Dhampir Part 12

"What about Edwan?" She stood, taking one step closer to Rashed. "Will he be released soon?"

Rashed was silent for a moment, not moving, his eyes staring at the wall behind her.

"Your husband was sentenced this morning and executed at dusk." He said it without any change of tone in his voice.

He turned toward the door, preparing to leave. "Do you wish to sit by the fire?"

A kind of madness tickled Teesha's brain.

"Do I wish to... ?" She began laughing. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

For nothing-she'd come to this nightmare pit for nothing, and Edwan, who deserved a peaceful life more than anyone she'd known, was dead simply because some twisted lord fancied his wife. The vicious comedy of it all became more than she could bear. Death was far preferable to this existence.

She bolted past Rashed, running down the short hall. She didn't know if Rashed pursued her or not as she ran down the stone steps to the main room. Lord Corische sat at the cracked table writing on a scroll with a feather quill. Teesha ignored him and ran for the great oak doors.

As she reached out for the iron latch, Parko sprang in front of her as if sprouting from the earth, snarling and sucking in her scent. She staggered back in reflex, but did not turn around, her eyes focused watchfully on the disheveled figure in front of her.

"Let me out of here!" she ordered Corische. She had nothing left for him to take, nothing that mattered to her, and so no more reason for fear.

Then she saw the enormous iron bar across the door. She hadn't even noticed it while rus.h.i.+ng to escape. It was wider than her own upper arm and so thick and heavy it didn't seem possible that any one person could have lifted it alone. It was most certainly impossible for her to do so by herself.

"Take this down," she said, her back still to Corische. "Our pact is over."

"Rashed put that bar up. Even I would have difficulty removing it. Did you enjoy dinner?"

Hatred was a new emotion for Teesha, disorienting, and it took a moment to think through Corische's insulting chatter.

"If you wanted a lady for your house, why didn't you find one? Are you afraid she would detest your crude manners and lowborn airs? No, you wanted someone beneath you that you could lord over"-she looked at Parko, no longer frightened by him, then caught sight of Ratboy hovering in the corner-"like the rest of your wretched little mob."

She heard something slam down on the table hard enough to make it slide and grate on the stone floor. He was easy to anger. Good. She turned about to face him and saw clean, unmasked rage.

"You live at my mercy," he said, "at my whim. Do not forget that."

"Your mercy?" The madness in her laugh matched Parko's eyes. "And what makes you believe living has anything to do with this? You murdered my Edwan, and I will do nothing to bring you pleasure. Do you understand me now? I will not grace your table nor entertain your guests nor do anything you desire. I will try to escape every day until I succeed or you tire of it and kill me."

Corische appeared stunned into silence.

Teesha only blinked once, reflexively, and he was suddenly across the room at her side.

His hand lashed out and grabbed her arm. The stale smell of him filled her with revulsion, but his grip hurt so badly she couldn't help crying out.

"You will will do as I say," he hissed. "I am master here. This keep may be a pathetic hovel, but I am still lord and you will obey." do as I say," he hissed. "I am master here. This keep may be a pathetic hovel, but I am still lord and you will obey."

"No," she whimpered. "You murdered my Edwan."

Corische swept the floor with one foot, kicking aside the straw to reveal a worn wooden hatch with an inset iron ring. Before Teesha could resist, he jerked up the hatch and shoved her inside.

Teesha expected to fall straight down, but instead she tumbled along stone steps in the dark. When she reached bottom finally, her head banged against a stone floor she couldn't even see in the half-light spilling down from the open hatch. A hollow thud echoed through the chamber as the hatch slammed closed, leaving her in complete darkness.

She sat up, feeling along her limbs for any wounds greater than bruises or sc.r.a.pes. At least now she was away from him for the moment.

A savage grunt came from the dark.

"You will do whatever I ask," a voice said, "because you won't be able to stop yourself."

Corische had come down the steps behind her and was somewhere in the chamber.

Teesha slid back from his voice. Finding the bottom stair with her hand, she turned to scramble upward to the hatch. Something tangled in her hair, jerking her back, and she felt fingers coil tighter just before her head was slammed to the floor.

She couldn't be sure if she'd lost consciousness for a moment, but she became aware of someone large crouched over her, pinning her down. The smell of Corische's breath hit her in the face. His hand was still in her hair, pulling hard enough to hurt as her head tilted back. She tried to thrash free and cried out instinctively. Her scream was cut short as she felt canine teeth bite down on her throat.

Teesha gasped in panic, wondering from where the animal had come, and became rigid with shock when she realized it was Corische. Air became harder and harder to take in as she heard him suck her blood through his teeth. As he continued to drink, the dark around her began to tingle on her skin. Her head swam, her breath grew shorter and shorter, until she could barely feel the air move in and out through her slack mouth.

He pulled back suddenly, and she wheezed in a lungful of air just before she felt herself jerked up to sitting position. Her arms were still pinned to her sides by Corische's thick legs. Both his hands clamped across the back of her head, and he crushed her face into his chest.

The stink of his flesh made her gag, but his skin felt chilled. And there was something wet smearing against her face.

She opened her mouth, trying to breathe, and the wetness spread across her lips. A coppery taste hit her tongue. The liquid was as cold as his skin, but she could still recognize the taste from the times she cut a finger or thumb while preparing food in the inn's kitchen-and she'd raised the small wound to her mouth, trying to stop the drops of blood.

Corische pressed her face tighter against his chest until she could not breathe at all, only feel and taste the slight bit of his blood escaping into her mouth. Every sensation in the dark became unreal and distant until all feeling in her body faded and her breath stopped altogether.

Teesha awoke on the stone floor in the dark. Had it been hours or days? It felt... somehow felt even longer. There was light in the room, yet the hatch above was not open. Rashed kneeled over her, a small oil lamp in his hand. Something flickered across his cold features. Pity? Regret? She sat up to look about anxiously, but Corische was nowhere to be seen. A heavy wooden door with an iron slide bolt was set in the wall opposite the stairs that led up to the hatch. Otherwise, the room was empty.

Rashed stood and opened the door to expose a long hall angling downward into the earth. Along its sides were other doors like the first, each with a slide bolt, but also looped steel at the jambs where the door could be secured with a lock.

"This used to be a dungeon of some sort," he said.

Teesha was too weak and confused to either question or object when he scooped her up in his arms, lantern still in hand, and carried her into that hallway. He did not stop at any of the doors but walked to the end of the pa.s.sage, and placed his free hand firmly against the end wall, careful not to drop her. The stone under his hand gave, sinking into the wall, and he reached inside to some hidden pocket of s.p.a.ce.

Teesha heard something akin to grinding metal, then the grind of stone as the hall's end pivoted open to reveal a set of stairs angling farther downward. Rashed slipped through and descended.

He walked on and on until finally he reached an end chamber. Within it was nothing more than five coffins. Four were of plain wood and little more than long boxes, while the fifth appeared to be of thick oak with iron bindings, crafted for the final rest, yet without any handles on the outsides of its lid.

"This is where you must sleep now," he said, "in a coffin with the dirt of your homeland. If you go out into the sunlight, you will die." He set her down in one of the four wooden coffins. "You will rest here near my own. I've already prepared it for you."

And so Teesha, the carefree serving girl, was gone, and something else was born in her place.

She learned many things over the next few nights: That she could not refuse the wishes of her master, that she needed blood to exist, that Rashed's coffin was half full of white sand, and that she was undead. Rashed taught her everything with his endless dispa.s.sionate patience, and although she sometimes wished for the rest of true death, hatred for Corische kept her rising every night.

He was more than lord of the keep. He was a master among the n.o.ble Dead, those beings among the undead who still retained their full semblance of self from life in an eternal existence no longer subservient to the mortality under which the living grew old and weak. They were the vampires and liches who possessed physical bodies, their own memories, and their own consciousness. The n.o.ble Dead were the highest and most powerful of the unliving. The only weakness for vampires, however, was that they were slaves to the one who created them. Corische's master, his own creator, had somehow been destroyed, and so he was free to create his own servants.

Teesha found that when he gave a verbal order, she could not refuse him. Internally, she could despise him, fantasize about seeing him scorched in flames, and think whatever she pleased. But when he spoke, she could not stop herself from obeying. Neither could Rashed, Parko, or Ratboy-not that Rashed would have refused anyway. The tall, composed warrior seemed honestly loyal to his master. This revolted Teesha, as Rashed was clearly superior to Corische on every imaginable level.

Rashed taught her how to feed without killing, harmonizing the thrum of her voice to the exertion of her will, until the victim became pliable and docile.

When she asked Rashed why he cared so for mortals, that he did not wish to kill them, his reply was coldly practical.

"Even a heavily populated area like this one cannot support four of us recklessly. We must be careful or lose our home and our food supply."

She came to understand that their kind developed different levels of power. Rashed thought her mental abilities were quite p.r.o.nounced. His own and Ratboy's were adequate. Parko couldn't express himself well enough for the others to gauge his abilities, yet his senses were highly acute, even beyond the average heightened senses of a n.o.ble Dead, and he was a constant trial for Rashed to control. Corische's telepathic skills were so limited that Teesha sometimes wondered how he fed.

Most of the n.o.ble Dead developed mental abilities, but these often were dependent on the individual's inclinations in life. Teesha had always loved dreams and memories, for her life had been filled with the best of them, and so she eventually found she could easily reach into the mind of a mortal and project sweet waking dreams and alter memories.

The first time Rashed took her hunting was a revelation. They rode his bay gelding together for a while and then dismounted and tied the horse to a tree. Slipping through the forest, she realized they were hiding in the shadows on the outskirts of her home village. A farmer came out of the tavern and stepped into the trees to relieve himself. Teesha recognized him. His name was Davish.

"Watch me," Rashed said. "This is important."

He stepped out of the shadows. "Are you lost?" he asked Davish.

The farmer started slightly at the sound of a strange voice, and then he looked in Rashed's eyes and seemed to relax into a kind of confusion. "Lost? I... ? I'm not sure."

"Come. I will help you home."

Davish appeared .to be frightened, but not of Rashed. He kept looking around as if he should know where he was but did not. Rashed reached out as if to help him, but then gripped his arm, pulled him over, and wasted no time biting down on his throat. Teesha watched in fascination.

Rashed did not drink much and then pushed the dazed farmer toward her. "Feed, but not too much. You must not kill him. You'll be doing this on your own soon enough."

Teesha grabbed Davish and began feeding, unable to stop herself, and surprised by how right the act felt. She was not repulsed at all. Then she realized how delicious his blood tasted, how warm, how strong she felt. Pure pleasure seeped through her. She could not stop.

"That's enough." Rashed pulled her off. "Don't kill him." He laid Davish out on the ground and then used a knife to connect the holes made by his teeth, but he did this carefully and did not cut too deeply. He leaned close and whispered, "Forget."

"What did you do?" she asked.

"You simply reach inside their thoughts with your own. Force the fear, the moment, the emotion to fade."

And so she learned that Rashed was able to manipulate emotions, and able to create a blank s.p.a.ce in his victim's memory. Teesha herself learned to create dreams and manipulate more complex memories.

Ratboy, on the other hand, hunted through his ability to blend. No one noticed him. No one remembered him. He did not hunt with finesse or by creating dreams, but he was able to feed by mentally intensifying his own innate ability to be forgotten. That was all.

Parko quite often killed his victims, but they were mainly peasants. As master of Gaestev Keep, Corische was responsible for looking into these deaths so, of course, little investigation took place.

Teesha hunted either alone or with Rashed. His forethought and consistently rational manner impressed her. He wasn't exactly predictable, which would have made him mundane, but rather, he was constant. His intelligent, calm nature was the only thing she could count on besides herself in this new existence.

Corische, on the other hand, exhibited mood swings she never learned to understand. One night, her choice of dress might please him, and on the next night, the same dress would disgust him and give him cause to humiliate her. The unwashed state of his armor and his yellow teeth sickened her. True hatred was a new emotion for Teesha, and because of this, she did not question how often it consumed her. She began to wonder about the nature of his control and to consider how she might be forced to obey her master and yet thwart him at the same time. Since she was only compelled to obey him when he gave a verbal order, a subtle approach seemed the only possibility. The answer took a month but was simple enough in the end.

She would become exactly what he claimed to want.

Half a year pa.s.sed, and Teesha made only small changes at fast. She took up fine needlepoint and hired a talented local woman to come three times per week for lessons. She asked Corische for money and ordered fine dresses in the styles that most often seemed to please him. And he began to smugly revel in her efforts.

Since her master was masquerading as a feudal lord, he could not completely ignore his duties. A good portion of land profits remained in his purse, so he collected rents and even occasionally sat in judgment over peasants who were accused of petty crimes. But in that first year, he had a new barracks built on the north side of the keep, and afterward forbade any of the soldiers to enter his home. A competent middle-aged soldier named Captain Smythe, along with Rashed, handled the typical workload required for overseeing a fiefdom with four villages.

One night, when Corische and Rashed were leaving to collect rents, Teesha watched Rashed lift the iron bar off the door. He was physically the strongest creature she had ever known, an immortal incarnation of bone and muscle. But she had also begun to see through his cold dispa.s.sion, catching him at times staring intently at one of her needleworks or the small items she'd ordered for the making of a proper n.o.ble household. Rashed hungered for the trappings of the living. She saw no shame in this, and knew she could use his hunger to her advantage. Teesha decided that night to accelerate her plans.

First, she had every room above the cellar cleaned by hiring a temporary housemaster, allowing him to believe she and Corische were a pair of lazy n.o.bles who debauched all night and slept all day. She ordered tapestries, braid carpets, and muslin bedding for the two small guest rooms, a chandelier with forty candles, silver goblets, and porcelain dishes. Every night, she had a roaring fire laid in the pit to create an illusion of life and warmth. Although she told herself this was all simply a ruse for Corische's benefit, she began to see layers of herself she'd never realized before. Weren't taste and style simply learned skills that the wealthy taught their children? Isn't that what she'd always believed? Back in the tavern with Edwan, Teesha cared for nothing beyond warmth, love, and the friends.h.i.+p of others. She'd worn one dress in the summer and another in the winter. Why had that never bothered her? Why hadn't she seen how much more there was to desire? She hated Corische, but part of her appreciated how his curse had opened her eyes.

Corische watched with a growing arrogant satisfaction as day after day she slipped deeper into the role he expected of her. And she watched Rashed's fascination grow as the cold keep slowly changed into a living place. She even found that she derived some comfort from pleasing him. And he was the only one she entertained any interest in pleasing.

Eventually, Corische stopped taking notice of all the things she did. She was doing what he wanted, and he made little or no comment on it. Rashed, on the other hand, could not hide his growing approval, which seeped out for a blink or two to wash away the grim coldness of his features. He'd ask where she'd found the latest tapestry or how she would use the strangely shaped flowered vase. Once, he even complimented the knotted pattern she was st.i.tching into a pillowcase.

Then one late evening, when Corische was out, she slipped downstairs to spot Rashed alone in the main room, unaware of her presence. A wrapped and tied bundle of new cloth she had ordered was sitting on the table, and he was trying to peek inside without leaving any trace that he'd been inspecting it.

For a moment, Teesha forgot about Rashed's place in her half-formed plans and stood entranced by his bizarre obsession with mortal trappings. A forgotten softness filled her briefly while she watched him. Firelight almost gave his face color, and he looked so handsome standing by the table, as curious as a boy about her bundle. Then she remembered herself and shook off the feeling. She must think of him as a tool. He would be her instrument, and she could not let emotion sway her from using him.

In another month, Corische began to invite guests to the keep-at first only a nearby lord from a neighboring fief, then a few others as the visits were a success. Teesha could see he sought to improve his social standing and rise in mortal political ranks. After the year's end, she stepped up her studies, using house accounts Corische put at her disposal to order scrolls and books.

She studied history and languages on her own. Lord Corische knew she was trying to improve herself and did not interfere, but neither did he take an active interest, seeming to shy away whenever she was entranced in some text. Rashed, however, openly approved of her efforts and, to her surprise, started teaching her mathematics and astronomy. He showed little interest in most of her books, but was apparently educated, instructing her from memory alone. It was the most she'd learned about his origins somewhere in the great desert lands he referred to as the Suman Empire. Her ability and interest in academics gave her more cause to appreciate her new life-should she call it life? There was so very much to learn and study and absorb, and she'd never given any of it a moment's thought. She'd never known that anything beyond her small world of spiced, turnips and Edwan even existed. How droll, how sad.

Although she studied astronomy and languages diligently, Teesha learned little about the other household members. Parko grew more difficult to speak with as time pa.s.sed. Often he would be out at night, only appearing when Corische wanted him for something. He seemed to have an awareness that told him when his master would expect his presence. On the other hand, Ratboy would annoyingly pop out of dark corners whenever he felt like it. She caught him watching her intently several times, only to have him turn away with dramatic disinterest when discovered. He was always polite but bored and discontent-something of which she took careful note.

Throughout that second year, Corische began to make guests in the house a regular event, at least once per month.

In the third year, a caravan came through the village. She hurried out early after dusk in time to purchase a large piece of rich, dark burgundy brocade and silver thread before the merchants closed their tents for the night. For the next month, she worked in secret, sewing Rashed an exquisite tunic. She finished it early one evening and sat waiting in the main hall, knowing he would be along sometime soon, as always.

"Here," she said. "I thought you could use something new in your limited wardrobe."

He offered no response when she handed the wrapped bundle to him. He took it with only a slight twitch of puzzlement in his left eyebrow, wasted no time snapping the binding strip, and unwrapped the muslin to display the tunic.

Rashed looked at Teesha once, quickly, then back down at the tunic, staring for a long moment. He said nothing to her as he turned away, but his hands shook slightly as he carefully refolded the muslin around the tunic and then walked toward his own chamber. It was not until later in the year that she would realize why he didn't start wearing it immediately. He would only wear it on the rarest occasions when expected to look his best for guests, and when he did, he was conspicuously concerned with anything that might cause the slightest stain or smudge on the fine fabric.

But that evening, Teesha sat quietly satisfied as Rashed disappeared down the side hall, her gift in his hands. He thought himself so guarded, but he was so easy for her to read. She told herself the gift was only meant to sway him further to her side. But he had looked pleased, hadn't he?

It took a moment, distracted with Rashed as she was, before she sensed the eyes watching her. She turned her head slowly with a scowl, expecting to catch Ratboy lurking in the corner again, but she couldn't have been more wrong.

The sight that met her eyes would have made anyone else, even one of her current household, back away-but not Teesha. She froze, unable to speak, and perhaps experienced a moment's fear. Then her eyes grew forlorn as if her heart had been shattered all over again. No tears fell, for the dead no longer had the ability to weep. She tried and failed three times to speak, then stumbled halfway across the room to stop short. A smile finally came to her lips.

Edwan stood at the foot of the stairs in his hideous, transparent form.

Perhaps she'd been living in a nightmare so long that seeing the ghost of her dead husband did not strike her as traumatic. Perhaps death was too intimate a thing for her to be repulsed by his visage. She smiled wider, cutting short a small laugh of relief.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Since... beginning," Edwan said, though the sound didn't quite match the movement of his sideways lips speaking from the half-severed head upon his shoulder. "I saw... he did to you."

Teesha's smile faded. "And you left me alone?"

Language seemed difficult for him, but she could still read his familiar face, pale and bloodless as it was.

"You have not been alone," he said, almost petulantly, his words growing clearer. "I was afraid to show myself. I exist at the moment of my death." His body turned, for he couldn't move his severed head and it was the only way to pull his closing eyes away from her.

Teesha stepped close, glancing quickly about to make sure no else was there. She reached out to touch him, but her hand only pa.s.sed through his chest without even a tingle on her flesh. Edwan's eyes opened.

"You are beautiful to me," she said, and she meant it.

"Then leave this place. I am bound to you, and if you leave, I can follow."