Prince of Demons

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  The procedure did not faze Tae; he had become accustomed to his father’s secret haunts. Lantern light funneled upward from below, barely revealing a stairway. Tae scurried down, testing each tread in an instant and leaving Kinya far behind. The momentary reprieve released little of the emotions pent-up nearly to a boil. At the bottom of the staircase, the tunnel opened into a room. Its natural coolness chilled him through clothing still damp from rain. Shelves lined the irregular walls, filled with books, journals, and bric-a-brac. Weile Kahn relaxed in a wooden chair softened with pillows. He wore simple linens, tailored for comfort rather than style. A man stood attentively at his side, surely the one who had acknowledged Kinya’s code. Two other cushioned chairs completed the decor, and an archway led to another room, presumably sleeping or eating quarters.

  The instant Tae entered the room, Weile Kahn sprang from his chair. A smile split the too-familiar features. Soft, brown eyes lit on his son, and he ignored the dark curl that fell into his eyes. He reached for an embrace.

  Tae wanted to feel nothing except in control, but conflicting emotions hammered him into motionlessness. He let his father envelop him, but he gave nothing back except a cold stare.

  Tae’s lack of response cut short his father’s exuberant greeting. “Kinya.” He inclined his head toward the exit. “Daxan, wake Alsrusett and take him with you. I want to speak with my son alone.”

  Kinya opened his mouth, presumably to warn Weile Kahn of his son’s hostility, but something in his leader’s expression stopped him. Turning, he headed back up the stairs. The stranger, apparently Daxan, marched through the archway. After several moments, he returned with a yawning, sleepy-eyed man in tow. These two followed Kinya. The board shifted, admitting moonlight. Shadows partially blocked it, then the board moved back in place. Dirt splattered over the wood, simulating hail, then Tae heard the quiet thump of the boulder returning to its position.

  Only then did Weile speak. “I’ve missed you, son.”

  “Have you?” Tae made no attempt to hide the sarcasm.

  “Of course.” Weile back-stepped, restoring Tae’s personal space. He waved toward an empty chair. “Terribly.”

  Tae ignored the invitation, his father’s last word remarkably apt. Tae met Weile’s gaze directly, with blazing defiance. Anything less would have made him look weak. For several moments, their dark eyes, so much alike, locked.

  For once, the father looked away first, turning his entire body for a paced step, then returning for another round. “Why did you come?” The voice lacked its usual authority, quiet with a gentle touch of pain.

  Tae refused retreat. “Had I not, your men would have killed me.”

  Weile’s lids separated further, and his chin sank slightly in question. “That’s the only reason?”

  “Yes,” Tae lied emphatically.

  The eyes returned to their normal size. “I’m your father, Tae Kahn.”

  “No.” This time, Tae broke the contact as a deep sting warned of welling tears he would not dare display. “You ceased being my father the day you sent me away. It only took me a few months to realize it.”

  “You can’t just decide . . .” Weile’s voice boomed at Tae’s back, then he dropped the argument as suddenly. It would get him nowhere. “I did it to help, not hurt you.”

  The ridiculousness of the comment chased away the tears, and Tae spun back to face his father. “Set me into an alien, hostile world with murderers at my heels?”

  “Yes.” Weile did not bother to correct the suggestion that he had commanded those murderers. They both knew the killers were enemies of Weile’s, not Tae’s.

  “That was supposed to help me?”

  “It did.”

  Now it was Tae’s turn to stare in wide-eyed disbelief.

  Weile explained. “Look at you. You’re a strong, competent young man. You survived by your own wits and wile, and you’re not afraid to face anything lesser.” He smiled, his admiration genuine. “My enemies couldn’t kill you. And my men said you gave them the chase and battle of their lives.”

  To Tae’s mind, they had greatly exaggerated, but he would not voice such self-deprecation. He clung to resentment. “So you would take credit for my hard-won abilities?”

  “Absolutely not.” Weile returned to his chair, sinking into the cushions. Though he looked relaxed, Tae read balance. Weile could mobilize swiftly, if the need arose. Tae attributed the position to habit rather than any specific concern for his current welfare. “Your effort, your genius, is everything. I created only the need.”

  “Your need almost killed me.” Tae turned his back again. “How can you claim to love me and do this? How can you claim to be my father?”

  “I am your father.”

  “Only in name.”

  “I am your father.”

  Images avalanched down on Tae, accompanied by a feeling he equated only with Weile Kahn: nights when the wind howled, and a callused hand replaced blankets knocked askew in the early night; days when he sat alone with his father discussing frivolous details and learning advice that made little sense to him at the time; the gentle kindness Weile always displayed toward Tae’s mother, so unlike the brutality and shouted cruelties most Eastern men inflicted on their wives; the love shining in otherwise hard eyes when Weile looked upon his wife and child. Tae could not stop the sobs that followed, but he could hide them. Finally, he took the proffered chair, burying his face in his palms.

  Though Tae’s turn to speak, Weile clearly sensed his need to regain control. Without action or comment to indicate he recognized Tae’s fragile state, he took the burden of words onto himself. “Fathers make mistakes, and I’ve made more than my share. There’s no instinct for parenting. You can only learn from the skills and follies of your own parents and hope you do better.” He sighed deeply. “If you learn nothing from me but how not to treat your children, then you’ve learned a valuable lesson.”

  Tae did not trust himself to speak, and the lapse rankled. So often, he had used his father as the negative example for parenting. Yet, he suddenly realized, he had forgotten or trivialized the good. Without Weile Kahn’s lessons and examples, he would never have survived so long. Without his father’s closeness growing up, he would not have found himself capable of, even craving, the intimate friendships with Kevral, Matrinka, Darris, and, eventually, with Ra-khir. And, had he not followed his father’s teachings about finding the best in the worst of men and organizing them into a cohesive unit, he could never have orchestrated the escape from Pudar’s prison. King Cymion would have executed Tae in the most painful and bloody manner possible for a crime he had not even committed. In good ways as well as bad, Weile Kahn had taught him much.

  Tae heard the hiss of a chair leg moving, then a soft footstep. Weile’s meaty hand clasped Tae’s shoulder firmly. “Son, I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” Tae’s voice emerged thinly from between his fingers. “Why?” Somehow, they both knew what he meant. He did not question the apology, nor even the method of Weile’s fathering. He had to know the reasons his father chose an occupation so fraught with peril, not only to himself, but to those he loved.

  “The answers lie in my own childhood, with the skills and follies of my own parents. To this day, I’m not certain which were skills and which follies.” The hand disappeared from Tae’s shoulder, and Weile’s heavy tread thumped against the floorboards as he paced. “I was the oldest of five children.”

  Even that simple fact caught Tae by surprise. Weile never spoke of his growing up, and Tae had always assumed his father an only child, like himself.

  “Born with a deformed arm, my father could not apprentice in any of the standard trades. The army would not have him. His pride came from his family, and he often bragged of his ability to keep all of us clothed and fed. Early on, I did not question how.” Weile reached a wall and stopped, not yet bothering to turn. “One day, they arrested my father.”

  “Theft,” Tae supplied, taking advantage of Weile’s back to
wipe away the tears.

  “Right.” Weile turned, though his gaze was focused beyond Tae. “They hacked off his good hand, and with it his will to live. For years, my belief in his return served as my determination.” He paced back toward the center of the room. “He never did, of course. He died before his sentence ended.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tae said and meant it. No matter his bitterness, he would not wish such sorrow on anyone.

  “Not a day passes that I don’t resent the time I didn’t have with my father.” Weile sighed deeply. “But that’s a different story. More importantly, all five children wanted a revenge that my mother denied. Despite everything, she clung to morality, condemning violence. Scarce food turned our family to chaos. Widows never fare well in the East, especially wives of criminals. We lost our mother to violence within . . .” Weile’s words caught in his throat, and he finished in a whisper. “. . . two years.”

  Tae thought it only fair to grant his father the same courtesy he had shown, yet he could not help staring in amazement. He had never seen anything rattle Weile Kahn. He had always believed his father as emotionless as a stone. Yet now Tae saw his father only as a blur. The tears had returned to his own eyes, spurred by memories of his own mother’s haunting screams.

  Weile quickened his step, striding beyond Tae’s chair, then resumed his careful pacing. “The mad scramble for food that followed dissolved family ties. A brother and sister abandoned us to die. Ironically, the three of us who clung together lived, and it was they who died. From that agony, I learned a valuable lesson about loyalty and sharing. For the rest of my life, the streets became my parents and my tutors. Assassins, thieves, lunatics. Desperation and need. Starvation, cold, and disease. Lessons from brutal teachers are learned fast and well. An orphan who pays attention learns more than just survival.”

  Tae’s mind slipped back to his own years on the streets. The knifelike pierce of icy wind through sodden clothes had become firmly entrenched in his mind. Fear flickered through him, tightening every muscle; and he clung to the deadly aura of competence that had bullied him past thugs seeking any excuse to slaughter him. For years, he had not dared to allow that facade to crumble, making it a part of him until it fooled even himself. That life had come to him much later, at his father’s insistence, while Weile remained in the haven Tae and his family had once called home. A fresh wave of bitterness churned through him.

  Weile whirled again, oblivious to his son’s stony glare. “I developed a strange knack for organizing gangs. Children lasted longer on the streets by sharing their skills. We were a family, but, like all families, we reached an age where we grew up and separated. Only then, I lost Curdeis, my best friend.” He met Tae’s angry gaze. “My brother.”

  This time, the revelation did not catch Tae so off guard. He nodded stiffly for his father to continue.

  Weile continued pacing and obliged. “That night, with Curdeis’ blood trickling down my arms, it came.” He paused, leaving Tae an opening for the obvious question he did not bother to ask, then went on. “I can liken it only to the calling priests claim to receive, whether they follow Sheriva or the Northern pantheon. It was an obsession that seized every scrap of my being, including the deepest portions of my soul. If children could unite, why couldn’t adults? The streets need not take another brother. I lost choice in what I would become. Those whom law and propriety had dismissed needed me, and I could not refuse the calling even had I wanted to do so.”

  “So you became the king of crime.” Disgruntlement drove Tae to demean. The story had qualified much he did not understand. Experience had shown him, in vivid detail, that his father did not lead criminals for the money, though it was there. He shared his wealth freely, without hoarding, and his tastes ran toward the simple. The challenge of uplifting the broken, of valuing men and women so despised even they believed themselves worthless, of cultivating loyalty in the lawless was met with an ardor that never faded. Weile had sacrificed his freedom and, ultimately, all he loved for a cause. Whether or not Tae believed in that cause did not diminish Weile’s accomplishment or faith.

  “In a manner of speaking.” Weile took the faint praise in stride. “But I made one enormous mistake.” Again, he faced Tae directly. Earnest eyes looked out from beneath a jumble of dark curls, and he gauged Tae’s interest in the confession.

  Tae nodded once, bland encouragement that did not reveal his deeply burning curiosity.

  “I fell in love with a girl in the gang.” A slight smile crept across features otherwise foreboding. “She was beautiful and brilliant, kind and soft-spoken. Her wit was immense, but never biting like mine.” Weile’s eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. “And yours.” Realizing the apparent connection, he amended, “Falling in love wasn’t the mistake, of course. That was only natural. The wonder is how every other man didn’t battle me for her.”

  Gradually, with a slowness that made him feel stupid, Tae came to the realization that Weile was talking about his mother. Though he had loved her immensely, he could not fathom how his father could call her beautiful. He pictured the deeply-set eyes, the too broad nose, and the almost lipless mouth. Years of scrounging for food had made her frail and stolen the rich, Eastern darkness.

  “I didn’t know the life I inflicted upon either of you when you were conceived and I married her.”

  Tae had already performed the arithmetic that proved things had happened in the order Weile just mentioned.

  “No one had ever organized criminals before. I anticipated rivalry, but never to the extent that . . . that . . .” Weile could not continue. Instead, he broke down into wild sobbing so uncharacteristic it stunned Tae.

  All of the hostility washed away in the flood of his father’s tears. For a moment, the urge seized Tae to comfort, but he found himself unable to move. The memories that had tortured his dreams returned: the salt odor of his mother’s blood, her anguished shrieks, the rancid stench of their attackers, and the cramping agony of blades tearing through his own flesh. Again, helplessness assailed him, and he alternately hated himself and circumstance for the terror that seemed endless. He had managed no action that spared his mother or himself.

  “If I hadn’t married her, there’d be an empty hole where my heart used to be. But she would live.”

  Tae doubted his father’s assessment. Most Eastland men showed their women less kindness than cattle while his father had always treated his mother as an equal. “And I would never have been born.”

  Weile said nothing, trapped into a corner. Pregnancy would have sealed Tae’s mother’s fate. No good man would have married her.

  Tae pressed, “So my existence was your mistake?”

  “I don’t know, Tae.” Weile used the shortened form of his son’s name as a familiarity rather than insult. He sat in his chair. “I love you, and your mother did, too. I can’t imagine my life without you. But I sometimes wonder if you wouldn’t have been better off.”

  “Not being born?” The rage Weile’s story had dispelled sparked again, superficial and raw.

  Weile made a noncommittal gesture.

  “Now the truth comes out. You don’t care about me. You never did!”

  Weile flashed to life. “That’s not true!”

  “You wished I wasn’t born!”

  “That’s not what I said. Listen to me!” Weile half rose, then dropped back into his chair. “Please, listen,” he said, no longer a commander but a father. “That night when I came home and found you . . . and your mother . . .” His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he managed words again. “I just wanted to die with you. Had I mustered the strength, I would have killed myself before I discovered you were still alive. Bringing you back against impossible odds was the only thing that kept me going. I vowed that, if I lost you, I’d go with you. Does that sound like a father who doesn’t care?”

  “No,” Tae admitted, but he could not help adding. “It sounds like a man who’s lying.”

  The pain that bunched Wei
le’s features was undisputable. “Ask Kinya.”

  “Kinya would lie for you.”

  “He’s the only witness I have.”

  “How convenient.” Guilt flared at Tae’s own words. About this, he knew his father spoke the truth, yet he could not banish the need to hurt. “If you really cared, we would have hunted down those bastards. Together.”

  A light glimmered through Weile’s eyes and disappeared. He hesitated, clearly fighting a battle within himself. At last, he spoke with a strange hesitancy. “I’ve told no one this before.”

  Tae gave an encouraging look.

  “I did hunt those animals down, filled with all the fires of vengeance.” Weile’s expression went distant. “I slaughtered them, too. Brutal, bloody murder without a shred of remorse.” His hands started to tremble, and he hid them in his lap. “I’d never killed before. And never since.” He sucked a lungful of air, held it, then released it through his teeth. “It didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt shattered into a thousand painful pieces. I vomited until my guts ached, and I howled my sorrow like a wolf. To this day, I still don’t feel whole, like a statue broken on the floor and glued awkwardly so that every seam shows. It didn’t make me feel better, but I didn’t feel worse either. And, for one glorious hour, I savored my revenge.”

  A chill shivered through Tae. Sometimes, the promise of revenge had dragged him through days otherwise impossible. He had always believed a day would come when he would avenge his mother’s death . . . and his own stabbing. Then, he felt certain, the nightmares would leave him in peace. His father’s words brought home the truth. The victory would have proved hollow, and the remembrances would have lingered. Let his father suffer the horror. In truth, the vengeance was Weile’s to savor, never his own. Finally, for the first time ever, he let Weile off the hook. “Mother’s death was a tragedy, not your marriage. Or my birth.”