that radiated from her.
It was her lack of fear.
Loclon cautiously took a step back from her. “You've come for me?”
“Did you doubt that I would?”
Hope flared in him as he realised rescue was at hand. She would take him from this place. He would probably be dragged back to the Citadel in chains, but that was better than being here. Better than a slow, lingering death while he was eaten alive by his own body. He could escape eventually. Either along the way or once they got to the Citadel. It didn't really matter.
He nodded and held out his hands to her. “I'll come quietly. I won't resist.”
R'shiel studied him for a moment and then smiled. It chilled him to the core.
“Death told me once that evil is its own reward, Loclon. I understand what he meant now.”
“What are you talking about? I'm surrendering to you. Take me!”
“I don't want your surrender.”
“
“Vengeance,” she said softly.
“Then take it! Take me away from here! Take me back to the Citadel! Put me on trial! I'll confess. I'll tell them everything I did to you. They'll hang me R'shiel, you know that. Rape is a capital offence. You can stand there and watch me swing! You can gloat over my corpse! Take me back!
“No, I don't think so, Loclon.”
She turned away from him and began to walk back along the shore. The waves shone with phosphorescence as they slapped at the pebbly beach. He fell to his knees, sobbing with despair.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder, her black eyes reflecting the shimmering waves. “Mercy?”
“Please, R'shiel. Take me back with you. I'll do whatever you want. I'll suffer as much as you want.
R'shiel stood there watching him on his knees, begging her for mercy. She had done this to him before. She had made him grovel like this at the Grimfield and once they were gone from this place, he would make her pay for that insult, too. But for now...
She was wavering. He could tell. She walked back towards him. Hope burned bright in his eyes. She was part Harshini, wasn't she? They were supposed to be unable to kill. Deep down, she didn't have what it took to make the killing stroke. That he was alive at all was proof of that. She'd been raised by the Sisterhood. She believed all that stuff about law and honour. She would not be able to turn her back on him.
But when he saw her face, he realised how wrong he was. There was no mercy in those alien black eyes. No pity. No compassion.
Nothing but cold, unrelenting contempt.
“I came here to send you to hell,” she said. “But I don't have to, do I? You're already there.”
He wasn't sure how to answer her; he wasn't even sure what she meant. She just stood there, staring at him with those alien black eyes...
Then the itching started. It was barely noticeable at first. He was too consumed by his fear of her to pay attention to it. It began in his fingertips, a niggling, annoying sensation that barely even distracted him. He rubbed his hands against his tattered trousers to relieve it, but it simply made the itching worse.
R'shiel didn't move.
The itching spread up his left arm. He scratched at it with his right hand and discovered his arm covered in small hard lumps. He tore his eyes from R'shiel and glanced down. The lumps were growing larger. As he watched, one of the lumps on his forearm began to develop a puss-filled head. The itching progressed beyond annoying into true pain. The lumps were spreading. He could feel them forming on his back and across his belly. His trousers chaffed as the sores began to form in his groin. His face was swelling with them, too. He tore at his clothing as another sore erupted, the burning itching growing more and more relentless; his breath came in gasps as he realised what was happening to him. The sores kept spreading.
“No!” he panted, as he tore at his own flesh in a futile attempt to relieve the burning. “No! No!...
R'shiel stood there watching him.
“What have you done to me?” he wailed. “Make it stop! Don't do this to me! Not this! Kill me if you must, R'shiel, but not like this! Let me die like a man!”
That evoked a reaction from her. She laughed.
“Like a man, Loclon?”
“Stop it, R'shiel!
“It takes years to die from Malik's Curse, did you know that?” she asked in a conversational tone. “Of course, a few years being slowly devoured by your own body doesn't seem sufficient to repay all you've done, but it will have to do, I suppose.”
“I'll... kill myself before... I let this thing... eat me alive,” he gasped, unable to stop scratching at the spreading sores.
“No, Loclon, you won't kill yourself. For one thing, you're too big a coward, and for another, I won't let you.”
“How are you... going to... stop me?”
“Magic.”
R'shiel turned and walked away, until eventually she was swallowed by the darkness. She didn't look back.
The salt water stung the sores on his legs as he splashed into the foam. He plunged into the sea until it was waist high, then suddenly found he could go no further. He wanted to live, he realised with despair. Even though he had consciously made the decision to die, there was another voice in his mind that wouldn't let him. He found himself unable to take another step.
Loclon staggered back to the beach and threw himself down on the sand, rubbing against the grains to ease the itching, but the sand merely aggravated his already inflamed skin. He was sobbing with frustration. He couldn't relieve the itching. He couldn't stop the pain. He couldn't even die...
A hand reached for him and hope flared bright for a fleeting moment! He knew she couldn't walk away from him! She had to come back! This was just a game, she was just tormenting him for revenge...
“Mister?” the voice said gently. “It's all right, Mister. The itching goes away after a few days...”
He looked up to find the girl from the settlement with her pathetic smile and her ruined face staring down at him, her eyes filled with pity.
Loclon's howl of despair echoed across the empty beach.
Then he forced himself up and looked around urgently, but it was as if R'shiel had never even been here. There was no sign of her.
Not even footprints in the sand.
_____
