With a shriek like a dying thing, the metal sheared neatly in two, and the door swung open.
* * *
'You are bold, priest,' the demon rumbled.
'I am curious; perhaps foolish -- but never bold,' responded the plump, balding priest of Anathei. 'I was curious when I first heard the rumors of your return. I was even more curious when the two who were responsible for your defeat before were missing this morning. I will confess to being quite confused to find one of them here.'
He cast a meaningful glance at the demon's companion, curled sullenly on the velvet beside him. The sorceress did not appear to be happy, but she also did not appear coerced in any way. Come to that, there was something oddly different about her....
'I repeat, you are bold; but you amuse me. Why are you here?' Thalhkarsh settled back onto his cushions, and with a flicker of thought increased the intensity of the light coming from his crimson lanterns. The musky incense he favored wafted upward toward the ceiling from a brazier at the edge of the padded platform where he reclined. This priest had presented himself at the door and simply asked to be taken to the demon; Thalhkarsh's followers had been so nonplussed by his quiet air of authority that they had done as he asked. Now he stood before Thalhkarsh, an unimpressive figure in a plain brown cassock, plump and aging, with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. And he, in his turn, did not seem the least afraid of the demon; nor did it appear that anything, from the obscene carvings to the orgy still in progress on the platform behind the demon, was bothering him the slightest bit.
And that had the demon thoroughly puzzled.
'I am here to try to convince you that what you are doing is wrong.'
'Wrong? Wrong?' The demon laughed heartily. 'I could break you with one finger, and you wish to tell me that I am guilty of doing wrong?'
'Since you seem to wish to live in this world, you must live by some of its rules -- and one of those is that to cause harm or pain to another is wrong.'
'And who will punish me, priest?' The demon's eyes glowed redly, his lips thinning in anger. 'You?'
'You yourself will cause your own punishment,' the priest replied earnestly. 'For by your actions you will drive away what even you must need -- admiration, trust, friendship, love -- '
He was interrupted by the sound of shouting and of clashing blades; he stared in surprise to see Tarma -- a transformed Tarma -- wearing an acolyte's tunic and nothing else, charging into the room driving several guards ahead of her. And with her was the platinum-haired child he had last seen at his own temple, telling his brothers of the rumors of Thalhkarsh.
But the blade in her hands was the one he had last seen in the sorceress' hands.
The woman at the demon's side made a tight little sound of smothered rage as the demon's guards moved to bar the exits or interpose themselves between the women and their target.
'Your anger is strong, little toy,' Thalhkarsh laughed, looking down at her. 'Use it, then. Become the instrument of my revenge. Kill her, and this time I promise you that I shall give you your man's body back.' He plucked a sword from the hand of the guard next to him and handed it to his amber-tressed companion.
And the priest stared in complete bewilderment.
Given the weapon, the bandit needed no further urging, and flung himself at Kethry's throat.
Kethry, now no longer the tough, fit creature she had been, but a frail, delicate wraith, went down before him. Tarma tried to get to her, knowing that she was going to be too late --
But Warrl intervened, bursting from behind the crimson velvet hangings, flinging himself between the combatants long enough for Kethry to regain her footing and recover Need. She fumbled it up into a pathetic semblance of guard position; then stared at her own hands, wearing a stupefied expression. After a moment Tarma realized why. Need was not responding to her -- because Need could not act against a woman, not even for a woman.
And between Tarma and her she'enedra were a dozen or so followers of the demon.
But some of them were the ones who had so lately been sharing her own body with their master.
She let herself, for the first time since her awakening, truly realize what had been done to her -- physically and mentally. Within an eyeblink she had roused herself to a killing battle-frenzy, a state in which all her senses were heightened, her reactions quickened, her strength nearly doubled. She would pay for this energized state later -- if there was a later.
