Gourmand Hag
Page 4
Gourmand Hag, Immanuel, The Lions of Inganok, Man Friday, Masie's Mind, No Torrent Like Greed, Oak Do Hate, Post-Traumatic Redemption, Sacrificial Offering
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Adventurer's Honeymoon, The Beast of Exmoor, A Deliberation of Morality, The Denver Walker, The Golden Mushroom, Gruff Tolls, Jigsaw Dragon, The Peril Gem, Rhapsody in Orange, Shenanigans, Youthful Indiscretion
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Sample Excerpts
From "Disposable Commodities"
He laughed again and shook his head as he crossed the room to his desk. He dropped the messages on the blotter and took a moment to push down the upper panel of his window to get some fresh air, glancing down at the street twenty stories below. He then turned and opened the desk file drawer. Inside was a bottle of whiskey, half full, a thick-walled pewter bowl a foot across, and a crude ceramic jar stopped with a lead plug. He took out all three and set them on the desk. Pulling loose the plug, he poured a handful of grayish-green powdery salt into a glass from the wet bar and measured out a gram onto a slip of rice paper using a pharmacist's balance. He poured the unused dust back into the jar and replaced the plug before dumping the gram into the bowl. He walked into the middle of the room carrying the bowl and the whiskey bottle, set the bowl on the floor, and poured in a libation of the liquor. He sprinted back three feet as the contents began to fizz.
Within seconds, a column of fine mist rose into the air. It billowed and swirled, and took on a female form. As he watched, it coalesced into a solid object, then faded away, to reveal a nude, voluptuous woman with an hourglass figure and skin the color of bread crust. She stood as still as a statue for a few moments, her eyes closed, then she inhaled sharply and started to breath. She tilted her head back, raised her arms, and stretched her entire body, as if trying to reach the ceiling. She lowered her arms in a languid manner, bending her elbows, and ran her fingers through her billowing mane of fiery crimson hair. Still lowering her arms, she caressed the sides of her face and neck, her shoulders, and her voluminous breasts. It wasn't until she rested her palms on her hips that she relaxed and opened her eyes.
She stepped out of the bowl. "How long has it been this time?" Her voice was a low contralto, with a sultry burr that sounded like a purr.
"Three months, Lily my dear." He raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth.
She frowned and raised an eyebrow. "That's the longest yet."
He took a swig. "Not as long as when I first woke you up. What year were you processed again?"
"1912." Her voice sounded tight as he took another drink.
"And the first time I let you out was last year. So, ninety-five years. Get the picture?"
She gave him a look that could curdle milk. "What do you want this time?"
He took one last pull then recapped the bottle. "Most of it's routine, but I have a couple of new requests. First, I want to replace Lucy." He turned and went back to his desk to set the bottle down.
"Isn't she working out?"
Her snarky barb stung, but he ignored it. "She expects me to permanently resurrect her." He turned around.
"What ever gave her that idea?"
"I told her I knew how to do it, to get her to do what I wanted."
She scowled. "That was stupid. All you had to do was threaten to torture her, though you would have to do it at least once to make it credible."
"I'll keep that in mind. So, can it be done?"
"No."
"That's plain enough. So I'll need someone new for tomorrow. Who would you recommend?"
She smirked. "As I remember, you prefer them sweet, adorable, and naïve, true?"
He licked his lips. "Most definitely."
"Then I suggest Helen; front row, third from the middle."
He looked over to his left. That entire wall was covered by a bookcase. In its center was a display cubicle with a glass front. Inside were three rows of ceramic jars, similar to Lily's, but only a third the size.
He glanced back at her. "Stacked?"
Lily favored him with a grinning leer. "Most definitely."
He went over and opened the front. "From the name, I assume she's a blonde."
"That she is."
He reached in and picked up the jar in question. "Why can't they be permanently resurrected?"
"The reconstituted body is held together by the salt matrix. The salts are vulnerable to oxidation, so the integrity of the matrix only lasts about a day. Once the body starts to break apart, it crumbles very easily. If you could seal her in an airtight vessel filled with helium, she would stay intact indefinitely; she doesn't need to breath. But that wouldn't do you any good. Of course, the more powder you use, the longer she would remain reconstituted, but the fewer times you could resurrect her."
He examined the jar as he returned to his desk. "I've always wondered why your jar is so much bigger than these others."
"That's because living tissue condenses that much smaller. Your grand-uncle poisoned me first; I still don't know how."
He snapped his head around and stared at her, his gut crawling. "They were alive when you...?"
"Of course. You need special procedures to process a dead body. Your uncle didn't know that and he almost botched my processing. I survived only because I hadn't been dead long enough to matter. It also helps if the subject is aware."
He felt the blood drain out of his face. "They're awake when you...process them?"
"At least for as long as it takes the chemicals to begin decomposing their bodies."
He glanced back at the jar in his hand. "Is it painful?"
"Excruciating. And they remember every moment."
He grunted as he placed the jar on his desk. "You sound like you enjoy their suffering."
She turned and walked over to the "casting" coach against the right wall. He had put it in against the day when he would have flesh and blood female clients; for the time being, it served as the platform for his daily antics with Lucy. She laid down, facing him, her head and shoulders propped up on the padded arm and one arm draped over the back.
"They're my servants; they're only purpose is to serve my needs; all my needs." She snapped her fingers and a cigar appeared in her mouth.
"Your slaves, you mean."
"I prefer to think of them as pets. In any event, I fail to see a distinction." She snapped her fingers again and the exposed end lit up.
"You don't believe they have any rights?"
She snapped her fingers a third time and a glass of liquor appeared in one hand. "Technically, they're dead. What rights does a dead man have?" She drained the glass, but as soon as she held it level, it refilled.
From "The Lions of Inganok"
Their break came after seven weeks, on the afternoon when half a dozen Men of Leng entered the inn.
Before then, each day Teehar toured the city, discretely eavesdropping on any conversation that piqued his curiosity, and it wasn't long before he became a familiar sight flitting about on the balconies and through the garden plots of the dwellings. Each evening, upon his return he reported the rumors and gossip he overheard to Medb. Based on his intelligence, she determined which sections of the city needed closer investigation, and each morning she and Conaed and Creme went exploring to see what they could discover for themselves. They returned at noon to eat and spent the afternoon in the common room, listening to and engaging in conversation as she probed for any information on the idol. After supper she played and sang for a fe
w hours, pausing only when the temple bell rang, announcing the daily evening service. She had grown used to it after the first few days, and even emulated the people in their obeisance so as not to incur their enmity. Sometime before midnight she and Creme then went back out into the city, to reinvestigate locations they had visited in the morning that had sparked her interest, but under the cloak of darkness for added security. They returned by midnight, and she and her companions retired to their room, where she and Conaed cataloged and analyzed the information they had gathered, to try to sift out nuggets of information. Afterwards, she spent the night with any of the other patrons willing to share their beds, but she always returned to her room before morning.
Unfortunately, after forty-eight days they had come no closer to finding the idol than when they first arrived, and Medb grew more frustrated, and despondent, with each new dawn.
At first she took little interest in the Leng Men. She had encountered them before, mostly in Dylath-Leen, the one port in the central Dreamlands that always welcomed the arrival of their black galleys without hesitation or restriction, and she had heard the many stories concerning their habits. She had even seen a group of them at one of the taverns in the northern part of the city that were frequented by onyx quarrymen. Even so, despite the close proximity of Inganok to the Plateau, she had learned that the Leng Men rarely came to the city, and those few who did traveled overland