“Yes, yes, I will.”
“At midnight, Nosto. The demon will come at midnight.”
The archbishop left Theoll’s chambers, muttering to himself and invoking the succour of a dozen different saints. Theoll sagged, the strain of the meeting wearing on him. Still, he called out.
A guard appeared instantly, hand on sword. “How may I serve you, Baron?” the guard asked. His quick eyes circled the room to check for danger, then returned to lock boldly with Theoll’s.
“The jester. Harhar. Bring him. I feel the need of amusement.”
“The physician has ordered rest.”
“Damn the physician! Obey me! I need the jester’s wit. Fetch him immediately.”
The guard saluted and left. Theoll let the grin spread broadly now. Victory edged ever closer. He had no idea who had tried to kill him on the battlements, but with Archbishop Nosto’s unwitting help, he would remove one cabal plotting against him. If they were not responsible for the assassination attempt, at least the effort would not be wasted on hapless innocents.
As if anyone in the castle of Porotane was truly innocent. All had blood on their hands from a score of years under Duke Freow.
“Baron?” came a tremulous voice.
Theoll jerked around to see Harhar standing in the doorway, a rattle in one hand and a battered rag cap in the other. The sudden movement sent waves of pain throughout Theoll’s body. He fought to keep from fainting.
“If you wish, Baron, I will leave. The guard said…”
Theoll gestured the fool to silence. “I require your services, Harhar. Will you perform for me?”
“Baron, yes!” Harhar stuck the cap on his head and put the rattle in his mouth. With an agility that defied joints and muscles, Harhar began a series of leaps and aerial twists. Each movement allowed him to snap his head about, causing the rattle to whine and purr and whistle and produce sounds Theoll could not identify.
“Harhar, wait, stop. No more. You make me tired watching this display.”
“It does not please you, Baron?” Harhar sank to the floor, his forehead on the rug beside the baron’s bed. “A joke?” the jester asked hopefully.
“No, no, not here, not now. But a joke, yes. A fine jest. The best you have ever done. Will you do this for me?”
“Oh, Baron, yes, of course!” The jester’s eagerness to perform disgusted Theoll, but he needed this simpleminded acquiescence to his scheme. For over a fortnight he had prepared the pantry for Archbishop Nosto. He had intended to be the primary actor in the drama but his condition prevented it now. Letting Harhar perform struck Theoll as ironic and appropriate retribution for Nosto’s pomposity.
“You will be costumed by the guard who will accompany us.”
“Us? But Baron Theoll, your condition!”
“That is not your concern, fool,” he snapped. “You will dress and speak loudly the words I whisper in your ear. Is that understood?”
A frown crossed Harhar’s handsome face.
“You will repeat what I tell you,” Theoll explained, impatient with the jester’s lack of understanding. “If you please me, I shall give you a gold coin. Displease me and I shall see you whipped through the streets like a dog!”
The jester cringed again, head banging on the rug. “I will please you, Baron, I will, I will!”
Theoll summoned the guard to aid him. Although fully three hours remained until midnight, Theoll thought the journey to the pantry would prove slow and tedious. He endured the pain, but had to stop even more often than anticipated. A scant hour remained by the time the trio — baron, jester, and guard — reached the deserted pantry.
“Guard, remain hidden in the kitchens. No matter what you see or hear, do not reveal your presence. Only on my command will you attend me. Do you understand?”
The guard nodded. To Harhar, Theoll said, “Help me into the pantry storage room.”
The jester helped the disabled noble. Theoll pointed out a hidden panel. “There. We go in there.”
“Why, it is like a small stage,” marvelled Harhar. “The door closes, but a window opens to reveal us.”
“To reveal you,” corrected Theoll. “Put on this costume. Can you use makeup?” He drew forth a large box of paints and coloured greases.
“It is second nature to me, Baron. But what character do I perform this night? Punctilious? Or perhaps Wobbles?”
“Nothing of the sort. No characters from a children’s play. A demon. You must look like a demon.” Theoll snorted in disgust when the jester cringed away. The baron grabbed the fool’s collar and dragged him into the small box built into the wall. He settled down on the floor. Harhar had to stand with legs spread to avoid stepping on the noble. When the window in the secret door opened, Harhar would be visible only from the waist up, allowing Theoll to remain seated and coach him. The baron saw that this might prove more difficult than he had thought because of the fool’s reaction.
“Put on this snakeskin jerkin.” Theoll watched as Harhar stripped off his rags and donned the sleek, gleaming garment that transformed a human into a reptilian creature. The baron guided Harhar in applying the makeup. In less than twenty minutes, the jester had become a convincing serpent-like demon.
“Do I please you, Baron?” asked Harhar.
“Even this close, you look the part,” said Theoll. “From the room, you will seem to be a demon.”
Harhar stirred uneasily at the notion but said nothing. Theoll painfully worked his way into the secret box again and motioned for Harhar to enter also.
“Stand and wait. Do not open the window until I order you to do so.”
Theoll drew a dagger and bored a small spyhole with the tip so that he could peer out into the dusty pantry. He had intended to look through a crack between window and shade but his injuries changed that plan. He looked at Harhar and decided that this might be even better. Nosto would never believe the jester capable of such perfidy.
“What do I say, Baron?”
“Remain silent. I shall whisper to you. Repeat exactly what I say or I will cut out your tongue.”
The jester bobbed his head like a crane fishing in shallow waters but said nothing. Harhar entered the box on the baron’s order and closed the secret panel. Within the box it was dark, stuffy, and for the jester, terrifying. For the baron, it proved only cramped and increasingly painful. He used his spyhole to look out into the pantry. He hoped that Archbishop Nosto proved prompt. It had to be within a few minutes of midnight.
“Baron!” cried Harhar. “Someone is coming!”
“Silence, fool!”
Theoll squinted hard at the spyhole, a rising excitement within his breast. He needed Archbishop Nosto’s influence if he was to stop the Lady Johanna in her drive to depose him. Whether she had been responsible for his brush with death, Theoll neither knew nor cared. Eliminating her from power within the castle meant one less opponent when the ancient duke finally succumbed.
“Good,” murmured Theoll. “That’s the way, Nosto. Hide there. Yes, yes!” To Harhar he said, “Scream as loudly as you can. I want his heart to explode with fear.”
Harhar responded. Even expecting it, Theoll started. He smiled. Harhar was beginning to enjoy his role and it showed.
Theoll began feeding the lines to his willing fool.
“Archbishop Nosto,” called Harhar. “You are not the one I chose to meet this evening. Come forth!”
Theoll watched as Nosto crept from hiding. The baron reached up and opened the curtain. Harhar, in his demon’s coloured makeup, was dimly revealed to the cleric. Theoll had tested this effect; it appeared as if the demon was inside the solid wall, making it all the more frightening.
Archbishop Nosto made protective signs in the air in front of him. “What demon are you?” he demanded.
“You do not fear me?” Harhar asked, on Theoll’s prompting.
“The saints protect me from all evil.”
Theoll had to admire the cleric’s courage — or his fanaticism.
“You would serve me as the lieutenant of the guard does?” asked Harhar, his voice rumbling in a deep bass.
“What guardsman is this who strays from the True Path?”
“You know the one,” said Harhar. “The Lady Johanna fornicates with him nightly. You know the one. I have given him the object of his lusty desires because of his faithful service.”
“Lieutenant Oprezzi?”
“That is his mortal name,” agreed Harhar. The jester chanced to look down as Theoll worked on a candle. The baron motioned him back to the task. Archbishop Nosto must not suspect trickery.
“You are not a demon. The last demon was banished more than three hundred years ago.”
“Aye,” said Harhar. “When Kalob the Fierce made reparation to you puny humans, he left the trinket you call the Demon Crown. Kalob was banished, but others of considerably more power have returned. Oprezzi and those of his ilk appease us with their bodies and souls. They do our bidding. We will triumph over you, Archbishop Nosto. Demonic power returns to this world!”
To emphasize the words, Theoll lit the candle and cupped his hands about the flame to focus the light upward. From the pantry, it appeared as if the disembodied demon had opened a trapdoor to hell and the hellfire shone upward on his face.
Archbishop Nosto made another ward gesture.
“You will aid me, Archbishop?” demanded Harhar.
“I order you back to the depths of the hell from which you come!”
“You cannot order me. Not when there are those among you who do my bidding!”
“Then they shall be put to the Question. They shall never stray from the True Path!”
Harhar laughed until his voice began to turn hoarse. Theoll snuffed out the candle flame, almost choking on the sudden plume of smoke rising from the wick. He turned back to the spyhole and peered at Nosto. The cleric turned and bolted from the room.
Baron Theoll wanted to laugh and cry out loud at his victory. Nosto would not stop with his Inquisition of Oprezzi until the feckless lieutenant confessed everything — truth or not. And through the guardsman, Nosto had to come to the Lady Johanna.
Theoll did not care if Nosto put her to the Question. The cleric’s suspicion would keep the woman busy and allow Theoll a free hand in his own dealings.
Duke Freow would die soon. Theoll would see to that. And when the duke passed on, the power would come to Baron Theoll of Brandon.
CHAPTER V
The Glass Warrior rode slowly from the castle, knowing that she had seen Duke Freow for the last time. Success or failure, her mission marked the ruler’s last significant command.
She reined in and looked at the dawn-lit castle walls. She shook her head, soft white hair floating like a nimbus around her face. It seemed an eternity since Freow — or the man posing as King Lamost’s reclusive brother for all these years — had entrusted her with the Demon Crown. She reached behind, her fingers lightly touching the velvet sack in which rested the magical crown. As always, a tiny thrill passed through her. Although she had no royal blood and could never don the crown without risking instant and total madness, some of its magic inspired her.
“To rule all this,” she said, her keen grey eyes looking around the farms surrounding the castle. Good land, rich and productive. And the workers strove to bring in bountiful harvests. “A shame the wars have raged so long. What might Porotane have accomplished as a whole instead of fractured into a dozen warring pieces?”
Again she shook her head. She tried to stay above politics, to remain aloof from the machinations of those in the Porotane court. But as long as she held the Demon Crown, she knew she would be the centre of a vortex of death and intrigue.
“The scurvy son of a bitch wasn’t even Lamost’s kin,” she said aloud. Freow had completely fooled her. She had believed him an honourable, decent fellow intent only on locating the twins and returning them to power. For almost twenty years she had believed this. It was for the best that she had not partaken of the feuds and power games being played out in Porotane. She was too easily duped.
But the man who had assumed Freow’s identity had chosen her with uncanny skill. For twenty years she had fought off legions of thieves, both lowborn and noble, seeking to steal the Demon Crown. She had kept the crown as a trust for Lokenna and Lorens and never thought for an instant of betraying it.
The Glass Warrior stretched, her joints popping. She was no longer the young warrior woman who had accepted this task. It was for the good of all that she now do what Freow had promised for so many years. She had done her duty in protecting the crown for the twins. Now she must find them to hand over their heritage.
“Mayhap then I can rest,” she said, patting her horse on the neck. The mare whinnied and tried to rear. “Whoa, now. What’s the trouble? Do we have company on our ride this fine morning?”
The horse bobbed her head up and down, as if she understood. Sometimes, it seemed to the woman, the horse truly foresaw the future and tried to tell of it.
The Glass Warrior reached into her pouch and pulled out a short string of wildcat gut with a small cut-glass spike tied to it. She held it at arm’s length and closed her eyes. Soft chants rose from her lips, the weak magic turning the glass into something more than a convenient device for finding her way. Vibrations from the crystal raced up the gut string and into her fingers, down her arm and into her shoulder.
Her entire body began to quiver under the impact of her scrying spell. A darkness fell over her mind as if a box of purest ebony encased her. With sight went sound and smell. She floated in the magical void, the only sense being the shivering gut string in her fingers.
“Come,” she coaxed. “Show me who follows.”
A vivid picture formed, as if before her eyes. But the Glass Warrior’s eyes were screwed shut in concentration. The image came magically and from a distance beyond sight.
Twelve riders rode from the Porotane castle, circled to where she had tied her mare, then followed her spoor with uncanny skill.
The image intensified. She now heard the leader speaking. “I sighted her along the trail. Make good speed, men, for we ride under the baron’s strictest orders.”
“The baron,” she murmured. “Baron Theoll. Who else could command such resources within Porotane?”
The riders galloped along her trail. She watched and listened magically until their leader reined in and slowed his band of fighters with their clanking swords and rattling armour. “Here,” he said. “Here is where I sighted her. Dismount and find the trail. We must not lose her — or the Demon Crown!”
The Glass Warrior’s concentration began to slip. The pure blackness of the box in which her senses were encased developed cracks. Wind blew across her face, carrying soft scents and the promise of rain before nightfall. The light of a new day pried its way under her lids and she saw instead of saw. The chirping of a songbird broke the spell completely, and she again saw only the world around her. Her fingers tightened on the gut string and she drew the glass crystal into her hand. She squeezed so tightly that blood dripped onto it, renewing its power for her next use.
“So, Baron, you think it this easy to steal the crown?” The Glass Warrior threw back her head and laughed, her mockery of the diminutive noble frightening the wildlife into silence. She controlled her scorn, and slowly the birds again sang and the crepuscular animals moved through the low brush around the trail.
She put her heels to the mare’s flanks and started off at a good pace. Let her pursuers tire their steeds. She had an unknown distance to travel before she found the heirs to the throne — and she had all day in which to lay a false trail for the baron’s men.
They were soldiers, fighters trained in the ways of killing. She knew the forests and plains and all the ways of eluding pursuers.
The Glass Warrior used her full knowledge. By midday, another scrying showed the soldiers racing directly north to the Uvain Plateau. She turned east and then south, circling wide around the castle, and by
late afternoon, was heading in the opposite direction from her pursuers.
The small cooking fire drove back the dampness of the night. The Glass Warrior hunched forward to warm her hands. The rabbit she had hunted and eaten for dinner had been too small, its taste doing little more than supplementing the dry trail rations she carried. But the tiny fire did more to raise her spirits than anything else. She could stare for long hours into the dancing orange and blue flames, studying the ever-changing patterns and trying to impose sense on them.
One childhood story she remembered well was that fire had been given to mankind by a demon repentant for all the woe it had visited on the world. The Glass Warrior smiled wanly. So many myths sounded similar. The Demon Crown had been given to King Waellkin by the demon Kalob in reparation for the destruction brought by demonic acts. It mattered little to her. The sight of fire carried its own magic, soothing and warming.
Her hand flashed to her dagger when distant clanking echoed through the copse where she camped for the night. She strained, listening intently. Then she dropped to the ground, pressing her ear into the dirt. She straightened quickly. The ground had been soaked by the afternoon rains and carried sound poorly.
The sound of a wagon grew louder. She sighed and stood, buckling the sword belt around her trim waist. Returning her glass dagger to its sheath, she drew her sword. In the firelight, its glass surface reflected rainbows. Moving like the wind, she vanished into the thicket around her campfire and crouched, waiting.
Those in the wagon made no attempt to hide their arrival. Boisterous shouts, curses, and laughter preceded the pair.
“I tell you, Vered, you cannot hope to escape the wheel if you keep doing such things.”
“You’re getting old, Santon, old and frightened!”
“Courage has nothing to do with it. You stole from the village elder.”
“He was the only one with money. Why bother picking empty purses? Hot air I can get from you. Gold I get only from the rich!”
The one called Santon grabbed his companion’s sleeve when he spotted the campfire. “Looks as if we’ve another traveller along the road this evening, Vered. But where has he gotten off to?”
The Glass Warrior (Demon Crown Book 1) Page 5