Parasite Soul (27 page)

Simon paced relentlessly in his cell. Tiny and narrow,
unfurnished save for a stone bench and a latrine bucket, his prison was
woefully inadequate for the nervous energy animating him. Across the
narrow, crooked hall from him, Niu sat still and quiet in her own cage,
reluctant to attract the attention of her famished cellmate. Despite
having professed her growing hunger repeatedly, however, Sasha hadn’t shown any
sign of turning on Niu. The bruxa seemed content to stand in one corner
of her cage and stare vacantly up the stairs which led to the guardhouse
above. As for Oswald, he largely filled his cell, his horns scraping on
the ceiling, so pacing wasn’t an option.

“You’re certain you couldn’t bend the bars?” Simon asked the giant
for the fifth time.

“At least have the courtesy to rephrase your inane questions, lad,”
Oswald muttered moodily, without making eye-contact.

“What about Hezben? He’ll get worried about us – well, about
you – and then he’ll…”

“You know Hez has no power where there ain’t no trees worth speaking
of,” the giant interrupted with a dismissive gesture. Simon frowned and
resumed his tight circuit. It couldn’t end like this, not with a noose
about his neck, or whatever tortures Princess Tiera would devise for him.
And worse, for Niu! The handmaiden was certain to suffer mightily at the
hands of the petty, spiteful princess. With one simple act of
thoughtlessness, he had condemned Niu to what would surely be an excrutiating
fate. He could easily imagine Tiera violently defacing Niu to appease her
own vanity, after which she was certain to kill her. The thought was
unbearable.

“Sasha,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. “Surely you
could overpower our captors?”

But Sasha was still gazing at some fixed point between the foot of
the stairs and the door above, and did not appear to hear him.

“Sasha?” He tried again.

“Leave her be,” Niu said wearily.

“Why?”

“She is concentrating,” Niu explained, voice low. “She is
extremely hungry. Blood is a primal, constant need for the undead.
She is focusing on not forgetting herself and eating
me
.”

Simon blinked. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Niu agreed. “I would like her to be successful in her
endeavor.”

Simon nodded fervently. He studied Sasha with new
respect. Sharing your body with a vampire could be no easy curse to live
with, but she had the courage to wrestle with her nature. He needed to
draw from her strength, to rail against his own damnation.

Sinking down on the hard, bare stone bench which provided him a bed
of sorts, he cupped his head in his hands. Despair threatened to
overwhelm him. He had to fight it consciously. This was no easy
task, and he noticed that occasionally Oswald’s hand stole toward his enormous
barrel chest. Was he experiencing heart murmurs? Worse, was
Niu? The thought of accidentally killing Niu agitated him even further,
until he was certain he wouldn’t be able to control the cauldron of emotions
threatening to bubble over.

“Stay calm,” Niu said quietly. She was watching him closely.

“I’m trying.”

“We will escape this situation if we manage to keep our heads.
We will get away.” She stared wistfully at the single barred window at
the end of the passage which allowed in three sad stripes of sunlight. “I
will show you my homeland. You will like it, I think.”

We won’t
, Simon thought, but he was
grateful for her words, for what she was trying to do, and it calmed him
slightly to think that they might have some sort of future together. If
they stuck together long enough, might she even come to love him? Maybe
he’d always be second best, Cihau’s phantom ever first in her heart, but it
would mean the world to him. He clung to this new hope, daring to
entertain it, focusing sharply upon it. A few moments later, he was
surprised to discover his breathing leveling out and his agitation, however
temporarily, receding. He felt sure his pent-up emotions would seek
release eventually, but if he could just contain them until the right moment…

“It was a little farm that you wanted, correct?” Niu asked softly.

Simon nodded. “And children,” he mumbled. “A son and a
daughter.”

“Keep that picture in your mind,” Niu told him. “Tell me about
your farm.” She wasn’t encouraging his fantasy so much as containing his
pain, but he was thankful all the same. Perhaps this was all of the life
he’d pictured that they would ever share.

“By a lake,” he said, closing his eyes and concentrating. “The
farm should be near a lake.”

“That sounds very pretty.”

“It is.” Simon could picture it. A very blue lake, clear to
the bottom, rocky shores alternating with inviting stretches of sand. His
father’s grave marker had been relocated to one such tranquil stretch of
shoreline. Cows and sheep grazed nearby;
his
livestock. A
pair of children played with a lively sheepdog. Did they look more like
him or Niu? Simon focused in on them to discover that the girl resembled
a miniature Niu, while the boy looked a lot like himself, but with his father’s
crooked smile. There wasn’t a dragon or cursed sword in view; the scene
was so serene and pastoral that when he opened his eyes and found himself in
his cell, his heart nearly broke.

“Describe the lake,” Niu suggested.

Simon shook his head. “There’s no point. None of it will
ever happen. But thanks for trying.”

“Stay strong, Simon.”

He smiled. “I like how you say my name.” It sounded
awkward on his tongue, but he said it anyway.

She smiled back, but sadly, and did not respond.

She really feels nothing
.

Depressed, Simon took to studying the stone back wall of his
cage. Previous occupants had scratched their identities there. He
couldn’t read, but suspected names, rude poetry, condemnations of state or
enemies, perhaps a philosophical comment or two. He wondered if all the
men and women who had attempted to leave some mark of their passage here were
dead now: hanged, torched, or worse. Brooding now, he wished he’d learned how
to write, if only to leave some indication of his existence on this wall of
condemned lost souls. Not that he had any instrument to work with; the
guards had confiscated their weapons. Well, except Sasha. Sasha was
a weapon.

The door at the top of the stairs groaned open. All eyes
turned to the widening sliver of light which spilled down the stairs.
Three figures were framed there. Simon squinted; a woman of noble
bearing, he thought, and two men. Visually, he could determine little
more, but his pounding heart told him who had deigned to pay him a visit.

Leaving the door ajar, perhaps unnerved by the darkness, the woman
descended with the men in tow. She lifted her skirts as she stepped
delicately over filthy patches of straw, an overturned wooden platter which had
been tossed from the cages by some previous inmate, and a dead rat. The
creature was so desiccated that the smell wasn’t as unbearable as it might have
been, but it clearly offended the woman. She muttered something about ‘
provincials
’,
and in that moment Simon’s doubts faded.

“Princess Tiera,” he said dully.

“Oh, do you recognize me?” She stepped close enough to his cage that
Simon could make out her features, callous and sneering. The last time
he’d laid eyes on the princess, he’d thought her beautiful, in a remote,
dangerous, untouchable way. He put that down to the awe of having been an
unworldly peasant thrust into her royal presence, because he saw none of that
beauty now. A twisted inner ugliness shone cold behind that porcelain
flesh mask. Simon could hardly bear to meet her glittering, ice-shard
eyes. “Is my face now suddenly worth your attention?”

“Of… of course, my lady. I am flattered,” he added boldly,
“That you consider me worthy enough prey to hunt me personally.”

She smiled grimly. “Is that so, Simon Dragonslayer?
Well, in the interest of keeping things
personal
,” that last word insinuated
a terrifying world of threat, “You and I are going to have an interview
upstairs.”

Simon’s heart began to hammer crazily. Perhaps there
was
a way out of this mess after all. Tiera no doubt planned to have him
tortured and killed, but if he was away from his friends, he would be free to
focus on his negative feelings, to channel the curse of the parasite, and put
an end to this twisted hunt without harming Niu. “Is that so?”

“This is the peasant who has you all in a tizzy?” asked one of the
men standing behind Tiera, rather informally for a guardsman or servant, Simon
thought. He looked closer. The man was tall and rangy. An
effeminate wealth of hair spilled in waves from his hood; a golden beard jutted
at an odd angle from his pointed chin. Most strikingly, he wore a metal
mask which covered his entire face save for his mouth and chin, and
contemplated Simon from behind rectangular slits.

“Yes, this is the worm,” Tiera acknowledged. “The insect who
spat in the face of a goddess.”

Simon might once have felt mortified by this speech, but now he just
thought the princess was laying it on a little thick. He had no patience
with her pettiness.

“Well, I see why you’re so obsessed. He reminds me of
Huntsmaster Aphridion,” the masked man remarked lazily. “To look at, I
mean, not in spirit.”

Simon could tell by the sudden shock in Tiera’s eyes that her
strange, overly familiar companion had touched a nerve. The princess
looked as though she’d tasted some sort of realization and had found it bitter.

“Sergeant,” she said gruffly but imperiously. “Take the
peasant upstairs and secure him. I would interview him.”

The second man stepped forward, keys jingling, as Tiera’s stormy
gaze swept across the other cells. Her eyes lingered on Niu. “The
handmaiden,” she spat, placing one hand on the masked man’s shoulder, “Is all
yours. But don’t kill her quickly.
Ruin
her.”

Niu groaned. The hooded apparition turned to consider his
gift. It was a strange, unnatural motion, a full-body turn, his head stiffly
aligned with his torso. Apparently he liked what he saw, as his next
words were: “Oh, indeed. Delicious. I have never plucked the
fruit of Jynn.”

“No!” Simon yelled, panic welling as he fought to calm
himself. Whoever –
whatever
, his gut told him - Tiera’s strange
companion was, he couldn’t allow him –
it
– to lay hands on Niu.
“No! Leave Niu alone! I…”

Then he caught Niu’s eye. Her gaze flickered briefly across to
Sasha, who was watching the scene unfold with detached interest.

Oh. Right.
They don’t know
what Sasha is
. Fine, let this monster open that cell. He’s in
for a bit of a shock.

The door to his own cage was wrenched open. The burly sergeant
marched Simon out and forced him toward the stairs at swordpoint. He
didn’t resist. He needed to get away from his companions so he could do
his thing, and hopefully, Sasha would do hers. The bruxa was hard to
predict, but she
did
like Niu, and if all else failed, she was
hungry.

Besides, Simon thought, he might conceivably deal with Tiera swiftly
enough to assist his companions. The princess was going to be sorry for
her persecution. She had absolutely no idea what he was capable of.

More men waited at the top of the stairs, two of whom fell in behind
Simon and his escort as he was led through a small, untidy office and up a
second stairway, through a heavy iron door, and into the small chamber in which
he was to be ‘interviewed’. This consisted of a table, bolted to the
floor; two chairs, one of which bristled with chains, and a wall rack of very
unpleasant looking implements. Simon recognized such common instruments
of pain as flails, thumbscrews, and unpleasantly stained knives, but he was
baffled as to the use of some of the more complex and outlandish equipment and
hoped he wasn’t about to receive an education in their usage.

The guards marched him to the chair and forced him to sit, following
which they clamped manacles about his wrists and ankles. Despite
disheartening traces of blood on the manacles, Simon didn’t fight them.
He had no clear plan of escape. His hopes rested almost entirely on Sasha
going on a rampage. He himself, however, was going to deal with the damn
princess.

After the guards cleared out, Simon settled back, listening hard for
sounds of conflict in the cells below. Unfortunately, the walls and floor
were solid stone and the door was very thick. He wondered whether Tiera
would let him sweat or whether she would prefer to visit her revenge upon him
promptly. His speculation ended momentarily as the princess swept into
the interrogation room, her eyes alight with predatory eagerness.

“Alone at last, dragonslayer,” she said. Her hands were
trembling with obscene excitement. Closing the door behind her, she made
a motion to seat herself then appeared to think better of it and began to prowl
about the chamber. The wall of torture implements clearly fascinated
her. Trailing her fingers along what looked like some manner of bladed
clamp, she eyed Simon speculatively. “How unfortunate that you chose to
meet me here rather than my bedchamber.”