There was one rending burst of pain. Then an explosion that seemed to shatter his brain. Its million floating fragments drifted through blackness.
IV
He was aware of low chanting rhythms, the blood heating throb of unknown instruments. He stirred and found himself wallowing in a bed of incredible depth and softness. Heady scents that twisted his soul with sweet pain floated across his face, and his wild barbarian heart was instinctively repelled by the suggestion of sensual, soft decadence.
When he opened his eyes, oscillating lights bathed him in sense-drunkening sweetness that sickened even as it lured. He turned his head. A boudoir out of the abyss of a drug dream. Black drapes littered with flashing jewels. A black floor that seemed to undulate with sentient life, mosaicked in red veins. Weirdly-plumaged birds with serpent's heads hissed in a golden cage.
And Alhone stood by his couch and sang to him.
When she spoke, her voice had been unpleasantly whiny and shrill. But now, singing the dissonant cries of some alien song, it was high and piercingly sweet like a violin's cry. Small furred breasts rose and fell gently as she sang. Lithe hips swayed. Her cat's eyes searched his with a cruel dreaminess, and, for him, there was no malice there.
Small, delicate, fine-limbed monster from an alien hell. At her command thousands had died horribly during the Red Moon Games. Trampled, drained of blood, shredded by talons, poisoned by fangs, tortured, flayed and inflicted with unspeakable indignities worse than pain. Yet she possessed the sadist's love of beauty, of decadent riches, luxury, sensual surroundings, and love.
He arose with one fluid motion and faced her. His body had been bathed and scented with perfumed oils. His trappings were new, the grey leather of the Anghorians. A long sword swung at his side.
"The Mistmen are yours," he said. "And this has all been a trap to get me here?"