The Demon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  “That they want it controlled?”

  “Yes. I’ve already changed my mind about that. Now the Overlord is also having second thoughts, and his loving son,” acid dripped from Marek’s words, “is trying to strengthen the old man’s resolve. It’s not working…”

  *

  “I bet that one isn’t waiting for his pay,” muttered one of the troopers with a brief nod towards the man in black with all the weapons at his belt. He managed the old soldier’s trick of speaking without moving his lips, but what he said carried well enough.

  “Silence in the ranks,” said Hertag Tolnar more sharply than required; his rank-bars were still so new and bright that he sometimes needed to give their authority an airing. Then, more quietly, “Do you think he’d even be here if he was? The Geruaths have paid in advance for once.”

  “I wish they’d pay us in advance.” Raden was harping on his favourite string, and Tolnar would have been more surprised if the man had stayed silent. Then we’d only be, oh, three months behind. Or is it four?”

  “Silence!”

  It was just the usual grumbling. Tolnar heard it on every parade and every time he assigned the sentry roster. He had done plenty of it in his time, but paid more heed since his promotion in case there was a change in the usual resigned tone of voice. Commander Jervan had put all his officers, even the most recent like Tolnar, on notice to report any signs of genuine unrest. The whole garrison was in arrears with their half-pay nicely judged, enough to keep them waiting in hope, not so little or so much that they would walk away. Eldhertag Keeyul and his squad had seemingly done it, but nobody else.

  Not yet…

  Kortagor Jervan feared mutiny, but Tolnar and the other junior commanders knew better. Their men wouldn’t wake up one morning and tear Seghar apart looking for hidden cashboxes; if they existed at all they were long empty. Most were farmers’ sons like Tolnar himself, and the joshing they would get when they gave up soldiering and returned home would be no worse than this. It was far more likely that Jervan would be the one to wake up and find his barracks as empty as its pay-chest.

  “Attention!” Tolnar and his squad straightened from stand-easy to parade rest as the Geruath lords and their two companions went by. “All right, lads.” Someone laughed, someone else made a rude noise. Every one of the squad was older than their Hertag and calling them ‘lads’ rang hollow, but Tolnar persisted. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re back off duty.”

  “I was off-duty. And asleep.” Raden faked a yawn. “So I should get extra for this. Double time.”

  “If Jervan hears you,” said Tolnar, “the only double time we’ll get is round the square until we drop. And if you’ve found a drinking-den that takes extra nothing for their ale, let us all know where it is. Fall in, march!”

  *

  Aldric watched as the Geruath argument ended in an abrupt word of command that sent the column off through darkening streets. Lord Geruath was in the lead but, perhaps significantly, Crisen brought up the rear. They re-entered the citadel at what seemed its oldest point, clattering down a winding flight of worn stone steps into a place familiar to Marek, new to Aldric and equally unpleasant to them both.

  There was a cross-corridor at the foot of the stairway, and the door halfway along its left branch was secured by many bolts, all new. The original lock was gone, smashed out of the timber as if by the stroke of a siege-ram, with only a semi-circular hole edged with ragged wood and twisted metal to show where it had been. Something inside had wanted out and had succeeded.

  The soldiers who drew the bolts went about their task in a scared manner that suggested Crisen’s meddling with magic wasn’t such a well-kept secret as he hoped. Like everyone else, Aldric backed away when the door opened, even though nothing more than a sickly smell of stale incense came drifting out towards them.

  The room beyond had been completely wrecked. What little furniture it contained was reduced to shreds and splinters, and the lamplight revealed many triple gouges in floor, in walls, even in the ceiling almost twenty feet above their heads. Half-erased magical scribblings covered the floor and, even from where he stood, Aldric could see how the larger of the two circles were broken by a broad spray of ashes. Then he grimaced when he noticed the blackish-crimson shreds strewn across the floor. It looked like dried meat, and he remembered what Marek had told him after his first visit to this grim place.

  It was dried meat. Of a sort.

  “Do you see any more than last time?” demanded Overlord Geruath, paying the grisly fragments little heed.

  “No, my lord,” said Marek. “I told you before, Sedna drew this circle slowly and with care, but that one yonder in great haste.” Heads turned to look at it. “She wasn’t expecting a dangerous Summoning and I doubt she was making a Summoning at all, not on that particular night. I told you why she—”

  “What was it?” The Overlord’s voice was irritable and impatient, as if he no longer had time for theories. As if he had other things to do before the night was out. “I said, what was it? Can’t you tell?”

  “My lord, I can’t. And I won’t guess. But I ask once again, will you allow me to start a Dismiss—”

  “Until my son permits it, no,” said Geruath and turned away. Aldric saw his face, and an expression that was little more than a collection of facial tics.

  “Is he as mad as he looks?” he asked Marek once the others had moved out of earshot.

  “Not only mad, but a fool,” said the demon-queller grimly. “Sedna had a library somewhere, but he and Crisen won’t let me near it. If I could see what books she had, I might at least be able to—”

  “Guess? You just claimed you won’t do that.”

  “Don’t joke about these things. It isn’t funny. Not now. But… But you said something when we first met. When you drew that first dagger on me and I encharmed you to save my neck. Say it again.”

  Aldric knew what Marek meant, yet couldn’t speak the words which had tormented him for so long. It was as if something was impeding his tongue. His face went red with effort and sweat broke out on his forehead, enough that it trickled like great tears down his temples.

  “No,” he whispered, “I can’t. Not here.”

  “You must!” Marek insisted. “Otherwise more people will die! Say the words, Aldric! You have to say the words!”

  His real name made Aldric twitch as if pricked by a thorn and his lips moved, forming words that Marek couldn’t hear, couldn’t read, couldn’t recognise. There was a thread of blood running from between the fingers of his clenched left hand, where his nails had driven through the skin of his palm. It was as well no one was near, for it would seem to any other observer that Marek’s young companion was in the throes of a fit. And then the fit was past. Aldric’s eyes, which had squeezed tightly shut, reopened and he summoned up a smile from somewhere. A genuine one.

  “M-my m-mind is my own,” he stammered. “S-so is my m-mouth.” The smile widened fractionally as he took a deep breath. “And no bloody intruder will interfere with either.”

  “Do you know what you just did?”

  “Gave myself a headache.”

  “I said before, don’t joke! You’ve just thrown off a Binding.”

  “A what?”

  “Binding. Our uninvited guest doesn’t want to be talked about. Gemmel must have mentioned the charm.” If he had Aldric couldn’t remember, but he nodded cautious agreement all the same. “And you broke it!”

  Aldric could guess how. The Echainon spellstone was in its bag inside his jerkin, and he could feel the heat against his chest. Yet its augmenting of his own meagre will hadn’t left him weak and shaky the way it had before, and a brief stumble in speech was nothing by comparison to that.

  “Does this Binding tell you anything about what set it in place?”

  “The only thing that will tell me is—”

  “Is what the Binding kept me from telling you. There’s an old burial mound in the Deepwood. I was insid
e it, never mind why. It had been broken open, but it was clean, and there were roses. Such roses, Marek. Huge!” The dream that was a nightmare coiled itself about the inside of his skull like a thread of incense-smoke, but Aldric continued without even a tremor in his voice. “And there was a sheet of parchment that must have come from here, because I met lord’s-men sent to retrieve it.”

  Marek didn’t ask about their fate. With Aldric’s reputation he could guess. The opened mound-grave concerned him more, for such places had an evil name in demon-lore. They had been a focus for great emotion in their time, sorrow or joy or simple relief, and that focus was easily redirected for other things.

  “Parchment?” he prompted. “As in pages from a book?”

  “One page.” Still unwilling to let his conscious mind dwell on it too much, Aldric cleared his throat. “It was a rhyme,” he said. “A poem, or a prophecy maybe. It was something like this: ‘The setting sun grows dim…’ ”

  Marek listened and felt the hackles rising on the nape of his neck as they hadn’t done in many a long day. The significance of the roses was clear now. All too clear. He only wished this hadn’t come in his time.

  “ ‘…Despair and death to all,’ ”Aldric finished, and shivered as if ice had pressed against his neck. “I only read it once but it’s been with me ever since, even though I could never memorise poetry when I was young. What does it mean?” Marek didn’t want to tell him, and to put off the inevitable he changed the subject.

  “It’s two nights past full moon,” he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Two nights since Sedna was…”

  “Eaten.”

  “Eaten,” Marek echoed. “So I can only guess what this thing is or looks like.” He produced a small taut smile to keep the admission company. “But I’m much more sure of how it feels.” Aldric’s mind raced along that particular unpleasant track and reached the same conclusion.

  “It’s hungry.” The next step of reasoning was an ugly one. “And the Geruaths are bringing unarmoured men against it. Or should that be for it?”

  When they caught up with the Overlord and his retainers, several troopers were hammering at the end wall of the corridor while the rest, Crisen among them, stood well back and watched. A blow rang hollow, the concentration of impact altered slightly and within a minute the outline of a doorway appeared among the rough stones of the wall. Aldric nudged Marek and as they retired a judicious distance down the corridor his left hand slipped inside his jerkin, fingers tightening around the spellstone hidden there.

  When the door burst open with shocking suddenness and gulped three soldiers into the blackness beyond Aldric’s muscles spasmed, wrenching the spellstone off its cord even though the plaited leather bit deep into his neck before it broke. Only his closed fist and the thin covering of buckskin prevented an eldritch glow of power from illuminating the corridor from end to end. Then the men reappeared, grinning sheepishly as they dusted themselves down. He relaxed again and tucked his deadly handful out of sight.

  “Why should we be looking here?” he asked the demon-queller. “If this thing’s a true dem–, a true thing, then it won’t need tunnels. Will it?”

  “It’s become flesh of a sort. It must move as fleshly beings move.”

  “Can this flesh-of-a-sort be cut?”

  “Probably not.”

  “We’ll see.”

  There was a passageway beyond the hidden doorway, no doubt a sound piece of work, but its design gave Aldric the shudders. Unlike even Dewan ar Korentin, a man nobody could call a coward, Aldric was at ease below ground. After Gemmel’s home beneath the Blue Mountains, after the Lair of Ykraith and the burial crypts under Dunrath, he should have been well-used to the subterranean. But all of those places had been well-lit and familiar, or at least vaulted and spacious.

  This tunnel crouched around him, only an arm’s length overhead at most. Its walls weren’t raw stone or lined with wooden beams; these walls were curved, and their metal arches curved with them. Outlines once hard and artificial had blended through over many years with red clay and pallid fungoid growths, until now the glistening passage looked like a colossal gullet frozen halfway through the act of swallowing.

  When Geruath moved his soldiers further down the tunnel Marek had followed, leaving Aldric alone with his imagination and his lamp. One formed glutinous images just beyond the edges of the other’s light, furtive half-seen movements that ceased before his eyes could reach and focus on them. Moisture gathered on a squashy growth above him, then drooled with salivary stealth towards his face.

  Aldric wasn’t actually running when he caught up with the others. Not quite.

  The tunnel divided at that point. After brief, muttered discussion between the Overlord and his son, they and four men went one way while a six-strong squad went along the other fork. Aldric stayed with the Overlord. In sight or out of it he distrusted Geruath, and he intended keeping a close eye on Crisen. Besides, whatever route those two chose was probably the safest, and for the time being courage and honour could give way to common sense and caution.

  He wondered if the same notion had prompted Marek, but doubted it. The Cernuan was that rare and often dangerous thing, a brave and dedicated man. But dedicated to what? Duty? Principle?

  Or just self-preservation like all the rest...?

  *

  Hertag Tolnar gave his boot-straps a final tug, wriggled his toes inside the leather and straightened to find himself alone. The squad had warned him almost in chorus that they wouldn’t wait, but he thought they were joking. He was wrong.

  Tolnar swore under his breath. So much for showing respect to a superior, even a very new one. There was a lot less glamour to serving as a lord’s-man than he had thought; fewer plumes and parades, more standing guard in the rain then polishing his armour afterwards. The hertag’s bronze bars for his shoulders had been promised weeks ago, like his arrears of pay, but though the rank arrived eventually, the pay did not. Keeyul and his men had done the right thing when they left, and Tolnar decided to follow their example as soon as he was able.

  Another division in the passageway told him why the others had disappeared so fast, and he opened his mouth to call them. Then shut it again, not wanting to seem a panicky fool. And for fear of what else might be listening. There were many rumours current in the barracks, all different and all variations on a single nasty theme. But there were footprints in the russet muck coating the tunnel floor, and they at least were more tangible than rumours. After a moment’s hesitation Tolnar followed them.

  And the clinging velvet shadows swallowed him.

  A bare ten paces further on he stopped, shivering with more than the dank cold because the whole situation reeked of danger. His solitary walk had a horrid inevitability about it, like the fifteen steps from cell to scaffold he had watched other men and women take. If he walked on, he would die. Yet his vulnerability felt so overstated that it was self-defeating and the shivers died away as assurance of his own reality warmed him. He was a man, he existed, he wasn’t a puppet dancing when another hand tugged strings in a preordained pattern. And he was armed.

  He groped at his back for the slung crossbow, taking comfort from its cool weight, and slid it around into the cradle of his left arm. The weapon had a spring-steel prod thicker than his thumb that would send bolts into and through a target with appalling force. Into and through any target, even one armoured in proof metal. Any target at all…

  There was something hanging from the ceiling just ahead of him, and he froze with all his fears rushing back. Then he breathed a sigh of relief as the yellow light of his lantern played across its surface. A rock had slipped free of the all-embracing clay, and its enormous weight had buckled the props without being heavy enough to break through them and fall to the soggy floor. He sidestepped the massive boulder, staring warily at it the whole time. What he could see of the surface was rounded and smooth, glossy as enamel from the moisture filming it. Never mind the monster of the rumo
urs, a rock like that dropping on a man’s head would take him off the barrack roster with no need to involve magic.

  Tolnar breathed a soft oath and strode on, his curse hanging on the cold air of the tunnel as pale-grey fog. Then he jerked to another halt and this time sweat-beads popped out all over him, for something just out of his lantern’s range had moved.

  “Bloody wet fungus!” he muttered. “Scared of a bloody reflection!” The words didn’t reassure him, and the hands which spanned and loaded the heavy crossbow were shaking as he lined the weapon on the lantern’s pool of light. Whether it was imagination or a real movement he saw it again and jerked the trigger. His bolt ripped sparks from stone and rang its way down the tunnel’s oozing throat with enough noise to drown out any other furtive movements.

  Tolnar turned and ran back the way he had come, not daring to reload or even look back. Not wanting to know what might be at his heels. If he could make the hanging boulder fall and complete the cave-in, it might bring down enough rubble to block the passageway. Or make a barricade to hide behind. Or something…

  As his lamplight swayed across the rock’s slick surface it seemed to move and shudder, but became comfortingly huge and stable when he stopped beside it. It would be big enough to shelter him, if only he could knock it free. He swung his crossbow like a pickaxe, felt the impact slamming up his arms and heard the wooden stock crack in protest. Part of the mechanism gave way, but the boulder shifted slightly. He hit it again, then a final time with all his strength and jumped sideways out of its path.

  Nothing happened.

  His lantern showed him where the rock had settled a little against its metal props like someone shifting in bed. A trickle of fragments pattered against the ground, but stopped before more than a handful had fallen. Tolnar cursed as anger swamped fear for an instant, and stepped forward with his makeshift bludgeon hefted in both hands.

  It was then he saw the fragments more closely, and his gorge rose. They were soft, some pallid but others a rich crimson like things he might see on a butcher’s slab. These chunks of meat were far, far fresher than any butcher’s cuts, so fresh and warm that they steamed in the trembling lamplight. It took two beats of his frantically pumping heart to realise this was the rest of his squad. The wavering lantern slashed shadows and moist reflections from the curving, claustrophobic walls until at last its light settled back onto the curves and angles of the boulder. Except that it wasn’t a boulder, but something – some Thing – curled up in a cradle of its own long limbs, asleep, or dormant…