Demon King

by Bunch, Chris

  Philaret and another officer bellowed at the man, shouting for him to get back to the road, get back or die, which made no sense.

  The slug reared as it moved, then collapsed wetly on the soldier, burying him under its disgusting bulk. Arrows spat, and buried themselves in the creature, and spears studded its flanks. But the monstrosity took no hurt. It slid away as quickly as it had come, back into the dimness, back into the shadows. There was no sign of the scout, no sign at all.

  “That stupid bastard,” Philaret swore. I asked what the man had done wrong, what we should do if one of us were attacked.

  “I don’t know if it’s a secret or not … but no one said not to say anything,” he said. “I told you the logs had words said over them, to keep them from rotting as fast as they would otherwise. There’s another spell, something supposed to keep any of the swamp creatures from crossing the road, or even going on it. Stay on the road and you’re safe. Move off it …” He didn’t need to say more.

  We went on for another hour, then stopped where we were, on the road. We slept in the carriages, and the Maisirian soldiers spread canvas from the carriage tops to the roadway for shelter. It was uncomfortable, but I don’t think anyone slept very much. I certainly didn’t. Not so much out of fear of the slug’s return, but because I was pondering what Philaret had said. As far as I knew, no magician, not even the Chare Brethren, had the power to create a spell like the one Shamb Philaret had described. The emperor had been right — Maisirian magic appeared to be far in advance of our own.

  • • •

  Eventually we came to the end of the swamps, and entered woodlands, part of the immense Belaya Forest that ringed Jarrah and was its final protection. The hills were low, rolling. The ground was poor, sandy. The trees were tall conifers, and the constant wind touched them, moved them, night and day, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar.

  The track improved until it was actually a road, even graveled from small town to town, and in the towns the ways were cobbled. We were getting close to Jarrah.

  We came on the great estates of the Maisirian nobility, which stretched for leagues. But as often as not the great houses needed work, the surrounding villages were shabby, and the land poor and unyielding. We were greeted joyously at these estates, since we were, in many cases, the first visitors “of their class” to be seen in half a year, and they were eager for what they called news.

  Actually all they wanted was gossip about what the rich and powerful were doing and wearing in Numantia, in Oswy, or on other estates. Real news, such as the tension between our two countries, bored them. They were lonely, they said, but I noticed none would have considered inviting any of the merchant caravans to be their guests. Boredom was better than having to deal with a lower class.

  • • •

  We stopped outside a village, and a peasant came out with buckets of milk, which he sold by the dipper. We drank all he had and wanted more. I went back to his farmhouse with him, this time sensibly allowing Karjan and Svalbard to accompany me. I asked questions about the land, the farm, the growing seasons, what kind of help he needed to work the land, but the man grunted monosyllables. I’d hoped to ask what he thought of the king, of his rulers, but I realized I’d get nothing from this stone.

  His farmhouse was a bit neater than most we’d seen, although very small by Numantian standards. Painted over the door was an interesting symbol. It was yellow, and looked like an upside-down, curving letter U. The ends were thicker, like knots in a rope.

  “What’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice innocent.

  The peasant looked at me hard, a threatening expression that was strange from a man of his station.

  “ ‘Tis an’ old family sign f’r luck an’ good weather,” he muttered. “No more.”

  The drawing looked very much like the yellow silk strangling cord used by the Tovieti.

  “Let me ask something,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Does this mean anything to you? It’d be in red.”

  With my sword tip I sketched a circle in the mud, a circle with lines curling from it, the main Tovieti emblem, of murderous snakes rising for revenge from the pooled blood of the cult’s martyrs.

  “No,” the peasant said quickly. “Means naught.” But he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  So the Tovieti were in Maisir, as well.

  • • •

  The mansion gaped at the gray heavens, stonework still scarred from the flames that had consumed it. It might have been just an unfortunate accident, but an hour earlier we’d passed through what had been a tiny village and was now a similar ruin. I asked Shamb Philaret if he knew what had happened, and he nodded. I had to prod him for the story, but eventually he told me the peasants had risen against their masters.

  I remembered the horror of Irrigon — the flames and Amiel’s death — and held back a shudder. “Why?”

  “The usual reasons, I suppose,” he said and shrugged. “Sometimes peasants forget their lot’s nothing but a crust and the whip, and their master’s got the right to do what he wants — and they go mad. It’s like a plague,” he said. “None of them think about what they’re doing, about what’ll happen, and they tear and kill, like a bear among the dogs.”

  “So the army burned that village putting down the insurrection?”

  “Not the army,” he said grimly. “The king’s magicians sent firewinds against the killers, and let Shahriya’s fire take them all — men, women, children. The king proclaimed these lands outcast, and forbade anyone to live here or plant the lands. This was to be an example that would live forever for man to know his station, and his duties.”

  “When did this happen?” I said, thinking such utter barbarism must’ve been a generation or more ago.

  “Five, no six, years past.”

  We rode on, through other shattered villages, still-scorched lands. I felt the dark hand of the gods overhanging us.

  • • •

  The inn, only a day beyond Jarrah, sat on a hill overlooking a lake, and was a delight. It was frequently used for holidays by Maisirian nobility and was quite luxurious. There were stables, covered areas for the carriages to be washed, and barracks for servants of the guests. As with other Maisirian buildings, the lower story of the huge main building was of stone, framed in wood, and the upper stories were wooden. My men were on the second level, each with a room to himself. Captain Lasta was used to such luxury, as was Karjan, but the others were as delighted as children at their day-of-birth celebration.

  I was utterly exhausted, and asked to have a simple meal served in our rooms. Alegria and I had three huge rooms on the top level, lit by gas piped from a nearby fault, which was a great rarity in Maisir. We’d barely examined the bedchamber or the main room, for this inn had that most precious of all things, something we’d barely seen since leaving Oswy — a bath. The room was hand-rubbed wood and stone, with controllable vents bringing heat up from the lower floors. Now I learned the Maisirian nobility’s way of cleanliness.

  Stone monsters were set on the walls, chain-pulls below each, which allowed spouts of water, in various temperatures, to gush out of the pipes into wooden buckets. You wet yourself, soaped, and rinsed clean at least twice. Then you went to the tub, a twenty-foot-wide wine barrel cut in half. You never sullied this water with dirt or soap, but used it for relaxation, Alegria told me. There were other carved monster heads with chains overhead, and when the chains were pulled, the heads would tilt and dump down hot or cold water.

  Alegria went into the bathroom first, while I tried to keep awake. Every muscle in my body whined about the moil and toil inflicted over the last time and a half.

  “You may come in now,” she said, and I obeyed. Alegria floated on her back in the tub, eyes closed. I was too tired, too worn, to give a hang if she chose to watch. I hung the robe on a hook, filled a bucket, found the soap and a huge sea sponge, and began scrubbing. It took three complete baths before I felt the filth of the journey dissipating, and my skin was pink
as a baby’s. A hairy baby’s, and I took out my razor and polished steel and shaved, amazingly without slashing my exhausted throat.

  Alegria splashed happily, singing to herself. She, at least, was awake and alert. I considered drowning her. I thought about putting the robe back on, then thought myself foolish, went to the tub, and lowered myself into it. It was just above blood-warm, about three feet deep. Submerged, I felt my hair float like seaweed about my head. Finally I had to surface to breathe, and I stretched out on my back, my head resting on the tub’s rim.

  The water was unusual, bubbling, caressing my skin, soothing it, but without the usual stink of a mineral hot springs. Alegria lay as I did across from me, peering at me through toes she wriggled from time to time.

  “Are you happy, Damastes?” she said.

  I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that at least I wasn’t unhappy. The leaden misery that had companioned me since Marán had discarded me was still there, but far distant, almost a memory. “Pretty much,” I said.

  “I am, too.”

  I yawned.

  “None of that, sir,” she said. “You will be awake to dine. We have been eating slugs and snails and worms and grain and things I wouldn’t feed a duck for ages.”

  “Well, we better not wait too long, then,” I said. “Or I’ll drown in the soup.” Oddly, as I spoke, I felt fatigue draining, as if the bath had rejuvenating powers.

  “Of course not,” Alegria said. “These tubs are dangerous, I’ve learned.”

  “How so? Too warm and you melt to death?”

  “No,” she said, putting a worried look on her face. “It’s the wood the casks are made out of. I read that it harbors small creatures that slip out after a time.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she said. “They’re somewhat dangerous, since they have a single claw, and dearly love to bite.”

  “I’m deeply concerned,” I said.

  “Oooh. I just felt one,” she yelped. “It’s down on the bottom, and it’s moving toward you.”

  At that moment a pair of pinchers closed on my cock, and I found the power of levitation. Then I realized the “claw” was Alegria’s toes.

  I stood, streaming water. “Wench! Hoyden! Liar!” My outrage might have been more convincing if my cock hadn’t been rising in front of me. “I told you not to do things like that,” I said, again failing at dignified outrage.

  “I’m very sorry, Damastes,” Alegria said. “Especially since I hear the sound of our table being set outside. Shall we dine?”

  • • •

  We did, on freshly baked warm bread, tubs of country butter, a wonderful salad of many different kinds of greens, and tiny shrimp Alegria swore came from the inn’s tubs, and were just like the one that had bitten me, sans claws. We could have had meat or fish, but both of us lusted after vegetables, and so we had quickly fried bitter melon with black beans and assorted mushrooms. Alegria had two glasses of wine; I drank mineral water. I summoned a servant and had him remove the ruins of the meal.

  “And now to bed, my lord?”

  “And now to bed,” I said and yawned.

  “Actually,” she said, as she rose and went into the bedchamber, “I’m quite grateful we have the arrangement we do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Were we anything other than what we are, we might be losing valuable sleep, which we need to build our bodies for the morrow.”

  “You sound like my mother,” I said.

  “But do I look like her?” She dropped her robe as she spoke. I caught a glimpse of her lithe, nude body, then she closed the gas valve, and we were in darkness, except for the tiny fringe of a moon through racing clouds. “Come to bed,” she whispered, and I heard the creak of the springs.

  I obeyed. It was huge, soft, warm, and wonderful, although, at the moment, I was having a bit of trouble thinking about the bed and sleep. Alegria was on her side, back to me. I took several deep breaths, but that didn’t help matters.

  “I’m almost asleep,” Alegria said, but she didn’t sound sleepy. “Tell me something, Damastes. Do Numantians kiss?”

  “Of course, silly.”

  “Why is that silly? I’ve never been kissed by one. Least of all by you. I thought maybe your people thought it was evil or something.”

  “Alegria, you’re not being good.”

  “No? What’s the harm in one little kiss? I mean, just to satisfy scholarly curiosity and things like that.”

  “All right.”

  She rolled on her back and stretched her hands above her head. “Do Numantians kiss with their mouths open or closed?”

  “This one does it with his mouth closed, because he’s trying to stay out of trouble,” I muttered. I leaned over and kissed her gently. Her lips moved under mine a little. I kissed the corners of her mouth, and it opened slightly. But I held to my resolve and kissed her cheeks, then, gently, her eyelids. There seemed no harm in caressing her eyelids with my tongue, however.

  “Numantians are very gentle,” she murmured. “Do that again.”

  I did, and somehow my mouth opened a little, and her tongue slid into it. Alegria sighed and lowered her arms around me. The kiss went on, and became less gentle. Her arms moved up and down my back. It seemed appropriate to run my tongue back and forth across her neck, and her breathing came faster. She took one arm from around me and pulled the sheet away. Her breasts were against me, tight nipples hard.

  I kissed one, then the other, teased them with my teeth, then came back to her mouth. One of my arms was around her back, pulling her close, and the other caressed her, moving down, just over the swell of her buttocks.

  She lifted a leg, curled it around me, and I felt dampness and a curly tickle on my upper thigh.

  Then she yelped, pulled away, and rolled out of bed to her feet.

  “What the — ”

  “Something bit me! Ouch! Son of a palsied — find the light, quickly!”

  I fumbled on the bedside table for the covered slow match, opened it, and relit the gas.

  Alegria stood naked in the middle of the floor, warily looking at the bed. “I’m not getting back in there — pull the blankets back, my lord.”

  I obeyed, and a black spider scuttled across the sheet. I crushed it with the heel of my hand.

  “Where did it bite you?”

  “Here,” she said. “On the back of my arm.”

  There was a red area, rapidly swelling. I found the bellpull and clanged for a servant. One arrived in minutes, and I ordered vinegar and baking soda. When they arrived, I mixed the two together, then laved the back of her arm again and again. As I did, the innkeeper appeared. She was appalled that such a thing could happen in her inn, especially to such a noble visitor, and insisted on having the entire bed removed and replaced. She wanted to have the chamber smoke-filled — to make sure the spider was dead — to move us to another room, even though it wasn’t her best like this one — and so on and so forth. But eventually I got rid of her and went back to Alegria. After about half an hour, she said the pain was gone.

  “But when we reach Jarrah,” I said, “I want you to visit a seer. Spider bites can turn nasty.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. She looked at me wryly. “I’m starting to believe Irisu wishes me to remain a maiden forever, though.”

  I managed a wan smile. My mood of romance, gentle lust, was gone. Now I wanted …

  I didn’t know what I wanted.

  Alegria correctly read my expression. “Come, Damastes. Let us sleep. For real.” Once more she shut off the lights, and once more we got into bed.

  “Good night,” she said, and her voice was dull, flat.

  “Would you mind if I kissed you good night?” I asked.

  After a moment, she said, “No,” and there was a breath of life to her tone. We kissed, and it was very tender, very gentle, with no heat. She turned over, and I yawned. Her breathing gentled, became the tiniest snore.

  I felt myself sin
king, but as I did, she moved toward me, her behind warm against my stomach. She fitted her legs against mine until we were nestled together, her head just below and in front of mine. I kissed the tip of her ear.

  I cupped her breast with my right hand, and she made a contented sound. It precisely filled my grasp.

  Then sleep took me.

  • • •

  I don’t know what might have happened if we’d stayed another day or two at the inn … or perhaps I do.

  But the next day we moved on, and by dusk we were in Jarrah.

  EIGHTEEN

  KING BAIRAN

  Jarrah sprawled for leagues, its symmetrically laid streets broken by parks and small lakes, even more than graced Nicias. The boulevards were wide and tree-lined, and a river wound lazily through the city, from east to west. The city was walled, but in a rather haphazard manner. It had been planned as an octagon, with siege-proof walls nearly thirty feet thick, and onion-shaped guard towers at the angles. But the city had sprawled beyond, and each time it did, another set of walls was built. These walls, when the metropolis devoured them, had arches driven through them, so commerce could pass through.

  Farther south were rolling hills, and here were the palaces of the mighty. One held the Numantian Embassy, where we were going. Beyond these estates, each set off by parklands, was Moriton, the King’s Own, a fortress enclosing many more elaborate mansions, barracks, and administration centers. Here dwelt King Bairan, and his satraps, servants, slaves, and administrators in their thousands.

  Shamb Philaret had sent riders ahead the night before, so we were expected. A pavilion was raised beyond the city gates, against the occasionally spattering rain, and richly garbed dignitaries waited under it.

  I wore a waist-length red cloak against the weather, black knee-high boots, white riding breeches, a white tunic with red trim, and a shako. I was armed with the sword King Bairan had given me.

  Alegria wore a dark brown, almost black, silk garment with needlework, high-necked. At the waist, the suit flared into wide-legged pants, and she wore short boots underneath it. For protection against the weather, she had a hooded cloak that appeared to be no more than translucent cloth with exotic embroidery. But the garment was spellbound, so it cast off the rain and was windproof as well.