Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "I cannot agree. Those who are evil simply don't know what good is."

  "Oh, they know, all right; and they reject it to follow pure selfishness."

  "I—" the little priest blinked in the candlelight.

  "Can you give me even one instance of great evil turned to good once good has been pointed out to it?"

  "Uh—" he thought hard for a moment, then smiled triumphantly. "The Great Demon-Wolf of Hastandell!"

  "Oh, that's too easy. Warrl!"

  A shadow in a corner of the hearth uncoiled itself, and proved to be no shadow at all, but the kyree, whose shoulder came nearly as high as Tarma's waist. Closer inspection would reveal that Warrl's body was more like that of one of the great hunting cats of the plains than a lupine, built for climbing and short bursts of high speed, not the endurance of a true wolf. But the fur and head and tail were sufficiently wolf-like that this was how Tarma generally thought of him.

  He padded over to the table and benches shared by the ill-assorted trio. The conversation of all the other occupants of the inn died for a moment as he moved, but soon picked back up again. After three days, the patrons of the inn were growing a little more accustomed to the monster beast in their midst. Tarma had helped that along by coaxing him to demean himself with a few tricks to entertain them the first night of their stay. Now, while the sight of him still unsettled a few of them, they had come to regard him as harmless. They had no notion of his true nature; Tarma and Kethry had tactfully refrained from revealing that he was just as intelligent as any of them—and quite probably could beat any one of them at chess.

  "Here's your Demon-Wolf—one of his kin, rather." Tarma cocked her head to one side, her eyes far away as if she was listening. "Kyree is what they call themselves; they come from the Pelagir Hills. Warrl says to tell you that he knows that story—that Ourra didn't know the sheep he'd been feeding on belonged to anyone; when he prowled the village at night he was just being curious. Warrl says Ourra had never seen humans before that lot moved in and settled; he thought they were just odd beasts and that the houses were some kind of dead growths—believe me, I have seen some of what grows naturally in the Pelagirs—it isn't stretching the imagination to think that huts could grow of themselves once you've seen some of the bushes and trees. Well, Warrl wants you to know that when the priestess went out and gave Ourra a royal tongue-lashing for eating the stock, Ourra was quite embarrassed. Without there being someone like me or Kethry, with the kind of mind that he could talk to, there wasn't much he could do by way of apology, but he did his best to make it up to the village. His people have a very high sense of honor. Sorry, little man—Ourra is disqualified."

  "He talks to you?" the little priest said, momentarily diverted. "That creature truly talks? I thought him just a well-trained beast!"

  "Oh, after all our conversation, I figured you to be open-minded enough to let in on the 'secret.' Kyree have a lot of talents—they're as bright as you or me. Brighter, maybe—I have no doubt he could give you a good battle at taroc, and that's one game I have no gift for. As for talking—Warrior's Oath—sometimes I wish I could get him to stop! Oh, yes, he talks to me all right—gives me no few pieces of unsolicited advice and criticism, and usually with an 'I told you so' appended." She ruffled the great beast's fur affectionately as he grinned a toothy, tongue-lolling grin. Kethry tossed him one of the bones left from their dinner; he caught it neatly on the fly, and settled down beside her to enjoy it. Behind them, the hum of voices continued.

  "Now I'll give you one—evil that served only itself. Thalhkarsh. We had firsthand experience of that one. He had plenty of opportunity to see good—it wasn't just the trollops he had stolen for his rites. Or are you not familiar with that tale?"

  "Not the whole of it. Certainly not from one of the participants!"

  "Right enough then—this is a long and thirsty story. Oskar?" Tarma signaled the host, a plump, shortsighted man who hurried to answer her summons. "Another round—no, make it a pitcher, this may take a while. Here—" she tossed him a coin, as it was her turn to pay; the innkeeper trotted off and returned with a brimming ear then vessel. Kethry was amused to see that he did not return to his station behind the counter after placing it on the table between Tarma and the priest. Instead he hovered just within earshot, polishing the tables next to them with studious care. Well, she didn't blame him, this was a tale Tarma didn't tell often, and it wasn't likely anyone in Oberdorn had ever heard a firsthand account of it. Oskar would be attracting folk to his tables for months after they'd gone with repetitions of the story.

  "From all we could put together afterward, Thalhkarsh was a demon that had been summoned purely by mistake. It was a mistake the mage who called him paid for—well, that's usually the case when something like that happens. This time though, things were evidently a little different," she nodded at Kethry, who took up the thread of the story while Tarma took a sip of wine.

  "Thalhkarsh had ambition. He didn't want to live in his own Abyssal Planes anymore, he wanted to escape them. More than that, he wanted far more power than he had already; he wanted to become a god, or a godling, at least. He knew that the quickest ways of gaining power are by worship, pain, and death. The second two he already had a taste of, and he craved more. The first—well, he calculated that he knew ways of gaining that, too. He transformed himself into a very potently sexual and pleasing shape, built himself a temple with a human pawn as his High Priest, and set up a religion."

  "It was a religion tailored to his peculiar tastes. From what I know most of the demonic types wouldn't think of copulating with a human anymore than you or I would with a dog; Thalhkarsh thought otherwise." Tarma grimaced. "Of course a part of that is simply because of the amount of pain he could cause while engaging in his recreations—but it may be he also discovered that sex is another very potent way of raising power. Whatever the reason, that was what the whole religion was founded on. The rituals always culminated with Thalhkarsh taking a half-dozen women, torturing and killing them when he'd done with them, in the full view of his worshipers. There's a kind of mind that finds that stimulating; before too long, he had a full congregation and was well on his way to achieving his purpose. That was where we came in."

  "You know our reputation for helping women?" Kethry put in.

  "You have a geas?" ventured the little priest.

  "Something like that. Well, since Thalhkarsh's chosen victims were almost exclusively female, we found ourselves involved. We slipped into the temple in disguise and went for the High Priest—figuring if he was the one in charge, that might solve the problem. We didn't know he was a puppet, though I had guessed he might be, and then dismissed the idea." Kethry sighed. "Then we found our troubles had only begun. He had used this as a kind of impromptu test of the mettle of his servant; when the servant failed, he offered me the position. I was tempted with anything I might want; nearly unlimited power, beauty, wealth—and him. He was incredibly seductive, I can't begin to tell you how much. To try and give you a notion of his power, every one of his victims ran to him willingly when he called her, even though they knew what their fate would be. Well, I guess I resisted him a little too long; he became impatient with me and knocked me into a wall—unconscious, or so he thought."

  "Then he made me the same offer," Tarma continued. "Only with me he demonstrated his power rather than just promising things. He totally transformed me—when he was done kings would have paid money for the privilege of laying their crowns at my feet. He also came damned close to breaking my bond with the Star-Eyed; I swear to you, I was within inches of letting him seduce me—except that the more he roused my body, the more he roused my anger. That was his mistake; I pretended to give in when I saw Kethry sneaking up behind him. Then I broke his focus just as she stabbed him; he lost control over his form and his worshipers' minds. When they saw what he really was, they deserted him—that broke his power, and it was all over."

  "She'enedra, you were in no danger of breaking; your will
is too strong, he'd have needed either more time to work on you or power to equal the Warrior's."

  "Maybe. It was a damn near thing; too near for my liking. Well he was absolute evil for the sake of it—and I should well know, I had that evil crawling around in my mind. Besides that, there were other things that came out afterward. We know he took a few innocent girls who just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place; we think some clerics went in to try and exorcise him. It's hard to say for certain since they were hedge-priests; wanderers with no set temple. We do know they disappeared between one night and the next; that they did not leave town by the gates, and that they had been talking about dealing with Thalhkarsh before they vanished."

  She trailed off, the set of her mouth grim, her eyes bleak. "We can only assume they went the way of all of his victims, since they were never seen or heard from again. So Thalhkarsh had plenty of opportunity to see good and the Light—and he apparently saw it only as another thing to crush."

  The little priest said nothing; there seemed nothing appropriate to say. Instead, he took a sip of his wine; from the distant look in his eyes he was evidently thinking hard.

  "We of Anathei are not fools, Sworn One," he said finally, "Even though we may not deal with evil as if it were our deadly enemy. No, to throw one's life away in the foolish and prideful notion that one's own sanctity is enough to protect one from everything is something very like a sin. The arrow that strikes a friend in battle instead of a foe is no less deadly because it is misdirected. Let me tell you this; when dealing with the greater evils, we do nothing blindly. We study carefully, we take no chances; we know everything there is to be known about an opponent before we face him to show him the Light. And we take very great care that he is unable to do us harm in his misguided state."

  Tarma's eyes glinted with amusement in the shifting light. "Then it may well be your folk have the right of it—and in any case, you're going about your conversions in a practical manner, which is more than I can say for many. Once again we will have to agree to disagree."

  "With that, lady, I rest content." He bowed to her a little, and the bench creaked under his moving weight. "But we still have not settled the point of contention. Even if I were willing to concede that you are right about Thalhkarsh—which I am not—he was still a demon. Not a man. And—"

  "Well if you want irredeemable evil in a human, we can give you that, too! Kethry, remember that bastard Lastel Longknife?"

  "Lady Bright! Now there was an unredeemable soul if ever there was one!"

  Kethry saw out of the corner of her eye that Oskar had not moved since the tale-telling had begun, and was in a fair way to polish a hole right through the table. She wondered, as she smothered a smile, if that was the secret behind the scrupulously clean furniture of his inn.

  "Lastel Longknife?" the priest said curiously.

  "I doubt you'd have heard of that one. He was a bandit that had set up a band out in the waste between here and—"

  "Wait—I think I do know that story!" the priest exclaimed. "Isn't there a song about it? One that goes 'Deep into the stony hills, miles from keep or hold'?"

  "Lady's Blade, is that nonsense going to follow us everywhere?" Tarma grimaced in distaste while Kethry gave up on trying to control her giggles. "Damned impudent rhymester! I should never have agreed to talk to him, never! And if I ever get my hands on Leslac again, I'll kill him twice! Bad enough he got the tale all backward, but that manure about Three things never anger or you will not live for long; a wolf with cubs, a man with power and a woman's sense of wrong' came damn close to ruining business for a while! We weren't geas-pressed that time, or being altruistic—we were in it for the money, dammit! And—" she turned to scowl at Kethry. "What are you laughing about?"

  "Nothing—" One look at Tarma's face set her off again.

  "No respect; I don't get it from stupid minstrels, I don't get it from my partner, I don't even get it from you, Fur-face!"

  Warrl put his head down on his paws and contrived to look innocent.

  "Well, if my partner can contrive to control herself, this is what really happened. Longknife had managed to unite all the little bandit groups into one single band with the promise that they would be able—under his leadership—to take even the most heavily guarded pack-trains. He made good on his boast. Before a few months passed it wasn't possible for a mouse to travel the Trade Road unmolested."

  "But surely they sent out decoy trains."

  "Oh, they did; Longknife had an extra factor in his favor," Kethry had managed to get herself back into control again, and answered him. "He had a talent for mind-magic, like they practice in Valdemar. It wasn't terribly strong, but it was very specific. Anyone who saw Longknife thought that he was someone they had known for a long time but not someone anywhere within riding distance. That way he avoided the pitfall of having his 'double' show up. He looked to be a different person to everyone, but he always looked like someone they trusted, so he managed to get himself included as a guard on each and every genuine pack-train going out. When the time was right, he'd signal his men and they'd ambush the train. If it was too well guarded, he'd wait until it was his turn on night-watch and drive away the horses and packbeasts; there's no water in the waste, and the guards and traders would have to abandon their goods and make for home afoot."

  "That's almost diabolically clever."

  "You do well to use that word; he was diabolic, all right. One of the first trains he and his men took was also conveying a half-dozen or so young girls to fosterage—daughters of the traders in town—the idea being that they were more likely to find young men to their liking in a bigger city. Longknife and his men could have ransomed them unharmed; could even have sold them. He didn't. He took his pleasure of each of them in turn until he tired of them, then turned them over to his men to be gang-raped to death without a second thought."

  The priest thought that if the minstrel Leslac could have seen the expression in Tarma's eyes at this moment, he'd have used stronger words in his song than he had.

  "The uncle of one of the girls found out we were in a town nearby and sent for us," Kethry picked up when Tarma seemed lost in her own grim thoughts. "We agreed to take the job, and disguised ourselves to go out with the next train. That's where the song is worst wrong—I was the lady, Tarma was the maidservant. When the bandits attacked, I broke the illusions; surprise gave us enough of an advantage that we managed to rout them."

  "We didn't kill them all, really didn't even get most of them, just the important ones, the leaders." Tarma came back to herself and resumed the tale. "And we got Longknife; the key to the whole business."

  "What—what was the 'thorough vengeance'?" the priest asked. "I have been eaten up with curiosity ever since I heard the song, but I hardly know if I dare ask—"

  Tarma's harsh laugh rang as she tossed back her head. "We managed to keep one thing from that songster, anyway! All right, I'll let you in on the secret. Kethry put an all-senses illusion on him and bound it to his own mind-magic so that he couldn't be rid of it. She made him look like a very attractive, helpless woman. We made sure he was unconscious, then we tied him to his horse and sent him into the waste following the track of what was left of his band. I've no doubt he knew exactly what his victims had felt like before he finally died."

  "Remind me never to anger you, Sworn One." The priest shook his head ruefully. "I'm not sure I care for your idea of justice."

  "Turnabout is fair play—and it's no worse that what he'd have gotten at the hands of the relatives of the girls he murdered," Kethry pointed out. "Tarma's Lady does not teach that evildoers should remain unpunished; nor does mine. And Longknife is another bit of scum who had ample opportunity to do good—or at least no harm—and chose instead to deliberately inflict the most harm he could. I think he got his just desserts, personally."

  "If you, too, are going to enter the affray, I fear I am outnumbered." The priest smiled. "But I shall retire with dignity, allowing the justice of
your assertions, but not conceding you the victory. Though it is rather strange that you should mention the demon Thalhkarsh just now."

  Both Tarma and Kethry came instantly alert; they changed their positions not so much as a hair (Tarma leaning on both arms that rested on the table, Kethry lounging a little against the wall) but now they both had dropped the veneer of careless ease they had worn, and beneath that thin skin the wary vigilance of the predator and hunter showed plain.

  "Why?" Tarma asked carefully.

  "Because I have heard rumors in the beggar's quarter that some ill-directed soul is trying to reestablish the worship of Thalhkarsh in the old Temple of Duross there. More than that, we have had reports of the same from, a young woman who apparently dwells there."

  "Have you?" Kethry pushed back the hood of her buff-colored robe. "Worshiping Thalhkarsh—that's a bit injudicious, considering what happened at Delton, isn't it?"

  "Injudicious to say the least," the priest replied, "Since they must know what will happen to them if they are discovered. The Prince is not minded to have light women slaughtered on altars instead of paying his venery taxes. I heard that after Thalhkarsh's depredations, his income from Delton was halved for the better part of three years. He took care to alter or tighten the laws concerning religious practice after that. Human sacrifice in any form is punishable by enslavement; if the perpetrator has murdered taxpayers, he goes to the Prince's mages for their experiments."

  Kethry lifted an eyebrow; Tarma took a largish mouthful of wine. They'd both heard about how Prince Lothar's mages produced his monstrous mindless bodyguards. They'd also heard that the process from normal man to twelve-foot-tall brute was far from pleasant—or painless. Lothar was sometimes called "the Looney"—but never to his face.