The Ruby Knight

straight back to this house, hoping that I might be able to treat her here. The count was away on one of his journeys, so he had no way of knowing what began to happen after I got her home.’
    ‘And what was that?’
    Occuda shuddered. ‘It was horrible, Sir Knight,’ he said in a sick voice. ‘Somehow, she was able to completely dominate the other servants. It was as if they were powerless to resist her commands.’
    ‘All except you?’
    ‘I think the fact that I had been a monk may have protected me – either that or she didn’t think I was worth the trouble.’
    ‘What exactly did she do?’ Sparhawk asked him.
    ‘Whatever it was that she encountered in that house in Chyrellos was totally evil, Sir Knight, and it possessed her utterly. She would send the servants who were her slaves out to surrounding villages by night, and they would abduct innocent serfs for her. I discovered later that she’d had a torture chamber set up in the cellar of this house. She gloried in blood and agonies.’ Occuda’s face twisted with revulsion. ‘Sir Knight, she fed on human flesh and bathed her naked body in human blood. I saw her with my own eyes.’
    He paused and then continued. ‘It was no more than a week ago when the count returned to the castle. It was late one night when he arrived, and he sent me to the cellar for a bottle of wine, though he seldom drinks anything but water. When I was down there, I heard what sounded like a scream. I went to investigate, and opened the door to her secret chamber. I wish to God I never had!’ He covered his face with his hands, and a wracking sob escaped him. ‘Bellina was naked,’ he continued after he had regained his composure, ‘and she had a serf-girl chained down on a table. Sir Knight, she was cutting the poor girl to pieces while she was still alive, and she was cramming quivering pieces of flesh into her own mouth!’ Occuda made a retching sound, then clenched his teeth together.
    Sparhawk never knew what impelled him to ask the question. ‘Was she alone in there?’
    ‘No, My Lord. The servants who were her slaves were there as well, lapping the blood from those dank stones. And – ’ The lantern-jawed man hesitated.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I cannot swear to this, My Lord. My head was reeling, but it seemed that at the back of the chamber there was a hooded figure all in black, and its presence chilled my soul.’
    ‘Can you give me any details about it?’ Sparhawk asked.
    ‘Tall, very thin, totally enshrouded in a black robe.’
    ‘And?’ Sparhawk pressed, knowing with icy certainty what came next.
    ‘The room was dark, My Lord,’ Occuda apologized, ‘except for the fires in which Bellina heated her torturing irons, but from that back corner I seemed to see a glow of green. Is that in any way significant?’
    ‘It may be,’ Sparhawk replied bleakly. ‘Go on with the story.’
    ‘I ran to inform the count. At first he refused to believe me, but I forced him to go to the cellar with me. I thought at first he would kill her when he saw what she was doing. Would to God that he had! She started screeching when she saw him in the doorway and tried to attack him with the knife she’d been using on the serf-girl, but I wrested it from her. The thin one in the black robe seemed to shrink back when we entered, and when I looked for it later, it was gone. The count and I were both too sickened and disturbed to go looking for whomever it might have been.’
    ‘Was that when the count locked her in the tower?’ Sparhawk was shaken by the horrible story.
    ‘That was my idea, actually,’ Occuda said grimly. ‘At the hospice where I served, the violent ones were always confined. We dragged her to the tower, and I chained the door shut. She will remain there for the rest of her life if there’s any way I can manage it.’
    ‘What happened to the other servants?’
    ‘At first they made attempts to free her, and I had to kill several of them. Then, yesterday, the count heard a few of them telling a wild story to that silly fool of a minstrel. He instructed me to drive them all out of the castle. They milled around outside the gate for a while, and then they all ran off.’
    ‘Was there anything strange about them?’
    ‘They all had absolutely blank faces,’ Occuda replied, ‘and the ones I killed died without making a sound.’
    ‘I was afraid of that. We’ve encountered that before.’
    ‘What happened to her in that house, Sir Knight? What drove