The Demon Lord (26 page)

The Cernuan had not seen it drawn, had no idea where it had been concealed and did not care. ” ‘We could be friends, you and I,’” he spat, bitterly hurling Aldric’s own words back at him. “I doubt that!”

It was as if he had emptied icy water over his companion’s head. A hot mist seemed to clear from inside the Alban’s wide, dark eyes and they looked down at the knife as if he held some noxious reptile in his hand- “I might have killed you,” Aldric whispered and the horror in his voice was real.

“You might have tried,” Marek grated. But deep inside he knew that Aldric spoke the truth. Had he drawn sword instead of dagger—and Marek had seen how fast some Albans could clear steel from scabbard—the
eijo
would have cut him down in a continuation of the drawing stroke. It would have been an instinctive reaction, he would not have truly meant to do it; but at that stage motive or the lack of it would no longer have concerned his target… The Cernuan felt his legs grow slightly shaky.

“You struck me.” Aldric touched the livid mark, not accusing, just stating the literally painfully obvious. “You are Cernuan. You should know.
Kailinin
are not struck. Not even by their lords.
Never
. I might have killed you…”

It was very clear that he was thinking as Marek had done: about the
taiken
, about the blinding speed with which he could draw it. About what the consequences of such reflex retaliation might some day be…

He shuddered inwardly and slipped the knife back into its sheath within his boot. “I regret that. All of it. But… I doubt that what happened was an accident. And that disturbs me.”

“Sedna… ?”

“I think that she was killed to keep her quiet.”

“But… but why?”

“Because of me. Because of what I am. What I really am, not what I pretend to be.” Briefly he explained ideas, theories and wild surmises, elaborating points which earlier he had skimmed over or omitted altogether.

“And where does the girl—Gueynor, or Aline, or whatever she calls herself—come into all this?”

Aldric shook his head. “She does not. That matter is quite separate—and private. Between us—”

” ‘And none of your business, Cernuan,’” Marek mocked.

“At least you’re getting back your sense of humour.”

“If I didn’t laugh—”

“You’d cry… ?”

“I would probably go mad.” There was such sincerity in the demon queller’s words that Aldric subsided again. He turned away and fussed with Lyard for a while, gentling him with a buzz of nonsense that required no thought on his part. “I’m glad,” he muttered finally, without looking around, “that Geruath wants you to destroy this… whatever it is.” Aldric patted Lyard’s velvet nose and glanced at Marek: “I hadn’t given him so much sense…” That swift glance caught an expression on the Cernuan’s face which had no right to be there, and Aldric’s eyes narrowed. “
Doesn’t he
?” As the Alban’s mind raced ahead of his tongue the last words came out like the crack of a whip.

“Well…” Marek stared at the stable floor, pushed a single stray wisp of hay back and forth, back and forth with the toe of his boot, and completely failed to meet the
eijo’s
gaze. “Not—not quite destroy…”

“Then what in the nine hot Hells
does
he want?” For the horse’s sake Aldric held his impatient shout in check, but it required a conscious effort on his part to do so and apprehensive anger thrummed behind the words. He was afraid that he already knew the answer.

And he was right.

“They both want it captured. Tamed. Quelled… Broken to their will”—he gazed at Lyard—”as one might break a horse. They think I can control it.”

“But you can’t, can you?” Marek shook his head. “Then don’t you think you ought to tell them so—or are you so keen to end up as leftovers?”

This time the demon queller ignored his verbal brutality. What Lord Geruath wants, he usually—no, invariably— gets.

“He may get more than he expects this time,” said Aldric savagely. He walked to the stable door and looked outside towards the Overlord’s tower, which reared its stark outline against the clear and star-shot sky. “Because he must be mad, you know. Quite insane.”

“I’ve seen him, Aldric-an. I do know. That’s why I daren’t refuse. Not openly. Not yet.”

The apartments set aside for them in the citadel of Seghar were much superior to those just vacated at the Inn of Restful Sleep; but Aldric doubted he would get much sleep here, whether restful or disturbing. There were too many guards—yet, strangely, very few soldiers in the Imperial harness worn by
Kortagor
Jervan. It seemed to Aldric that the sentries he had seen were no more than part-time troops, a militia made up from the fortress’s servants and paraded before him to impress by numbers alone. He had been more impressed by their core of mercenaries, the Drusalans and the Tergovans Gueynor had mentioned—and whom he had already met within the chieftain’s broken mound. But there were not enough of them. Certainly not enough to justify the amount of money which should be within these walls. Aldric had a vague idea of what stipend Seghar received to foment rebellions against Grand Warlord Etzel; but now that he knew where the Geruath sympathies truly lay, he had expected to see plain traces of the misspent wealth—rich furnishings, a large, well-equipped retinue… Extravagances of that sort. Yet there was nothing. Unless the gold was sent elsewhere—but he doubted and dismissed that surmise almost at once; it was too untypical of what he already knew. Strange…

Stranger still was Geruath himself. As had happened before, the trio had barely unpacked what few belongings they had brought to their respective rooms when they were commanded—courteously enough, Aldric noted with a
kailin’s
eye for such niceties, but still commanded rather than invited—into the presence of the Overlord of Seghar.

That presence was not overly imposing, as such things are measured. Geruath was gaunt; indeed he was scrawny to the point of emaciation, but he endeavoured to counter his physical insignificance with splendid clothes and all the trappings of lordship. His robes would have been magnificent had they been one-half as rich—instead they were foolish, ridiculous and, even to Aldric’s cold single eye, a little pathetic. He could smell the heavy perfumes of musk and civet, of lavender and attar of roses. Roses again… ! And beneath it all he could see a man of middle age, sick in mind and body, terrified of growing old. Lord Geruath’s hair might well have been of a distinguished grey, or with elegant tags of silver at his temples; but it had been dyed a hard, unreal black, sleek as polished leather, and to match its mock-youthful darkness his face was painted and powdered to the ruddy tan of a healthy man of thirty.

It should have been laughable. Or perverse. Or simply decadent. But in truth it was no more than sad.

Yet his weapons were perfection; apart from Isileth Widowmaker and perhaps two other blades which he had seen at a distance in Cerdor, Aldric suspected that the Overlord’s matched swords and dagger were quite possibly the finest in the world. He was beginning to realise where King Rynert’s gold had gone. And in his secret heart of hearts, given such an opportunity without risk of lost honour and its atonement in suicide, he knew that he would do the same…

Kneeling, Aldric pressed brow to crossed hands on the floor in the Second Obeisance that was due any lord in his own hall, then sat back neatly on his heels. After a startled glance at the unexpectedly elaborate courtesy— acknowledged with the curtest of nods—Geruath dismissed the Alban as a mere retainer and spoke rapidly to Marek in what sounded like some courtly form of dialect. The choice of language might well have been deliberate, for Geruath’s words immediately reverted to a rapid, slightly irritating background noise which made no sense at all to Aldric.

Nor, from her blank expression, to Gueynor. She had copied him: kneeling, bowing and sitting back as he had done not so much to appear a foreigner—although it had given that effect—as for something positive to do. The girl had covered her initial spasm of detestation well; Aldric doubted if, at her age, he could have hidden his true feelings so successfully.

If the guards around the fortress and the outer citadel had been uncomfortably numerous, in here they were unusually few. Given Geruath’s propensity for ostentation, a troop in full battle armour would not have been out of place. Instead there were only two soldiers flanking the Overlord’s high seat, wearing crested coats like the boy who had come to the inn the previous night; both carried gisarms, and looked as if they knew how to use them.

Seated a little way to one side was an elderly man, balding and harrassed-looking. He wrote in a large, leather-bound book at great speed and with many blots, but seemed always at least two sentences in arrears of what the Lord was saying. The hall scribe, guessed Aldric, giving him his Alban title:
Hanan-Vlethanek
, the Keeper of Years. Certainly he seemed to be making— or trying to make—a record of everything that was said and done here, as any normal Archivist would do, but this was not Alba—it was a border province of the Drusalan Empire, and one could never be entirely sure for whose eyes the information was ultimately destined. Aldric rubbed at his right eye through the cloth which covered it. He had already decided that the organ had merely been “injured” and was “improving” rapidly, because the patch was annoying, uncomfortable and often downright painful. And it was dangerous. He always had a blind side now, had been startled more than once by Gueynor at his elbow when he had not heard the girl approaching, and found distances impossible to judge. Soon he would remove the patch, dab soap into his eye—he flinched from that necessary evil—to make it red and inflamed, and have his full vision restored.

But not yet. The old scribe glanced in his direction, chewed at the frayed end of his pen and scribbled a brief description of the Lord’s guests. Soon, thought Aldric. But not just yet…

Weapons lined the walls of Geruath’s presence-chamber: an excessive quantity of weapons for any room except an armoury. The polished wood and lacquerwork, the semiprecious stones and bronze and leather—and above all else the steel, blued and burnished, etched and plain and razor sharp… such an array would have done credit to the Hall of Archives at Dunrath, or Gemmel Snowbeard’s arsenal in his labyrinthine home under the Blue Mountains that were Alba’s backbone. All were of good quality, fine examples of sword or spear or bow or axe, and a few—a very few, like the blades so ineffectually worn by Geruath—were masterpieces. Someone, somewhere, their name and face elusive, had told Aldric about this: “he searches out old weapons,” the forgotten name had said, “and collects them in his tower at Seghar.” Those half-remembered words should have given him a warning, should have prepared him… They did not-

“Kourgath-an!” There was a sharpness in Marek En-dain’s voice that made Aldric realise it was the demon queller’s second time for speaking. Perhaps even the third…

“Sir?” he responded, inclining his head to his erstwhile “employer.”

“Geruath the Overlord wishes to speak with you.” There was worry behind Marek’s neutral, bearded features as he leaned closer, slipping momentarily from Jouvaine into Alban. “With you, not to you,” he hissed urgently. “He’s being pleasant, before Heaven! Try to do likewise, no matter what…”

No matter what… ? Aldric thought as he nodded, wondering why the Cernuan had felt it necessary to make such a request; and wondering, too, what had disturbed him so much that it showed through his schooled exterior. He soon found out.

“I want,” said Geruath brusquely, “to see your sword.”

The Overlord might have been pleasant to Marek’s ears, but Aldric found both his request and the form it took offensive in the extreme. Of all the elaborate courtesies which governed high-clan Albans, the most elaborate concerned
taikenin
. Any insult to the sword was an insult to its wearer; and any insult to the wearer was answered by his sword. One did not demand to see a
taiken
, any
taiken;
one did not employ the words “I want,” at all; and as a collector of weapons Geruath the Overlord most surely was aware of all these things. He might have been testing him, trying his reactions. Or he might merely have been stupid.

“No,” Aldric replied, his voice toneless and flat. That was all.

“I want to see it,” Geruath repeated.

“No.”

“Kourgath, for the love of God…” Marek was almost pleading with him, but he could sense Gueynor’s silent approval and support. “Kourgath… !” the demon queller said again desperately. Aldric looked at him; at the girl; at the Overlord.

“No.”

Silence. The exquisitely bundled, painted and perfumed apparition that was Geruath the Overlord rose to his feet, his breathing coming quicker now and an unhealthy flush darkening his powdered cheeks. Bony, veined hands heavy with rings clutched at the carven arms of his chair, working convulsively like a falcon on its perch. Except that falcons had more dignity. The storm brewed, plain in his staring eyes and flexing fingers.

But it did not break. “Leave my presence!” Geruath commanded and his voice was calm, controlled and terrible. “You,” he swung on the scribe, “give me your book.” The old man sidled forward apprehensively, unsure of what was to come, then cried out as Geruath snatched the Archive from him. Lips moving, the Over-

lord traced what had been written, his finger following the words and smearing the still-wet ink. “You were able to write all this down fast enough,” he accused and the scribe cringed back, anticipating a blow. Instead Geruath gripped the latest page by its outer margin and let the heavy volume fall. There was a momentary hesitation and a snapping of threads before the binding gave way with a sharp rip and the Archive thudded to the floor. Geruath ignored it. He ignored everyone: the old man, reaching out with little snatching movements to recover the book without coming too close to his lord’s feet or fists; the two guards who looked on stoically at a scene probably familiar to them; he even ignored the cause of his anger as Aldric stood up, turned and left without a bow of courtesy, Marek and Gueynor in his wake. Instead Geruath flopped back into his chair and tore the page apart with manic care and concentration until its pieces too small for him to grasp…