PART 2
Cordelia had not realised it was possible to inflict the amount of agony and humility on a human being as was being inflicted on her now. Her feet were about a foot above the ground, and she was hanging by her wrists from metal clasps and chains fixed to a wooden beam in the ceiling above her. She was stark naked, and the temperature in the chamber felt to her to be at or even below freezing point, in reality it was maybe five or eight degrees above freezing but it was bloody cold.
Her nipples were squeezed by two large, ugly, agonising, clamps.
All of which was intolerable enough, but the scourge which Lord Vulcan was enthusiastically using upon her arse was equipped with metal barbs which tore into her young, tender flesh.
Princess Cordelia Ross of Heidraen hung there and bellowed in agony.
Her life up till now had been one of comfort and privilege; she had never had to endure the slightest discomfort; the possibility of pain on this scale had never before occurred to her.
The future didn’t look good, either. Vulcan had taken her on the flying horse to a castle built near the top of Mount Inge Tarant. The horse had landed in the castle courtyard, where the first thing she had noticed were seven large wooden crosses laying on the ground awaiting their victims. Each one had a name, followed by the word ‘Hexe’. This, she knew, meant ‘witch’.
ROXANDRA
BLAIRE
PENELOPE
BARBARIA
EULALIA
CORDELIA
ELISE
Vulcan had explained, quite matter of factly, that he proposed to take her into the castle and torture her. He knew that the other women would pick up her distress – he was sure they were all mind readers, and would come to him right here at Castle Tarant, whereupon he would crucify them, one by one, as they arrived. But as he did so, he would cast a spell upon them so that they would live, nailed to the cross, without the mercy of death, for at least a year, just as he had had to endure the cross for a year. Then he would consider whether to let them die. He then observed, with a smug grin, that only those that he allowed into the castle could get into the castle, it was impregnable against attack from ground troops.
Vulcan was certain that his magic was superior to that of any of the ‘witches’, even Eulalia. Vulcan feared the magic of one sorcerer, and one sorcerer only, and he hadn’t been seen in Aestria since the days of the Dark Princess. Even then, as the Dark Princess, he had nearly defeated Merlin. He knew he was stronger now.
So Cordelia hung, and the agony of her despair was almost as great as her physical agony. She’d tried to threaten Vulcan that her father, Shevak, would rescue her, but she knew that even Shevak could not successfully attack Castle Tarant. ‘Even Pilus can’t save me now’, she thought, as far as she could see she had twelve months of unendurable agony before her. She had been hanging here less than twelve minutes, and it felt like a lifetime.
She threw back her head, and wailed in pain and hopeless terror, as the scourge wrapped itself, once more, around her bleeding buttocks.