Unlike several High Maguses she was aware of, Banneth didn’t go in for ostentation. Her senior acolytes were permitted whatever decadent luxuries they could steal and bribe for themselves. But they lived several floors above her, decorating their apartments with expensive hedonistic amenities, and harems of beautiful youths and freakish supplicants. She indulged herself on somewhat different levels.
When Kilian started to look round, he found he was in a place that was way beyond the worst-case scenarios that acolytes whispered among themselves. Banneth’s sanctum was an experimental surgery. Its mainstay was a broad bench desk with high-capacity processor blocks and shiny new medical equipment. Three stainless steel tables were lined up in the middle of the floor, with discreet leather restraint straps placed strategically round the edges. Life support canisters were arranged around the walls, like huge glass pillars. Aquarium-style lighting caps shone brightly on their contents. Kilian really wished they didn’t, the things inside were enough to make him shit his pants. People, in a few of them. Suspended by a white silk web in some thick clear fluid, tubes going into their mouths and noses (those that still had mouths and noses). Always with their eyes open, looking about. Acolytes he remembered from not so long back; with new appendages grafted on; others with parts removed, their incisions raw and open to reveal the missing organs. Then there were the less than human creatures, made worse by having very human pieces attached. Clusters of organs bound together by a plexus of naked pumping veins. Animals, game cats and gorillas with the tops of their skull removed, and no brain left inside. Pride of place on the wall above the work desk was taken by an ancient oil painting of a young woman in a dress with a stiff bodice and long skirt.
Although Kilian had never been in the sanctum before, it was the place where everyone came eventually, either for boosting or punishment. Banneth performed both types of operation herself. Now he stood as still as his trembling limbs would allow as the High Magus walked briskly across the floor to him.
Banneth’s face had a male jawline, a blunt protuberant blade of bone. But that was the only masculine feature, the eyes and mouth were soft, very feminine. A shaggy pelt of straw-blonde hair completed the enigma. Kilian glanced nervously at the white shirt Banneth wore. Everyone said the High Magus got aroused at the sight of fear. If her nips were jutting, then she was in the feminine stage of her cycle.
Dark circles of skin were definitely tenting the cotton. Kilian wondered if it really made a difference. Banneth was a hermaphrodite—by design, so rumour said. She looked as if she was about twenty, either as a male or a female; though age was an easy enough cosmetic adaptation. Nobody knew how old she really was, nor even how long she had been High Magus. In fact, legend and rumour were all that existed about her past. Questions were discouraged.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” Banneth said. Her hand stroked Kilian’s cheek, the cool skin of her knuckles drifting gently along his cheekbone. An appraisal by a gifted sculptor, finding his exact form. He quivered at the touch. Pink eyes with feline irises blinked in amusement at his reaction.
“Nervous, Kilian?”
“I don’t know what I’ve done, High Magus.”
“That’s true. But then a barely human grunt like you doesn’t know much of anything. Do you? Well don’t worry yourself too much. Actually, you’ve been quite useful to me.”
“I have?”
“Amazingly, yes. And as you know, I always reward the devout.”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“What can I do for you now, I wonder?” She began to circle the apprehensive acolyte, grinning boyishly. “You’re how old now? Twenty-five, isn’t it? So I ask myself what does a nice young boy your age always want. And the answer’s a much bigger cock, of course. That’s pretty standard. I can do that, you know. I can snip off that pitiful rat-sized cock you’ve got now, and replace it with something much better. A cock that’s as long as your forearm and as hard as steel. You would like me to do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Please, High Magus,” Kilian whimpered.
“Was that a ‘yes please,’ Kilian?”
“I . . . I just want to help you. However I can.”
She blew him a kiss, still prowling her circuit around him. “Good boy. I asked to see you because I’d like to know something. Do you believe in the teachings of the Light Bringer?”
“An excellent answer, Kilian. Now tell me this: do you welcome the coming darkness?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“Really? And how do you know it’s coming?”
Kilian risked a glance over his shoulder, trying to follow the High Magus as she circled round him. But she was directly behind him now, and the only thing he really noticed was the way the eyes of the acolytes in the life support containers were tracking her movements. “The possessed are here. He sent them, our Lord. They’re going to bring His Night to the whole world.”
“So everyone says. The whole arcology is talking about nothing else. Indeed the whole planet has little else to say. But how do you know? You, Kilian?”
Banneth stopped in front of him, lips curved in a sympathetic, expectant smile.
I’ll have to tell the truth, Kilian realized in horror. But I don’t know if that’s what she wants to hear. Fuck! Oh God’s Brother, what’ll she do to me if it’s wrong? What will she turn me into?
“Cat got your tongue?” Banneth asked coyly. The smile hardened slightly, becoming less playful. Her glance flicked to one of the life support canisters containing a puma. “Of course, I can give the cat your tongue, Kilian. But what would I fit in its place? What would be appropriate do you think? I have so much material I don’t really need any more. Some of it is long past its sell-by date. Ever felt flesh that’s started to decay, Kilian? Necromorphology is a somewhat acquired taste. You never know, though, you might get to like it in time.”
“I saw one!” Kilian shouted. “Oh fuck, I saw one. I’m sorry High Magus, I didn’t tell my sergeant acolyte, I . . .”
She kissed his ear lobe, shocking him into silence. “I understand,” she whispered. “Really I do. To understand the way people think, you must first understand the way they work. And I’ve made the workings of the human body my special area of study for a long time. Physiology begets psychology, you might say. Mightn’t you, Kilian?”
Kilian
“It—I saw him in the Vegreville dome coven’s chapel,” Kilian said. He knew for sure now that the High Magus wanted to hear about the possessed. Maybe this would get him off the hook.
Banneth stopped her pacing, standing directly in front of the woeful acolyte. There were no more smiles left on her androgynous face. “You didn’t tell your sergeant acolyte because you thought you’d wind up in deep shit. Because if the possessed are real, then the sect hierarchy that you’ve so devoutly been kissing ass to for the last six years will be replaced by them. By telling everyone what you’d seen you would in effect be spreading sedition; though I doubt you would be able to rationalize it quite like that. To you it was simple instinct. Your serpent beast looks after you, it puts you first. As indeed it should, in that respect you’ve been loyal to yourself and God’s Brother. Of course, you couldn’t resist telling a few people, could you? You should have known better, Kilian. You know I reward acolytes who betray their friends to me.”
“Yes, High Magus,” Kilian mumbled.
“Well I’m glad that’s settled then. Unfortunately the golden rule of the sect is that I am to be told everything. I and I alone decide what is important, and what is not.” Banneth walked over to one of the stainless steel tables, and tapped a finger on it. “Come over here, Kilian. Lie down for me.”
“
“Now.”
If he’d thought running would have done him the slightest good, he would have run. Actually, he even had the wild thought that he could attack Banneth. The High Magus was physically weaker. But that idea was resolved in a second by a simple clash of wills. He was foolish enough to glance at her pink eyes.
“That’s a very bad thought,” Banneth said. “I don’t like that at all.”
Kilian walked over to the table, taking the smallest steps possible. In the faintly violet light thrown out by the
