by Mark McCabe
“Yes, of course you can, my dear.” It was Golkar’s deep voice that responded. She opened her eyes and turned to face him once more. “Must keep your strength up,” he continued. Though his tone was pleasant enough, it gave her little comfort. She knew that the end must be close for her now.
As if to confirm the thought, the wizard turned towards Ruz and spoke again, reaching out across the table that stood against one wall of the room and filling a small goblet with water as he did so. “Fetch Josef back up here again,” he said in an off-hand manner to the draghar, “and get him ready. Tug can help you.”
With a final snarl in Sara’s direction, Ruz moved to obey his master. She knew what his look meant. You think what I gave you was bad. You’re really in for it now, he had said to her, as plainly as if he had spoken the words. She felt her lower lip tremble ever so slightly. She knew he was right. She watched as the draghar left the room, then shivered as she realised he had left her alone with Golkar.
In all of her time in Tu-atha, both since Tug had brought her back, and when she had first been brought there, she had never been totally alone with the fiend. Either Tug or Ruz had always been present when he had been with her. Now, for the first time, she was alone with the maniac. She felt the goosebumps rise on her skin as the wizard approached her with the goblet of water in his hand. She knew he could see the way she was squirming futilely against her bonds, but there was nothing she could do to control her actions. For some strange reason, his very presence unnerved her. Hard though it was to believe, she would rather be left alone with Tug or Ruz than with him. He made her skin crawl, and it only got worse the closer he came to her.
Having reached her side, Golkar stood there for a moment, obviously relishing her discomfort, then lifted the goblet to her lips, tilting it ever so slightly so that some of the water within could flow into her waiting mouth. She saw him smile as she flinched when his arm brushed against her tunic as he held the drinking vessel up to her lips. For a moment, she hesitated, wondering if the water was drugged, then relaxed as she realised that would actually be a godsend. As she opened her mouth, she closed her eyes, not wanting the wizard to see the fear she knew they would betray. Greedily, she gulped down the cool fluid, swallowing repeatedly until the goblet had been drained. Her automatic ‘thank you’ as the wizard placed the goblet back on the table drew another unwanted smile from Golkar. Sara wondered if any of his other victims had been so polite on the eve of their death.
“So now we come to it, my dear,” he said, approaching her once more. Halting directly in front of her, the wizard reached out and pushed a strand of hair that hung down over her eyes back into place, carefully avoiding touching her skin as he did so. “It will be better for us both if you try to stay calm,” he continued. “I’ll finish with Josef first, and then it will be your turn. I promise not to keep you waiting long.”
Somehow, she managed to hold back the tears that sprung to her eyes until he turned away and began to busy himself at his table once more. As she felt the salty fluid beginning to run down her cheeks and onto her lips, she tried to focus her attention on the wizard, knowing that if she allowed her mind to wander she would quickly lose all control of her emotions. Images of her parents, of Rayne, of her house and her friends all sprang to the forefront of her mind, jostling with each other for attention. Taking a deep breath, she pushed them all away, trying to calm herself by focusing on what the wizard was doing.
She watched as he lifted a small pot that had been simmering for some time on a brazier beside the table. As he poured some of its contents into a slightly larger bowl which he had placed on the table, Sara caught a glimpse of the fluid within. From what she saw, it appeared to be nothing but water. She had automatically assumed it would be something more sinister than that, and perhaps it was. Looks, as she knew, could be deceiving.
Once that was done, he reached up and took down three porcelain jars from a shelf that ran along the wall behind the table. As he opened each container, he held it to his nose for an instant, then reached in and took a pinch of its contents and added it to the bowl of heated liquid. When he had done that with all three, he took down a bunch of what looked to be dried herbs and began to add some of their leaves to the mixture as well, crushing them with his hand as he did so and gently stirring the resulting concoction. This continued for a short time until he seemed satisfied with the result and put the mixture aside.
Into a smaller bowl, he then placed three or four seeds which he extracted from yet another jar on the shelf above the table. He then took a small, black pestle and began to crush the seeds against the side of what she now realised was a mortar. Once he had reduced the seeds to a powder, he added that too to the larger bowl and began to stir the mixture once again. Within moments, the room began to fill with a heady aroma that belied the small quantities he seemed to be using.
For some reason, despite her circumstances, Sara felt her spirits beginning to lift as the aroma permeated the room. Her pulse, which had been steadily rising as she had watched Golkar preparing his strange brew, began to slow. Her breathing, which had been shallow and laboured, began to return to a steadier rhythm as well. Even her eyes, which had felt heavy and downcast, began to lift and clear.
She watched in fascination as Golkar then seated himself at the table once more and leaned down, right over the bowl, breathing its fumes in deeply in steady, measured breaths. Even from where she was, bound to her chair, she could see the way the colour of his skin slowly, but noticeably, began to change. Whatever the concoction was, it was clearly very powerful stuff.
Sara wondered what the seemingly innocent ingredients must really have been. Certainly, they cannot have been simple garden herbs. His normally pale skin was slowly but surely acquiring a pinkish hue that hadn’t been there before he had begun to inhale the brew over which he was now slumped.
Sara’s focus on Golkar was suddenly interrupted as two sounds in quick succession interrupted her thoughts. The first came from Golkar himself. Quite unexpectedly, he began to chant. What began as a murmur, quickly rose in volume. Before long Sara could distinguish words, clearly recognisable as such, though they were from no language she had ever heard before. Despite what she’d been told about the translation spell which had been embedded in the portal that had brought her to this world, she couldn’t understand what it was he was saying.
The second sound was that of the door opening. It was the two draghar. They had Josef with them. He was slumped between them, apparently unconscious. If anything, he looked even worse than when Sara had last seen him . . . skinnier, if that were at all possible, and more emaciated; older too, and sicker. His right wrist was wrapped in a rough bandage that was stained with blood and she could see a large bruise on the right side of his forehead.
She watched, silently, as Golkar’s two henchmen dragged him across the room and lowered him onto one of the other chairs in the room, pulling it out from the table so they could maneuver his body into it. Once they had done that, they bound him in place as well, using manacles as they had done with her, and chaining each of his ankles and both of his wrists to the legs and the arms of the chair in succession. Another chain was wrapped around his waist, binding him to the back of the chair in what seemed to Sara a completely unnecessary final flourish
The result was that, just like her, Josef was almost totally immobilised and certainly completely at the mercy of his captors. Not that it seemed to matter to Josef, who remained unconscious throughout the operation.
Sara looked on with mounting apprehension as they carried out their task. It was so hard to accept that what she was witnessing, what she was taking part in, was really happening. It all seemed so surreal, especially with Golkar’s chanting adding such an eerie touch to what was already such a macabre scene.
Having bound Josef to the chair, Ruz then untied a bandage that had been wrapped around the old man’s wrist. Sara’s eyes widened at the sight of the wound it had covered. Craning her neck t
o see what was happening, she looked on, enthralled in a ghoulish way she found she couldn’t resist, as Tug took a knife from his belt and ran its sharp edge across Josef’s wrist, making an incision parallel to two that were already there. She drew in her breath sharply as the blade sliced open his sallow and wrinkled skin.
With a mixture of horror and fascination, she continued to watch as Tug took a bowl that Ruz offered him and held it just below the arm of the chair Josef was bound to, collecting the dark blood that began to flow freely from where he had made his fresh cut and ran down over his wrist and onto and over the arm of the chair. All the while, Golkar sat at the table, chanting and inhaling the fumes from his mixture, ignoring the sinister task being carried out by his two minions.
Sara watched the colour draining from Josef’s face as the bowl slowly filled. So much blood. Too much for an old man just barely alive, she thought. They’re killing him, it suddenly dawned on her, just as Golkar had said he would. She heard the low groan that he gave then, like a death rattle must sound, she thought absently. His left eye-lid fluttered for an instant, revealing a glimpse of some small spark of life that remained in his ruined and battered body. Then, it seemed to Sara, the spark, all of a sudden, was extinguished. He slumped forward, lifeless again. Dead this time, surely. Finally, and thankfully, dead.
Tug turned around and carefully handed the bowl of blood to Ruz. It was as if what it contained was extremely precious. The wizard was still chanting. He hadn’t stopped for an instant while all this was going on. The sound he was making reminded Sara of a Buddhist monk kneeling at a prayer wheel. So this is how Golkar kills them, she thought to herself, marvelling at her detachment. She watched as Ruz carefully placed the bowl on the table, well away from where Golkar still sat.
That action was the signal for a change in the whole proceedings. At the very moment the bowl touched the table, Golkar stopped his chanting. The sudden and unexpected silence was almost as eerie as the chanting itself had been and Sara found her attention riveted to the change in the wizard’s behaviour.
Pushing back his chair, he slowly rose from his seated position, then stood uncertainly for a moment, swaying slightly, gripping its back tightly for support. Gradually, he steadied himself. Once he had done that, he turned to look, first at Josef, and then at Sara.
Sara gasped as his gaze locked on to hers, shocked at the transformation that had come over him. He seemed taller now, for some reason, but that wasn’t all. It was his eyes that really held her. His gaze, which had always been intense, now held her transfixed. Though she was still firmly bound to her chair, she suddenly felt as if she was falling, towards Golkar . . . no, not just towards him . . . into him, into the deep well of his eyes!
She wanted to blink, but couldn’t. His gaze held her more surely than the bonds about her wrists and ankles. It was like a rope had been stretched taut between them and it was now being reeled in, slowly pulling them closer and closer to each other, though she knew that neither of them was actually moving. She stared back at the wizard, her own eyes gritty, unable to blink or turn away, though she desperately wanted to.
A sense of power seemed to emanate from him now, unlike anything she had ever experienced. The room and all of its contents receded into the background of her vision. There was just Golkar now. Golkar and her. She felt the dryness of the air around her, vaguely remembering she had experienced a similar sensation twice before. Her hair seemed to be standing on end. Every nerve in her body seemed to have come alive and was tingling . . . waiting . . . waiting expectantly for something to happen.
Then, suddenly, the spell seemed to break. Golkar abruptly turned his gaze from her and began to move, very slowly now, as if in a trance. Turning back to the table, he reached out and took a hold of his wand which lay there beside him, on top of the pages of an open book. With that in his hand, he turned towards her again. She was relieved when his gaze passed her by this time. His attention was now directed to Josef. She flinched as the uneasy silence of the room was suddenly broken once more. Golkar began to chant again.
As he chanted he moved towards Josef, crossing in front of Sara as he did so. She noticed that Ruz and Tug were as equally transfixed by what was happening as she was. As Golkar reached Josef, he took a hold of the old man’s bleeding wrist with his left hand. She could see the skin of the wizard’s hand whitening as he tightened his grip on Josef’s arm. Slowly, he raised his other hand, chanting all the while. He placed his palm flat against Josef’s forehead, and then slowly allowed it to form an arch, with just the tips of his fingers touching the old man’s skin. The chanting continued unabated. It was as if he was trying to draw something from the old man’s head.
Sara shrieked in alarm as Josef’s eyes suddenly flew open. She had thought him dead. Now his eyeballs were bulging from their sockets and his lips had drawn back, exposing his teeth and gums. Somehow, Sara managed to tear her eyes away from the ghastly scene, vaguely aware that she was sobbing.
Unable to resist the lure of the ghastly scene being played out before her for long, however, she raised her eyes again a moment later. Golkar’s chanting had risen to a crescendo. As she looked up, he was lowering both of his hands. Josef’s head had slumped forward on to his chest once more. If he hadn’t been dead before, he certainly looked it now. His face was as white as a sheet.
Golkar looked down at his own bloodied hand, turning it over and idly examining it as if it was something he had never seen before. She noticed a slight smile form about his lips. He looked up then, directly at her. For the briefest of moments, his eyes flashed as he held her gaze, then he turned and strode purposefully across the room. She cried out in surprise as she watched him walk right into the mirror that hung on the wall opposite. In the blink of an eye, Golkar was gone. He had disappeared right before her eyes.
It was some time later when the commotion started, at least it seemed that it was to Sara. She had fallen asleep for a while and had no idea how much time had actually passed, whether it had been only a few minutes or some hours since she had drifted off. She hadn’t believed sleep would be possible, still chained to the chair as she was, but she had obviously under-estimated the depth of her exhaustion.
She awoke to find herself still in much the same situation she had been in when Golkar had made his incredible exit. Josef was still there, bound to the chair next to her and Ruz was still sitting in the chair she had last seen him in; only, now he was leaning back with his feet resting on the edge of the table. Tug was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, he hadn’t returned from wherever it was he had gone to when he’d left the room shortly after Golkar’s alarming departure.
Sara clenched her hands together two or three times and tried to wriggle her toes. Her limbs were beginning to cramp and she thought that some movement might help the circulation. What she really wanted to do was to walk around a bit and to bend and twist her back and stretch her limbs like she sometimes did when she woke at home.
Home, what a meaningless word that was now. Sara forced the thought from her head, fighting down the despair that threatened to engulf her. It had risen so suddenly it had shocked her. She sensed that her nerves were hanging by a thread and she tried to think of something else. She didn’t dare turn her eyes to the mirror. That was where Golkar would come from when he returned from wherever it was that he’d gone.
Turning to her left, she cast her eyes over her fellow sufferer. Josef looked in no better condition than he had earlier. It was hard to believe he was still alive but she could see no reason for Ruz to lie about the matter. The draghar had checked the old man’s pulse as he and Tug were preparing to take his body away, only to find that he still lived, despite everything he had been through. His pulse was barely a flicker, Ruz had said, but it was there nonetheless.
At first, Sara had thought they’d been teasing her. She had seen what they had done to him earlier, the amount of blood they had taken from his body, and what Golkar had done to him before he had left. It was hard
to credit the old man surviving that experience.
For some reason, they seemed to regard his blood as a particularly precious commodity. Ruz had taken the bowl from the table after Golkar had gone and had placed two small stones that looked to Sara just like polished amber within the fluid. He had then covered the bowl with what seemed to be a silk cloth and placed it on a small table on the other side of the room. It still sat there now, right where he had left it. Sara couldn’t even begin to fathom what they hoped to do with it.
She guessed, however, that while ever Josef was still alive he could still provide them with more of his precious blood. Perhaps that was why they had decided to leave him where he was. As if to confirm her suspicion, Ruz had told Tug it would be better to let Golkar decide what to do with him. He had said that the wizard might still find some more use for him yet.
“Don’t worry, little one,” he had sneered at Sara at the time. “Your time will come too. Be patient.” They had both had a good laugh over that.
Sara had tried to ignore them. She didn’t want them to see how afraid she really was. She hadn’t succeeded though. Once Ruz had realised how much he had upset her, he had only teased her even more. He hadn’t stopped until she was crying again. Even now, the thought of some of the things he had said to her brought the tears welling up in her eyes again. Thankfully, he had eventually tired of that game and had sat back to wait for the return of Golkar. Tug had gone off on some unnamed errand and she had been left alone with her thoughts until, mercifully, sleep had claimed her. And now she was awake again. Awake, but still in her own private nightmare.
Sara’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden commotion from somewhere beyond the door. She heard someone cry out and then a crash, as if some item of furniture had fallen over, spilling its contents on to the floor. Ruz was up and out of his chair in a flash. Drawing his sword, he rushed out of the room and disappeared from sight down the corridor. Once again, Sara was left to wonder at the sudden departure of one of her captors.