Brechalon (12 page)

* * * * *

“
It’s almost time now, Pet,” said
Zurfina looking at the sun, through the tiny window high up on the
wall.

Nils Chapman was crawling on his knees next to
her. Shaking and twitching uncontrollably, he no longer had the
ability to stand on his own. This didn’t bother him, because he no
longer had the ability to think on his own either. He crawled along
on all fours drooling like a dog to the center of the
cell.

Zurfina peeled off the filthy rags that had
been her only clothing since she had been brought to this hell hole
one thousand nine hundred eighty four days before. She tossed them
aside and sat down cross-legged in the center of the cell. Chapman
pressed against her, but she pushed him away, and closing her eyes,
she began to chant.

“
Uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum,
uuthanum.” She repeated the word over and over again. Twenty times.
A hundred times. Slowly the room became darker and darker. She
continued to chant. The eclipse was at his height.

Chapman screamed. Zurfina opened her eyes and
smiled. The four walls were walls no more. They were shining,
rippling, silvery surfaces like the surface of frighteningly cold
and deep water. Sounds could be heard from the other side—freakish,
awful piping noises that tugged at one’s sanity. Then the surface
directly in front of her bubbled and churned, touched by something
on the other side of that boundary between cell eighty nine and the
abyss beyond.

“
Yes!” Zurfina screamed. Then she
began reciting a new set of words. “Uuathanum eetarri. Uuthanum
eetarri. Uuthanum blechtore. Uuthanum blechtore. Uuthanum
maiius.

* * * * *

“
So can you see the
eclipse?”

“
Sure. It’s ace,” said Saba,
standing in the courtyard. Then he turned and saw who was speaking
and flinched.

“
Would you like to take a look,
Miss?” he asked, offering Iolanthe the magic glass pane.

Taking the almost opaque square, she held it up
to her eye and pointed her face toward the sky.

“
Interesting. It looks like of a
halo.”

“
Yeah. Yeah, it does look like a
halo, um… Miss.”

“
It doesn’t feel like a halo,
though, does it?”

“
Miss?”

“
Look at it again,” she said,
handing back the magic glass. “This time, tell me what you
feel.”

The boy looked again and suddenly shuddered.
When he looked back at her, his face was accusing. She had made him
aware of something he hadn’t noticed before. There was something
evil about the eclipse, and though he had looked forward to the
event since he had first heard about it from his mother, now all he
wanted was for the return of the sun in its full glory.

* * * * *

The thing on the other side of the membrane
between two worlds tested it once again, and a moment later it
burst through. It was long, thick tentacle, necrotic grey and
covered with suction cups. It searched along the stone floor of the
cell, tentatively at first. Then it touched the sorceress sitting
naked and chanting and suddenly it shook and thrashed throughout
the chamber.

“
No!” shouted Nils Chapman and he
jumped in front of Zurfina. The tentacle found him and wrapped
around his waist.

“
No!” he cried again, and then it
yanked him so violently that the snapping of his neck was clearly
audible, as it pulled him beyond the shimmering veil.

Then the room was filled with a hundred
tentacles, touching every inch of the cell, caressing the woman
like a demonic lover. She slowly rose to her feet, the tips of the
alien appendages touching every inch of her skin.

“
Uuathanum eetarri blechtore maiius
uusteros vadia jonai corakathum nit.”

A black fog poured into the cell from all four
walls. It filled up the tiny chamber and sprayed through the
openings in the door, creeping down the corridors of the prison and
into every room and every cell, every nook and every
alcove.

* * * * *

“
How is it?”

“
It was ace,” replied Saba. “Now I
just want the sun to come back.”

“
Don’t be like that.” Yuah stepped
down the stairs from the back door and put an arm around the boy’s
shoulders. “Let me take a look.”

Saba held the square of magic glass up and Yuah
pressed her eye to it, leaning back to find the sun. “There. The
sun’s starting to move out from behind the moon. In a few minutes
everything will be just like it was before.”

“
Good.”

“
You shouldn’t let Miss D ruin your
fun. She’s a right bitch, you know.”

“
No, she’s not.”

“
She is.”

“
Well, it’s not her
fault.”

“
What do you mean?” asked
Yuah.

“
Nothing. Here. Do you want this?”
Saba pushed the magic glass into her hands and started up the
stairs into the house.

* * * * *

Zurfina smiled as the dead grey tentacles
caressed her.

“
Now I will leave and now I will
lay my vengeance on this stony prison and this little kingdom and
this world.” She raised her arms and began her final incantation.
“Uuthanum…”

At that moment a thin streak of light entered
from the small window high up on the wall. It was so tiny that it
might have gone totally unnoticed, had it not stuck the first and
largest of the grey arms moving around the cell. But the tiny
sliver of sunlight burned through the tentacle like a hot ember
through a slice of bread. The great tentacle jerked and thrashed
about the room and the other appendages did too, one of them
striking the woman and throwing her halfway across the floor. More
sunlight entered through the window and all of the unearthly,
unholy members were yanked back through the portals that shimmered
where the walls of the cell had once been.

“
No! No, I’m not finished!”
screamed Zurfina.

* * * * *

Yuah stood in the courtyard, idly staring up at
the eclipse, and totally unaware that she was being watched from a
window on the third floor. Terrence watched her, appraising her in
a way that he didn’t bother appraising other women. There was no
doubt that she was beautiful. She wore no makeup, had her hair
pulled back into a bun wrapped by a maid’s cap, and she wore a
simple maid’s dress with minimal bustle and almost no color. And
yet she was one of the most beautiful women that he had ever seen.
There was no doubt about that. Iolanthe was thought to be a great
beauty and with her flawless skin and those striking aquamarine
eyes, she was something special. Yuah’s chocolate brown eyes had a
tenderness and an innocence in them though that one would never
find in his sister’s, and Yuah’s features were perfect. She could
have been one of those women that the great sculptors of old used
as a model. She was just the right height and she was
well-proportioned. So what if she was a bit skinny.

Yuah was almost perfect. But Terrence didn’t
want an almost perfect woman. He had thrown away any chance at a
wife and a family and a home. That was not going to be his future.
His future was far away, in another time and another place, on a
great field of purple flowers with a woman who was frighteningly
perfect. He turned away from the window and climbed back into bed,
pulling the box filled with small blue vials from beneath the
pillow.

* * * * *

A large square of sunlight filled the center of
the cell floor and sprawled naked in the center of that square was
Zurfina. She lifted her head up just enough to look around and then
she slammed it back against the stone floor. Then she lifted it up
and slammed it back down again: once, twice, three times, till
there was a bloody spot on the floor and a bloody contusion on her
forehead. The walls of the cell had all returned to their original
stone texture. Not even the arcane bloody scrawling
remained.

Schwarztogrube really was proof against magic.
She had summoned the most ancient magic in the universe, a feat
only possible because of the eclipse, and had used it to release
the dead demon-gods that awaited beyond the edge of sanity. But
even they had not been able to completely pierce the veil. Even
that magic was not enough. Without the power of the eclipse, it was
not enough, and the eclipse had not lasted long enough. And it
would be a long time before the next full eclipse over
Schwarztogrube.

“
Eight thousand four hundred thirty
seven days,” Zurfina wailed. “Kafira’s bloody twat!”

She looked up at the ceiling as if she could
see the sky beyond it and dared the Zaeri-Kafirite God and his
crucified daughter to strike her dead. Could even his magic
penetrate this magic-proof hell? Prove it!

* * * * *

“
Is it over?” asked
Senta.

“
Yup.” Maro stood up from the
pin-hole camera that he had made to watch the eclipse, in actuality
nothing but a small pasteboard box with a hole cut in the side.
Shining in through the tiny hole, the image of the sun had been
visible on the back side, and as the moon had moved across the sun,
the small white orb in the box had been covered and then
uncovered.

“
That was pretty ace, wasn’t
it?”

“
I guess so,” said Senta. “I wish
we could have watched the real thing.”

“
You’d be blinded.”

“
Yeah. I’m glad you were able to
make it with only eight fingers.”

Maro nodded and looked at the three remaining
fingers on his right hand.

“
Maybe someday you’ll be really
rich and you can pay a wizard to regrow your fingers for you,”
offered Senta.

“
Maybe I’ll get so used to having
eight fingers I won’t want my other ones back. I bet pretty soon
I’ll be able to do my eight times as good as you can do your
tens.”

“
What’s seven times
eight?”

“
Fifty six.”

“
Is that right?”

“
Yup.”

“
Wow.” Senta looked impressed and
she was. “What are we doing now?”

“
I don’t know what you’re doing,
but I’m going to play Mirsannan cricket at the park. You can’t go
because you’re a girl.”

“
Then I’m going to the toy store
and buy a doll.”

“
You don’t have enough money to buy
a doll.”

“
Uh-huh. For pretend.”

“
Yeah, alright.”

“
You know when you said my mom
didn’t want me?”

“
Yeah.”

“
I don’t understand it.”

“
What?”

“
Well, look at me. I’m just
cute.”

* * * * *

“
Eight thousand four hundred thirty
seven days,” Zurfina told herself. “I’ll be old. Well, I’ll be
older.”

The sorceress was already far older than she
appeared. Thanks to magic used long ago, her body was much younger
than it should have been. But it was aging now. Here in this place
where magic had no hold, it was aging. In eight thousand four
hundred thirty seven days, she would most surely begin to look
old—not as old as her true age, but old. Too old. She would have no
youth, just as now she had no magic. She couldn’t wait eight
thousand four hundred thirty seven days. She had to get out. But
she couldn’t use magic. What could she use? What did she
have?

She had her youth… for now. She had her beauty…
for now. She had this body, this body that men wanted.… for now.
She had to use what she had.

Chapter Nine: One Month
Later

“
I wish you didn’t have to leave,”
said Iolanthe, as she brushed a stray piece of lint from her
brother’s navy blue uniform.

“
The army needs me.”

“
I know you will do the family
proud, and while you are away, you may leave everything in my
capable hands.”

“
Yes, I know.”

“
And as always, come back with your
shield…”

“
Or on it,” he finished for
her.

“
Indeed.”

“
Could you do one other thing for
me, sister?”

“
Of course.”

He pulled an envelope from his tunic and held
it toward her.

“
Would you give this to Yuah after
I’ve gone?”

She stared at it for a moment before taking the
envelope.

“
Of course,” she said.

Terrence kissed her on the cheek and left the
room. Iolanthe stepped over to the window and watched as his
luggage was loaded onto the back of the steam carriage. Terrence
walked out the front door, down the steps and climbed into the
passenger side of the vehicle, while Merriman climbed into the
driver’s side. Iolanthe watched as the car made its way down the
street and around the corner. Terrence never looked
back.

Walking to her desk, she used her silver letter
opener to slice through the envelope, and then pulled out the
single sheet of paper inside. She put away the opener and read
through the message as she walked the length of the boudoir. She
shook her head and then tossed the letter and the envelope in the
fireplace, watching as it burned brightly and then turned to
ash.