The Lady's Man

by Greg Curtis

  And for a year and a half Mayfall had served in that capacity. Served well and loyally as far as anyone had known. He had seemed to fit the role perfectly. He had earned a lot of praise because of it.

  Then the rumours had started. The whispers that all was not right with the wizard. Whispers that at first no one had believed. Because the crimes they spoke of – necromancy, demonancy, human sacrifice and torture – were too dark to imagine of him. Why would he do such things? And even then why had he gone on to harm those who had been kind to him? And when they searched his quarters and his laboratory they had found evidence of a great many deaths. People in the city who had simply gone missing. People who had worked with Mayfall. Even his friends.

  There were no answers of course. There never would be Yorik guessed. But in the end it had all come back to a few simple facts. The man had murdered his family in the most vile way. His life was ending in a similar fashion. And now Yorik knew that he had damned himself. And all of it for no reason.

  “Please.”

  Mayfall called out to him again. The pain must have been incredible as the wizard's leg began bubbling and blistering from within with the heat from the venom, while his other wounds took their toll, and his cries were so faint that Yorik almost didn't hear them. But when he did, he remembered he had a duty to care for the sick. And evil as this creature was, he was in need of care.

  But there was no possible treatment for him. His wounds were beyond healing, and he would die in terrible agony. There was only one mercy he could grant the wizard.

  “I'm sorry.” Despite knowing that it was simply finishing his crime, Yorik levelled the bow to finish him. It was a mercy shot, better than Mayfall deserved, and not what he had intended, but at least it would finally end the nightmare that had destroyed his life, and it at least would be clean, and the will of the Lady. Nothing else in his life had been in a long time, and he was grateful for the chance to do at least something in her name. But he had reckoned without the wizard.

  “Bribak!”

  Surely on his last breath by then, Mayfall screamed out the word with all the power of a banshee and a shiver went down Yorik's back. He didn't know why. He didn't know the word and there was no sense of magical energy that accompanied it. But there was something eternally evil about it. Something had been called. Without any more thought than that he pulled the trigger, determined to end the matter before whatever evil he had uttered appeared. But it was already too late.

  Like a man in a daze he watched as the bolt left the crossbow, streaked at its target and at the last instant veered aside to hit the ground not six inches from Mayfall's head. Yorik almost rubbed at his eyes as he saw that, wondering for a moment if he'd somehow missed, but he knew he hadn't. The shot was good, clean. It should have skewered the wizard right through his head. Ended it all. Instead something had pushed it to one side.

  Without even thinking about it Yorik began to reload the crossbow, pulling back the drawstring as fast as the lever would let him, and dropping another bolt in the slot. It was a fast reload, perhaps five or six seconds at most, but by the time he raised his head again to sight his target, it was to find that things had changed. Mayfall still lay there, dying by degrees and screaming his pain and hatred, but surrounding him was some sort of magical shimmer in the air. A distortion similar to the heat haze above the ground on a hot day. But this was no natural thing. It was magic, dark and terrible magic, and the cold down Yorik's back only got worse. Something evil had arrived. Something even more evil than the dying wizard.

  “Lady protect me. Guide my aim.”

  He uttered the ancient prayer by instinct, even as he raised the bow for another shot. But this time instead of aiming at Mayfall he began hunting for whatever evil thing the wizard had brought through from the other side, hoping to kill it. The thing from the demon worlds. The demon. For that was the only thing it could be.

  He could feel its presence like an unclean slime all over his skin, and he knew he was in trouble. He had to fight something far more powerful than him, and at the same time stop it from corrupting what little remained of his soul. For a mere human that was impossible, and even for a paladin of the Order of the Lady calling on his gifts, it was extremely difficult. Yet it wasn't a choice. Such things had to be fought with every breath of one’s body.

  Casting his spell of true sight once more, though the first cast was still working, he began searching all around for the demon. Still he couldn't find him and that was wrong. All around him he could see the signs of the demon's passing. Grass that had already begun wilting from its presence, the stone wall which was slowly turning black, even the smoke which was slowly thickening all around them in the clear air. But he couldn't see the demon itself, and that worried him.

  Demons were more than just tough. They were unkillable, and only able to be vanquished back to their realms with great magic, too often after good paladins had given their lives trying to stop them. An invisible demon would surely be much worse again, and he was only a single paladin alone, a long way from home. Worse, he was a paladin who had failed his duty, failed his patron. Nevertheless, he would fight the evil though it cost him his life and soul. That was his duty.

  “For the Lady.”

  He cried the ancient battle cry taught to his illustrious predecessors many centuries before, and to his surprise, suddenly felt the gifts of the Lady beginning to fill him as they hadn't in far too long. He wasn't worthy of them, but he was infinitely grateful, for with them, he had a chance.

  His strength, only moments before on the point of failing from so many days of riding to the point of exhaustion, was suddenly returned and much more besides. His eyesight sharpened immeasurably so that he could pierce even the darkest gloom, while his armour and sword began to glow with the aura of the divine. Even his courage returned as his doubts fled. What he had been doing before was wrong, not something he could have justified asking the Lady to aid him with, and the magic he had used had been only the simple spells he had been taught. The spells that didn't require her presence; only his knowledge and his bond. But fighting demons was his rightful duty as her servant, and he needed far more than just that simple magic. He needed her presence, something he would never have been able to call on before. Had she known his dark mission she would never have permitted it. This though she demanded of her servants, and all thoughts of doing anything other than her work were taken from him.

  In a few scant heart beats she filled him with her elemental might and he became her unwavering tool. This was the compact that had been sworn between the first paladins of the Order of the Lady and the Lady herself many centuries before, and it was the same compact that every paladin accepted when they took their vows. He had sworn those same vows, drunk of the blessed water, and stood vigil at her shrine as had all others of his Order, and when he had the need in her cause, he too could ask for and receive her blessing. It was an honour for any paladin, but more so for him when he had failed her so badly only scant moments before, and he thanked her as best he was able.

  Of course, no gift came completely without a price, and this was no different. The price was his free will.

  Without knowing why, he dropped the crossbow on the ground and drew his now glowing great sword from its sheath, holding it directly in front of him. The Lady didn't just guide him; she controlled him, body and soul. But that too he had accepted long ago, and he had no thought of resistance.

  “Arie varin maer van helmsgord.”

  Her words came directly out of his mouth without his understanding what they meant, while his sword began tracing an intricate glowing design in the air in front of him. A circle with a flat triangle in the middle of it, a star to one side and a wavy line running right through both on an angle. Yorik had no idea at all what it was, but he quickly found out what it did.

  From the instant the sword had finished the last part of the design, a wall of light sprang from it, turning the ground in front of him and all the way to the
fallen wizard and beyond into a blaze of glory. The black smoke which had come out of nowhere quickly vanished before the light, and suddenly he could see a putrid green vaguely human shaped figure crouching over Mayfall. Yorik didn't have to ask to know that this was the demon he'd summoned. He even knew its name; Bribak.

  There was nothing else it could be. The creature was simply too hideous to be anything created by nature or the gods. Its skin was some sort of oily slime, somehow held together over its equally disgusting bones. Its features were as if a monkey had randomly rearranged the face and even the body of a man, and then thrown in a few more pieces from other creatures, until what remained was uneven and lumpy, and in no way human. Yellow slime streamed from its nose on one side of what he would loosely have called its face, while red slime emanated from holes randomly placed throughout its body. Yorik would have hoped it was blood and that the demon was injured, but he knew that the creature had not been touched. It was horrendously deformed, but not injured in any way.

  He knew the truth of its non-injury as he saw the creature raise an evil black staff before it, and holding it flat against the light, create some sort barrier between it and the glowing symbol. That was bad. The creature had surely only just arrived in the world; brought through the barrier between worlds by Mayfall's spell, and it was still bound to him. Yet it was already powerful enough to hold off the power of the Lady. What would it be like in a few hours or days when it had found its full strength? But Yorik wasn't concerned. He couldn’t be because the Lady wasn't.

  Instead he watched as his glowing sword suddenly traced a new design in the air immediately beside the first. This one was a giant five pointed star with a small rectangle underneath and a series of lines fanned out like sun rays running between the two. No sooner had the sword tip finished its last stroke then the design too began to glow, but this time with a golden light that bathed everything around like the new born sun. What it meant and what it did again Yorik didn't know, but the creature did and it didn't like it.

  Immediately it began twirling its staff and making some strange clicking and growling sounds, perhaps its own version of speech, and the barrier that it had formed between them became stronger again. In fact it was almost solid.

  Meanwhile Mayfall – still dying by painful degrees – had managed to turn his eyes from Yorik to the demon crouching over him, and despite his having summoned it, he clearly didn't like what he saw. He began screaming in horror, although not a sound made it through the demon's barrier. But Yorik could see his bulging eyes, open mouth and terrified expression, and knew his thoughts. So did the demon, and it didn't like them.

  Even as Mayfall began screaming, began resisting that which he had called into the world, no matter how futile that resistance might be, it extended two green clawed fingers like knives, and pushed them deep into his eyes. The screaming – already loud from what he could see of the wizard's terrified face had surely grown far louder. At least for a while, until the wizard either fainted or died. Yorik had no idea which he did. All he knew was that Mayfall's head suddenly flopped to one side. But whatever he did it didn't matter. What mattered was that the demon had silenced his summoner, and was suddenly released from even his meagre and corrupt control. It was free.

  With a single hop, something like that which a toad might make only not as graceful, the creature and its staff suddenly fled the fallen wizard, leaping high into the air and far over the wall. It was escaping Yorik realised. But so did the Lady, and she had expected it. With a single word he found himself pointing the sword directly at the demon even as it was almost flying away from them, and a ray of golden light shot out from the sword's tip to strike the creature directly in its middle.

  It was a perfect strike. Yorik could feel the satisfaction of the Lady within him as she saw the creature pinned perfectly in the air. And while it hung there helplessly she began drawing it in like a fisherman pulled in a fish. Somehow, as the light from the sword seemed to intensify the creature was being drawn closer to the two of them, and closer Yorik realised, to the two glowing symbols still hanging in the air between them. And they, he guessed, were what were really going to harm the demon. How he didn't know, but the demon clearly understood the same thing, and he watched it struggling frantically in the air as it came closer and closer to the glowing symbols. But it had no chance. The Lady had it secure in her grasp, and she would not let it go.

  Seconds or perhaps many minutes later – time was irrelevant to Yorik in the presence of the Lady – he watched the demon's struggling form suddenly touch the edge of one of the glowing symbols, and finally lose its battle. In a single instant both symbols seemed to change, reshaping themselves into a single glowing ball of twine which surrounded the demon, trapping it within. A glowing ball of brilliant white and gold that rapidly began shrinking in front of his eyes.

  In a very short while the ball was half its size, and presumably the demon within it was as well, since not a single part of it escaped the strands of golden fire that surrounded it. Perhaps it was being crushed to death? He could but hope though as far as he knew, demons still couldn't be killed, only vanquished. Perhaps half a minute later the demon ball was the size of only a man's head, and still no part of it leaked through the fiery strands of the spell. Then it was the size of a man's fist, and Yorik understood that whatever was being done to it, the demon was not escaping its new prison – ever.

  A few seconds after that the glowing demon ball had reduced to the size of his thumb, and for the first time Yorik could hear some sounds coming from it. A continuous frantic high speed clicking and some screeches. Was the demon screaming he wondered, or trying to utter some sort of counter spell? He had no way of knowing, but at least the Lady – still living and breathing within him – didn't seem worried by it. But then she had no need to worry.

  Five seconds later, the glowing ball had become the size of a man's smallest finger nail, when suddenly it vanished with a popping sound, and the screaming stopped as though a door had been closed somewhere. The demon he guessed, had been banished back to whatever underworld it had come from, and there was a feeling of deep satisfaction within him. But it wasn't his. It was the Lady's, pleased with her handiwork, and he knew that if she was pleased then he should be as well. As should all men.

  A breath he hadn't known he'd been holding was suddenly released, and a sense of relief overcame him – until his years of training returned to him and he remembered that there was still a wizard to deal with.

  Except that there wasn't.

  As he looked at where Mayfall had lain, he could see no sign of him. Plenty of blood on the ground where he had been, but no body. Had he escaped somehow? Or had he somehow been drawn into the banishment with the demon he'd summoned? There was of course no answer, and right then he was already too drained to care. Not far behind that tiredness was complete exhaustion and that he knew he couldn't fight off for much longer.

  Already he felt the fatigue settling over him as never before. The lessons had told him of this, the withdrawal as the writers called it, and yet all the words in the world couldn't have truly described it. He was emptying in some way. The Lady he realised, was leaving him, her work done, and his body was simply reacting to the loss. It was expected if difficult to accept, but he knew he had no choice. He only hoped she didn't leave him forever. He would have deserved that, having failed her so badly, but he didn't want it. For life without her guidance would be unbearable.

  “Blessed Lady. Stay a while with your unworthy servant.”

  Sir Kepples the First had uttered those same words the first time he had been filled by the Lady, and they had been written down in every book of the Order ever since. It was only then though, as Yorik intoned those same words, that he truly understood their meaning. For until then he'd never asked more of the Lady than the most basic of her gifts as he carried out her duty. He'd never known such power, or such loss.

  Happily she blessed him with her presence for a little longe
r, telling him that she wasn't yet finished with him. She told him that even as he begged her not to leave him forever. As he apologised for his failure. As she heard his plea and forgave him. Forgiveness was another of the Lady's great blessings, and he felt it wash over him with relief greater than any he had ever known. The Order might soon have excommunicated him for his giving in to vengeance, but the Lady still loved him. She owned him, body and soul and though he might not be her best, brightest or most obedient servant, she wasn't going to discard him. Instead she had work for him to do.

  Just before she left, or before he fainted, she told him that he was being given a mission to carry out. That he had to find a man and deliver a message to him. Not that she told him who the man was, where to find him or even what the message was. All she gave him was the direction to travel. But that was enough. He was a lowly paladin who had nearly failed his duty completely. The duty was in part a test of his faith and obedience. Even then Yorik suspected it would not be as easy a mission as it might seem, nothing worth doing ever was, but he also knew he would do it. It wasn't just that the Lady had asked it of him and her will had to be obeyed, it was that it was right that he did so. He was her servant and it was his most sacred duty.

  Yet it was more than that still. As he felt the last of his strength leaving him, and the darkness begin closing in on his eyesight, he knew one thing more about the Lady; he loved her. Without question, without reservation, without doubt. He couldn't not love her. She was his mother whispering her love in his ears at night as he slept, holding him when he felt pain. She was his friends giving of their friendship, his father protecting him and even his animals giving of their service faithfully. She was his entire world, and he would do her task for love alone. He had no choice, and he wanted none.