Crypt of the Violator

by K. J. Coble

  Thyss-Ulea leaned over her, close her face. Her teeth looked like fangs and her lips shined wetly like blood. “Don’t fear,” she purred. “It won’t be long now.”

  Lyssa slid under a surface of frigid black and was lost.

  ASYRA FELT THE NARROW corridor begin to slope upwards and her pace quickened. She’d begun to wonder if it’d ever end, a slow creep of terror into her blood that maybe there was no way out. She held the ring—Clover’s ring—out in front of her, desperate for any detail that might confirm escape.

  The passage was climbing. Ahead, she could see what look like the beginning of a stairwell. She began to rush, breath coming out in sobs. She was exhausted. She was haunted by the death, broken upon a pit of spikes, that still stared out of her skull. She was trapped.

  She reached the stairs and began to climb. It was a narrow, dark way, ascended to whatever unknown height awaited her. Up had to be better than this endless trek through cramped shadow, scuttling along what felt like the basement of the world. It reminded her of the sewers below the Pasha’s harem, crawling through a rotten, reeking murk to emerge in the benighted bazaar and there to thieve and craft her final escape.

  Escape, here, came to an end in a weird, cramped compartment, the climb ending abruptly. Asyra’s heart hammered with sudden panic as she shined the light about. Another cruel trick? Another trap? But, no, the ring’s brilliance picked out the creases of what looked like a hatch above her. She put a hand up, pushed. Stone grated. There was weight. But there was also give. She shifted about and put her shoulder blades up against it, pushed hard.

  With a grumble of moving stone, Asyra forced the hatch up and to the side. For a red, straining moment, she wasn’t sure she could finish the job, the terrible weight against her. But something seemed to break loose and, with a shriek, she flung it aside to strike a floor with a resounding crash that went on forever in a new dark.

  Asyra shined the ring light around her—and was instantly sorry.

  She’d emerged not from a hatch in some floor, as her senses had first indicated, but from under the lid of a sarcophagus. Around her, in a featureless, circular chamber, bones heaped upon a dusty floor. A single passage led the way out, this littered, too, with fragments of humanity. The air felt as still and stale as the dead.

  Hiking a leg over the edge of the false sarcophagus, Asyra leapt down to the floor. Stepping gingerly around the yellowy-white remains, she crept to the passage, paused to shine her light down it, saw nothing, and moved on. Dust a quarter inch thick puffed under her feet. She grimaced when a toe encountered a skull, half-buried. Sidestepping it brought her heel crackling down on a curve of ribs. Hissing, she scrambled ahead, had to keep going.

  At first, she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. But, as she kept going, her strides lengthening, she realized she did see a light ahead, not just a trick of the ring. This new illumination had a warm, sunny hue, almost felt warm as she approached, rays of it catching dust motes in the air. The passage curved, turned sharply.

  Asyra pulled herself to a halt. In this place of killer traps and animated corpses, could she trust her senses? The welcoming glow ahead drew her, but was it real? Nothing here had been, so far, except for death.

  Trust what you see...what you feel...

  Asyra stiffened. The voice, mute for some time, purred behind her eyes, a honey presence, sweetening, calming. After her ordeal in the dark, she wanted it to be real. With a raw surge of desperation, she needed it to be so.

  It is, Asyra, the voice said. I am real. Come to the light and you will see.

  Despite the howl of every instinct in protest, she moved on.

  The passage brought her into a long, columned chamber, trilling with the sounds of fountains, tittering with the voices of girls and monkeys chained as pets. The air smelled of palms and incense and oiled flesh. She had squint as a blaze of light that looked and felt like the sun shafted through an open sky light in the ceiling.

  Asyra blinked, and recognized her surroundings.

  She was in the harem. She was in what had been home for most of her childhood.

  Giggles drew her gaze to one side as she stepped, almost numb, into the atrium of what had been the east wing of the sanctum of Pasha Parvuuz in mighty Akbir. He kept this area private, no visitors, a place for the playthings, where there was no work, no demands upon them. Amongst columns, movement materialized in the shadows. She recognized a circle of the girls clustered around a hooka, drawing on its many pipes as purplish tendrils of whisperweed smoke twined into the air above it. Giggles became sighs as they leaned back on heaps of pillows and their eyes fogged over in drugged delight.

  A low growl sent ripples along Asyra’s nerves. A striped shape sauntered along the middle of the tiled floor, muscled and scarred, golden eyes flickering up at her. The tiger yawned as it passed her, showed rows of fangs, seeming hardly to notice. Fed beyond the need to hunt, and charmed just to be sure, the big cat—Raker—was a curiosity of Parvuuz’s, an old, battered brute he’d rescued from the games and mostly-tamed.

  Mostly. Asyra remembered a time when a client of Parvuuz got violent with one of the girls, and Raker put a bloody end to that.

  Whispers wormed from the shadows to Asyra’s left, in the far corner near the exit. Smoky eyes flickered in the dark and secrets hissed from lips to ears. Some of the older girls crouched there, later teens, favorites of the Pasha’s and cruel with that knowledge. Cruelty gained an extra, sadistic edge with fear—they all knew their age doomed them; the Pasha kept few beyond twenty and all could expect an uncertain future.

  The older girls had despised Asyra who, for her charms and cunning, had remained longer than most. She’d been a true favorite. She’d been marked for it. The others’ whispers and schemes had grown beyond nasty to truly murderous.

  Another familiar shape detached itself from their hissing coven and moved out onto the sun-warmed tiles, knelt beside the fountain and the pool running through their center. Painfully slender, but with wiry muscles of surprising strength, this one’s build made him an effete male, rather than another chittering harlot. Asyra drew in a breath of surprise and took a step towards him as he ran fingers through the water, stirred rose petals sprinkled across its surface.

  “Fadin,” Asyra whispered.

  The boy looked up from the pool, smiled without surprise, as though she was expected. Eyeliner accentuated a deep brown, almost black stare. Long, jet, square-cut hair framed a narrow, triangular face bronzed by the sun and so pretty as to be nearly womanly. Kindness flitted at the corners of his stare, the warmth of a boy whose humanity the beautiful sadism of this place hadn’t broken. But sadness crouched there, too, an endless melancholy.

  Because he’s dead, a part of Asyra lurchingly remembered.

  A gong rang somewhere, brassy, harsh, and instantly triggering a flinch from Asyra. She knew that dread note well; the announcement of the Pasha’s approach. Movement fluttered throughout the hall, the girls scattering for shadowed exits, even Raker rumbling irritably and padding from the chamber. Only Fadin remained, seemed dreamily unfazed by that which, in his life, would’ve been the gravest of warnings.

  “You should go,” Asyra told the weird shade before her.

  He smiled at her, but did not comply.

  “Fadin, please...” She reached out for him, remembering with a surge of nausea that night he really hadn’t fled...and what happened after that.

  But Asyra’s hand encountered nothing, no resistance, no flesh, only air through which her hand passed effortlessly. Her jaw hung open in confusion. She could feel the light of the sun, smell the semi-tropical sultriness of blossoms’ breaths. The flesh knelt before her gleamed with oils and a faint sheen of the day’s heat.

  But Fadin wasn’t there.

  “Just memories, I’m afraid,” the voice of before echoed through the illusory atrium. “Your memories, to be certain, but ghosts of the past, unreachable, as they all are.”

  Asyra looked up to see the far
side of the chamber shiver and darken, as though some impossibly thin curtain had fluttered across it. Through this momentary gloom—and the illusion of the atrium entrance—stepped the terrible beauty that owned the Voice.

  Thyss-Ulea, onetime Queen of the Nightmare Lands, stood in the full finery of her station. Darkened olive flesh shined under a skimpy shift of linens so fine as to be nearly sheer, hinting at a figure already quite obvious. A cloak of purple shimmered at her back, seemed almost a living thing as she raised one arm up against the doorframe and leaned with a hip cocked out, the other palm rested upon it. Jewels glinted from a brooch, more from a necklace, even more from the high headdress perched atop her haughty brow. Painted eyelids drooped languidly over sparkling eyes as she regarded Asyra. She half-smiled and her red, red lips suggested hunger.

  “Who was he?” she asked, gesturing at the image of Fadin. “A lover of yours?”

  “A friend,” Asyra replied with a sad sigh. “And for it, he paid a terrible price.”

  “Dead?” Thyss-Ulea descended the short flight of steps into the atrium. Asyra noticed that the floor darkened wherever her feet planted, the illusion fading and a dusty, stone floor showing through it. “The master of the house slew him?”

  “If this is my memory, and you’re the one recreating it here, then you know the answer.”

  The dead queen smiled a little, as if somehow pleased, and shrugged. “You’re creating it; I’m just making it visible. Tell me anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because through the retelling, I can learn more about you. Images can be forgotten, or misremembered. Words make an impression.”

  “Why?” Asyra felt herself harden a little, grow more suspicious. “Why do you want to learn about me? What’s so special about me?”

  “I have waited for you, across an endless wasteland of years,” she replied, slowing her approach as she drew near. “And you have called back, even before this lifetime, even when you were a half-formed thought in the minds of the gods. I always knew you’d come.”

  “Come and do what?”

  Thyss-Ulea stopped a stride away and regarded her. Aysra could feel her warmth, not like these memory-images. And she felt it as the queen reached out and set a hand upon her shoulder. She could have collapsed at the warmth and the surge of something else—she wasn’t sure it could be called lust or desire; but want.

  “Come,” Thyss-Ulea said, “and be one with me” she licked her lips and revealed a flash of teeth that seemed almost too sharp “and together we will be free.”

  Asyra pulled back a half-step, some fragment of caution remaining in her. It broke the contact between them and she shivered, could feel the true cool of the place that lie beneath the illusion. “What does that mean; be one with you?”

  The dead queen smiled and there was no mistaking the points of her teeth. “I think you know what I mean.”

  Asyra shivered and wasn’t sure if it was thrill or dread. “But you’re...” she wanted to say dead “...not fully here, are you? How is that possible?”

  “Magic, of course,” Thyss-Ulea replied. “I’m surprised I have to explain that to someone who’s already had some experience of it.”

  She did. And the mention of it brought back the memory of the woman who’d taught her much about it. Asyra’s caution intensified, as did her suspicion. This all felt too good, too right. She retreated a step. “I do know something of it—enough to know its trickery, its lies.”

  A little ripple crossed Thyss-Ulea’s face. But the smile remained. “This is no lie.” She gestured around. “This is your past, seen again with my assistance...my magic.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to see this past.”

  “Maybe you need to.”

  Asyra took another full step back from her, shook her head. “What I think I need is to get out of here!” She gripped the handle of her sword—though how she’d ply it against illusions and ghosts, she had no idea. “This is just another snare, just like every other trick in this damnable place!” Lips peeled back from her teeth in rage, at another memory, so recent it still bled in her mind. “You killed Clover! You’re behind all this!”

  Thyss-Ulea chortled and shook her head in obvious regret. “So much fire, so much anger...” She sighed and smiled warmly, held her hands out to either side. “Traps and mazes and monsters...they’re my guards and wardens. And this place, is my prison.” She hazarded a step closer to Asyra, who retreated reflexively. “I killed no one, Asyra. But, I fear, you and yours have paid a price for trying to free me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to free you,” Asyra replied hoarsely. But she wasn’t sure she believed. Thoughts and memory jumbled, all tangled, fogged. This damned place! Thyss-Ulea’s damned, beautiful, desirous presence! It was all emmesh, all wrenched into a knot. She shook her head. “We were trying to get to the Emperor.”

  “Are you sure?” Thyss-Ulea smirked. “Or is that the excuse you gave yourself to justify coming here, because you knew you’d find me?”

  “I’m sure!” Asyra snapped. Cold, clammy hands of realization, of guilt tightened about her throat. She could not—would not—consider that Clover had died because she’d been led by a dream into this deadly place!

  Thyss-Ulea’s smirk endured, mocked the lie. The dead queen turned once more to the image of Fadin, still knelt at the pool’s edge, still stirring rose petals. “Weren’t you going to tell me what happened to him?”

  “You already know. He was murdered.”

  “Your Master did it? Did he defy him in some way?”

  “No,” Asyra croaked. “The other girls did it, to get at me. They hated me, because he kept me around.” She swallowed and put a hand to her breast, felt filthy suddenly. “He didn’t even...use me for anything, after a while. He preferred the younger ones for that. We just talked. I think he enjoyed my intelligence. He had me tutored. I learned to read, write. There were acrobatics lessons and calisthenics and even unarmed fighting. I was a project.”

  “And the others were jealous?”

  Asyra shook her head, feeling her gorge rise. “No. Well, yes. But more, they were terrified. As long as he kept me around, he could only afford the others so long. One after another, they disappeared, sold off to clients of his. And everyone knew what kind of clients he kept.” She shivered again. “But always I stayed. They hated me, but I think, too, they also needed me gone—if any of them were to survive. That was the lesson of the harem; you’re either on top, or crushed beneath.”

  “Why didn’t they come right at you, then?” Thyss-Ulea asked with a glance at Fadin.

  “Because the Pasha would know what had happened and punish them,” Asyra replied. “So, instead they sought to drive me mad with grief. Because Fadin was a friend, because he was decent, a spark of light in a dark place. He read, too, enjoyed poetry. We would talk about it, here, by the pool.” She winced as the bloody memories forced their way like vomit to the top of her thoughts. “They killed him here, by pool. They fell upon him with knives they’d stolen or sewing needles or whatever they could find. In a rush they cut it him down.”

  Asyra gagged, stopped, let a sob burst from her chest. She buried her face in her hands and tears she’d suppressed a decade poured out. She could hear her own crying, like a wild thing’s howls of anguish. But she let it echo on, couldn’t stop it.

  “He was a simple, kind boy,” she wailed. “And they botched it, fled, left him in his own blood here, by the pool. I found him like that. He didn’t have enough left to speak, just stared at me. I don’t think he was scared, then, when the end came.” With those last words the sobs slowed. Deep breaths came, interspersed between them, until the fresh air drove out the foul fog of this most horrid of her memories. “I think, maybe, I helped him at the last.”

  Thyss-Ulea nodded once, and turned to wave a hand. The illusion of Fadin vanished. “What happened then?” she asked.

  Remembered rage stoked in Asyra’s chest. “I killed them.” She glowered at Thyss-Ulea, who o
nly continued that infuriating, satisfied smirk. “I told you I learned to fight. And I used that skill. I didn’t get them all, and I don’t know they all deserved it. But I found the ring-leaders.” She was shaking and her fists were clenched. “I got justice for Fadin. And, then, I got the hells out of the harem, out of Akbir, out of all of it!”

  “And that is why I needed you to remember, Asyra et Mathala et Fahldan,” said Thyss-Ulea.

  The dead queen held up a hand, made a strange gesture, and suddenly the atrium fell away, as though it had been a curtain of sun and finery, now drawn back. The pair of them stood now in a dusty, crumbling chamber of pocked columns and torches guttering so low in half-rotten sconces that Asyra’s ring light actually provided most of the light.

  “This is my harem,” Thyss-Ulea said, “this is my prison, where a madman in his unholy lust and madness locked me for the ages.” She put her hands to her chest. “And I don’t even have the comfort of a young body and the hot course of blood in veins.” For an instant, the vision of her sleek flesh crumbled at the bones and decay were visible. “I hold this together only with a sustained, draining force of will!”

  Asyra stared at the dead queen for a long time. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you made me see this, relive it. So that I’d know...we are alike?”

  “We are the same,” she said and moved close to her. Tentatively, she reached out, and when Asyra didn’t recoil, she set her hands upon her shoulder. For all that she was a ghost, clinging to the fabric of the material world by her fingertips, she felt real. “The gods, the world, people...it doesn’t matter. All of them made us prisoners.” Her hands tightened. “The only difference is that you escaped.”

  “And now you want me to help you get out?”

  A shiver went through Thyss-Ulea. “That’s right.”

  “How do I do that?”

  The dead queen raised a hand from Asyra’s shoulder to touch her face. Lips peeled fully away from sharp teeth, gleaming wetly and white, yet somehow not hideous, almost alluring. Thyss-Ulea’s caress seemed to dull all instincts.