Warlock and Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

"Come," she breathed, eyes devouring his, fingers plucking at his breeches. "Have at me!" And her head tilted back, eyes closing, lips parting....
    A flash of memory of that slash of mouth, with its rotten teeth, made Magnus recoil again ... but the memory was quickly smothered with the sight of her, proud and glorious and longing, standing full in a sunbeam, and his body clamored for her with an intensity that was sickening. She smiled, beckoning, and almost against his will, he felt himself stepping toward her with slow, dragging steps, reaching out to touch her perfect skin, head bending over hers, lips parting....
    He forced out the single syllable, thwarted longing shaping it to a groan: "No!"
    "Thou canst not mean no." Tears filled those huge, wondrous, violet eyes, filled and overflowed; the beautiful head bowed, shoulders heaving with sobs. "Oh, thou wilt not leave me forlorn!" Guilt seized him, and shame at making a woman weep; pity filled him, and he reached out to gather her close, to comfort her, to press her to him in the golden rays of the setting sun that seemed to set both of them aflame with desire, gilding the huge expanse of snowy feather bed, and he felt his need for her rising, filling him, a physical pain within him.
    But the thought of pain reminded him of the tapestries. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at them, and recoiled with a gasp of horror.
    Suddenly, the tapestries were gone, and the cobwebbed walls were all that were there behind the naked hag who stood before him, screaming, "Fool!" Oblivious of her nudity, she howled, "Villain! Vile miscreant! Travesty of a man! If thou wilt not take what is offered thee, become what thou art-the lowest of the low!" Her hands snapped out; he felt her will compelling his own as her eyes seemed to swell, swallowing him, dragging him into the dreadful, bloodshot, yellow gleam, and he felt himself dwindling, growing slack, falling to his knees, till he writhed on the floor.
    "Be the serpent thou art," she hissed, malicious satisfaction in her eyes, "and shalt be evermore. " Page 14
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    He strained against the compulsion, but again, the touch of an expert had bound him, constrained him; he knew she had only convinced him he was a snake, that physically he was still every bit the man he had been-but his subconcious knew differently. It was now convinced of his snakehood as completely as it had once been certain of his humanity; she had bound him within his own skull, far more expertly than anyone he had ever met, and he could no more throw off that conviction than he could leap to the moon unaided.
    "Away," she hissed, lips curving with cruel satisfaction, and he felt himself rising, lifting, up off the floor and to the stairwell. He writhed and strained against the compulsionbut only felt his body whipping about like a snake's. She crowed with delight, and followed him down the spiral stair-down, down, and down, then out into the dusk, for night was falling again.
    A hundred yards from her tower, he felt his body drift to the ground at the foot of a huge old oak-and, suddenly, whip itself about, curving against the bark.
    "There shalt thou stay," the hag grated, "warding that tree from harm, till death take thee-and thy bones shall assure all who come nigh that they must do the bidding of the Hag of the Tower!" She turned away, and Magnus stared after, at the sagging, mottled flesh and gaunt shanks, realizing that the musicrock's song had been a warning, that he should have heeded it more closely. . . . How had it ended?
    He strove to remember, but had only a fleeting notion that the youth had escaped the fate the witch had bound him toand he had the vagrant dread that if he looked, he might find the skeletons of other young men bound around tree trunks nearby. The music, he thought desperately-maybe the song would tell him the means of escape! He listened, yearning, but the only