Pausing momentarily in his narration, Vrimreez, who sat before Pharion, made a brief gesture towards a prodigious metal door at one end of their gloomy chamber. "From a guard I managed to learn what things I had not already known. Moreover, he g ainsaid that, upon t he yesterday, for some reason whi ch he would not reveal, the King ordered a dozen or more practicioners of the magical arts to be searched out for capture and indungeonment. Thus it was f or that reason that the guards broke in upon us, for evidently word of my possession of many books on sorcery and other matters, reached their greasy ears. Perhaps they considered you to be my apprentice, or servant, and however much I protested it availed nauaght against the tick-headed and dull-witted guardsman. But why the King has done this yet remains a mystery. He must have some foul plot in mind, to serve for his entertainments."

For an unknown period of time, Pharion and Vrimreez remained in the underground chamber where there were no windows or crevices through which the sun’s rays could filter, telling them the duration of their imprisonment. But at whiles, as they passed the time as best they might, discussing Rothwing or sundry other matters, a small metal panel at the base of the iron door would grate open on its rusty hinges, and a foul, unidentifiable mash, intended to serve as food, was shoved in upon a tray, along with bread and water. Pharion, subsisting on the brittle dry bread, would not touch the mash, for it looked like vomit of dogs and as appetizing as crushed pig bladders. The water, filling small tin cups, although clouded and slimy as if drawn from some spoiled underground cistern, was drinkable. By count of the times that these appeared through the small panel, they determined that they had endured three days of incarceration; and because of this knowledge, their future seemed exceedingly bleak and foreboding.

It was possible, they feared, that Evarth, at a whim of his fancy, or for some other unfathomable reason, had simply abandoned them to the cellars, as he had purportedly done to others beforehand. Further efforts to extract information from the attendant who brought the food, as to the reason for such prolonged confinement, proved futile.

Then, upon the fourth day, sandalled footfalls and rustling of leather echoed in the hallway without the chamber, and expecting their provision to be nudged through the small door panel, they were startled to hear the fumbling of keys being fitted into the prodigious iron lock. The, with a sound like the grating of a rusty coffin lid, the door swung inward, and a guard, with flambeau in one hand and a sword in the other, stood in the portal. Silently he motioned for Pharion and Vrimreez to accompany him.

Arising, the two brushed bits of straw from the garments, and at the direction of the guard, they walked before him through the dimly lit hallway. After ascending an upward winding stone stairway, they ultimately arrived at a great chamber of the royal palace where Evarth sat attended by his current concubine, a dark-skinned beauty named Adramas. Positioned on either side of the tables, great burly slaves, standing still as the sculptured statues of kings and heroes which lined the hallway leading to the chamber, guarded Evarth and his guests. Their huge axes with crescent shaped blades reflected evilly the light of countless lamps and cressets which dotted the walls.

They had been led to the great feasting hall of Evarth, and through huge doors, Pharion could see that twilight was thickening outside as evening began darkening into night. They were led before the King into an open area bordered by his three great tables, and positioned in line with a troup of other captives, where they waited until at last a few more remaining ones, looking exceedingly nervous and outraged, were herded into the chamber. While standing there, Pharion and Vrimreez learned from the whispering of the wizards that certain ones of their number had made attempt to amuse the King with some tiresome and oft-repeated tricks, handled crudely as the stock-in-trade of carnival magicians. In anger, the King ordered them imprisoned along with many others, sought out and chosen at random throughout the city.

The King, whose paled countenance appeared wrinkled beyond his years due to the abundance of his excesses, glared with his deep sunken eyes upon the group before him. Raising and arching one eyebrow, he leaned forward, resting his elbow upon the table while he stroked his long bony fingers upon his beard, which was matted thickly from dried dribblings of wine. Glancing toward Adramas atr his side, Evarth grinned.

"What, my lovely, should be done with those who displease their King with tricks whose crassness would fail to amuse even a child?" A hush had come over the crowd of chattering guests when Earth spoke, and now all eyes were upon Adramas as she arose from the table and walked lithely and slowly as a panther around to the wizards. She considered the group, among whom Pharion was the youngest, with a strange sly expression like that of a cat eyeing a pack of mice, answering slowly with an almost whispery voice.

"My lord," she purred, "it would provide both a fitting punishment, and a grand spectacle, if they were......" She paused momentarily, tapping her forefinger against her moist lower lip, as if deliberately toying with the captives, ".....if they were publicly exposed. Call the populace together, and in the eyes of all, proclaim them as charlatans and cheap tricksters. Then banish them, or whatever else the King sees fit to do to them." She smiled mischievously as some female demon, "Perhaps have the punishers flog the skin of their wrinkled backs...."

Then, the King, mirroring her grin in his own countenance, with manifestly greater evil, and evidently pleased with her suggestion, went on to add, "And use whips whose thongs are tipped with steel, and then cut off their noses or ears or something else equally as fitting".

A few of the already drunken guests cheered at the words of their King, and so Evarth ordered preparations to be made forthwith. Adramas was yet encircling the group, who had stood with open-gaping mouths as the words of the pronouncement froze their blood and clutched at their hearts like icy ghoul fingers. Standing dumbstruck beside Vrimreez, Pharion watched Adramas glide towards him and suddenly grip his arm with her hand. "But the the young one," she said, separating him away from the silent Vrimreez and the others. "Perhaps other arrangements can be made for him".

Meanwhile, others who had overcome their mute horror, were now filling the air with the shouting of violent curses and pleas and protestations of having nothing to do with the original displeasers of the King. But these pleadings fell unheeded on the ears of Evarth, who had determined to give a lesson to the magicians and all their ilk, and provide a grand entertaining spectacle in the process. "Take them away," he commanded sharply, and at once, a dozen armed guards rushed around them, herding them off to their grim prison-holes, to await execution of their sentences.

Calling for his attendants to fetch his favorite drugged wines, Evarth dismissed Adramas and devoted himself to the enjoyment of his libations. And the people returned to their laughing and revelling, while twenty black dancers began cavorting like wood nymphs in the open area before the King, where the wizards had stood previously.

Pharion, who had been led away by Adramas, followed her through monstrous halls far from the noisy feasting room, to realms of the palace where a sepulcharal silence hung in the air, broken only by the rustle of Adramas’ flowing silken garments and the tinkling of her delicately wrought gold bracelets and the padded sounds of their footfalls, on the marble stone floor.

Positioned at regular intervals, and at intersections of other halls, there stood silent guardsmen, whose presence banished any hope of escape from Pharion’s mind. For he did not desire to risk a repetition of his former encounter with Evarth’s soldiers, at least not until his chances were somewhat more propitious. And so, numbly as a corpse, he trailed after the lithe, gliding form of Adramas, knowing not whether he had been saved from mutilation by the girl, or merely prepared for some other equally horrible and unknown fate.

Through a prodigious darkwood door, they entered a large, fabulously furnished chamber, decorated and hung with huge tapestries and wall-hangings of a blood-red color and embroidered with golden and silver threads in the fashion of hideous demonic figures. Golden lamps, shapen in the form of skulls and serpents shone in the room,. regarding them like living eyes. Pharion stared at the splendorous but bizzare and morbid furnishing. He noted, hanging upon walls like trophies, unusual devices fashioned of metal and wood and leather straps, which he recognized as instruments for inflicting torture. They were delicately designed for the most abominable and malevolent of uses, for maiming, for shredding skin, or squeezing a person’s temples in a tight caress of death while driving his mind to madness and his body to tattered shards.

Without a word, and with the manner of one going through the motions of an oft-repeated ritual, Adramas bade Pharion to seat himself upon a velvet cushioned couch while she strode to a wooden cabinet nearwards the center of the room. As its wooden doors opened at her touch, he could perceive, shelved and displayed therein, all manner of jewel-studded swords and knives and daggers. As if musing over which one to choose, Adramas gently withdrew a long rubay-hilted and extremely thin blade, and returned bearing it to the couch. She grinned enigmatically, with a smile like the smile of a lamia ready to suck the blood of her earthly lover before devouring him on the night of a full moon.

For the first time since leaving Evarth’s hall of gluttony, the girl, leaning close to Pharion and turning the gleaming blade slowly in her nimble wrist, spoke in her whispery voice.

"This is a very rare and especial knife," she whispered, "once used in sacrificial rites by ancient priests of unknown gods. You are not impressed? It was procured from a travelling merchant from the land of Pzanibar, who unwittingly introduced Evarth to a unique experience, besides adding a rare item to his collection".

"Notice how long and thin it is, almost like a needle." She paused as if carefully noting and delighting in Pharion’s disturbed facial expressions as she spoke. "Inserted in the proper portions of a man, or woman’s, body, to varying depths, it can produce instant paralysis, sudden death, or a slow and agonizing torment, unmeasurably painful. The merchant himself was pierced over a thousand times in his limbs and torso before he finally expired in a convulsing heap at the feet of King Evarth."

Pharion, his eyes opening like full-orbed moons while he listened, nervously glanced around the chamber for some possible means of escape. The only apetures besides the door were two recessed portals, behind whose over-draped curtains Pharion imagined that guards or other sworders likely were standing, ready to rush upon him with their bared weapons should Adramas call out, or they suspect anything amiss. For in the space between the floor and the bottom fring tassels, he thought that he could see occasionally shifting shadows.

In the far wall of the chamber, however, was one closed window, with bolted wooden shutters. This provided his only hope. Although he doubted he could reach it ere the girl could summon guards.

Adramas, meantime, slid a long slender forefinger along the length of the blade to its point, humming faintly to herself, the tune of some fescennine song. She touched the needle-like point to Pharion’s face. "It slides almost effortlessly through the skin," she grinned, "drawing only drops of blood from the wound. Perhaps you would like me to demonstrate?" And then, at the same time as she let the blade point slide slowly down the soft skin of Pharion’s cheek, icy shivers slithered down his spine in response.

She was toying with him like a cat with a rodent, and Pharion knew not whether he had been brought to a lover’s couch, or a couch of death, or both. All about him were countless means of causing death, the knife in her hand, the instruments of tortures, silken scarves and nooses with which to strangle victims, and other cabinets of vials and bottles of poisions of various characteristics and potencies.

"You need not be afraid of Adramas," she whispered, as if reading his thoughts by some uncanny power. And while she whispered, she lay down the stiletto, so that her arms, like living snakes, were free to curl around the neck and shoulders of Pharion. "I share not Evarth’s taste for murder. Although it amuses me to see people squirm in their fears, as I have caused you to do, my handsome young magician."

And as she drew near, Pharion could smell the fragrance of sweet perfumes, scents of roses and flowers, born of bathing in roseate and violet-scented waters. Running her fingers lightly down his chest she stopped while a smile played across her face, and her eyes sparkled again like those of a female vampire considering her prey.

"Ah, what is this," she whispered, sliding her hand under his shirt and withdrawing the folded and sealed parchment which Vrimreez had given him days beforehand. "Perhaps a letter to a sweetheart?" she asked, almost jealously, while gently breaking the wax seal and unfolding the paper.

"These are naught but meaningless phrases," she sighed, as she read, "Lodhaith, Vashrit i, atu, Vashriti....What are they?"

But ere a syllable could fall from Pharion’s lips in reply, a low, rumble, as of far off thunder in a clouded night, filled the room, resounding through it in response to the words spoken by Adramas. And both Pharion and his beautiful captress were visibly shaken by the errie sound. For, appearing as if by some mysterious necromancy, the sound echoed throughout their very beings, and was sensed and felt rather than merely heard. Then, as i f c hoked and suffoc ated by the oppressive and tan gible rumblin g, which roared like the b ellowing of a great dragon, the yellowish glow within the skull - s h a p e n lamps redd ened and was soon extin guished, c asting the room into a thick darkness.

"What is happening here!" Adramas shouted, and thereafter abandoned all efforts to repress her screams when, above them in the crepuscular darkness, there appeared what seemed to be two blood red eyes, glowing and staring wildly like those of a devil.

As soon as he wrenched loose from the spellbound stupification of his own horror, Pharion dove through the darkness for the side of the room where he thought the window was situated, hearing but faintly the echoing of Adramas’ screams for help, and the confused clamoring of the guards as they stumbled out from behind their curtains in the gloom.

These jumbled sounds soon faded altogether, for Pharion at least, for, upon unlatching the window shutters, he wasted no time in climbing through the opening. And soon he was racing with the speed of a fleeing gazelle across nighted gardens away from the palace, and away from Adramas, and away from the un-explained horrors wrought by the mysterious words of the ancient demon conjuration.

But while Pharion thusly made his narrow escape from the clutches of King Evarth, Vrimreez was not so fortunate. For the King, in his increased boredom and bloodlust, was now of a mind not merely to expose the group of wizards, and mutilate them, but to publicly execute them. And so, upon the morrow of the second day after Pharion’s escape, and the strange circumstances which surrounded it, the preparations were fully completed.

Early the gathered crowds began filling the public square, where a great platform had been erected, to view the spectacle. All the shops had been declared closed for the occasion, the city not having witnessed and execution of such magnitude since the mass-killings of war captives long decades ago. Thronging thickly, like close-pressed sheep in a pen, they filled the market streets and balconies and nearby rooftops, with the smaller children sitting in trees or upon the stout shoulders of parents.

Twelve headsmen, with faces concealed by masks as black as their hearts, had been summoned in from surrounding realms. And in a solemn parade, the seasoned and expert executioners marched through the crowds who parted as they passed, up the wooden steps of the platform standing massively in the midst of the city. They took their positions solemnly alongside head blocks of freshly hewn wood, for the King had deemed the old ones too greasy and blackened by years of sanguinary use.

King Evarth, dressed in his royal array of purple and gold robes, variegated with pictures of dogs, serpents, flames and devils, was attended by Adramas and his immediate servitors and counselors, all arrayed in finery like the King. With all the regalia accompanying such a noted occasion, they viewed the procession from a lofty balcony overlooking the public square. And at the proper indication from Evarth, the wizards were next herded unwillingly up to the platform by a troop of soldiers. And even from where we sat, the King could hear the many wizards, most of them no more than carnival magicians, cursing foully and calling down the wrath of unnameable devils and gods upon the monarch for his wicked and murderous deeds. But Evarth only mocked their outcries, unmercifully ordering the execution to proceed.

Among the self-styled sorcerers, only Vrimreez remained silent, with the air of one resigned to his horrible fate, for he full well knew that there was no conceivable means of escape from the copper fetters and ropes of palm fibres which securely bound them. And should they break free to run, they would be instantly pierced either by a sword blade or lance hurled by one of the guards, who surrounded them on all sides with faces leering like that of the grim reaper. There was no avoidance of the black fate awaiting them, and so Vrimreez found comfort with the thought that at least Pharion had somehow escaped. For word of the errie happenstance in Evarth’s death chamber reached even into the dungeons.

Still mouthing anathemas, with brows sweating profusely with rivers of perspiration, the condemned were lines up and positioned before their individual blocks. With blood thickening coldly in their veins, gelling like the waters of frozen seas, palsy claimed many of them as they were now forced to kneel with faces downward and noses resting upon the clean wooden blocks.

For several moments the headsmen stood motionless beside their victims, as unmovable as posted door guards or the Kings personal chamber sentinels. Grasping their axes tightly, they waited as a tense silence fell upon the crowd, and then, at the awaited pre-arranged signal from the King, who nodded his head, all of the hooded figures raised their axes. And as they did so, the sharpened blades mirrored the blinding gleam of the sun in their polished surfaces.

With all eyes impaled upon the headsmen, save those of Vrimreez and the others awaiting their doom, they held their weapons aloft with steady hands for the space of a thrice, whereupon the black-sceptered King made a slight gesticulation with his heavily ringed right hand. Simultaneously, and swiftly as the rushing of wind, the blades made their deadly descent, slashing down through the prone necks and into the wooden blocks with quick wet thuds. No repetition was necessary, for all were expertly clean cuts.

As the dissevered heads popped off their necks like corks from wine bottles, and came to rest a few feet away, their slumping bodies collapsed limply upon the sawdust strewn platform, which soon assumed a crimson hue. For the blood which had spurted like little fountains at the instant of decapitation, was now gushing more profusely, more swift than rain-swollen rivers, from the scythed corpses.

While some of the crowd sickened at the sight of the execution and the ruby colored life-blood pooling into little lakelets, transforming the sawdust into a wet mash, their King, Evarth, felt no such emotions or qualms. After viewing the scene with the bloodlust of a starved vampire, he was somewhat disappointed to see the elaborate preparations and the actual grisly spectacle done with so quickly.

Rising with his train of doting attendants, he readied himself to dismiss the crowds when suddenly he stiffened like a week-old corpse, his bulging eyes fairly leaving their sockets like the bloated eyeballs of drowned seamen. For there, upon the executional platform that had been bathed and drenched in scarlet moments before, he could see the bodies and their open-eyed heads staring dumbly, but every drop of blood seemed to have vanished, as if bewitched to steam and blown away by the hot desert wind. The yellow straw, soggy scant seconds before, was as dry as the bloodless corpses.

The crowd and the headsmen, who had begun to disperse of their own accord, noted the marvel, and were hushed anew, glaring dumbly at the executional platform with unbelieving eyes, and turning to their King for some manner of explanation. At length, as the veil of astonishment was lifted, the King’s wit returned to him and anon he spoke, without resort to consulting his counselors or priests.

"Surely," he said firmly, "the blood of those wizards was accursed, and they were needful to be slain, for the gods drink it up like a sacrificial offering, that it does not pollute our land."

At this pronouncement, the air resounded with the chattering acclamations of the credulous throngs, cheering their sovereign for ridding them of the wizards. Evarth, immensely pleased with himself and this display, thereupon returned to his palace, with spirits lifted and boredom relieved for the nonce.

That evening, a feast greater than usual was held in the King’s banquet hall, surpassing all others. Overladen were the tables with roasted peacocks, broiled blackbirds, and wood pigeons and boars. Wildfoul stuffed with rice and countless bowls of sauces and vegetables arrayed the dishes; and at Evarth’s beckoning, servitors brought forth liberally poured wines of the oldest and choicest vintages, from the vine-gardens of Roweh and Yadir, in bottles kept cool in the King’s subterrene cellars. And all enjoyed themselves sumptuously as the air thrilled with music and vibrating tongues of singers and the waggish jokes of the revellers.

Adramas, however, sitting beside the King, acted as if strangely afflicted, for her appetite waned, and she delighted not in the songs of the minstrels, and the singing lutes, and the other entertainments. Seized by a melancholy which she could neither understand nor explain, she abandoned Evarth and his hall of gluttony and bacchanalia, where the flushed faces of the inebreators bloated themselves like cadavers throughout the course of the nights revels; and she sought instead the quietude of other portions of the palace, where she paced moon-shadowed halls and treaded corridors as deserted as age-forgotten desert tombs.

King Evarth, on the other hand, as time passed, was soon beset and plagued again by his own boredom and ennui, which seemed as persistent in returning as some recurring nightmare, or an evil witch-sending that could not be banished. The public execution, it seemed, accomplished more than Evarth’s original intentions. For since that day, the number of those coming in before him, save for his hired singers and musicians, had dwindled almost to naught, out of fear of invoking his wrath, and suffering the same fate as the wizards. So even the dull pleasures of repetitious entertainments or the amusement of spurning their tricks and sending them off to rot perpetually in the ratty, disease-infested dungeons, was denied him. And he spent the next few days consumed by a funereal gloom, with nothing to relieve the tedious duties of dispensing with matters of state, hearing trivial matters of government, and greeting the few ambassadors who had come with tribute from outlying lands, to insure safe passage of their caravans through Dnipreed. Even Adramas paid little attention to him and was ever absent from his side.

Then, upon the fourth day following the execution, while the King was seated in his throne room, attended only by a few obsequious servants and pursuivants, the clamorous sound of a great gong broke the air with its heavy metallic sound. The deeply resonant vibrations announced the arrival of some dignitary or minister to be presently admitted before the King. And although Evarth could not recall any being scheduled for the morning, he sat back awaiting the visitant.

Anon, the tall wide doors opened to admit to the columned chamber a great negro blackamoor servant, blind in one eye and naked to the waist, wearing leather breeches of jet black hue. He bore in one hand, a small chest, about the size of a human head, carrying it as carefully as if it were filled with a treasure of unknown wealth or gems of some sort. Striding confidently down the carpeted aisle before the King, and thrice bowing in obeisance to Evarth, the blackamoor then laid the golden chest at his feet..

"My master proffers his greetings, and sends, as a gift, this small token of his esteem for the great King Evarth," the black said. And as he spoke, Evarth leaning forward in his ivory throne chair, noted that the blackamoor wore no patch over the gaping socket of his missing eye, and deep within the abysmal hole, like an ember smouldering in the darkness, there appeared to be a reddish glow, which the King found to be quite unnerving and loathe to look upon.

Displaying rows of polished teeth, white as the King’s own throne, the black grinned amost evilly, as he waited patiently for Evarth to open the chest. When the King did so, instead of brimming with jewels or other valuables, the box was filled with eyeballs, clean of muscle flesh so they were smooth and white and glistening foully.

"What sort of vulgar prank is this!" the King roared, raising from his lofty seat, hurling the chest violently away from him so that it came with a crash to the marble floor. And as the eyeballs rolled out everywhere, they seemed to stare back hideously back at Evarth from all about the chamber.

"This is an outrage! Send for this master of his at once! And by the hoary archdemons, I shall teach him to play such abominable tricks!"

"Let not the King command in haste," the black said slowly, "lest he deny himself that which he most seeks. My master will arrive upon the eve, coming to your banquet hall at that time, but no sooner. And when he does come, he has in store for the grand King an experience beyond those of his wildest phantasies." The black continued, however, lowering his eyebrows as the red glow within the eye socket seemed to flare like a wind-blown coal. "But it were ill of you to spurn his offering, for there are those who would deem them a rare delicacy, requiring much care in preparation. For the lenses are meticulously removed and the orbs drained before being filled with honey, and then ensealed with wax. But now I must go, in preparation for the evening."

Upon hearing the words concerning the coming eve, the King’s wrath subsided somewhat, being overshadowed by his longing for relief from his monotinous routine. For Evarth was starved for divertissment like a vampire for blood, and he would welcome the black’s master, or welcome his execution.

"So be it," Evarth barked. "But when he arrives, if he fails to beguile me, he will taste of the bitter blade of the headsman, and afterward be dismembered and stuffed into a coffin scarcely larger than that loathesome chest!"

Upon bowing again, the dark-skinned servant turned and quitted the chamber, leaving Evarth dr ow ne d in thought s. Verily the King was intri gued, for long had it been since anyon e so deliberately and audaciously courted his displea su re , as f or c ou ntless year s he had been approached and attend ed by doting servants and subjects, and fawning priests and princes and co-regents. They swarmed about Evarth like sycophanatic charnel worms who fed upon his wealth and banquets, speaking constant words of adulation and false praise.

Now, after the servant had taken his leave, the King, pondering his words, called for the dispersed eyeballs to be regathered, immersed in cleansing waters, and brought before him. Once these things were accomplished, Evarth withdrew a plump gleaming eye-orb from the assemblage. And after a moment’s hesitation, he bit into the eyeball, which burst sickeningly in his mouth as he suddenly gagged and choked and spit forth bits of repulsive crushed eyeball along with a white curdy substance tasting insufferably foul. The oozing substance made him empty his stomach in nauseation as his eyes crimsoned with rage. Roaring violent imprecations and heavy curses, Evarth determined to bide his time until the eve, when he could confront the black’s master in person.

The hours until the eventide passed in a slow procession for Evarth, dragging by with the sluggishness of legless amputees, but eventually the sun sank below the horizon so that a blood-red and darkening twilight prevailed. The King and his consorts, his privy counsellors and high functionaries of state, and civil magistrates, were gathered in the great feasting hall of the palace, glutting themselves on the food and drowning themselves in seas of potent, drug-impregnated wines.