Claudius Nero had no difficulty in understanding.
“It grieves me to be confronted with the realization that those who serve me are fools,” Ssrhythssaa hissed. “Incompetent fools who are unable to execute the simplest of tasks. A band of Pictish savages is allowed to creep into my realm without detection-to break open the cell of their king and slaughter my vaunted legionaries without raising the alarm-and to remain at large despite hours of fruitless search. It is only to be expected. Did not this human girl escape without any help other than the stupidity of certain of you-and wander unchallenged until by the barest chance she was recaptured?
“Stupidity. Incompetence. It is enough to try my patience with you. But now there comes to my hearing the insidious whisper of treachery and sedition! You, Claudius Nero! Had you asked me for this girl for your plaything, I might have granted your whim. But my grace is not sufficient for you, it seems. You lie to me, seek to keep the Pictish wench by stealth!
“Fool! Did you think to outwit me! You, who cannot carry through the simplest commands! Did you think I would not learn of your deceit! And of your treasonous whining against the People of the Dark! Your traitorous disavowal of my absolute power over your apish race!
“Do not dare to think I will not break you, Claudius Nero! Your importance is not so great in my eyes that I cannot replace you with a less arrogant slave of your herd!”
Ssrhythssaa smiled his pointed ophidian smile-gloating over the legate’s fear, savouring the knowledge that Nero hated him with all his soul, and dared not so much as lift his eyes to his master’s sneering smile.
In that moment Morgain almost found it in her heart to pity Claudius Nero.
“I shall be merciful,” Ssrhythssaa went on. “Merciful this once. I am, after all, aware of your pitiful limitations. Yet I think it wise to remind you of the powers that I command. It may encourage better performance of your duties-and strict obedience! Never let it be forgotten-the power of the Black Stone, that it is your duty and your fate to serve!”
Turning again to the cairn of skulls, Ssrhythssaa reverently lifted the Black Stone from its dread altar. The wizard raised the sinister crystal on high. Obscene hisses of adulation resounded from the assembled horde.
Ssrhythssaa carefully turned the hexahedron in his taloned hands and gazed at the sixty dagger-shaped characters etched into one six-sided face. Then, reversing the black crystal, he considered the sixty similar cuneiform glyphs on the hexagonal face opposite.
The wizard spoke in tones of awe-the dread secret of the Black Stone.
“Here are carven the elder cantrips by which life can be reduced to the primordial slime from which life evolved-the dread phrases by which the serpent can be compelled to assume the shape of man-and by which man can be compelled to put on the flesh of the reptile!”
Ssrhythssaa turned to his caged captive. “Do you understand, girl? Would you see the dissolution of the proud barrier between your racial origins and those of the People of the Dark? Will you experience in full measure the power of the Black Stone?”
The wizard raised his voice, shouting in Pictish the words he hoped might lure Bran Mak Morn from hiding, if the Pict were within hearing.
“A small portion of this power I shall control to destroy the soul of Bran Mak Morn-but you, his sister, shall be destroyed body and soul through the full power of the Black Stone!”
Again the wizard raised the hexagonal face with its cuneiform characters to his eyes. In harsh and sibilant cries, Ssrhythssaa began to chant the obscene syllables that it seemed no living throat could utter. A hush descended over the vast cavern. Ssrhythssaa’s loathsome incantation echoed eerily into the vaulted darkness.
Slowly, carefully shaping each alien phrase, the serpent-wizard intoned each of the sixty characters.
In its cage, the pallid serpent hissed in inexpressible anguish-threw its great coils in convulsing loops. The iron bars shuddered with the fantastic spasms of its tortured coils. Then a last shudder, and abruptly the huge snake lay still.
The limp coils collapsed, foreshortened. The albino scales dissolved Like flakes of ice; sinew and flesh melted from the hoops of sagging bone. Then the elements blurred, mingled in an elongated puddle of glistening slime upon the bottom of the cage.
Ssrhythssaa’s hellish incantation continued phrase by relentless phrase.
The quivering blob of primordial ooze began to draw inward upon itself. Like some obscene amoeboid creature, it began to thrust out sudden projections of its substance. The slime gathered itself together, assumed hideously recognizable contours. Flashes of bone took shape, covered over with a crawling tide of flesh. Blood pulsed through newly formed arteries; skin clothed the bare muscles and sinews.
There appeared legs, arms, torso, head. A sudden throb of life shuddered through its breast.
Ssrhythssaa intoned the final phrase.
From the floor of the cage, a living creature stirred, slowly came to its feet, grasping at the bars to steady itself on its unfamiliar limbs. The eyes glared in ophidian cunning, but every other outward appearance was that of a human girl.
Morgain stared in dread wonder at her own image. That which had been a serpent returned her stare, flicked its tongue over its lips.
Madness hovered very near.
“I wonder how Bran Mak Morn will receive his sister when again they meet,” Ssrhythssaa chittered with inhuman laughter. “Its soul is still that of a serpent. The reunion may be something of a trial for the king of Pictdom.”
The wizard regarded Morgain balefully. “It may be that you shall observe that reunion, Morgain. But I think your brother will not be quick to recognize you. I wonder how you will speak to him-for I think Bran Mak Morn will have little liking for his sister’s fond embrace!”
Morgain looked away from the Black Stone and its exultant priest-and cursed the fete that spared her from drowning. There was no escape from the ultimate degradation and horror that would engulf her now. Even if Bran were here, there was nothing he could do against this serpent-horde, against this alien sorcery.
Utter hopelessness chilled her heart. Turning from the Black Stone, her haunted gaze fell upon Claudius Nero. The swaggering legate, who cringed like a whipped slave before the ancient wizard’s power, blanched with deeper shame as the girl’s imploring eyes focused with a look of scorn on his bowed face.
Now Ssrhythssaa ghoulishly rotated the hexahedron in his hand, paused to laugh at the girl’s abject horror-and studied the sixty glyphs etched upon this opposite face of the Black Stone.
Ssrhythssaa’s loathsome voice intoned the first of the phrases of abomination.
Morgain screamed-a shuddering, convulsing cry of ultimate revulsion and fear.
Ssrhythssaa paused to savour her hopeless terror.
With a movement as swift as it was sudden, Claudius Nero drew his shortsword, made a quick lunge forward, hacking savagely. The wizard’s attention was concentrated on the Black Stone and its victim. Nero’s sword made a sound like an axe on rotted wood, and the astonishment of Ssrhythssaa’s face was the most vivid expression its demon’s mask had ever registered.
Nero struck again, in the fraction of a second, before the serpent-wizard had even begun to crumple under the first blow. Ssrhythssaa jerked like some broken thing, spun about-his pointed jaws gaping in stunned rage from the steel that split his bony chest. Nero’s third quick stroke clove the elongated skull like a dry gourd.