The Demon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  And then he saw the clearing.

  Aldric was glad to rest his Deepwood-wearied eyes on an open space at last. It glistened under the moon like a pool of quicksilver, and at its centre was a solitary tree that might once have been an oak – or an ash or an elm – but now was unrecognisable, centuries dead, a split and blasted monument to the fury of a long-forgotten storm. A hundred yards from where he stood, the forest began again as if the hands of men had never interrupted it, for this was no natural clearing. Northward, beyond the shattered tree, was the remnant of a mound ringed by standing stones. The place had a sense of profound age and the stones were everywhere, some upright, some askew and a few fallen completely, half-hidden in the grass.

  It was the several still lintelled across others like colossal doorways into nowhere that made Aldric’s scalp prickle. He had seen things like this before, for his own long-dead blood kin – an Mergh-Arlethen, the Horse Lords – lay in such mounds throughout the southern part of Alba. Their great barrows weren’t round, as this had once been, but long to resemble the ships which had brought them and their tall steeds across the deep sea. They dotted Cerenau and Prytenon up past Andor and Segelin to the very eaves of the forest of Guelerd, and in Alba they were undisturbed, honoured as much for their great age as for what they were.

  Here on the fringes of the Empire things were different, and this mound was already open to the sky. He could guess what the inside looked like; the tomb torn apart by disrespectful hands, its burial chamber violated in search of treasures buried with the dead, the poor old bones scattered and their long rest disturbed. To any Alban such actions were repellent, and in particular to the last of the Talvalins, whose reverence for his ancestors was all the greater now ancestors were all he had. Yet curiosity compelled him to look closer, almost as if he might make amends for the rude treatment meted out by others.

  “Don’t go into that place.” said Evthan. His hand closed on Aldric’s left bicep, holding him back and in that grip discovering the meshed mail and splinted steel beneath the leather sleeve. If the revelation startled him he gave no apparent sign.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was once a holy circle of the Flint Folk, where they worshipped the old gods that are not our Gods.” Religion, thought Aldric, and almost smiled. Never debate with a man about religion, politics or taste in women. But then Evthan muttered, “I could wish it still was, instead of being…” before his words tailed off in a way Aldric didn’t like. Perhaps this involved more than just religion.

  “Instead of being what, Evthan?”

  “Instead of being what it is now! Unhallowed and evil! Keep away from the ring of stones, Kourgath. Everyone else does.”

  “All the more reason for me to look. I sense nothing evil about either the ring or the mound, and the dead have never done the living harm.” Even as the words left his mouth he remembered the traugarin raised by Duergar the necromancer, and Kalarr cu Ruruc who had first died before the Clan Wars five centuries ago. “The peaceful dead, at least.”

  “But why should the lord of the mound be at peace?” Evthan made his argument with inexorable logic. “His long sleep ended when they broke open his tomb.”

  “They? Who are they?” Evthan hesitated, and Aldric pounced on it. “Don’t you know? Or don’t you want to tell me?”

  “I know.”

  “I think so do I. Crisen Geruath. Someone whose name appears too many times without adequate reason.”

  “He, and his father. Lord Geruath searched for ancient weapons – he collects them in his tower at Seghar as another man might gather works of art. But the son sought for other things.”

  “And did he find them?”

  “Now Kourgath – Aldric – how much would you expect a mere hunter to know about the private doings of his Overlord?” Evthan’s teeth glinted, not a grin now but a fence securing any further words on the topic.

  “I’d like to meet your Overlord. And his son.”

  “I’d like to be there to see that meeting.”

  “Perhaps you will. For now I’ll be content to see this holy place. It may not be holy any more, but it grows more interesting by the moment.”

  “But I told you—”

  “You told me a superstition, nothing more. But I’ll give the mound-king your respects if I meet him.” The hunter flinched at that, and Aldric saw him flinch. Was it because of his own casual, thoughtless remark or for a more obscure, more private reason? Questions, so many questions. Soon, he promised, there’ll be many answers to keep them company.

  As he walked out across the moonlit clearing, unseen eyes watched with interest from the shadows.

  *

  Things hidden by the long grass gave way with sharp, dry cracking sounds beneath his boots. They were neither twigs nor branches and Aldric didn’t even have to guess before he stopped, knelt, and lifted one into the thin wash of silvery light to see it better. The slender leg-bone ended in a small cloven hoof, and it was very old. Groping about on the ground was something he wouldn’t have done in daylight, for this open space in heavy forest was viper territory if ever he’d seen it. On a hot day the snakes would have been everywhere, basking in sunlight that couldn’t otherwise reach ground level. In the cool of the night they were gone, leaving him alone to fumble with ancient sacrificial bones. He found their age reassuring, and on the occasions he looked more closely the remnants were always those of sheep, or maybe goats.

  But then something crunched under his heel and skidded in a manner so uniquely nasty, and so unlike any sensation which had gone before, that for several seconds distaste outweighed curiosity. It was inevitable that curiosity won, and just as inevitable that Aldric regretted it, for what he picked up was a human hand. The fingers had shattered – that was the crunch felt as much as heard, like treading barefoot on a snail – and its decomposing flesh had smeared under his weight. A stench of putrefaction offended the clean night air, for it had lain on the ground a month or more, and as foul matter slicked across their leather, he was glad of his gloves.

  It was a small hand; a woman’s, or perhaps a child’s.

  He drew breath to summon Evthan, then remembered the man’s wife and daughter, mentioned at their first meeting. That recollection shut his mouth with an audible click of clenching teeth. This pathetic remnant was another leaving of the Beast. He gently laid the fragment down and, with an effort, kept obvious revulsion from the way he wiped his fingers clean. Then he drew his tsepan dirk and used the needle point to scratch out a little grave. In other circumstances he would have muttered an apology for dishonouring the dirk with such a menial task, but not now. Simple decency would not offend an honourable weapon.

  After he finished and pressed the soil back into place, Aldric remained on his knees, forcing himself back to calmness. Rather than detached regret, he felt a rage such as he would never have imagined possible over the death of an unknown foreign peasant’s unknown child. Usually such spasms of fury only came with his hand on Isileth Widowmaker’s hilt, but now his whole body trembled and sent reflected moonlight dancing along the tsepan’s blade. Crisen Geruath and the inner turmoil of his own honour ceased to be important. If razing the Jevaiden down to bare black rock could assure the obliteration of the Beast, he would have fired the forest without a second thought.

  As that impotent fury faded to a killing mood that was infinitely more dangerous, Aldric realised why Evthan was subject to such strange fits of brooding. If he, outlander, hlensyarl, could be so overwhelmed by anger at the evidence of a single slaying, then what must the Jouvaine’s mind be in now that thirty people, many known to him, had been ripped apart and eaten?

  And how many of that thirty had walked into the jaws of the Beast because they trusted the protection of what they thought was the finest hunter in the province?

  There was a film of icy perspiration on the Alban’s face as he rose, and urgency in the way he slid the tsepan out of sight. Had he been in Evthan’s place he would have used
the wicked blade as intended, and been grateful for the privilege of an honourable end. Except that not even the most sincere suicide would help the dead, or those still living. It would only help the Beast. And if Evthan really was more than he seemed, taking his own life was the last thing he would do…

  Aldric clamped down on his feelings and pushed them to the back of his mind. Not that they ceased to have substance, his willpower wasn’t that powerful, but they would no longer affect his actions unless he desired it or events required it. And then, wound as tightly as the spring of a telek or the string of a crossbow, he would release them when and where they would do most good.

  He continued his walk towards the mound and when he paused, one hand against the rough surface of a fallen sarsen, he looked back towards Evthan. The hunter was just visible, backing away from the clearing, from the mound, from the moonlight and into the comfortable darkness under the trees. Aldric wondered at that, finding the massive trunks and their ink-thick blots of shadow far from comforting. He preferred the sky above his head.

  So he appreciated the rich irony of his next three steps, which brought him under the great stones of the burial chamber and into a confined space of dark and silence.

  *

  He had expected cracks, crevices and perhaps even the gaping holes left by the Overlord’s grave-robbers, It hadn’t occurred to him that the dome would still be complete enough to exclude any light. The blackness within the mound pressed around him like folds of heavy cloth, and even though the pupils of his eyes expanded to enormous proportions in their quest for a glimmer of something useful, their involuntary effort was wasted. The only things he could see were sparks created by his own straining vision.

  Aldric reached out until his outstretched fingers touched the great blocks of the dry-laid chamber wall, trusting to luck and any irregularities warning of unseen hazards. Then after just three shuffling sightless paces he stopped again, muttered an annoyed oath against himself, and reached into the pouch at his belt for the tinderbox and thick beeswax candle it contained.

  He always carried them, seldom used them, and forgot them. Just like now…

  Half-closing his light-sensitive eyes to guard them from its flash of sparks, Aldric tripped the spring of the tinder box. Then tsked in annoyance and did it again, twice, until the fluffed linen wisps caught fire enough for him to light the candle’s triple-thickness braided wick. It smouldered for a few seconds before a blue-cored yellow bud swelled from the stem of the wick to blossom into a tall, saffron flower. Once assured it wouldn’t go out, he fixed its brass shield-ring to catch any potential drips and looked about him.

  It was enough to make him catch his breath.

  The roof of the hollow hill hung grey and huge an arm’s length above his head. He hadn’t known what to expect, for every mound he had seen before had been intact, its secrets of construction hidden under high-heaped soil and green grass. Aldric knew each had at least one chamber at its heart where the dead lay, but this was the first time he had looked inside. That grey roof was a single colossal slab raised by the strength of great grief or great piety to balance with ponderous delicacy on three tapering pillars. Though it had remained in place for unknown centuries, its presence looming over him sent a shudder fluttering through the marrow of his bones. If that capstone fell he, like the owner of the tomb, would be nothing but a memory.

  Shadows crawled from the crevices between the stones as he raised the candle for a better look. There was a strangeness to the barrow, something so obvious that for a few moments it escaped him. Then awareness dawned. The place was clean. There was no earth trodden between the slabs of the floor, and no trace of debris from the robbery – or even the forest outside, although dry, dead vegetation must blow inside with every gust of wind. Instead the chamber seemed to have been swept, and recently at that. As he moved towards where the old chieftain lay, Aldric wondered who had such unconcern for local legends that they not only entered a place usually avoided – except by inquisitive Albans – but tidied it as well. The original occupant was no fit state to appreciate the gesture.

  Or was he…?

  Other chambers opened off the main crypt, most likely storerooms for possessions bringing status and comfort to the Afterworld. He didn’t trouble to investigate, sure they had been even more thoroughly cleaned out than the main tomb. Yet it was hard to ignore those yawning entrances, as if something might creep from them the moment his back was turned. Aldric cursed his own over-active imagination. Except for optimistic spiders which had spun webs here and there he was the only living creature in this place, and he had weapons more dangerous than a spider’s bite.

  Aldric shifted the candle from right hand to left so he could loosen his telek in its holster, and disliked what that shift did to the way the shadows moved. He disliked it most intensely. The telek slipped free, this time without a sound, and his thumb released its safety-slide as the weapon’s reassuring weight settled into his hand. Nothing moved now except the play of light and darkness at the corners of his nervous eyes, but he turned and kept on turning with his boot-heel as a pivot, tracking line of sight with the telek as he raised the candle higher.

  And cast light across the lord beneath the hill.

  The old chieftain’s appearance wasn’t as unpleasant as expected. He had been too long dead for that. His corpse, laid out on a simple bed of stone slabs and reduced by the weight of passing years to mere sticks and leather, was no more frightening than firewood. The ceremonial trappings of death held no terrors for an Alban kailin-eir of high-clan birth, aware that regardless of rank and title he would eventually come to this. More aware, indeed, than most. The cseirin-born met their ultimate destination early in life, and Aldric had been only a small boy when his father Haranil took him to the vaults beneath Dunrath-hold. There he had seen his own funeral column, with its vacant niche patiently awaiting an urn of ashes. His name and rank and date of birth were already cut into the polished basalt, but the last line remained incomplete, needing another date to give perfect symmetry to the carved inscription. Even at five years old the experience had been sobering.

  There was an odd smell in the air, compounded of more than mustiness and candle-smoke, and Aldric glanced at the withered corpse with one eyebrow raised then shook his head. There was nothing of decay about this smell; without the sickliness of corruption its sweetness was more like a perfume. He walked closer, then remembered his manners and bowed, the still-drawn telek glinting in the candlelight as his right arm made the small, graceful gesture of respect to the dead. This was someone’s ancestor, and if the dead man deserved such regard as raised this tomb around him, then simple courtesy wouldn’t be out of place. He met the dark gaze of the skull’s empty eye-sockets without blinking, but didn’t match its mirthless final grin.

  “Here you lie, lord of the mound. Just bones and rags and dust. Our way is better. Fire is clean.” The skin around his mouth scored chevrons of shadow into itself as the recollection of a strange old saying made his teeth show in the candle’s flame. “ ‘Give thanks that death is at the end of life, and not at the beginning’…” After Duergar Vathach and his traugarin, it made ugly sense.

  Then all thought stopped.

  There was colour amid the ivory and brown of the thin hands folded on the dead man’s breast, and that colour was the source of the elusive fragrance. There were roses twined between the bony fingers, three bloated, baleful roses so deeply crimson they seemed almost black, their great petals velvet and luxuriant, their scent far heavier than any he had smelt before. Rich as incense, almost overpowering like the drug ymeth, the dreamsmoke of Imperial decadence, and yet somehow less wholesome still.

  A few months ago, far too few, there had been a dream, and within that dream lurked nightmare…

  Aldric realised his hands were trembling; not much, but enough to send a spiral of black smoke from the candle wick as it guttered under molten wax. He wished too late that he had told everything to Gemmel when he had
the chance, and not hidden his fears behind false, drink-born bravado. At least he might know by now what all this might mean.

  There had to be a reasoned, logical explanation for the flowers. Maybe Geruath the Overlord had discovered this dead man was long-forgotten kin, and the roses were an apology for the indignities of breaking open his tomb and stealing from it. Yes, that was the likely solution. Aldric was half-ashamed of his own reaction, though he knew well enough he was trying to fool himself. There was nothing reasoned or logical about what was going on in the Jevaiden, in Valden or in this tomb.

  He walked around the stone bed, looking down at the shrivelled corpse, and wondered who this man had been, what he had been, and what he had done for his people to grant him so imposing a burial. And it was at the far side, when his boot pressed down on a thing which crackled in the silence, that he discovered the crypt wasn’t empty after all.

  The thing was a sheet of parchment, its edges dry and crumbling, and it had an ugly sense of familiarity that made Aldric’s mouth go dry. The last time he found an overlooked object that was sought by others so many, many deaths had followed. Deaths, and horrors, and the extinction of his clan. With this one still pinned securely underfoot, he was tempted to scrape it against the floor until it became illegible shreds.

  But Aldric Talvalin was as much prey to the vice of foolish, fatal curiosity as any proverb-maker’s cat and he looked at it first, holstering his telek and setting the candle on one corner of the dead chief’s last bed before he picked up the page with apprehensive fingers. It was a poem of some sort, written with a pen in the spiky letters of formal Jouvaine script, and he could read it. Any lettered man could read it, for High Jouvaine was the language of learning, understood in varying degrees by almost every scholar… Even those who paid scant attention to dull lessons on a drowsy summer day. He scanned the lines twice, once for translation and once for sense, then ripped the brittle sheet across and across, crumpled the remnants between his palms and dropped them back onto the stones of the floor.