“Bring Kortagor Jervan in here at once…!”
*
The two soldiers didn’t speak at all until they reached a heavily barred door, when after a few seconds fumbling with locks and obviously mismatched keys, one of them asked for Marek’s help. The Cernuan came close to outright laughter at such studied clumsiness, but contained himself and pretended ignorance until the second trooper made his move.
It took the unsubtle form of a gisarm lunging at his chest.
Marek twisted from the weapon’s path, brushed its point aside with one arm and slapped the other open hand against the soldier’s chest. It was a heavy blow, yet not heavy enough to explain why the armoured man went flying down the corridor with the print of that hand driven deep into the metal of his breastplate.
The sonorous thrumming in the air should have warned the second guard that he had more to deal with than just the fat man he was to kill, but even without magic it was far too late. He feinted with the gisarm-blade, then whirled its spiked shaft up from ground level at Marek’s head. It was a crafty move, but not crafty enough, and he didn’t expect the demon-queller to duck so fast. Or what happened next.
In his youth Marek Endain had trained with both the straight spear and the curved, and required no aid from sorcery to read the shifts of balance, hands and eyes that signalled what was coming. As the stroke wasted its force an inch above his head Marek’s own fist stabbed out, and one extended finger touched the soldier’s midriff with a sharp, high crack. This time, with all his inner energies concentrated in that single finger, it folded his opponent like a broken twig and hurled him upwards high enough to smash with stunning force against the ceiling. When the metallic clatter of the man’s descent faded, Marek listened for a moment but could hear no other sentries.
“So two soldiers are enough to deal with a fat old demon-queller, eh? I’m insulted.” Marek had a sore finger to show for it, but wasn’t even out of breath. He considered the already-blackening fingernail and guessed he would likely lose it. Better that than his head. “But why kill me at all?” The Cernuan’s subconscious supplied his answer in a single word.
Ythek.
Crisen Geruath had certain plans afoot and wanted no outside interference. Marek, the self-proclaimed queller of demons, personified such interference and the nasty practicality of the Empire’s logic dictated his removal. Yet even nastier to his educated mind were the implications of what had prompted such a drastic course. He regretted not giving way to his first impulse and put a cleansing fire to work on his grim discoveries in Sedna’s library. They were the books secured in a blued-steel cabinet, locked at first but not for long. Books. Such a simple word to describe them. Accurate, too, until closer inspection revealed what books they were.
That closer inspection, just reading two titles, had set him shaking with revulsion and he pronounced the Charm of Holding with more fervour than he had ever summoned up before, his grip on the medallion at his neck tight enough to dig the thin antique metal into his palm. The books were old, with the mustiness of age about them as pleasing a scent to any scholar as the bouquet of fine wine. Yet there was another subtle odour, born of much more than the passage of years. It was – what had the young Alban said? – the stink of written evil.
Yet these books were so rare, almost irreplaceable. Enciervanul Doamnisoar he had already seen, and not in the Vlechan editions so mutilated, expurgated and corrupted down the years. Corrupted? That thought had made Marek laugh a mirthless laugh, for how could anything totally corrupt be corrupted any farther? Sedna’s copy was a – the – near-legendary Jouvaine translation, and priceless. On the shelf beside it was Hauchttarni, ‘High Mysteries’, and The Grey Book of Sangellan. They and others like them had been destroyed by the ignorant and frightened for centuries, to such effect that in several cases there were no records to confirm they had ever existed. The scholar within him had rebelled against burning such books, but he wasn’t a scholar now, and it was a grimoire like those in Sedna’s secret library which had made him take up the demon-queller’s mantle ten years earlier, when…
Marek closed his mind to that pain-filled memory, then closed and locked the cabinet, unable to destroy its contents but equally unwilling to leave them for untutored hands and eyes. Now, standing before another locked and bolted door, he realised with uncomfortable certainty that he hadn’t done enough. Locks could be unlocked and doors opened.
He half-doubted this was Aldric’s cell at all. It was far more likely he was in a deserted part of the citadel where murder would go unnoticed. But with his mind almost made up, Marek didn’t take time to wonder what might be behind the door. Still lost in his own thoughts he reached out and slid back a bolt, deciding that he might as well – another bolt – make sure that there was nothing to see inside. Certainly – his fingers closed around the handle – there was nothing to hear. The heavy door swung back. Beyond lay darkness.
That was when Marek realised the depths of his own folly, and in the instant of realisation something unseen blurred past his head to strike the wall behind him like a hatchet. He could hear the rending of a fine-grained pinewood panel as its fibres split from top to bottom.
Beyond the gaping doorway, darkness moved…
*
“Enough of this.” Crisen’s voice was lazy and laced with malice. “I already know where she is, the important word was what. Quite a different question and requiring quite a different answer. So why the deviation, Kortagor Jervan?”
Jervan looked up from his uncomfortable, unaccustomed kneeling position – garrison commanders didn’t kneel, they stood up straight like soldiers – and tried to read his new Overlord’s expression. It didn’t work.
“Come now, you took her to your room, so you must have found her interesting. In one way or another.” By the look and sound of things, Crisen was enjoying himself. “And you the most happily married man in the garrison. So-called, and self-styled.” He leaned closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Between the two of us, man to man – how was she?” Jervan reddened and the Overlord’s smile stretched wider. “Oh, I see. She was a virgin. Is she still?” The eagerness with which he asked that final question came from much more than simple prurience, but it was a subtlety lost on Jervan’s burning ears.
“Dammit, I don’t know!” the Kortagor snapped, then remembered who he was addressing and added a hasty “My lord,” before trying to vindicate himself further. “I swear I didn’t touch her. She’s young enough to be my daughter!”
“What difference does that make?” Crisen’s unfeigned astonishment said more about him than Jervan wanted to know. The Overlord steepled his fingers and studied their interlaced tips before resting his chin on them, laughing. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Then he looked beyond Jervan to where there was more movement at the back of the hall. “Well?”
“It was as you suspected, lord. The commander’s door was locked.”
“Then what?”
“We broke it open, lord.” There was a pause, more noise, and Gueynor’s voice raised in frightened outrage that made Jervan’s stomach turn over. “We found the woman inside.”
“Why lock the door, Commander?” The voice was a caressing murmur, but Crisen was the last Overlord’s son and if he was anything like his father, Jervan knew how easily gentleness could become rage. Rather than say something wrong he said nothing at all, and even managed to ignore what was going on behind him. “Oh, come now.” Crisen settled back in his high-backed chair, at ease and in control. “I asked you a question, so you could at least try to tell me entertaining lies. Were you hoping to keep this pretty morsel for yourself? That would be a credible human failing. Or did you hide her because she and Kourgath conspired together in my poor father’s death?”
“Then he killed the old swine after all?” shouted Gueynor. “It’s a shame that piglets run so fast – Ow!” The sharp sound of a blow punctuated her words and this time Jervan did turn, half rising to his feet.
“Let her
alone, damn you!” His parade-ground bellow shattered the ugly tension in the hall for a moment, and the two retainers standing nearest Gueynor fell back by reflex alone. The red mark of a hand glowed on her pale face.
“Yes, let her alone,” said Crisen. “Until I tell you otherwise. Step forward, girl, and let me see what provoked such uproar.”
Gueynor walked with stiff-backed dignity for half a dozen paces, aware of the blatant lechery in the soldiers’ eyes because she and they knew both what Crisen’s ‘until’ meant. But her control faltered when she came close enough to see the strange expression on his face, then broke completely as she ran to Jervan’s arms.
“How touching! But Commander, I don’t recall permitting you to rise. Get down on your knees in the dust where you belong!”
Jervan tightened his embrace on Gueynor, reassuring her as he would one of his own children, before swinging slowly around to face Crisen. There was pride on his face now, the haughtiness of a man who had served in the Imperial military machine for twenty years.
“No,” he said. “What you intend to do, you’ll do whether I obey or not. So I defy you.”
“A pretty speech.” Only Gueynor and Jervan were close enough to see the sarcasm was a veneer. Crisen might seem confident, but only when that confidence remained unchallenged. It was his streak of cruelty that ran much deeper. “And of course you’re right. I’ve already decided what to do, not so much with you as with the lady. Aren’t you even slightly curious about that?”
Gueynor’s eyes widened, and she pressed closer to Jervan as if he could protect her. As if… Both were unarmed, unprotected, and even the oppressive atmosphere was a weapon in Crisen’s favour. There was more clattering as another retainer came in and marched hurriedly toward the Overlord’s high seat. He carried a book, held like a tray in outstretched arms because of its size, its weight – and because he clearly didn’t want the thing too close.
“My lord,” the man said, “two things were not as you said: the iron bookcase had been locked and the sentry—”
“Never mind that,” Crisen cared about only one thing, and the sentry played no part in it. “Give that to me.” The heavy volume changed hands with relief on one side and an unsavoury display of fondness on the other, for Crisen Geruath hugged the book against his chest as a man might hug a child. Or a bedmate. He stroked its cover, and even that gesture seemed heavy with unpleasantness. “Do you know what this is, Jervan?” The kortagor shook his head. “I didn’t expect you would, though you might have said ‘a book’ or something just as witty. No matter. Thanks to Lord-Commander Voord we have an unexpected guest in Seghar, a guest whose favours I want to cultivate. So I intend to make a gift—”
“No! I won’t let you!”
“How will you stop me? Besides, she should be honoured.” Crisen stared at Gueynor and the tip of his tongue ran once around his lips. “Are you sure she’s a virgin…?”
“I told you,” Jervan forced his voice to stay low, reasonable, convincing, “I don’t know.” Crisen seemed so eager for a positive answer that he racked his brains for convincing negatives, and they were there: good, sound explanations. “I doubt it. She was married. When I questioned her at the Summergate, she said she was a widow. And she’s been keeping company with Kourgath, so…” He finished with a dismissive shrug that should have convinced the Overlord, except he seemed not to care any more.
“A pity,” Crisen muttered, patting the great book now resting across his knees. “But such a petty detail shouldn’t matter.” Gueynor uttered a tiny, piteous whimper without even knowing she had done so, and Crisen favoured her with a wide, benevolent smile. “In every other respect this gift seems most accept—”
That was when Jervan sprang on him.
The sudden assault from a cowed inferior took the Overlord by surprise, and that was what saved his neck from being snapped between the kortagor’s outstretched, clawing hands. Surprise made Crisen jump backwards in his great chair and that small, violent movement was enough to upset its balance. When Jervan’s impact sent it toppling backwards like a felled tree, the fall broke his half-formed grip and spilled both men to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Crisen’s squeals brought lord’s-men running from their places around the hall. One of them seized Gueynor, the rest set about their erstwhile commander with panic-driven boots and gisarm hafts until he was almost unconscious and his left arm had snapped.
Only then did they pick Crisen off the floor and dust him down while he stared fixedly at the kortagor. Long red gouges scored his pallid face where Jervan’s nails had clawed away long ribbons of skin, and his lack of expression was far more frightening than if he had raved as his father would have done.
“Stand him on his feet.”
The Overlord watched Jervan dragged upright by main force, agony hissing through his clenched teeth as they used his shattered arm to lift him from the ground. Crisen seemed to notice neither the commander’s pain nor how his lord’s-men inflicted it to impress their new master. Instead he walked once round the kortagor’s sagging body, studying it with the chilling air of a butcher sizing up a carcass, then glanced straight into Gueynor’s terror-clouded eyes and allowed himself a smile. His hand reached out, cupped her chin as she turned her head away and dragged it back to face him, squeezing until her cheeks were puffy and congested with dark blood.
“The Devourer will enjoy you,” he whispered so softly that only she could hear. “And will reward the giver for the gift. But this…” Crisen released her, half turned and held out his empty right hand. “This is for me. Knife.”
When the chequered wooden hilt of a military dagger slapped into his grasp, he looked at its chisel point and single razor edge then stroked one finger along the blade, gazing at where it sliced skin and meat until the ruby beads of blood welled out. Then he studied Jervan once again. His eyes were unfocused, seeing nothing, or seeing things denied to other men.
“Now hold him,” Crisen took a long shuddering breath halfway to a sigh of pleasure. “Hold him steady…”
*
Aldric looked very different to the elegant figure Marek had last seen, whose appearance and opinions gave the lie to everything he claimed to be. He was still dressed in black, but where beforehand the sober colour had been contrasted and relieved by polished metal, white linen and clean skin, almost everything here was a dingy russet brown that stank. Until he emerged from the darkness of the cell he was one with its shadows, and only a glitter of eyes showed that there was anything beyond the light. When he saw Marek, and the slumped unconscious bodies on the floor, his face literally cracked a smile that sent a fine web of fractures crisscross through the crust of blood masking his features. It was mostly Lord Geruath’s blood, but not all. Crisen’s retainers hadn’t been gentle.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said after a moment’s silence. Aldric hadn’t expected to see any human faces again except the soldiers sent to finish him. Though he hadn’t intended to be slaughtered like a sheep – the metal dish sunk half its diameter in the panelling bore witness to that, its rim sharpened by grinding against the stone cell floor – he had resigned himself to dying. Marek had given back his life.
“I know,” said Marek. “If you had killed Lord Geruath, Heaven and King Rynert both know you’re capable, you wouldn’t have made such a mess. And you wouldn’t have dishonoured your tsepan by using it.”
Aldric acknowledged the words with a slight inclination of his head, then eyed the corridor and the two men sprawling in it. One retainer was lying on his back, with blood around his nostrils and the print of a human hand driven into his armour as if hammered there as a decoration.
“You favour the High Accelerator,” he said, glancing in Marek’s direction. The demon-queller gave him a long, hard stare.
“When this is over,” he said severely, “you and I must have a little talk.”
“When this is over. It isn’t yet, and my gear is here somewhere. I heard them carrying it past, but I don’t know
which room they put it in—” a score of bronze-faced doors lined the long corridor, “—and I haven’t time to search them all.”
“No need.” Marek Endain grinned a hard, toothy grin reminiscent of Aldric’s foster-father Gemmel, and gestured with one hand in the air. “Acchai an-tsalaer h’loeth!” he said, then clenched his fist and opened it. There was a shrill whining sound like a monstrous mosquito, so it shot up beyond hearing and Aldric winced as it stung his ears, then jumped as one door burst outward off its hinges and clanged against the floor. Marek nodded towards it. “In there,” he said.
All the equipment was in an untidy heap rather than laid out in orderly fashion as it had been in his room, and Aldric made a swift inspection to confirm nothing was missing. Then he scrambled into his battle armour with a speed born of long practice, checking straps and laces as he drew each one tight, and Marek watched as the young man built himself piece by black steel piece into an image of war. There was a subtle scent which clung to an-moyya-tsalaer, the Alban Great Harness. Usually that odour of metal, oil and leather wasn’t unpleasant, but to the demon-queller’s sensitive nostrils it combined with the eijo’s past reputation and present smell to become the stench of sudden, violent death.
Aldric looped Widowmaker’s crossbelt over his shoulder and made her scabbard secure on the weapon-belt about his waist, then fitted a steel and silver cuff around his armoured wrist and locked the Echainon spellstone into its socket. Marek watched, wondering if he would get an explanation for it, but the look on Aldric’s face warned him against asking questions now. Or maybe ever.
“Aldric,” he said. The name came out louder than he intended and drew a curious glance. “Aldric, when you left the library I… I went back to the cellar. The room where Sedna died.”
The Demon Lord Page 28