Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [60]
He enquired in the market for her. She had not been seen there for well over two hours. Thinking swiftly, he headed for the slums of the city, dismounted outside a certain door and knocked.
Massiva, the black Numidian priest, answered the door himself. He was dressed like a slave—evidently disguised.
“Come in, Simon. It is good to see you.”
“I wish aid, Massiva. And in return I may be able to help you.”
Massiva ushered him inside.
“What is it?”
“I am certain that Queen Olympias has kidnapped Camilla, Lord Merates’s daughter.”
Massiva’s expression did not change. “It is likely—Camilla is reputed beautiful and a virgin. Olympias seeks such qualities. Either she will corrupt Camilla and force her to take an active part in the rites—or else she will make her take a passive part.”
“Passive? What do you mean?”
“The blood of virgins is needed in several spells.”
Simon shuddered.
“Can you help me? Tell me where I may find her!”
“The Rites of Cottyttia begin tonight. That is where to look.”
“Where do they take place?”
“Come, I will draw you a map. You will most likely perish in this, Simon. But you will be convinced that we have spoken the truth in the past.”
Simon looked at the negro sharply. Massiva’s face was expressionless.
They called her Cotys and she was worshipped as a goddess in Thrace, Macedonia, Athens and Corinth. For centuries her name had been connected with licentious revelry—but never had she prospered so well than in Pela where Queen Olympias danced with snakes in her honour. Though only part of a greater Evil One, she flourished and grew on the tormented souls of her acolytes and their victims.
The house stood on its own on a hill.
Simon recognized it from Massiva’s description. It was night, silver with rime and moonlight, but there were movements in the shadows and shapes of evil portent. His breath steaming white against the darkness, Simon pressed on up the hill towards the house.
A slave greeted him as he reached the door.
“Welcome—be you Baptae or heretic?”
Baptae, Simon had learned from Massiva, was the name that the worshippers of Cotys called themselves.
“I come to take part in tonight’s Cottyttia, that’s true,” Simon said and slew the slave.
Inside the house, lighted by a single oil-lamp, Simon located the door which opened on reeking blackness. He bent and entered it and soon was creeping downwards, down into the bowels of the hill. The walls of the tunnel were slippery with clammy moss and the air was thick and difficult to breathe. The sharp sound of his sword coming from its scabbard was comforting to Simon.
His sandaled feet slipped on the moss-covered stones of the passage and, as he drew nearer to his goal, his heart thudded in his rib-cage and his throat was tight for he now had something of the emotion he had felt when confronted by Alexander’s insanity.
Now he heard a low chanting, half ecstatic moaning, half triumphant incantation. The sound grew louder, insinuating itself into his ears until he was caught for a moment in the terrible evil ecstasy which the Cottyttian celebrants were feeling. He controlled himself against an urge to flee, the even stronger urge to join them, and continued to advance, the rare steel sword gleaming in his fist. The iron was a comfort, at least, though he still refused to believe that there was any supernatural agency at work.
Almost tangibly the evil swirled about him as he pressed on and here his rational, doubting nature was to his advantage. Without it, he might easily have succumbed.
The chanting swelled into a great roar of evil joy and through it he heard a name being repeated over and over:
“Cotys. Cotys. Cotys. Cotys.”
He was half hypnotized by the sound, stumbled towards a curtain and wrenched it back.
He retreated a pace at what he saw.
The air was thick with incense. Golden light flared from tall black candles on an altar. From the altar rose a pillar and tied to the pillar was Camilla. She had fainted.
But it was not this that sickened him so much as the sight of the things which