By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  From the north came footsteps heavy enough to shake the ground.

  Thud, thud, thud . . .

  A shape loomed out of the dust with hot brown eyes and huge fists that opened and closed.

  “Priest!”

  Heliot’s shout boomed against the houses still standing, rattling what windows remained, and against the stark tower of the Kencyr temple.

  “Come out, damn you!”

  Ishtier had, in fact, already emerged and now stood on the desolate plain before his front door. The wind swirled his black robe about him like a storm cloud. All that was visible of his face under the hood was the thin line of his mouth, turned downward.

  “I did not summon you, creature.”

  “Oh, but you did. You promised me power. Now you renege?”

  “Not so. When the time comes, you shall have it in full measure.”

  Night had fallen, moonless at this hour, and the sky was again obscured with clouds. Heliot brought his own light, the red of fire glowing through the seams of his armor. Another shape rose out of the dust behind him, and another, and another. Foremost stood Kalissan, swaying, her third eye like a lamp that only illuminates the living. It followed the wanderers at her feet who fled but cast no shadows, then closed. The two eyes beneath opened onto smoldering pits within her skull. She smiled, with pointed teeth.

  “I gave no orders for this creature’s making,” snarled Ishtier. “You forget yourself, demon.”

  “Ha, ha, ha. No, priest. I remember myself. Who I was. What I have become. Did you think to control me?”

  “I created you!”

  Heliot bent over the priest. With the tip of a finger he seemed about to flick him contemptuously away.

  “Little man, little mortal. My first worshippers raised me to godhood, then betrayed me the first time that I lost a battle. True, I was among the ranks of dead gods until you infused me with a voluntary human soul. I was your first such creation, was I not? Since then, you have shown me how to use those traitors’ descendants more efficiently, that I grant you. However, there are new sources of power here now.”

  “Yes! This temple!”

  “And the usurping New Pantheon gods that it feeds. Now I feed upon them and upon their followers, but there is something else at work here . . .”

  Ishtier all but stamped in frustration. Consumed as he was by his own ambitions, he barely seemed to reckon with the looming form that threatened to annihilate him. “Yes, yes, yes! Whatever you do to weaken this world strengthens my Master and feeds his shadows. When Rathillien falters, there is another reality beyond waiting to flood in on us. That is what I serve and, by extension, so do you.”

  Heliot straightened, thoughtfully scratching his beard. It crackled with sparks. “No, I don’t see that,” he said. “Why should I work for someone else’s gain? I was going to mash you like a bug, little priestling, but I suppose that I owe you something. Just don’t cross me again. Now, thanks to you, I have business to attend to elsewhere.”

  With that he turned and strode off, leaving Ishtier sputtering behind him in incoherent rage.

  Titmouse stifled a yelp. His pocket bulged and split. Gorgo plopped to the ground and grew, and grew, and grew. The stubby remnants of a tadpole tail merged with his body, making his head swell even more and his eyes bug out.

  “Quonk!” he said, raising one foot after another to regard his webbed toes.

  Loogan held back for a moment, as if shy, then threw himself into his god’s arms. They embraced, small priest, not-so-small god in that Loogan’s arms only went halfway around Gorgo’s mottled bulk.

  “So far, so good,” said Jame to Titmouse.

  Gorgo shuffled around and hopped off, following the impressions left by Heliot’s massive feet. Loogan scurried after him.

  “Now what?” Titmouse demanded.

  “We follow them, of course, probably back to the Temple District. I suspect that Heliot has a bigger problem on his hands than he realizes.”

  Chapter XI

  Meanwhile

  Spring 56

  I

  BRIER IRON-THORN drew a bucket from the courtyard’s well and scooped up water to dash in her face. It was cold enough, almost, to make her gasp.

  Wake up, she told herself. Wake up. Maybe, then, this nightmare will end.

  That night after they had left their strange guest to his own devices, she had dreamed that she had gone in search of Jame—out into the empty wards, in through the oddly echoing dormitories, up to her tower quarters, and had found the latter torn apart. There she had woken with a start, standing amid strewn clothing, broken furniture, and scattered bedding.

  Did I do this? she had wondered, aghast. Am I going mad?

  A dry laugh had answered her, seeming to rise through the floorboards like gouts of dust.

  Were the lordan’s quarters still like that or had she only dreamed it? In her mind, reality flickered back and forth. It shamed her to admit that she hadn’t dared to go back.

  It was two days since Jame had disappeared. Tomorrow, with or without her, Brier and the rest of the third-year cadets would depart for Gothregor.

  Here came another one of them, pretty Mint, looking anxious.

  “Ten, I hate to ask, but have you thought of the smokehouse? The nights have been so chilly. . . .”

  Of course, she seemed to suggest, Jame would crawl into any source of warmth like a stray cat. Someone else had already mentioned the bakery oven.

  “I looked,” said Brier. “Also on the rooftops, in the cistern, and behind Kells’ potting shed. She isn’t there.”

  “Sorry.” Mint backed off, turned, and fled.

  Brier was aware that everyone had been treating her with great care these past two days, while at the same time fighting the urge to cling to her for reassurance. She had been master ten both at Tentir and Kothifir, as well as marshal of Tagmeth for almost a year, yet this had never happened to her before. Was it because this was now their home, however the Highlord decided to judge it? Were Kendar really so needy? To depend so on the fickle goodwill of a Highborn . . . where was their pride? Where was hers?

  Jame had had to prove her ability to lead in adversity. Maybe now it was Brier’s turn.

  The watch horn sounded, ending on an upward note. This was a friend, coming from the north.

  Char rode into the courtyard on a dusty post horse.

  If he passed the muster, Brier thought, watching him approach, and if Jame offered him the bond, would he accept? Once, she would have said, “Never.” He had been a scowling enemy at Kothifir, one of the class jumped up from the Cataracts that other cadets thought of as uncouth. A year at Tagmeth seemed to have changed him, though. Now he was someone whom Brier and, apparently, Jame trusted.

  Why, though, should he, should anyone, put faith in the lordan? Granted, she was brave—Trinity, foolishly so. To raid Restormir, to ride foremost against the Karnid horde, to stand in the way of a yackcarn stampede. . . . All right, the rathorn colt had given her an advantage at Kothifir. And she was loyal—even, it seemed, to those who should have been her enemies. Char, Shade, Timmon, Gorbel . . . That last was another Caineron, and a potent one.

  Life had been much simpler for Brier before the Knorth had crossed it. One obeyed one’s lord, in her case, Caldane Lord Caineron. What he did had been distasteful but not crucial, until he had tried to subject her to one of his tests of loyalty. Jame had saved her. There was always that.

  Behind Char trailed a vaguely bovine creature that seemed to be all spindly legs, knobby knees, and oversized head, with high withers, a prehensile lip, and virtually no neck. The yack-cow calf Malign was quite possibly the ugliest baby Brier had ever seen, now barely a season old. Worse, every time Brier saw her, she appeared to have grown yet again. Her mother had been a cow named Beneficent who, inexplicably, had followed Char everywhere. Her father was a diminutive yackcarn bull. Yackcarn females, however, grew to frightening proportions. Malign appeared to have inherited both size and de
votion. The Kendar, of course, found the latter adorable.

  Soft people, Brier thought with a passing sneer, then checked herself. More than once, she had almost smiled too.

  “Blaah!” said Malign, snuffling toward the pail of water.

  Char’s thirsty horse also had designs on it, but backed away, ears flat, as the calf eagerly pushed past. Their shoulders were nearly the same height.

  “Well?” Brier demanded of the cadet as he dismounted.

  “She isn’t in the Merikit village, nor do they have any news of her.” He gave a short laugh. “Gran Cyd says that no doubt she will appear when it suits her.”

  The Merikit queen could afford to be nonchalant, thought Brier sourly. Her future didn’t depend on Jame’s presence—or did it?

  “Cyd claims that I sired her daughter. Well, who am I to contradict a mother?”

  From the storage room came a yelp and near-hysterical swearing with a definite Kothifiran tinge. Something black slithered hastily out of the dark, then paused on the threshold to fight over a mouse that one of its heads had caught.

  Snap, snap, tear. Blood sprinkled the flagstones.

  By an eastern gate, Jorin raised his head in interest.

  Cook Rackny loomed over the node of vipers, wielding a cleaver. His earlier encounter with a parasitic blackhead had clearly put him off anything remotely serpentine.

  “No!” Brier cried, involuntarily.

  Fragments of mouse disappeared down several gullets, then the cloak surged into the courtyard. All but one snake, still struggling to swallow, moved in unison. The one out of order was jerked back into it by the silver thread that stitched it to its fellows. Together, they lunged past Char’s horse, which threw up its head, eyes showing their whites, turned and bolted down the ramp into the subterranean stable. Voices below shouted a warning as its hooves clattered downward.

  Startled, the knot of serpents swerved back into the mess hall. Char stared after it.

  “What in Perimal’s name was that?”

  “I forgot. You weren’t here when it or its bearer arrived. I think,” said Brier carefully, “that may be the Serpent-Skin Cloak.”

  “As in the Ivory Knife and the Book Bound in Pale Leather?”

  His expression changed.

  “You aren’t joking, are you? What, here? Now? Why?”

  Brier threw up her hands. “Do I look like a Tyr-ridan, to answer such questions?”

  But Jame had said that she was on the edge of becoming one of that long-awaited, long-despaired-of Three. And a potential nemesis, no less. Sweet Trinity. Did myths and legends again haunt the Kencyrath? What good had they done in the past? Weren’t things complicated enough as it was?

  Please, not in my age, Brier thought, then shook herself. Whining never helped. That she should even think of doing so appalled her.

  “I’ll explain later,” she said to Char, “as best I can. Go see to your horse.”

  Char nodded, frowning, and trudged off, followed by a shambling Malign. Brier could almost hear his thoughts:

  Leave this place on its own just for a minute and all Perimal breaks loose.

  II

  GRAYKIN PEERED DOWN out of the tower’s second-story window into the courtyard, instinctively keeping to one side in order not to be seen. The cadet Char parted from the Marshal and descended the ramp, followed by that monstrous mooncalf that he called Malign. Oh, she would be welcome below among those close-set stalls where the cadet’s mount was probably even now having hysterics.

  Brier Iron-thorn stood for a moment, as if taking stock of the surrounding chaos, then went over to soothe the distraught cook who apparently had not seen where the cloak had gone and was looking about wildly, waving his cleaver.

  Graykin stealthily withdrew from the window.

  The Marshal was hiding something. She must be. As ramshackle as this keep appeared to him, Jame couldn’t have simply walked out of it without someone noticing—could she? He remembered what he had just seen, the blind ounce Jorin settling down again before that eastern gate. Had anyone realized that he might be keeping watch, as it were, for the return of his mistress? Had anyone looked for her there? Graykin briefly considered slipping through the door that the ounce appeared to be guarding. His experience with the savannah, though, gave him pause. It wasn’t that he was scared, he told himself. It was just that the job of scout belonged to someone more expendable. He was a spy, and proud of it. Moreover, he was the lordan’s spy. That reflection stiffened his spine with pride. But what good could he do here in the Riverland, where everyone regarded him with such suspicion?

  He turned back into the room, nervously fidgeting with the coral trim of his pink dress coat.

  Had it been a mistake to wear such finery? He stuck out here like a gilded hangnail but, dammit, he would not be looked down upon, especially by that ironbound Kendar Iron-thorn. So what if she was on her way to becoming something special among the randon. Everyone thought that she was so wonderful. His agents had at least told him that much. Well, there was brazen glory, all big muscles, hard eyes, and strong jaws, but also there was the more subtle kind, based on intelligence, on wits. What hurt him most was the thought that Jame might turn to Brier rather than to him for council,

  “Did you see what he wore today?” one might ask the other, and both would laugh. . . .

  Graykin shuddered at the thought.

  To forestall that, to prove his worth yet again, he must offer the lordan new information, something valuable.

  A gaunt, motionless figure sat before the dead fire, staring at nothing. Graykin drew up a chair opposite him.

  “So,” he said with what was meant to be an engaging smile. “Have you decided to talk to me yet? I won’t go away, you know, until you do.”

  III

  THE DAY WORE ON. More Kendar reported having slept poorly and hinted at bad dreams. Some spoke of falling into an abyss, others of being left behind in the dark. All felt abandoned, and mocked in their abandonment by soft, sly laughter.

  Nonetheless, preparations for the third-year cadets’ departure the next morning went smoothly, having been started days before. Maybe they could leave early. Brier wished so, devoutly. That alien presence in the second-story quarters of the keep weighed on her. Moreover, she still hadn’t gone above that to see what state the lordan’s room was in. She had to wait, though . . . didn’t she? What if Jame came home today, tonight, tomorrow at dawn?

  She is your lady. You owe her that.

  When everything about the journey was as well in hand as could be hoped, Brier found herself obsessing over the keep’s schedule while she was gone.

  “Keep an eye on my horse,” she told patient Cheva. “I don’t want that hoof to crack any farther.”

  “Kells, if you go out herb collecting, take a guard with you. Yes, I know that it’s always been safe near the keep, but these are troubled times.”

  “Rackny, I know you mean to prepare a feast for Summer’s Day and am sorry I won’t be here to enjoy it. But d’you have enough provisions on hand? I don’t want anyone going through the gates while I’m away.”

  “Swar, your forge needs to be reorganized. It’s a mess.”

  Finally Marc drew her aside. “Be calm,” he told her. “Be serene. Fussing only puts them more on edge. They all know their jobs.”

  “Are you saying that I don’t?” she snapped at him, and then felt ashamed of herself. “Sorry. It’s just that I overhear them talking among themselves. If your pet were to offer them the bond now, who would take it? A year she spent, winning their trust, and now to risk it with Ancestors-only-know what freak of an escapade . . .”

  “The lass understands her duty as well as you do. What you don’t know are all of her other responsibilities. Nor do I, come to that.”

  “Being the commander of this keep isn’t enough?”

  “She’s also her brother’s lordan, the Earth Wife’s former Favorite, somehow father of Gran Cyd’s child, and potentially one of the Tyr-r
idan. Her life is . . . complicated.”

  “Huh!”

  Damson dragged a cadet across the courtyard toward them. Brier recognized second-year Wort, who was often too clever for her own good and prone to baiting her humorless ten-commander. So far, she had gotten away with the latter. Now, however, she clutched a blanket over her head and seemed to flinch away from the light.

  “This little fool has been hiding under her bed all day,” Damson said, without preamble. “Show Ten.”

  Wort hesitated, then defiantly shook off her covering. She had had long black hair twisted into an elaborate braid of which she was inordinately proud. These days, the randon favored a short cut, meaning less for an enemy to grab. To wear one’s hair past the ears was a minor act of rebellion or, at Tagmeth, a declaration of loyalty to Jame whose own hair, when loosed, was notoriously long. The cadet’s braid had been crudely lopped off next to her skull, leaving her with a frayed halo.

  Brier swore.

  “You have no idea who did this?”

  “None, Ten,” said Wort, fighting tears. “At least, I dreamed that someone sat on the pallet beside me and stroked my hair. ‘You think to honor her,’ he said. Yes, it was a man, gloating. He made me want to crawl inside my own skin to hide. ‘Little girl, witness her weakness.’ And he gave me these.”

  In one hand she held a knife; in the other, the severed braid that she had been clutching to her breast.

  “I thought we were past such things,” Brier muttered to Marc as the cadet wobbled away. “Killy was the prankster. Killy is dead. This seems more . . . visceral. And it’s so petty. Her throat might just as easily have been slit.”

  “Ah, don’t say that. Think what an uproar there would be then. Someone didn’t want that. Besides, she may have cut it off herself. In her sleep.”