The Grey Robe

by Clare Smith

  Jonderill handed his map to Jarrul who took it between bandaged hands. “Take good care of Tarraquin and keep an eye on Malingar, I have a feeling that he can’t be trusted.”

  "I will and you take care of yourself," said Jarrul, "and remember I still owe you my life twice over."

  "I won't let 'im forget it," assured Perguine, suddenly appearing by Jonderill's side. "An’ until yer can settle the debt yerself I'll keeps an eye on 'im."

  "There's no debt and no need to come with me."

  "Well, maybe not, but I don't trust that there prince not ter stick yer with 'is blade as soon as yer out of our 'earin'. Anyway, it'll annoy 'im good an' proper ter 'ave me along." Perguine laughed and put his arm around Jonderill's shoulder, silencing any other arguments as they walked to where the horses waited.

  "About time too, boy," snapped Pellum, glaring at the small thief whilst Jonderill stroked Sansun's nose in greeting. "If he has to come with us then he stays out of my way and you, boy, remember your place, not at my horse's head but by my foot. Another thing, I'll have that sword if you please, it's not much good but it will be more effective in the hands of a warrior prince who knows how to use it than a bound servant."

  Jonderill reluctantly handed the sword over. He could find no way to argue with such logic even if his own feelings told him Pellum was wrong.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Demon Magic

  Jonderill stopped and stared in total disbelief and horror, unable to comprehend the changes before him. Where smooth boughs of honeyvine had broken through the ground in a protective circle, dark gnarled trunks of redthorn now tore the earth apart to support a vicious barrier. Entwined tendrils of white and cream had been replaced by thick branches of dark brown, knotted together in a twisted mass. Where once the delicate white flower of the honeyvine had bloomed and shed its delicate fragrance, blood-red thorns protruded like a tangled web of miniature daggers. Amongst the branches lay the evidence of men and other creatures that had tried to penetrate the barrier, their remains trapped and impaled on the piercing thorns.

  "If you expect me to go in there you're out of luck," said Pellum emphatically. "I may be mad enough to agree to come with you but I'm not totally insane."

  Jonderill didn’t say anything, there seemed to be nothing to say. He’d been so certain that Plantagenet or Animus had laid the enchantment which built the honeyvine barrier to protect the sleeping princess. In doing so, he was sure they would have created a pathway for Daun's true love to pass through unharmed but this was definitely not their work. The two elderly magicians would not, could not, construct anything so vicious with the obvious intent of taking the life of anyone foolish enough to try and penetrate their protective screen. It had to be Maladran's work, in which case, he would have destroyed any safe passageway.

  "Now we aint gettin' anywhere just lookin' at the fing are we?" said Perguine, walking along the barrier and peering into its depths as if he were searching for something.

  "Well you go in if you're so brave.” snapped Pellum. “You're scrawny enough to wriggle underneath and through the gaps."

  "S'pose I could," replied Perguine half-heartedly.

  "What's wrong thief, lost your courage? You were quick enough to call me a coward but you're not so brave now are you?"

  "No!" protested Jonderill. "It has to be you; you're the one who needs to get through to the Princess."

  "Keep out of this, boy. He's the one who called me a coward, now let's see how brave he is."

  Jonderill looked pleadingly at Perguine but the little thief gave him a shrug and a half grin and dropped to his knees, almost as if he were praying to the hedge of thorns. Ignoring Jonderill's cries of protest he lay flat on his stomach and began to squirm forward. His long sensitive hands clutched at the ruptured earth beneath the first red bough whilst he pulled himself along, the earth barely shifting under his light weight. Behind him his toes dug into the soil hard enough to push him forward until his waist was level with the outermost trunk.

  Perguine twisted his lithe body around the gnarled bark of the next thick trunk and heaved himself forward using his elbows so that his entire body was beneath the thorn hedge. Here branches, heavy with long thorns, trailed across the ground and with infinite care he raised the front half of his body and eased it over the sharp spikes. His head led the way, ducking beneath a low bough and then his shoulders, hunched so that his chest wouldn’t touch the sharp red tips.

  Finally his knees and hips followed, twisting at an acute angle, ready to negotiate the next trunk and bough. It was a tight turn, challenging the fine, delicate movements of a master thief. He twisted his body one way and then another, concentrating so hard that he failed to notice the thorn which scraped the top of one finger as he edged his way forward.

  A single bead of blood oozed from the tiny scratch and fell unnoticed onto the broken soil by his hand. As he reached out slowly to grab hold of an upturned sod to pull himself forward again a branch of newly grown thorns erupted through the soil beneath his outstretched fingers. Perguine cried out in surprise and pain and couldn’t prevent the automatic reaction of his hand as it jerked away from the source of its injury. As his arm jerked backwards with the thorn-encrusted branch still embedded in his hand it was instantly sliced into ribbons of tattered flesh on the canopy of thorns above him.

  He dragged the branch of thorns embedded in his flesh forward and it slashed across his face, ripping down to the bone of his cheeks and piercing both eyes before he could close them. Blood gushed from the wounds and where it fell new thorns grew, twisting and turning and slicing into Perguine's body as he thrashed in agony and screamed in terror.

  Jonderill felt the change in the forest of thorns from the moment Perguine's first drop of blood hit the shattered earth. The ominous silence and utter stillness, like a predator in waiting, changed to a sibilant hissing and then to a wild frenzied thrashing which couldn’t be made by one man alone. Before Perguine had even started to scream, Jonderill was amongst the thorns, tearing with his bare hands to part the interlocking branches and reaching for his friend. Despite the strength that his desperation gave him the branches wouldn’t part. Those that came away in his hands snapped apart only to rejoin lower down to entangle his legs or higher above his head blocking his way whilst new branches snaked into place preventing any movement forwards.

  Perguine's screams were becoming weaker when reality broke through Jonderill's desperation. He needed a weapon, an axe to slice the branches apart but his axe was gone, left behind in the forest and Pellum had his sword. "Use your sword," he yelled at Pellum, who sat impassively on Sansun’s back watching the scene as if he were a neutral observer. Pellum didn’t reply and made no effort to assist.

  For a moment Jonderill seemed to lose all control as he pulled himself from the ensnaring hedge and charged at Pellum as if he were the enemy. He grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him from Sansun's back in a welter of flailing arms and legs and drew the sword free from Pellum’s belt before dropping him heavily to the ground. The Prince gave a loud grunt as he hit the hard ground and then scuttled backwards as if he expected the sword to be used on him.

  Instead Jonderill ignored him and leapt onto Sansun's back, driving him straight towards the wall of thorns. Sansun never hesitated, pounding those branches which Jonderill cut beneath his hooves into tinder. On his back, Jonderill slashed wildly at the hedge sending splinters of wood in every direction but not noticing that the redthorn which touched his skin withered away and those tangled limbs which fell before his onslaught slithered back into the ground from where they had come.

  In less than a dozen strokes he could see the prone figure of Perguine wrapped in a netting of thorns and within another dozen strokes he was at his side, pulling the thorns free with his bare hands. He carefully turned Perguine over but there was very little left by which to identify the corpse. Every piece of flesh had been ripped from the body and the face was featureles
s. Even the delicate hands had been torn so badly that only the bones remained. Jonderill closed his eyes, choking back his tears and recalled the weasel-like features, the sudden impish smile and the imperceptibly quick movements of the thief.

  That was how he would remember him, not as the bloody mass which lay at his feet. He took off his jerkin and laid it over the remains of the thief’s face. As he stood and looked around he suddenly realised that he’d opened up a pathway into the hedge and apart from a few minor scratches neither he nor the horse were harmed. Wearily he remounted Sansun and, holding tight to Plantagenet’s old sword, began hacking half heartedly at the redthorn forest until a wide, clear path was cut through to the city and palace beyond.

  *

  The silver globe on the burnt and scarred table began to vibrate very slowly, disturbing the air so slightly that one would have had to touch its smooth surface to realise that it moved at all. For some time it remained in its unsettled state before its agitation increased and its form lost its clarity, blurred by its constant motion.

  A low buzzing filled the air as the globe moved against its carved ebon stand but the sound lacked urgency and had as little effect on the dark, sleeping form in the nearby chair as would the hum of a flying insect. The globe, however, was no insect to be ignored or disdained and when the trigger with which it had been primed was activated the steady hum leapt into an angry squeal through which no one could sleep.

  Maladran stirred in his chair behind the table where he had collapsed into a deep sleep after priming the globe. For a moment he couldn’t remember why his compliant and obedient scrying tool should be screaming at him. Angrily he whipped off the black silk cloth and shut his eyes against the blinding light which exploded from the globe once it was free from its shroud. The sorcerer rapidly placed his hand on the shimmering surface, reciting words of power which silenced the high-pitched whine and brought the beacon of light back to bearable intensity.

  He stared at the globe and waited for the image to settle. At first only dark forest showed but it was a forest he was very familiar with, made up of savage redthorn. He watched as it wilted and sank into the ground, drawing back and forming an open pathway which had been sliced through its defences. A movement at the end of the pathway caught his eye and he leaned forward to study the globe more closely. There, a young man with brown eyes and dark hair took a sword from his servant, sheathed it and made his way towards Alewinder's open palace gate.

  Screaming an imprecation, Maladran swept the globe off the table with a vicious swipe from the back of his hand, propelling it into the wall to shatter into thousands of fragments, eternally irreplaceable. He didn’t care, all he could see was the Princess’s chosen, Prince Pellum, walking safely through the forest of thorns which he had created having destroyed the strongest enchantment he’d ever cast.

  If such things could be, then the Prince had to be the wielder of the great powers he had so recently felt. Was it possible that he’d misjudged the prince so badly and he truly possessed powers which had the potential to grow stronger than his own? He couldn’t allow that to happen. He was and would always be the greatest of magicians in the six kingdoms. That was why so many people had died and why Pellum would have to die too.

  Taking up the serrated knife he’d used to remove his prisoners’ hearts and not bothering with the remains of his shattered scrying globe, for which he had no further use, Maladran swept out of the room and down the spiralling stairs. Wards shattered like glass before him as he descended to the lowest cavern beneath the tower. Now that their souls had been freed, the bodies of Garrin and the other captives hung limply from their chains, their flesh putrefying and making the stale air of the confined space reek with their stench. Maladran ignored it as if it didn’t exist; the decomposing bodies were there for a purpose and if that meant the vilest of stenches, then so be it.

  Without bothering to remove their chains the sorcerer sliced through their wrists and ankles and dragged the decomposing bodies onto the stone slab, heaping them on top of each other in a bizarre mound of rotting arms and legs. He worked with feverish haste, like a man possessed, not caring about anything except what needed to be done. That there were thirteen bodies was no accident but carefully planned for the moment when he would finally call upon the most terrible of all arcane power: demon magic.

  Maladran ran his fingers beneath the lip of the stone slab, releasing catches to hidden compartments and taking out packages of powders and metals which he had meticulously prepared beforehand. One by one he sprinkled the powders across the thirteen bodies, reciting different incantations for the arcane compounds. With each incantation his voice rose and waned like waves and strange mists twisted amongst the bodies and filled the small room.

  Finally he laid a crude circlet of base metal on top of the bodies. A bestial creature, poorly engraved but clearly a replica of the demon which surrounded the top of the tower, lay entwined around the circlet. Black ebon wings and white taloned claws had been painted to follow the curve of the narrow circlet and a spiked tail wound around the metal until it reached the head with its two protruding ruby eyes as yet dull and lifeless.

  Calling on those names given only to creatures of nightmare, Maladran summoned demon magic, feeling it fire his blood until he could contain the searing inferno no longer. Still chanting the sorcerer took the sacred knife and held his hands over the circlet. With two quick movements he sliced through the veins of both wrists, allowing his scalding blood to fountain onto the thirteen bodies. Immediately they were consumed by flames which destroyed all flesh and bone in moments. As the bodies fell to ash the flames gathered in the centre of the circlet until it glowed white hot. The sorcerer spoke again and a sulphurous cloud billowed into the air, engulfing Maladran in a swirling shroud.

  A deathly silence fell across the room and nothing moved. Slowly the cloud dispersed just leaving the glowing circlet in a mound of smouldering ash. Maladran held out his hands and grasped the white hot metal, staggering with the pain as the metal burnt into his flesh. Carefully he separated the demon's head from its tail changing the circlet into a torc which he slid around his neck. He bit back a cry of agony as his flesh seared and the metal crumpled to ash, leaving the demon imprinted into the raw flesh of his throat.

  The sorcerer staggered away from the stone slab, his steps uncertain and his whole being churning and twisting within its fragile covering of skin so that the crispness of his outline blurred and shifted. He stumbled up the stairs becoming stronger and, with each step, regaining his solidity whilst the turmoil within him increased its intensity.

  At the top of the stairs he burst through the iron-bound door with power surging through him and a new energy pulsating at the edge of his consciousness, straining to take control of his being. Maladran held it in check by the force of his human will, determined to be the master of the demon magic he had summoned and not its slave but it was a tentative control, a fine edge between containment and oblivion.

  In the stone, cold hallway he stopped to breathe deeply, pushing the power back inside of himself and calming wild emotions of hate and anger and a craving to tear living flesh and drink hot blood. He carefully and deliberately wrapped his black cloak around him, shielding the vivid scar on his throat from sight and keeping the name of his enemy from his mind. For the first time in nearly five years he opened the tower door and stood at its threshold, revelling in his freedom.

  Horsemen crowded around the door, their steeds’ laboured breath making red-tinged plumes in the dying sunlight. Horses stamped noisily, their iron-shod hooves striking sparks on the jagged stone as they shied into each other, nervously backing away from the cloaked figure and the animal presence he radiated. Grim riders covered with the dust of a long hard ride fought to keep their fractious animals steady and fingered their sword hilts as if they too sensed some overwhelming evil.

  Sarrat urged his horse forward through the crowd of horsemen and flipped back his visor, a look of uncertainty
on his face as he saw the magician standing there with waves of anger and hatred sweeping from him, their force almost destroying Maladran's tenuous control. "Good, you're ready." He turned to the rider closest to him. "Gartnor, give Maladran your horse, we leave this place immediately."

  Gartnor reluctantly dismounted but Maladran made no move to take the horse’s reins. Sarrat's look of consternation changed to annoyance and his frustration beat against the sorcerer's mind. "Move, magician, I have need of your services. That bastard who rules Northshield has been supporting my enemies in the south against me but I will make him pay for his treachery. Before I’m finished I will have him screaming on a stake and every one of his noblemen’s heads on a pike. Now mount, he has a magician you will need to deal with and there's work to be done."

  "I cannot, My Lord.” hissed Maladran through clenched teeth. “Your exile still chains my power and holds me in thrall within the confines of this tower."

  "Damn the exile, you have my release!” He reached inside a silk bag which hung at his waist and removed the magician’s torc which he threw at him. “Now get on that horse and come with me."

  Maladran caught the torc and looked his master in the eye before placing it around his neck over the imprint of the demon burnt into his flesh. With a surge of power which threatened to bring him to his knees the gold circlet bonded to his flesh and the ruby eyes glowed fiery red.

  "No, My Lord," replied Maladran in a growling voice which hardly seemed his own. "I have other things of greater importance to attend to."

  Sarrat looked at the sorcerer in disbelief. "You’re mistaken, magician. My affairs are the only thing of importance to you and you will obey me."

  Maladran staggered under the onslaught of Sarrat's fury magnified by the torc around his neck and the insatiable demands of the demon which fought within him for release as each fought for dominance. His long ago vow of fealty tore at him with a physical pain but the needs of the demon magic were too great.