The Defiler Read Free Page B

Shadow dancers flickered and writhed across their makeshift camp. The wind carried its eulogy across the night.
    When it came, Sláine's sleep was restless. He tossed and turned fitfully while Ukko snored, oblivious, his lips rattling against his teeth.
    He dreamed a thousand fragments of dream, but one rose up within him, fevered by the edge of prophecy. A woman knelt by his side, her face close to his, her lips leaning in to taste him. He gave himself to the kiss though their lips never touched. He felt the invasive presence of her mind within his, scratching around through all the memories that made him who he was.
    Who are you? He gasped but he knew - because just as she touched him, so he touched her, melding with the woman of his dreams.
    Caoilfhionn, the name sang through his head. Whether it was Sláine, the voice of his dreamself, or the Weatherwitch naming herself, there was no way of knowing.
    Her ethereal fingers slipped inside his skull, pressing deep into his mind. He wanted to scream but this dream-self had no mouth. He bucked and writhed, trying to dislodge the witch but it was as though bonds of iron tied him to the earth. He could not fight her.
    Do not struggle, Son of the Sessair. Let me inside you. Deeper. Surrender.
    If you weren't already dead, woman, you would taste my axe.
    I would taste so much more, warrior. Her icy hand reached down to cup the silver tusk of his boar's head codpiece, tugging it aside. There was no tenderness in her touch when it came. It was hungry. Such anger in you, such pain. Let me take it away. Let me help you. I can, with just a word.
    GET OUT OF MY HEAD, WITCH!
    He concentrated on his hands, even as his body responded to her touch, forcing them to reach out and grasp either side of the witch's head. Her grasp on him tightened. An elemental charge, like lightning, coursed through his body as he pressed and his fingers sank into her insubstantial skull. Sláine screamed out against the charge wracking his body, the agony fierce enough to tear a raw hole where his mouth ought to have been. The pain was visceral, his response to it primal. He struck out, looking to batter the witch until she relinquished her hold on his flesh.
    Such sadness consumes you, warrior, the ghost of Caoilfhionn said, feeding off his pain. She licked from his nose to the centre of his brow in a parody of erotic sensuality. The greater his suffering the more substantial she became beneath his hands, the more forceful her grip. She threw her head back, relishing the spasm that shook his body. A sheen of perspiration clung to her too-pale skin. Her lips parted hungrily, eager to devour more of him. Ribbons of mist leaked out between sharpened teeth, coiling lazily down towards his nose and mouth and slipping easily into him. The mist clogged in his throat. Sláine thrashed about wildly, retching and choking on the ethereal ribbons as they delved deeper inside him. He tried desperately to reach out for the Earth Serpent, to harness its power with his mind, to surrender to it, but the witch's fingers drew more exquisite pain from him, and the serpent recoiled, leaving him alone with Caoilfhionn, helpless against her invasion.
    What do you want from me? It was more of a plea than a question. The final spasm wracked his body.
    And in answer to it she offered him a sunburst of images; places he did not know, names he could not grasp or understand flashed through his mind. Spiralling towers of ivory and bone clawing up into the red sky, a city of wonder and fear populated by the pale ones, burning giants brought low, The Morrigan and Blodeuwedd, black hounds and crows and scaled monstrosities all blurring into one as her final words floated like a ghost beneath, behind and between everything that he saw: find the Skinless Man .
    Sláine came awake with a start, gasping and sweating in a tangle of fur where he had become embroiled with his cape. The fire was dead, charcoal and ash all that remained. He looked