bicep.
“Greetings,” said Tortha, with a purple-rimmed smirk of his lips. “Step this way.”
He led me –or forced me, truly told–to advance out over the water. Vertigo tugged at my senses, but the walkway extended automatically beneath our feet, keeping exact pace with our progress. The jingling of my chains mingled with Jyla’s chanting, which never faltered during the age it took us to cross the pool, and to the tune of this discordant plainsong I arrived at the pedestal.
She did not acknowledge my presence.
Tortha cast me rough-handed at the brazier’s base, and there secured the chains upon my wrists to an iron ring embedded deep within the oily black stone. My reflection sullied its surface–ragged beard, soiled clothing, pallid skin, and fear acid-etched upon my brow.
After watching Tortha withdraw, I turned my attention to Jyla, the author and mistress of my misery. Her sheer silken robes whispered as she moved, but where before I might have found the sight and sound erotic, this day I felt uncurious and detached from the business of living. Perhaps I had exhausted all possible emotion during my incarceration. Perhaps I had given up. Whatever the reason, fate no longer held claim upon my life.
I knew she wove magic, but to what purpose?
I wondered again at Jyla’s obsession. No-one beneath the suns is born evil. They choose their path –so my father taught me. Though a child may do wrong, and be taught wrong, true depravity is the acquired habit of adults. But Jyla! Could ought but Ulim’s own spawn be so steeped in evil? Jyla, mark my words, would maim, ruin, and torture without hesitation or regret. Small wonder Janos had chosen to live in hiding! To my knowledge he had never left Yarabi Vale, yet I knew he must have travelled the lands to acquire his great knowledge. What was his secret? I burned to know. It must be a cause dark and sinister, vast and terrible, that this murderess should pursue it unto death …
As for Tortha, he had brute strength. He despised the weak. Jyla’s service offer ed opportunity aplenty to bloody his hands, I assumed, a duty he patently took cruel pleasure in perfecting. He had come to my cell one night, reeking of lethola spirit, to spit and rail at me through the bars. And the weal-marks of his whipping were not yet healed.
What would my parents have made of this? Dragged to the tower of a Sorceress, bound to her whim and pleasure? And Janos? I had taken flight rather than fight; made no attempt to save him. Coward! Fool! Fool through and through … had I but done differently on that fateful night, had I but driven past! Ay, and had I not thought it through, considered the angles, replayed those events until I loathed myself with a loathing that burned as glowing coals in my heart? Why ignore the trader’s grephe? Why tell Jyla where Janos lived? Why tarry in Elaki Fountain, acting the whore?
I had betrayed the man I loved as a father.
Would he ever forgive me? Was he already dead?
As my bitter reminiscence proceeded, I became aware that the chanting had stopped. A silence as deep as black waters surrounded us. Jyla’s stony orbs studied me as though I were a loathsome species of crawling insect she had discovered on her bedroom floor and was contemplating crushing with her heel.
She said, “You’re bleeding.”
I replied in low tones, “What is it to you?”
“I need you alive and well –for the moment.” Jyla offered this without inflection, not threatening.
Had ought changed? Patience, Arlak, I counselled myself. Wait her out. Do not give in to your enervation …
At length she continued, “You intrigue me, Arlak Sorlakson. You hail from a Roymerian village which even by Umarite standards is a stinking hovel. Yet your bearing is worthy of a Hassutl. Here are sensitive hands. Hands made not for dirt and calluses, but for the quim, for poetry, and musicianship. Perhaps … perhaps even for magic.”
She touched me then, just the faintest
“Greetings,” said Tortha, with a purple-rimmed smirk of his lips. “Step this way.”
He led me –or forced me, truly told–to advance out over the water. Vertigo tugged at my senses, but the walkway extended automatically beneath our feet, keeping exact pace with our progress. The jingling of my chains mingled with Jyla’s chanting, which never faltered during the age it took us to cross the pool, and to the tune of this discordant plainsong I arrived at the pedestal.
She did not acknowledge my presence.
Tortha cast me rough-handed at the brazier’s base, and there secured the chains upon my wrists to an iron ring embedded deep within the oily black stone. My reflection sullied its surface–ragged beard, soiled clothing, pallid skin, and fear acid-etched upon my brow.
After watching Tortha withdraw, I turned my attention to Jyla, the author and mistress of my misery. Her sheer silken robes whispered as she moved, but where before I might have found the sight and sound erotic, this day I felt uncurious and detached from the business of living. Perhaps I had exhausted all possible emotion during my incarceration. Perhaps I had given up. Whatever the reason, fate no longer held claim upon my life.
I knew she wove magic, but to what purpose?
I wondered again at Jyla’s obsession. No-one beneath the suns is born evil. They choose their path –so my father taught me. Though a child may do wrong, and be taught wrong, true depravity is the acquired habit of adults. But Jyla! Could ought but Ulim’s own spawn be so steeped in evil? Jyla, mark my words, would maim, ruin, and torture without hesitation or regret. Small wonder Janos had chosen to live in hiding! To my knowledge he had never left Yarabi Vale, yet I knew he must have travelled the lands to acquire his great knowledge. What was his secret? I burned to know. It must be a cause dark and sinister, vast and terrible, that this murderess should pursue it unto death …
As for Tortha, he had brute strength. He despised the weak. Jyla’s service offer ed opportunity aplenty to bloody his hands, I assumed, a duty he patently took cruel pleasure in perfecting. He had come to my cell one night, reeking of lethola spirit, to spit and rail at me through the bars. And the weal-marks of his whipping were not yet healed.
What would my parents have made of this? Dragged to the tower of a Sorceress, bound to her whim and pleasure? And Janos? I had taken flight rather than fight; made no attempt to save him. Coward! Fool! Fool through and through … had I but done differently on that fateful night, had I but driven past! Ay, and had I not thought it through, considered the angles, replayed those events until I loathed myself with a loathing that burned as glowing coals in my heart? Why ignore the trader’s grephe? Why tell Jyla where Janos lived? Why tarry in Elaki Fountain, acting the whore?
I had betrayed the man I loved as a father.
Would he ever forgive me? Was he already dead?
As my bitter reminiscence proceeded, I became aware that the chanting had stopped. A silence as deep as black waters surrounded us. Jyla’s stony orbs studied me as though I were a loathsome species of crawling insect she had discovered on her bedroom floor and was contemplating crushing with her heel.
She said, “You’re bleeding.”
I replied in low tones, “What is it to you?”
“I need you alive and well –for the moment.” Jyla offered this without inflection, not threatening.
Had ought changed? Patience, Arlak, I counselled myself. Wait her out. Do not give in to your enervation …
At length she continued, “You intrigue me, Arlak Sorlakson. You hail from a Roymerian village which even by Umarite standards is a stinking hovel. Yet your bearing is worthy of a Hassutl. Here are sensitive hands. Hands made not for dirt and calluses, but for the quim, for poetry, and musicianship. Perhaps … perhaps even for magic.”
She touched me then, just the faintest
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