“This was the last of the sacrifices we bought from the supplier who trades with us through the death-house. Some time gone the supplier warned us these sacrifices were becoming few; the place that bred them was empty of them. The supplier sent us a sample of another sacrifice, one that could be provided in unlimited numbers. Then that supplier ceased dealing with us.
“These new ones will work very well,” he trumpeted. “We have found a new vendor to provide them through the death-house. We have the original sample here. Others will soon arrive from the new vendor. Bring it!”
From the temple beneath me a K’Famir emerged bearing a child in its arms, a human child of perhaps nine or ten. At the altar, the child was asked his name.
“Fessol,” he said, shyly. “I am Fessol.”
They were the last words the child uttered, but they were not the last sounds he made. He was larger than the small creatures, and the torture was done carefully. It went on until dawn. The cage was set in place, a larger thing materialized within. The tall pillar almost seemed to bend above it.
“Too much light to carry it into the city,” Progzo said. “It might be seen. Put it into the place and lock the door.”
The cage was put in the mausoleum below me. The K’Famir and their guards departed. Only Progzo and two other K’Famir lingered on the step.
“Will this kind work as well on humans as the others do?” one asked.
Progzo answered. “Our supplier sent me a few of these a long time ago. They were much more expensive than the other kind, the little ones, so I tested one myself. I arranged for it to fasten on my daughter’s pet, a human. It was my daughter it fastened on, but she did not live long. Her pain was amusing.”
“I, too, find females’ pain most amusing,” the other answered.
“Adille’s pain was not worthy. She was sterile. A mere plaything. Of no value. The ghyrm feeds on the human pet now.”
Some time after they had gone, when the plaza was completely empty, I struggled down from the temple roof and went into the plaza itself. A few torches still burned. The bodies of the victims were nowhere to be seen. Had they been taken away? Perhaps eaten by the K’Famir? Perhaps by Progzo, who had arranged for the death of his daughter, and for my continuing pain. Progzo, who had spoken of a human child as a new form of sacrifice?
I had thought I was past any anger, but what burned in me at that moment was too hot to be anything but rage. A torch burned beside the door of the mausoleum, which had been locked with a length of chain threaded loosely between the door handles, loosely enough that I could push one door open to make a sizable crack for the torchlight to fall through. The cage was just inside, and in the cage was a creature I knew all too well.
“Come,” it whispered. “Come here. Feed me.”
The crack was too small, and the cage that held it was of too small a mesh for it to escape. I was about to turn away when something behind the cage caught my eye. A pool of light held between the massive, uncut stones of the far wall. And not far from it, a pool of dark among the boulders of the adjoining wall. Between them, a machine of some sort. A very strange machine. I stared, stared, almost too long, for the thing had extended a tentacle and was feeling its way toward me through the crack. Only its little gasp of anticipation alerted me. I turned and struggled witlessly down the hill, through the alleys. I had seen nothing during the night that I had not seen the K’Famir do before. All male K’Famir seemed to be experts in torture; perhaps it was something they learned in their malehood school, but this was the first time I had seen it used against an absolutely helpless victim instead of against an adversary, or against a female consort or daughter they wished to be rid of.
I dreaded the fact that it was waiting for me, eager to make me relive it all, to drain me of everything I had seen, felt, heard, smelled. Well, it must not learn what I had heard! It must not know that I knew how its kind were made! Without at all understanding why, I knew without any reservation that the thing must not know of it.
Past experience helped. I had learned that if I concentrated on the pain and the blood, it would pass over the specifics of surroundings and torturers. Particularly…yes, particularly when it was very hungry. I delayed feeding it, therefore, until after I had eaten and had arranged my thoughts carefully. Then I fed it, concentrating on the little creatures, on how they had writhed and cried out and screamed, playing the scene over and over in an endless loop, until the thing drew away, satisfied.
As I dressed for work, my mind was busy sorting out what I had seen, putting together all the clues and sayings gathered during my time on Cantardene. On my walk to work, I fit everything into a scenario that was consistent with what I had learned and observed, not only last night, but all during my enslavement.
Male K’Famir prayed to Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead, personified by the standing stone. The sacrifices acceptable to the Eater of the Dead were pain, terror, panic, horror. All these were bankable, and the aim was to build up a credit account with the god. If Adille’s father, Progzo, had a large credit account with the Eater of the Dead, the
