The Demon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  That breath came out an instant later as a gasp of relief, because there was no adverse reaction. At first he thought there was no reaction at all, then realised that the irregular flicker of the stone’s cold fire had changed, pulsing now in time with the beating of his heart as if its energies were as much a part of him as blood and breath. Aldric sank down in the straw of the stable floor, back braced against the wall, and put his tsepan back in its accustomed place. Then he raised the talisman level with his eyes.

  “Abath arhan,” he said, not fully comprehending where the words came from. “Alh’noen ecchaur i aiyya.” There was a faint humming like bees in clover and the Echainon stone grew warm against his skin, its sapphire nimbus flinging out tendrils of smoky light that poured like mist between his outstretched fingers. Gemmel was right. He did know what to do. Aldric pressed the palms of both hands together, fingers interlaced as if in prayer, then bowed his head until his knuckles touched his forehead.

  And remembered nothing after that…

  *

  So tired…

  Aldric opened leaden eyelids and rolled his head back on a neck whose muscles seemed incapable of supporting its weight. There was no light in the stable. He had brought no candle, risking neither fire nor discovery, and the dilute trickling of moonbeams through almost unseen cracks didn’t count as illumination. Aldric opened his clasped hands and looked down at the spellstone. It magnified the lines and creases of his palm beneath it as a lens might do, and was almost colourless now, except for a tiny thread of blue-white fire deep in its core. Apart from that crawl of minute flames there was nothing to suggest the crystal was anything but a piece of polished quartz.

  And apart from weariness, there was no longer any pain to remind him of his wounding. The arm inside the sleeve might show a scar, but it would be that of a wound long- healed, for the stone took energy from his own body to speed the healing process, reducing it from weeks to minutes. A useful magic without doubt, but the strength it drained left him tired beyond belief.

  “Sorcery,” Gemmel had often warned him, “isn’t free. It has a price which must be paid. Sometimes that price is higher than expected, but not even the mightiest wizards can evade it.”

  Aldric was paying his price now.

  He dragged himself upright with an effort that brought sweat to his skin, leaned panting against the stable wall for several seconds before daring the few steps to his saddlebags, and wondered if using the talisman as a weapon would kill him before it killed his enemies. When he reached the nearest bag he stripped the spellstone’s metal framework from his wrist and pushed it deep into the pannier, tugged a few pieces of clothing down to hide it and fumbled the straps back into their buckles. Once all was back in order, he staggered to the door and out into the moonlit night. The charm of healing hadn’t taken long, he could tell that from the moon and the still-wet blood on his left arm, but even so it would be better if he was in his bath if anyone came looking for him.

  As they probably would.

  *

  The stove in Evthan’s house heated the tank in the bath-house and its water was almost scalding hot, but Aldric used most of it to fill the wooden tub. Before he climbed in and almost fell asleep, he rinsed and dried his armour then rubbed a mixture of grease and beeswax into the places which had struck the tomb wall. If there was an unseen crack in the shiny black proofing, salt blood would damage the metal underneath as easily as immersion in the sea, corroding it until one day the mail gave beneath a blow. The smell of hot oiled metal still hung in the steamy air when Gueynor came in, unannounced yet again, with another basket, this one full of ointments and bandages.

  “Don’t you believe in knocking?” said Aldric, opening drowsy eyes as he slithered deeper into the tub.

  “Should I?”

  There might have been genuine surprise in Gueynor’s voice, but he doubted it. She set the basket on a bench by the tub, drew the single oil-lamp closer, then spread her skirts and sat down beside it. Aldric had seen court ladies take their seats with less grace and elegance. Then he forgot about the things he had or hadn’t seen when she took his left arm in a gentle grasp. An instant later she let go as if it burned her, and her eyes were the only coloured thing in a shock-blanched face.

  “Lady Mother Tesh protect me,” she whispered, drawing a protective ward-mark between them. “What happened to your arm?”

  “It healed,” he said, and raised the arm again for her inspection. A narrow line ran across the tanned skin, not even puckered scar tissue but only a pale mark such as chalk might leave.

  “What sort of man are you, hlensyarl?”

  “A man like other men. A little better educated in strange subjects than most, but nothing more than that.”

  “What do you know of Sedna?” The question confused him, and it showed plain on his tired face. “Sedna ar Gethin,” Gueynor added by way of elaboration. “Lord Crisen’s mist— His consort.”

  The name meant nothing, but its distinctive form meant the woman Sedna was from Vreijaur. Just like Dewan ar Korentin, now the champion, confidant and friend of King Rynert but before that an eldheisart in the Imperial Bodyguard at Drakkesborg. Aldric didn’t suspect ar Korentin of anything. After being forced to abandon his well- favoured post, Dewan held no love for the Drusalan Empire. However he also knew a little of how the man’s mind worked and that nothing, no matter how convoluted, was beyond him. That might include the presence of another Vreijek where none was expected.

  A memory cut through the weariness clouding his mind. He was aboard the merchant-ship En Sohra, hearing from Dewan’s own mouth how he had manipulated Aldric’s ignorance, and thus his unfeigned innocence, to fool the commander of an Imperial battleram. Aldric had meant what he said when he called ar Korentin a devious bastard, everyone who heard him knew it, but the man himself just smiled and bowed, happy with the compliment…

  “Gueynor, give me a towel please,” he said, just as she thought he was drifting back to sleep. “And look away.”

  Gueynor looked surprised, as if expecting less modesty and more appreciation of her company, but Aldric didn’t care. She watched the door while water sloshed in the tub and spattered noisily across the tiled floor, followed by the slap of bare feet and the scrubbing of the towel put to use. When she risked an over-shoulder glance it was already thrown aside, for by that time Aldric was back in his breeches and reaching for a clean shirt.

  From the corner of one eye he could see her examining him, and if her scrutiny was less dispassionate than a doctor’s she hid it well. There were several traces of past injury on his skin, yet none could properly be termed scars except the one from eyebrow to jaw. All the rest, after something more powerful than the passage of time healed each of them, had that chalked-on look as if a damp cloth might wipe them away.

  “Now,” he said, straightening, “what about Sedna?” The last part of the word vanished in an enormous yawn.

  “Never mind questions now,” Gueynor replied, despite having plenty of her own. “You should be in bed. You look,” her hand reached out and touched his cheek just below one drooping eyelid, “as if you haven’t slept in days.”

  “But—”

  “Ssh! You may not need my help as a nurse, but I can be useful in other ways.” He raised one eyebrow, and she made a disapproving noise. “Like telling you when to be sensible.”

  Aldric blinked; she seemed genuinely concerned for his health and why that was so important he didn’t know. Then there was Sedna ar Gethin, a Vreijek already in the Geruath hold at Seghar. Was Dewan behind that? Surely he would have said so, not left Aldric to find it out for himself. The swarm of irrelevancies whirled together like moths round a lantern, and he swayed a little until Gueynor caught one arm and helped him regain his balance.

  “Bed, Kourgath!” she repeated. “Lie down before you fall down. Next time I might not catch you.”

  He heard her sniff, perhaps in disdain for a man who couldn’t hold his drink since she had watche
d him put down three large cups of wine when he came into the house. But the family knowledge of herb-lore probably wasn’t restricted to her aunt, and she might be trying to recognise the scent of herbs or drugs taken to aid his rapid healing. Aldric let her reach her own conclusions as she helped him from the bath-house to his bed.

  Whatever she decided would probably be more convincing, and certainly safer, than the truth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  …I know that I am lost, and none can help me now… Night surrounds me… I am lost… None can help me… Lost… Help me… Help me… Help me… Help me help me help me HELP—

  And he was awake.

  Aldric lay flat on his back, shuddering all over. He was far too familiar with nightmares and that had been the worst kind, one which would make him afraid to sleep again if he recalled its details afterwards. But those details were gone now, vanished like mist in the morning, and only cold sweat remained.

  The wan light of pre-dawn trickled through his bolted bedroom shutters, making vague shapes of the furniture. Familiar shapes, and comforting. Aldric rolled over in the narrow bed, hoping to find more peaceful sleep and instead found another warm body stretched out beside him. That made him sit bolt upright in a way the dream had never done, and for just a moment, when he saw the tumbled blonde hair on his pillow, he thought he was dreaming again; this time much more pleasantly.

  “Kyrin…?”

  Gueynor.

  She pulled her nightgown close under her chin and looked up at him, as shy as any woman might be if found unexpected and uninvited in a stranger’s bed.

  “I’ve embarrassed you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have woken earlier and left you alone.”

  “Embarrassed? I should think… No, not at… Not much, anyway.” He raked hair out of his eyes and knuckled at their sockets as if trying to punch himself awake. “I thought—”

  “You thought I was someone else. Someone called Kyrin?” Gueynor, he thought, was most perceptive for so early in the morning. Too perceptive for his liking.

  “She was a woman I… I thought I knew better than I did.” Aldric held his breath for a second, then changed the subject. “What happened?”

  “You slept. While you were standing, and even when you were walking on your way back here from the bathhouse. I’ve never seen a man so tired. It wasn’t a natural weariness. Do you…” She hesitated, searching for words.

  “Just say it.”

  “Do you use ymeth?”

  “Dreamsmoke?” Aldric stared at her a moment and chuckled to himself, not loudly, but with an honest amusement she hadn’t seen from him before. “No. I don’t use any sort of smoke at all.” The laughter faltered, and faded away. “Perhaps I should. That way I might sleep soundly every night.”

  “Not last night,” murmured Gueynor. “You spoke in a language I don’t know. So I held you, and you were still again. But you didn’t wake.”

  “I… I have bad dreams. Of betrayal, and loss, and darkness. Of my father. All the time and money spent to make me skilled in bringing death, yet I couldn’t bring him one breath more of life. That was when I should have died myself, but he ordered me to live. To avenge him. So I took that oath. I set aside my honour and promised I would keep faith. I wanted to say so many things. But he was already dead.”

  Aldric tried not to blink his stinging eyes, knowing what might happen if he did, and Gueynor shivered. He could see her try to imagine what was going on in the mind behind them, and wonder too if there was a short, simple answer to those imaginings.

  “I’m not mad, Gueynor. I think too much about the past, that’s all. The past, and what can’t be mended. It’s a common Alban vice. But no, not mad.”

  He stroked his left hand down the line of Gueynor’s jaw until it cupped her chin. Its pressure was neither rough nor painful, but for just an instant she started like a frightened animal. Then she relaxed. Her behaviour puzzled Aldric, and his brows drew together in a frown. He had often heard of people resigning themselves to the inevitable, and almost done it himself, this was the first time he had ever watched it happen. The experience wasn’t pleasant.

  “Since for once we’re exchanging honest answers, my lady,” there was no sarcasm in the way he used the title, “I’m curious what secrets you might have to tell me.” The mere prospect of answering questions seemed to frighten her, as it always did, so much that he suspected physical assault would have less effect than a prolonged verbal interrogation.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What don’t I want to know?” Matching question with question was no way to get answers. Aldric paused a moment, trying to get his thoughts into something resembling order then shrugged and abandoned the attempt. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.” He doubted Gueynor would do anything of the sort, but it was as if she needed some reason, some excuse, or just some sympathetic listener.

  “I’ve lived here since I was a child, and my uncle Evthan has always been like a father to me. He took my real father’s place early in my life, when my parents were… When they died.” It was all familiar ground. Too familiar by far.

  “But surely his sister Aline is your—”

  “Aunt. My adoptive mother, yes, but my aunt for all that.” Evthan had never said that sister and niece were mother and daughter, Aldric just assumed it and was wrong again as in so many other things. “My mother’s name was Sula. She was the youngest of the family, and a kind, gentle lady. That was why my father loved her. Not for rank and lands and titles, for she had none, and despite her faith, which was not his. He loved her for herself alone.”

  He realised now why so many things about Gueynor and her uncle seemed out of character, and the obstacles between father and mother were familiar ones. Albans were usually pragmatic about religion, yet they turned uncharacteristically devout when they needed reasons to obstruct a marriage and politics weren’t enough.

  “Who was your father, Gueynor?” he prompted, already half-guessing the answer. “What was his name?”

  “My father was… My true father was Erwan Evenou, the last Droganel Overlord of Seghar. Before the Geruaths came.” So the guess was right after all. He asked no more prompting questions, for with this first hurdle crossed Gueynor would find her memories and talking about them easier to bear. He knew that from experience. “Lord Erwan was already married when he met my mother by the river, one warm day in spring. His wife had been chosen for him to bring an alliance, gold and land to Seghar. You’ve heard of the custom?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “He was young, your age or a little more. My mother wasn’t yet twenty. He was the Overlord of Seghar, she was a peasant, and he could have lain with her there and then or taken her to the citadel. He was the Overlord, he had the right. But he was a courtly gentleman. Instead of violence and rape, he climbed from his tall horse and paid her compliments as he would a high-born lady, and with his own hands gathered flowers along the river’s edge.”

  Aldric wondered if that was how the meeting really played out, or if it was just what Gueynor had been told. Then he regretted his cynicism at once. The thing wasn’t impossible, and many haughty lords were often romantics at heart. Kyrin once said that he himself was… His mind veered from the memory. Did such long-past details really matter to anyone but Gueynor?

  “The Empire’s law allows a man of rank to take formal consorts besides his wife, and my father wanted my mother’s presence in his household to be respectable and open. So he petitioned his own father, High Lord Evenou, at the Emperor’s Summer Palace in Kalitzim. My mother told me how he rode there himself, wearing the overmantle of a Falcon courier so he could use the post-roads. When I was born the next spring, I was his daughter in all but rights of succession, and I lived in Seghar until I was eight years old.”

  Gueynor stopped and Aldric glanced at her face. They had been lying on their backs, side by side with the coverlet pulled high, with her talking into the air as if making a speech. The phrases wer
e slightly stilted and over-correct and, and if she had spoken to him like that when they first met, her pretence of being a peasant would have caused yet more confusion and even slight amusement. It was clear, with benefit of hindsight, that she had never been other than what she was, the much-loved bastard of a lord who probably showed her more affection than his legitimate children. She was proof of love, they were just evidence of duty done to family and politics. That was a dangerous attitude, for him, for the child and for her mother. Aldric had encountered extremes of jealousy before, and knew what they could do.

  Gueynor’s lips were pressed tightly together to stop their trembling, and unshed tears glistened in her wide-open eyes. Aldric, with memories like that of his own, kept his own mouth shut and waited until she regained her self-control. It didn’t take long.

  “I was happy for those eight years. My mother and my father were happy too. Then everything went wrong.”

  Aldric had expected to hear those words sooner or later, because this whole situation reeked of vulnerability. What happened, what he was about to hear, was as inevitable in its way as the final scenes of a classic tragedy. The only difference between reality and one of Oren Osmar’s plays was the unfairness of the plot.

  “My father’s wife died in childbed, and the infant died with her. There was no difficulty about inheritance, since besides myself there were two sons and another daughter. But he decided he would marry my mother, to give her rank and style and title before the law as well as before the Gods.” Gueynor laughed, a hoarse little sound, and pushed the heel of one hand against her forehead.

  “The Gods… Yes, that was the trouble. I know nothing of your Alban beliefs, Kourgath, but the Jevaiden and Vreijaur have a different faith from the Imperial lands. There the Emperor’s descended… Supposed to be descended, in direct line from the Father of Fires. Ya an-Sherbanul bystrei, vodyaj cho’da tlei.” She made a spitting noise. “ ‘Revere those of the Sherban dynasty, for their words are the words of Heaven.’ Or so they say. It’s even written on their banners. Yet how much reverence have the Grand Warlords shown their Emperors? None of it would have mattered… if the Grand Council hadn’t ruled that all lords owing fealty to the Empire must worship as Sherbanul. All lords – and their families.”