by Paula Guran
Then as Kane deflected Dragar’s powerful stroke, the youth made a quick thrust with the turning blade—enough so that its tip gashed diagonally across Kane’s brow, severing his headband. A shallow cut, but blood flowed freely, matted the clinging strands of his unbound hair. Kane gave back, flung the blood and loose hair from his eyes.
And Dragar lunged. Too quick for Kane to parry fully, his blade gored a furrow the length of the sorcerer’s left forearm. Kane’s long sword faltered. Instantly the barbarian hammered at his guard.
The sword left Kane’s grip as it clumsily threw back the star-blade. For a fraction of a second it turned free in midair. Dragar exulted that he had at last torn the blade from Kane’s grasp—as he raised his arm for a killing stroke.
But Kane’s right hand caught up the spinning blade with practiced surety. Wielding the sword with skill scarcely inferior to his natural sword arm, Kane parried Dragar’s flashing blow. Then, before the startled barbarian could recover, Kane’s sword smashed through Dragar’s ribs.
The force of the blow hurled the stricken youth back against the bed. Wizard’s Bane dropped from nerveless fingers and skidded across the wide oaken planks.
From Dessylyn’s throat came a cry of inexpressible pain. She rushed to him and cradled Dragar’s head against her lap. Desperately she pressed ineffectual fingers against the pulsing wound in his chest. “Please, Kane!” she sobbed. “Spare him!”
Kane glanced through burning eyes at the youth’s ruined chest and laughed. “I give him to you, Dessylyn,” he told her insolently. “And I’ll await you in my tower—unless, of course, you young lovers still plan on running off together.”
Blood trailing from his arm—and darker blood from his sword—he stalked from the room and into the night mists.
“Dragar! Dragar!” Dessylyn moaned, kissing his haggard face and blood-foamed lips. “Please don’t die, beloved! Onthe, don’t let him die!”
Tears fell from her eyes to his as she pressed her face against his pallid visage. “You didn’t believe him, did you, Dragar? What if I did engineer our meeting, dearest! Still I love you! It’s true that I love you! I’ll always love you, Dragar!”
He looked at her through glazing eyes. “Bitch!” he spat, and died.
How many times, Dessylyn?
How many times will you play this game?
(But this was the first!)
The first? Are you sure, Dessylyn?
(I swear it! . . . How can I be sure?)
And how many after?
How many circles, Dessylyn?
(Circles? Why this darkness in my mind?)
How many times, Dessylyn, have you played at Lorelei?
How many are those who have known your summoning eye?
How many are those who have heard your siren cry, Dessylyn?
How many souls have swum out to you, Dessylyn?
And perished by the shadows that hide below,
And are drawn down to Hell by the undertow?
How many times, Dessylyn?
(I can’t remember . . .)
VII. “He’ll Have to Die . . . ”
“You know he’ll have to die.”
Dessylyn shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Clearly it’s far more dangerous to let him live,” Mavrsal pointed out grimly. “From what you’ve told me, Kane will never permit you to leave him—and this isn’t like trying to get away from some jealous lord. A sorcerer’s tentacles reach farther than those of the fabled Oraycha. What good is it to escape Carsultyal, only to have Kane’s magic strike at us later? Even on the high sea his shadow can follow us.”
“But we might escape him,” murmured Dessylyn. “The oceans are limitless, and the waves carry no trail.”
“A wizard of Kane’s power will have ways to follow us.”
“It’s still too dangerous. I’m not even sure Kane can be killed!” Dessylyn’s fingers toyed anxiously with the emerald at her throat; her lips were tightly pressed.
Angrily Mavrsal watched her fingers twist the wide silk and leather collar. Fine ladies might consider the fashion stylish here in Carsultyal, but it annoyed him that she wore the ornament even in bed. “You’ll never be free of Kane’s slave collar,” he growled, voicing his thought, “until that devil is dead.”
“I know,” breathed the girl softly, more than fear shining in her green eyes.
“Yours is the hand that can kill him,” he continued. Her lips moved, but no sound issued.
Soft harbor sounds whispered through the night as the Tuab gently rocked with the waves. Against the quay, her timbers creaked and groaned, thudded against the buffers of waste hemp cordage. Distantly, her watch paced the deck; low conversation, dimly heard, marked the presence of other crewmen—not yet in their hammocks, despite a hard day’s work. In the captain’s cabin a lamp swung slowly with the vessel’s roll, playing soft shadows back and forth against the objects within. Snug and sheltered from the sea mists, the atmosphere was almost cozy—could the cabin only have been secure against a darker phantom that haunted the night.
“Kane claims to love you,” Mavrsal persisted shrewdly. “He won’t accept your hatred of him. In other words, he’ll unconsciously lower his guard with you. He’ll let you stand at his back and never suspect that your hand might drive a dagger through his ribs.”
“It’s true,” she acknowledged in a strange voice.
Mavrsal held her shoulders and turned her face to his. “I can’t see why you haven’t tried this before. Was it fear?”
“Yes. I’m terrified of Kane.”
“Or was it something else? Do you still feel some secret love for him, Dessylyn?”
She did not reply immediately. “I don’t know.”
He swore and took her chin in his hand. The collar, with its symbol of Kane’s mastery, enraged him—so that he roughly tore it from her throat. Her fingers flew to the bared flesh.
Again he cursed. “Did Kane do that to you?”
She nodded, her eyes wide with intense emotion.
“He treats you as a slave, and you haven’t the spirit to rebel—or even to hate him for what he does to you!”
“That’s not true! I hate Kane!”
“Then show some courage! What can the devil do to you that’s any worse than your present lot?”
“I just don’t want you to die, too!”
The captain laughed grimly. “If you’d remain his slave to spare my life, then you’re worth dying for! But the only death will be Kane’s—if we lay our plans well. Will you try, Dessylyn? Will you rebel against this tyrant—win freedom for yourself, and love for us both?”
“I’ll try, Mavrsal,” she promised, unable to avoid his eyes. “But I can’t do it alone.”
“Nor would any man ask you to. Can I get into Kane’s tower?”
“An army couldn’t assail that tower if Kane wished to defend it.”
“So I’ve heard. But can I get inside? Kane must have a secret entrance to his lair.”
She bit her fist. “I know of one. Perhaps you could enter without his knowing it.”
“I can if you can warn me of any hidden guardians or pitfalls,” he told her with more confidence than he felt. “And I’ll want to try this when he won’t be as vigilant as normal. Since there seem to be regular periods when you can slip away from the tower, I see no reason why I can’t steal inside under the same circumstances.”
Dessylyn nodded, her face showing less fear now. “When he’s deep into his necromancies, Kane is oblivious to all else. He’s begun again with some of his black spells—he’ll be so occupied until tomorrow night, when he’ll force me to partake of his dark ritual.”
Mavrsal flushed with outrage. “Then that will be his last journey into the demonlands—until we send him down to Hell forever! Repairs are all but complete. If I push the men and rush reprovisioning, the Tuab can sail with the tide of another dawn. Tomorrow night it will be, then, Dessylyn. While Kane is exhausted and preoccupied with hi
s black sorcery, I’ll slip into his tower.
“Be with him then. If he sees me before I can strike, wait until he turns to meet my attack—then strike with this!” And he drew a slender dirk from a sheath fixed beneath the head of his bunk.
As if hypnotized by his words, by the shining sliver of steel, Dessylyn turned the dagger about in her hands, again and again, staring at the flash of light on its keen edge. “I’ll try. By Onthe, I’ll try to do as you say!”
“He’ll have to die,” Mavrsal assured her. “You know he’ll have to die.”
VIII. Drink a Final Cup . . .
Spread out far below lay Carsultyal, fog swirling through her wide brick streets and crooked filthy alleys, hovering over squalid tenements and palatial manors—although her arrogant towers pierced its veil and reared toward the stars in lordly grandeur. Born of two elements, air and water, the mist swirled and drifted, sought to strangle a third element, fire, but could do no more than dim with tears its thousand glowing eyes. Patches of murky yellow in the roiling fog, the lights of Carsultyal gained the illusion of movement, so that one might be uncertain at any one moment whether he gazed down into the mist-hung city or upward toward the cloud-buried stars.
“Your mood is strange tonight, Dessylyn,” Kane observed, meticulously adjusting the fire beneath the tertiary alembic.
She moved away from the tower window. “Is it strange to you, Kane? I marvel that you notice. I’ve told you countless times that this necromancy disgusts me, but always before have my sentiments meant nothing to you.”
“Your sentiments mean a great deal to me, Dessylyn. But as for demanding your attendance here, I only do what I must.”
“Like that?” she hissed in loathing, and pointed to the young girl’s mutilated corpse.
Wearily Kane followed her gesture. Pain etching his brow, he made a sign and barked a stream of harsh syllables. A shadow crossed the open window and fell over the vivisected corpse. When it withdrew, the tortured form had vanished, and a muffled slap of wings faded into the darkness.
“Why do you think to hide your depraved crimes from my sight, Kane? Do you think I’ll forget? Do you think I don’t know the evil that goes into compounding this diabolical drug you force me to drink?”
Kane frowned and stared into the haze of phosphorescent vapor which swirled within the cucurbit. “Are you carrying iron, Dessylyn? There’s asymmetry to the nimbus. I’ve told you not to bring iron within the influence of this generation.”
The dagger was an unearthly chill against the flesh of her thigh. “Your mind is going, Kane. I wear only these rings.”
He ignored her to lift the cup and hurriedly pour in a measure of dark, semi-congealed fluid. The alembic hissed and shivered, seemed to burst with light within its crimson crystal walls. A drop of phosphorescence took substance near the receiver. Kane quickly shifted the chalice to catch the droplet as it plunged.
“Why do you force me to drink this, Kane? Aren’t these chains of fear that hold me to you bondage enough?”
His uncanny stare fixed her, and while it might have been the alchemical flames that made it seem so, she was astonished to see the fatigue, the pain that lined his face. It was as if the untold centuries whose touch Kane had eluded had at last stolen upon him. His hair billowed wildly, his face was shadowed and sunken, and his skin seemed imparted with the sick hue of the phosphorescent vapors.
“Why must you play this game, Dessylyn? Does it please you to see to what limits I go to hold you to me?”
“All that would please me, Kane, is to be free of you.”
“You loved me once. You will love me again.”
“Because you command it? You’re a fool if you believe so. I hate you, Kane. I’ll hate you for the rest of my life. Kill me now, or keep me here till I’m ancient and withered. I’ll still die hating you.”
He sighed and turned from her. His words were breathed into the flame. “You’ll stay with me because I love you, and your beauty will not fade, Dessylyn. In time you may understand. Did you ever wonder at the loneliness of immortality? Have you ever wondered what must be the thoughts of a man cursed to wander through the centuries? A man doomed to a desolate, unending existence—feared and hated wherever men speak his name. A man who can never know peace, whose shadow leaves ruin wherever he passes. A man who has learned that every triumph is fleeting, that every joy is transient. All that he seeks to possess is stolen away from him by the years. His empires will fall, his songs will be forgotten, his loves will turn to dust. Only the emptiness of eternity will remain with him, a laughing skeleton cloaked in memories to haunt his days and nights.
“For such a man as this, for such a curse as this—is it so terrible that he dares to use his dark wisdom to hold something which he loves? If a hundred bright flowers must wither and die in his hand, is it evil that he hopes to keep one, just one, blossom for longer than the brief instant that Time had intended? Even if the flower hated being torn from the soil, would it make him wish to preserve its beauty any less?”
But Dessylyn was not listening to Kane. The billow of a tapestry, where no wind had blown, caught her vision. Could Kane hear the almost silent rasp of hidden hinges? No, he was lost in one of his maddened fits of brooding.
She tried to force her pounding heart to pulse less thunderously, her quick breath to cease its frantic rush. She could see where Mavrsal stood, frozen in the shadow of the tapestry. It seemed impossible that he might creep closer without Kane’s unnatural keenness sensing his presence. The hidden dirk burned her thigh as if it were sheathed in her flesh. Carefully she edged around to Kane’s side, thinking to expose his back to Mavrsal.
“But I see the elixir is ready,” announced Kane, breaking out of his mood. Administering a few amber drops to the fluid, he carefully lifted the chalice of glowing liqueur.
“Here, drink this quickly,” he ordered, extending the vessel.
“I won’t drink your poisoned drugs again.”
“Drink it, Dessylyn.” His eyes held hers.
As in a recurrent nightmare—and there were other nightmares—Dessylyn accepted the goblet. She raised it to her lips, felt the bitter liqueur touch her tongue.
A knife whirled across the chamber. Struck from her languid fingers, the crystal goblet smashed into a thousand glowing shards against the stones.
“No!” shouted Kane in a demonic tone. “No! No!” He stared at the pool of dying phosphorescence in stunned horror.
Leaping from concealment, Mavrsal flung himself toward Kane—hoping to bury his cutlass in his enemy’s heart before the sorcerer recovered. He had not reckoned on Kane’s uncanny reflexes.
The anguished despair Kane displayed burst into inhuman rage at the instant he spun to meet his hidden assailant. Weaponless, he lunged for the sea captain. Mavrsal swung his blade in a natural downward slash, abandoning finesse in the face of an unarmed opponent.
With blurring speed, Kane stepped under the blow and caught the other’s descending wrist with his left hand. Mavrsal heard a scream escape his lips as his arm was jammed to a halt in mid swing—as Kane’s powerful left hand closed about his wrist and shattered the bones beneath the crushed flesh. The cutlass sailed unheeded across the stones.
His face twisted in bestial fury, Kane grappled with the sea captain. Mavrsal, an experienced fighter at rough and tumble, found himself tossed about like a frail child. Kane’s other hand circled its long fingers about his throat, choking off his breath. Desperately he sought to break Kane’s hold, beat at him with his mangled wrist, as Kane with savage laughter carried him back against the wall, holding him by his neck like a broken puppet.
Red fog wavered in his vision—pain was roaring in his ears . . . Kane was slowly strangling him, killing him deliberately, taunting him for his helplessness.
Then he was falling.
Kane gasped and arched his back inward as Dessylyn drove her dagger into his shoulder. Blood splashed her sweat-slippery fist. As Kane twisted away from her blow,
the thin blade lodged in the scapula and snapped at the hilt.
Dessylyn screamed as his backhand blow hurled her to the stones. Frantically she scrambled to Mavrsal’s side, where he lay sprawled on the floor—stunned, but still conscious.
Kane cursed and fell back against his worktable, overturning an alembic that burst like a rotted gourd. “Dessylyn!” he groaned in disbelief. Blood welled from his shoulder, spread across his slumped figure. His left shoulder was crippled, but his deadliness was that of a wounded tiger. “Dessylyn!”
“What did you expect?” she snarled, trying to pull Mavrsal to his feet.
A heavy flapping sound flung foggy gusts through the window. Kane cried out something in an inhuman tongue.
“If you kill Mavrsal, better kill me this time as well!” cried Dessylyn, clinging to the sea captain as he dazedly rose to his knees.
He cast a calculating eye toward the fallen sword. Too far.
“Leave her alone, sorcerer!” rasped Mavrsal. “She’s guilty of no crime but that of hating you and loving me! Kill me now and be done, but you’ll never change her spirit!”
“And I suppose you love her, too,” said Kane in a tortured voice. “You fool. Do you know how many others I’ve killed—other fools who thought they would save Dessylyn from the sorcerer’s evil embrace? It’s a game she often plays. Ever since the first fool . . . only a game. It amuses her to taunt me with her infidelities, with her schemes to leave with another man. Since it amuses her, I indulge her. But she doesn’t love you.”
“Then why did she bury my steel in your back?” Despair made Mavrsal reckless. “She hates you, sorcerer—and she loves me! Keep your lies to console you in your madness! Your sorcery can’t alter Dessylyn’s feelings toward you—nor can it alter the truth you’re forced to see! So kill me and be damned—you can’t escape the reality of your pitiful clutching for something you’ll never hold!”
Kane’s voice was strange, and his face was a mirror of tormented despair. “Get out of my sight!” he rasped. “Get out of here, both of you!
“Dessylyn, I give you your freedom. Mavrsal, I give you Dessylyn’s love. Take your bounty, and go from Carsultyal! I trust you’ll have little cause to thank me!”