Morgain refrained from comment, her mind working furiously.
“I must go to see to his recapture,” Nero told her, watching her impassive face suspiciously. “We know he hasn’t left the caverns. Every way is guarded, even if they could find their way back. We will recapture him. Ssrhythssaa will bend Bran to his will-living or dead. The struggle is useless.”
Nero opened a chest, withdrew a gorgeous gown of sinuous silk. “Here,” he said, offering it to her. “This should fit you. You’re about Ada’s size.”
He considered her cunningly. “It may be-if your heart is as sincere as your speech to Atla-that you can persuade your brother to obey reason. The… family interest… might change his stubborn mind about an alliance. There is much to be gained of power and wealth for him if he joins us of his will. If not, Ssrhythssaa will still make use of him.”
Morgain followed the thread of instinct that had guided her to this pass. “Perhaps I could,” she suggested, “if it was an alliance of warriors, and not of crawling things. Why do you need Ssrhythssaa? You say yourself that the Worms of the Earth are worthless in battle. If your legion is so powerful, why do you grovel for puny vermin?”
Nero’s eyes narrowed. The thought was not a new one. With feminine craft, Morgain manipulated his vanities and his hatreds. The legate’s obsessive attention to the details of Roman military and social organization showed clearly how maniacally Claudius Nero sought to mimic the race of man. A man of such conceit and such compulsions could only hate his inhuman master and the race of vermin he served through tradition and fear. Morgain instinctively sought the chink in his armor, twisted her deadly blade.
“In your fine tale,” she pursued, “you said nothing about Dis bowing his head to a horde of stunted weaklings. Bran Mak Morn would suffer any death before prostrating himself to a degenerate pack of vermin who hide from the light.”
With an effort, Claudius Nero turned his back on her. “You are dangerous, Proserpina,” he mused. “Could I be certain of you…”
“You said you loved strength,” Morgain pressed.
“If you desire only a tepid spirit with hot loins, call back Ada and beware of the sister of a Pictish king.”
“I’m not afraid of you!” Nero declared. “Nor of Ssrhythssaa! Don’t think to goad me with your insinuations, girl! Claudius Nero is his own master!” He stalked angrily from the room. “You will remain here until I return,” he called back. “My servants will see to your needs-and my guards are posted throughout the praetorium.”
Morgain wondered if she had overplayed it, decided she had not. There was madness in the soul of Claudius Nero-a certain dark fanaticism similar to that which drove her brother. With care and cunning, she might find a weapon in that madness.
The servant-girl watched her impassively. Morgain could see an armored figure beyond the curtained doorway. No escape. At least this cell was an improvement over the iron cage.
Gingerly Morgain climbed out of bed. Her ribs ached abominably, her limbs could not have been any sorer had she been stretched on the rack, and her bruised feet would scarcely bear her weight. It helped to take her mind off the foulness that burned within her. Morgain lowered herself into the sunken bath, scrubbed herself savagely-knowing she would not feel clean afterward either.
The servant-girl toweled her dry, and carefully rubbed some soothing ointment over her livid skin. The marks of Ada’s whip had faded, except where the skin had been broken. From her familiarity with healing wounds, Morgain guessed her flogging must have taken place at least two days ago. For the first time Morgain felt optimistic enough about her chances to worry whether the lash marks would scar.
A deeper welt across her shoulders and around one leg marked the grip of the crawlers. Morgain realized she still had no clear conception even as to what sort of member had clutched her in the darkness. So many bruises marked her bare flesh that she fancied she might pass for one of the mottled-skinned serpent-women.
Unable to contain her hunger, Morgain ate cautiously from a tray of smoked fish and other uncertain items she left untouched. She was alive, she meditated, and for the moment safe enough. The price…
Last night had been horrible. (Vaguely Morgain realized it had been this morning; it had been dawn when she was recaptured.) Coming after hours of constant terror, her senses had been blunted-accepting the outrage with little capacity to feel. Morgain was glad that the wine and exhaustion had blurred the memory somewhat. If she lived long enough, she would someday sit alone in the heather and weep. For now she was alive, against all odds-and walking a sword’s edge somewhere between hideous death and a faint hope for escape.
It gave her encouragement to know that Bran had escaped. She wondered who had been able to break him free. Grom would risk anything for his king, and old Gonar might have the craft to direct them to where Bran was imprisoned. If they had accomplished that much in the face of the odds, conceivably they could win their way back to Baal-dor-or even come to her rescue here in Claudius Nero’s camp. It came to Morgain that Bran’s continued presence in these caverns must be on her account. Bitterly she reflected that had she not escaped from her cell, even now she might be with her brother and those who had come to rescue them.
The silken gown fit her well-a loose sleeveless thing of dark blue that fastened at either shoulder with silver pins, belted with scarlet cord. It was easily the costliest garment Morgain had ever worn, and she guessed it was still another article of plunder from the baggage train of the Ninth.
The rooms here were filled with such artifacts. It might have been a shrine. Nero had stated that Calidius Falco had been his great-grandfather; she had fallen asleep listening to his talk of the fate of the Ninth, of his own boastful dreams of conquest. The survivors of the Ninth had lived for years, impressing their Roman heritage upon their half-human progeny-until it attained the aspect of a cult for them.
Surrounded by trappings of Rome, obsessed with his creation of a legionary fortress on the Roman model-Claudius Nero was as fanatically Roman as any aristocrat who claimed ancestry back to Romulus and Remus. When the girl thought about the emotional stresses that must derive from this obsession-and the reality of Nero’s serpent-blood, his servitude to a race of vermin, commanded by an ancient wizard to ally his cherished legion with the hated Picts against sacred Rome-Morgain realized the madness that surged within the man who styled himself legate of Legio IX Infernalis. For a man of his arrogance and grandiosity, the only emotional recourse would be a certain faith in his own superiority, and a gnawing hatred of everything that reminded him of his position of inferiority.
Morgain knew she could play upon Nero’s madness. It might mean her salvation. A misstep would certainly be deadly.
She rather wished Bran would find her, and get her out of this before her nerve suddenly failed her.
She sensed a sudden tension in the air, There was a commotion in the hallway beyond. A strident tumult in the shrill hisses of the serpent-folk.
“Bran!” cried Morgain joyously.
A tall figure pushed through the curtained doorway at her outcry.
It was Ssrhythssaa.
22
FROM THE CRYPTS OF HELL