• • •
The surprise came at the very end of the Auditions, at the end of a very long day. The hall was almost empty, pretty much everyone who wanted to be seen had been seen, and judged, and Hawk and Fisher and the other tutors were just sitting it out through the last stubborn few and getting ready to call it a day, when a striking young man strode forward and bowed gracefully before Hawk and Fisher. Tired as they were, there was something about this one that made them both sit up straight and pay attention. He smiled easily at Hawk and Fisher, calmly confident, and there was just something about him . . . He had that easy charisma, that not-quite-cocky charm, and the assured stance of the experienced fighter. He was tall and elegant, handsomely blonde and blue-eyed, and he wore his chain mail with the ease of long familiarity. He carried a sword at his side, and looked like he knew how to use it. In fact, he looked a hell of a lot more like a hero than anyone else they’d seen that day. Hawk immediately decided he didn’t trust him, just on general principles. No one had any right to look that impressive at that young an age.
“I have travelled a long way to be here, my most noble Lord and Lady, Hawk and Fisher,” he said, in a crisp, commanding voice. “All the way from the Forest Castle, and the Court of King Rufus, of the Forest Land. I was raised there, and have spent much of my life studying the Castle records of what happened during the legendary Demon War. I think I can safely say I know all there is to know about the heroic Prince Rupert and Princess Julia, and their glorious exploits in that time.”
“Really?” said Hawk. “Bet you don’t. You do know you can’t trust everything you read in official reports?”
“But I have been allowed access to more than just the public accounts, sir Hawk,” the young man said smoothly. “Because I am the grandson of Allen Chance, once Questor to Queen Felicity of the Forest Land, and his wife, the witch Tiffany. I am Patrick Chance.”
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other, and then back at the young Chance.
“They were good people,” said Hawk.
“According to all the stories,” said Fisher.
“Their names assure you of our full attention,” said Hawk. “So make sure that whatever you’ve got to say is worth hearing.”
“You’re a bit late for the Auditions,” said Fisher.
“Oh, I didn’t come here for that,” said Chance. He smiled briefly but dismissively at the few remaining Auditioners, and then turned his back on them. He didn’t look at the tutors, either. His gaze was for only Hawk and Fisher. “I am here to speak privately with you, Lord and Lady. I bear grave and important tidings, from King Rufus himself. And my words are for your ears only.”
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other again, and a silent communication passed between them. And then they both stood up and looked thoughtfully down at Patrick Chance. Hawk glanced at Roland the Headless Axeman. “You take care of the last few hopefuls. We’ll abide by your judgement.”
“I should bloody well hope so, after all these years,” said Roland. “You wander off and have a nice chat with young snotty boots here, and I’ll finish off the real work.”
“Graceful as ever, Roland,” said Fisher.
“It’s been a long day,” said Roland. “My head aches.”
Hawk beckoned to Patrick Chance to follow him and Fisher, and they led the way out of the Audition Hall, down a few corridors, and into a quiet side room. Hawk sat down at the only table and gestured for Chance to take the seat opposite him, while Fisher firmly closed the door. Chance politely declined the offered chair, and wandered round the room, looking it over. Fisher came back to stand beside Hawk. Chance turned abruptly, to smile briefly at the two of them. He didn’t look charming any longer. He looked cold and focused, as though he had a necessary but unpleasant duty he was determined to perform.
“Time,” he said. “So much time . . . Did you really think you could escape your past, just by running away to another land, to become someone else? Did you really think you could ever be forgiven for what you did? No. It’s time . . . for you to die.”
He didn’t go for the sword at his side. He raised both his hands in the stance of summoning, and an ancient and awful Word of Power issued from his distorted mouth. A change spell manifested on the air around Hawk and Fisher, spitting and crackling, designed to reshape their bodies, their flesh and bone, and remake them into something entirely incapable of surviving. A slow and nasty way to die. Except . . . the spell couldn’t reach Hawk and Fisher. It howled and coruscated on the air around them, unable to get a hold on them or affect them in any way at all. Strange lights flickered and flared, strange energies beat frustrated in the room, and none of them worked. The spell fell apart and dissipated harmlessly and was gone, leaving Patrick Chance to look stupidly at the unchanged Hawk and Fisher before him.
“That’s not possible,” he said numbly. “The charm of unmaking is one of the oldest there is; nothing in this world can withstand a change spell of that magnitude!”
“It was a nice try,” said Hawk. “But change spells are no use against us.”
“Not after everything we’ve been through,” said Fisher.
“The lesser magics can’t touch us,” said Hawk. “We have been touched by the Wild Magic, and we will always be . . . what we are.”
“Damn right,” said Fisher.
Hawk rose unhurriedly to his feet and looked coldly at Patrick Chance. “So. You’re not really the Questor’s grandson, are you? Who sent you?”
“Who is there who still knows who we really are?” said Fisher.
Chance drew himself up and sneered at them both. “You’ll never know. You can’t make me talk.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find we can,” said Hawk.
“No,” said Chance. “You can’t. This moment was prepared for, before I left. The price of failure was made very clear to me.”
His back arched suddenly, his face contorted by an awful agony. He fell to the floor and lay there convulsing, trying to force a scream through clenched teeth. Hawk and Fisher hurried towards him, and then stopped abruptly as what had been Patrick Chance changed its shape into something not in any way human. It was a demon. Not the huge and dark-scaled thing they’d seen in the Audition Hall earlier, though; this was just a squat, distorted shape, with needle teeth and scarlet eyes and jagged claws. It kicked a few times, lashed out at them once, for spite’s sake, and then it died. The flesh melted quickly from its bones, which dissolved in their turn, until there was nothing left but a dark stain on the wooden floor and an unpleasant smell on the air. Hawk and Fisher moved over to the open window and breathed deeply.
“Well,” said Hawk. “That was . . . interesting.”
“Interesting, hell!” said Fisher. “Someone knows who we really are!”
“It had to happen eventually,” said Hawk. He turned to look back at the dark stain on the floor, already being absorbed by the wood. “A hundred years since the Demon War . . . and we encounter two demons in one day. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was trying to tell us something.”
“Not forgetting the flock of dead birds that landed on our heads first thing this morning,” said Fisher. “What was that? A threat, or a warning?”
“It’s late,” said Hawk. “And I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”
• • •
It was late evening and already dark outside by the time they finally got to bed. They hadn’t realised how long the Auditions had dragged on. They sat side by side in a large four-poster bed, on a goose-feather mattress they could sink right down into. Their backs were currently supported by a padded headboard, and a warm golden light glowed from the walls. The Tree looked after its own. Hawk had a nice mug of steaming hot chocolate. Fisher had a large glass of brandy. With a paper umbrella in it. Both of them warming the inner self in their own ways.
They were both wearing long white nightshirts, complete with their initials picked out tastefully on the left breast. They never used to wear anything to bed when they
were younger, but they’d reluctantly agreed to wear the things because otherwise it shocked the students when they went to the jakes in the early hours of the morning. And besides, the winters were a lot colder these days. Their room was comfortable, even cosy, though, and absolutely nobody bothered them.
Hawk and Fisher sat slumped together, the bedclothes pulled up round their waists, quietly discussing the day’s events. At the foot of the four-poster, on a pile of really smelly blankets, their really smelly old dog lay curled up, snoring loudly. He was a great, long-legged, high-shouldered brute of an animal, of no particular breed, old now, as they were old, but still active enough to get into his own fair share of trouble. His fur was grey, and white around the muzzle. He twitched restlessly, chasing rabbits in his dreams. He farted loudly.
Hawk shook his head slowly. “He’s getting past it.”
“Aren’t we all,” said Fisher.
“At least I don’t lick my privates in public,” said Hawk.
“You would if you could,” said Fisher. “Actually, I think I’d pay good money to see that.”
The dog let loose with a quick series of bubbling farts, like a miniature rumbling volcano and almost as explosive. Hawk and Fisher both winced.
“I’ll have the Alchemist whip up some more of those little blue pills,” said Hawk.
“It’s either that or a bung,” said Fisher.
“Are we really not going to talk about the demons?” said Hawk, putting his empty mug down on the bedside table.
Fisher emptied her brandy glass and tossed it casually into a cushioned chair. “What is there to say? It’s just a coincidence. Has to be. There’s no one left alive who knows what we did. Who we used to be.”
“Someone must have sent that demon assassin, pretending to be Patrick Chance,” Hawk said stubbornly. “They knew just the right name to get past our defences. Someone wants us dead!”
“What can we do?” said Fisher. “Run? I don’t think so. No one chases me out of my own home.”
“We were planning on leaving anyway,” Hawk said carefully. “Perhaps our mysterious enemy wouldn’t go after the new Hawk and Fisher. Our replacements.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” said Fisher. “I thought we were safe here. I thought . . . all that was over.”
“The past is never over,” said Hawk.
And then they both sat up sharply and looked around them. Something was wrong. They could feel it. Something bad was coming, coming right at them, from a direction they could sense but not identify. Something forcing its way into the world, from Outside. And then suddenly there he was, standing right in the middle of the room, grinning nastily at them from the foot of their bed.
The Demon Prince.
He looked something like a man, close enough to human to mock and discredit humanity with the comparison. He was unnaturally tall, and slender to the point of emaciation. His pale flesh had a lambent pearly gleam, unhealthy as leprosy, and he dressed in rags and tatters of purest black, as though he’d wrapped himself in snatches torn from the night itself. He wore a battered, broad-brimmed hat, pulled down low over his fiery crimson eyes; and from what could be seen, his features were blurred, uncertain, as though they could never settle on just the one face. He held his pale hands up before him, as though in mocking prayer or entreaty, and his long delicate fingers ended in vicious claws, from which dark, clotted blood dripped constantly. There was nothing human in his stance, in the way he held himself. He looked like a man because it amused him to do so. Once, he had looked like something else, and might again, but for now he lived in the world of men and shaped himself accordingly. If the word lived could ever be properly applied to something that had never been born.
The Demon Prince, lord of all the demons in the Darkwood. Who had tried to wipe out all humanity in the Demon War and rewrite the living world in his own awful image.
His presence seemed to bruise the air, and stain the light, to foul the room just by being in it. Slow creakings moved through the wood of the room, as though the old Tree was disturbed by the Demon Prince’s very existence. His feet burned through the rugs on the floor, and scorched the wood beneath. The Demon Prince smiled slowly at Hawk and Fisher, showing pointed teeth, and when he spoke, his voice was the one you hear in your very worst nightmares.
“Well, well . . . hello again, my sweets. It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it? Did you like my little assassin, my calling card?”
“How did you get in here, past all the Tree’s defences?” said Hawk. His voice wasn’t quite as steady as he would have liked.
“You invited me in,” said the Demon Prince. In a voice like babies crying, like children dying, like a scream in the night. “You let me in, with your precious applicants for the Auditions, and no one saw me. I live inside people now. You saw to that. You’ll never find me, and I’ll be long gone anyway. Aren’t you glad to see me again, my most treasured enemies, my dearest rivals? You’re as much a legend as me now, Rupert. Julia.”
“What do you want?” said Fisher.
“Your grandchildren are in danger,” said the Demon Prince sweetly. “They will die, slowly and horribly, unless you return to the Forest Kingdom to save them. A war is coming. Country against country, army against army . . . Farms and towns and cities burning in the night, blood and slaughter in the woods, terror on the march. The darkness is rising, the Blue Moon is coming back, and you and I will play the game of Fate and Destiny one last time. And I will finally have my revenge . . . when the Wild Magic is loosed in the world of men forever. Stop me, my dear ones, if you can.”
He vanished, gone in a moment. Nothing left to show he had ever been there, except for the scorch marks his feet had left on the floor. The old dog at the foot of the bed raised his great grey head.
“Oh, bloody hell. Not again.”
“Hush, Chappie,” said Hawk.
TWO
A MARRIAGE IS ARRANGED
On a perfect early-autumn day, under a perfect sky, Princess Catherine of the Kingdom of Redhart went running happily through the huge cultivated gardens outside Castle Midnight, along with her lifetime friend and one true love, the King’s Champion, Malcolm Barrett. She was tall and blonde and beautiful, and he was tall and dark and handsome, and they were so much in love that sometimes they would look into each other’s eyes and find it hard to breathe. They ran back and forth across the great sprawling gardens, chasing and being chased, laughing happily as they revelled and sported across the wide lawns. They ran round and round the artfully piled-up rockeries with their tumbling, bubbling streams, raced round and round the massive flower beds that blazed with brilliant colours, and finally in and out of the neat rows of poplar trees, where squirrels chattered angrily at them from the high branches.
Two young people, so happy in love, on a bright autumnal day. Not a cloud in the sky to warn them that a storm was coming.
Princess Catherine had hair so blonde it all but glowed, bouncing halfway down her back in heavy curls. She had eyes as blue as the sky, lips like heart’s blood, and without even trying she was as cool and refreshing as a drink of clear water straight from the well. Her face was high-boned but not harsh, with a merry gaze that could flash with fire in an instant, and a smile that sometimes seemed to go on forever. She was always happy, always laughing—except for when she lost her temper. And then wise men would flee for the horizon, or at the very least hide behind the furniture until she stopped throwing things. Catherine was always very sorry afterwards, and would even help clean up the mess. As the King’s only daughter, she had been thoroughly indulged, and to her credit, she knew that. Anyone who thought they could use her to get to the King, through gifts and flatteries and blatant insincerities, was in for a rude awakening. And quite possibly a good kick in the arse. Catherine had few real friends, by her own choice, and she was fiercely protective of all of them.
Today, as most other days, Catherine was wearing rough boy’s clothes, consisting of a simple tuni
c and trousers and boots, because she was always off doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed to be doing, like riding, hunting, exploring, and generally getting into trouble. When cautioned, or even scolded, by her father or others, she would just say that expensive robes and dresses and formal clothes weren’t practical. As though that was the answer to everything. If anyone was ever stupid enough to press the point, she would lose her temper. So most people didn’t press the point. The King had long ago given up trying to make her behave like a Princess.
The King’s Champion, Malcolm Barrett, was tall and wide, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders, and surprisingly graceful for his size, thanks to a lifetime of military training. He was Champion because his father had been Champion before him, and it had honestly never occurred to Malcolm that he should want to be anything else. He was slow and thoughtful, never allowing himself to be hurried into anything; except on the battlefield. No one could move faster than Malcolm Barrett when steel clashed on steel and fire roared in his blood.
Malcolm and Catherine had been close friends since they were children, and in love since they were old enough to understand what that meant. To his credit, Malcolm still couldn’t believe he’d been lucky enough to win Catherine’s favour. He would have died for her, lived for her, conquered a country for her. She was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever dreamed of.
On this particular autumn day, he was wearing simple, practical leathers, and found them almost indecently comfortable after the chain mail and heavy armour he often had to wear for weeks in a row when out on border skirmishes. Though he was always careful to wear the correct ceremonial armour, burnished to within an inch of its life, when he had to make an official appearance at Court as King’s Champion. Unlike Catherine, he understood the need for proper clothes at proper occasions. He wore the same sword all the time, and there was nothing ceremonial about it; it was a broad butcher’s blade in a much-used scabbard. Because it didn’t hurt to remind certain courtiers and politicians and hangers-on that he was always capable of sudden violence, in the King’s name.
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