JOURNAL OF THE PHYSICIAN TUSHRATTA OF KHAND
Morning of 12 Du'ûzu, the thirtieth year of the Reign of King Shapsusharr of Khand
Midsummer Day, June 21, 3019, according to the Western reckoning

This morning, I once again open my journal and set out to record my observations of the events which occur around me. With the few fleeting moments that are allowed to me before the caravan departs, there is never an opportunity to do more than summarize the events that have happened. Still I feel that I must attempt to transcribe these experiences and thoughts before they retreat into the recesses of memory and are forever lost. How can I with any degree of acuity and clarity of mind ever recall all of the many strange and unusual occurrences of yestereve, I have no idea. Still I am desirous of making an attempt to account them so these things will serve as a record for those who come after me.

Near dusk last evening, Aziru and I returned from the scene of the unauthorized disciplining of the slave women. Such events, filled as they are with an abundance of visual and auditory stimulations that tend to inflame the passions, often leave the observers in a state of agitated excitement. My mind was overburdened with all that I had seen and heard, and I wished only to enjoy a quiet supper before playing a game of chess with Aziru. How often it is that our plans are never to know fruition! The physician must take all this in his stride, though, for he of all men does not own his own time, but has given it to others.

While the subject of punishment is upon my mind, I will record here in my journal that I have no quarrel with the whipping of servants if the punishment is applied fairly and if it is for the betterment of the slaves. The practice is considered necessary, even in the case of wives, for females are weak and their minds are flighty. They need the firm resolve of disciplined men to keep them under control. Left to their own devices, women will invariably stray into mischief, often allowing themselves to be beguiled and taken down into adultery. A virtuous woman - wife, concubine or slave, whatever she may be - is one who knows and fears the rod of her father, husband or master, keeps her place in the house, and lives her life solely according to the will of the man whom fate has put in charge of her.

However, while whipping has its place, only those of our own kind should be allowed to apply it. Entrusting the brutish orcs with the authority to administer chastisement will only give them an overblown sense of their own importance. They have neither the strength of mind nor the moral fortitude to be able to dispense punishment fairly. Seldom do they whip moderately, but rather are they inclined to lay the beating on heavily. But my opinion is quite unimportant, for I am only one man, and each one, either fool or sage, is quite irrelevant in the overall scheme of the world. Enough of these ramblings; it is pointless to fill up my journal with useless ruminations!

As I have said, my hopes for a peaceful evening were to be disappointed. Aziru and I had scarcely entered our pavilion when we found the lady Goldwyn in a frenzy bordering on hysteria. In our absence, her maid, the slave woman Barsud, had been forced to call upon the aid of the guards to restrain the patient. Goldwyn was almost in a frothing rage. As though she had some preternatural sense of cognition, the lady seemed to know that some unpleasantness had befallen her comrades. Of course, this could be easily explained by her overhearing some careless remark. Her first words to me were something to the tune of, "Hypocrite! You are just as foul as the rest of them! Why do you attempt to act as though you were better?"

Her words grew to be nothing more than a heated diatribe, interspersed by gibberish and garble. She was throwing another of her fits, and this time it was so severe that it was consuming her with its potency. Though I attempted to pacify her, there was no settling her down. She drew her hand back to slap my face but I caught it before she could do any harm. That turned her into a screaming fury, forcing me to struggle and fight with her until I had forced her down upon her bed. While Aziru prepared a calming draught, I held her there, but she struggled and wiggled so furiously that I feared I might injure her as I attempted to restrain her.

After the drug had taken its somnolent effect, Goldwyn grew calmer. With this return to a peaceful state of affairs, I allowed Barsud to go to the tent of the slave women, for she needed to gather a few garments. Although some might not have been so generous, I allowed her to spend one hour with her two children. The woman seldom offends me, for she is most obedient, never attempting to impose upon my good nature. Assured that she knew her first duty, I was confident that she would not stay overlong and would come back before the allotted time had elapsed.

While Barsud was away, I kept vigil by Goldwyn's bed. As the woman slept, I decided that I would attend to some necessary reading of my medical books. That night, the volume did not seem to hold my attention, and try as I might to read a treatise on abscesses, I found my eyes constantly wandering to her lovely face and divine form. I confess I could not concentrate upon my reading as I observed the blissful expression upon her face and the gentle rise and fall of her bosom. At last I turned back to my reading and left her to her slumbers.

It was shortly after the first watch ended that something aroused my notice. I could not determine what it was, and glancing about the tent, I perceived that all was in order. No one save the lady and I were in the room, for Aziru was occupied in the outer chamber with some reading of his own, and Barsud was still away. Concluding that I had heard only some sound from outside, I looked down at the woman and found her still peacefully sleeping. Irritated at the interruption, I turned back to my reading.

Not many minutes had passed until I distinctively heard my name being spoken in my own language. My eyes went immediately to the woman, but I found that she was still sound asleep. Putting my book down on the table, I rose to my feet and peered into every corner of the inner chamber. Thinking perhaps that Aziru had called me, or had said something to the guards or to one of my slave boys, I went into the other section of the tent.

Finding he was alone and fully engrossed in his work, I asked him if he had called to me or any other. Surprised at my question, he informed me that he had spoken to no one. My assistant noted that, other than a guard and one of the boys, there was no one assigned to duty near the tent at this hour. I went outside to see for myself and found Hibiz snoring at the entryway. Convinced that there was nothing that could not be explained by logic, I went back to the inner chamber. Though I felt like a fool for doing so, I once again walked about, searching every darkened corner of the tent. Not even the roof of the tent escaped my inspection. Again, nothing.

Convinced that I had merely let my worries get the better of me, I picked up my book and sat down by her bed. All was quiet, except for the sounds of her measured breathing. I was fascinated by her delicate white skin, the dark shadows beneath her closed eyes, the rosebud petals of her lips, and the form and graceful outlines of her body. All of these contributed to her almost ethereal beauty. Unable to read, I watched the rhythm of her chest rising and falling, the material of her gown draped like a film of gossamer around the contours of her breasts. It embarrasses me to admit that I felt the urge to reach down and fondle one of her nipples. I fairly trembled with the impulse to feel the delicious little bud hardening under my fingertips. Though it was a severe act of will to refrain from touching such a lovely creature, I did not give into the more perverse impulses of my nature.

Trying to keep the thoughts of her from my mind, I went back to reading. Within a few minutes, I then heard my name again. Low and husky, the voice whispered out the vilest invitation: "Lie with me." It was a voice I could not recognize and had never heard before that time. Like the most craven of cowards, I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise like the bristling hair on the neck of an angry dog. A shudder went down my spine as I heard the words again. I swear by all the holy gods that it was a man's voice coming from her beautiful lips! In spite of my disgust and fear, an overwhelming lust began to fill me, and I felt myself being irresistibly drawn to the woman's calm face. As her lips moved, once more I heard the voice.

As though bewitched, I bent down and gripped her head in my hands. I kissed her violently and loathsomely, sucking her lips into my mouth and licking them with my tongue. In her sleep, she moaned into my mouth, a pathetic cry like a hurt kitten. Her sighs only inflaming me more, I tore the covers from her body. Racked with a cold sweat, I felt at the same time as though I were on fire, consumed by the flames which radiated from my loins. Sweating and grunting like an animal, I fumbled to take down my pantaloons, my only thought to sheath my ferocious erection inside her. Wild, primal urges surged through my mind, demanding that I must spend my seed inside her as quickly as I could. In my abject insanity, I sensed that this obscene union was the only way in which she and I could ever know fulfillment in the flesh.

My body demanded release; I had become like a rutting animal, a beast! But no less than my body, my mind craved it, demanded it, yearned for it! I know that I was mad, overcome with a foul lust that possessed and consumed me with a rank lechery. I reveled in my madness, no longer caring, for I had become obsessed in the space of a heartbeat. I yanked her gown above her waist, wanting only to see her ripe downy peach displayed before me, her voluptuousness open for the taking. Demented and burning with desire to have her, there would be nothing - no moral compunctions, no human compassion, no fear of divine retribution - nothing to hold me back!

Caring naught for my dignity, my honor, or what might be done to me should I be found out, I gloated as my mind filled with the carnal frolic which was to come. My body quaking with lust, I slid her to the edge of the bed and spread her thighs wide apart. Kneeling between them, I was on the verge of sinking myself into her chalice. Then, suddenly, her eyelids fluttered open like the beating of a bird's wing. Wide open in a ghastly unseeing stare, her dilated blue eyes deepened and darkened until they were black and fell, terrible eyes which I did not know!

Then suddenly the pools of ink evaporated, the murky tide drawing back and receding, her pupils shrinking as though a brilliant light had been waved just above her face. The turquoise orbs of her irises seemed to shimmer and scintillate, like an undulating mirage of some mystical city seen upon the distant horizon across the burning dunes of a sweltering desert. The milky whites of her eyes turned into opalescent pools which rippled like the prismatic waters of some otherworldly mere.

I found I could not turn away from them, no matter how hard I tried. It was as though a powerful spell of binding held my will captive, imprisoned in those ever-changing iridescent depths. And then much to my horror, I beheld, slowly taking shape through the coalescing mists of opal and turquoise, the pale and faded form of a masculine entity. Surrounded by a phosphorescent glow, his supine body floated upon dark and shadowy waters, his graceful ivory fingers clasped upon his breast as though in final repose. Just one glance at the pallor of his skin, the shadowy pits of his sunken cheeks, and the ghostly whiteness of his lips would leave no doubt in the mind of anyone that this man was utterly and completely dead.

But then his cold, dead eyes suddenly snapped open and he looked directly into mine. My breath stopped in my chest and I gaped in increasing terror at these bizarre sights which I beheld as I stared trance-like into the lady's eyes. His cruel orbs glittering like two black diamonds, the spirit's pallid lips pulled back in a ghastly smile that was both repulsively ghoulish and morbidly alluring. And then I heard in my mind a voice so unbearably seductive and superbly masculine that it would cause even the most chaste man to turn into a wanton deviant.

"Lie with me... complete this trinity. Together we shall share her, and together she and I will share you."

In that one moment, I knew in the deepest core of my soul that this foul phantom was of the accursed Edimmu. My unknown adversary was one of the wandering ghosts, the restless spirits, the undead walkers, the devils who thirst for living bodies in which they may inhabit. Wishing to slake its contemptuous lusts, it would force me to commit the most perverse obscenities upon Goldwyn. This foul thing from some tormented nether-place beyond the barriers of time and eternity wanted both the woman and me!

He had trapped my mind with his bewitchment. My thoughts came sluggishly, struggling like insects whose wings and legs are mired, caught in a pot of thick honey. I sensed his cruel, mocking laughter, like some callous youth who will laugh at the sufferings of others. My tormented mind fought to break through the thick barrier of evil magick, but I was helpless.

In desperation, I clutched at the amulet which hung about my neck and implored the Chief Goddess of Healing. I mumbled prayers of protection and deliverance that I had not invoked in years and could scarcely remember. In the distress of my spirit, I called upon the name of every healing power of whom I had ever heard. I found myself babbling in several languages and dialects, Khandian, Haradric, Westron. "Estë! Estë!" I called out, using one of the many names for the Goddess. Frantic with terror that she would not hear me, I screamed out her name as I almost wrenched the amulet from my neck.

The spirit shrieked as though in unbearable agony, but still I continued my storm of supplications. I wanted to bring him pain, deal as much hurt to him as he was eager to give to the lady and me. Then, as though gathering himself for a final battle, I felt his presence encompassing me like a swell of putrefying corruption and wickedness. An oily black vapor seemed to sink into each pore, each vein, each sinew and bone of my frame, trying to overcome me, trying to wrest my body away from my soul.

"Estë! Estë! Estë!" Again and again I screamed the name of the Goddess in Quenya, for the name seemed to have more power over the spirit in that language. The fiend shuddered and then recoiled. Then with a hissing shriek, like an enraged dragon, the fell spirit thrust me backward, knocking me sprawling to the floor. Still it lingered about the body of the woman, curling like a serpent of smoke around her supine form.

Struggling to my knees, my body shaking and drenched in its own rank sweat, I swayed as I clutched the holy amulet tightly in my fist and invoked the name of the Goddess. "Be gone, unclean spirit of the Edimmu! You have no power over those whom the Goddess of Healing protects! Depart unto the Land of No Return, the darkness from whence you come, and trouble us no more!"

With one last shriek, the phantom sighed and evanesced in a cloud of black smoke which stank and fumed like a flaming pit of bitumen. He was gone, driven away, back to the vile pits from whence he had come! Though his hold over the lady had been broken for the time, some sense told me that this powerful, wicked spirit would not give up so easily. Knowing that my life had been irrevocably changed, I did not fight the overpowering sense of exhaustion that filled me as the world turned black before me and I sank into a weary stupor.

When I awoke, Aziru was kneeling beside me, shaking me by the shoulder. "Tushratta, are you all right?" he asked, deep concern in his voice. "I was in the outer chamber and heard a noise. When I came in here, I found you lying upon the floor."

The room was spinning around me as I struggled to a sitting position. "Yes, yes," I mumbled, shaking my head to clear it. "I had just gone to see about the Lady Goldwyn when suddenly I felt ill, and I suppose I fainted."

"Ah, Master Physician," Aziru chided me, "you have been working far too hard lately! You need more rest."

"I think you are right, Aziru," I replied, carefully rising and going over to sit at the table. "That is all it is... exhaustion."

"You ought to go to bed now, Physician. Have a draught of wine to steady your nerves first," Aziru encouraged me as he poured a goblet of wine. "I will watch the patient until Barsud returns."

"You mean she is not back yet?" I asked, uncertain how much time had elapsed during my period of unconsciousness.

Aziru wrinkled his forehead and tugged idly at his nose. "She has only been gone a short while."

I looked at him incredulously. Then the whole encounter with the fell spirit had taken place in less than an hour. In wonderment, I looked about the chamber and saw that everything was exactly as it had been before. The medical tome was still on the table, open to the chapter on abscesses, and the wine decanter was undisturbed on the table. The lady lay sleeping peacefully upon the bed, a serene smile upon her face, as though all cares had been lifted from her troubled mind. At first I wondered if the pale apparition had been just a dream, but yet my soul told me that it was not, and that the foul spirit had not finished with either the lady or me.