The huge double doors were rendered even more imposing by the terrible malevolence roiling behind them. Winia came to a halt, leaning against the wall and gasping hard. She’d run full out from where she’d left the others to here, but she barely took the time to steady herself before drawing a slender wand from her satchel and striding to the door. Still breathing hard from the run, Winia placed her hands on the doors and thrust them open.
She pushed as much with her mind as her body. Winia had nothing near Raekar’s command of telekinesis, but the added force was enough to fling the doors wide. It wasn’t subtle, but Winia wasn’t interested in subtlety. All she knew was that whatever was happening – whatever Vessadial was doing – was so vile that it had to be stopped, even if she had to offer herself up as a distraction to do it.
A single long table dominated the hall. Below it were spilt platters, loose rope and scattered foods; on top of it, a ghoul who could only be Vessadial knealt over the prone body of a golden haired woman. Winia’s heart froze. Halana!
The priestess’ limbs trembled as though she struggled with invisible restraints. Her armor was missing entirely and her robes were torn apart to the waist. The lich straightened, raising his head to stare at Winia. In her Sight he burned with malevolence: hatred and rage and envy and lust all snarled together until they were one and the same, an acrid miasma that raised bile in her throat to witness directly.
Vessadial screamed: an inarticulate screech of fury and frustration and hate. Winia pointed her wand – and mind – at the ghoul, but just as quickly as she raised her arm she was seized by Vessadial’s telekinesis and flung sideways into the wall. She hit hard and bounced, catching herself against the ground with one palm.
“You dare interrupt? You dare?!” Vessadial’s shouts were hysterically pitched. He raised his hand from Halana’s breast; the claws came away bloody. “You can be first, then,” he snarled, jabbing his taloned fingers at Winia and twisting his hand in the air.
It wasn’t the intricate sort of gesture Raekar used to focus his telekinetic ability, but it sufficed to rip the wand from Winia’s hand. Vessadial flexed his wrist and snapped out his fingers: Winia was flung back into the wall – and this time she was held there by a force that threatened to crush her lungs. Winia tried to fight back, but neither her mind nor her body was strong enough to overcome the lich’s telekinesis.
“Know your place,” Vessadial snarled. “Stop fighting it! Everything on this island is mine, damn you!”
Suddenly, Vessadial’s evil seemed diluted. Or rather, obscured. Anawyn, Winia realized. He’s tapping into her for power; I’m Seeing her soul imposed over his. The plan to free Raekar must have failed. Winia couldn’t move; couldn’t fight. She stopped trying, and prayed for an opportunity.
On the table below him, Halana grabbed a platter and slammed it into Vessadial’s knee. She shoved herself up with one arm, swinging the other: trying to knock the lich off of her.
Winia redoubled her efforts to break Vessadial’s psychic grip, but his telekinesis remained focused on her.
“Unholy bitch!” He howled, and physically seized Halana. His palm covered her face: even with surprise and momentum on her side, Vessadial’s unnatural strength was too much. He slammed her head back down into the table and leaned forward, grinding her skull against the wood.
Halana struggled beneath the lich and Winia screamed – helpless to do anything as Vessadial drew a long, straight knife from his belt. The blade glowed darkly to Winia’s Eye: it had been used in enough magical rituals to have acquired a hint of a soul, and all of them had been vile.
Halana seized the lich’s arm with both hands – but it was the arm holding her down to the table by her face, not the one she couldn’t even see. The one with the knife. “At least as a zombie,” Vessadial snarled, “You’ll be smart enough to do as you’re told.”
Then the lich reared back like a snake and, before Winia’s horrified eyes, plunged his dagger into Halana’s chest.
Winia screamed again; Vessadial collapsed over Halana’s body, giggling. Laughing. He rose up when she stopped moving and stroked the cheek of her limp body. “You see? Isn’t this easier than fighting me? Don’t worry, I’ll raise you soon. And tomorrow night will be perfect, I promise. You won’t be able to ruin it like you did tonight.”
Chuckling still, Vessadial slid off the table. The vileness in his soul was more quiescent: the miasma of evil within him roiled hungrily, but without the madness that had driven it a moment ago, as though it had been sated through Halana’s murder. “Now,” the lich murmured, “I find myself beset by another guest.” He crossed the room, still holding Winia to the wall with his mind. “I would offer you a meal, but I’m afraid that stupid bitch ruined my fine preparations.”
With the lich so close, Winia could tell he was even worse about leaking energy than Anawyn was. Or perhaps it was that Anawyn’s soul was less attached to him than it was to her, and the energy he stole but did not use fled him into the surrounding air.
Or perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps it was his sheer vileness attracting the attention of things best hidden from – but a pressure filled Winia. Her Eye felt like it was burning. She could barely focus on the lich in front of her.
“We’ll think of something else for you to do,” Vessadial was saying, “if you want to live.” The pressure built as Vessadial reached out for her. One hand closed over her breast. A claw snagged the cloth of her blouse and began to tear. More of Anawyn’s power, so close and unused by the lich, poured into Winia, looking for a host. Her head throbbed. Her Eye blazed so that she couldn’t feel Vessadial’s claws on her.
“Please,” Winia sobbed, “stop.”
Vessadial laughed. “Oh, very good,” he said. “A young, supple thing begging me to be kind.” The madness was back in his soul: swirling, frothing; gnashing to be unleashed. Clawed fingers pierced the other side of Winia’s blouse and sank into her flesh. Vessadial giggled as his other hand continued to shred the garment open, oblivious to the agonizing force gathering behind her eye. “I have such good memories of that, too.”
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