The Dark Lord's Handbook (2 page)

Jurgen pulled at his moustache. “You mean a girl who’s not yet married, and whose father would be upset with her condition, so she says she was visited by, I don’t know, a swan, or an eagle, or a bull?”

“That would be it,” agreed Tibault. “A bull. We have them kind of maiden births all the time round here.”

The monk stood shaking his head when from upstairs Jesobel shrieked once more. To any who had heard the sound before they knew the time was soon. As one the monks looked up and a triumphant expression lit their faces.

“It seems we are just in time,” said Francis and he pushed further into the room, his fellows close behind.

“Hang on there,” said Harold from behind the bar. The monks stopped. There was iron in Harold’s voice. “You’re not going up there. That’s my Jesobel up there.”

“And?” said Francis.

Harold, and for that matter everyone else in the room, looked at the monk in disbelief. Everyone knew the name Jesobel, least all in the shire. These monks must have travelled some distance.

“I am her husband,” said Harold. “There’s been no swans or eagles around here. Or bulls for that matter. You’ve got the wrong place. I’ll be asking you to leave.”

The monks looked more than vexed.

“Harold,” piped up Tibault. “Harold?”

“What is it, Tibault? Another ale? I’ll be with you shortly.”

“No, Harold. Sorry. I mean. That is to say. I heard…” Tibault faltered as everyone looked at him. “I was only going to say that Diona, over Wellow way; the blacksmith’s daughter. She’s due about now and swears blind it wasn’t Kristoff, like all suppose, that did her up.” Tibault licked his lips as his news was digested.

All eyes turned to Kristoff.

“I don’t know what you’re all looking at,” said Kristoff, blushing.

“You’re right,” said Jurgen. “It’s not like limericks can get a woman pregnant, now is it?”

“I’m a poet!” insisted Kristoff above the laughter.

“There you have it then,” said Jurgen once the laughter had subsided. “You’ll be wanting to head over Wellow way.”

The monks huddled in a discussion which seemed to get quite heated.

“We will not be stopping for a beer and that’s final,” said Francis, his voiced raised above the babble of the room.

There were grumbles as Francis dragged his group from the inn to shouts of “Shut that bloomin’ door! Bloody freezing!”

“Strange bunch,” remarked Kristoff, and saying so he headed for the privy.

“Aye. Who would want to be out on a night like this?” said Jurgen. “Listen to that wind. They’ll be back.”

“Sounds like it’s picking up again,” observed another at the table.

The wind did indeed sound like it had picked up. There was a tremendous buffeting and the entire building shook.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Thought I heard screams?”

“That’d be Jesobel. I expect we’ll be wetting a baby’s head soon enough.”

“No. Not Jesobel. From outside.”

“You’re hearing things.”

The inn door clattered open and a fresh blast of air blew in.

“See, told you they’d be back,” said Jurgen. “I’ve never known a monk pass up a beer. Shut that bleedin’ door, will you please!” He turned to look over his shoulder to see what Tibault was staring at.

In the doorway stood a man, tall and thin, yet powerfully muscled, long black hair falling over leather clad shoulders. To one as observant as Jurgen, there was something not quite right about him. His skin for starters. Black, like obsidian, and as smooth. It could have been passed off as a rare skin condition if it wasn’t for the blazing red eyes that swept the room with their glare. Jurgen had heard stories, legends really, about all manner of strange creatures but not for a second did he imagine one would walk through door of The Fat Lamb, right as day.

The stranger strode over to the bar. He spread his hands on the surface in front of him and smiled. “You must be Harold.” Harold’s mouth moved but no sound came out. “I knew your father,” said the stranger. “He left quite an impression.”

Harold’s eyes darted down to where the stranger’s hands rested and gulped. The stranger’s smile widened, making plain a set of razor sharp teeth.

“I do hope I am not too late,” continued the stranger smoothly. “I understand young Jesobel is due.” He let his eyes slip from Harold and cast around until he came to the passage at the back of the bar and the flight of stairs that led up. “Ah, yes. Up there if I remember? I won’t keep you. I can see you are busy.”

As the stranger made his way up the stair, it creaked as though a great weight were upon it. The conversation in the room returned, if somewhat quieter than before.

Kristoff came out of the men’s privy next to the stair. All heads turned his way. He fumbled at the buttons on the front of his trousers. “Did I miss something?”

Chapter 3 Fatherhood

If you want it done right, do it yourself.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

Lord Deathwing had a weakness for the ladies. It had often got him into trouble with Lady Deathwing, and so he had curtailed his gallivanting in the last decade, but when he had happened across the painfully sweet Jesobel all resistance had melted away. She had been helping a buffoon of an innkeeper waiting on the tables. She had cascading blonde hair and a body that wriggled in all the right places under the thinnest of cotton dresses. He had felt his blood rise until he could bear it no longer.

The inn was empty but for the three of them and she had been wiping the tables down, leaning over, bodice loose, full milky white breasts struggling to stay confined. When she had brushed past him on her way to empty her pail, and let her hand play down his leg, he knew not only was she sweet but also ripe for the picking. He’d lost control completely. It was unfortunate about the innkeeper. He may have been a buffoon but he had been affable enough.

His dragon seed was a powerful thing, and when planted could be hard to bear. Most mortal women died in a shuddering, pain-filled, ecstatic, thrashing bundle, but not Jesobel. She had brushed her skirt down and pinched his cheek. He was more used to being begged for death by the recipient of his recent attentions, the pain and ecstasy too much to live through.

“Are you feeling well?” he had asked.

She had looked at him, a hint of a smile on her cherry lips. “Much better for a good seeing to, my lover.”

“No pains? Headaches? Spasms?”

Her brow had wrinkled. “No? I don’t mean to be rude, but although I’ve no complaints, I’ve had better.”

After that, he hadn’t been able to perform for six months. Not that his wife had noticed. Dragons only mated among themselves every twenty years or so. It had taken a scullery maid to die in legs akimbo bliss for him to regain his confidence.

That any fruit had been born of this tryst with the barmaid was a further surprise and also problematic. It wasn’t as though he could tell the wife he was expecting an heir. He wasn’t that sure how the child would turn out. What he was certain about was that he had better be there for the birth, if for no better reason than he was insatiably curious. Moreover, if a dragonling of his was going to take its first breath, and doubtless fry the mid-wife, he wanted to be there to see it.

Then there was the small matter of the Naming.

He had only just made it in time. Standing outside the door, Jesobel’s panting and screams were all too clear. The birth would be soon. He hadn’t brought flowers and a faint flicker of remorse played across his black heart, but there was no surviving a dragon birth so there seemed little point. The one concession he did make was to alter his appearance; he didn’t want to frighten the poor girl.

He pushed the door open and recoiled. The smell was like being mugged by an outhouse. He stepped in and was met by a ghastly tableau. The room was hot, cramped and filthy. Bedding was strewn around with fleas so big he could see them hopping in the tallow light. Two ugly young girls held a woman’s legs high and apart, a skirt between them. A hag was kneeling in the gap, rummaging between the legs.

“Nearly there my lovely,” crooned the hag. “I can see his head now.”

Everyone was too busy with what was going on in Jesobel’s nether regions to take notice of him.

“Shut the door behind you, Harold,” said the crone without turning round.

Deathwing took a step into the room and closed the door behind him. Let her think what she would. He peered over the hag’s shoulder to catch a first glimpse of his son. He expected the hag to recoil in shock and fright as his son’s lizard head made its appearance but it was he who was repulsed. Rather than black scales he could see a patch of black human hair.

In a surprisingly short time, the baby popped out in a mess. The way the hag managed the process that followed with a dexterous hoist, slap, snip, knot, swaddle combination was impressive. She had obviously done this before.

Jesobel had in the meantime been returned to a more dignified position and was craning over to catch a glimpse of her newborn when she caught sight of him at the door. He managed a weak smile. He was still in shock. Was this child his after all?

“Oh my! It’s you!” she exclaimed.

This got him the attention of the hag and her two helpers.

“Who are you and what you doing here?” demanded the hag.

The child had been wrapped and was being passed up to Jesobel. Deathwing had heard enough human runts around his palace to know they were forever crying, but not this one. Jesobel instinctively pulled away her dress top to reveal a full bosom. He stepped closer.

The baby’s eyes were tightly closed and its mouth worked hard in search of the teat that was proud and waiting. Jesobel took the child and lifted it to her breast where its thirsty lips started to suckle.

The hag and her women were taken by the sight and ignored him, once more to assume a fawning ensemble. They muttered all manner of nonsense.

“Oh, how sweet.”

“A good head of hair and no mistake.”

“He’s a big one, isn’t he?”

“Like his father.”

As the baby took its first urgent sucks there was a collective sigh, though Deathwing’s was more of annoyance that he had come all this way to see a human baby born.

Then the baby’s eyelids shot open and it let go of the teat and screeched. Jesobel screamed.

Curdled milk oozed from Jesobel’s teat and ran from the baby’s mouth. The hag and her helpers joined the mother’s hysteria, which amplified when they caught sight of the baby’s eyes; they were black pits in the baby’s skull. Jesobel fainted clean away when her son flicked out a forked tongue.

Disappointment fled Deathwing faster than a peasant caught stealing.

He had a son!

Deathwing reached down and picked up the child. He held him close and whispered in his ear so that no one but his son could hear, and gave him his True Name.

He then held up his son to take a better look. Malevolent dark eyes stared back, a keen intelligence in them that even Deathwing found disturbing. There was no question from whose loins this lad had sprung.

Satisfied, he returned the baby to his mother’s arms. The hag and her helpers were frozen, eyes wide in fear, staring at him.

“Help her,” he commanded. “Feed the child warm blood until he can take solids, and then only meat. Look after him well or face my wrath.”

The women didn’t move. They were clearly terrified.

“Get to it!”

There was a flurry of activity and Jesobel was brought round. For a moment, she seemed unaware of where she was and what had happened but then she saw the baby and screamed.

“Enough!” ordered Deathwing. He knelt at her side and spoke to her. “This is your child. He will be like no other. You must look after him.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “You can’t leave me. What am I to do?”

Deathwing reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a purse. He wrapped her hand over it. “This will help. He will have…special needs.”

He kissed her forehead and placed a spell of forgetfulness on her and stood. She would not remember what had happened and see nothing but a normal baby boy. From another pocket he took a chain with a small dragon pendant and put it around his son’s neck.

“He wears that always,” he told Jesobel. It would not only protect his son but make him seem more human. “Now I must go.”

“But what shall we call him?”

Deathwing stopped at the door and turned to take a last look at Jesobel and his son. He had given his son his True Name but that was never to be spoken. He needed a human name.

“His name is Morden.”

Chapter 4 A Dark Lord

Your Will is your strength.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

Morden sat on his throne and surveyed his realm. All that he could see was his and it was good – in the sense that it was his. In reality, it was a long forgotten store room that he had come across while exploring the school. Little used, it had been ideal for a lair from which to direct his empire. He had it in mind that these days something bigger would be more in keeping for someone whose interests extended beyond the school and spread across a larger part of the Western Reaches. Not much was brewed in these lands without him having a share of the profits. A storeroom, not much bigger than a cupboard, tucked away off an outer yard of the school was not ideal for a criminal genius such as himself, but it was where he had started and it had a special place in his heart.