Empire of the Worm (24 page)

At last he could stand no more. He
erupted inside her, and she trembled and shook against him, digging her fingers
into his back so deeply blood wept from his flesh.

Gasping, with his member still
inside her, he walked over to the side of the pool and leaned against the
interior of the serpent’s mouth for support.

“Alyssa . . .”

She breathed in his ear, “No.”

He drew back. “What?”

She smiled. “I’m not Alyssa.”

He felt a vague trace of alarm, but
he was so relaxed, so spent, that it was just an echo of what it might have
been. She must be playing a game. Very well. She could be whomever she desired.

“Who are you, then?” he asked
tiredly.

“Their leader.” Her gaze flicked
over his shoulder.

Slowly, he looked over his
shoulder. There were Alyssa’s guards, just dark shapes against the blood-red
mist. Masked by the gurgle of water and Davril and Alyssa’s lovemaking, they
had descended to the lowest pool—and were entering it.

Coming toward Davril.

No longer human, their gray-blue
skin was misted with red foam, and their empty, dead black eyes stared from
cold, fish-like faces.

Davril’s blood flowed cold, and his
member’s wilting accelerated. He tried to jerk away from Alyssa, or whoever she
was, but she constricted about him, squeezing him, almost making him hard
again. Even then her vaginal muscles kept him inside her.

“No,” he choked.

He turned back to look at her, even
as he shoved and wrestled against her, trying to free himself. He didn’t want
to look, but he had to know whom he was inside of.

Black eyes stared at him from a
horrid, nightmarish face with wide, hard, perch-like lips, gulls fluttering at
the neck, a crest rising from her slick grayish head . . .

“
No
,” he heard himself say, even as the Lerumites closed on him from
behind.

“Yes,” she said, but now her voice
was not Alyssa’s; it was a horrid, watery gurgle. And he was
still
inside her!
Violently, he tried to jerk away.

Water stirred nearby. He spun in
time to see one of the Lerumites lift its arm, holding a spear, and bring it
down on his head. Darkness claimed him.

She came to him, smiling. Lights danced to either side of
her.

“My love,” she said.

“Yes . . .” His head swam, and she
was little more than a blur. A beautiful, blond-haired blur. As she drew
closer, she solidified, and he felt a wave of comfort at seeing her beautiful
face.
Alyssa
. Her blue-green eyes
flashed demurely. He blinked at her. Something warm and liquid rolled down his
scalp and over his cheek. Sweat, probably. They had made love recently, hadn’t
they? Everything was fuzzy, and he couldn’t quite remember . . .

She smiled and approached him. He
could smell her, all jasmine and honeysuckle. She ran her fingers over his bare
chest.

“Oh, Davril, you’re so handsome.”

Her fingers were light and soft. The
lights in the room glinted off the pins in her golden hair, making her shimmer.
“Beautiful,” he gasped. The world swam, but Alyssa was firm, solid. She was the
only solid thing in the world. “My love . . .”

She smiled, and her teeth shone
whitely. She was nearly naked. She wore only a thin, silken shift, white with gold
embroidery. She pressed herself to him and laid her soft head against his
chest. He tried to encircle her with his arms, but for some reason his arms
were encumbered. And his legs. No matter. He just enjoyed having her near.

Was he taller than normal? He
seemed to be floating off the ground.

“Oh, Davril, we need you,” she
said.

“Anything,” he swore. His emotion
made his voice thick.

“We need access to the room with
the Jewel in it.” She tilted her face to look up at him, and her blue-green
eyes were moist with tears. He so longed to hold her. Why couldn’t he move his
arms? “We need the key to the room.” She gave him a knowing, cajoling, intimate
smile. “Won’t you tell me where it is?”

He stared down at her, frowning. Slowly,
very slowly, he shook his head. “Alyssa . . .”

“Please. Oh, Davril, we need it
badly. I searched your rooms but couldn’t find it.”

The world began to take shape
around her. He saw that he was in a high dark room, circular and much higher
than it was wide, lit only by two raging braziers some distance apart. A
man-size hole gaped in the center of the bowed floor. He tried to make sense of
it.

Seeing his distraction, she kissed
his chest. “Look at
me
, Davril.
See
how much I need you? I do, Davril. I
do, my love. Just tell me where the key is. I know you have it. I know you hid
it.”

He stared down at her, confused. Slowly,
bits of memory began coming back to him.

“You . . . you’re not Alyssa . . .”
He bunched his shoulders, tried to struggle free of whatever bond held him.
 
Chains rattled. “Where’s Alyssa? What have you
done with her?”

She drew back. “You’re stronger than
most. We’re going to have to do this the hard way. Well, I’m prepared for that.
It’s why I brought you here.”

He tugged his arms, then looked up,
though doing so pained his neck. His wrists were in manacles, and he hung by
chains from a protrusion above. Many protrusions jutted from the walls of the
high chamber, row upon row of them. Most were shaped liked thorns, or fangs,
countless rows receding up until the faint red light gave out. And the hole in
the center of the floor . . .
the gullet
. . .

He was in the High Priest’s private
sanctum, the room Davril had sealed off when he’d taken over the priest’s
residence, and for good reason. Many had died here over the centuries, and it
remained a dark and terrible place. The entire floor was shaped like the
Serpent’s mouth, curved to imitate the mouth’s curvatures, complete with a
gullet at the center and giant fangs sticking from the walls to either side of
the door.

The closed door. Two tall figures
stood to either side of it: Alyssa’s guards, or the fish-priests that had
replaced them. Two more would stand on the outside. As for his own guards, he
supposed they had been slain.
At least
Jeselri escaped.

He grimaced and focused on the one
who had taken Alyssa’s face and form. “Where is she?” he demanded again.

“
I
will ask the questions,” she said. “None will hear your screams. None
heard theirs.” She gestured to the endless rows of thick fangs receding above
them. “Can you feel the ghosts clinging here? I can.”

He blinked at her. “What did happen
here?” He had never understood the reasons for the protrusions.

“The High Priest impaled his
victims on those sharpened spikes. Hundreds of them at a time would be arrayed,
screaming, on those thorns above, and their bloods would drip on him as he
prayed. Can you imagine the cacophony of all of them screaming at once,
glistening on the walls like overripe fruit? And the smell. And yes, there was
a smell. You see those spikes with the upturned ends? That was to prevent the
guts from slipping off. You see, sometimes the High Priest did not impale his
sacrifices but would make a small incision in their abdomen, unspool their
entrails, and hang the victims by their intestines from those barbs overhead. There
they would writhe and dangle by their own guts until the guts ripped and the
bodies fell, and the reek of torn intestines filled the air, along with the
stench of blood old and new. The High Priest wouldn’t mind. He would go on
praying, occasionally shoving one of the bodies down the gullet when it got too
ripe.” She smiled. “He slew many thousands here, slowly and painfully—as did his
predecessor, and
his
predecessor
before him. So, you see, this is the perfect room for what I am about to do.”

She held up a small, fine blade
that glimmered in the vague light. “You will tell me where the key is.”

He stared at the blade. When he
spoke, he tried to keep his voice from quivering. “Never.” He did not succeed.

Her grin widened. There was nothing
of Alyssa in it now. “We shall see.”

The blade slashed down. Pain filled
his side. He screamed, twisting away. He could not go far. He tried to kick at
her, but his ankles were tied together and his legs were bound by chains to the
floor. The Alyssa-thing just smiled at him. A few flecks of his blood had
spattered her cheek, and her little pink tongue darted out and licked it up.

She slashed him again. Red swam in
his vision, and the world receded. All that existed was the pain. She slashed
again and again, and he was not even aware of his screaming until he felt the
rawness in his throat.

At last, covered in dripping red
droplets, the Alyssa-thing stepped back, panting. With an exhilarated smile,
she said, “
Now
will you tell me where
the key is?”

“Show me your true form,” he
choked. “I can’t abide you looking like that. Show me your scales, fish.”

Suddenly her skin changed color,
and she seemed to grow several inches. Dark color ran through her hair until it
was auburn, and her nose grew longer, her lips wider. She’d become a beautiful,
stately woman, not a Lerumite.

“I don’t . . .” Blood dripped down
his scalp and stung his eyes. More blood dripped down his chest to tangle in
his pubic hair, or run down his legs and drip off his toes. The world had gone
foggy again. For a moment he thought he might be dreaming.

“I only took the form of a Lerumite
earlier to needle you,” she said. “I am known by many names. You might have
heard me called Hiera.”

“Hiera . . .” It clicked. “The Lady
of Asragot!”

“That is one of my names.”

I
slept with a goddess
. “It was you that began this whole affair. Your
awakening . . .”

“When my flock had grown large
enough, before your hounds could prune their numbers, I awoke and led them down
into the sea, to sunken Nagradin, to the altar in His great palace. There their
blood roused my Lord, the Great Uulos, who was then able to move the earth. Fires
blossomed on the bottom of the sea, and continents shifted, and mountains rose
from the deep, the mountains of Nagradin, which was once my home. I was one of
those that fled with the Great One when His Circle betrayed Him.” Her eyes
narrowed. “I can smell their taint on you now, Husan, and you should know that
I’ll go harder on you for that.”

“You raised Nagradin . . .” He shook
his head. “Don’t you realize Uulos is an enemy to us all?”

She smiled indulgently. “I’m not
human. I merely took this form to ingratiate myself with the Asragotians before
I put myself to slumber. They thought me a messiah, and so I was, of a sort. I
will be unable to retake my
true
form
until Master has devoured the Jewel. Then there will be nothing left to oppose
Him.” Again she licked at a speck of Davril’s blood that had flecked her cheek.
She stepped forward, and the blood on her blade dripped down her white fingers
to spatter the floor. “Thus this form, at least for now. It’s time. Speak! Or
suffer.”
He spat on her face.

She wiped the spittle from her
cheek—and slashed.

For a while, his world became pain,
and more pain. Fire raged through him, became him, and needles riddled his
throat from screaming. He was conscious only of agony and the jade fire in
Hiera’s eyes. She used not only her blade, but whips and pliers and white-hot
pokers laid over the braziers. He was only vaguely aware of the pokers sizzling
against his skin, though he did later remember the stench of his own flesh
burning. And he remembered her laughter, her horrid laughter, shaking the walls.

At last, covered in blood and
sweat, she stepped back, smiling in satisfaction. She called one of the guards
over and whispered in his ear. The guard approached Davril, who was so
delirious he didn’t know if he was awake or dreaming. But he felt the guard
bite him plainly enough, though he was too exhausted to scream. The Lerumite
took his blood, more than Davril thought he had left, then stepped back.

The guise of the guard sloughed
away. The skin color changed slightly, the build grew taller, but more finely-boned;
the face became young and handsome, crowned by curly red-gold hair. Clear blue
eyes gazed out from the familiar face.

“No . . .” said Davril.

The other Davril turned to Hiera,
the Lady of Asragot. “Am I convincing, my Lady?”

“You are. Now go.”

The Davril-thing bowed and left the
room. Davril blinked dumbly after him. What did the creature intend to do?

The Lady of Asragot nodded to the
other guard, who pulled a few levers, and Davril tumbled to the floor in a limp
wet heat, striking his jaw. He barely noticed it. He felt the click as his
manacles were unshackled, and he tried to swat at his captors, but they just
laughed. At last he flipped himself over, feeling like a fish gasping for air,
and stared up at the Lady, framed by all the endless rows of thorns above.

“What . . . the other . . . ?”

“He goes to fetch the key.”

“But I never . . .”

Her smile turned pityingly. “You
don’t even remember, do you? I’ve seen it before. At the last, speaking is just
an animal reaction, an unavoidable reflex to preserve life. Some aren’t even
aware of it afterward. No matter.” She held her slim little blade again, and
Davril’s blood dripped from it onto his mutilated chest. He only had one nipple
now, and almost idly he wondered where it had gone.

She fingered her sword, staring
down at him. “A shame to waste you. An emperor would make a worthy sacrifice to
the Great One. Yet I dare not let you live that long. You’ve proven yourself a
menace, and not without resources.”

She nodded to the remaining guard,
and it grabbed Davril by the ankle. Unemotionally, the Lerumite hauled Davril
over toward the black hole of the Serpent’s gullet.