Gorgesque Read online

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  Chapter 30

  The lamp shatters, pieces of ceramic and glass scattering everywhere, its oil sloshing over the unconscious Courundia as she slumps to the floor.

  Parvo’s smiling, but I can’t understand why.

  Not content with deeply embedding his stilettos within Pavro’s chest, the cardinal’s now using them to rapidly slice at the flesh, much as an accomplished chef deftly twirls his utensils.

  Before I can fully turn and help Pavro, however, his attacker withdraws his blades: bringing out, pierced upon their tips, a squirming, shrieking, oversized maggot.

  *

  Chapter 31

  I’m horrified, almost physically sick.

  ‘It’s the queen, the Queen of Queens!’ Pavro’s assassin yells triumphantly as he continues to hack and slice with one blade at the firmly pinioned and howling, writhing larva.

  I rush to Pavro’s side, supporting him in my arms as his legs crumple and his arms go limp.

  From the deep, bloody wound the assassin’s created in Pavro’s chest, other insects, ones no bigger than the smallest midges, pour out like a brackish water. Still others stream out from his mouth, his nose, his ears.

  This is what has been keeping him alive.

  He’s become a nest, a living, breathing nest, to a colony of insects, commanded by their queen.

  ‘They like the warmth of the heart, but not the heat of the flame!’

  The assassin’s not satisfied with endlessly slicing at the queen.

  No doubt aware of her continuing power to control and manipulate her subjects, he takes her towards the flame of the oil lamp, chuckling evilly as she squeals in fear and agony, as she attempts to coil her body away from the hungrily licking fire.

  With a hiss and splutter of roasting flesh, of bubbling juices, the queen vanishes in a roar of flame.

  Pavro slumps completely within my arms, too heavy for me to support any longer. He slips out of my weakening, trembling grasp, slides out of my hands to the floor.

  There’s nothing to keep him alive any longer.

  *

  Chapter 32

  The insects, each one hardly bigger than a speck of dust, dart aimlessly around the floor, a dark chaos, alive yet possessing no purpose.

  Pavro’s assassin glances down at them scornfully, their queen now nothing more than a roasted hunk of seared flesh hanging from the end of his stiletto.

  ‘The power of the Queen of Queens lay in her irreplaceable intelligence: and that was her weakness, for without her guidance everything else collapses.’

  He looks back towards the still darkened window, frowning thoughtfully, doubtlessly imagining what must now be happening in the rest of the town.

  Now their Queen of Queens was dead, every man or woman who had been brought back to life must now also have collapsed like Pavro, the insects no longer under any direct or purposeful control.

  As for any other people in this town – those who live here either completely unaware or knowing of the way their friends had been colonised – they would probably panic and flee, fearing that they might be the next to abruptly lose their lives.

  ‘You used her?’ I glare at the assassin accusingly. ‘To fulfil this whole idea of the transference: and all just a way of ensuring the church had ultimate power over us all?’

  He doesn’t appear in anyway embarrassed or ashamed by my allegation.

  ‘It was all so perfect at first, of course: as long as she was satisfied that her subjects lived in the relative safety and benefited from the capabilities of what, after all, would have been a dead – a wasted – human.’

  ‘But it…it’s horrific; sickening! To have these...things squirming about inside us!’

  ‘Really?’ He still appears completely at ease with my accusations. ‘Obviously, you fail to recognise that even you are being kept alive by countless, endlessly writhing creatures too small for you to even imagine. The Queen of Queens merely shepherded her charges to herd those who, in their turn, would control ever smaller creatures, repairing or even transforming damaged fles–’

  His next, his last, expression is one of wide-eyed surprise, his voice abruptly choked off by a whirl of flying glass that instantly slices his throat.

  I spin around to see who had thrown the shards of shattered lamp.

  It’s Pavro.

  *

  Whatever wounds Pavro had suffered during the assassin’s attack appeared to have vanished, the only sign that he had been severely injured being his ripped jacket and shirt, the blood that still dripped from his clothes here and there.

  He mistakes the tortured look on my face for one of bafflement.

  ‘It was a queen: a Royal Sister who sacrificed herself so we’d learn the Church’s intentions.’

  When he approaches me to place a comforting arm around me, I shudder, withdraw.

  ‘That…that thing…’ I stammer uneasily.

  He laughs, as if my repulsion is ridiculous.

  ‘An honour,’ he states blissfully. ‘She came to me, recognising my importance to their great cause: the young queen who had originally granted me life willingly vacated my heart for her–’

  ‘How? How did such…an horrendous thing that size get inside of you?’

  She couldn’t have entered through something as small as bullet wound, could she? I suppose, being malleable enough, she might have done.

  And yet – he says a young queen vacated her position for this older queen. His wound would have been healed.

  Is that what Courundia had seen and heard when she thought Pavro was dying? Had she simply witnessed the replacement of one queen for another, Pavro being allowed to briefly pass out while it was accomplished?

  ‘For most people, for me originally, the queen grows as her colony grows. But such a young queen can make mistakes–’

  ‘Those people I’ve seen who are rotting?’

  He nods then, seeing that I’m becoming increasingly horrified by all this new information, tries to reassure me.

  ‘The older queens can keep you alive, keep you beautiful, almost endlessly!’

  He reaches out, tenderly touches the repaired side of my face, as if aware of the damage I’d sustained there.

  This time, I don’t recoil.

  His touch still feels like that of Pavro’s.

  His skin, his warmth, is that of Pavro’s

  The loving glitter of his kind eyes: all Pavro’s too.

  Responding to the touches of the Pavro I’ve always known, always loved, I caress the wound to his chest that is once again healing rapidly.

  ‘Yet I just saw your queen die!’ I whisper concernedly.

  ‘But we benefit from so many other means of communication…’

  Stepping back from me a little, he drew my attention to a small line of almost microscopic insects leading from one of his feet towards the large, heavily curtained window.

  ‘Think about it, Andraetra: would that assassin have attacked you as mercilessly as he attacked me?’ Delicately placing a slender hand beneath my chin, he lifts my face up to his once more. ‘Men are enamoured by beauty, weakened or at least deliberating when they fall under its spell.’

  Pulling aside from me once more, this time more urgently, he excitedly strode towards the drawn curtains, reaching up for the dangling cord that opened them.

  ‘We were going to bring you here anyway; that silly girl helped us all in the end!’

  With a proud flourish, he drew the curtains aside.

  It wasn’t a window behind the curtains after all.

  It was a deep and dark alcove, featuring a large, throne-like chair.

  And seated upon that throne was the most ancient, withered and exhausted woman I had ever seen.

  ‘Because the Queen of Queens, Andraetra, wants you to inherit all of her powers!’

  *

  Chapter 33

  ‘She is indeed a rare beauty,’ the Queen of Queens croaked, speaking with what seems great di
fficultly.

  If the Queen of Queens had ever been a ‘rare beauty’, it was a beauty that had long deserted her.

  ‘You…you can’t take me over,’ I insisted, stepping back even farther from her as I spoke. ‘I…I’m not dead!’

  Noting my disgusted stare, the queen cackled like the witch she seemed to be.

  ‘I see you have your doubts suddenly, girl!’ she hissed. ‘But I’m centuries old: even I can’t remain beautiful forever – somethings do, inevitably, become irreparable. Though if you’d seen me only a month ago, even you girl, yes even you, would have envied my gorgeousness.’

  If it were true that she had still been young and beautiful only a matter of weeks ago, then her deterioration had been swift and almost complete; she could hardly hold her head up, her neck was so scrawny and weak, while her voice – though still harsh and commanding – was strained and grating.

  ‘Your beauty will be preserved for hundreds of years, Andraetra!’ Pavro urged, his eyes wild with what could have been lust – but whether that was for me or for power, I wasn’t quite sure.

  I shook my head, stepping even farther back from this hideously revolting queen.

  ‘No, no! I can’t do it, I can’t!’

  ‘Of course she can’t do it!’

  The strident statement came from behind me.

  It was Courundia who, no longer unconscious, had risen to her feet.

  I gasped with relief.

  ‘Courundia!’ I rushed towards her, grabbing her hand. ‘We have to get out of here!’

  She shrugged off my grasping hand with disgust, ignoring my urgent plea and determinedly looking instead towards the Queen of Queens.

  ‘But I can do it!’ she firmly declared.

  *

  Chapter 34

  Parvo stared at Courundia with distaste.

  Yes, the real Pavro really did still exist somewhere within that stolen body.

  Courundia couldn’t miss his sneer.

  ‘I was a little dazed,’ she announced with a fleeting glare my way, ‘but didn’t I hear you say you could replicate any beauty as long as you had the template?’

  She lifted up the bag of the satchel slung across her shoulder; the satchel that had been tied to my horse.

  Had Courundia taken it when she’d pretended to save me from Dogface?

  Or had it simply fallen from my horse during that brief attack, and she’d picked it up and hidden it beneath her jacket?

  ‘The glass plate?’ Pavro asked, his face lighting up with interest.

  Courundia nodded.

  The Queen of Queens laughed, but it seemed to me that she was impressed by Courundia’s resourcefulness and determination.

  ‘Yes, yes; why not?’ she wheezed tiredly. ‘It seems I can have beauty and brains.’

  Courundia glanced my way again, and this time she was the one who was sneering.

  ‘Didn’t I say, Andraetra, that I was a more beautiful person inside than you could ever hope to be?’

  *

  ‘Pavro! You can’t allow this!’

  Was this the real Pavro?

  Someone who hadn’t loved me for who I was, but purely for the way I looked?

  Pavro smiled warmly, smoothly drawing closer towards me, the way he had whenever we had found ourselves alone, unchaperoned; and then we had kissed, no matter how briefly, relishing every second our lips remained together.

  He kissed me now too, as warmly, as lovingly as he had ever done.

  There was a momentary tickling of my skin where it touched his. A tickling that coursed a little up the inside of my nose.

  I jerked back, recognising that awful sense of water streaming beneath my skin. This time, too, I felt it flooding underneath both sides of my face.

  Pavro grinned as we urgently parted, the stream of minute insects taken by surprise, some of them falling into the space between us.

  ‘You always were a little shallow, Andraetra!’ Pavro chuckled.

  *

  Chapter 35

  Gently caressing the treated glass plate handed to him by Courundia, Pavro carefully placed it within the back of the photographic equipment standing upon the room’s central table.

  It didn’t make any sense placing it there, did it?

  Surely a used glass plate, its light-sensitive chemicals hardened, couldn’t be used to take any new portrait?

  Besides, the lens was pointing to nothing but a surprisingly empty wall, one painted white rather than gaily decorated like the rest of the room.

  A backdrop, perhaps, for whomever would stand there to have their portrait taken?

  ‘Kneel before me girl!’ the queen commanded imperiously, gently waving a long-bladed knife as if it were a sceptre; and, to my surprise, Courundia obeyed her without the slightest objection.

  Pavro brought across to the kneeling Courundia a dark box, which he placed to one side of her. From a sheath affixed to its top, he drew out a long-bladed knife.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Pavro announced coolly to Courundia, ‘there’s no sister waiting for you in this box.’

  Suddenly, he made two quick slashes across Courundia’s chest.

  As if sensing my apprehension, the insects skittering beneath my skin flexed my flesh slightly, a threat that they could do far more to me if I made the mistake of intervening.

  The queen had also made two similar slashes across her own chest, the blade digging only into her dress, not her flesh. She pulled back the flap of her dress, revealing her bared breast beneath.

  Pavro similarly pulled aside the flap of Courundia’s jacket, baring her chest.

  ‘I can do it for you,’ he offered, setting the tip of the blade just above Courundia’s heart, ‘if you don’t feel capable of…’

  ‘I can do it!’ Courundia replied determinedly, taking the knife out of Pavro’s hand.

  She wiped the long blade on her jacket, as if to clean it, choosing the most oil-drenched part of her jacket, perhaps believing this would clean it better. She pressed down hard against the thick material, the oil seeping to the surface and running along the blade’s furrow, the furrow down which her own blood would soon run.

  ‘She is indeed a good host for me” the queen croaked as Pavro, returning to the table, picked up the lit lamp.

  ‘I was always at war within myself.’ Courundia smirked, briefly glancing my way again. ‘I may as well let all my inner, unseen creatures join in a panicked revolution against their masters.’

  ‘Simply follow my own actions,’ the queen explained to Courundia, raising the dagger up towards her chest, indenting its sharp tip into the flesh lying just above her heart. ‘Do it swiftly, then stand and embrace me, wound to wound.’

  She plunged the knife home into her chest.

  Courundia followed her action, her blade going in perhaps at far more of a downward angle, threatening to slice the beating heart lying beneath.

  She gasped, along with me.

  Insects streamed from her jacket, as if they had been waiting for this moment all along. They hurried down the blade, rapidly widening the wound as they did so, merging and washing away a little in the oil that streamed down the furrow.

  Pavro either doused or abruptly lowered the lamp’s flame.

  The room was plunged into the most complete darkness.

  *

  In the darkness, I heard Courundia’s approach towards the queen, the rustling of clothes as they warmly embraced.

  There was a sickening sound of puckering flesh, of a squirming, a slithering.

  Then something fell limply and heavily, in a crumpling of heavily layered material.

  The lamp’s flame flickered into life once more.

  What remained of the queen lay in a crumpled dark mass by the throne, now looking like nothing more than a bundle of unwanted rags.

  Courundia looked no different to how she had before the light had been doused, her wound still not yet completely healed, a trail of blood and oil seeping from it.

 
Yet she smiled blissfully. Proudly.

  The room darkened a little yet again, Pavro lifting the black cloak hanging from the back of the photographic contraption and slipping the lit lamp inside its supporting frame.

  As he let the cloak fall completely about the frame, the room wasn’t plunged into complete darkness, however.

  Rather, all the glow from the lamp was projected by the complicated system of lenses up onto the facing, blank wall.

  Although, of course, the wall was no longer blank.

  I was standing there, glowing as brightly as any angel.

  *

  It was the image that Señorat Holandros had captured of me within his chemically treated glass plate.

  Here, though, I was life size, the image thrown up as a glittering presence upon the white wall by the projecting lamp.

  Courundia unhurriedly, gracefully, moved into the streaming light, letting that image play about her own features, such that it was impossible to see any longer which was image and which was her.

  And when she finally stepped away from the projected image, it was more difficult than ever to say who or what was walking away from whom.

  For she now appeared every bit as beautiful as I appeared within that image.

  She was every bit as beautiful as me.

  She was a perfect replica of me, perfect in every detail.

  *

  Chapter 36

  Courundia elegantly stepped through the slightly, gently flickering light, giving me the most mocking of looks.

  She approached Pavro confidently, brazenly throwing her arms about him: drawing him into a log, passionate kiss that Pavro had no inclination to resist.

  She twirled Pavro around in her arms, as if already imagining the romantic dance, the happy times, they would share together.

  Then she suddenly spun away from him, throwing back the black cloak of the lantern, picking up the blazing oil lamp: and shattered its fragile body of glass and ceramic hard against her bared chest.

  *