Demon Rider

by Ken Hood

  Laughing at this brilliant wit, Senora de Gomez hitched up her hems and stepped over a dead child without seeming to notice it.

  —|—

  Her little kitchen was clean, tidy, and cosily cramped with three of them in it, a bizarre oasis of domesticity in a city of death. She set half a bushel of beans to boil and rapidly peeled about a hundred onions. She put Toby to grinding the grain in a hand mill and Hamish to opening a wine bottle. By the time they had passed that around several times and he had opened another, the party became jolly. Toby's mouth watered copiously as the scents of food wafted around him—he could not remember his last good meal. Gracia bustled merrily, clattering pans while the fire crackled in the grate and her guests sat on their stools, awkward in their mismatched, ill-fitting finery.

  She put another stool between them, set a bowl on it, and began tipping food in. The men reached for it, burning their fingers and not caring. As soon as they emptied it, she would add more and they would start all over again. More wine bottles went around. She was as good a cook as she had said she was, considering the material she had to work with, and she had the sense to realize that her companions needed large portions. She helped herself to a few handfuls without ever sitting down.

  "It grows late." Hamish frowned at the little barred window. "We must be gone from here before sunset."

  Gracia's spoon paused in its vigorous beating of batter. "There is a room upstairs where the senores may sleep." She did not look at them. "There are no neighbors to gossip. Besides, it will be perfectly proper, because I shall be out." The spoon walloped against the bowl again.

  The senores exchanged glances.

  "I am concerned about the wraiths," Hamish said. "There are many unburied dead here and no spirit to care for them."

  "You need not worry about wraiths, senor. They have been attended to." She thundered her spoon in the batter.

  "I do worry about the wraiths. Wraiths drive men insane."

  "I have lived here for several nights, and they have not harmed me."

  Hamish looked skeptical.

  "What have you done for them, senora?" Toby asked quietly.

  Gracia flipped a drop of oil onto the griddle to test its temperature. "I have collected them." She added more oil and spooned out some batter.

  More glances. Women could be driven insane as easily as men, but Toby had been expecting something along these lines.

  "In the bottle?" The bottle was never far from her.

  Hesitation. "Of course."

  "Is this gramarye, senora? It is not a custom familiar to us in our homeland."

  "Have you had so much war and death in your homeland? No, it is not gramarye! How dare you suggest that I would stoop to such evil?" But she still did not look at her guests.

  "Will you tell us the way of it, then?"

  She tipped more beans into the communal bowl. "Eat!"

  They ate in silence, while she plied them with tortillas and beans and onions, helping after helping. Toby felt as if he were filling an empty barrel. When at last they could eat no more, the light in the alley outside showed that the sun must be very close to setting.

  "Tell us about the wraiths, senora," said Hamish.

  "It is of no importance."

  He opened his mouth to protest—probably to point out that he regarded his sanity as of considerable importance—and Toby silenced him with a shake of his head. She responded better to him.

  "You are taking your sons' souls somewhere, senora? And these other souls also?"

  She promptly filled her mouth so she could not answer, but then she nodded.

  "This is a noble mercy, although I never heard of it being done before. Who taught you this skill?"

  After a moment she said, "My sons."

  Hamish rolled his eyes and looked around for his staff and bundle.

  "Where are you taking them?" Toby asked gently.

  She bit her lip, staring at him, and then seemed to decide to trust him. "To Montserrat, senor. There is a great tutelary there, just north of Barcelona. My sons asked me to deliver them to the spirit in the monastery at Montserrat."

  "You are traveling alone?" he asked incredulously.

  With a little more hesitation, she said that, yes, she was traveling alone.

  "This is a most fortunate coincidence. We are going to Montserrat. Will the senora permit us to escort her?"

  She gave him a smile as warming as a blazing fire on a winter night. "So that is why they told me to wait!"

  "Who told you, senora?"

  "My sons, of course!"

  "Toby!" Hamish was glowering.

  Toby shrugged apologetically. He could not possibly let this poor child go wandering off alone again! It was a miracle she had managed to come this far without being molested.

  But Hamish's practical soul was much less impressed by this damsel in distress. "Tell us how you work this conjuration with the wraiths."

  "It is not your concern!"

  Toby said, "It should not be, senora, but if we are to be traveling together, then it might become so. The Inquisition, for example, might—"

  She froze, staring at him. The color drained from her cheeks.

  "We disapprove of the Inquisition," he added hastily and sensed Hamish shuddering at this indiscretion.

  "I have no dealings with demons!" Gracia cried.

  "Nor we, I assure you, but it takes only a whisper to start the Inquisition asking questions, and we all know how they ask questions."

  She looked down at the floor and spoke very quietly. "After the soldiers left Madrid... I was the only one left, senor. They overlooked me at the end, when they slew the women. I hid under the bed where... it was not my bed. I was the only one left, the houses were burning. I went to the shrine, and the spirit did not answer, so I knew they had taken it. I hunted everywhere for my husband and my sons, to bury them. All day I searched and could not find them. But that night my sons came to me. Their wraiths stood beside me—not as I had known them but as the men they would have been, tall and strong and handsome. They wept because their lives had been so short and they would never grow to that manhood. They wept more because they must evermore remain wraiths with no spirit to cherish them. They told me to take a bottle and gather up the souls, theirs and all the others, and carry them to the tutelary at Montserrat, for it would take them in and care for them always as if they had been its own people. That is what I have done, senor. There and anywhere else I found death. Is this a wickedness?"

  "No, indeed. It is a virtuous thing." He did not know if what she claimed was possible, but he certainly did not know that it was not. He dared not look at Hamish. No doubt Hamish could quote books on the subject.

  Gracia was relieved to have his approval. She smiled wistfully, her eyelashes glistening. "They still speak to me sometimes. Here I found much death, and it was hard for me to make the wraiths understand, because of the language. My sons told me to keep trying, to stay here for a while. They must have known you were coming, senor, a strong man to escort me through the troubled lands. But I think I have gathered all the souls in this town now. I shall go out again tonight to make sure. There may still be a few of the very little ones, I fear, who find it difficult to understand. They will not trouble you." She looked at him like a wounded plover.

  "I believe you. I shall sleep here tonight, then, with your permission." The hob would defend him, but it might not worry about Hamish. He stole a quick glance at his friend.

  "And I," Hamish croaked loyally, although he looked as if he could see the room full of ghosts already.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He had a lot more to say later, when the two of them were alone in the poky bedroom Gracia had appropriated for her use during her stay in Onda. The bed was too short for Toby and would not be wide enough for both of them anyway. He spread his blanket on the floor.

  "Toby, I thought you agreed we were not going to go to Barcelona?"

  "We can't abandon that child!"

&nbs
p; "Child? She's borne two children—or thinks she has. She's crazy!"

  "All the more reason to be kind."

  "Ha!" Hamish hurled the last of his clothes down and scrambled into the bed. "Kind? Child? She was dropping broad hints that she didn't really have to go out if the senor needed her and the boy could sleep in the dog kennel."

  "You're imagining things!" Toby stretched out on the floor and rolled himself up.

  "She wanted you to share her bed, and you weren't exactly ignoring her yourself. This is no time to start falling in love with a demented—"

  "You are being ridiculous and evil-minded!" Toby sneezed several times as his efforts to get comfortable raised dust from the ancient boards. "I am certainly not falling in love! I'm sorry for her, that's all." Memories of last spring... Jeanne in the springtime... disaster at Mezquiriz... Agony in his throat. Never, never fall in love! Love was not for a man possessed. The dust was making his eyes water.

  "And you promised we wouldn't go near Barcelona." Hamish sounded aggrieved.

  "We can go around it. We'll cut overland, avoid the coast. That'll be just as safe as heading for Navarre. And if we find a convent, we'll leave her there, all right? Or some town with a tutelary that will care for her. Besides, I'm not convinced she's crazy at all. The wraiths don't seem to have molested her."

  "How could they?" Hamish said glumly, moving the candle closer and balancing a huge leather bound tome on his chest, a history of Aragon. "She was crazy before she arrived."

  "Is what she thinks she is doing possible?"

  "Not without gramarye, I shouldn't think. Ah, me! Demons last night, ghosts tonight? You won't mind if I read awhile?"

  "Not as long as you don't laugh too loudly."

  "If I cut your throat in the night, don't blame me for it." It would take more than a few hundred wraiths to distract him from a good, meaty book, but after a moment he said, "Toby? I realize that your vision, or whatever it was... that your vision of Barcelona was pretty bad. I know you suffered. That doesn't mean you have to prove anything."

  "Prove what?" Toby asked his blanket.

  "Prove that you're not scared, I mean. I know you're brave."

  "Huh?" He could still smell that odious cellar, see the barbarous implements of torture, feel those cold manacles scraping his flesh. How long could a man endure being chained to a wall like that? How long survive in the cold and the dark? How long endure without sleep? And what happened after he broke, when he begged for release, telling everything, promising anything at all...? "What do you mean? That's an absurd backward way of thinking! Why would a frightening vision make me want to go to Barcelona? That's nonsense. Bloody demons! That's just as crazy as anything Gracia has said."

  Hamish grunted. "You needn't shout. Go to sleep, you big ox."

  —|—

  Toby was awakened in the morning by a delectable odor of fresh-baked bread. Gracia was clattering pots downstairs. The candle had burned itself out, and Hamish lay fast asleep, the book pitched over him like a Gothic roof.

  Soon after that, the three of them walked out of Onda and headed north, over the hills.

  PART THREE

  The Hired Guard

  CHAPTER ONE

  Toby closed the door carefully. This dim, poky room was Master's workshop, where he did his hexing, and it held far too many fragile things that a big clumsy oaf like him might knock over—balances, mortars, brass instruments, bright-hued glass bottles, and a bewildering clutter of other mysteries, including a mummified cat. Dozens of books were heaped in disorder on shelves above the benches, but they did not look like the sort of books that would have pictures in them. The baron was stooped over a bench under the window. Rain streamed down the little leaded panes, and he had several candles burning, even in daytime.

  "Toby?" he said without looking around.

  "Yes, Master."

  "Come and see this."

  Toby moved gingerly between a chair piled high with books and a globe of the world bigger than a wine cask.

  Master was poking a metal rod in a tiny brazier. "See this gem?"

  "Looks like glass, Master." It was hard to see at all on the bright-glowing coals.

  "It's rock crystal. But what matters is that the hob is inside that glass. That's where I put the hob, Toby. Immured, we call it."

  "Thank you for taking the hob out of me, Master. The hob was bad."

  "Yes, well we're making it badder." The baron chuckled. Perhaps he had made a joke. "It shows promise of being a truly vicious demon. At the moment I'm teaching it respect. A few hours' roasting should get its attention, wouldn't you say?"

  "I don't know, Master."

  "No. Well, sit down. Ah! Your new outfit. Turn around and let me see. Yes, very fair. Continue to dress like that, dear boy, and the annoying crackling noise you hear will be the breaking of innumerable hearts."

  Toby wasn't sure what that meant either, but he seemed to have pleased Master, and that made him happy, so he smiled anyway.

  "Sit down, Toby."

  There was nothing to sit on, for all the chairs were piled with books or bundles of scrolls, so he sat down on the floor with his knees up like a grasshopper—green silk hose, very soft buskins. His fancy new outfit had cost a very big amount of money, bigger than he could count. He had never owned clothes like these before—not that he could remember—and he had three more outfits as grand upstairs in a big cupboard. He felt a fool in all of them, with his shoulders barely able to fit through doors and his feathered bonnet brushing the lintels. He knew people laughed at him behind his back and sometimes he caught them smirking at his codpiece. Every man wore a codpiece, but why did his have to be padded and embroidered with gold thread? The baron said this was the new fashion, but it was very embarrassing, and his layered, slashed jerkin was cut to gape in front and make it as conspicuous as possible. He was quite big enough already without padding, there or anywhere else. But this was how Master wanted him to dress, so of course he must.

  Master began speaking, but not in a language Toby knew.

  While he waited to hear why he had been summoned, he gazed proudly at the ring on his left hand, a bright yellow jewel in a thick gold setting. He breathed on it and rubbed it on his sleeve. He couldn't take it off, but that was good, because that meant he wouldn't ever lose it. (He lost things quite often.) There was a demon in that jewel! It kept him loyal, meaning he would do whatever Master told him to do, although he couldn't imagine why he would ever not do what Master told him to do.

  "Tonight, Toby, you will be my guest at dinner again."

  "Oh, thank you, Master!" He smiled so he would look pleased, but he wasn't really. It was wrong to be so disloyal and ungrateful, but he felt more than usually stupid at the viceroy's grand dinner parties—servants and musicians, chilled wine, raw oysters and stuffed peacock, twenty separate courses on gold plates, one plate for each guest instead of everyone sharing from a bowl. He didn't know how to talk to the sort of people he met there. Sometimes he got stuck in the wrong language. He didn't even know how to look at the ladies, because their gowns showed the tops of their breasts and he kept wanting to stare down the gap, although Master had told him not to. He didn't really slobber! Or not much. He rubbed his chin to make sure it was dry and he had remembered to shave.

  "I hear your dancing lessons are going well."

  The praise brought a prickle of tears to his eyes. "I try, Master. I am trying as hard as I can!"

  "I know you are, Toby. And you are very nimble for a big man. At least you didn't lose that. There are two ladies who have especially asked to meet you. They want to sit next to you at dinner."

  His naked face felt very hot. He bent his head between his knees. "I don't know why. I'm not witty or clever or any of those things. They ask me questions I should be able to answer and I can't." Sometimes he would cry, which was terrible.

  Oreste laughed. "It is not your table talk they are interested in! Now listen, Toby, I'm giving you orders. There will be one l
ady on your right and one on your left. They are both older than you, but well preserved. After dinner, you will choose one of them, whichever one you like best. Invite her—or both of them, if you can't decide—up to your room."

  "They wouldn't do that!"

  "Oh yes, they will! And you know what happens then, don't you?"

  "We take our clothes off and get into bed together?" He squirmed and bit his lip. I don't think I've ever done that with a woman, Master. I'm not sure, but I don't think so."

  "Yes, you did once. And don't worry, because she will certainly know what to do, even if you don't. It will be all right, and you will enjoy what happens. Just be gentle."

  "Be gentle. Yes, Master."

  "But you will pleasure her most manfully."

  "If she'll tell me what she wants. I'll ask both, Master." He thought that was what Master wanted him to do.

  "Please yourself. I'm sure you'll manage. You don't have the hob to worry about now."

  The hob was gone. The hob was roasting in that brazier. The hob didn't matter any more. "No, Master. Thank you for taking the hob out of me, Master."

  "Enter!" The baron turned to a knock on the door.

  Captain Diaz opened it and stamped his feet without coming inside. As usual, his face bore as much expression as a tree stump. "I have the honor to inform your Excellency that the judgment has been handed down and can be carried out at your Excellency's pleasure."

  "Very good. We shall be out shortly. Send Ludwig in."

  Diaz stamped again and closed the door.

  "Toby?"

  "Yes, Master?"

  "I want you to do something for me."

  "Anything I can, Master!"

  "You're a big, strong lad. Can you use an ax?"

  "Oh, yes! I use to chop down trees often back home in... when I was a boy, I mean." What was that place called?

  "I want you to chop off two men's heads. They will lay their heads on a block of wood and you will cut them off."

  "Um... Won't that kill them?"

  "That's right. I want them dead, so you'll do that for me. You mustn't talk to them. Just cut off their heads. You'll have a mask over your face."