Automatically, Bianca started to utter the incantations that would destroy the creature—only to realize, then, that whether Sophia understood what she was doing or not, strangling a sorceress is perhaps the safest way to kill her.
She couldn't speak a word!
In fact, her mind was becoming so fuzzy from lack of air that she wasn't sure she could have remembered the words well enough to incant them properly, even if she had been able to speak.
Bianca went into a paroxysm of terror, writhing and twisting on the floor. But everywhere she went, Sophia stayed on top of her—like some hideous leech, sucking out her life.
Desperately, she planted her hands on what part of Sophia she could reach. Nothing more than her hips, unfortunately, which were protected by the woman's tattered but still richly thick garments. The pain touch worked much better on bare skin—especially skin with a lot of nerves close to the surface. Even if she could have clawed her way past the fabric to Sophia's buttocks, she'd only have been touching fatty flesh.
Still, Bianca used the last of her strength to send agony pouring into Sophia's body as best she could. And a great deal of agony it was, too, despite the handicaps. Bianca Casarini was fighting for her life, and the agony she summoned was driven by a will to live that had sent her into every foulness imaginable, for years.
It was perhaps the worst thing she could have done, not that she really had any options. Sophia's body arched like a suddenly drawn bow from the excruciating pain—but her hands, clenched by the same agony, never let go of the scarf. The silk that had been choking Casarini now collapsed her windpipe completely, crushing it into ruin.
Bianca spit out blood, feeling her life going with it.
I can't believe it! Sophia Tomaselli!
I WANTED TO LIVE FOREVER!
"She's dead," Eneko said grimly. "I felt the monster dying. I knew the moment she was gone."
He knelt and crossed himself, then kissed the crucifix, reverentially—and yet, Erik thought, with some other emotion as well. Guilt? Regret? Though Erik could not imagine what Eneko Lopez could possibly have to feel guilty about, at least in this instance.
"How did she die?" asked Erik.
After he rose to his feet, Lopez shrugged. "That, I couldn't tell you. I am not clairvoyant, you know. I could simply sense the monster's frantic attempts to use magic to forestall her death—somebody or something was killing her, that much I know, though I couldn't tell you who or what—and her eventual failure."
His expression was grimmer than Manfred had ever seen it—and Eneko was a man given to a grim view of the world. " 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,' " he heard the priest murmur. "Still . . . the beast died in great despair as well as fury. It was fitting."
And you shall live forever, Bianca Casarini. Oh, yes, most certainly.
Confused, Bianca opened her eyes. She was more confused, then, by what she saw.
First, because all the images seemed duplicated—no, multiplied, many times over.
Oh, you'll get accustomed to compound eyes soon enough. Perhaps unfortunately, from your point of view. Not mine, of course.
The strange voice seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Bianca's eyes moved over the . . . landscape?
Hard to tell. It just seemed like a world made of cables. A kind of enormous net of cables. Dirty-white in color, stretching to what seemed like infinity. She sensed that the effect was not simply caused by the weird multiplication of her vision.
A reddish glow somewhere to her left drew her gaze that way. Dully, she stared at it for a while. How long, she couldn't say. She seemed to have difficulty determining the passage of time.
The color of the glow changed, slowly; shading from red to yellow to, eventually, a particularly loathsome shade of yellow-green. The color of slime, if slime were as hot as lava.
Also the color she'd once seen, in a glimpse she'd gotten of the Great One. The eyes that weren't eyes at all, but something that had reminded her at the time of staring into bottomless, volcanic cesspools.
Welcome, Bianca Casarini! Welcome to eternity!
Realization finally came to her. She opened her mouth to scream.
Tried to, rather. She had no mouth. Looking down, all she could see was a proboscis of some kind, where she'd once had a nose.
Looking down still further, at her body, she saw that her lungs were now on the outside, red-veined and pulsing.
Oh, yes, that. I'm afraid that certain physical laws still apply here. On this level, at any rate. There are quite a bit more than nine, incidentally. How many? Hard to say. Depends on which mathematical formula you use.
She tried to scream again. The only effect was to make her proboscis grow more rigid—and cause the lungs to pulsate quicker.
Yes, yes, I'm afraid so. Volume to surface-area ratios, that sort of thing. All very tawdry, I'm afraid. It also means that discreet little spiracles won't do the trick at all. So I've had to modify your lungs a bit.
It does make you hideously ugly, true. But, then, that's now the least of your problems. I'm afraid Crocell lost his sexual appetites long ago—and wouldn't care in the least if you were still as comely as you were.
Paralysis was giving way to terror. Bianca's eyes now ranged down the rest of her body.
There were
way
too many legs, and she was quite sure that wasn't simply a function of her strange new vision. Skinny, weirdly jointed,
hairy
legs.
Six legs, to be precise. I'm something of a stickler when it comes to tradition. Very conservative, actually, despite my reputation as a rebel.
Ah. Here comes Crocell, now. Give him a nice run, would you, Bianca? I have to keep him well-exercised, for the rare occasions when I let him out.
She sensed the vibration first. Looking down, she saw that her feet—
feet? what were those horrid claw-like things?
—were planted on one such cable. The cable seemed to be undulating. As if some great weight had been placed upon it.
She twisted her body—awkwardly, since she was unaccustomed to its new shape—and saw that a monster was moving toward her along the cable. Like a great spider, except for the face.
It was the face that finally broke what was left of Bianca Casarini's self-control. For some reason, the sight of a middle-aged man's face on such a monster—except that he possessed mandibles as well as jaws—was more horrifying than anything else.
Worst of all, was the look of bleak despair in the man's eyes.
Utter and complete despair, such as Bianca had never seen before—not even in the eyes of her own victims.
Crocell was a much better cheater than you were, Bianca. Oh, much better. That's why he gets a privileged position here. So to speak.
As I said, I even let him out now and then. A privilege which, I'm afraid, you'll not be enjoying.
Bianca fled down the cable, shrieking silently. She could feel the cable thrumming beneath her feet, under the treads of something much heavier than she.
Oh, please, Bianca! Have no fear—after he sucks out your juices, I'll replenish them again. It's agonizingly painful, of course, but not terminal in the least.
If only she could scream!
No, no, not in the least bit terminal. Even though you were planning to cheat me, I'm not at all vengeful. Despite what you may have heard.
If only she could scream!
You wanted eternal life, Bianca Casarini. And now you have it.
If only she could scream!
As food.
"They've landed on Vidos Island!"
Like everyone else, Benito scrambled out of bed and rushed for a viewpoint of the island off to the northeast of the Citadel. Benito eyed the beached vessels on the island with impotent fury. The castle's defenders were firing, but it was obviously too little and far too late.
Vidos Island had guarded the northern sea access to the Citadel. Now, with the island obviously under heavy attack, the people of the fortress realized that there would be no place that would be entirely free from cannon fire. There would be no respite. The cannon from Vidos would not be able to hit the Citadel, but the Byzantine fleet would now be able to sail into that area and shell the Citadel without coming under direct fire from both flanks.
Benito strode off in search of Manfred. He found him standing with Erik contemplating the situation grimly. "They're in the outer walls of the island already," said the Icelander. "The keep might hold out a while, but it won't be for too long."
"And they'll be able to harry the northeast too." Benito sighed. With Emeric's latest increase in bombardment on the city itself, rather than just the walls, much of the population had taken to at least sleeping over there. True, very few people had been killed by the cannon fire, but it was frightening and hurt morale. Knowing there was no place that they could truly get away from the possibility of a cannonball killing them—or, worse, their children—was going to dent morale even further. Emeric was slowly chipping away at the spirit of Citadel with starvation and fear.
"We need to strike back somehow."
"A sortie is out of the question," Manfred said. "You two have forced Emeric to invest more in defense than he has in attacking capability. The shingle out there is a set of death traps for horses."
"Then let's take it to the bastards by sea," urged Benito. "We've got the fireboats. If the keep on Vidos hasn't fallen by tonight, they'll have all their carracks bunched around the island, firing ship's cannon at the keep."
Manfred cocked his head at Erik. "You've looked at those cockleshells. What do you think?"
Erik nodded. "Almost all of their larger cannon are on the carracks. The cannon on those carracks are what they've mostly been using to harass the Citadel from the sea with anyway. Burn them and you'll reduce their marine gunnery to a pitiful effort."
"But will it work?"
Erik shrugged. "Those little boats are works of shipbuilder's art, Manfred. They've got one weakness: they were built to run straight with the wind. If we can row them to a point where they're directly upwind, leave each of them with a slow-match and a dead bearing . . . well, it is going to be a question of how well we aim and how well we can judge the slow-match time. You'd be aiming a small boat at a small target a long way away. Most of them would miss. Still, it's worth trying. We're not going to get as many Byzantine ships so close together again. Get one of those little sailing bombs in among them and we'll likely see a fair number catch fire."
Benito compressed his lips. "We're
not
going to miss. Not if I have to ride those little ships all the way in myself. Call it Umberto's legacy. The Little Arsenal has about fifteen longboats. The Byzantines would either have to up anchor and out oars in the dark, or, with the light galleys beached at Vidos, launch. It's the better part of a mile . . . but with a start and twelve rowers we should do it."
"What are you suggesting, Benito?"
"We lower longboats. Give each team two fireboats to tow out. The enemy are going to be focused on Vidos. We should be able to get really close—they're firing and the muzzle-flash will be easy to see. Set the fireboats on their line, leave one man to each, have him jump overboard at the last moment. With luck, the longboats will recover the aimers."
"Why does someone need to stay with each fireboat?"
"Because they don't have steerage if they aren't moving quite fast." He saw the puzzled look on Manfred's face. "Just take it from me or Erik. That's how it works, Manfred."
Manfred looked at him with a strange expression. "You'll need men who are tired of life, Benito. The longboats won't be able to hang about looking for anyone."
"Manfred, we're starving. We're down to four cupfuls of water a day per man. You don't have to be tired of life to volunteer for this—you have to want, desperately, to live." He shook his head. "The people down at the Little Arsenal are furious about Umberto's murder. They're tired of being powerless to do anything. A lot of them—especially the caulkers—swim like fish. The caulkers have to, for when there's a sprung plank. There's only so much you can do to repair a ship from the inside, and if the ship's on the water it means diving with a rope around your waist and some wadding. I'll get volunteers all right." He sighed. "I'll get too many."
"You know I will not assist in the war of one Christian soldier against another," said Eneko Lopez. "Regardless of what vileness Emeric delves into or what Chernobog does, most of Emeric's troops and the Byzantine soldiers are of our faith."
Benito held up his hands pacifyingly. "I'm not proposing you do anything that kills anyone, Eneko. All I was hoping for was some way to save good men from drowning in the darkness. Like the glowing winged Lion on the sails of the great galleys."
Eneko Lopez looked at him with those penetrating eyes, and apparently decided in Benito's favor. "Tell me what you are planning. I suppose I should be grateful that a fiendish mind like yours is on the side opposing Chernobog and the Devil-worshipers."
Benito told him. Eneko Lopez shook his head. "And you have thirty men prepared to do this?"
"I think at last count even places on the longboats were double-subscribed." Benito looked at Eneko consideringly. "You know, Father Lopez—everybody always lectures or preaches to me. Antimo said it was my face. Now I'm going to do the same for you, seeing as you've also done it to me." He grinned wryly. "Fair's fair, after all. You priests, Justices—even princes—seem to think you have the monopoly on a sense of justice. It isn't like that at all. I promise you the scuolo, the boat-people, hell, even thieves, have a sense of justice. Of what is right. It may not always be what the priests and others think is right, but they believe in it. And they're prepared to pay a high price for what they believe in. The Arsenalotti are angry and frustrated about this siege, and about the murder. Umberto was a quiet fellow, but he was theirs. He'd stood by them, he'd bled for them. Maria too. The Corfiotes think more of her than they do of the governor, for instance. They're bitter about her loss. She's even won over the Illyrians. I've got men who can't swim volunteering. I had four times what I wanted for the fireboats. Now, are you going to help me keep these men alive or are you going to get sanctimonious with me?"