Chapter Eight –
Fencing Words With the Darkness
Forcing herself to sleep through the rest of the day, and then the whole of the night that followed after it, was torment enough to put the imprisoned faery princess into a severely bad mood. And the time that she didn't spend literally squeezing her eyes shut and willing sleep to come, she spent thinking up some startlingly appalling names to affix to her captor.
By the time that dawn finally rolled around: the sun tingeing the far-off hills of sand, the pale walls of the labyrinth, and the spike-lined black tower with delicate pastel hues of apricot, gold, and lavender, a few wispy clouds of smoky blue blowing into the azure sky, Elowyn had decided fully upon simply making all effort possible to get out of the bed, no matter what the cost.
Which may or may not have been the best choice that she could have made.
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The room was silent and still, faintly lit by the pale, cold light of dawn. Elowyn shivered, her bare skin breaking into goose bumps where it was exposed to the chill air inside the chamber. It was like sleeping in a tomb, she reflected, in the surprisingly calm quietness.
She slowly turned her head then.
It was the first time that she had made a move with any part of her body since her last awakening, and now she finally glimpsed something of her mysterious companion.
He – or it, whatever – was lying on his side, one arm resting on the pillow, underneath his head: his fingertips, the hands of which were gloved in black leather, nearly brushing the crown of her head. From simple observation, she gathered that he was quite tall; his legs stretched out at least a full foot and a half past hers. He was also quite muscular – the chest that her bare shoulder blades were touching was rock-hard, and she could feel the rippling cords of muscles in the arm that was about her waist even through the layers of heavy, thick black material that made up his obscuring robes. There was a hood over his head, and she could catch a glimpse of dull black iron where a chin might have been.
And he was still sleeping: deeply, noiselessly, and without movement, but for his breathing. Elowyn wondered just what kind of person he was underneath all of those robes.
But she wasn't going to wait around for the chance to find out.
Slowly – ever so infinitesimally slowly – and cautiously, she slid her right leg out from underneath her left, reaching with her toes towards the edge of the mattress. Doing so, simply moving that limb the mere two feet to the edge of the bed, seemed to take centuries. She found that she was unconsciously biting her full bottom lip, a cold sweat on her forehead. Holding her breath, she ceased to move. Had he felt her movement? No – nothing.
Exulting of her success but still no less cautious, she now moved her left leg over, which caused her to roll over onto her stomach. Inch by inch, keep it slow; there you go, girl – keep it nice and steady, there's a girl…
Her shoulders moved forward next: her bedmate's arm sliding painstakingly off of her waist. The edge of the bed was getting nearer now, so tantalizingly nearer…
No! Steady now – slowly!
She crept her arm across the bed, inching herself up off of the mattress—
And, of course, predictably, the inevitable worst-thing happened: she heard a masculine throat softly clear itself, from behind her, stopping her where she was, and she turned, slowly, as one who had found herself trapped in a waking nightmare would, her mermaid-like eyes moving from the window: through which her freedom awaited her, tauntingly…
…To the black-cloaked figure behind her, who was sitting up halfway, one elbow propped on the mountainous pillow that his head had rested on not moments before: free hand, on which there were the shackles that bound her to him, drumming fingertips lightly on the black sheets. Watching her. Just sitting there, and watching her. As if he were amused. Waiting.
"You've slept well, I hope?"
The voice that spoke to her was deep and strangely resonant: not at all the dry, cold voice that had addressed her in the garden, through the dark… Elowyn cleared off the terrifying memory of that, sitting on that edge of the bed so that she was halfway turned towards him, her own hand resting on top of the black sheets.
She regarded the black figure that reclined so leisurely and nonchalantly, with cool self-assurance in his air, on the pillows behind her: a cold, dire hatred and revulsion in her long-lashed eyes, her curving eyebrows fraught with frigid disdain.
"Who are you?" she demanded of him, without policy or preamble.
And the menacing figure in black laughed softly: throatily, arrogantly, the emotion behind the velvety sound one of pleasure and exultation, because he certainly knew who he was, and what was meant for her – and she didn't. Elowyn's scalp prickled with icy-hot indignation.
He sat up, looming before her in all his venomous evil grace: silent and calm as a panther, deadly as a coiling cobra. The faery princess looked at him, her back ramrod straight and her face etched with defiance and cold anger.
With a smooth, elegant gesture of his gloved hands, he made a placating motion, although all the while his condescending laugh continued to burn into her ears, pounding heatedly into her mind until she thought she would snap, and go mad.
"Only someone you should very much fear…like the Big Bad Wolf of your nursery fables and all your little faery tales, if you will…" The head beneath the black hood cocked to one side, mocking and arrogant. "I wouldn't move much farther off this bed, though, if I were you – you might fall and bump your head on the floor."
But moving further off was all that she wanted to do at the moment!
Incensed, her temper boiling over, she stood up and pulled her arm back, yanking on the chain. Her dark companion made an infuriated noise as he was lurched forward, taken off guard by her surprising show of strength.
And then things went from bad to worse.
Elowyn: so utterly, gleefully delighted by her success that she even found the wits to snap the chain around, looping it about her wrist, which gave her aggressor an extra, even more vicious yank across the bed, stepped back, eyes blazing. But this was not the best thing that she could have done – for, immediately, the furious black-cloaked specter fought himself to his knees, swung his legs down off of the bed, and rose to his full almost seven feet of height.
Moving with incredible speed, as the bat-like shadow that had overtaken Robbie and Sala in the forest that night had done as well, he was suddenly snatching her arms above the elbows in a violent, cruel grasp, with hands that locked around her like iron vices. Elowyn twisted like an eel in his arms, however – but this helped not at all. The hands that had closed around her arms were like iron, like steel: she could never escape them.
And with a sound that was suspiciously like a snarl, the black-cloaked form whirled her bodily around, pinning her against him, then literally threw her backwards. Elowyn stopped herself just before she hit the wall and turned to face her antagonist, never taking her eyes from him.
But, then, without a moment's pause, the specter now took his own turn and jerked on the chain, snapping it – and Elowyn's arm – straight with a force that sent a numbing shockwave up her arm, and made her lurch forward, directly into his arms. She fought back, throwing her head back in time to see the black shadow swooping down on her: both of its hands moving to press themselves to either side of her head…forcing her to look only one place – into the flat, emotionless expanse of a Sytherrian burial mask.
She couldn't take her eyes away.
A thin stream of hot, belabored breath whistled through the slit in the mouth of the mask, as the false iron eyes stared blankly, menacingly, down at her.
"You are a fighter, then, little one," came the deep voice: resonant from behind that mask. Still, the false eyes glared at her, soulless and unfeeling. "But I can fight as well – and in this case, I think that I would end up winning…don't you?"
"You'd only win because you're a twisted, sick spawn of a goblin who can't give his name, or even summon up the nerve to show his own face!" Elowyn spat. "Or are you really that ugly?"
Whoosh.
The mask was now hovering so close to her face that her eyelashes brushed against the false eyes when she blinked. She swallowed and stared without flinching into those eyes. He was silent for a long, long time, leaning over her…
Finally—
"Sometimes the things that do not allow their faces to be seen are those that are fairest to look upon, little princess…and sometimes, they are the most awful."
Then, gloved fingers brushed her cheek, with the whispering touch of a butterfly's wing. So gentle, so deft…how could something this careful also be so violent, and so cruel?
Pensively now, as if in thought – "But you will never know, now will you? You will never know; you can never know, unless I allow you…"
"And I'll still refuse," she spat back at him.
For a moment, she almost imagined that she had seen dry, twisted lips curve behind that iron burial mask: an expression of cruel, nasty, pure evil amusement. The gloved fingertips now moved to run themselves lightly through her hair, burying themselves in its masses for a moment – reminding her subtly of the power that he held over her: a prisoner in a desolate land…
Elowyn closed her eyes.
"Oh…perhaps you might, little princess," he murmured, his voice a velvety and soothing purr: under which was still, however, the dangerous undertone of venomous evil. "Perhaps you might. But…you might not have that chance…"
And – suddenly – his hands clamped down onto her head again, palms and fingers digging through her hair and pressing hard against her scalp, holding her powerless to move or fight back; there was a sound like something dissolving, with a hiss – and then a dry, rough mouth fell on hers.
The kiss of evil.
Elowyn's scream of incredible fury at this most horrible of insults was muffled by the lips of he who kissed her, however, and try as she might, no efforts of her own would free her.
His hood had fallen forward so that it draped over not only his head, but hers as well, and she felt as if she had been instantaneously blinded, trapped in that horrible blackness. The lips of this creature of pure evil claimed hers, tearing into her senses, until she felt as if her head would burst. No kiss that she had ever before experienced had been this savage, this cruel and, more than anything else, this violent! It was almost more as if he was torturing her into submission with a cat-o'-nine-tails, rather than embracing her, and the touch of his lips was revolting: hot and deft as a snake's flicking tongue, taunting and brutal, pitiless and vindictive as any lord of the Dark Realm—
Cold air suddenly swept in as he abruptly released her, flooding into her senses and bringing her back to life, as if she had been kept frozen in an abandoned temple for thousands of years.
She let her eyelids shoot open again, and found herself looking once more into the burial mask, and she could just imagine the wicked, malevolent smile that might have been on his face, had he shown it to her at that moment. Instead, all she saw was the mask.
Two fingertips ran themselves gently along her cheek, down along her jaw line. She despised their touch, and sensed that he could see right through her – now, if never before. A sound that was suspiciously like a laugh, instead of a growl this time, rumbled from that broad, muscular chest, causing the black figure before her to shake slightly with cruel mirth.
"I wouldn't suggest your trying to make it through the doorway again, little princess," he told her, fingers still caressing her cheek, then below her swollen bottom lip.
Elowyn only just kept from flinching away – for all she knew, he'd stoop to kissing her again if she reacted that way. Instead, she fixed him with her fulminating glare of blue-flecked jade. He laughed deep in his throat again then, pleased by her defiance.
"I can already see that this will prove to be a most amusing time of things, now that we have you here – and what an honour, as well! To have the legendary princess of prophecy in such a desolate realm…"
He trailed off, and then his hand clamped down on one side of her head again. Leaning low over her, he breathed, in a low and utterly menacing voice that only she could hear, "You are here at the behest of my Queen, little one – I will only keep you alive because she has commanded me to, and I live to do her bidding."
"Then your Queen, whomever she happens to be, lives to simply go around and abduct random people, and then – then do what with them? Kill them? Torture them? Or simply dissolve their mortal bodies until only the barest husk is left and leave them to wander for eternity as the living dead in the lovely bloody desert that you've got here? I can come up with more!" Elowyn hissed back.
A condescending chuckle.
"Such a sense of humor – what an endearing little quirk. I might have been tempted to keep you around, little one…only I don't think that we would get along very well, for where you have the wickedly sharp tongue of a viper, my Sea-Jade, I have the patience of a Titan. Though it doesn't matter…she has plans for you, little one. Do you know just how important you really are?" Fingers ran through her hair again. Elowyn stiffened her neck.
"Don't you have anywhere else to be right now – haunting a graveyard or hanging from your claws in a tower somewhere, perhaps?"
"Actually, it's more like my crypt, but I really don't think that you need to know things like that. You are my prisoner, and I wouldn't forget it, were I you," was the smug reply.
Then he stood back, looming over her still: an ominous specter robed in billowing black shadows. She sensed his thoughtful regard upon her, as he remained where he was, looking down. Then, as an afterthought, "I had hoped…this would have been a little less easy. Now I won't have long to toy with you," And she only just kept herself from shuddering in utterly paralyzing dread at the way he said that word, "Because, after all, my Lady will want to have a personal audience with you as soon as she can take herself away from the other more pressing matters of her court. I hope that you will not much mind the delay."
What spiteful, malicious venom of irony was in those words!
Elowyn raised one eyebrow, cool and nonchalant.
"Will you be my companion in the duration of the time between then and now?"
A ripple of silent anger went through the air.
"You will not attempt to leave this place again, do you understand?"
She made no reply. Instead, she stepped away from the wall, and, half-turning her back on him, began to re-braid her hair again – completely and purposefully ignoring him. The figure in black swooped down on her, imprisoning her in his arms again, his hands grasping her arms just above the elbow once more and nearly lifting her clean off of her feet. The burial mask glared furiously into her face.
"I said—" Forcefully; then, the soft, but deadly purr again, "Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Elowyn gave in. He would never leave her until he'd had his promise from her.
And she was right: as soon as she had said the words, the figure in black – her tormentor and captor – released her, and made a gesture, his hands at his sides. Instantly, the shackles on his wrist, and those on hers, dissolved, with a faint hissing noise. Rubbing her wrist where the metal thing had been, Elowyn wondered if that was his way with all metal things – magically dissolve them with his dark powers. That was the only way she could have explained the sudden disappearance of his burial mask, since his hands had never left her head just before he had kissed her…and her mind shied away from that thought like the memory of a bad dream.
She closed her eyes.
"Do not think for a moment that they are really gone," he told her, in a flat, hollow tone that was totally devoid of any emotion. He now stood several feet away from her, his huge, black form outlined by the light of the sky beyond the window.
"If at any time you make the slightest move to escape from here – there is magic in this place, magic that will serve to tell me that you are trying to leave…and I will come to find you. Wherever you are, however you attempt to hide yourself, I will find you – and then, no mere amount of word-fencing will save you from me."
And then he stepped to the balcony.
Elowyn heard a sound like material ripping, violently torn apart, and there was a blast of fiery-hot wind, which sent her gown and her hair to whipping about her uncontrollably, almost knocking her to the ground as she stood there, in the center of the cold, black marble floor.
Then she heard a truly frightening noise – the ragged, ground-shaking roar of a dragon.
Running to the balcony, she looked out, expecting to see her captor's black form already tiny in the distance, borne on the back of a red-and-gold dragon of the desert…
But, instead, all she saw was a huge black dragon, which arched its neck and spread its enormous wings out fully, and shrieked again—
Telling her just what kind of fate met whatever unfortunate souls who tried to make it out of the labyrinth maze alive. She knew, of course, that they just didn't. Wordless and without a hope in the world, she sank down to the floor.
And was silent.
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A/N: Yes, I'm still being evil and keeping you all from knowing what he really looks like…but for right now, envision my beloved-but-bratty Dark Lord as resembling Imhotep from the train scenes in "The Mummy Returns". And now, I will leave you until I make my next update…please review for me…