Tensing, Marley rammed her head back against her captor’s face. Something crunched, and her vision flickered black. He dropped her. Scrambling to her feet, she tried to run to Ian. But she got tangled in the yards of skirts and tripped. Determined, she rose again, but something struck her from behind. Pain and dizziness drove her to the ground. Just before her head hit the stone, she saw Ian crumple.
~*~
The screams woke her. Instinct kept Marley quiet as the sounds of agony scraped along her skin. Disoriented, it took her a few moments to separate her own pain from the source of the screams.
Ian!
Marley gasped, tried to raise her head, and almost vomited as the room spun. Fighting past nausea, she managed to get semi-vertical. The manacles on her wrists and ankles made that more difficult. Her body felt heavier than the iron chains, but another bellow galvanized her the rest of the way. Squinting through the bars, she made out the wavering shapes of people in the next room. Wavering, she realized, because it was lit by torchlight. As her eyes adjusted, she picked Ian out of the lineup of ten men. Like the others, he was stripped to the waist, bound to some kind of rack that held him almost crucified. Though a bruise purpled his temple, he wasn’t the one screaming.
That misfortune belonged to the man next to him, who continued to buck and fight. Blood streamed down his chest from some strange series of markings. Certainly the wounds would be painful, but Marley couldn’t figure out what he was fighting. Something moved beneath his skin. His muscles seemed to writhe like snakes, bunching and curling. As she watched, the man threw back his head and shrieked, one long ululating cry that chilled her blood and all but stopped her heart. Blood tracked down his face, garish, terrifying tears. Then he fell forward and was silent.
Another man, short and stocky, stepped forward, checked his pulse, and shook his head. “Dead.”
A robed figure at a table on the other side of the room scratched notes with a quill and ink. His lip curled in disgust. “If a shaman doesn’t survive the procedure, I have little hope for the human. But all in the name of the cause, I suppose.”
The racks were mobile. The dwarf rolled the dead man back and moved to shove Ian into his place.
Human, she thought. He used to be human. She realized she was somehow trapped in his memory
. His past. But was it an illusion or had she actually been transported back?
Ian kept up a steady stream of profanity as the dwarf secured the rack, though it was no language she’d ever heard.
The dwarf gave a gallows smile and jerked a thumb at him. “I like this one. I hope he survives the transition.”
The robed man stepped forward. “Let us begin again.”
At first, Marley thought it was a quill and ink. The long, black feather curled over his hand as he dipped it into a pot the dwarf held. But the nib was some kind of blade. It dug furrows in Ian’s chest, mixing the blue liquid with the red of his blood.
Ian’s face drew tight with strain, but he made not a sound until the quill stopped. “Is that all ye’ve got? Ye think I’m bothered by yer wee sticker there?” Blood flowed freely down from the wound in his shoulder.
Hands raised, the robed man began to chant, and his hands started to glow.
Grabbing hold of the bars, Marley dragged herself to her knees and tried to get a better look. Before the warlock—for he must have been one—a pool of some black, viscous liquid began to bubble. The chanting grew louder, more forceful. The warlock raised his hands in a gesture of summons, and a shape rose out of the muck. Unlike the Nix, the liquid didn’t sluice off to reveal some other creature. This thing was of the pool. It wasn’t just black; it was somehow the absence of light, of hope. Looking at it, Marley could feel her own despair ratcheting higher.
The warlock carved another symbol into Ian’s chest on the opposite shoulder. Ian had no witty comeback this time. He was too busy staring at the black thing hovering mere feet away. The warlock turned and addressed the thing, speaking in some guttural language. The black elongated into something vaguely humanoid, with two arms that came to sharp, blade-like points. As it reached toward Ian, Marley saw fear etched on his face for the first time. She didn’t understand what was happening, not at first, not until the blades pierced Ian’s eyes, and he began to scream.
Her screams echoed his as the black thing funneled into him through those two, excruciating points.
Not real. Not real. Dear God, don’t let this be real.
Ian strained against his bindings, roaring as the thing fought inside him. Muscles corded and visibly bulked. The dark eyes shot through with silver. The shape of his face bulged and shifted, as if the thing was shoving around, making itself fit inside his very skin. Abruptly, he stopped screaming and stared, panting, at the warlock. Hanks of hair clung to his sweaty face, but even from her cell, Marley could see the silver glow of his eyes. He did not speak. Not even when the warlock traced another symbol in the center of his chest.
Was it even Ian anymore?
“Well, he made it farther than the other one,” said the dwarf.
“We’ll see if he completed the transformation. The athame.” He took the ritual knife the dwarf offered and made a shallow slice across his palm, then a single slash across Ian’s chest. Pressing the bloody palm to the fresh wound, the warlock began to speak.
“Eternal magic of ageless time.
“Heed the call in my rhyme.
“Bind two souls like molten steel.
“Let fire forge the woven seal.”
We were slaves, Ian had told her. Each bound to a single master. As the ground began to shake, she started shouting. “Ian! Wake up! This isn’t real!”