JULIEN

II

Chapter 74

Darkness

That thing was alive! Despite the desperate situation in which Julien found himself he couldn't stop staring at the bloody organs laid out, he could now see, as if for a dissection exercise. He tried to guess what type of creature it had been, but he couldn't find any word to describe the horror of what he was looking at.

The blood-covered stone was still sticky with the fluids that had been drawn from the victim of the past night's sacrifice. Julien stood on it unrestrained but he was not remotely surprised to discover that he was unable to jump to somewhere a long way away, as he desperately wanted to do. Whoever had brought him here clearly had the power to prevent him from using his Gift. And he suspected that the cloud of darkness in front of him was probably responsible for that.

Logically he should have been paralysed with terror, but of course he had had a number of meeting with Neh-kyongs and had twice shared an instant of their existence, and those meetings had made him immune to the effects of the weird quasi-numinous presence of that type of entity. However, that didn't stop him from being afraid. On the contrary, he was horribly aware of the fate that was awaiting him, and he was having to make a conscious effort just to keep his sphincters closed. He'd sometimes wondered how he would cope under torture, and every time he had come to the conclusion that he would have talked. Even the heavily moderated tales of what the Gestapo had done during the war were enough to convince him that he was not a potential hero. And the condition of the creature he had finally recognised as a vril – a VRIL, for God's sake! - was a clear demonstration of just how pain could pass beyond imagination. Just to add to his distress he remembered that, no matter how quickly he acted, his nagtri couldn't help him to choose a quick death instead, because the black blade was incapable of harming its master.

A brutal blow between the shoulder-blades sent him flat on his face to the ground and a powerful voice boomed at him using words that a hitherto never called-upon memory identified as one of the forbidden tongues used by practitioners of the Dark Arts.

“Prostrate yourself before the One who serves the Whisperer!”

Despite the pain Julien's mind was clear as the knowledge buried in his mind organised itself, a knowledge inherited from Yulmir and which now bubbled up, flooding into his mind like a black spring welling up at the bottom of a pond.

This was not the first time that the Emperor had been in this place. In fact he had actually died here twice, a very long time ago, drugged, incapable of coherent thought and his defence reflexes totally blocked. On both occasions they had tried to kill him as slowly and painfully as possible. On other occasions he had come here to destroy infamous councils of evil sorcerers who had made the mistake of allowing their dark cults to become known. However, he had never been faced with two of the entities they sometimes summoned. Dealing with a single Dre Tchenn was a dangerous business for those who summoned it. Having two within the same circle of invocation was absolutely suicidal.

And to go by what had just been said, these weren't just any Dre Tchenns, either! 'The Whisperer in Darkness' was an alternative title for one whose true name could not be uttered. There was a legend current on several worlds, including Earth, concerning a book that spoke of the Whisperer, a book that would drive anyone who read it insane. As for the One who served Him, this surely had to be the entity referred to in some texts as 'The Crawling Chaos'.

If those two were involved there could be no hope of escaping a dreadful end. The only sliver of comfort was the thought that those who had summoned them were sure to share his fate.

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But the excruciating, unbearable pain he had expected failed to materialise. Although he was still aching from the blow he had been given, several seconds passed in silence and they had still not started to crush his limbs. He couldn't understand it. The part of him that was still a boy was almost pathetically relieved, while the part that had been Yulmir marvelled at it and, paradoxically, worried about it even more than he would have worried about the expected vicious torture to come.

He was dragged to his feet once more. Two acolytes had now joined the celebrant, and these held his arms. They stripped him of his laï and sandals and cut the lace that held Aïn's and Wenn Hyaï's target-klirks around his neck. The also cut the thin belt that held his nagtri, leaving him at last, as somehow seemed right, clad only in the white Marks of the Emperor. The celebrant stood in front of him, towering over him.

“This time you are not going to die, Protector of the Nine Worlds,” he said, pronouncing the title with such scorn that Julien felt insulted. “You are going to live, for a very long time – as long as it takes. And the Servant of the Whisperer in Darkness is going to take good care of you.”

The demmbal drum started to beat again, very slowly and quietly, and the grating squeaks of the yabbhaï flute, scarcely louder than the cry of a bat, once again offended eardrums. The sorcerer reached out and seized Julien's penis with astonishing gentleness, feeling its weight and handling it slowly, even as his own member, which was slick with the juices that had been dripping from it since the celebration began and which had been rock-hard throughout, twitched in time with the beating of the drum. The sorcerer's calloused fingers, which he had dipped in the aphrodisiac sap of the sandar tree, were warm despite the freezing desert night, and they caressed the boy's body with great expertise. And Julien, despite the fear and loathing which pervaded his spirit and despite the certainty of imminent pain, felt his body respond. He was certain that at any moment the man would seize his testicles in a crushing grip, overwhelming him with pain – and yet he could not stop his penis from stiffening, nor could he prevent the waves of intense sensation from sweeping through him. His mind cried out that he felt no desire, but his body wanted only to surrender to pleasure.

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Chapter 75

Debate

The Palace was in an uproar. They hadn't even managed to capture any of the attackers! Xarax had barely caught sight of them before they disappeared, presumably transported back to their base. Nobody knew what was going on, and they had no idea whether Julien had been captured or if he had managed to jump away to safety. They had no choice but to wait for him to return to them.

Wenn Hyaï, who had been summoned urgently, jumped into the Outside, but he was unable to find any trace of his klirk, the one that Julien always kept around his neck.

Tannder and Dennkar considered themselves responsible for Julien's security, and so for them this situation was like a dreadful case of deja-vu. But this time they didn't think the Dalannis were involved. Even if there was still a group of them hiding out on Nüngen or elsewhere in the R'hinz, it was almost impossible to believe that they had found a means to destroy klirks, even if they had worked out that klirks were anything more than a strange local form of jewellery.

As soon as they heard the news Aldegard and Tahlil decided to summon a council, to which they invited Niil, as well as Subadar, Wenn Hyaï, Tannder and Dennkar. Niil promptly suggested that they should also bring in Ambar and Yülien.

“Look,” declared Aldegard, with some annoyance, “I understand that we're going to have to tell them that Julien has disappeared, but I hardly think we need to invite them to the meeting. We've got other things to worry about besides offering consolation to...”

“By your leave, My Lord,” cut in Niil, in defiance of all protocol, “but we need them here, because they are the only ones who have been through the same experience.”

“I don't remember them being abducted by assassins!” snapped Aldegard.

“No, but the klirk Ambar was wearing at the time disappeared, just like Julien's has this time.”

The silence which followed spoke louder than words. Eventually Aldegard recovered enough to say, “I suppose I must admit that you have a point.”

“Uncle,” said Niil, choosing the term of respect because he was eager to dispel any trace of antagonism, “your duty as Mirror of the Emperor leaves you little time to spot the sort of trivia I can see.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation Aldegard managed to laugh. “You're trying to rub the tak up the right way, I see,” he commented. “Obviously Lord Tahlil's education is doing you some good. All right, we'll send for our wonder Ningtchik.”

oo0oo

The debate was quite heated. As soon as they heard what had happened Ambar and Yülien wanted to set out immediately in search of their friend, and if they had decided to defy the authority of a profoundly sceptical Aldegard and the fear of Subadar, who really didn't want the most promising duo he had ever seen to risk their lives in so dangerous an enterprise, nobody would have been able to stop them. Tannder and Dennkar did believe that they were probably the best equipped of anyone to find out what had happened to Julien, but they thought it highly unlikely that the pair would be able to do anything against adversaries who could probably annihilate them without breaking sweat. But Wenn Hyaï, whose affection for his pupils was accompanied by a genuine respect for their abilities, finally talked everyone round by stating that he would accompany them in their search.

They still had to convince Tannder that, although his help would have been extremely valuable, the presence of a non-Guide on the expedition would have made things very difficult. And Tannder was far too honest to raise the objection that Ambar wasn't a Guide either.

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