CHAPTER 64
Loclon tossed and turned on the hard ground as the nightmare took him again. It haunted him in his dreams and he lived it in his waking moments. It never left him. It never gave him a moment's respite.
It had begun as they left the Citadel. He was expecting to be smuggled into the Karien camp and treated like a hero - until they took the fortress and slaughtered everyone in it. But Mistress Heaner, her thug Lork and the chillingly beautiful boy Alladan had kept on going. They had not stopped until they reached Brodenvale, and then they had bundled him onto a small river boat and sailed downriver to Bordertown. When they reached the port town they stayed only long enough to arrange another boat, and before he could raise an objection, he found himself heading for the Isle of Slarn.
It hadn't been too bad at first. The island was dank and miserable, and the priests were a strange bunch, but they tended his malnourished body and helped him regain his strength and even began talking of letting him travel to Yarnarrow.
He had done the Overlord a great service, the priests assured him, and his reward was waiting for him.
For a time, he had foolishly believed their promises - until he remembered that for the followers of the Overlord, the rewards for service were not to be found in this life, but the next.
His first escape attempt had been treated as an unfortunate misunderstanding. His second earnt him a savage whipping. His third and last attempt had almost succeeded. It would have, had not the island begun to tremble as if in the grip of an earthquake, and the priests suddenly gone mad.
Something drastic had happened.
Loclon had been at the back of the Karien chapel for the Restday dawn service, waiting for the chance to slip out the door, when the staff belonging to the priest conducting the service had flared with light, and a wave of intense pleasure had washed over the congregation like a warm breeze. It took hold of him for an instant and held him in a thrall. There was a promise of so much in that wave. A hint of joy. A breath of sexual fantasy. A promise of paradise. Even a glimpse of the other gods. It had taken his breath away.
It had almost destroyed the priests.
They had fled the chapel and run towards the cavern where their sacred rock was hidden, howling with terror at whatever it was that it was doing. It only lasted for a few moments, then the feeling had faded abruptly and Loclon shook his head to clear it and bolted for the door.
His original plan had been to head for the small dock near the keep, but with the priests running everywhere like lunatics, he discovered that route no longer open to him. So he ran the other way, pulled himself over the wall that faced the leeward side of the island, cursing as he fell down the long drop on the other side, and ran until he collapsed onto the boggy ground. He was terrified, and at the limit of his endurance, expecting to hear the priests coming after him, not really believing he had succeeded in getting clear of them.
It was then that the nightmare truly began.
They found him that evening, shivering and exhausted, and in the darkness he could not make out their faces. They were not priests. All he knew was that someone wrapped a blanket around him and someone else thrust a cup of cool water in his hands. He drank it greedily and grasped at the mouldy bread they offered him. They led him through the darkness to a rough hut so close to the shore that he could hear the waves crashing below him as he fell into a fitful sleep.
At some time during the night he woke to find a body pressed against his, warm and young and unmistakably female. He smiled to himself, thinking that before he left this place, he might have some fun. If he was careful, and didn't leave any marks, they would not know he had hurt her until after he had gone. With a smile and a contented sigh, Loclon pulled the girl closer and went back to sleep.
With daylight came the horror.
He had opened his eyes slowly, enjoying the feel of the naked body pressed against him. He ran his hand over her small breasts and her slender hips and then over her belly, reaching down between her thighs to pull her legs apart. He felt something sticky against his hand and cursed. He pulled his hand away and held it up to the light.
It was not blood on his fingers - it was pus.
He screamed, leaping from the rough pallet as the girl turned over. She was grotesque. Her face was ruined, half of it eaten away by the disease that devoured a person from the inside out. Her whole left side was covered with open sores that wept pus, and a clear sticky fluid that stained the rough sheets beneath her.
“Please...” the girl cried, tears streaming from her one good eye. Her pathetic cries made him want to vomit; the idea that he had touched her made him want to die.
He had leapt the wall into the colony of Malik's Curse sufferers.
Loclon screamed again, and he kept on screaming until a big man with a huge fist and half his face eaten away by the Curse burst into the hut and knocked him out cold.
He had been in hiding ever since. He avoided the small settlement and its disgusting inhabitants, sneaking in at night to find whatever scraps of food he could scavenge. The others knew he was out there, and the grotesque girl from the hut sometimes left scraps for him, perhaps in an attempt to coax him back into her bed. She had been quite pretty once, he supposed, but now she was just a husk that was being slowly consumed by a disease that had no cure. A disease that ate at the extremities and left the body covered in ulcers, and ate through one's internal organs until there was nothing left and the victim died an agonisingly painful death.
He peeled off his ragged clothes and checked his body every day, looking for some sign that he had contracted the disease, but so far he showed no symptoms. All he could do was prowl the island looking for a way off.
There was none.
It was the reason the victims of Malik's Curse were confined here.
He made one attempt to get back into the Karien compound, but the wall, which had been so easy to clamber over from the inside, was much steeper on the leeward side. A deep, empty moat surrounded it that made it impossible to climb without a rope. There was no rope to be had. So he had returned to his prowling, scavenging existence and gone back to trying to find another way off the island.
Loclon tossed restlessly and then sat up, unsure what had wakened him. He looked around in the darkness but could see nothing, so he scrambled on his hands and knees to the entrance of the small cave where he sheltered and looked out over the rocky beach. He saw a figure standing in the moonlight on the beach and scuttled out to get a closer look. Whoever it was, it appeared to be a woman, but he could not make out her identity from this distance. A bubble of excitement began to build in him.
The figure saw him stumbling across the beach and began to walk towards him. He raised his hand in greeting, certain that he had been rescued. The woman was tall and walked with an easy grace that showed no hint of the wasting disease. She was not one of them.
“Hello, Loclon.”
He froze at the sound of her voice as she stepped closer.
“
“You sound surprised, Captain. You should have known I'd come for you.”
He studied her warily. She must have been drawing on her power - her eyes burned black as the night surrounding them. Her hair had grown out and was almost on her shoulders, ruffled gently by the sea breeze. It took him a while to work out what else was different about her. It wasn't her quiet air of confidence, or the power
