As soon as she entered Morando's cellar from the secret entrance, and closed the wall behind her, Bianca felt a thrilling surge of triumph. Her plans were working—and working perfectly!
She'd be safe from discovery here. The Venetian authorities in the Citadel had, weeks earlier, sealed the front entrance to Morando's domicile. They'd had to, in order to put a stop to the constant stream of curious visitors. That meant no one would even think of reopening the cellar and looking in it again.
Only one danger remained, and she'd deal with that now. Bianca went directly to the altar, not bothering to look around. The altar was a fake, true enough, but put to Bianca's use instead of the charlatan Morando's, it would serve her purpose.
Quickly, using the tools and ingredients in the bag she'd brought with her, she performed the necessary ritual. Not like the much more difficult scrying in blood she needed to use to speak with her putative mistress, this was a simple thing—communication by fire. Nothing that the powers of Corfu would be able to touch or hinder.
She kindled the flame of a candle made of the rendered fat of an unbaptized baby; then bent over the flame, cupping her hands about it, and whispered a single name.
This was a mild incantation, not something she had any fear that the cursed Lopez would be able to detect. In and of itself, simply a communication—and with someone whom she'd prepared long ago for the purpose.
In his cell, Morando suddenly awoke, gasping for breath.
"Bianca?" he whispered. "Is that you?"
He saw the image of her beautiful face emerge, seeming like an apparition in midair. She was smiling gently.
"It's me, Aldo. But keep your voice down."
"Thank God!" Then, speaking softly: "Listen, they still don't know anything about you—and they say they'll commute my sentence to ten years on the galleys. So with your help—"
"Nothing, Aldo? They don't know about the secret entrance to the cellar?"
He shook his head. "No, I kept that from them. The only—"
He got no further. Bianca said some words he didn't catch and a sudden sharp pain stabbed through his chest. He gasped, clutching his chest with both hands.
Dimly, through the pain, he saw Bianca's smile widen. "Poor Aldo," she said. "That's the needle you're feeling. The one I implanted below your skin months ago while you were sleeping—and then numbed the nerves in the area, so you'd never sense it."
Her mouth worked, speaking more words. He knew it was an incantation of some kind, though he didn't understand the words themselves. "It's working its way into your heart now. Don't be concerned, though. I don't have time to enjoy this properly. It'll all be over within a minute."
The agony was now too intense for speech, or even screaming; the shock, even more so. He simply gaped at her, until he died.
In Casarini's abandoned house, Eneko Lopez broke off his part of the search they were conducting. His hands started to fly to his temples, again. But, this time, his frustration and anger was so great that he slammed them against a wall instead.
"May the saints blast the monster! She's doing it again!"
He leaned against the wall, shuddering. His face full of concern, Manfred took a step toward him.
Then, suddenly, the priest whole body grew rigid. "Wait," he murmured. "Something is happening . . ."
Perhaps a minute later, Eneko pushed away from the wall and turned toward Manfred. To the prince's astonishment, there was a smile on the priest face.
A very, very, very grim smile. "I shall have to do penance for this, of course," said the priest. "Vengeance is, indeed, the province of the Lord. Still, I can't help but treasure this moment."
As she turned away from the altar, smiling broadly with satisfaction—treachery was so sweet—Bianca was startled by a sudden motion in the darkness of the cellar.
Sophia Tomaselli's face loomed in front of her. Bianca barely recognized the woman. The once-fastidious Case Vecchie looked like a hag. Filthy, her hair disarrayed—and with a hag's contorted grimace.
"You bitch! This is my refuge!"
Too late, Bianca saw that Sophia held a heavy candlestick in one hand—and was raising it to strike.
She threw up her arm to block the blow, but her recent use of two powerful incantations had left her very fatigued. She couldn't get the arm up in time. The brass candlestick smashed into her forehead like a mallet, sending her dazed and half-conscious to the floor.
Consciousness returned perhaps thirty seconds later, pain leading the way.
She couldn't breathe!
Her hands flew to her throat. There was something—
It was a silk scarf, she realized. Digging deeply into her throat, cutting off all air and blood. Somewhere behind her, Sophia Tomaselli was holding the thing, strangling her as Bianca had once strangled a niece.
"You stinking slut! Aldo's mine, not yours!"
Tomaselli's words came in grunts, sounding more like something uttered by a peasant than a noblewoman. "Besides," Sophia hissed, "there's not . . . enough food. I'll share it . . . with Aldo . . . when he comes . . . but not you."
Bianca was frantic now. The situation was absurd. How could such a pathetic creature as Sophia Tomaselli possibly be a threat to her? But the fact remained that the hag was in such a frenzy that she'd kill Bianca if she weren't stopped.
Automatically, Bianca started to utter the incantations that would destroy the creature—only to realize, then, that whether Sophia understood what she was doing or not, strangling a sorceress is perhaps the safest way to kill her.
She couldn't speak a word! In fact, her mind was becoming so fuzzy from lack of air that she wasn't sure she could have remembered the words well enough to incant them properly, even if she had been able to speak.
Bianca went into a paroxysm of terror, writhing and twisting on the floor. But everywhere she went, Sophia stayed on top of her—like some hideous leech, sucking out her life.
Desperately, she planted her hands on what part of Sophia she could reach. Nothing more than her hips, unfortunately, which were protected by the woman's tattered but still richly thick garments. The pain touch worked much better on bare skin—especially skin with a lot of nerves close to the surface. Even if she could have clawed her way past the fabric to Sophia's buttocks, she'd only have been touching fatty flesh.
Still, Bianca used the last of her strength to send agony pouring into Sophia's body as best she could. And a great deal of agony it was, too, despite the handicaps. Bianca Casarini was fighting for her life, and the agony she summoned was driven by a will to live that had sent her into every foulness imaginable, for years.
It was perhaps the worst thing she could have done, not that she really had any options. Sophia's body arched like a suddenly drawn bow from the excruciating pain—but her hands, clenched by the same agony, never let go of the scarf. The silk that had been choking Casarini now collapsed her windpipe completely, crushing it into ruin.
Bianca spit out blood, feeling her life going with it.
I can't believe it! Sophia Tomaselli!
I WANTED TO LIVE FOREVER!
"She's dead," Eneko said grimly. "I felt the monster dying. I knew the moment she was gone."
He knelt and crossed himself, then kissed the crucifix, reverentially—and yet, Erik thought, with some other emotion as well. Guilt? Regret? Though Erik could not imagine what Eneko Lopez could possibly have to feel guilty about, at least in this instance.
"How did she die?" asked Erik.
After he rose to his feet, Lopez shrugged. "That, I couldn't tell you. I am not clairvoyant, you know. I could simply sense the monster's frantic attempts to use magic to forestall her death—somebody or something was killing her, that much I know, though I couldn't tell you who or what—and her eventual failure."
His expression was grimmer than Manfred had ever seen it—and Eneko was a man given to a grim view of the world. " 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,' " he heard the priest murmur. "Still . . . the beast died in great despair as well as fury. It was fitting."
And you shall live forever, Bianca Casarini. Oh, yes, most certainly.
Confused, Bianca opened her eyes. She was more confused, then, by what she saw.
First, because all the images seemed duplicated—no, multiplied, many times over.
Oh, you'll get accustomed to compound eyes soon enough. Perhaps unfortunately, from your point of view. Not mine, of course.
The strange voice seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Bianca's eyes moved over the . . . landscape?
Hard to tell. It just seemed like a world made of cables. A kind of enormous net of cables. Dirty-white in color, stretching to what seemed like infinity. She sensed that the effect was not simply caused by the weird multiplication of her vision.
A reddish glow somewhere to her left drew her gaze that way. Dully, she stared at it for a while. How long, she couldn't say. She seemed to have difficulty determining the passage of time.
The color of the glow changed, slowly; shading from red to yellow to, eventually, a particularly loathsome shade of yellow-green. The color of slime, if slime were as hot as lava.
Also the color she'd once seen, in a glimpse she'd gotten of the Great One. The eyes that weren't eyes at all, but something that had reminded her at the time of staring into bottomless, volcanic cesspools.
Welcome, Bianca Casarini! Welcome to eternity!
Realization finally came to her. She opened her mouth to scream.
Tried to, rather. She had no mouth. Looking down, all she could see was a proboscis of some kind, where she'd once had a nose.
Looking down still further, at her body, she saw that her lungs were now on the outside, red-veined and pulsing.
Oh, yes, that. I'm afraid that certain physical laws still apply here. On this level, at any rate. There are quite a bit more than nine, incidentally. How many? Hard to say. Depends on which mathematical formula you use.
She tried to scream again. The only effect was to make her proboscis grow more rigid—and cause the lungs to pulsate quicker.
Yes, yes, I'm afraid so. Volume to surface-area ratios, that sort of thing. All very tawdry, I'm afraid. It also means that discreet little spiracles won't do the trick at all. So I've had to modify your lungs a bit.
It does make you hideously ugly, true. But, then, that's now the least of your problems. I'm afraid Crocell lost his sexual appetites long ago—and wouldn't care in the least if you were still as comely as you were.
Paralysis was giving way to terror. Bianca's eyes now ranged down the rest of her body.
There were way too many legs, and she was quite sure that wasn't simply a function of her strange new vision. Skinny, weirdly jointed, hairy legs.
Six legs, to be precise. I'm something of a stickler when it comes to tradition. Very conservative, actually, despite my reputation as a rebel.
Ah. Here comes Crocell, now. Give him a nice run, would you, Bianca? I have to keep him well-exercised, for the rare occasions when I let him out.
She sensed the vibration first. Looking down, she saw that her feet—feet? what were those horrid claw-like things?—were planted on one such cable. The cable seemed to be undulating. As if some great weight had been placed upon it.
She twisted her body—awkwardly, since she was unaccustomed to its new shape—and saw that a monster was moving toward her along the cable. Like a great spider, except for the face.
It was the face that finally broke what was left of Bianca Casarini's self-control. For some reason, the sight of a middle-aged man's face on such a monster—except that he possessed mandibles as well as jaws—was more horrifying than anything else.
Worst of all, was the look of bleak despair in the man's eyes. Utter and complete despair, such as Bianca had never seen before—not even in the eyes of her own victims.
Crocell was a much better cheater than you were, Bianca. Oh, much better. That's why he gets a privileged position here. So to speak.
As I said, I even let him out now and then. A privilege which, I'm afraid, you'll not be enjoying.
Bianca fled down the cable, shrieking silently. She could feel the cable thrumming beneath her feet, under the treads of something much heavier than she.
Oh, please, Bianca! Have no fear—after he sucks out your juices, I'll replenish them again. It's agonizingly painful, of course, but not terminal in the least.
If only she could scream!
No, no, not in the least bit terminal. Even though you were planning to cheat me, I'm not at all vengeful. Despite what you may have heard.
If only she could scream!
You wanted eternal life, Bianca Casarini. And now you have it.
If only she could scream!
As food.