by P. J. Fox
The door opened, admitting a nervous-looking boy of about ten. He had pale skin and black hair. No, Tristan amended. Not pale. Sallow. Jansen gestured expansively for him to come forward and the boy shrank back a little. Not out of fear, or at least not of Jansen in particular. He was a timid thing, and seemed overwhelmed by the light and color of his new home.
“This,” Jansen said, confirming Tristan’s assumption, “is George. My page.”
“He hasn’t been long with you, then?”
“Oh, he has.” Jansen chuckled. He directed George to put the tray down on the low table between them. “Three years and counting, although you wouldn’t know it. He hails from the West. Don’t you, boy?” George, poleaxed, appeared not to know. Jansen answered the question for him. “Remember those old coots down at Enzie? He’s one of theirs.”
A more useless tribe than House Cavendish had never existed. Tristan was mildly amazed that this child, who appeared almost in tears from being directly addressed, had found the courage to leave home. House Cavendish was a highlander house, and everyone knew that highlanders drank fermented honey and fucked their own sheep.
But even they, as a group, seemed brilliant and not inbred at all compared to the man that Tristan presumed must be George’s parent. He’d seen that George charge into battle from the wrong side, calling out “hullo!” and wondering why he’d met with no resistance. A more pointless waste of life he’d never encountered, and to be honest Tristan was astonished that he’d managed to get it up long enough to produce a son. Because this was his son; Tristan remarked easily on the resemblance between them. And on the fact that poor George would be a great deal handsomer if he were a girl.
Jansen dismissed the child, who fled.
“He’s a torment, that one.” He steepled his large, callused hands and leaned back into the cushion behind him. He didn’t speak for a very long time. The fire crackled and outside, Tristan saw through the small window, it had begun to snow again. He, too, said nothing.
Finally, he poured himself some wine. “Trouble at the homestead, I gather.”
Tristan waited.
“I’ll have a room prepared,” Jansen said. He sounded resigned.
“Oh?”
“Come on, man, you didn’t come here to not stay, did you?” He shook his head. “And besides, whatever foul humor you’re in, I can hardly send you back into the snow.” He paused. “Or did you come here to drink my substandard wine and then leave?” Tristan began to respond, but Jansen waved him off. “If I can tolerate my wife’s grandmother as a houseguest, I can tolerate you.”
“Thank you,” Tristan said formally.
Jansen’s eyes met his. “Are you still my friend?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tristan said.
They shared their wine in silence.
THIRTEEN
He’d put on the clothes that Jansen had given him, after stepping naked from the bath. He’d refused assistance, dismissing the servants as soon as they’d brought in the tub and filled it. The water was cold, of course, but he’d warmed it with a touch of his finger.
Outside, the storm still raged. The third one in a fortnight. He’d arrived just in time. Were he and Brom still out in this, they’d be lost. Brom certainly would have died. And Tristan…he didn’t know.
He was content, too, not to know. For the moment. The room he’d been given was a snug one, and warm. A large canopied bed dominated the far wall. The curtains enclosing it were serviceable, but plain. Tristan had inspected his surroundings earlier, and been pleased to see that they contained a horsehair mattress and a quilt stuffed with eiderdown. Together, they’d make a pleasant nest and keep away the worst of the cold. Not that Tristan felt cold, anymore…or, rather, was bothered by the sensation. He’d spent a long time, earlier, standing in front of the window and staring out into the darkness.
He’d enjoyed his bath. He was discovering that his appreciation of what could be called the creature comforts had only increased since his…change. Now that he no longer needed them, he was free to savor them as he might a fine wine: the feel of the water against his skin, the texture of the soap. Its lavender and camphor smell, familiar and half-unpleasant.
When he’d stepped from the tub, naked and alone in the small room, he’d walked over to the fire without bothering to find a robe. And, once the heat of the flames had evaporated what beads of moisture still clung, he’d inspected Jansen’s offering. He and Jansen were of a height, and similarly broad-shouldered, so the blouse and jerkin fit him well enough. He was trimmer through the waist than Jansen, although he suspected that these clothes were ones that no longer fit. He felt…strange, standing here in a foreign room, garbed in another man’s castoffs. Like he’d lost his anchor.
The temptation to lose himself in bathing, and eating, and lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling was strong. To lose himself in sensation, the sensations he’d dreamed of for so long and until now never encountered. His first few hours, and now days, as a human man had been so rushed that he’d barely had time to process the experience.
But he had a life to lead.
Life…what was that? Just a word? An experience? A belief that one was alive, even if one wasn’t? The window in front of him was partly glassed in and partly open to the elements. The open section, the larger of the two, was covered with a shutter. An errant gust of wind blew against it, rattling the glass. Sparkles of snow flew in around the shutter.
Tristan reviewed, in his mind, what everyone he knew must be doing right at this moment. Simon was lying, his arms folded across his chest, in some outbuilding until the ground thawed. Unless he’d been burned that night, as a lich. That was what one did, to prevent a lich from rising: burn the body and disperse the ashes in running water. Church or no church, the North clung hard to its superstitions. Liches, to Northmen, along with gnomes, were real.
Brom was probably still in the kitchen below, making free with the serving girls. He wasn’t an unattractive man; he’d end up waiting out the storm in some warm nest, a pair of willing arms wrapped around his shoulders. Or two. Tristan’s other men were probably, whatever their loyalties, doing much the same at Caer Addanc.
Jansen’s poor page was probably weeping into his watered-down ale, frightened of his own shadow. Idly, Tristan wondered if the sallow little thing would ever reproduce or if, as it probably should, House Cavendish would die out. Their neighbors, House Strathearn, had ever eyed their lands. Enzie Moor, if it could be called an estate in its current condition, had the potential to produce well. Tristan, of course, didn’t know at the time that George the Weak, as he’d come to be known in later years, was Isla’s great-grandfather. Or that the same troubles that plagued his house would continue to plague it decades hence. But he’d look back on his musings that night with the closest thing a demon felt to amusement.
Some things, despite the passage of years, never changed.
Brenna, he knew, was in her room. She had a habit of taking a cup of tea before bed. She wasn’t one of those who laid down with the sunset, but it was late. The moon, invisible behind the curtain of snow, was high. Even the most inveterate night owls were in their beds, or soon would be. Tristan had been in this room a long time. He’d begged off on dinner, citing the rest he didn’t need. Jansen had asked no questions, although he must have had some inkling of what Tristan had gone through to get here. A human man would indeed have been exhausted. Instead, Jansen had sent up a tray laden with all the mid-grade delicacies that a northern household could offer. That Tristan hadn’t eaten.
He thought back to when he’d first courted Brenna, how he’d believed himself to be winning her over. How proud he’d been. He touched pale fingers to the glass, leaving no impression of heat. There was a time when such thoughts would have made him…sad, he supposed. He tested out the word in his mind. Sad was an unfamiliar concept. He didn’t feel sad; he didn’t feel anything at all. He had no soul.
He was…interested was the right word. In the worl
d in which he dwelled, and in the people he encountered. Human beings had always presented a certain fascination for him. Now that he lived among them, it remained only to see what form that fascination would take.
He and Jansen had talked for a long time. Jansen knew he was different, but past his initial question had said nothing. He was a good friend, and Tristan had been a good friend to him. Before. He might have realized that there were worse things than to be allied with a demon. Or he might not care. Tristan was beginning to wonder if he’d been hopelessly naïve all along; if, in taking on his host’s form, he hadn’t inherited some of that man’s foolishness. Tristan…the other Tristan…the real Tristan…had always wanted to believe the best of everybody. The hardening that had later infected his heart hadn’t been natural to him. Perhaps that was why he’d been so easily warped. And Brenna…he sighed, withdrawing his fingertips. Who knew. Maybe he and the wench would have been happy together. Maybe, in time, she would have come to truly love him. As he had so loved her.
Jansen’s wife had avoided Tristan, and Mother Guenna had continued to spit at him, but Jansen himself regarded the situation with a certain equanimity. He’d made one direct reference to the…changes, and one only. Men went off to war, he’d pointed out over his second cup of wine, and came back differently all the time. They might look like the same people, but they weren’t the same people. As long as Tristan was his friend, he didn’t care.
And then they’d gotten down to the business of discussing how, exactly, Tristan was to reclaim his home.
Tristan turned from the window. There was nothing to see out there, except snow and more snow. Life was continuing on, even now, although it didn’t feel that way to him. Moreover, the snow was no barrier to animals as it was to men. The circle of life, eating and being eaten, spun on regardless of the weather. Owls snatched up field mice, wolves stalked deer, the circle of life revolved. And men’s lives changed, too, even now; they froze to death or died in their beds or made new life out of boredom.
Only Tristan stood outside it all, now.
He walked over to the room’s finest feature and, undoubtedly, one of his friend’s finest possessions. Why was it, he wondered idly, that a man’s best things should be left in a guest room? They might or might not impress the guest, but they’d never get any use and that seemed to rather defeat their purpose. Or perhaps this item, a long and narrow mirror, had been part of his wife’s dowry.
He gazed at himself in the slightly smoky glass. For a long time, he didn’t move. Robbed of whatever fleeting illusion that movement lent, he looked like what he was: a corpse. No life vibrated around him; there was no sense of impending action, any more than there would have been from a statue. His skin, indeed, was as pale as marble—as pale, and as hard, with an odd translucence that reminded him uncomfortably of wax. He’d seen such skin before. On…other corpses. The thought came to him, once again, that he was a revenant. A specter from nightmare, risen up from its natural grave to harass the living.
His eyes, in life, had been blue. Blue, like Loch Addanc before a storm. The lake of his childhood, where he’d learned to both swim and fish. And to make love. The girl in question, who was no maid, had been a local tradesman’s daughter. What seemed like a thousand years ago…except, he reminded himself forcibly, those weren’t his memories. He wasn’t that man. He wasn’t a man at all. His eyes, some time in the past week, had been transformed into black pits. Devoid of expression. He looked frightening. His mouth, cruel in life, had grown all the more so. His lips were full, but bloodless, giving him a strange and unnatural aspect.
His shoulders were still broad; he was still muscular. He still bore the scars that he’d gained in life. But now his long, patrician fingers ended in viciously curved claws. He still blinked, and breathed, out of habit rather than need. He’d have to remind himself to keep doing so, if he wanted to move freely among mortals.
He’d been a handsome man, once. He doubted, though, that any woman could be persuaded to touch him. At least, not of her own free will. All creatures, all living creatures, bore an instinctive revulsion toward the dead. Their own especially. He’d seen it at funerals, how once-loved men became other.
And was that not right? The soul had fled. The person was gone, leaving behind only a thing. A shell, no longer used. The condition of being dead, he mused, was really quite ridiculous if one thought about it. All one did was lie there on one’s back, arms crossed, staring at the ceiling of one’s crypt through closed lids.
Unless, of course, one was like him.
There was nothing ridiculous about dying, about losing a loved one and dealing with the aftermath of that loss. But, to be sure, a corpse was not a person. It served as a sort of factotum for the living, he supposed. A focus for their grief. What was one to do, then, when one was still—if not alive, precisely, then aware?
He wanted a woman, and there were women to be had. For a price, or because he willed it. He was above the law; he could do as he pleased. The part of him that had once been human questioned whether this was an avenue worth pursuing; whether he’d even gain pleasure from the act if it was forced. But the part of him that had never been human knew that he would. Knew that he wanted to dominate. To control. To possess. Whatever Tristan had wanted with Brenna, the demon had no interest. It wanted to sate its own desires. Now more than ever.
He might look like a man, but he wasn’t one.
He thought about Jansen’s marriage, and about his friend’s life in general. Jansen seemed contented enough, having done as he’d been told. He’d fought, retired to run his estate, married. Amused himself with hateful in-laws. He’d have children, and perhaps a mistress, and he’d grow old and die. Tristan would never do those things. No woman would ever want him, not truly, nor look at him as Jansen’s wife looked at Jansen.
He hadn’t thought of these things, before. He’d thought that, as different as he was, he could be part of this world. But now he thought back to the fairytale, about the mermaid.
And did he want to blend in? To be as one in a herd of sheep? Simply for the sake of—what? Their acceptance?
He was their superior in every way. They were food to him. Was he truly upset over the supposed injustice that his food didn’t love him? Had he truly been supposing, in his fantasies, that it might? He thought about sending for one of the chambermaids. He could fuck her senseless and then rend her limb from limb and suck the marrow from one delicate little bone at a time.
He’d never have what Jansen had, but he didn’t need it.
Didn’t want it. He had no need to perpetuate his line; he’d never die. He had no feelings, only…urges. Maybe if Brenna…he didn’t finish the thought. It didn’t matter, anyway; she would only have been staving off the inevitable. The realization that, whatever wistful fantasies he might have cherished before, he wasn’t like these people. Was never going to be. Could never be. He’d thought he wanted to be human, but in the glade, when faced with the betrayal of his so-called lover, he’d finally come to terms with his own folly. And by the time he’d reached Jansen’s door, the snow blowing down around him….
No, Brenna couldn’t have changed anything. Not really. Even if she’d loved him from the beginning, truly, and accepted him for who he was—then and now—she was still mortal. She’d grow old, withering into nothing, and then he’d still have to face what he was.
He watched himself watching himself. A different creature stood in front of the mirror than had invaded this body. Than had gone into the glade, or left it. Betrayal had taught him, as nothing else could have, that he was different. Other. These sheep, for all their vaunted morality, would kill him as soon as look at him. Kill him as soon as they discovered that he was not like them. So he might as well kill them, first. He’d sold his soul, like the girl in the book, only to learn that he’d been cheated. There was no happy ending; there was no reward. There was only struggle, and darkness, and death.
And if he was going to survive, he had to make hi
mself into the kind of creature that could survive. He had to let himself be himself. Embrace his true nature, not that of the man whose life he’d stolen.
When he finally turned from the mirror, he did so with a new sense of purpose. And a new darkness, forged in the crucible of loss. What loss, he couldn’t quite define. Innocence, perhaps; the innocence of a creature from another plane, who’d coveted what he thought he’d seen. He’d never been truly human, of course, and had clung to human ideals—to his host’s ideals—from loyalty rather than need. So when he let the last of them drop, he found that doing so was easy. Like a snake shedding its too-small skin, breathing a sigh of relief to be rid of such a restrictive and ultimately useless covering.
He’d become, in that night, the man he’d be for the next hundred years.
Before long, he’d come to be known as the Demon of Darkling Reach, a title that he more than earned. His subjects grew terrified of him. Women avoided him, except for those foolish few who believed that he could be reformed. Or believed him when he said he cared for them, to lure them out into the night. And there were those, too—male and female—who merely craved power. His wealth, as he discovered, was inducement enough to overlook his cold skin and unblinking gaze. Wealth, indeed, made up for a great deal.
But all that was in the future.
All he knew, at the moment, was that somewhere in the woods he’d stopped being the demon and started being Tristan. Just as somewhere in the woods he’d stopped being it and started thinking of himself as he. He might not have wanted…what happened, but he did want this life. To have the things he’d always wanted, before. And he would have them.
He ran a hand over the material on his cuff. Someone had added a line of brocade trim. As frightening a one as he might be, he looked like a man. He was a man. And he knew, already, that people would see what they wanted to see. Dead men didn’t walk in their midst; therefore, he couldn’t be what he seemed. People would ignore their revulsion, scarcely daring to credit its source. He’d be free to do as he wished, so long as he believed himself free.