The Lightless Dome

by Douglas Hill

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

In the shadowed swamps far from Prince Phaedran's fabulous city of Quamarr, a sorcerer tests the fabric of the universe. At his command something stirs in the emptiness beyond the stars. It is incalculably evil, immeasurably old. It is summoned by the promise of fresh human souls... Meanwhile in a 20th Century film studio, Red Cordell takes another cheap part in another cheap swords and sorcery movie. A beautiful neglected sword he finds in Props is his only satisfaction. But in Quamarr, the enchantress Aurilia is in mortal danger. When she calls on the sword of Corodel, Red finds himself at her side, fighting for her life in a land of waking dreams...

Release date: September 30, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 309

Sample

In the winter night the moon rose late, half-way through its turn, sharp-edged and frigid as a fragment of yellow ice, and shreds of cloud drifted across the sky as if the cold made them sluggish. The sea was a bright pewter-gray, sliding like thin oil on to the sand and away again, endlessly, all along the desolate shore. At one point a spit of land thrust out into the water like a small peninsula – almost entirely covered by an immense and featureless structure. It loomed like a vast, misshapen hemisphere, its curved surface gleaming blackly. On that wild shore it seemed grotesquely unnatural, like a gigantic swelling from some infection, shiny-dark and monstrous.

Inside, also, monstrosity was being prepared.

Nothing passed through that huge black half-sphere, not winter’s chill nor thin moonlight. Within, darkness ruled – saved for one blemish. A window, flickering orange-red from the upper portion of a building made of dark stone, high-roofed, solid, and grim. Like a mansion with aspirations to be a castle, it had a tall tower at each corner, rising almost far enough to touch the inner surface of the over-arching sphere. The lighted window, slit in one of the towers, opened from a high-ceilinged chamber extending its full breadth. It was bare save for a few hangings on the walls and a raised area at one end. On this area stood two luxurious divans with backrests and a solid, thick-legged table loaded with manuscripts and parchments, flasks and vials, and other strange devices and implements. In the centre was a tall striped candle.

Beyond its reach the uncanny darkness, almost palpable, owned the room: it rippled in the corners like vapour over a marsh, drifted thickly along the ceiling, lapped like black silent surf at the edges of the small island of light.

But the man standing at the table was oblivious to the darkness. He was a tall man in a high-collared robe, his bony face showing the lines of middle age, with a greying beard and a mane of silvery hair. Studying a stained, flaking parchment, he muttered aloud in a harsh baritone. Then he glanced at the candle, nodded briefly, and took up a bulbous flask. A sudden faint phosphorescence gathered around his fingers as he reached with the other hand for a small pouch, from which he took a pinch of powder and dropped it into the flask. He spoke one low, sharp-syllabled word and fumes arose – thick and acrid.

‘May this give me strength enough, tonight,’ he said, his voice echoing in the silent chamber.

Then he bent forward, face into the fumes, and inhaled. He quivered slightly as he filled his lungs – and when he raised his face again his face was flushed and his eyes were unnaturally bright.

Stopping the flask, he glanced at the candle once more before striding to the edge of the dais. As he lifted his hands, the eerie glow still playing among his fingers, the drifting darkness fled back, leaving the floor bare. Taking a deep breath, hands raised high, he began to chant.

His voice as it lifted grew more harsh and grating, speaking words in the incantation that were of no human language but an ugly, guttural tongue never meant for the mouths of men. As the chant went on he became hunched and taut, as if straining beneath some awful weight. His glowing hands began to shake: his arms quivered as if they had grown too heavy to be held aloft. Sweat burst out on his skin, streamed down his twisted, drawn face. Yet still he chanted, voice rising and falling in a complex pattern of minor keys and discords. As it rose steadily higher, its dissonance growing wilder and more raucous, the man’s hands flexed into claws, spreading wide. The chant became a cry, a howl – his eyes bulged, his face darkened, his every muscle and tendon vibrated with unbearable strain.

The chant rose until he was screaming the words at the upper limits of his larynx. Abruptly he stopped – for a resounding instant of total silence – before the climax of the incantation. A final word erupted, in an appalling shriek that seemed to tear his throat in agony. As it echoed around the chamber he lurched, found his balance, lowered his arms as if they pained him, and staggered back towards the table. There he fumbled to open the flask, half-choking as he gulped another huge breath of the thick white fumes.

But he did not take his gaze away from the centre of the room.

Above the blank floor a swirling haziness appeared. Unlike the black fog of the darkness, it glittered coldly, seething. Within its depths an image began to form.

Vague and blurred at first, it quickly became recognizable. Two pairs of tall pillars or columns, ghostly but unmistakable, supporting a broad, smooth-surfaced pediment. Between the pairs of columns, below the pediment, the opening presented itself, an entrance, a doorway … a Threshold.

The entire rectangle was outlined in a lurid green light, as if the perimeter of the threshold was formed of luminous gas. Beyond it more shapes were slowly forming: a series of shadowy arches that supported a long, flat surface glittering as coldly as the haziness from which it was emerging. Like a Bridge, stretching away from the threshold, its farther end invisible as it extended into the haze.

When threshold and bridge seemed fully formed, the man by the table moved again to the edge of the dais. The second inhalation of the fumes had steadied his step and eased his trembling, but he looked no less tense and haggard. And something else showed in the set of his jaw, the glint of his eyes – the look of a man who is clutching hard at his courage, steeling his will. Reaching the edge, he stopped, his face twisting in a grimace that might have been apprehension.

Before him, beyond the threshold, along the bridge, something moved.

It had appeared out of the haziness as if materializing. But it did not glitter like the haze. It seemed to be formed of shadow, hues of grey and black. Yet it was not truly formed at all, for its dark mass was shapeless and intangible. And immense. As it flowed along the bridge it towered high as the threshold’s columns, broad as the pediment. Its planes and surfaces were in ceaseless motion, twisting, folding, roiling, never finding shape or substance. Yet it was an entity with undoubted material presence – an awareness that, as it reached the threshold and halted, bore down on the man like the gaze of a ghastly eye. No words, or thoughts or other identifiable communication issued from it, yet the man cowered and flinched. Uncontrollably he stepped back a pace as he experienced – even through the protected threshold – the impact of its power, immeasurably old, incalculably evil, augmented by the cravings of an indescribable hunger.

The monstrous presence moved forward slightly farther. A shapeless portion of it touched the threshold like a terrible hand. The green perimeter pulsed wildly as the hand pushed and probed, seeking a weakness. And behind it the man sensed the ravenous hunger, mounting, an immense force that was shrieking soundlessly with a murderous desire to rend and crush, to devour and drain.

The man stumbled back another pace, his face ashen. ‘No!’ he cried, his voice cracking. ‘There is no need …! The barrier will not fall – and your hunger will soon begin to be fed, even as I promised you!’

The shadow gave no sign of understanding or acknowledgement, but the terrible pressure withdrew – perhaps merely because the luminous shielding of the threshold had thwarted it. For an endless moment the being remained where it was. Then, abrupt and soundless as before, it flowed away, back along the bridge, and vanished from sight amid the haze.

The man’s body sagged with relief as he watched bridge and threshold fade into mistiness and finally nothingness. When he turned away he was stumbling and trembling as if on the edge of collapse, yet his lips curved in a smile of fierce satisfaction. And that smile widened and grew more savage as he sank down on the nearest of the two divans, let his head loll back, and raucously laughed aloud.

‘I did it!’ he said to the empty chamber, his voice raw and quavering. ‘I can perform the Invocation, even at my present level! It will answer my summons!’ Again the croaking laughter rose. ‘So now all is in place! Now dreams will become realities! Now I may begin!’

When the assistant director announced that they would be going for a second run-through, nearly everyone on the set reacted with the usual chorus of groans and muttering. But then the technicians and crew began to busy themselves with the sort of things they always seemed busy with, while Red Cordell and one of the other actors went back to doing what actors always seemed to have to do – killing time, while waiting. In their case, time was killed with a pack of cards and an endless game of gin rummy, which did not prevent them from glancing over now and then at another actor, the star, in prolonged conversation with the director himself.

Watching the director take a few steps, with gestures, as if in demonstration, Red smiled a mocking smile. ‘It’ll take more than that to turn Loopy into an actor.’

The other man grunted. ‘Just so he remembers his lines,’ he said.

Red laughed, but his eyes were thoughtful. ‘They ought to try to brighten up the scene, while they’re at it.’

‘Don’t say that. We got enough extra days’ shootin’ already.’

‘Extra days are extra pay.’ Red peered briefly at the discard pile. ‘And the scene is a dud, Karl.’

‘Maybe.’ The other man, Karl, was staring at Red dubiously. ‘An’ maybe it don’t matter. So don’t you go …’

Whatever warning he was about to voice was interrupted by a shout from the assistant director and a sudden extra bustle as everyone settled themselves for the second run-through. Red grinned at Karl and rose, gathering up the sheathed sword that he had set aside during the break. And with a worried frown Karl picked up his own sword and followed.

Both men were dressed in someone’s romanticized idea of the garb of ancient warriors, from some unspecified era. Their sleeveless leather jerkins displayed an abundance of bare chest and arms, while otherwise they wore close-fitting trousers, boots, short cloaks flung back, and of course their sword-belts. Red was clearly the younger of the two, perhaps in his late twenties, with good facial bones, pale blue eyes, and a shock of russet-red hair. Though he was fairly tall, with the hard, lean muscles of an athlete in peak condition, he looked almost slight beside the older man. Karl was a little taller and far heavier, his bulk solid and fleshy rather than athletically muscular, with the beginnings of a belly and tinges of grey in his hair.

As they moved towards the set itself, they were joined by the star, similarly clothed. He was the most powerfully built of the three, the overdeveloped muscles of his upper body bulging from his jerkin with impressive definition, looking as if they had been oiled. He also had long black hair, slightly close-set eyes, and a large jaw that was set in a look of determination.

‘Places, everyone!’ cried the director, oblivious of the fact that everyone was already assembled in their places. He wore an ill-fitting safari jacket, was bony and balding, and his face was mottled with a semi-permanent floridity. ‘Do let’s try to get it right this time!’ he added, both his tone and his accent sounding slightly affected.

‘Oh, do let’s,’ Red muttered – earning a half-smile from Karl and a scowl from the star.

Then the three of them walked forward, on to the set. It was a scene from a grimly arid land – powdery grey sand underfoot, dead trees standing skeletally here and there, great outcrops of rock or heaps of crumbling boulders looming around them. The only element it lacked was the typically relentless sun of such a landscape, for the batteries of mighty lights around the set would not be switched on for a mere run-through.

As the three advanced, Karl was staring worriedly around at the rocks and trees. ‘Thagor!’ he said in his gruff baritone. The others turned to him enquiringly.

‘Are we wise,’ Karl went on, ‘to travel here so openly? By now the Soulless One will surely know that Thagor the Invincible has entered his realm.’

The big black-haired man heaved immense shoulder muscles in a shrug. ‘It matters not to me what he knows,’ he replied, his voice flat and stilted.

‘But if he sends his troll-creatures …’ Karl said.

The one called Thagor shook his head stiffly. ‘We have to reach the Citadel, my friend. There is no choice. We must simply be watchful.’

During the exchange Red had remained silent, letting one hand stray to his sword-hilt while he looked around warily. Then the three moved off again.

They had taken no more than a few steps when roaring horror erupted from behind the nearest outcrop.

It was a giant, taller than a tall man, with legs and arms like tree-trunks and purple-grey skin as thick and ridged and knobbly as armour. It had three huge staring eyes, curved yellow fangs in its roaring mouth, and a club studded with spikes in one vast hand.

Red was closest to the charging monster, standing as if paralysed with terror. But when the vicious club swung down, it struck only empty air. Its intended victim moved with startling speed, flinging himself into a flat sideways dive – and a controlled dive, so that as he struck the sand he rolled once and came smoothly to his feet, having somehow in the same motion drawn his sword.

The monster was clumsily wheeling towards him, raising its club, when the sword flashed through the air. Strangely, the blade did not shine with the silvery brightness of ordinary steel, but glimmered with an ever-changing variety of luminous colours. But its edge was not in doubt when it parried the enormous club, nor was the strength of the blade. It neatly sheared off most of the club’s length, which bounced in a rubbery way as it fell to the ground.

The monster stumbled back awkwardly. ‘God’s sake, Red!’ it said, sounding shaken.

At the same time another voice raised itself, from the edge of the set – the voice of the director, sounding not shaken but decidedly irate.

‘Cordell!’

Karl looked at Red with an almost weary shake of the head. The star, bunching his deltoids, looked at Red with an angry glare. But the younger man merely sheathed his sword with a resigned smile, amusement brightening his pale blue eyes.

Near by, the towering monster reached up to pull back the head of its costume, revealing the lantern-jawed face of a very skinny and obviously unusually tall man. The man poked a foot at the portion of the dub on the ground, severed by the strangely colourful sword.

‘That’ll take some fixin’, Red,’ he said mournfully.

‘Sorry, Al,’ Red replied. ‘I didn’t think the blade would be so sharp.’

By then the director was striding angrily up to them, face more floridly mottled than ever. ‘Cordell!’ he barked. ‘What the bloody hell was that all about?’

Red smiled brightly. ‘It was about believability, Dick.’

‘The name is Dirk!’ yelled the director.

‘Right,’ Red said. ‘Sorry. Don’t know why I always think of you as a Dick.’

The muted ripple of laughter among the people around the set served to darken the other man’s face even more. ‘Never mind! I want to know what you think you were bloody doing!’

Red gestured vaguely. ‘I’m supposed to be a warrior, aren’t I? Who’s just been told to be watchful? It seems stupid to get myself killed without even reaching for my sword.’

The director was taking deep breaths as if trying to contain a towering rage. ‘Cordell. The script says that the monster comes out and dubs you, and you die. That’s all. Nothing more.’

‘But it’s not—’ Red began.

‘Cordell!’ the director shouted. ‘This is for children! Kiddies don’t care about believability! You get killed, that’s it! No sword, no gymnastics, nothing!’

‘Anyway,’ the huge Thagor suddenly interrupted, ‘if someone’s doin’ fightin’ tricks an’ stuff, should be me.’

Red glanced at Karl, standing stolidly next to him. ‘Tricks?’ he murmured. ‘He needs a stuntman to help him draw his sword.’

‘I mean,’ the huge man went on, apparently not hearing, ‘I’m Thagor the Invincible.’

Thagor the Unconvincing,’ Red muttered.

‘Right, Lupe, right,’ the director said reassuringly to Thagor. ‘But we don’t want too much in this scene. The troll kills Cordell, you kill the troll, then you and Karl take off and get picked up by the Sand Witch.’ He glanced around, then at his wristwatch. ‘But it’s all taken too long now, today. We’ll have to shoot the scene first thing tomorrow.’

The rest of the crew turned away with another general chorus of groans, while the director swung around to glower again at Red Cordell.

‘The cost of replacing the club will be deducted from your pay, Cordell. And another thing – where did you get that sword with the rainbow blade?’

Red shrugged. ‘Found it in Props. I thought it was kind of unusual.’

The director snorted. ‘Kind of hokey, is what it is. Like something from a cereal packet. Get something that looks like a sword, for tomorrow.’

‘Whatever you say, Dick,’ Red replied.

The director’s nostrils went faintly white as his face tightened. ‘Stop pushing your luck, Cordell,’ he snapped. ‘It wouldn’t be hard to get another actor for your few scenes. If we have to.’

Red’s eyes glinted as he began to reply. But Karl, next to him, clamped a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘Leave it, Red. It’s never worth it.’

Red stopped, clenching his teeth with a grimace, turning away from the director who stalked off with a victorious smile. But then the giant Thagor, or Lupe, took a lumbering step forward.

‘You had to play games,’ he grumbled at Red. ‘And now we got to do the damn thing tomorrow.’

Red smiled tightly. ‘What’s wrong, Loopy? Afraid you’ll forget your lines by morning?’

The bigger man bunched his fists, swelling all the muscles of his arms and shoulders. ‘Someday,’ he growled, ‘somebody should smash in that smart mouth of yours.’

Red did not appear to move. Yet a feeling came from him of springs coiling, and his pale eyes acquired a light that looked like eagerness.

‘If you want to be that somebody, Loopy,’ he said evenly, ‘just say the word.’

The big man blinked, seeming to lean back slightly, something like doubt showing for an instant on his face. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said at last. ‘Just watch it.’

As he wheeled and lumbered away, perhaps a little too quickly, Red’s mocking smile reappeared. ‘Mr Universe runner-up,’ he said idly. ‘Body of a gorilla, balls of a gnat.’

‘They ain’t all like that,’ Karl told him. ‘An’ he’s right, too. Someday bein’ a smart-ass is gonna get you into trouble. No matter how tough you think you are.’

‘I’ve been in trouble, Karl,’ Red said lightly. ‘Beats being bored, any time.’

Karl sighed. ‘Sure, sure. I prob’ly said stupid things like that myself, when I was your age. Maybe you should go back to stunt work, Red. Get rid of all that excess energy.’

‘Not me,’ Red said as they turned to walk off the set, with the troll-monster man trailing behind. ‘Acting pays better, and no broken bones.’

Karl shook his head. ‘It don’t pay better when you got to cough up for wrecked costumes. Or if you get fired.’

‘I won’t get fired, Karl,’ Red told him. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be good and let Al here kill me just like the script says.’

The troll-monster man came up beside them at the mention of his name. ‘You guys wanna get a beer, when you’re changed?’

‘Not this time,’ Red said. ‘Got a date.’ He grinned at Karl. ‘You probably did things like that, too, when you were my age.’

The older man grunted. ‘It’s a nice life, ain’t it, kid? All fun an’ games – pick a fight, laugh at the boss, a few girls on the side, never a care …’

‘That’s it, Karl,’ Red said easily. ‘Fun and games. Without them, life wouldn’t be worth living.’

And none of the others noticed how, with those words, most of the amusement faded from the pale blue eyes. Some while later, he was still looking unamused. In fact his expression had been thoroughly glum while he had stared at himself in the dressing-room mirror. He always hated it when people like Karl – older people who had been around and knew a few things – started getting serious. He hated it because lately he had started to suspect that they might be right, in their implied or spoken criticism of his life-style. Or at least that they might be right in pointing out that he couldn’t go on like that – being aimless and irresponsible, two of the words most often used – for much longer. He wasn’t far away from the watershed age of thirty. And after thirty, as far as he had always understood, the fun and games started coming to an end.

Sighing a deep sigh, he turned away from the mirror, pulling on a T-shirt to go with the jeans and Reeboks that were his normal street wear. As he tucked the shirt in, his gaze fell on the long slimness of the sword that he had carried, which was resting against the wall where his costume hung. His expression brightened a little as he picked it up, sliding the blade partway from the sheath, admiring the luminous, delicate play of colours on the metal.

Hokey? he thought, remembering the director’s dismissive word. Never. It’s beautiful. Strangely light and perfectly balanced, for all its length. And how had the makers done that, making it seem to glow, making the colours seem to move within the steel?

Smiling a half-smile, he reached up to where he had hung the short, midnight-blue cloak that was part of his costume. He remembered the cluttered corner of the Props room where he had been idly rummaging, at the studio, when he had found the sword. If it had been left under all that mess, he thought, it clearly hadn’t been used for a long time, if ever. It would never be missed.

Right, sword, he said silently. If you’re not wanted here, you can come with me.

Wrapping the cloak around the sheathed sword, in order to carry it on to the bus that would take him home, he sauntered smiling out of the dressing-room.

When she awoke, she found that she was lying in near-darkness on a heap of evil-smelling straw. At first she thought she might be in a stable, but the odours were wrong. So, too, was the shape of the room – if it was a room, she thought. The walls and the low, rounded ceiling seemed to have been carved from bare rock, except for part of one wall, made of heavy planking with a blank wooden door, where dim reddish light seeped in through the cracks. And rivalling the stink of the straw was the dankness of the stone around her, musty and stained, belying the fact that it had been a warm late-spring day in the city from which she had been taken.

She shivered briefly, less from the stony chill than from the memory of the icy, incredibly strong hands that had clamped on her throat from behind, skilfully compressing windpipe and arteries, plunging her into unconsciousness before she could bring any of her powers or her own lithe strength into action. She felt the lingering soreness in her throat – and with it a rising fury in her spirit. But since there was no one around to vent her fury on, she controlled it, setting it aside within her, to be brought out as a fuelling source when – if – anyone did appear.

Meanwhile, she lay still and considered her position. She had clearly been robbed, and left wearing only her light chemise. But more important, she was bound: heavy metal manacles, fastening her wrists uncomfortably behind her. And she knew that they were no ordinary manacles. She could sense a warmth deep within them – not a physical warmth that affected her flesh, but an unnatural essence at the very heart of the metal.

Warded, she thought, her heart sinking. And powerfully, so that the metal would not respond to her at all. But, even worse, the warding power uncannily reached out from the manacles. She could sense it surrounding and enveloping her to muffle and constrain her own powers, rendering her doubly helpless.

She wriggled to bring her legs beneath her, raising herself to a sitting position, carefully testing the strength of the irons on her wrists. I know someone possibly skinny enough to slip out of these, she thought. But not just yet. It was a time for waiting – to learn who had done this, and why, before she took steps to free herself and, perhaps, impose a proper punishment on her captors.

So she sat still, calming herself, smoothing out her tensions as she might another time have smoothed her hair. It was a rich, tawny blonde, though just then in something of a tangle since she had lost the jewelled combs and pins that had held it in a careful coiffure. If she had been standing, it would have waved and rippled down past her hips, soft and luxuriant. Her skin was also tawny in its own way, smooth as honey, glowing like soft bronze. Her eyes were emerald-green, wide and clear, her mouth was curved and generous, her hands were slim and shapely. And the thin chemise revealed a body that was in its splendid prime – exuberantly rounded, yet with a trim waist and long, shapely legs.

A few small lines appearing at the corners of her eyes, the edges of her mouth, the long sweep of her throat, showed that she had left her girlhood behind her. But otherwise the honey-bronze skin was almost unblemished – save for a peculiar mark in the deep cleft between her breasts, revealed by the chemise’s low neckline. The mark looked slightly ridged, like a scar or perhaps a brand, and had certainly been placed there by design. It consisted of two vertical curved lines coming to a point at the top, like a stylized image of a drop of water or a candle flame, in a simple circle.



 

For a long time she sat on the foul straw, composing and readying herself. As well as she could in the dimness she studied the details of the room, especially the planking of the door with its iron hinges. Of course it would be locked and barred – but she knew that if she could free herself from the unnatural restraint of the manacles it would offer her no more of a barrier than the straw. So she sat unmoving, waiting – ignoring the ache in her wrists just as she ignored the chill, the stink, the rustling of vermin in the straw. She even dozed now and then, brief drifting catnaps.

But she came fully awake, watchful and ready, when with a creak and a crash the door was suddenly flung open. There was a flare of torch-light that made her wince and blink. Then, through slitted eyes, she examined the six people who crowded in through the door.

Five of them seemed to be a little less than average height, but she could tell nothing more about their bodies. They all wore long heavy cloaks, with deep hoods and full sleeves, that covered every part of them, hiding their faces and hands, their shapes and gender, everything. Only the sixth person came in uncloaked so that she could see the details of his appearance, none of them pleasant or reassuring.

He was a tall, bony man with pale skin and long, lank, yellow hair. He wore narrow dark trousers, low boots, and a black leather tunic trimmed with a liverish green. Green, too, was his belt and the two sheaths fastened to it, one obviously containing a sword, the other a short sword or long dagger. And one side of the man’s narrow face was ridged with shiny scar tissue as if it had been burned.

But the scarred one had one thing in common with his five companions. The hooded ones all had strange designs imprinted here and there on their cloaks – mostly abstract patterns, oddly disturbing to the eyes – and they also wore heavy metal amulets, with similar designs, on chains around their necks. A similar pendant hung from the scarred man’s neck, and similar markings showed on parts of his clothing and weapons.

More wards and protections, she knew, obviously aimed at shielding them from her powers if she were somehow to free herself from the manacles. But we will see, she told herself fiercely. When it is time.

She watched expressionlessly as the scarred man stepped towards her. The man had seen her survey of the designs that covered him and the others, and he showed stained teeth in a cruel smile.

‘See the magics we got on us?’ he said. ‘Feel the power in your irons? You’ll get none of your witchings past that.’

She raised one eyebrow, coolly. ‘Are you so sure of your sorceries?’ Her voice grated slightly from the soreness of her throat.

‘Not mine.’ The man’s short laugh mocked her. ‘I got different talents – and your throat’s likely reminding you of some of them. You maybe even heard of me. Name’s Vanticor.’

If the name had been intended to unnerve her, it almost succeeded. Her eyes began to widen before she could control her expression, and she fought down a shiver. ‘I have heard the name. A notorious assassin who prefers a blade in the back, a garrotte from behind.’

The man laughed again. ‘Good to know the Sisterhood keeps in touch with things.’

‘Sisterhood?’ she repeated, raising both eyebrows.

The ugly smile twisted. ‘Don’t play games. I know your ring.’ He held up his left hand, where on the smallest finger gleamed a delicate gold ring, the metal twined into a complex knot. ‘And everybody knows about the witch-mark.’

He reached down to pull at the top of her chemise, exposing her breasts a