The Demon Lord (9 page)

Killing is always simpler at a distance; cheaper to pay the cost of death when you cannot see in detail how very high it is. How much easier would it be if one’s victims were so far away that they ceased to be people and were reduced to numbers on a tally of the dead… ? So might the world die, consumed by fire while its leaders calculated how much loss each could accept before defeat or victory. So might Valden be destroyed— although more intimately, by the vengeful whim of he who was son of the Overlord.

Aldric snatched up the spring-gun and levelled it—but hesitated when he realised the soldier had not moved. The man’s arms hung by his sides, his head was turned away and he was simply waiting for what he knew to be inevitable. His terror was a palpable thing, and the Alban felt a sickness churning in his stomach. The
telek-
muzzle wavered, and in vain Aldric tried to summon images of what men like this would do to Valden—and to Gueynor—when Crisen turned them loose. He could not justify what he had to do… Not unless the man attacked him or tried to run—or did anything that might give him reason to complete that pressure on the trigger…

“Come on,” he snarled between his teeth. “The odds are even now. Rush me!”

Now is that not the worst of all? said a small, stern voice inside his head. It sounded just like Gemmel. If you must kill, then kill. But whatever you do, waste no time trying to persuade yourself that what you do is right!

Aldric whimpered softly, like a hurt child. And squeezed the trigger.

The running footsteps dwindled, replaced after a few moments by the rapid, fading beat of hoofs. They had horses! Of course they would have horses. It is a long march down from Seghar, by all accounts. Will they march or come on horseback when Crisen sends them to obliterate the village because of what I did—and could not do… ?

Very slowly Aldric lowered his
telek
, looking at it and smiling a small, wan smile. What he had not done… ! He had not shot the soldier—because he had not fully cocked the weapon. Perhaps it was an accident, perhaps unconsciously deliberate. Either way, it no longer mattered. Three deaths in one night were enough for any man. Although the killing might be over, the dying was not finished, for the first man he had shot was irrevocably doomed. Aldric had not forgotten the poison on each dart’s sharp point. At least the wolfsbane would send an easier, a kinder death than some of the other venoms which he might have used—if any death before its time could be called kind.

Stripping off his right-hand glove, he knelt and pressed his fingers to the soldier’s neck. The man’s skin was cold, and clammy with perspiration; senses numbed and body paralysed, he did not react to Aldric’s presence save with an upward rolling of his eyes. The pulse was slow beneath the Alban’s touch, irregular and weak; like the uneven, shallow breathing, soon to stop. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do, not now. Except… reaching up toward the chieftain’s bier, Aldric moved his candle closer. At least the lord’s-man would not die in the dark. But the gasps for breath had stopped before he set the candle down.

Aldric’s eyes closed for several minutes; then he straightened and decided it was time to leave this place. On a whim, he bent and lifted the red rose which had lain undisturbed throughout the fighting. Its fragrance was as potent as before, still with that slight voluptuous suggestion about it. But at least it did not stink of fresh-spilled blood. Then, just as he had touched the soldier, he reached out with those same fingertips and laid them lightly on the chieftain’s dry, brown skull. The contact was cool, with the slight leather slickness of an old book-binding.

“Lord of the mound,” said Aldric. It sounded like a salutation. “Did they leave your hawks and hounds and horses here, and the chosen of your warriors to guard your goods and ease your loneliness in the long night of the grave? Maybe. You will have more company from this night on.”

He had hoped for magic, or an answer to the many riddles which troubled him; and had found only pain and the echoes of nightmare, and death. With a small, slight bow, he turned and walked away.

The reflex jerk of one slim leg awoke her, wrenched sweating and wild-eyed out of a dreadful dream of endless falling. There was no warm interval of drowsiness: one minute she was deep in restless sleep, the next shocked wide awake by her own spasmodic movement. Through a crack where the bedroom shutters failed to meet across one window, the moon shone into her eyes, and for an instant the young woman thought that she had somehow lost all of one day and night—then realised with a relief concealed by the darkness that its disc was not just yet at full.

She was Sedna ar Gethin, the present consort of Lord Crisen Geruath and, some said, a sorceress of great— though undefined—ability. Not that any who lived in Seghar town beneath the shadow of their Overlord’s lowering citadel were rash enough to use that word, or indeed any of its variants: an over-forthright merchant from Tergoves had been torn by horses in the public square merely for hazarding such a speculation aloud. Yet when regarded in the light of what the Empire’s law demanded as the punishment for sorcerers, Crisen’s swift and ferocious reprisal became if no less excessive, then at least more understandable. Though men of power and privilege in Drusul and the other Imperial provinces ringing Drakkesborg could do much as they pleased, protected by what they were or who they knew, the same did not apply to petty noblemen out on the Jev-aiden plateau. Especially those who were determined to avoid attention if they could—and it was a measure of how such things were measured in the Empire now, that an execution without trial was no longer cause for comment.

Sedna curled her legs beneath her and sat up, knowing that sleep would prove elusive for a while—and, remembering a little of her dream, was glad of it. The plump, down-stuffed quilt slipped from her shoulders and permitted the night air to take liberties with her naked upper body. She shivered, and not just from cold: the sensation had been uncomfortably like… an experience earlier that night. Moving carefully for fear of waking Crisen she began to snuggle lower, but the Overlord’s son, disturbed by the intrusion of a cool draught, muttered something to his pillow and rolled over, clawing still more of the quilt from Sedna’s limbs. She glared at him, momentarily debated what to do while her skin grew rapidly colder, then came to a decision and swung both legs out of bed as she reached for her discarded robe. This was of cream silk patterned with sunflowers, and lined with a costly apricot satin whose weight made it cling to the curves of her body as if both fabric and flesh were oiled—but more important still, that heavy lining made it warm.

She was not so much slim as slender, almost thin, with all the implied plainness which that word suggested. But “almost” only, for Sedna was not thin and not plain, not even merely pretty: she was beautiful, possessed of the translucent fragility of an exquisite porcelain figurine for all that she was taller than most men. Her straight black hair added to her height; no blade had touched it since her birth and now, worn as she preferred it in the courtly, simple high-clan Alban style of a single switch— tied back with a thumb-thick silken cord—it flowed in a glossy raven sheet the full length of her spine and beyond. Its darkness, and the deep brown of her long-lashed eyes, accentuated the soft pastels of a face which had never tanned, even when as a peasant’s child she had played out of doors all day. Not that she seemed much more than a child now, for all her willowy elegance—at the age of twenty-two, she had the unblemished features of a sixteen-year-old nun. But Sedna ar Gethin was neither nun nor innocent; she was Vreijek, a sorceress, and a long way from home.

The thick, unpleasant smells of burnt
ymeth
and stale wine lingered in the bedroom; Sedna wrinkled her nose distastefully and wished herself more than ever back in Vreijaur—or indeed anywhere that was far from here and now. She looked down at the muffled bulk of Cri-sen’s sleeping body, staring in a dispassionate way which she knew would have annoyed him intensely had he been awake and aware of it.

He was not a bad man, she thought, at least no more man most in his situation; ambitious of course, but then so many were.
She
was ambitious—that was why she was here. But she felt sure that there was no real evil in him, unlike some of the men she had encountered in this same fortress during recent months. Lord-Commander Voord for one, who slept in a guest-room in the same wing of the citadel, not sufficiently far away from the Vreijek’s peace of mind. Or, she reflected, more likely did not sleep but sat bolt upright in a high-backed chair with his unblinking pale eyes fixed on nothing, no more needing to close them than an adder. Because there was something undeniably reptilian about him, something cold and patient. Sedna was unaware why so young a man should warrant such high rank, and had no desire to find out. She guessed that ignorance of Voord’s doings was an advantage, when one had to speak to him—an ordeal which she had so far kept to an absolute minimum. The man frightened her.

Wrapping the lined robe close about her and tying it in place, Sedna walked towards the casement and swung one shutter wide. Now that there was no longer such strong contrast between out-of-bed and in, the night air was refreshing rather than chilly and she drew it deep into her lungs as a man might breathe in the fragrant smoke from his pipe. The dream still troubled her, for there was more behind it than a simple nightmare—of that she was quite certain. Suddenly she was afraid of the moonlit darkness. One finger stretched out towards an oil-lamp, and there was a small, sharp crack as its wick ignited when she pronounced the Invocation of Fire. Sedna was a sorceress indeed, and one who was considerably skilled in the Art Magic; her nonchalant lighting of the lamp demonstrated as much by her con-

trol of that one spell. A less capable wizard could quite easily have set the entire table aflame…

She set herself to concentrated thought, knowing that she was not given to precognition or to visions yet aware that such, in this instance, was the case. There had been death in her dream, the violent ending of more than one life—but where, and why should it concern her? Then her gaze turned on Crisen with the beginnings of a horrid certainty, as she felt sure that this affair would prove to concern him most of all. Sedna could not have given any reason why, even to herself—but nonetheless she
knew
.

He had always shown a little inquisitive interest in her magics—only so much as any man might have in something of importance to a lover but of no account to himself—and had used his rank and status as a shield to guard her from the consequences of her studies. Yet on more than one occasion past she had discovered that her books had been disturbed. There was no reason for complaint at that; none were damaged and mere curiosity was again accountable. But now with her suspicions aroused, Sedna began to see connections which earlier had not been apparent. How many other times had all been tidied carefully, so that she was unaware of them… ?

Her well-thumbed copy of
The Grey Book of Sanglenn
had been withdrawn from its case, read and replaced with its place-tag moved from “Herblore”—a most ap-propriate subject here in the forest country—to “Shape-shifting,” an art in which she had no interest whatsoever. More ominously her rarest and most expensive grimoire— a hand-bound, handwritten Jouvaine translation of the proscribed Vlechan work
Enciervanul Doamnisoar
—On the Summoning of Demons—had been moved fractionally and one hasp of the reputedly woman’s-hide cover was not quite snapped shut. Sedna had noticed that intrusion straight away, for she had bought the volume at a high price when the opportunity had arisen and since that time had not opened it except to ascertain that all its pages were in place. It was a book for owning, not for use—and it was certainly not for idle browsing by the uninitiated.

Now the realisation that someone—perhaps Crisen, perhaps not—had looked between its covers unsettled her, where before it had merely irritated her. The phrase “forbidden knowledge” was one greatly over-used by the ignorant, but in the case of
Enciervanul’s
contents it was no more than the truth. There were stories and unsubstantiated rumours of what had befallen the translator, one year and a day after the completion of his self-appointed task. At least, Sedna hoped that they were only stories…

She knew what she would have to do, for her own peace of mind, and though she would far rather have waited until daylight it would have to be done at once. Pushing her feet into soft slippers, she slid the bedroom door aside just enough to let her out, then with a glance back towards the still-sleeping Crisen, Sedna squeezed through the crack and pulled it shut behind her.

Three seconds passed. Then Crisen Geruath sat up.

The Overlord’s son had granted his lady two rooms for her own private use; one was a library and the other a great cellar underneath the oldest part of Seghar citadel, where she could perform such spells as she desired without causing untoward disturbance—or attracting unwelcome curiosity. It was in that chamber that she occasionally made entertaining magics for Crisen’s amusement: conjuring minor elemental spirits, like those which caused the blossoming of great red summer roses four months ago at the waning of winter, when snow outside still clothed the Jevaiden in white drifts six feet deep.

Once, and once only—for she detested the dark necromantic art—Sedna had called up the spirit of one of Crisen’s ancestors. Crisen had not been pleased, for all that he had insisted she perform the sorcery; just as many men are angered when a careful scholar reveals their line to have sprung from less exalted stock than they had hoped or led others to believe. It had been thus in this instance; Sedna’s spell had revealed beyond all doubt that her lover and his father were descended from a bastard line. Such a secret was probably common enough among the new aristrocracy, elevated through their friendship and support for the Grand Warlords— although the fact that something was common did not help to make it palatable. The old nobility regarded illegitimacies as mere human failings---within reason, of course—strengthened as they were by generations of lordship. Only families such as Crisen’s felt it necessary to be over-sensitive about the misbehaviour of men and women long since dead—as if it did anything to alter history…