The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [70]
Sadistic glee filled Borran Kiosk as he turned on the last living person in the tavern. The woman cowered against the back wall, trapped by another wall on one side and the fire from the elf s spell on the other.
She sobbed and wailed, and the shrieks were a joyful noise to Borran Kiosk. Walking toward her, he dragged out the enjoyment. Torture, if there were time yet remaining before the city watch arrived, would be a welcome diversion.
"Stay away!" the woman shrilled. She held her empty hands up before her.
Borran Kiosk cocked his head, surveying her.
"No! Please don't kill me!" She shrank down, dwindling to a kneeling position with her arms wrapped around her head. She kept her eyes averted from his skull, but looked at his skeletal feet covered in blood.
Stopping just out of the woman's reach, Borran Kiosk gazed down at her and said, "Do you know who I am, woman?"
"Yes."
"What is my name?"
The woman shook her head, gasping in painful fear.
Borran Kiosk opened his jaws and let his tongue spill out. The dripping purple appendage coiled like a restless snake as it approached her. The mohrg relished the taste of the woman's fear, so palpable through the tongue. Some of his other senses, and the pleasures of the flesh, had been taken from him or dulled by the magic that brought him back to unlife, but they had been replaced by the ability to taste another's fear. For Borran Kiosk there was no finer elixir.
"If you know my name," the mohrg said, "say it. Spare your life a little longer."
He caressed her cheek with the bloody tongue, leaving smears in its wake.
The woman trembled, gasped, and cried. Tears tracked her face, and the mohrg tasted the sweet salt of them.
"Your death," Borran Kiosk promised her, "is a certainty. It can be the most horrible thing you've ever been through, or it can come so fast you're not even aware of it. The choice is yours."
"I don't want to die."
Grabbing the woman's hair, Borran Kiosk yanked her head back up at him.
"Please. Please don't hurt me."
"My name," Borran Kiosk commanded, shaking her head.
Coughing and hacking, eyes blurred with drink and tears, the woman said, "Borran Kiosk."
"And you remember me?"
"I've heard tales of you since I was a little girl," the woman said. "I never thought you were real-only something made up to frighten children." She wailed, "Gods help us if you are real."
"I am real," Borran Kiosk declared, pressing his flesh-less face close to hers. "I am real and I am come back from the icy pits where the priests of Eldath kept me. I am come back for my vengeance."
Holding a hand up before her face, the woman wept and trembled.
Borran Kiosk laved the tears from her cheeks with his bloody tongue, tracking her face and marking her features with grotesque patterns.
"Do you want to live, woman?"
She hesitated, and he knew she thought he was trying to torture her further by giving her false hope. Light from the flames clinging to the wall danced over her face and sparked highlights from her hair.
"Answer me," Borran Kiosk said. "Would you live if you could?"
"Yes. Gods help me for being so weak." Borran Kiosk touched the woman's face with his hand and said, "Then I shall let you live."
An uncontrollable shiver ran through the woman. "Thank you! Gods bless you for that!"
"Only one god has blessed me," Borran Kiosk said. "I will do Malar's work to bring this city to its knees. Aye, and even the whole of the Vilhon Reach if the Beastlord should choose to put that within my grasp."
The fire clinging to the wall crept closer to them, and Borran Kiosk could feel it soaking into his bones.
"You will let me go?" the woman asked.
"Yes," Borran Kiosk said, turning his grim visage on her, "but your life comes with a price."
"Anything, Lord Kiosk."
The woman bowed her head, flinching from the flames