.
"Morphayus. ."
The man's eyes widened. For a long moment he scowled at Von Kharkov, then darted quick glances at the jungle around them.
"How did you manage this, Von Kharkov?" the man snapped. "And what is it you want? Whatever it is, be quick about it!"
"Your name is Morphayus? "
"As if you didn't know! Don't waste my time with foolish posturing! Just tell me why you brought me he
re and what you want of me. If indeed you did bring me here."
The man's voice — Morphayus'voice — grated on Von Kharkov's ears. And suddenly, he did know. He knew this place. He knew this person, this wizard. He knew —
In an instant, like the sky opening and drenching him in a downpour, his true past descended on him, burying him under the million details of a life he had not until that moment known existed.
A life before Darken. A life in which the parents whose gravestones he had visited so often in Neblus did not exist except in his own false memory.
A life in lands called Cormyr and Thay, where that first killing had taken place, the killing that had been echoed in the slaughter of Malika.
And before Cormyr —
For an instant, it was as if he were confronted by a featureless wall that threatened to shatter and fall and crush him, but instead it became akin to the Mists, and shadowy images reached out to grasp him and pull him in.
And he recognized those images.
And he knew the truth about himself.
The final truth.
He had not lost his humanity, trading it for immortality that night in Karg when he had eagerly submitted himself to Dakovny. He had had no true humanity to lose, only a veneer, an illusion.
An illusion created by the creature, the wizard that stood before him now: Morphayus.
Before Morphayus had found him and created that illusion of humanity, there had been no Urik von Kharkov. There had been only a beast, a jungle beast. A panther, virtually a twin to the one he had just encountered and bested. A beast, living its life out in this very jungle to which the Mists had returned both him and Morphayus.
The wizard had found the beast and transformed it into a man. Into the form of a man. And he had supplied that man with memories of a past that did not exist.
And then, when it had suited the wizard's warped purpose, the Beast had been brought back — to wreak bloody vengeance on an innocent woman whose only crime had been to spurn Morphayus. A woman named Selena, who could have been twin to Malika.
For what seemed like an eternity but could have been only a moment, Von Kharkov was lost, adrift in the vast sea of new and contradictory memories.
But then his eyes focused on the crimson-robed man who still stood impatiently before him.
Morphayus.
And he knew that only one thing mattered in all that churning ocean of newfound memories: his true nature lay not in the Von Kharkov shell but in the nameless jungle beast he had originally been. Had he been allowed to remain in that true form, here in the jungle, he would have lived out his life as the simple predator he was. All the senseless killing, all the pain and horror he and his hundreds of victims had undergone, was the fault, not of the Beast or of the Von Kharkov shell, but of the monster who stood before him, the wizard who had created this misbegotten half-human thing and set it upon its hellish course.
Morphayus, who had been brought here and put before him.
For the first time in his pseudo-life, Von Kharkov willingly — eagerly — called forth the Beast. This time the transformation seemed almost instantaneous, the flames of his altering body compressed into a brief pulse of pure agony of an intensity he could not have imagined.
And then it was as if they were one: Von Kharkov and the Beast. Von Kharkov's lust for revenge on Morphayus meshed with the Hunger that pulsed through the Beast, a Hunger that, he was now positive, had not been a part of his original jungle self but something the wizard had stirred into the mixture when the Von Kharkov shell had been created.
They leapt.
Together.
Von Kharkov felt the wizard's will grasping at them, trying to force them back, trying to control them as it had in Cormyr, as Dakovny's will had controlled the Beast so often in Darken.
But the wizard's power was not great enough, not here on the far side of the Mists, and not against the two of them, united in their overwhelming desire for his destruction.
And they were upon him.
It was over.
Little remained of the wizard's body and robe but crimson tatters.
For the first time, the feeling of self-loathing did not come to Von Kharkov as he observed the Beast's — and, this time, his own — grisly handiwork. Instead, there was a feeling of grim satisfaction. He would never atone for what the Beast had done in the names of its masters, but at least he had put an end to the human monster who had been ultimately responsible for those horrors.
And here, in the jungle of his birth, with no perverted master to serve, perhaps those horrors would come to an end. In time, even, perhaps the Von Kharkov shell itself would fade back into nonexistence, now that its creator was gone.
Perhaps that was why he had been brought here by the Mists — or by whatever power lurked behind them, using them to manipulate people and animals and even wizards for its own, impenetrable purposes.
Or so he could hope, though he feared it was more likely just the opposite. No power with any pretenses of goodness or justice could ever have brought an innocent like Malika here only to be pointlessly and cruelly slaughtered as part of its obscure plan for Von Kharkov and Morphayus.
And with that thought, his mind was invaded by a rumble of distant laughter.
And he felt the Mists closing about him once again.
Sight and Sound
"Open the door!" I cried as I pounded on the massive, metal-bound aperture that separated me from my purpose; neither the wood nor the brass gimmals ornamenting its ebon surface moved. "Open, I say!" I shouted, my voice rising almost to a scream. "Open in the name of justice!" Again I pounded on the portal with rage.
Lightning cracked behind me, silhouetting the black rain drenching this land. The heavens rumbled back — the expansive, pernicious murmurs of an alien sky I had quickly come to hate — and jags of lightning snapped again, momentarily illuminating the cold, forbidding stone of Castle Blaustein. I stared up at the double doors before me, which were fully the height of two men, and beyond to the walls surrounding the citadel's entrance. Snarling stone gargoyles, tortuous crenellations of slate, and shadows of black iron remained branded on my inner eye after the flash departed.
Rain poured down in sheets, engulfing me, soaking my woolen overcoat. It clung unpleasantly to my fevered flesh. I raised my bloodied fists high above my head and glared up at the monolith before me, oblivious to the rain pelting my face and eyes. With a feral moan, I hurled myself at the doors, crying aloud," Hear me, Bluebeard!"
Lightning responded above me, filling the night sky with white light and sound, nearly blinding and deafening me in its turbulent response. But my senses were abruptly riveted by the doors before me: They were moving.
My eyes bulged in their sockets as I strained to catch that minute movement. I know that only seconds must have passed before the doors swung open to grant my admittance, but time seemed somehow suspended then. I heard the creak of those massive doors swing back upon badly oiled hinges. I saw the faint glimmer of light flicker on the gimmals marking the doors as they swung inward. I smelled the dank decay of stale rushes and rancid candle tallow as the warm air within the castle greeted me; it was a false warmth, unpleasant to me even in my cold and sodden state.
I stepped forward immediately, intent on the manservant lurking beside the door, and entered the keep. "Show me to your master at once," I demanded imperiously.
The creature closed the doors behind me, sparing me not a single glance until he had done so. Then he turned his gaunt frame toward me, squared his shoulders, and nodded with a dignity I had not expected in this backwoods country. "My lord will see you now," was his monotone, tight-lipped response. For an instant his gaze met mine, then slid away, but not before I caught the yellow gleam of hatred for a man his better. He picked up a candelabrum resting upon a nearby table and proceeded across the hall's granite floor.
I followed the manservant through the castle's foyer, the size of which was utterly lost in the feeble light of two cand
les, to an expansive stair that curved upward then split and flowed into separate hallways. My guide took the left branch, and here the dim shadows receded before the light. I gave little thought to the thick carpets we traversed, the muted tapestries periodically adorning the finely papered walls, or the pieces of furniture placed here and there in the long passages. I cared not at all for the glimpses of silver and gilt I caught via the candlelight as we walked this otherwise unlit abode. My thoughts were possessed by the man I would soon confront, by the tales the villagers had told me, by the man who had —
Abruptly, the manservant stopped before an ornately carved door. He threw it open, stepped inside, and announced," My lord, the gentleman you wished to see is here."
I strode forward swiftly, knocking the servant aside in my haste, and halted just inside the room. In my heightened emotional state, my senses were acutely attuned. In a single moment I took in the vast number of books, the cheerful fire in the grate to one side of the large room, and the comfortable, elegant surroundings. My gaze slid to and locked on the man slowly rising from behind a desk at the far end of the room. The valet proceeded to light more candles, bringing the dark room to more sensible illumination. I strode forward, impatient words forming on my lips.
"Lord Henredon, I presume?" interjected the man behind the desk before I could speak. His words — pleasantly spoken, with a casual, intimate intonation — took me aback. I paused before him, inexplicably disarmed by his easy, familiar manner. I had told no one of my real name in this land; had Lorel. .? My eyes narrowed.
My hesitation was slight, however, and I regained my composure immediately. I bowed my head, pausing a hair shy of insolence, and said," And Lord Bluebeard — I presume?" His left eyebrow arched in amusement, and his red, full lips twitched. His beard, as I had been told by the villagers, was indeed a shade of black with highlights that waxed blue in the light. He was a man of my height, though he easily outweighed me by nearly half my weight. His features were bulbous and dissipated, and I was suddenly sickened at the thought of his fleshy lips violating Lorel. His eyes, however, were alight with a cunning I knew instinctively to be that of a most dangerous man. He waved his hand — fat and pampered, with rings on three fingers — toward a chair, but I declined with an icy smile. Again his full lips twitched; he fell backward into the huge wing chair behind him, his great girth encompassed by the even larger seat. The manservant lit a remaining candelabrum and stood behind his master.