The King, His Son, Their Sorcerer and His Lover Read online

  Vengar leaned back away from her and got his bearings. Much to his surprise, he discovered the sceptre-like tower blotting out the sky above him. The wall they were leaning against surrounded it, sectioning off some sort of private compound within.

  "Sorcerer," the barbarian said again. The word was sour and dripping with thirty kinds of venom. "Tell me, maiden... What about this place vexes you so?"

  She didn't skip a beat, except perhaps those she stumbled over with her melodramatic bawling. "M-m-my sister Lilandra. She w-was kidnapped by Iximan, the vicious sorcerer who calls the tower his h-h-home."

  "Hmmmm," Vengar intoned as he stroked his chiseled chin. "That does sound rather like a sorcerer."

  She went on. "We belong to a nomadic tribe of goatherds who wander the desert north of here. We lived such a peaceful life, but then Iximan and those damned cultists came upon us in the night. Tales of Lilandra's beauty had spread far and wide, and when Iximan discovered she was even more lovely than the stories proclaimed, he carried her away to his tower where he keeps her as his... his loooove slaaaave!"

  Vengar's face tightened with rage and his heart churned into motion. A lovely maiden in peril always had that effect on him. In another moment, the boisterous little hero inside his head took over, and with a snarl Vengar said, "I'll save her."

  "I knew you would," his lady replied beneath her breath.

  "What was that?"

  "What was what?"

  Vengar's righteous rage was momentarily buried under a mound of confusion. "That thing you said a second ago. I said that I'll save Lilandra, and then you said something else." His lips formed a silent O and one of his eyes went all squinchy.

  His lady stammered. "Oh. Yes... I said something, but what was it? Ummm.... Oh! I said I knew you were good. That was it."

  At that, Vengar puffed up with self-satisfaction. Of course he was good. He was damned good, and any fool could see it. If his new lady-friend was already absent-mindedly muttering about how good he was, then frolicking couldn't be far behind. Rough frolicking, with lots of hair pulling and monkey sounds.

  "So damned good," he said while visions of said frolicking ran rampant through his muscle-bound mind.

  "Uh, Vengar?"

  "What?"

  "Weren't you about to get going?"

  The dreams vanished from his eyes and he snapped back to his usual raptor-like sharpness. "Yes. Of course."

  She reached into her skin-tight halter and plucked out a sealed envelope. Vengar stared in wonder, unable to comprehend how anything else could fit inside such a tightly packed shirt. Then she reached into the other side and pulled out a small vial full of blue liquid, and Vengar gave up on reason altogether.

  "Here," she said, handing both items to the barbarian. "My sister is under a terrible enchantment, and were she to leave the tower awake, she would wither away and die within the hour. The vial contains a mystic concoction that will put her into deepest sleep. Just apply a few drops to a piece of cloth and hold it to her face."

  "Drug her. Got it."

  "Good. After that, escape the tower with utmost haste. Any dallying may be the death of her. Then, once you're free of the compound and she reawakens, give her the letter and she'll lead you to our meeting place. With my sister safely returned, we will both undoubtedly want to give you a fitting reward."

  "Check and check," Vengar said.

  "And mighty Vengar..."

  "Yes?"

  "Be careful," she said with a fluttering of her lashes.

  "Careful? No worries. I'm good, remember? Damned good," he said, and then was on his way.

  It didn't take Vengar long to clear the compound's wall. He bounded up the first tree he found with a swiftness and grace unfitting of his bulky physique, and moved from trunk to limb as smooth and silent as a prowling leopard. From there, he leapt to the wall, slid over its top and dropped into the shadowed brush beyond.

  He found himself then in a great courtyard circled by scores of fragrant gardens and tiny ponds. Macabre hedge sculptures lurked everywhere, their ghastly shapes resembling no creatures born of this Earth, and a mosaic path of red and green stones wound a twisting route between them. Upon those paths walked the bare-footed, bald-headed cultists in their robes of vibrant orange. Each carried a tambourine in one hand and a shepherd's crooked staff in the other, and they mindlessly drummed the two together as they strolled the grounds.

  Despite their flabby bodies and dreamy demeanor, Vengar was sure the cultists were a guard patrol. Their tambourines rang out with an unerring rhythm, keeping them in contact with one another even when out of sight, and their staffs were far too long for simple drumming. They were of fighting length.

  Vengar briefly toyed with the idea of chopping them all into bloody bite-sized bits, but thought better of it. There was no telling what sort of forces lay within the tower, and it was vastly easier to murder men who never saw it coming. Vengar prided himself on just that sort of pragmatism.

  Instead, he made his way silently around the tower, ducking from one shrub monster to the next and melting into the shadows so perfectly that no mortal eye could follow him, until finally he had circled around to the entrance. There, he peeked out from behind his hiding spot. After one good look, any illusions he had of strolling through the door melted as fast as freshly churned butter in the Summer sun. Two giant cultists stood astride the gated portal, each a full head taller than Vengar, and between them paced a lean and well groomed tiger.

  Vengar had never seen such a beast tamed before, and the thought alone made his ham-sized heart as heavy as two whole hams. Tigers weren't meant to march to the beat of a human drum; they, like Vengar, were remnants of an ancient and disappearing world that had existed since the Earth was first cleaved from the heavens. They stood for purity, simplicity and uncontrollable...ness...osity... even in the face of man's wicked order.

  Vengar would rather see the majestic creature dead than victim to such perversion. In fact, the sight tortured him as much as if he'd just seen his own brother yoked and pulling a slave-master's plow, and for a moment, the tiny wild animal that lived in his mind waged bitter war against his tiny hero. It was no use, though. The tiny hero triumphed, and with his minuscule boot firmly planted atop his defeated foe, he pointed determinedly toward the distressed damsel still detained in the dastardly defiler's demesne.

  "Ugh," Vengar grumbled. He often hated that tiny hero for any number of excellent reasons. Alliteration wasn't least among them.

  With the matter settled, Vengar gave the giants and the brainwashed animal one more wistful look, then turned about and circled back the way he'd come. He moved fluidly from one hedge sculpture to the next, always wary of the robed guards and their endless song, until he came to the tower's opposite side. There, he scanned around for another way in, but found only one. It was clearly the worst option possible.

  Sadly for Vengar, it was all he had.

  The barbarian waited in perfect silence, all the while watching the cultists wander and listening to the thump and crash of their tambourines. Bum-tsh, bum-tsh, bum-tsh they went, one growing quieter as it ambled into the distance, and another simultaneously growing louder as it approached.

  Then Vengar's moment came and he seized it. He raced across the paving stones with long, even strides and jumped with all his might. The great, ropy muscles of his legs exploded with pent up power and the massive bulk of him sprang up into the air.

  The wind whistled by.

  The wall approached fast as a diving hawk.

  He collided with a dull thump.

  There wasn't any time to curse. He ignored the sudden full body ache and began to scramble up the side of the wall, finding hand-holds everywhere in the strange, uneven surface. It wasn't long before he was up above the wandering cultists' eye-line, yet a glance skyward revealed he was in for a long, hard climb.

  Vengar reached the top of the tower just as the glow of sunrise began to show over the far black horizon. Panting and c
overed in a slick layer of sweat, he clambered over the edge and collapsed in a heap, thoroughly exhausted after hours of non-stop exertion.

  He lay there for a long while watching the stars sail across the deepness of the sky, and he enjoyed the rough winds that whipped past in howling gusts. He was starting to think (with no small measure of jealousy) that sorcerers lived a pretty charmed life, what with all the devoted cultists, luscious love slaves, and pretentiously tall towers. "Not bad at all," he said to himself, and both his wild animal and tiny hero concurred.

  When finally he climbed back to his feet, he discovered a vista like none he'd ever beheld. From the jewel-encrusted glans of the tower, he could see clear out across torch-lit Tensara and he marveled at the haphazard way her streets zigged and zagged across the land. He thought it looked rather like a web spun by a drunken spider.

  At the city's furthest edge squatted a sprawling palace adorned with cyclopean stone columns and a golden dome swollen like an overfilled wineskin. The riches hidden away within no doubt made those of the sorcerer's tower green with envy.

  Vengar could've spent all morning absorbing that view, and perhaps even the whole day, but there wasn't time. Instead, he wrenched himself away and returned to the task at hand. After all, there were lovely ladies waiting to be liberated and a bevy of brilliant baubles to be burgled.

  With one hand on the hilt of his titanic sword, Vengar entered the dim doorway and stalked down the winding staircase that followed. Braziers full of crackling coals lined the walls, bathing the stone passage with a reddish light, and the smell of roasted meats wafted by. Sounds of worship echoed from somewhere far below and they grew louder with each step, filling Vengar with an inexplicable dread.

  Suddenly, there was a strange snorting sound ahead and Vengar froze in his tracks. His fingers tightened around his sword's leather-wrapped handle, and he slid the humungous weapon an inch from its sheath.

  A shadow danced on the walls before him, but its shape was strange and Vengar could make neither heads nor tails of it, no matter how he tried. The peculiar creature came floating into view a few seconds later.

  Against all reason, a disembodied nose as large as a human head hovered languidly in the air a few short yards away. It was rounded and bulbous, a healthy pinkish color with a few traces of gin-blossoms, and had a tangle of tentacle-like hairs dangling listlessly from its cavernous nostrils.

  This creature could not be, and yet it was. Presented with this conundrum, Vengar struggled bitterly against the madness which raged like a forest-fire across his psyche. It required every last ounce of his indomitable will—even his tiny hero held on for dear life—but he refused to let insanity consume him, and he survived it by the skin of his teeth.

  The nose moved slowly about. It would find something of interest, sniff the thing, then wander to a new spot only to sniff something there for a moment and wander yet again. When it came finally to the barbarian, who remained still as a bronze colossus, the creature gave pause. It descended inch by harrowing inch until it hovered just above him. Its tentacular hairs brushed back and forth across Vengar's face, viciously tickling as they went, and then... it sniffed him.

  This sniff was no ordinary sniff. It sucked in with the force of a hurricane, the wind disappearing into parts unknown and quite likely unknowable. The suction pulled at the toned flesh of Vengar's face, and a hideous squelching noise filled the passage.

  It finished its inhalation and nothing happened for an agonizingly long moment. There was a queer silence filled with Vengar's dread, and then the beastly nose sniffed again. Its terrible suction was doubled, the squelching became deafening, and yet Vengar refused to budge even an inch throughout the ordeal. Then, despite the nose's perfect and complete lack of shoulders, it somehow shrugged and went about its way.

  A shudder overtook the mighty barbarian, after which he quickly regained his composure and journeyed on.

  As he descended through the countless levels of the tower, he passed one door after another, each containing a different collection of odds and ends. In some, he saw cultists performing strange exercises, contorting their bodies into all manner of uncomfortable positions, and in others there were banal things like mops and brooms. Many were filled with cupboards full of unremarkable food stuffs, while one particularly unsettling room contained a group of curious unhatched eggs, each a half-foot long and covered in throbbing purple veins.

  That made Vengar think of breakfast, and thinking of breakfast invariably made him angry for some reason he couldn't recall. Whether out of spite or simply morbid curiosity, he plucked one of the eggs from the room and placed it tenderly in his journey-bag.

  He continued on. After an hour of traveling down the long and winding staircase, the passage opened up into a grand chamber so large that Vengar wondered how it could possibly fit inside the tower. Sorcery, no doubt. The room had a high vaulted ceiling and was lavishly decorated, its every piece of furniture gilded and upholstered in purple silk. On the far side stood a fanciful throne in the shape of a scorpion, and before it lay a grand buffet full of succulent fruits and savory roasted delights.

  Vengar stepped out into the chamber, and the sound of his footfalls, as miraculously quiet as they were, echoed out like a clatter of bones on granite. He immediately stopped in place and listened, but there was nothing to hear aside from the ceaseless murmurs of worship and his own quickened breath.

  He pressed on, each step placed lighter than the last for fear of triggering some dastardly trap. Perhaps there was something hidden behind those tapestries on the far wall? Best to duck beneath them in case they fired arrows, fireballs or some other unpredictable and ungodly thing. And the soft rug with extravagant pattern which lay in the middle of the floor? Could be concealing a tiger pit. The inviting chairs might turn into man-eating monsters, the fabulous crystalline chandelier could be rigged to fall, and the mouth-watering food laid out on the table was surely poisoned. Yes, even the whole suckling pig slow roasted to crackling perfection, with onions and carrots and leeks.

  "Iximan, you wily bastard. But behold, I've foiled all of your clever traps," Vengar said as he passed blithely by the last of the obstacles. The tiny hero cheered his copious courage and cunning, while the wild animal purred with approval.

  He found exactly what he was looking for on the other side of the throne: a passage leading to the sorcerer's private quarters.

  The passage was short but magnificent. The walls were decorated with elaborate bas-reliefs depicting wars between mostly forgotten gods, and every few paces, another pair of arabesqued columns stood to either side of the tunnel like silent stone guardians.

  At the tunnel's end, Vengar came to a large door carved from a single piece of hard, dark wood. He opened it with the most subtle pressure, and on the other side he found a room like none other. It was a bedchamber of the utmost opulent decadence, making even the throne room before it seem humble and lowly by comparison.

  The room was circular and all within it was suffused with a warm, golden glow of unknown provenance. The walls were adorned with thousands of precious gems, hundreds of triangular mirrors casting shafts of light, and a striking assortment of statues, some horrific and others breathtakingly beautiful. An enormous bed made of pure gold occupied the center of the space, standing on lion's legs and topped by a mirrored silver canopy.

  Upon that bed and its lustrous purple sheets lay the most wondrous treasure of all. With pale white skin and hair of purest black, the lady Lilandra slumbered there in soundless peace, wearing a sheer white dress that left precious little to the imagination. There was a hint of pleasant plumpness to her curves that reminded Vengar of fertile foothills, and the expanses of creamy smooth skin on display looked softer than a drifting cloud.

  The barbarian approached more quietly than an owl on outstretched wing, and the maddening pulchritude of the maiden filled his hungry eyes. A feeling overtook him just then as if he'd fallen prey to some contemptible enchantment; it felt lik
e all the blood rushed out of his head, silencing his tiny hero while its counterpart, the wild animal began to bawdily pant and thrash in a frenzy.

  Vengar struggled to keep hold of his own reins against the crazed pounding of his heart and the uncomfortable tightness in his pants. It was a desperate struggle, and he summoned every technique he knew in the war against his basest urges. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, and yet still the lustful spell persisted. He began to recite the names of all one-hundred-and-twelve hells, and by the thirty-sixth (the hell of Flatuleh, the bubbling bog of noxious gas), he finally found some relief.

  He opened his eyes but now wisely refused to look at Lilandra head-on, who lay prostrate before him in all her blossoming glory. With his head canted to one side, he reached into his journey-bag and removed the small glass vial with its soporific solution. One hand plucked a rag from his belt while the other thumbed the vial's stopper with a pop.

  He doused the rag and leaned in, doing his best not to notice the exquisite lines of her heart-shaped face. He ignored her eyebrows, each like graceful strokes from a master artist's brush, and the long lashes that swept up and out with a jubilant curve. He paid no mind to her flush cheeks, her dainty and ever-so-slightly upturned nose, or the full, pouty lips that glistened beneath it. Well... he very nearly ignored them, at least.

  The one fact that caught a hold of his mind and refused to be shaken was that Lilandra looked nothing like the people of Northern Ellysium, yet he couldn't remember why that might be important.

  With that lone thought echoing in the hollow chamber of his skull, he leaned the final inch and prepared to drug the poor imprisoned girl. Then he caught an unfortunate scent, and the whole situation changed.

  He wasn't sure at first, so he sniffed at the air and caught another spare hint of it. Then he gave a mighty suck to rival those of the floating nose encountered in the stairwell, and he was finally sure.