The Demon Lord (16 page)

Afterwards, with the villagers almost upon them— doubtless attracted by the sound of fighting almost on their doorstep—Aldric tried again to speak. “He saved my life.” One of Evthan’s arrows lay beside the flayed body of the Beast.

Gueynor looked, the tear-tracks down her cheeks turned silver by the moonlight. “And mine,” she whispered. “When—when the change began, I was beside him. But he went for you, and let you see quite clearly what he was. Although you don’t see, even yet. Look at him, Alban! Something does not accord with all the lore you so obviously know. Look at him…”

Aldric turned his head and stared. The hunter’s body was sprawled where they had set it, at the foot of a tree, and his long limbs hung loose in that unconnected way all dead things had. The beautiful deep fur of his
coyac
glistened dully on one shoulder, where it was soaked with drying blood that would turn the fine pelt harsh and spiky. The
coyac
—which he had been wearing all the time.

“
Domne diu
...” Aldric breathed. “He was fully dressed!” And he spoke that obvious fact as if it was remarkable.

Which it was, for all the books and old tales said the same thing; that before a man becomes a werewolf he must strip stark naked, right to the skin, bared of even rings or chains or any sort of jewel. For lycanthropy, they said, is skin-changing, whether it be to wolf or any other animal. While this was…

“Shifting. Shape-shifting, before Heaven! Sorcery.” Aldric had seen the like before; Duergar Vathach had prowled Baelen Wood beyond Dunrath in the shape of a wolf, and he had changed men into crows to act as his spies. “Did Crisen do this to him?” Gueynor nodded. “Just because he struck an insolent soldier who wasn’t even in the Overlord’s service…”

“My uncle let you see him, Kourgath, so that you would know what you had to do. Because he hoped…” Gueynor raised her head to look him in the eyes and the full moon was mirrored in her own. That pale light had washed all colour from his face and transformed it to a mask of metal, eyed with grey-green flints and with its shadows deeply etched. A slayer’s face. “No, not hoped,” the girl said finally. “Knew. He knew that you would kill him.”

Aldric sighed and it was as if the mask had never been. He felt tired, and sick, and old as Death. “
Ai, gev’n-au tsepanak’ulleth
,” he muttered grimly to himself, and then to Gueynor: “He used me as his
tsepan
—as his release from life. I’ve performed an honourable, charitable act.” He glanced up towards the mocking moon. “So what makes me feel so filthy… ?”

That same full moon hung in the sky at midnight, its pale face licked by tongues of drifting cloud; but not a glimmer pierced the heavy velvet curtains which covered Sedna’s windows. Her only illumination was the wan yellow glow of six black corpse-fat candles, each one man-high and thicker than a strong wrist. They stank.

As her slender white-robed form moved through the incense-spicy air, smoke curled from many censers to billow in the sorceress’ wake. Patterns of power writhed across the dark red floor under her bare feet, and for many minutes Sedna compared each symbol and inscription with its original in the vellum pages of an ancient grimoire. Finally she cleared her throat and began to read aloud in a rapid monotone, tracing each sentence with a grisly little gold-tipped wand made from the spine of a kitten.

“There had best be purpose to this playacting,” said someone well beyond the pools of candle-light, “for I am wearied of it.” Without inflection, irritation or impatience, the words were still heavy with an assurance born of rank and power. Metal scraped as one of the soldiers who enforced that power shifted uneasily. “And do not think this waste of time impresses me,” the icy voice continued. “You are far from indispensable. There are other warlocks—most of them a deal more skilled than you.”

Sedna paused in her reading and dared to look reproachful, but the only response was a dry, artificial chuckle which nevertheless served to make the Vreijek marginally bolder. “More skilled perhaps,
Eldheisart
Voord,” she replied, shaking back strands of hair from her face and giving the man his proper title, “but certainly no faster. This ritual—my playacting, as you are pleased to call it—is a requirement of the spell. And of safety: mine, yours… everyone here.” That nervous rustle of armour was repeated, and a wintry smile thinned her full lips as she returned to the incantation.

“Your safety maybe, spellmaker!” snapped Voord, angered by her impudence. “Not mine! Tonight’s performance is for Lord Crisen alone.”

Sedna’s head jerked round, eyes widening, and for an instant stark fear edged her voice before she controlled it, betraying the raw nerve that Voord’s words had touched. “Not tonight of all nights!” she gasped, then collected herself and continued more calmly, as if the outburst had never taken place. “This is full moon at the summer solstice. I cannot—I
dare
not make magic of any sort at such a time. Tell him, Crisen—make him understand…”

Voord already understood a great many things, among them her significant omission of the underlord’s title, although he chose not to pass comment on that… yet. And he was far more aware of what had frightened the woman—the witch, he corrected himself—than she imagined. On this night, of all nights in the year save its dark twin at midwinter, enchantments would work only crookedly if at all and would be made doubly treacherous by the lowering presence of the swollen moon. It influenced the tides and the ravings of madmen; it made dogs howl and… created other things that also howled at night. Despite himself Voord had to repress a slight shiver. A summoning such as that which Sedna was preparing might fail completely, despite the care with which she drew her circles and her pentad sigils. But under the triple influence of midnight, moon and solstice the charm would more likely warp as it took effect, calling up something totally unexpected and consequently unaffected by the highly specific wards and holding patterns that were effective against one entity but not another. Although that was a piece of knowledge which Voord’s cold mind had already filed away as being useful…

“She is correct,” Crisen said over the
eldheisart’s
shoulder, and by the warmth of his tone favoured her with an indulgent smile. “All this is for tomorrow. We have been most careful since—”

“The last time your amateur conjuring went wrong,” Voord finished for him brutally. “In my homeland of Vlech there is a proverb: ‘The wise man sheathes his knife before he cuts himself, not after.’ A shape-shifting was it not?”

“How
did
you…”

“How do I ever… ?” mocked Voord. “There are ways of learning everything, sooner or later. Instead of a changeling you created a werewolf, and then tried to hide your blunder by acquiring yet another wolf and training it to devour only women and children. That was not particularly clever, was it? Especially since between the two of them they have slaughtered some thirty of your forest-dwelling peasants.”

“And what’s a peasant more or less?”

“In such numbers, cause for unnecessary speculation at a time when—” Voord began, but was interrupted when Sedna’s quiet voice cut firmly through his own.

“/ am a peasant, Crisen,” she said.

“You are what I choose to tell the world you are,” he retorted, much too quickly. Voord glanced at his companion, and it was as well that his expression was lost in the shadows.

“A private word,” he whispered, tugging Crisen’s sleeve between finger and thumb in an exaggeratedly fastidious manner. Leading the other man out of the chamber, he stared at him in silence for so long that Crisen became uncomfortable—precisely the
eldheisart’s
intention—and then tapped him sharply on the chest. “Your priorities,” he stated flatly, “appear somewhat confused.”

They were of an age—late twenties—and similar in height, but there any resemblance ended. Crisen’s waist was thick from too much good living, his face heavy-featured and florid even in the sickly-blue moonlight which streamed into the corridor, and his black hair was cut in what had been the height of fashion at the Imperial court some three months past. Voord, by contrast, was whiplash thin in both face and body, pale of skin and flaxen of severely scraped-back hair. There was a disdainful twist to his razor-cut mouth which he made no attempt to conceal.

“Whatever do you mean by that?” Crisen tried to blus-

ter, but found it difficult to do so effectively in such a low-pitched conversation.

“You know quite well… my lord.” The honorific title came out like an insult. “Tell me—how much do you skim off the Alban stipend to your father? Thirty per cent? Forty?” Crisen cleared his throat apprehensively. “Not more surely… ? How much more?”

“Last time,” the Jouvaine nobleman confessed after a lengthy pause, “I had to take twelve to the score.”

“
Had
to…”

“Sedna—that is, I needed money urgently!”

“Gaming debts, no doubt,” soothed Voord. Then he assumed an air of theatrical incredulity, that of a man doubting the evidence of his own ears. “But does this mean that you subtracted sixty per cent of the gold your father should have received… and Lord Geruath did not notice?”

“My father,” there was lip-curling venom in the way Crisen sneered the word, “has his own interests.”

“As have I—and, it seems, have you…”

“He thinks himself clever because he has deceived the Albans into paying for precisely nothing—they still believe he supports Ioen and Goth.”

“Oh. Is that why they sent an envoy in near-secrecy to find out
precisely
,” he threw back Crisen’s word with relish, “how King Rynert’s gold is being used?” The Vlechan glanced back into the chamber where Sedna read and chanted, and that look spoke several eloquent phrases. “Or misused. I suggest that you would be advised to spend more on your mercenary cadre and less on your… amusements.” Crisen stared at him but said nothing. “They seem overly distracting.”

“For all the Albans’ secrecy, you found out,” Crisen flattered blatantly, trying to evade the issue, but Voord was having none of it.

“Of course I found out,” he snapped, omitting to say just how.

“And I sent a troop directly you warned me. They were disguised as…” The underlord’s voice trailed to silence as he saw the expression which had settled on Voord’s face.

“As bandits,” the
eldheisart
concluded dryly. “Very theatrical. And very useless! They still botched the mission!”

“They killed the Vreijek.” Crisen’s protest was feeble.

“But they were not sent after the Vreijek, were they?” Voord pointed out with heavy emphasis. “And I specifically forbade killing. It is difficult to get answers out of a corpse even after prolonged interrogation.” He was quite plainly not making a joke. “Was that your intention, or your hope… ?” The Vlechan paused just long enough for his implied accusation to sink home, but not long enough for Crisen to formulate a coherent excuse. “Because, my lord, it is
only
difficult. Not impossible. Not for me…” The smile which accompanied his words was an unpleasant thing to see and Crisen flinched. “Now, thanks to the bungling of your… bandits… the Alban has not merely eluded us but vanished completely. Yes. Quite! And he was no ordinary courier… ?”

“Why? What was he?”

“That,” snarled Voord with a sudden burst of anger, “ceased to be your concern when your men lost him! If it was ever your concern at all!” He grew quieter, more introspective, and his cold brain began to calculate with less emotion than an abacus. “Your father remains ignorant of all this, I take it? And I do mean all…” Crisen nodded dumbly. “So. Then something may yet be salvaged, if I—” He broke off what was plainly a train of thought and stared at Crisen out of pale eyes. “As for you, leave me. Go get drunk, or get some sleep—but get away from here and give me peace!”

Unaccustomed to abrupt dismissal in his father’s house, Crisen made no move and was plainly gathering enough nerve to assert himself. Voord took away his chance to even try with a single snap of the fingers which summoned his honour guard from where they had stood in silence ten paces down the corridor, and once the mailed troopers were at his side Crisen Geruath felt it wise to hold his tongue while they waited patiently for instructions.

“
Tagen, Garet, esvoda moy
,” said Voord, deliberately employing the Vlechan dialect which he already knew Crisen could not understand. “
Inak Kryssn ya vaj, dar boedd’cha. Najin los doestal Najin. Slijei
?” The armoured men saluted with a precise double click and flanked Crisen more closely then he liked. “Your escort,” Voord said flatly, “will see you safe and uninterrupted to your room. Good night, my lord.”

When he could no longer hear the cadenced footsteps, Voord opened the door of Sedna’s chamber a finger’s width. As he watched, she completed the patterning of a diagram with carefully poured white powder, each line stark against the red-dyed wood of the floor, and once again stood back to check what she had done against the grimoire, balanced now on a spindly lectern. The
eldheisart’s
gaze scanned what she had drawn, rested briefly and almost with regret on the outline of her body where the candleglow beyond it made translucent mist of her thin robe, and settled at last on the key of the heavy door, resting within easy reach on its usual small shelf. Lifting it down, Voord turned it over in his hands once or twice, then looked again towards the Vreijek woman. “Such a waste…” The words were barely audible even to himself. “If you had been less inquisitive, then perhaps…” The dreamy glaze behind his eyes froze over so that they became two chips of ice. “But not now, my dear. You know too much. I’m sorry.” He closed the door and locked it. From the outside.

Although he would never admit it, Lord-Commander Voord was frightened. The sensation was unfamiliar, and made worse by its very novelty; usually he had no reason to be afraid of anyone or anything—indeed, was more likely to be the cause of fear in others—but tonight he faced the realisation that events which he had once controlled were overtaking him. That, too, was unsettlingly novel.