"No!” she screamed, putting all her strength into the cry, but all that emerged from her lips was a breathless gasp as she floated over the stone block, her flailing feet missing it by scant inches. Higher and higher she flew, rising up to dizzying heights. The milling people below now looked like insignificant mites.
Her vision blurring, her lungs burning, she felt a cold shock of terror, expecting her abductor to drop her onto the stones below at any moment. Her fear, however, soon gave way to a warm flood of inner peace and acceptance.
The Names will greet me with open arms, she thought, closing her eyes in a moment of spiritual rapture. I offer my soul to their beneficence and grace…
She felt almost disappointed when her feet again touched solid matter, and the cruel, crushing arms loosened their hold on her. Drawing a rasping, whooping breath, she opened her eyes, and she staggered from a sudden, dizzying fit of vertigo. She would have fallen, were it not for a scaly arm that restrained her.
"Peace, young mistress,” a familiar, bass voice rumbled, as she stared down at the sheer drop mere inches from the tips of her toes. “I have brought you up here to cool down a little. Do not worry; I will not let you fall."
As rationality returned to her, Drex found herself perched on the parapet of the Priory's only remaining turret.
"Why did you stop me, Seneschal Shakkar?” she demanded, spinning around in the demon's arms, her ire heated by the knowledge of her failure. “You know what that foul rapist has done to me and my beloved Order. He deserves to die."
"Have you no pithy, cutting epithet for me, Lady Drexelica?” demanded the demon, looking down at her with those intense, scarlet eyes. “'Scaly monster', perhaps? Or would ‘fanged despoiler’ be better?"
Drex felt conflicting emotions snarling and fighting within her: rage at being denied; relief that she was not dead; misery at the loss of her brief, transcendental moment of grace. Most of all, she felt perplexity. Shakkar was friend to the man who had torn her innocence from her, but the demon had never behaved towards her in anything less than a gentle and protective manner. Alone among Grimm's companions, Shakkar evoked no angry reaction in her, and sheer confusion stayed her tongue.
"Maybe ‘winged pervert’ would suit me better?” the demon Seneschal suggested, and Drex found her voice.
"Of course not, Seneschal Shakkar,” she heard herself saying in a whining, little girl's voice, much to her disgust. “You are… you are you, and you have always been kind to me."
"Do you prefer ‘old lecher'?” Shakkar asked.
"That is General…” Drex began, trailing off as her head began to pound. She struggled to make sense of her whirling thoughts, but the loud, increasing noise in her brain made rational thought all but impossible.
"The ‘foul rapist’ is Baron Grimm, I understand,” the demon continued, in a friendly, conversational tone. “I imagine you reserve ‘oversized ogler’ for warrior Tordun. Am I right?"
Drex said nothing; Grimm had roused the same confusion in her, just before his destruction of the Priory. The clamour in her head was now worse than the tumult in her home town of Griven on market-day, and her head throbbed with an abominable, stabbing ache.
"Necromancer Numal!” Shakkar snapped, showing his fearsome array of steak-knife teeth. “Who is he? Speak, Lady Drexelica!"
"Numal is not worthy of your respect,” she muttered. “He's nothing more than a fumbling-"
"Pederast?” Shakkar demanded, making the masonry beneath them shake with the power of his deep voice. “Is that not what you were going to say?
"My eyesight is quite poor, but my hearing is excellent. I heard you muttering these imprecations like religious mantras, while the other nuns were working. They did not vary in cadence, tone or vehemence from one repetition to the next.
"You have been robbed of the gifts of thought and free speech, Lady Drexelica; your mind is nothing more than a puppet. You do not insult me because you have not received a convenient label with which to belabour me."
"The Order is all,” Drex muttered, trying to blot out the demon's words with the force of her faith.
She tried to listen for the calming, soothing voice of Prioress Lizaveta within her, but the Reverend Mother's ever-present advice was drowned in the cascade of tumbling, colliding emotions.
"The Order is my only friend!"
Drex tried to find comfort in the familiar words, but they seemed cloy like cold, sulphurous ashes on her tongue.
"Warrior Tordun may be a man of great strength and violence when confronted by enemies,” Shakkar rumbled, “but I have never seen him regard you with anything but… I have never seen him look at you at all; your youth and beauty embarrass him, yet he would fight to the death to defend you. He is weakened by disease and half-blind, yet he has fought to the limits of his strength to help save your sisters. You prefer to dismiss this noble human with a trite rote phrase.
"On more than one occasion, I saw the way you looked at Baron Grimm, and he at you, when you were with him in Crar. You did not then regard him as a rapist; nor did he regard you as a chattel. Somewhere deep within you, Lady Drexelica, you know this; yet you belittle him as a ‘foul rapist'."
"Shut up!” Drex screamed, feeling as if her muscles were turning to water. Feeling the barb-like thoughts of Prioress Lizaveta begin to push through the tumultuous din of her roiling emotions, she screamed, “Both of you! Shut up and let me think!"
Shakkar ignored her outcry. “I will stay with you, young mistress. You cannot run from me. You cannot trick me or deter me, but I will not kill you. Shall I take you back down there, to allow you to murder Baron Grimm? I will not do that, either.
"You and I will stay here, Lady Drexelica, until you divest yourself of these asinine, thoughtless labels and try to think for yourself."
"Let me go!” Drexelica's eyes prickled from the sting of nascent, hot tears. “Let me go, you… you big beast!"
"Was that an insult of your very own, Lady Drexelica? If so, I am honoured to wear the appellation. However, I am happy to stay here with you; protecting you, as I always have and always will. Rail as you will, but I will not let you go. I will, however, remain silent, so you can listen to your own thoughts."
With that, Shakkar fell silent. Drexelica groaned, helpless in the demon's arms. The sudden silence seemed a worse torture than any she had ever faced, as Shakkar's last words reverberated and rebounded in her head, but she tried to cut through the morass of conflicting influences. Somewhere, somehow, she must be able to regain the spiritual peace and comfort she had lost.
****
As several nuns stared into the dark night sky, stunned by Drex's impulsive attempt at sabotage and by Shakkar's swift response, Quelgrum crawled towards the hole, shaking with relief. He fought with every fibre of his being to control his trembling limbs, and, for the most part, he succeeded.
I can't let the others see how shaken I was, how slow I'm becoming, he told himself. I must at least look as if I'm in control.
Steadying his breathing, he clapped his hands to attract the nuns’ attention. “Ladies,” he said, “we still have a job to do, in case you'd forgotten."
The women turned as one to face him, their faces aghast. “The monster has abducted Sister Weranda,” one cried, pointing upwards, into the darkness. “We must save her!"
A faint susurration arose from the crowd, growing louder by the moment, and Quelgrum feared he might be losing them.
"Sister Weranda was not always a member of your Order,” he shouted, fighting to keep his voice level. “Once, she lived in the Barony of Crar. Seneschal Shakkar, amongst his other duties, acted as her personal bodyguard and protector. He would no more hurt her than you would eat dung. She was trying to kill Baron Grimm, and Shakkar acted to remove the threat. He could have destroyed her in a heartbeat if that had been his wish, but he did not do so."