princess.
'Death! Destruction! Pestilence!' thundered Hornsbuck as he turned round and round, holding up his arms and staring up at the broken dome.
'Leave her alone, old man!' cried Mika, lifting his sword once more. 'Take your hands off her and stand back. I will listen to no more of your nonsense, and do not think to stun me again. I will slice you through with my blade before you can say the words.'
'You do not believe me,' the old man said sadly as he turned around and gazed at Mika. His expression was mournful as though Mika were a prize pupil who had suddenly fallen stupid.
'Perhaps you would recognize me if I looked different. Like this, perhaps.' And the old man's body began to change. His back humped under the dark cape and then it seemed to fill out, bulging strangely in odd places.
Then the cape fell away from his head and the skull itself began to twist and move as though it were made of soft clay and being shaped by an unseen hand.
The skull lost what few threads of hair it possessed and swelled to three times greater in size. The forehead bulged grotesquely and eyebrows, great bushy red eyebrows, pushed through the skin and grew before Mika's startled eyes.
Red eyes. Red, the color of warm blood, with no pupils, looked out at Mika and seemed to gleam with an evil light.
The withered cheeks grew fat, the deep wrinkles smoothing away as though they had never been. The nose became bulbous and misshapen, and a gold stud was fixed in each nostril. The mouth formed wide and cruel and the lips fleshy and somehow obscene. The ears were mere slits in the sides of the skull.
The cape fell to the ground as the man-thing grew, revealing an immense broad-chested, round-bellied body, thick with layer upon layer of fat.
Its arms and legs were massive, smooth of skin and hairless and red. The entire monstrous manifestation was red. The red of a lobster boiled in seawater.
The man-thing continued to grow, becoming taller and taller and wider and wider till it towered over Mika, more than seven feet tall and four times his weight. And it wore nothing but an evil smile.
The horrible thing stood before Mika clasping the princess against its ugly body like some tiny toy. Mika could hardly bear to look; it was a sacrilege just watching the foul thing touch her.
The dome of the temple seemed to whirl around Mika's head and he closed his eyes to stop the giddy sensation. His heart hammered against his ribs, and his fear was like the taste of cold iron in his mouth. He shivered and his hands could barely grip the handle of his sword. The roan screamed, wheeled, and ran from the frightful apparition. Mika heard Tam and RedTail whine and slink away and wished that he could do the same.
'Do you believe me now?' thundered the awful red demon.
'I believe,' whispered Mika with his head bowed, daring to wonder if there was any hope of escape. Opening his eyes, he saw the demon's hand reaching out for him, its long fingers twitching as though they already held him in their grasp.
'Wait!' cried Mika, shrinking back out of reach, totally terrified. He knew that he would not survive if ever the creature touched him.
'Wait!' he croaked through his fear-clenched throat. 'Don't kill me! You can't kill someone who's done you a favor. Can you?'
'Of course I can,' chuckled the demon, smiling widely, exposing his long sharp fangs. 'I've done so many times. But perhaps it would be more fitting if we permitted the princess to reward you herself. Yes, I think I would enjoy that more.' And gesturing with his long fingers, waving them over her head in strange arcane moves, the monster muttered soft words beneath his breath and Mika saw the princess stir. A lump filled his throat. He had envisioned this moment many times, but never had he pictured it happening like this.
One grubby slender hand trembled and lifted shakily to press against the tattered silk-clad breast. The magnificent bosom rose and fell, taking in great gulps of air, and her eyelids fluttered and then opened.
Mika recoiled in shock! Peering at him groggily through a dirty tangle of thick black curls was one brilliant blue eye and one as green as the grass of spring!
'I shall allow the princess herself to bestow your reward,' said the demon. Then, before Mika's bewildered eyes, the monster began to shrink and whither, until it was once more the same wizened old ugly man in the voluminous black cape.
The princess leaned against him, seemingly too weak to stand alone and, as yet, totally uncomprehending.
The old man gestured with his frail, thickly veined hand, and the princess's hand rose and pointed at Mika.
Mike knew without a doubt that something terrible was about to happen.
'Wait! Wait! Stop!' he yelled. 'I don't understand. What's happening? Who are you? All right, I saw some horrible apparition. Something big and red, but maybe it was all illusion, it doesn't prove that you're Iuz.
'Why would Iuz need to kidnap a princess? None of this makes sense. I don't believe you're Iuz at all. I think you're just some old has-been magic-user. You can do some illusion and some spells and you can kill me, but you're not Iuz.'
Mike held his breath as he waited for the old man to respond. In his heart he was not at all certain that the old man was not exactly whom he claimed to be. But if he could get the old man talking, he might be able to think of a way to escape what now seemed to be certain death.
'You have touched on more of the truth than you know,' sighed the old man and he seemed to stagger off balance for a minute as the princess leaned on him more heavily.
The old man fixed Mika with a baleful eye and his voice rose in cold fury. 'I am Iuz! This, this old tired body is that which I have inhabited on this plane of existence for more years than I can number. It is a tired body, no longer strengthened by the blood and spirits of sacrifice. Soon, unless I take steps to prevent it, this body will die, and I will have no access to this material plane for more than a century.
'I have bided my time in the planes of other existence, in other forms of being, one of which you have just witnessed, searching for that which could return me to strength and power. And at last I found it.
'The answer is twofold. First there is the gem which you know as dramadine.
'Dramadine is a rare gem, occurring but seldom in nature, and it has never been replicated by man or mage. As you have heard, it heightens one's powers to the greatest potential. Such a gem would strengthen me and make me invincible.
'But it is not the gem alone I desire, for the princess herself is a conduit of power; her eyes, as you have no doubt noticed, give evidence of the strength hidden within.'
'But how can you use her power?' asked Mika, noticing with a quickening of pulse and a thread of hope that the princess was standing on her own feet, no longer leaning against the old man, and her eyes seemed to be focusing more clearly. If only he could keep the old man talking until she regained her senses! If she heard what he was saying, she could not fail to recognize their danger. Maybe she would help Mika in some way, or at the very least, allow him the opportunity to escape.
'I will encapsulate her power,' the old man said patiently, not seeming to notice that the princess was now erect and was staring down at her hands and arms, examining them in a puzzled manner as though she had never seen them before.
'The power of a virgin is very strong,' said the old man. 'It will rejuvenate this old tired body and make me young and strong enough to bring this world under my control. And I have you to thank for bringing her to me. Without your special brand of protection, she might never have reached me.'
'How do you encapsulate a princess, and wouldn't just any old girl do? Does it have to be a princess?' Mika asked hurriedly, hoping to keep the magic-user from noticing the bright look of fury that Mika detected in the princess's eyes as she picked up the shredded remains of her filthy silk dress between her dirty fingers and stared at it in angry silence.
'It's really a simple process,' said the old man, warming to the explanation. 'I need only distill the essence of the virgin and place it in a crystal, or in this case, the gem.
'No ordinary virgin will do. This princess, despite her plain exterior, is the end result of several hundreds of years of breeding that have produced kings, queens, magic-users, and men of power. Although her potential is as yet unrealized, I shall bring it to greater heights than she would ever have realized as a mere human.
