It was gloomy inside the low room, the air thick with the oily smoke from rush tapers. The lavender and sweet woodruff that strewed the beaten earth floor had long since wilted and failed to mask the smells of stale sweat and unwashed clothes.
At the back of the room, in an area of deepest shadow, Lord Karolan Rakka lay on a pile of tawdry cushions. He watched his companion caressing the two young women, his perceptions blurred by the poppy drug coursing through his veins. The three naked bodies were shiny with sweat and the smells of sex and exertion clotted his nostrils. He wondered, for a moment, why he had stayed. There had been no reason to linger after Jack had given him the things he required, but he had felt a desire for human company. And so he had poured a measure of the opiate into a tankard of ale and settled back to watch Jack indulge his sexual appetites.
For a while the two women worked on his companion, taking it in turns to kiss Jack’s mouth and caress his body. Then they put on a show for the two men, moaning loudly as they kissed each other, rubbing their breasts together until the nipples stood out like ripe cherries. Inflamed by the display, Jack reached for Isabeau, preferring her rich womanly curves to Adeliz’s more girlish form.
‘Come and join us, why don’t you?’ Jack mumbled, surfacing from between Isabeau’s spread legs and wiping her moisture from his chin. ‘There’s enough here for two. You don’t mind sharing your honey pot, do you my pretty?’
Isabeau giggled and surged against him, her slug-white thighs rubbing against his ears.
Karolan shook his head. ‘Need my help, do you? You must be losing your touch.’
Jack gave a roar of laughter and moved up to lie on top of Isabeau. She slid her arms around him and pulled him between her legs, groaning loudly when he thrust into her.
‘That’s it my lusty. I’ll take you,’ she murmured.
Adeliz, the younger and prettier of the women, propped herself up on one elbow and watched Jack pounding into Isabeau. Her face wore a bored expression. She threw Karolan an expectant glance. He shrugged his shoulders, then raised his tankard to his lips, before looking away towards the window where the icy river breeze pushed inwards against the greased membrane, sending draughts to rustle the carpet of herbs.
Adeliz pushed out her bottom lip. Proud of her fairness and her high, round breasts, she was popular with the customers and was not used to being ignored. Just who did his lordship think he was to look at her as if she was something that had crawled past him in the dirt? She knew what the other women said about him. Lord Rakka never touched any of them. He came here only to watch, and paid well for the privilege.
Perhaps he thought he was too good to sully himself with the touch of a whore. Or perhaps, as Isabeau said laughingly, he’d had his privy parts mutilated while fighting the French and lost the urge to pleasure a woman. Pity. He was beautiful, quite upsettingly so. And intriguing with the rushlight gleaming on the sharp planes of his cheekbones and softening his chiselled mouth. His neck and throat were slim, but muscular. The skin looked white and firm and had none of the usual coarse weathering of a knight or a working man. Then he glanced at her again and the chill of his beauty was softened by a smile.
Emboldened to approach him, she slid off the straw mattress. Neither Jack nor Isabeau noticed that she had gone. Their moans were rising in pitch, conjoined as were their bodies. Adeliz straightened her shoulders so that her breasts stood out and her slender body was shown to advantage. Sliding over to Karolan, she stood with her hips level with his head, giving him time to focus on the soft fuzz of dark blonde hair on her mound of Venus.
Her hands planted on her hips, she parted her legs, giving him a view of the pouting folds of her coynte. When he gave no sign of interest, she sat down next to him on the stained silk cushions.
‘It’s a sin to sit alone, when there’s company for the asking,’ she said.
It was the first time that she had been this close to him. Strange, but she had gained the impression that he was much older. Perhaps it was his air of melancholy or the depth of emotion she glimpsed in his deep-set dark eyes. It seemed to her that here was a man who had done many things in his life, perhaps questionable things, and who considered that he owed no one an explanation. He was self-contained, as few men were who visited the bawdy house by the river.
She studied him closely, under the pretence of making herself comfortable and pumping up the cushions. Karolan’s face was pale and fine-boned and had a hard, hawk-like beauty. Once, when she had been small, she had been taken to the monastery of Holy Penitence and there had seen the newly installed window. The face of the saint had looked like Karolan. He too had been beautiful and fierce, but somehow tragic too.
Moved by some emotion she could not fathom, Adeliz raised her hand and brushed her fingers against the hood that lay in deep folds on Karolan’s broad shoulders. As he turned towards her, his long black hair swung forward, framing his cheeks like dark wings.
‘Don’t,’ he said tightly. ‘Don’t dare to pity me.’
Adeliz managed not to flinch, but it took all of her courage to stay seated. For a moment his face had been twisted by a murderous rage. She thought he was going to strike her and she almost hoped that he would. It would at least prove that he noticed her and was not looking through her. But he only slumped a little and took a deep swallow from his tankard.
She laid a tentative hand on his sleeve, feeling the softness of the costly black velvet under her fingers. ‘Forgive me. I meant no offence, my lord.’
He covered her fingers with his own, removing them with a gentle but firm gesture. She had time only to register how cool his hand felt, before he stood up and gave her an oddly formal little bow.
‘There is nothing to forgive. The fault is mine. I should not have come here. I must go. My work awaits me.’
Suddenly she was desperate to keep him there. ‘Wait. I beg you. There must be somethin’ I can do for you. Somethin’ I can get you . . . I’ll do whatever you want and I won’t charge you.’
This time the smile enlivened his whole face, so that her breath caught in her throat. If he said the word she would go with him, now, naked as she was, and never regret it. Something about him drew her, even though she was repelled by the hunger inside herself. When he looked full into her eyes, like that, it was impossible to look away.
‘I would demand something you would not wish to surrender,’ he said, his eyes glittering like chips of mica. ‘Leave it be, wench. And save your charity for those more worthy of it.’
Turning on his heel, he strode towards the door. Only then did she feel able to move. It was as if his going had set her free. She watched him go out into the night, before she looked back towards the entwined figures on the straw mattress. Lord Rakka was a strange one indeed. She did not understand his final words, but only a fool would have missed the menace in his voice. It occurred to her belatedly that she had had a lucky escape, but from what she could not imagine. A shiver snaked down her spine and she was surprised to find that she was trembling.
‘Adeliz? You finished makin’ sheep’s eyes?’ Isabeau said acidly. ‘Then come over here and attend to Jack. He’s paid fer two and he’s fair wore me out already.’
Glancing at Jack’s heavy body, the damp mat of hair across his broad chest and his heavily muscled limbs, Adeliz felt a surge of relief. Jack was stolid, crude, and possessed of a rough-edged charm. He smelt sour and could be brutish at times, lashing out when he was in his cups, but he did not scare the life out of her like the tall, elegantly attired and saint-like Lord Rakka.
The moment Karolan left the ramshackle building he forgot all about Adeliz. But the sexual tension that her nearness and the freshness of her young body had fostered in him remained as a dull pressure in his belly.
He had long ago trained himself to subdue the clamourings of his flesh, but that did not mean that he was unaware of the movement of the tides within him. He observed himself with a sort of amused detachment, gaining a perverse pleasure from testing his self-control in the same way that one worried at an aching tooth.
As he walked down the narrow, cobbled alley, careful to avoid the piles of nightsoil and food scraps, he felt the subtle difference in the atmosphere that heralded the approach of the spirit being which was his constant companion. What had taken it so long? he mused. Normally it would have been attracted by Jack’s labours.
There came the familiar folding and pleating of the air directly in front of him.
An observer would have seen nothing untoward, but Karolan, with his preternatural senses, perceived the Fetch as a ragged shadow; an amorphous, reed-thin, almost human shape that wove in and out of focus, its constant movement deceiving to the eye. The Fetch’s voice was shrill and high-pitched, resembling bird song or the sound of water trickling over a rock.
It whispered to him now, eager for whatever experiences the night might hold.
Karolan smiled grimly. ‘You’re too late for the bawdy house, but there’ll be something later. There always is,’ he said, amused by its measureless hunger for sensation.
Unlike humankind the spirit never seemed to tire in its quest. Its whole existence was focused on indulging its every whim. Misery was its food, violence its delight and if there was a sexual element involved, then so much the better. It was totally amoral, but then, he was little different. It was just a question of degree.
‘Now. Want it now. Want to bathe,’ it whispered, allowing Karolan to feel the heat of its breath and the faint touch of lips at his ear. ‘As do you, Master.’
Karolan shivered. It could feel how he burned for sexual release and was offering its services. Images crowded his mind. Over the long years the Fetch had become expert at attending to his needs. The pictures it placed in his head were irresistible, obscene, tantalizing. It was everything he wanted it to be. A beautiful virgin, a lush, full-bodied woman, an adolescent boy. Twisting and turning it presented itself for him. Moist, willing. Soft curled petals of flesh, folded inwards over a centre of deepest-rose. Damp curling hair around a tight shadowed orifice. Perfume clouded his senses, amber, lilies, the spice of sexual exertion, the heady musk of a woman’s sex . . .
He clenched his hands into fists as the heat throbbed in his loins.
‘Stop that!’
The Fetch laughed wantonly, a sound like wind in the reeds. And obeyed him at once. The images faded, but the sweat broke out on Karolan’s forehead. It knew that he would not hold out against its potent lure for long. He never did; the alternative was too painful to bear. Too many years, too many deaths. The loneliness of his existence was like acid, eating into him until he thought he would go mad. And the only companion in his personal purgatory inhabited the spirit world.
A single word of assent and it would be at him, on him, or in him – whatever was his choice – drawing energy from his pleasure, bathing in the emanations given out by the restrained violence of his arousal.
He would resist for as long as possible. Ah, but it was torture to deny himself the solace of pleasure. And why did he still try? Only for the hollow victory that self-control brought him and because it angered the Fetch to be kept waiting. It was one way of punishing it for its betrayal all those long, long years ago.
He quickened his step until he broke free of the maze of alleys that clotted the area around the docks. Only the dissolute and those hardened by circumstance to a life of crime would be abroad at this hour, yet he felt no fear of walking alone and unarmed. He knew himself to be more a creature of the shadows than anyone he might meet.
The smell of the river was strong. At low tide the mud banks were exposed, their dark-green breath casting a pall over everything in the vicinity. In the thick, grainy light of early morn he could see the white shapes of oyster catchers dotting the banks. The bigger brownish humps were the bent backs of those who skimmed a living from digging in the mud, vying with the birds for their catch and as likely to turn up a bloated corpse as anything of value.
Along the waterfront the dark shapes of warehouses and small dwellings loomed up at him out of the gloom. There was a cog moored in the harbour, her sales furled and the web of her rigging imprinted on the brightening sky. He could smell the salt-sourness of her wooden hull and see the barnacles that clung to the slimed planks below the water line. At full tide she would be sailing to Flanders with her cargo of English wool.
Beyond the cog was another vessel, her elegant shape proclaiming her Venetian origins. It was from this ship that Jack had alighted the previous night, bringing with him the spices, opiates, chunks of perfumed resin, and other rare substances for which Karolan paid handsomely. The best thing about Jack was that he asked no questions. Anything could be had for the right price and there was no fear that he would go running for the authorities.
From the open doorways of the taverns, light spilled out onto the muddy path. Karolan could hear the voices of sailors and dock workers raised in song, but he felt no urge to join them. He was known in this area and would be tolerated, if not welcomed, but he felt the need to get back to his workroom. The furnace needed tending and there were things he needed to bury or burn. They were starting to smell.
As he walked past a dark and shuttered house, there was a stirring from a pile of filthy rags alongside the door. With his honed senses Karolan heard the rattling of diseased lungs and the sound of bare limbs scraping across the patch of dry path under the overhanging eaves.
The Fetch gave a pleased chirrup and rushed forward, leaving a faint trembling in the air in its wake. In that same instant, Karolan caught the stench of sickness and decay. The pile of rags resolved itself into a man. A begging bowl was thrust under his nose and a whining voice intoned, ‘Will ye give alms, Master? For the love of God.’
Aware of the Fetch’s antics as it flowed back and forth through the beggar, rapturously imbibing the miasma of human misery, Karolan averted his eyes from the ruined face. He was not unmoved by the ravaged pain-filled features and the suppurating hole where once there had been a nose, but the spirit’s enjoyment in such bleak fare prompted him to smile bitterly. If the beggar had known about the fiend who was bathing in the sickly energy emitting from his every pore, he would have been paralysed by horror.
No, Karolan decided, looking more closely at the man and noting the wooden cross hanging on a piece of flax string about his scrawny neck, it was more likely that he would start babbling for forgiveness, imploring God and all his saints to come to his aid. It always amazed him that such suffering wretches held on to their faith, when he – with so many dubious advantages – had lost his. He saw with a faint stirring of pity that the threadbare rags were no protection against the sharp wind and did nothing to conceal the running sores which covered the skinny, cold-mottled limbs.
Taking full advantage of the fact that Karolan had not walked straight past him, the beggar spoke again, his voice sounding rusty and unused.
‘Have pity, Master. The Lord will surely reward yer charity.’
‘I doubt that,’ Karolan said dryly and dug into the leather purse which hung at his waist. ‘But you can say a prayer for my immortal soul if it so pleases you.’
‘I will, Master. To be sure. God bless you.’
The beggar had missed the irony in his voice. At the thought of someone praying for him, Karolan threw back his head and laughed. What a fine joke that was. If God existed then he would have been struck down long ago. And as for Hell, there could be nothing worse than the life he was forced to endure. He moved forward and placed a hand on the beggar’s shoulder.
‘Surely you, my friend, can see that God is vengeful and capricious. At best He is totally indifferent to the suffering of men.’
The beggar flinched away, alarmed both by the unexpected contact and Karolan’s words. Groping for the cross at his neck, he brought the wood to his lips.
‘Leave me in peace, Master. I ain’t done nothing.’ Backing away he lowered his bowl.
Karolan had not meant to terrify the poor soul. He shrugged and tossed a coin into the air. It fell onto the path with a chinking noise. The beggar deliberated for a moment as if considering leaving the money untouched, then thought better of it. Stretching out a grimy paw, he scooped it up.
‘God is not mocked,’ he said stoutly as he loped off towards the open door of a tavern. ‘Those that stray from the path are welcomed back into the fold. I will pray for thee, Master.’
Karolan grinned at this homespun philosophy. It was a fine irony indeed that the humblest beggar should feel himself capable of doing him a service. The man had even felt superior for a few moments. Chuckling to himself, Karolan moved on, aware of the Fetch following in his wake. It had been invigorated by its ingestion of pain and misery and there was a dull glow in the centre of its shadowy form. Having bathed it was eager for a more rewarding exchange of energies.
Karolan felt its touch on his skin, probing, measuring the threads of desire within him, which had subsided but not disappeared. Its touch was a parody of a human caress, but welcome for all that. He felt the brush of lips against his mouth, warm and compelling, and a surge of renewed hunger blossomed in his belly.
‘I give you good solace, Master,’ it whispered. ‘Shall it be now?’
Karolan closed his eyes briefly, tempted to slip into the alley between two houses and give himself up to the spirit’s ministrations. Clenching his teeth he said, ‘No. Later. Wait until we get back to the manor.’
The Fetch chittered angrily and tugged at his hair before disappearing, its passing causing the air to shudder and fold in on itself. Karolan walked on alone, glad to be free of the demanding spirit for a time, but certain that it would reappear when he required its services.
In a while he came to the inn where he had left his horse. The ostler led Darkus from his stall. Karolan paid the man and took hold of the reins, running his palm over the horse’s velvet nose and stroking the elegant head.
‘Fine animal,’ the ostler said, his glance sweeping over the palfrey’s glossy black coat and the high curve of his neck. Darkus’s mane hung down like a curtain of black threads. ‘Breed him yourself?’
Karolan nodded as he swung himself into the saddle, thinking of the horse he had brought back with him from Arabia, another lifetime and more ago. That stallion had been the sire of a number of fine horses, culminating many equine generations later in the splendour of Darkus.
‘If ever you think of selling him . . .’
‘I’ll marvel at my own folly.’ Karolan lifted a hand in a wave as he exerted a slight pressure on the reins. Darkus wheeled and with smooth economy of movement navigated the small cobbled yard.
As Karolan approached the outskirts of his land, the morning sun appeared behind the banked clouds as a band of russet light. Coppiced hazel bushes threw deep shadows across his path.
He ran an eye over the fields with their ripe crops. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to see how much there would be to harvest. After five years of successive crop failure and animal murrains the price of bread and meat was well beyond the reach of most common men. There had been reports of starving people being reduced to eating cats and dogs.
But his vassals had fared better than their neighbours. Karolan had instructed his steward to oversee the planting of oats, beans, and peas and to set aside only a moderate amount of land for wheat. A careful watch was set for the first signs of disease in sheep and cows and the afflicted animals were destroyed.
So it was that when the wheat rotted in the field because of the high rainfall and high humidity, the oat crop thrived. And although there was a shortage of meat, enough cows remained to give milk.
He urged Darkus to a canter and they passed along the edge of the strip fields and headed in the direction of the village. The squat shapes of the thatched crofts were in view, when a movement in the hedgerow caught Karolan’s eye and he drew the horse to a halt.
A small boy, his fist screwed into one eye, peered up at Karolan.
‘Why abroad so early, Selwyn?’ Karolan said, smiling encouragingly.
The lad looked scared out of his wits and was shivering in the early morning chill. His tunic and hosen of rough, home-spun wool were damp with dew. Bits of grass and twig were sticking out of his thatch of fair hair.
‘Steward says . . . as how I’m to hide here and watch the fields. And . . . and run for help if anyone comes thievin’. Harvest’s nigh on ready fer the gatherin’.’
Karolan nodded. ‘Aye. Good lad,’ he said. ‘Have you been here all night?’ Selwyn nodded, his arms hugging his thin body against the cold.
‘Well then. Climb up behind me and I’ll take you to the manor house kitchen for a bowl of hot porridge and a sup of milk. I’ll tell Steward to send along another boy to watch the fields. You’ve done your duty, right enough.’
The look of eagerness on Selwyn’s face was chased away by an expression of alarm as he looked up at the great horse. His eyes slid sideways to Karolan’s face and the colour rushed into his thin cheeks. Karolan understood the boy’s dilemma. While he longed for food to fill his empty belly and a fire to warm his bones, he was loath to sit on the horse. Besides, he would have to press himself against his lord’s body and everyone knew that that was a more dangerous act by far. Karolan’s peasant vassals respected and trusted him, but they remained wary of him as if instinctively aware of his strangeness.
‘Do I look as if I’m going to eat you?’ Karolan said, grinning down at the boy. ‘Believe me, Selwyn, I’d pick a fatter morsel to dine on if I had a taste for such flesh!’
Selwyn’s mouth twitched nervously then widened into a smile, showing uneven, yellowish teeth. Karolan leaned down and extended his arm. Selwyn gripped it with both hands.
‘Up with you, lad,’ he said and swung the boy up behind him.
As Darkus started forward, Selwyn gave a gasp of terror and clung on tight to Karolan’s cloak. ‘Be not afraid. Darkus is gentle. You feel near frozen, lad. Pull a fold of my cloak around you if you wish.’
Selwyn mumbled his thanks, but made no move to obey. Karolan did not insist, although the boy’s shivers vibrated through him. The sensation of the frail body pressed against his own was delightful, tempting him to indulge his passions. But this feeling was devoid of all baseness. Selwyn’s proximity, the sweetish smell of his unwashed body, the sound of his pulses, and the heat of his breath, awoke only tenderness in him. But for the fact that the boy would be terrified out of his wits, he would have pulled him into his embrace and warmed him against his chest.
He felt a wave of sadness. The simplest things, like embracing his own child, would always be denied him. Thinking of the destruction he had wrought to past lovers, albeit unwittingly, he fell silent. Oh God, the eyes were what haunted him the most; eyes opened wide in agony, confusion, and horror.
And the blood. So much blood, pouring from torn flesh deep inside, running thick and poppy-bright down white thighs, clumps of stinking, scorched tissue mixed with the flow. His lips tightened as he thrust away the images, forcing himself to become absorbed by the rolling movements of the horse.
Selwyn, perhaps absorbing some of his lord’s melancholia, did not speak until they reached the manor house. As soon as the horse halted, he slid from Darkus’s back and with a hurried word of thanks scuttled off to the kitchen.
Karolan took Darkus to the stable and ordered the lad there to rub him down with a handful of straw before putting him in his stall and giving him some oats. He decided against following Selwyn to the kitchen. The old memories had fostered a depression in him. He felt only an eagerness to go and check that things were progressing to his satisfaction in his laboratorium.
His personal living quarters were situated in the stone tower which could be reached either by going through the main hall or by entering directly through an outside door. As soon as he reached his bedchamber, he locked the door, then swept aside the thick, woollen carpet which hid the trap-door in the floor. Feeling for the key which he kept hanging from his belt, he opened the wooden flap and descended a flight of stone steps. The stairwell was dark, but the air smelt clean and dry. He needed no light, being able to see in the dark as well as a cat.
Karolan pushed open the heavy wooden door at the bottom of the steps and stepped into the laboratorium. The vaulted ceiling and walls were built of stone and were many feet thick. A complicated network of stone-lined ducts and metal pipes, all buried deep underground, led out from the tower to emerge beneath heavy metal grilles set into the floor of the forest. The tales of hauntings and unquiet spirits, fostered by the villagers and having some base in fact, were a useful deterrent to anyone who showed undue curiosity.
A chemical smell greeted him as he walked across the laboratorium. It was dark inside, lit only by the faint glow from the furnace. Karolan lit a taper and then moved around the room lighting candles. Before he went over to look at the alembic vessel, set in its bath of boiling water, he went to his workbench to consult his notes. The waist-high table was neat and ordered; metal scales stood next to a wooden rack which held many vials of coloured liquids. Beside the open ledger there was a globe of the world and a detailed astrological chart.
Karolan sat on a stool and ran his finger down the row of neat figures, checking the detailed grid of times, dates, ingredients. He knew the contents by heart, but it was his habit to check and double-check each entry. Contained in this and the other ledgers was a note of every experiment, every failure, every success – great or small. The huge, leather-bound volumes were piled high now. They littered the wooden shelves that covered the workroom walls, many of them encrusted with the dust of ages and flecked with powdery mould.
He sat for a moment composing himself and performing the mental exercises which would put him into the state of higher consciousness he needed for the task in hand. Nothing of the outside world must be allowed to intrude. It was a simple matter to put himself into a light trance. The familiar feeling came over him almost at once. It felt as if a breeze was blowing through his skull. He felt insubstantial, his veins brittle – like glass.
Totally absorbed now, he skimmed down the long columns of entries. He began reading aloud, his voice echoing around the silent room.
‘Primal matter for purposes of possible transmutation acquired on the feast day of St Eusabius.
Item. One, healthy, day-old male child – purchased at the cost of two shillings from Jack Spicer.
Said child dispatched forthwith on the day following the feast and known henceforth as prima materia.
Prima materia put into alembic vessel and covered with aqua fortis – previously prepared by a process of distillation, using nitrate, alum, and ferrous sulphate.’
There followed a detailed account of all the complicated and arcane processes to which the prima materia had been subjected. As he read them he ticked them off mentally. Calcination. Solution. Separation. Conjunction. Putrefaction. Congelation . . .
Now the alembic vessel resided in the double-walled bath of metal. The lower part of the vessel, the curcubit, was surrounded by water, which was kept at a constant heat until all the stages of distillation were completed. It would be many months before Karolan knew whether he had succeeded this time. The end result of his experiment would hopefully be the Philosopher’s Stone or ‘seed’ – a red, waxy substance which held within it the pure, spiritual essence of renewal.
Walking across the room he looked into the alembic vessel, peering intently at the thick, greenish glass. The process of putrefaction was advanced and there was a dark, slimy mass in the bottom of the vessel. The glass walls were coated with a sooty residue.
‘Ah, the blackening. The nigredo,’ Karolan murmured, well satisfied that things were progressing in the correct manner.
Now was the time to add the next ingredient. He assembled everything he would need, smoothing the piece of vellum until it lay flat on his workbench and then laying out a knife and a metal dish. Calling on the names of Hermes and Mercurius, he began to read aloud from the tract in front of him. After a moment’s pause, he reached for the knife and brought the wickedly sharp blade up to his neck.
Holding the skin taut between two fingertips, he sliced into his skin then inserted the tips of his fingers into the cut to widen the wound. It hurt like the devil, but he gritted his teeth and probed, keeping very still. Blood made his fingers slippery and it was difficult to push aside the strap-like muscle and reach around the throbbing artery. The sensation of reaching into his own body made his stomach churn, but he fought down the revulsion. It was a few moments before he found the tiny, thread-like vessel he sought. Using the very tip of the knife, he pierced the vessel. At once he was aware of a subtle altering of his body’s rhythms. A trickle of thin, straw-coloured fluid seeped out, mixing with the blood flowing freely from the wound.
Swiftly, before his flesh began to heal around his fingers, he collected the two liquids in the bowl. The wound stung for a while longer, but the flow had stopped and the edges were already knitting together. In a few minutes there would be no sign of a cut. Carrying the bowl over to the furnace, he tipped the liquid into the alembic vessel.
Placing his hands around the curved glass sides, he closed his eyes and concentrated hard, mouthing the words of power. When he finally opened his eyes again, there were bubbles of sweat on his forehead. He peered into the slimy mess of the prima materia and felt a surge of exultation. The blackness seethed and churned. It began to glow, taking on a pearly tinge, the glass side of the vessel reflecting the iridescent colours.
‘The starry sky,’ Karolan breathed with awe.
With regular additions of his own essential fluid over the next few weeks he would expect to see a further change in colour, signifying that the next stage – the albedo – had been reached. Then the resultant ‘seed’ must be allowed to come to term. Forty days was the required period, a time corresponding to the forty week gestation period. After extinguishing all the candles he went back up the steps to his bedchamber, locking the trap-door behind him. Now that he had finished he felt exhausted. The rituals and the effort of concentration always weakened him for a short time. He threw himself down onto his bed, pausing only to kick off his high, leather boots before relaxing against the silken pillows.
On the borders of sleep he became aware of a presence close by. Opening one eye he saw that the air beside him was trembling as if with a silvery heat haze. A jagged tear appeared and the silver fabric peeled back to admit entry to a woman. The Fetch was back and this time it would not be gainsaid.
‘Now, Master,’ it purred, confidently. ‘Solace you, shall I?’
Karolan did not try to resist. The Fetch chuckled with throaty eagerness. The form with which it had clothed itself was soft, rounded, lushly curved. Perfume rose from the valley between deep breasts. The ‘woman’ smiled invitingly, running her palms down over her pouting belly and rubbing them across her thighs. She reached for Karolan, her soft lips trailing down his neck. He felt the lacings of his tunic being pulled free, the flaps of black velvet peeling open to lay his chest bare. A hot mouth closed over one nipple, suckling, drawing out the sweet sensations from his body. As teeth grazed his skin, his flesh rose up strongly. He arched his back in readiness for what was to come.
Yes. Oh, yes. Why deny himself this pleasure? He no longer cared that the Fetch would exact a price for this service. A few moments’ possession. That was all it wanted. To look out of his eyes, to feel blood coursing through its spirit veins, to experience the heavy beat of his heart, to imagine for that brief time that it was human. It seemed little enough to grant it.
Karolan moaned as the pleasure increased in intensity. Fingertips teased him, running up the insides of his thighs, smoothing and pinching his flesh by turns. A long nail scratched gently at the tight, creased rose of his anus. He was aware that a shadow passed across his face. The warm heaviness of a body settled over him. Thighs clamped the sides of his head. There were perfumed folds against his mouth. He stretched out his tongue, lapping eagerly at the rain-tasting flesh. He stabbed inwards and felt his tongue enclosed by warm, pulsing wetness.
The Fetch’s laughter was soft, exultant as it used its artifice to seduce its master. Karolan was lost in sensation. The Fetch’s flesh seethed, re-formed against him, offering pleasures that no mortal woman ever could. While Karolan’s tongue was still deep inside the perfumed vulva, hands smoothed down his body, gripped his hips and drew him towards a second orifice. And then Karolan was inside her, thrusting his cock deeply into a cleated wet maw.
She was hot and tight. The muscular walls squeezed gently, milking him. He seemed possessed by a welter of aroused flesh. Bucking and thrashing, holding nothing back, he gave vent to all his pent-up frustration. While he toiled, fingers plucked at him, urging him on to greater efforts. He was soaked in sweat, enclosed by sensation, every orifice invaded, plundered. His lips, anus, cock, the whole surface of his skin, throbbed, ached, pulsed. He caged a scream behind his teeth, desperate to reach a climax. The Fetch crooned, its enjoyment as deep as his own. As the pleasure peaked, tipped over, Karolan ejaculated in great, tearing spurts.
Before the last sensations had died away, the Fetch was inside his skin. Karolan’s mouth stretched open in a rictus of agony as the spirit occupied his body. He felt it rattling around inside his skull, pushing against his flesh from the inside. The skin on his arms and legs rippled and bulged as it explored him. His eyeballs burned and his vision clouded as the spirit claimed them for its own. He ground his teeth together. ‘Enough!’
The Fetch left him instantly. Drunk with sensation it scurried over the surface of his skin, tasting his sweat, dabbing at the moist surface with hungry, mindless avidity.
‘Go now,’ Karolan said, tiredly. ‘Leave me in peace. You’ve had what you wanted. Damn you!’
‘As have you, Master,’ it whispered exultantly, the moment before it faded into another dimension. ‘As have you.’
Karolan groaned and turned over, pulling the sheets over his half-naked body. Seconds later he was asleep.