The Assassin and the Sorceress Ch. 05

That was the end of Adrielle's story. Susan just stared out the window. "Wow," she said after a minute. "Do you think he was like Morgana? Controlling people's lives and forcing them to live in seclusion? Making them think they are lucky to be oppressed by her?"

"Hmm... maybe. Actually, no. There is a key difference. Unlike the cult leader, Morgana can actually do magic, and even then she doesn't claim to be God. She even seems to get offended at the suggestion. She doesn't kill people for thinking freely, either."

"You haven't seen her before."

"Before? What do you mean?"

"I... never mind. It was a long time ago."

"Susan, you can tell me."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Did she kill people?"

"I said I don't want to talk about it."

Adrielle thought about commanding her to tell her, but thought again. She already seemed to be gaining the girl's trust. Moreover, she needed Susan to be a free thinker if she hoped her to be of any use at all.

"Susan, listen to me. If we're going to help each other get out of here, we're going to have to trust each other. That means no secrets. You can't keep information from me that might be useful." Adrielle paused for a moment, then added, "I know it might be painful to talk about. But I need to know who she really is."

Susan slumped over, staring down at the floor. Was she starting to cry just a little? Was that why she had looked away?

"Adrielle, you've been wonderful to me. Thank you. But I can't tell you." Susan looked up again, and Adrielle could see tears forming in her eyes. "She'll hurt me if she finds out I told."

"I have to know. If I'm going to do this, I need to know everything about her that I can: any weakness, any insight into who this woman really is."

"Do you promise you won't tell her? No matter what happens, you can't tell her that you know. She'll know it was me."

"Yes, I..." Something stopped Adrielle from finishing. She wanted to comfort the poor girl, wanted to tell her everything would be okay, that she had nothing to be afraid of. But this wasn't a child she was talking to; this was a six-hundred-year-old woman, as hard as it was to believe. She was old enough to bear a harsh truth. Adrielle needed Susan to be brave, not at peace, for the time being.

"No. No, I can't promise that yet. But I can promise something even better. Susan, I promise I will do whatever it takes to get you out of here."

Susan shook her head, her face fearful. "NO! YOU CAN'T TELL HER!"

"I may have to. Do you want to be safe...?"

Susan nodded.

"...or do you want to be free?"

Susan considered. Her face returned to the floor in front of her feet. She said nothing.

"I'll be putting myself in a lot of danger, too, don't forget. I'm doing it for us, Susan.Us.I need to know that you have my back. If you want to help me get us out of here, you're going to have to accept some of that risk yourself. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"Then will you tell me who Morgana really is?"

"What I know."

"Good. Thank you. So... tell me about her."

"Where should I even begin?"

"How about how you came to know her?"

"We... we grew up together right here in Ash. Heh. The place was named for the trees that grew in the area at the time. Now I guess it has another meaning."

"Wait, that ruined village I saw on my way here..."

"Yes. It was called Ash. She's moved us around through the centuries. Centuries! I can hardly believe it. But here we are, back at the start. I hate it here."

"Wait, so you and Morgana were childhood friends?"

"Friends? I don't know. I might have been the closest thing she had to a friend. She was a strange girl. The only child of a drunkard father and an abusive mother. I guess I can't blame her for being different. Nobody talked to her. I did sometimes, but other times I was mean to her like everybody else.

"She creeped some of us out. Growing up, we couldn't really tell what it was about her, just... We'd joke about her being a witch sometimes. I don't think anyone seriously believed it, though. I certainly didn't."

"But she was? All along?"

"No, I don't think so. It just started all of a sudden one day. I was twenty-one. I think she might have been nineteen or twenty. Strange things started happening. Impossible things. These things would only happen around her, or to people she knew. Pranks at first, but they started to turn malicious. The lord of this castle at the time ordered an investigation. Everyone they talked to pointed back to Morgana. They arrested her. She stood trial. In the end, she was sentenced to death by fire, and people started cheering. That's when..."

Susan was sobbing audibly now. She could tell it hurt her to recall this painful memory. But she needed to know.

"What happened?"

"As soon as the lord declared his judgement, she broke free of her shackles. Just ripped them apart! And she... she..."

"I need to know."

"She started killing everyone! She made people fly through the air just by looking at them. She threw them against the walls hard enough to break their necks! People were crushed under furniture... and worst things! Guards shot arrows at her, but they didn't seem to hurt her. Other people tried to run, but by then she was like an animal. She killed them, too!"

Susan started sobbing even harder. Her face was buried in her hands. Tears were running down her wrists. It seemed like she was unable to go on. Adrielle decided to give her a few minutes. She put her hand gently on her back and rubber her up and down, trying to comfort her.

"How did you survive? Did you hide?" she asked after several minutes.

"No. I... I didn't do anything. I just stood there, not really believing any of it was happening. I wasn't the only one who didn't run, but all the others who stayed ended up dead. She just decided to spare me, if you can call it that. When everyone else in the court was slain or fled, she bound me to a chair then left. I don't know what happened, but I could hear screaming outside in the village. She came back for me hours later. She was delirious by then, absolutely insane. She said they were gone. Said it was just us now. I... I can't believe she killed all of Ash. Some of them must have escaped. They must have! There... there didn't seem to be enough bodies for everyone."

"What did she do with her parents? She couldn't have killed them, could she?"

"I don't know."

"You must have had a family of your own. Do you know what happened to them?"

"I thought I recognized some of my friends among the bodies, a few people I knew, but none of my own family. I like to think they escaped."

"Do you think they could still be out there somewhere? Their descendants?"

"How would I ever find them? It's been like twenty generations. At least. We were just serfs. No such family history goes back that far. Even if they are out there, there's no way they would remember me."

"Don't be so sure. Tragedies like what you just told me about don't fade so quickly out of history. There might be people who know. It's something to hope for."

"Hmm. Maybe."

"And here's another promise. If I ever get us out of here, I'll travel with you. I'll take you across the whole kingdom if I have to. We'll find out what happened to the survivors of Ash."

"I'd like that."

"So, Susan?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know anything about Morgana's powers? Anything at all? How she can do what she does?"

"No. I have no idea. She just started doing these things one day."

"Thank you for telling me all this."

"Please don't tell her. You understand why now, don't you? She's a monster!"

"I'm not so sure."

"How can you say that? She murdered an entire village!"

"That was a long time ago. Maybe she regrets it now."

...

That forgiving philosophy was hard to Adrielle to hold onto for long. The next time she saw Morgana, it was hard to look at her the same. Was everything that Susan had told her true? There was a lot she had forgiven Morgana for: things she wondered if she was foolish for forgiving her for. She was holding her captive here with no pretense of ever letting her go, and with little explanation. She had subjected Susan and herself to what could have been considered sexual abuse with her magical powers, yet Adrielle still found herself strangely in love with the woman. But the notion that Morgana had slaughtered an entire village was beyond Adrielle's ability to brush off or rationalize. She wanted to disbelieve it. She wanted to so badly, but she couldn't. Susan hadn't been lying.

Morgana could see this turmoil on her face. It was too much for her to hide. Morgana asked her what was wrong.

And so Adrielle replied that she was exhausted, and simply wanted to be left alone at the moment. Morgana outwardly seemed to believe her, but as she turned to leave Adrielle's chamber, Morgana gave her a look that might have been half concern and half suspicion.

Adrielle was a decent actor, but she was completely unable to mask these feelings. She had almost been tempted to tell the truth, to reveal what she had learned about Morgana's past. She wanted so badly to hear Morgana's side of it. Perhaps there was a reason for it. Perhaps it had been a lie after all. But she couldn't tell. She was too afraid of how the sorceress might act if she found out her worst secret had been let loose. She was afraid for herself, but also afraid for Susan. And in a sense, she was afraid for Morgana. She had no idea what awakening such a memory would do to her.

After that, Adrielle found it difficult to look at the woman she thought she had loved. Or maybe she did still love her, and that was why it was so hard to bear. Would she allow herself to love a mass murderer, or would she scorn the one who had helped her to free herself from the church's totalitarian ideals?

As the days went by, their relationship only grew colder. Even when Adrielle faked affection towards Morgana, Morgana would ask her what was wrong. She had no problem conniving her way into the cult leader's bed even though she had despised him more than any human she had ever met. The difference was because her love for Morgana was still there.

And as their relationship turned cold, and soon after so did Morgana herself. She smiled less. She ate less. She hung her shoulders. Soon, she became mean and domineering. She would punish her servants for slights, for not addressing her, for speaking to her unsolicited. While her servants used to come to her freely with their requests for her magic spells, they felt afraid to now. Since when did a servant ask her mistress for a favor?

Most of the servants wondered what had come over their formerly generous mistress. Once, Adrielle overheard two of the more senior servants gossiping quietly about her. "She's like she was before..." one of them had said.

Morgana spent more and more time locked away in her chamber with Gwendolyn. Perhaps believing she had lost the woman that made her soul happy, she was retreating to the woman that pleased her body the most. She had turned to Gwendolyn and her pleasures like a sorrowful woman might turn to the bottle. And just like with a heavy drinking habit, neither did Gwendolyn seem to make Morgana happy again. Meaningless sex was a poor counterfeit for true love, after all. Sometimes a third or fourth would join the usual duo in her chamber behind those locked doors. Adrielle, listened several times. Morgana and Gwendolyn were usually laughing, but it didn't sound like happy laughter. It was like the laughter of a bully when he pushed a smaller child into the mud.

Once she found Susan huddling on the floor against a wall in the farthest corner of the castle, sobbing loudly. She had tried to comfort her, tried to ask her what they had done to her. She only managed to coax two words out of Susan's lips: "Go away." She never found out what had happened to her.

Adrielle really did try to let Morgana back into her heart. She tried several times, but she was unable. She had sex with her a couple of times, but it had felt empty to Adrielle, and likely to Morgana as well. It wasn't Adrielle's body that Morgana missed. It was Adrielle's love that had been taken from her, and love had no counterfeit. That love had grown cold, indeed. Adrielle regretted ever prying that knowledge from Susan. She had learned more than she was prepared for. She had ruined everything.

No, there was no counterfeit for true love.

...

It was eighteen days after that revealing conversation with Susan that the fateful event happened.

Adrielle was walking from the library to the courtyard. She had taken a book with her to practice her reading, and had hoped to bask in the warm late afternoon sunlight. Suddenly she heard a scream. It was angry and desperate, and something about it chilled Adrielle's blood. Something was wrong!

It sounded like it was coming from the courtyard where she had been headed. As soon as she entered the patio, she dropped the book to the ground when she saw what was happening.

In the middle of the patio overlooking the bath, Guarin lay limp on his back on the cobblestones. Gwendolyn was crouching over him, her extravagant jewelry and golden hair glimmering radiantly in the sunlight. Morgana stood behind her, watching. The screaming, she saw, was coming from Cateline, who was seated on one of the stone benches. She seemed to be struggling.

Her first thought was that Guarin was hurt, and Gwendolyn was trying to help him. How wrong she had been!

When she had taken several strides toward the scene, several details finally came into focus all at once. Morgana and Gwendolyn were smiling. Gwendolyn's smile, in particular, was nearly diabolical: a devil disguised in an angel's radiance! She also heard the words Cateline was screaming at last.

"Leave him alone! Leave my husband ALONE!"

Cateline was struggling to get off the bench. She seemed to be stuck to it.

Guarin tried to lift his arms to ward off Gwendolyn, but he appeared too weak to move them.

Gwendolyn's hand closed around Guarin's half-erect penis. She leaned forward and slowly licked him up his muscular abdomen.

"Gwendolyn, please..." Guarin protested, politely. She could barely hear him over his screaming wife. He was barely able to turn his head toward her. "I don't want you... not in that way."

"Oh, but your body seems to want me..." Gwendolyn retorted with a mock sultry tone, as she flicked the tip of his growing penis with two fingers, and gave his foreskin a quick tug. "I didn't ask Morgana to magicthis. That's all you."

"LET ME GO! DON'T TOUCH HIM!"

"Oh, shut up, you bitch! I'm coming for you next with my horse cock."

Gwendolyn's gaze returned to the nearly paralyzed man in front of her. She smiled. It was a sickening smile that went from ear to ear, absolute poison. It was the smile of someone getting a prize they didn't deserve, a smile full of self-content pride.

Morgana had given Gwendolyn literally almost anything she had desired since she had arrived here: extravagant jewelry, delectable food, and countless trinkets and toys. She had been made inhumanly beautiful by the sorceress' magic, and granted bodily pleasures undreamt of by most mortals. Yet what did the devil desire most but the one thing that was forbidden?

And the one thing in all of this castle that Gwendolyn could not have was the one married man living within its walls.

Adrielle stopped in her tracks. She was too shocked and bewildered to make any sense of this. What would she do? What was even going on here?

It all happened so fast. Years later, Adrielle would still blame herself for failing to stop it. If only she had acted faster. If only she had done something, anything at all, except stand there transfixed with disbelief and denial.

In only a few short seconds, Gwendolyn threw one knee over Guarin and straddled him, then lowered herself down around him. Cateline moaned in despair. Guarin simply seemed to give up. With the battle already lost, why keep fighting? His weak arms fell limply to the ground, finally relaxing. He stared up at the sky with a completely blank expression on his face, as if the best strategy now was to simply wait this out.

To wait for what, a voice in the back of her mind asked?

For Gwendolyn to finish raping him.

That word finally entered Adrielle's mind. It was strange how her mind had seemed to clench shut to prevent such an ugly word from getting in, even as she had watched it happen right in front of her eyes. But now that her mind had finally caught up with her eyes...

"Morgana! Stop this!"

Morgana and Cateline turned to her. Gwendolyn, who had been facing away from her, spared a brief scornful glance from the corner of her eye, though she continued on with her engagement. Guarin did not react at all.

"Why?" Morgana seemed startled to see her.

"They're married! And he said he doesn't want to! I heard him!"

"This doesn't concern you, Adrielle."

"No, it doesn't," Gwendolyn agreed, turning her head around to look in Adrielle's direction. "Morgana said I could. She's the mistress here, and what she says goes, or have you forgotten?"

"It concerns me because those two are my friends!" Adrielle insisted. "Their marriage is sacred to them!"

"Adrielle, leave us. As your mistress, this is my command to you."

"I..." Morgana hadn't commanded Adrielle anything since they had fallen in love. She took a single step back, almost turned to leave. Then, she saw Cateline's eyes. Cateline was speechless now, but her face said enough. Tears poured down her cheeks; her lips quivered. Her desperate eyes pleaded to Adrielle for help, anything she could do at all! Her husband was being raped, for God's sake! Their perfect marriage was being desecrated!

"I can't! No, Morgana, this is wrong! Stop it! Stop it now!" She took several defiant steps forward.

Morgana outstretched her right arm towards her, and she felt herself unable to walk forward anymore, like her body was too heavy to move.

"You would do well to remember your place, servant." Morgana's voice was colder than she had ever heard it. This wasn't the Morgana she had known. It wasn't even the one she met that fateful night. This was the Morgana she had come to kill, one that she thought she had learned to be make-believe.

"Yeah, punish her!" Gwendolyn cheered.

Morgana clenched her fist and raised her arm higher. Adrielle felt herself being lifted off the ground. The air itself seemed to close around her, squeezing some of the air from her lungs.

"Punishing me won't make it right!" she gasped. "And it won't change my mind, either!"

"Oh, shut up."

Adrielle tried to protest further, but when she tried to open her mouth she couldn't. Her lips were sealed together. She tried to force her mouth open, but her lips would not part. Then, she felt herself being thrown. She caught a brief glimpse of the bannister guarding the edge of the terrace as she flew over it. She tumbled through the air for a gut-wrenching second or two before she splashed into the water below.

She oriented herself quickly and climbed out of the bath. Morgana could threated her or punish her all she wanted, Adrielle decided. She could stick her to a wall again or throw her back in the dungeon, or anything worse. She had morals to follow, and even completing her quest wasn't as important as that. She couldn't allow her friend to be raped, not so long as she was physically capable of protesting it.

She coughed up some water she had inhaled. At least her mouth opened again. As she started her way up one of the stairs leading back to the terrace, she noticed she wasn't the only one to have been drawn by Cateline's screaming. Six others had appeared after her. How much of that had they witnessed? Hassan that stood at their front of the gathering, facing Morgana.