The Demon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  “Including wives?”

  “Especially wives. If they’re of a different faith they must reject it in public, before the provincial Exark and twenty witnesses. When my mother Sula refused to renounce the Three Gods, my father Erwan broke all precedent and adopted the Teshirin holiness himself. They married by those rites. It would have been better to set aside the lordship first, rather than hold it as something the Drusalans despised. Their soldiers came, as he thought they would, but not to depose him as he expected. If they did that, he would have been granted an opportunity to speak before the Council and accept punishment by their ruling. Instead—” She broke off, but when Aldric rolled over to look at her, expecting tears, he saw instead such a cold hatred as he had never witnessed on any woman’s face. Not even on Lyseun ar Korentin’s, and before Heaven Dewan’s wife made her dislike of him all too plain.

  “They dared kill an Imperial Overlord? With no authority?”

  “They murdered him. They cut him down in his own High Hall, they claimed he was tainted beyond redemption even by the Lord Politark at Drakkesborg, and they even claimed my mother had enchanted him. That she was a sorcerer. And the Empire’s punishment for sorcery is… Is…”

  “Is better left unmentioned.”

  Gemmel had told him once, and hadn’t been invited to repeat himself. It involved force and heat and metal, applied with ingenious cruelty for as long as possible. If they did that to Gueynor’s mother… He felt nauseated, his imagination briefly touching on – and then crushing out of existence – vile images with no rightful place in his brain.

  “They murdered his whole family. My family. I escaped because Evthan was there that day. He was chief forester to the Overlord, and not just because Sula was his sister; he gained his place by merit. When he took me out past the soldiers, he told any who asked that I was his daughter. Two of them tried to stop us, but I remember their officer – he was very tall, with a black beard – commanding them to let us through. He said, ‘If any child of mine was in this place, I’d take them far away before they witness what will happen. Get out,’ he told my uncle, ‘and don’t come back until things settle down.’ We got out, and we never came back at all.” Gueynor’s eyes closed, and she lay still and silent for so long that Aldric thought she might have fallen asleep.

  “I’ve lived in Valden ever since,” she said at last. “I’ve learned to be a peasant, as best I can, and to accept my place. You learn a lot in ten years. But I haven’t learned how to forget. Or forgive. Oh, you can’t understand how it feels to have everything snatched from you by violence!”

  Can’t I? thought Aldric. Maybe one day I’ll tell you. And what I did about it. Or maybe not.

  “After that Seghar was ruled by one soldier after another; eldheisartin, hautheisartin, high ranks but high enough to suffer from delusions of grandeur. Then two years ago the Geruaths arrived, father and son, each as strange as the other. They make a fine pair. It was Lord Geruath who arranged my father’s murder. I learned this from… from well-informed sources. Yet he bided his time for eight years until his patron Etzel invited him to take the Lordship as a reward for continued support.”

  “Etzel? Grand Warlord Etzel?” Lord Geruath, according to King Rynert, sided with the Emperor. Rynert had told him – assured him – that the Overlord of Seghar was an Alban ally, and a safe means by which to contact Goth and Bruda. This new information turned everything upside-down.

  “Of course the Warlord. Who else?” Gueynor, brooding on what might have been, was becoming haughty and impatient. There was something else in her voice, something Aldric recognised but at first couldn’t place.

  “My uncle Evthan went to Geruath and humbly requested to keep his place as forester, claiming no more loyalty to my father than to any other man who could no longer pay him. That amused our loving lord, for he’s like that himself. But one day my uncle will entice Lord Geruath into the Deepwood, alone, and I’ll be waiting for him. I’ll teach him the cost of Seghar. It’ll be his last lesson, and he’ll take a long, slow time over learning it.”

  *

  Aldric recognised now what he had detected; it was the vocal equivalent of the hatred seen so briefly on her face, a low, ugly snarl deep in her throat, and yet there was no way he could condemn the reasons for it. He had felt the same way, done the same things, directed the same long-brooded hate at Duergar and Kalarr. The loathing which festered inside him for four years became so powerful that the talisman Ykraith focused it as a pulse of incandescent energy to roast Duergar Vathach where he stood, and Gueynor had been anticipating her vengeance for ten years… Her mood was past now, but he would never look at this young woman in quite the same way again.

  “I wonder if Geruath suspects something?” she muttered to herself, ignoring Aldric as if he wasn’t there. “He hasn’t come out of the citadel in months, except that time they dug open the old mound, and then he and Crisen kept themselves surrounded by soldiers. Mercenaries. Why mercenaries? Don’t they trust their own—”

  “What about mercenaries?” After the previous night, Aldric had a certain interest in soldiers appearing where they weren’t expected.

  “There are few Jouvaines in the garrison at Seghar now, and most of them are just retainers. The rest are Drusalan or Tergovan filth. A troop came here four months ago, just at the end of winter, riding through to Seghar. They hadn’t even been taken on by the Overlord when it happened. Which was just as well.”

  “When what happened?” It seemed to be his expected role, like an actor in one of Osmar’s more complicated dramas, to bridge Gueynor’s thoughtful pauses when she was unwilling to say more without prompting.

  “One of them was a man who called himself Keeyul.” She missed the expression which flicked like the shadow of a bird’s wing across Aldric’s face. “He offered me silver if I would… Go with him into the woods. But what he asked… He wanted me to…”

  “Enough. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “It wasn’t just soldier’s talk, Kourgath, not ordinary lewdness. What he suggested was filthy, and my uncle Evthan heard him say it. He spilled him from his horse into the mud and would have done much more if the other men hadn’t separated them.”

  From Aldric’s own encounter with the man, Keeyul was good enough with weapons, but fist to fist against someone like Evthan his lean weasel frame was outmatched twice over. The big hunter could have, would have, killed him bare-handed if left alone to finish the job. It was a pity he didn’t get the chance.

  “Keeyul wasn’t a lord’s-man, not yet, so he couldn’t do anything himself. Not to the Overlord’s head forester. But he took my uncle with him to Seghar and reported what had happened. Not to Geruath, but to Crisen. I don’t know why. Crisen ruled it would be unjust to kill a man of proven loyalty for being as loyal to his own family, and he let my uncle live.”

  Aldric waited. When a lord with a bad reputation turned magnanimous, the tale usually carried a sting in it. He was right.

  “But he said he wouldn’t tolerate such disrespect towards his intended retainers, and ordered a punishment. I don’t know what else they did to him, but I do know they beat my uncle with stock-whips from the cattle yard. They beat him until there was no skin left on his back, then they rubbed him with salt and flung him into an ox-cart to come home as best he could. He couldn’t stand when he came to Valden, he could only crawl on his knees and elbows like an animal. And he had barely left his bed when the Beast came.” Gueynor stared at the ceiling, remembering.

  “Kourgath,” she said, “my uncle Evthan isn’t the man I thought I knew. Not now. Not any more. Perhaps it was the beating, or fretting about the Beast, or what happened to his wife and daughter.” At last her voice began to tremble. “She was four, did you know that? Four years old.”

  Aldric’s mouth quirked as if at an unpleasant taste, the rank, bitter flavour of petty oppressions, of casual cruelties. This was a dirty business, and it was growing dirtier by the minute. Inexorably he was becoming
involved in more than just hunting the Beast, or King Rynert’s murderous political necessities. At least now there was reason for that involvement, regardless of how petty the reason might appear. But was it reason enough to kill? Words from his past came to him, in a woman’s voice accented by the distant north. ‘Don’t take life without regret; don’t waste regret when it’s not needed. Think about that.’ He had thought about it many times, and now he was thinking about it again.

  No longer restrained by pride and a need for clear speech, Gueynor was crying. They were deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body as she lay curled up tightly alongside him. Though he couldn’t guess who she was weeping for – there were so many – Aldric was glad to see the tears. She had held back far too much emotion this past while, and such a release could do nothing but good. That was something else he knew from experience.

  Aldric put his arms around her and held her close until the fit of weeping spent itself. When she rolled over and kissed him, he returned the kiss and held her closer still. It seemed both then and later that there was no intent from either of them; the embrace just changed from comforting to loving as naturally as the rising of the sun outside their window. It was as if, after all the blood and death shared in memory and reality, they needed to share something of life. Their bodies moved together with a slow rhythm that was very far from love, and yet much more than mere urgent lust. For the duration of a single heartbeat in that half-lit shuttered room another face invaded Aldric’s vision.

  Kyrin…

  And then was gone.

  *

  Only afterwards, when they lay in a warm knot of entwined limbs and soft quick breathing, did he realise how thoroughly Gueynor’s nails had scored his back. It wasn’t the clawing of real or simulated eagerness, not even a peak of passion, but more like reluctance to let him go and return to the real world outside the house, the room, the bed. A world where people hurt each another to prove whose god was best, and a wolf ran in the woods.

  With his head cradled in the angle of her neck and shoulder and his left arm curled around her waist below the ribs, his tousled hair tickled Gueynor’s nose until she had to shift aside. That small movement was enough to send him sliding face-foremost into the pillows.

  “Mmf?” The noise he made might not have been a question, but it sounded like one.

  “I wanted to pay you for killing the Beast,” she said, so quietly that she spoke almost to herself. “Nobody else can.”

  “Nobody has to pay me, least of all you, least of all like that.” Aldric’s voice was muffled and, despite the implied mild criticism in his words, there was also an unspoken hint of not that I’m objecting, you understand. “Because—” he rolled into a more audible position, “—because I’m doing this for my own reasons. Because I want to.”

  “And I wanted to as well,” she said, tracing patterns on his chest with one long finger until he twitched and brushed it aside.

  “You made your payment too early. The Beast isn’t dead yet.”

  “Yet. It will be, soon. And that wasn’t my only reason.” Her finger returned to his chest, moved up to his throat and touched the silver crest-collar encircling it. The contact wasn’t a caress, not quite, and suggested she could guess the collar meant there was more to ‘Kourgath’ the Alban traveller than he admitted. “What about afterwards?”

  “Afterwards is afterwards.” The half-smile vanished from his face and now its expression was fixed in neutral wariness. “And that’s a different place. Best wait until we get there.” Gueynor nodded as if she understood his meaning, though Aldric was none too sure she did. Kissing the palm of her own right hand, she touched it once against his forehead and once against his mouth, echoing the blessing she had seen him use though she certainly didn’t understand the meaning behind that either.

  “Avert,” she said in a hasty voice which didn’t trust itself to lengthy speeches, then slipped out of the bed, gathered up her clothing and hurried from the room.

  *

  Aldric glanced up towards the sky. It was a clear clean blue flecked with long white clouds high up, and the sun’s disc was just two handspans over the forest-fringed horizon. This would be a long day, and longer still since what he wanted was the night, and the rising of the moon.

  He was dressed in his clothes and equipment from the previous day, some of it still slightly damp from washing. His pack-saddle provided a clean white shirt, but any damage on the rest had been repaired with tiny, careful stitches by a woman of the village, perhaps even Gueynor herself. His armoured sleeves were an open secret now, but he still wore them concealed. The telek and short-bow were with him again, and his tsepan was on his belt. But this time the black dirk wasn’t alone.

  Aldric wore his Three Blades today, the taipan shortsword hooked to his weaponbelt at the proper angle for a fast draw, and Isileth Widowmaker’s black hilt rearing high above one shoulder. The taiken might be of little use against the Beast, but he was well aware how much her blade would have changed things against Keeyul and his companions and – though he didn’t say so aloud – he felt more at ease with the longsword at his back than having Evthan there. There was no poison on any of the weapons, not this time. If he had to bring death to whatever waited in the forest, it would be the clean death of steel.

  Or of silver.

  When he left the house that morning, he tracked down the dog-owner Laine, remembering how Evthan had put less effort into an attempt to borrow the animals than he might have done. Aldric gave the paunchy, fat-faced man five minutes of low-voiced, one-sided conversation, and by the end there were no longer objections about use of the hounds, or about anything he might have requisitioned from Laine’s house. He seldom made threats, but he knew how to do it well.

  Aldric was ready for almost anything now, except his first sight of the two beasts he had gone to so much trouble to obtain. They weren’t hunting-dogs at all but leggy, leering black-and-tan Drusalan guard hounds, creatures with an evil reputation. Aldric’s recent acquaintance with them was beyond mere reputation, and he suspected these brutes could be just as dangerous as anything they might be used to hunt.

  Sweating at the safe end of the leashes, Laine suggested he give the hounds his scent. In a mood more inclined to give them an arrow apiece – or maybe two – he approached cautiously and held out one hand for the dogs to sniff. From their expressions neither would have wagged a tail even if they possessed one, but they stopped growling and left the hand on his wrist. And that, he guessed, would be the only sign of friendship he could expect.

  As Evthan wrapped both leashes around his fist, Aldric glanced up and saw Gueynor on the edge of the small crowd gathering to see them off. She was staring at her uncle as if to fix his features in her mind. There were too many people about to exchange any private words, so instead Aldric made a small half-bow in her direction and hoped she would understand what he meant. Whether she did or not, an odd expression crossed her face before she turned and walked away.

  Evthan touched him on the shoulder and led the way towards the woods. Aldric glanced after him but stood a moment, confused by the emotion he had seen. He followed slowly, frowning as he tried to identify it, and realised only many hours later that what he had seen was pity.

  But by then it was too late.

  *

  They walked all day, often stopping to look for tracks, to listen for faint, furtive movement in the underbrush, to let the dogs cast about for scent. And all day they saw, heard and smelled nothing. The refreshing clarity of early morning was quite gone now, if it ever penetrated this far amongst the trees at all. The air, warm and close, was sticky with the threat of rain that never came. It sucked the moisture out of Aldric’s skin so it soaked into his clothing instead, and left his mouth tasting dry and acrid. He took frequent gulps from the flask slung at his hip even though what it contained, a herbal tisane of some sort, was sour enough to make his eyes water. All that could be said in its favour was that it was fairly cool, and ev
en that half-hearted praise ceased to apply by noon.

  Aldric had already set an arrow to his bow, clipping the horn nock tight around the serving of the string. It might save him a fraction of time if he needed speed to save his life. More than once he toyed with the goose-feather fletching, or hooked the thumb of his shooting-glove over the string, all as preparation for nothing at all. Each time he jerked one shoulder in an artificial shrug or compressed his lips in a false smile, and once he even returned the arrow to its quiver. But within a quarter-hour or so it was back on the string because the lack of it made him uneasy.

  As afternoon crawled towards evening, the few scraps of sky visible beyond the tree-tops clouded over until all the blue was gone. All that remained was a corrugated expanse of grey from one horizon to the other, tugged and driven by a distant wind too high to feel or hear. What light there was became dull, with a smoky, dirty-yellowness about it that seemed to stain whatever it touched. Evthan halted, looked around, then stabbed his toe at the ground.

  “We may as well turn back. There’s little enough for the dogs to work on, and if it rains, there’ll be no scent at all.” Aldric nodded in agreement. It was something he had been waiting to hear for almost an hour now but he was damned if he would say it first. Then he jerked his head towards the panting hounds.

  “Just let me get a good few steps ahead of that pair. I don’t think they like me, and I definitely don’t like them.”

  As Evthan stepped aside to let him through the Alban noticed again, though it had been right in front of him since they left Valden, that the hunter wasn’t in his customary green and brown deerskins. Instead he wore close-fitting garments so dark grey they were almost black, and a sleeveless vest, a coyac, made from black fur of such thickness that it made the lanky Jouvaine seem stooped and hunch-shouldered. It was wolf-fur of course, and Aldric wasn’t a fool. He wondered yet again if the jacket was just a good-luck token worn by the man called Wolfsbane, or held the deeper significance he had suspected from the first time he saw it.