Against her will, she bucked against her straps, tried to fight her way free, but to no avail.
“You bastard,” she hissed.
Snyde wagged his finger at her. “Tsk tsk. Is that any way for a well-bred princess to talk?”
Snyde called into the corridor. “Ok, boy, come on in.”
The door opened, and a small elven boy entered, lugging a bucket, a filled burlap sack, and a bundle of cloth across the cell.
“Now, Willow,” Snyde said, “I need you to be on your best behavior. We have to make you look presentable for your dinner date. The Warlord’s an important man, you know. Wouldn’t do to have him visit with you smelling like a horse.”
“You’ll get yours, Snyde,” she hissed.
Snyde grinned and held up the parchment with the names. “As you can see, I’ve already gotten it.” To the elf child, he said: “Make sure you get all that stink off of her, and see if she needs to relieve herself. If she’s not presentable to the Warlord, it’ll be your skin he takes it out on!”
“Y-y-es, sir,” the boy said.
“Well,” said Snyde, his voice chipper. “I’ll leave you to your bath, shall I? Have a nice night, Willow.” He winked. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”
Willow fought to hold her tongue and succeeded. Snyde departed, leaving her alone with the elf boy. Their eyes met.
“Waeh-Loh, what should I do?” Ber-Ote said.
Chapter 57
“Quick! Undo my straps,” Willow whispered without a moment’s hesitation. “And while you do, tell me everything you know about the castle, its occupants, the dungeons, its jailors, and the gladiatorial games.”
Ber-Ote struggled with the leather band around her wrist. “My entire family works here at the castle in one way or another,” he said. “There’s a lot I can tell you.”
Willow’s heart pounded at the first ray of hope she had seen in a long while.
“They picked the wrong servant to prepare me for the Warlord,” she said.
“No,” said Ber-Ote, just a glimmer of a smile present on his thin lips. “I think they sent the right one.”
Chapter 58
“He’s coming!” Ber-Ote whispered urgently from down the hall.
“Good,” said Willow, her heart pounding. Her greatest nightmare approached and she hoped she was ready for him. “Now get out of here, Ber-Ote. And thank you.”
“Good luck, Your Highness.”
Willow got into position, draped the straps back over her throat and then her wrists. The angular discomfort of the knife hidden below her arm offered her little reassurance.
“Tamlevar, are you ready?”
He clanked twice on the bars of his cell, two doors down. Good. They had weapons, freedom of movement, and most important, the element of surprise.
So why was she so frightened?
A door slammed open far down the corridor. Willow almost leapt from her bindings in terror.
Discipline, Willow. Discipline. You’ve been a warrior your entire life, and he’s just one man. He’s not even a member of their warrior caste, and he’s outnumbered.
Discipline.
Now she heard footsteps. Slow, even, measured, as if there were all the time in the world. Willow pressed her arm down, reassuring herself with the pain of the knife’s hilt against the length of her forearm.
In her mind’s eye, she saw not the Warlord Jabar striding towards her but the Warlord Rackal. His pale blue eyes gleaming malevolently in the torchlight, his blond, almost-white hair hanging as straight as a gallows’s noose.
Someone—perhaps not Rackal; he was dead, after all—but someone paused before another door, jingling his key ring searching for the right key. The jingling seemed to continue interminably but at length it stopped, and door clanged open. The footsteps continued their inevitable approach.
Discipline, Willow. Remain calm.
The footsteps were imminent, perhaps outside the next cell or the one afterwards. He’d be here any moment.
The anticipation was worse than the actual confrontation could ever be. Goosebumps erupted along her arms, legs, and chest. She shivered even though it was broiling hot in the dungeon.
The footsteps stopped outside her cell door. She tensed as she fought the impulse to lift her head, to look upon her doom. Remember, she thought, your head is bound. You can’t lift your head.
She waited for the door to open.
Nothing happened for a long time. Then:
“Look at me, Waeh-Loh.”
She flinched. His voice was just as she remembered. Rackal’s. But they were blood relatives, so of course there would be similarities. It shouldn’t surprise her even if they looked somewhat similar.
“Look at me.”
Willow fought the power of his voice, fought to keep her head on the table, but seemingly against her will, she lifted her head just a little to see him. When she did, she shrieked and leapt from the table and fled to the farthest corner of the cell.
“It can’t be you!” she cried. “You’re dead. I saw you die!”
“Yes,” said the Warlord Rackal, his pale-blue eyes smiling. “Yes, you did. And now I live again.”
Chapter 59
The Warlord Rackal wasn’t a very large man, but he seemed to give off waves of power. It seemed to Willow as though she could almost hear his strength in a kind of subliminal hum that set her teeth on edge.
He stood before her, a slim man whose open vest displayed a hairless and extremely muscular chest and abdomen. He moved with the grace of a great cat, transfixed her with the hypnotic gaze of a serpent, and radiated the same kind of mysterious and unknowable evil as a spider.
The Warlord Rackal smiled, and the most horrifying thing about that smile was how gentle it was.
Willow, the great elven warrior of Bryanae, cowered in a corner of her cell, her knife held out before her in a defensive guard.
“You’re dead!” she shouted. “How can you be here?”
The Warlord Rackal clicked his tongue at her, admonishing her with a single finger. “Because you didn’t destroy my body. Didn’t you know to do that?”
Willow shook her head.
“What are you talking about?” It was more of a denial than a question. He had jarred something in her memory.
“You killed me, but you didn’t destroy my body.”
“S-so?” She thought about throwing her knife at him, but what if she missed? “So? You were dead!” Her voice had taken on an hysterical giddiness. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
“But I had a son!” The Warlord’s eyes gleamed with power or insanity … or both. “A son who did as he was supposed to. A son who consumed the flesh of my body, a son who inherited my soul.”
Cannibalism!
“That’s impossible! You can’t eat someone’s soul.”
The Warlord Rackal clucked his tongue again. “You can’t, Waeh-Loh, because you’re an elf and don’t have a soul. Other humans can’t, because their souls are paltry things that evaporate into the ether immediately upon death. But a Warlord of Kardán? Oh yes, Waeh-Loh. Oh yes.”
He pounded his bare chest with his fist.
“I am everything the Warlord Rackal was, plus everything the Warlord Rakem was, and now I have added everything that the Warlord Jabar is. I am,” he said, withdrawing a key from his belt and displaying it to Willow, “immortal.”
Willow pressed back against the cell wall. She had ruined much of the surprise of her plan through her cowardice, but it could be salvaged. She had to play this hand until the end. She had to keep the Warlord’s attention on her, as much as she dreaded it.
“What do you want from me?”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, Waeh-Loh, isn’t it obvious? I want you to suffer. I want you to suffer for a long time and then I when I grow bored of your suffering, I want you to die. Just as you made me suffer and then die so long ago.”
He inserted the key in the lock, looked up at Willow wi
th malicious glee, and then turned the key. The machinery inside ground and clanked open. The door opened with a gentle push.
At the same time, Willow heard a sound that she had been alert for: the opening of another cell door. Only she, who had been listening for it, would have heard it over the opening of the door in this room. It was a sound she had been praying for, but now it sent waves of terror through her: the sound had been on the wrong side of her cell. It wasn’t Tamlevar’s door that had opened.
Oh no.
“Stay away!” she shouted, brandishing her knife at him. The Warlord advanced, his hands empty, his chest bare, his smile confident.
“I’m so glad you managed to free yourself,” he said. “It’s going to be much more enjoyable this way.”
She saw Tamlevar slip from the shadows of the hallway behind the Warlord, a knife in his hand like the one to which Willow feebly clutched. He crept up to the door of her cell, sneaking up behind the Warlord.
No. Stop, Tamlevar. She shook her head.
“No,” she moaned. “No!”
But Tamlevar didn’t understand. He continued to approach the Warlord.
Behind Tamlevar, another figure appeared: huge, cloaked and hooded. He raised an enormous hammer.
“No!” cried Willow, her arms waving wildly, but it was too late. The hammer crashed down on Tamlevar’s skull, and she heard the crunch of bone.
The Warlord Rackal had never taken his eyes off Willow, hadn’t turned around.
“Thank you, Armis. Please drag what’s left of our friend back to his cell and make sure he stays there.”
“Yes, Warlord,” came a growl from under the hood; a growl that surely no human throat could produce. The hooded giant lifted Tamlevar’s feet and dragged him away, leaving Willow alone with her revenant.
“Did you think me a fool, Waeh-Loh?” the Warlord said as he skirted around the table so that now, nothing stood between them. “Even now, after all we’ve been through together? Do you think that I don’t know what transpires in my own dungeons?”
The Warlord snapped his fingers, and another set of footsteps approached. A similarly hooded figure entered the cell, carrying a limp body in his arms.
“Oh no,” Willow said, her voice barely audible. “Ber-Ote.”
“Yes, Waeh-Loh.” He snapped his fingers again, and the hooded figure brought Ber-Ote to him. The child was motionless, but at least he was breathing.
“You know, this is all your fault, Waeh-Loh.” The Warlord nodded to the hooded figure who in return handed him a knife. Willow adjusted her stance, ready for the attack.
The Warlord waved the knife through the air and cut Ber-Ote’s throat with one fluid motion. The hapless child convulsed in the arms of the hooded man as jets of blood sprayed upwards.
“That’ll be all,” the Warlord said. “Thank you.”
Without a word, the hooded figure turned and left, removing the body of the child even while it pumped out the remainder of its blood.
“You bastard!” Willow hissed, and lunged at him with an elusive double-twist of her knife.
The Warlord backed away for a moment, and Willow felt a moment of elation. He’s afraid! He’s mortal, after all.
But the relief was short-lived. The growing smile on the Warlord’s face showed her how little his fear of her was. “Oh, this is just as I imagined it, Waeh-Loh. I couldn’t ask for a better reunion than this.”
She lunged again, and her blade cut an intricate pattern through the air, and headed toward his throat. But a sudden movement on his part caused the knife to embed in his shoulder instead.
He grunted once, then clasped his hand over hers, trapping it. Desperate, she twisted the knife in the wound, but he showed no reaction. How could he not show pain from such a wound?
She sprung forward with a knee aimed at his groin, but he brought his own knee up into her shin, blocking her strike and leaving her howling in agony.
The Warlord withdrew the knife from his shoulder and without any preliminaries, drove it into her chest just below her right shoulder. Before the pain of her wound even reached her, his right elbow cut across her face, lacerating her lips upon her own teeth.
She reached for his eyes. He evaded, and grabbed her long hair, twirled it in his hands, and used it as a lever to slam her face-first into the stone wall. Willow saw stars. Her knees buckled. The strength in her limbs ebbed. Yet, still she fought! Her fists flailed against his face and chest.
He slammed her head into the wall again. Blood dripped into her eyes, blinding her. All the force left her body, and she collapsed onto the floor.
“Wuhh …?” came Tamlevar’s dazed voice from the other room.
“Help me!” she begged. “Tamlevar, please help me!”
The Warlord Rackal grinned at her. She had tied the sheet around her body as a makeshift garment, but the Warlord yanked it from her with one decisive movement, leaving her naked and defenseless.
“Help me!” she cried. “Please, no!”
“Oh yes,” the Warlord said. “Oh yes. This is exactly as I had imagined it.”
Somehow, she found the energy to claw once more at his eyes, but again, he evaded, and now he grabbed her hands and pinned them against the wall.
“Somebody, please help me! Tamlevar!”
“Whuuh? Willow?”
The Warlord was fumbling at his own clothing now, the certainty of his intentions too horrid to believe.
It’s a dream. It has to be a dream.
“Willow?” Tamlevar’s voice seemed to be gaining strength.
Please, hurry.
The Warlord’s bare knees pried Willow’s apart, penetrating her last and weakest defense. She was at his mercy now.
The Warlord Rackal nuzzled his face against her neck, and then kissed her cheek. Willow’s teeth snapped at him, but he butted her jaw with the side of his head, laughing. Blood oozed from her tongue.
“Oh, this is perfect.” He spoke as gently as a lover. He brought his naked pelvis up against hers. The smile on his face seemed to emit a light of its own. “Nothing could spoil the perfection of this moment.”
Her hands pinned, her legs spread, beaten almost to the point of unconsciousness, Willow suddenly smiled.
“Captain Snyde is fucking your wife,” she whispered into his ear.
The Warlord froze, his whole body quivering with rage.
“Your lie is pathetic, Waeh-Loh. You think it will delay the inevitable. It won’t.”
Her smile was bloody, broken. One of her pupils was already swelling large. Yet, still she laughed at him. The greatest terror she had ever known was about to violate her, and she laughed in his face.
“Search him. Search his jacket. You’ll find a parchment confessing it,” she said, laughing. “The great and mighty Warlord has been cuckolded.”
The Warlord Rackal, the wraith that had tormented Willow’s nightmares for hundreds of years, roared his rage. He slammed the back of her head against the stone wall once more, and then penetrated her before she had completed her scream.
Her consciousness flopped about like a bird with a broken wing. It was unable to take in the enormity of her horror.
Willow shrieked once and then fell silent.
The Warlord continued for a while, roaring and pumping his rage into her. Then, when he was done, he withdrew.
Willow collapsed to the floor as limp as a rag-doll. She did not move, not even when he began to cut her.
Chapter 60
Queen Tee-Ri entered her daughter’s cell. Willow’s eyes saw her enter, her ears heard her footsteps, but nothing registered. She lay where she had been discarded, a marionette with severed strings.
Tee-Ri looked at the shattered remains of the once-beautiful elven princess and sighed, then shook her head.
“You’ve only yourself to blame, Waeh-Loh,” she said. “Nobody else. You came from a good family, had good brains, exceptional looks, the best upbringing in the Kingdom. But you just couldn’t adapt, could you?”
Willow continued to look blankly at her mother without expressing an opinion on the subject.
“I suppose I should feel sadness for you.” Tee-Ri waved her hand, as though seeking the right word. “Or remorse, or responsibility, or whatever. But really, all I can think is that you’ve gotten what you deserved.”
Tee-Ri knelt beside what was left of her daughter, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“But I guess I shall always love you, Waeh-Loh, no matter what you’ve done to yourself and to me. You shall always be my daughter.”
She leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Willow’s forehead.
Willow seemed to have no feeling on the subject, one way or another.
Chapter 61
Willow fled into the darkness, mortally wounded.
No more. No more, no more. She would not endure any more.
By now, the darkness of oblivion was a familiar comfort to her. Perhaps it was not full of the promise of life, but at least it was safe. Neither the Warlord nor Willow’s mother could ever reach her here.
So, she fled into the depths of her own psyche, burning the bridges behind her, and severing her ties to the conscious world. She would never go back, never, never, never. One by one, her worldly senses fled her, and now they could torture her to death, and she wouldn’t even know.
She was safe.
But it wasn’t enough. She was still hemorrhaging from her emotional wounds. Like a wounded fish trailing blood as it descended to the ocean floor to die, Willow descended into the depths of her own mind.
Waeh-Loh, came the voice she longed to hear. Come to me. I will protect you.
Off in the blackness of the oblivion, she saw his figure appear. She headed towards him through the void.
“Father!” she cried to him. “Help me. I hurt so much!”
I know, Baera-Ni. I know. I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that, but your suffering is over. You’re safe now.
“Safe?” She sniffed. “Really?”
As safe as you’ll ever need to be. No one can hurt you here. I won’t let them.
Prince of Bryanae (Bryanae Series) Page 23