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  Before Varin knew it, he was just outside the stable wormhole the old Tempath had told him about.

  Just as he was about to enter it, he had a sudden vision…

  Brynn, walking down into a hole in the earth. Thinking it looks like a grave…or a mouth waiting to eat her. Two huge sentries on either side…they let her in…she walks into the blackness.

  “Brynn, no! Come back, little one—don’t go down there!” The words burst from his lips, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. In fact, he had a feeling this might already have happened—that he was seeing her past rather than her present. Even now, she was deep in the bowels of the earth, Varin just knew it.

  He felt his heart thundering against his ribs. Danger—she was in danger and he was still light years away!

  Setting his course, he plunged the little craft into the worm hole, praying to the Goddess that he wouldn’t be too late.

  * * * * *

  “Where is this place? What are you doing here?” Brynn whispered, bending down to get a better look at her former lady-in-waiting’s face. The way Amalthia was bundled into the rectangular stone hole in the wall it was difficult to see her. Her face was visible in the flickering light but her body was hidden in shadows.

  Amalthia’s previously plump and pretty face was bone thin, the arches of her cheeks standing out starkly under her pale skin. Her green eyes were glazed with a kind of madness and she smiled as she spoke, showing teeth that were stained red.

  “They brought me here to serve the Master.”

  “They? Who is they?”

  “The servants of the Master, of course. Silly, Princess…” She gave a jagged little laugh, her eyes rolling in their sockets.

  “But who is the Master?” Brynn asked. “Please, Amalthia—talk to me. You’re not making any sense.”

  “Of course I am. And if you haven’t met the Master yet, you will. He comes to visit regularly—just to check.”

  “Check what?” Brynn felt like they were talking in circles.

  “To check on me of course—to see how his children are getting along.”

  “His…his children?” Brynn felt a growing unease inside her. She couldn’t stop thinking about her nightmare—the one she’d had where Amalthia was a skull. “Kill me,” she’d said. “We are all dead anyway…”

  “Yes—the children he gave me. Look…” Amalthia began to struggle, trying weakly to crawl out of the ledge she was wedged into.

  “Here—let me help you…Oh!” Brynn gasped when she touched the other girl’s skin. Amalthia’s pale body was fever-hot, as though she was burning up from the inside out.

  She’s sick, Brynn thought. That’s why she seems out of her head. Maybe I shouldn’t ask her to sit up.

  But Amalthia was already levering herself out of the narrow crevice with great effort. Brynn soon saw why—her former lady in waiting’s belly was swollen and immensely round. It looked like she was pregnant but with what? Brynn had never seen an expecting woman so huge before. She didn’t even know how Amalthia had fit into the narrow rectangular space—it seemed impossible.

  “There now. Thank you, Princess dear.” Amalthia gave her that mad smile as she leaned back against the ledge she’d been lying in to give her enormous belly room. She was still wearing the lovely light green afternoon dress she’d had on the day she was abducted, Brynn saw. But it was ripped and dirty—stained with brown splotches that looked horribly like dried blood.

  “Amalthia…” she whispered and then didn’t know what else to say.

  “Do you want to see them?” Amalthia leaned forward, a mad, conspiratorial gleam in her green eyes. “Do you want to see the Master’s children?”

  “I…I don’t know.” Brynn eyed the skirts of the stained green dress, stretched tight over Amalthia’s enormous belly. “I don’t think—”

  “Here!” The former lady in waiting pulled up her dress, revealing her huge, sagging, rounded belly, swollen tight as a drum. It rose up to just under her breasts and bulged down between her thighs, almost to her knees, Brynn saw with horror. And there were marks on it—half-healed gashes that looked like stab wounds, as though someone had plunged something sharp into Amalthia’s abdomen again and again.

  But worse than the size and shape of the enormous belly, worse even than the stab wounds, were the movements going on just under Amalthia’s pale, stretched skin.

  Brynn had seen one very short vid segment about pregnancy and childbirth at the convent—the Sisters’ idea of sex education. Of course, they hadn’t mentioned how the baby had gotten into the woman in the vid in the first place or how it would come out. The narrator had simply said, “After a time spent with the husband her parents picked for her, this young lady has something lovely to look forward to.”

  Then the vid showed the results—a young woman who was glowing and happy after being obedient to both parents and husband. Brynn remembered watching the pregnant woman’s belly in fascination as it bulged once or twice when the baby she was carrying kicked from inside.

  But how could one baby make all the movements Brynn could see going on in Amalthia’s belly? It was bulging and rippling everywhere. It was as though she had a dozen restless babies inside her, all of them kicking at once. But how could that be?

  “Oh, Amalthia,” she whispered, covering her mouth in horror to keep back the terrified cries that wanted to leak out. “What…how…?”

  “His children—the Master’s children,” Amalthia crooned, rubbing her swollen, pulsing belly.

  “Are…” Brynn swallowed hard. “Are you in pain?” Because the hugely swollen belly looked like it must be painful—Amalthia should be in agony. Yet she continued to smile on and on, that same, mad, vacant smile that made Brynn feel like a cold finger was sliding down the groove of her spine.

  “It only hurts a little—just at first when he stabs you,” Amalthia assured her. “But that’s necessary, you see—to implant the children. And the honey helps with the pain, of course. The sweet, sweet Blood Honey.”

  She parted her lips in a grin, showing her red stained teeth.

  Blood Honey, Brynn thought. Dear Goddess above, what is she talking about? This is awful!

  “Amalthia,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “This…this isn’t right. It’s not safe here. You and I have to get out of here—do you know the way out?”

  “I can’t go now, silly Princess!” Amalthia rubbed her rippling belly. Was it Brynn’s imagination or were the things inside it writhing faster now, in time to the pulsing light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere? “The children are nearly grown—soon they will be born.”

  “Born?” Brynn repeated with growing horror. “How—?”

  Her question was answered before she could finish asking it for suddenly a red flower bloomed on the side of Amalthia’s distended abdomen. A red flower that was a bubble of blood, Brynn saw with dismay.

  The bubble popped and a trickle of blood dripped down the former lady in waiting’s belly to land on the floor. From the place where the blood-flower had bloomed, emerged a set of tiny, needle-sharp teeth. The teeth were followed by a long, sleek head with greenish-black skin, coated in bloody slime.

  The thing—for Brynn had no name for it—writhed from the hole in the side of Amalthia’s abdomen, gnashing its sharp, bloody teeth, tearing her flesh in its haste to get out. It fell to the floor at Brynn’s feet, a worm-like creature as long and thick as her forearm, whipping its pointed, snake-like tail and screeching a high, piercing note that made her want to clap her hands over her ears.

  Then Brynn realized that it wasn’t just the awful thing that had come out of Amalthia that was shrieking—her former lady in waiting was screaming too—a high, terrible wail of agony that ripped from her bulging throat and seemed to go on and on.

  More blood-flowers were blooming on her belly now, more sharp teeth were chewing their way out, more greenish-black, slime-covered slugs were landing on the floor, gnashing their teeth. Clearly th