Mother of Daemons

by David Hair

  ‘No,’ Ostevan snapped, ignoring the daemon wrapped around his heart suggesting a number of violent punishments for the old biddy and her timid cronies. ‘If we don’t force Lyra’s hand, she’ll find someone to prop her up. My spies say her ambassador is meeting privately with the Duke of Argundy. We’re going to end up with an Argundian emperor if we don’t act now!’

  This was in fact true: Lyra appeared to be playing on her Argundian kinship, whoring herself to the Borodiums, in a desperate ploy for survival.

  ‘If she marries an Argundian swine, her own people will desert her,’ Lady Violetta sneered.

  ‘By then there’ll be Argundian legions in Pallas,’ Ostevan retorted. ‘You have until the first of Martrois: twenty days. There’s barely time to reach Pallas as it is, unless you march – or rather, sail down the Bruin – right now. Duke Garod, you must seize this moment: Pallas will never be weaker than it is right now. The Corani are divided, half the city is in revolt and even if Lyra agrees a royal wedding to secure allies, they’ll be too far away to intervene.’

  Garod shifted uncomfortably on his bony behind. ‘But last time, she buried the best part of eight legions with heretical magic – but has anyone put the bitch on trial? You issued your Pontifical Ban, so there should be a Holy Crusade against her, but no one heeds you. And no one wants to march into the teeth of another dwyma storm.’

  She’s says you’re the daemon-possessed murderer behind Reeker Night, Garod’s eyes added.

  Ostevan leaned forward. ‘What if I can guarantee you’ll face no such thing?’

  The duke’s eye narrowed. ‘Guarantee? How can you?’

  In response, Ostevan turned to the last Keeper who truly looked the part. ‘Margentius, your views?’

  Standing erect, shaven-skulled to conceal the grey, he peered around with a reptilian stare, his hooded eyes alert. ‘When the heretic queen’s dwyma storm broke last year, we could do nothing: we were unaware her power was even being exerted, much less able to counter it with Air-gnosis. However, thanks to the Pontifex, we have discovered an answer. A dwymancer’s blood can be used as a bridge to attune our gnosis and counter their magic.’

  The room fell silent as everyone contemplated that. Everyone here was a mage, most of them pure-bloods, though few were as skilled as Margentius Keeper. And none of them had direct experience of a dwymancer. ‘How came you by this knowledge?’ Arn Regor, Earl of Brevis, asked sharply.

  The truth was that Naxius had made the discovery, but Ostevan wasn’t about the share that. ‘Old Church records I saved from the sacking of the Celestium,’ he lied.

  ‘But there’ve been no dwymancers for five centuries,’ Lady Violetta protested. ‘There’s only Lyra . . . isn’t there?’

  ‘I know of one,’ Ostevan announced, ‘and I have men ready to seize them.’

  ‘Who?’ Garod demanded.

  ‘The name doesn’t matter,’ Ostevan replied. ‘Indeed, it’s best not to know.’

  ‘If there’s another of these murdering heretics in reach, I want to know who the Hel he is,’ Brylion spat. ‘I’ll rip their accursed heart out!’ That was the knight, not the daemon speaking.

  ‘I will identify them in due course,’ Ostevan replied. Right now it was only an educated guess; he might still be wrong.

  Garod drummed his fingers on the armrest of his throne, his expression sour, but he capitulated. ‘Very well. But you will bring them to me. I want to look the evil bastard in the eye.’

  Ostevan smiled inwardly, then sent a signal, mind to mind, to one of his possessed men half a mile away. Then he turned back to Garod. ‘So, Milord, you will sanction the march?’

  The duke considered. The risks were horrible, putting his men out in the elements again, gambling that the Keepers were right and they could counter a power that had so recently devastated his forces. It was conceivable that the Sacrecour dynasty might not survive another such disaster.

  For all Garod was cautious, he was also willing to sacrifice everyone – except himself – for wealth and power. It wasn’t in his nature to slowly rebuild: he wanted the glory of restoration to be his alone.

  ‘I will not be remembered as the man who let opportunity slip him by,’ Garod announced decisively. ‘We march.’

  Driven by vanity, he gambles all, Ostevan mused, as the others praised Garod’s boldness while exchanging fearful glances. Including the lives of everyone here. Anyone would think I’d infected him . . .

  The matter resolved, Ostevan departed, letting the duke and his cronies get on with drinking and boasting. His suspected dwymancer was close by and he wanted to secure her swiftly. As he left, he glanced at young Prince Cordan, who was looking anxiously around, also eager to be gone.

  To be with his sister – the potential dwymancer in question.

  Cordan also suspects what she is, Ostevan mused, and yet he says nothing – he’s no more to be trusted than she is. A traitor to his own cause. Interesting. But he put that aside for another time and hurried on, eager for his prey.

  *

  The wind howling in the eaves and over the toothy battlements reminded twelve year-old Princess Coramore of daemon voices, making her shiver. She had announced she was sick, but that was just a ruse to keep the unwanted from her rooms. She had three maidens with her, girls her own age from noble families, playing a boring childish dice game, but any company at all was better than being alone, waiting in dread for Ostevan to make his move.

  ‘Three sixes,’ Lydia Molt shrieked. ‘I win again! I win!’

  Coramore suspected Lydia, the only one of them with the gnosis so far, was using kinesis to nudge the dice. Pietrice Banner and Gela Solston’s faces crumpled in disappointment, but Coramore didn’t care. She clapped her hands gracefully and called for more juice and honey-cakes, then went to the tiny garderobe, shivering at the thought of having to endure the cold air blasting up the hole, freezing her behind as she peed.

  Tap, tap, tap. Someone or something struck the small shutter behind her head. It wasn’t the wind.

  She rose, dropped her skirts and peered down the foetid hole to see the distant glow of daylight shining from below. Cautiously, she pulled the little lever on the shutters, cracking a layer of ice, and let in a little light – and a lot of frigid air – into the confined room.

  The black outline of a raven was silhouetted against the pallid light of the winter sky, its eye pressed to one of the cracks. It cawed harshly and while Coramore had no gnosis and knew nothing of birds, she understood instantly.

  The raven came from Aradea, the Fey Queen, and it was telling her to run.

  Now.

  2

  His Master’s Voice

  A Tree of Life

  The early dwymancers spoke of a Tree of Life, termed ‘Elétfa’, a word of Sydian extraction. The tree signified the cyclical nature of life. The curious thing is that it is exactly the same motif as that used by the pagan Sollan drui, who predated the dwymancers by centuries. Did the dwymancers adopt that symbol consciously, or more intriguingly, is this heresy older than we suspect?

  YROL DAISH, ORDO COSTRUO ARCANUM, PONTUS 653

  Freihaafen, Upper Osiapa Valley, Mollachia

  Febreux 936

  Kyrik Sarkany paused outside the cave, looked up at the morning sky, pale and cloudy through the ice-crusted pines, then called, ‘Ogre? Are you here?’

  The cavern, a natural formation, was half a mile from the main settlement in the hidden valley of Freihaafen, alongside a stream that ran from the enclosing mountains and drained into the lake. Kip’s settlers called the place ‘Nebbelwasser’, which translated as ‘Foggy Falls’, because of the way boiling hot springs caused the stream to run through the pine trees like a trail of smoke. The cave had a warm, ripe smell to it.

  A deep mournful voice answered from within, ‘Ogre is here.’

  Kyrik followed a slushy trail of mud into the poorly lit cavern. Brighter light ahead led to a second cavern illuminated by four gnosis orbs hangi
ng like small suns from the stalactites.

  Inside was a massive figure, over seven foot tall. His limbs were thick as two men’s, his chest and belly heavy, his skin a dirty khaki colour, his long black hair thin and straggling. He looked like a monster from a child’s tale, but he was a construct, made by a mage from human and animal elements. He wore just a loincloth and a crudely made leather jerkin. A massive sledgehammer was propped against the wall.

  Ogre was no simple brute, though, and the task he was engaged in underlined that. He had a big leather-bound book in his left hand and in his right, a stick glowing with gnostic energy that he was using to patiently etch letters and runes onto a smoothed section of wall. All the cavern walls were covered in such markings.

  ‘How do you fare?’ Kyrik asked.

  Ogre frowned, studying his handiwork, his heavy brows lowered over bright, alert eyes, barely acknowledging his guest. As king, Kyrik was entitled to greater respect, but he seldom stood on protocol and instead, patiently awaited a response.

  Finally Ogre grunted, leaned forward and tentatively etched a letter ‘r’ beside a runic symbol. ‘Maybe,’ he muttered. ‘But only maybe.’ Only then did he remember to bow his head. ‘Ogre welcomes Kirol Kyrik.’

  For a few moments they took the measure of one another. Ogre’s red-rimmed eyes had dark bags beneath. He’d probably been up all night again, immersed in his arcane task.

  ‘I’ve brought you breakfast,’ Kyrik said, placing a basket containing bread, cheese and relish onto a rock.

  ‘Is it morning?’ The construct yawned apologetically. ‘Ogre thanks you.’ The construct was generally polite, when he wasn’t distracted.

  Kyrik studied the wall blankly. ‘Have you made progress?’

  ‘Ogre believes so, but it is slow. This is written in no known language.’ He brandished the book: the Daemonicon di Naxius. Ervyn Naxius was a rogue mage, a former member of the peaceful Ordo Costruo who’d become what Kyrik could only think of as evil. He’d infected certain magi with daemonic ichor, allowing malevolent spirits to possess them, to further his obscure ambitions. All the evidence suggested it was he who was behind the troubles besetting Kyrik’s kingdom too.

  But Naxius was also Ogre’s maker. In most places just being an intelligent construct would have been enough to see Ogre condemned to death, but Kyrik had always believed in taking a person as they came – even if Ogre challenged the notion that person meant human.

  A daemonicon was a wizard’s record of their dealings with the spirit world, but Naxius’ book was filled with unintelligible gibberish in a script Kyrik had never seen before. But Ogre had been Naxius’ servant . . .

  ‘So did Naxius invent his own language?’ Kyrik asked.

  ‘He invented several, and taught them to me when I served him,’ Ogre rumbled, staring at the branched lines of symbols etched on the walls. ‘But he never anticipated losing me, nor that I’d ever get to see this book.’

  Every time Kyrik spoke to Ogre, the construct revealed a fierce intellect caught in an outsized, outlandish frame. And tellingly, he was starting to use ‘I’ and ‘me’ more frequently, as if growing into his own identity.

  ‘So you can read it?’ Kyrik asked, intrigued. What might the mind of this man Naxius reveal?

  ‘Eventually. But the script isn’t one he showed me, which means I must first solve the encryption.’

  ‘So these symbols could mean anything?’

  ‘Yes and no. Ogre believes the Master would want to read such a thing freely, without recourse to other documents and deciphering, so these must be real words. I’m trying to match symbols to sounds; only then will Ogre be able to decipher the words and seek their meaning.’ Ogre yawned heavily, his lugubrious face shifting from concentration to his more habitual expression of residual sadness. ‘Is there news?’

  ‘A little. Our scouts report that Asiv Fariddan has been seen with the Rondian legion in Lapisz – they were deferring to him, so I assume he’s infected them with this daemon ichor too.’ Kyrik tapped his sword hilt. ‘At least our blades are now either argenstael or silver-dipped. We have a fighting chance.’

  ‘Does your wife improve?’ Ogre asked, breaking off some bread and dipping it in the relish.

  ‘No,’ Kyrik replied sadly. ‘Hajya is still possessed by the ichor. She spouts gibberish, she can’t eat anything but raw meat, she flinches from silver and sunlight and suffers nightmares and waking horrors.’ He hung his head. ‘All I can do is keep her in the dark and give her what she needs.’

  Ogre’s big ugly face turned anxious. ‘No, Kirol Kyrik, that is the wrong thing to do. Darkness, bloody meat – these are things the daemon wants. You must deprive it, to weaken it and drive it out.’

  ‘I’m trying – I’ve used wizardry-gnosis but nothing can drive the daemon out. It’s tied to her blood, somehow. And I can’t starve her – it’ll kill her.’

  ‘You must purify her blood,’ Ogre insisted. ‘I saw such things in my Master’s service – you must starve the daemon. Make her sit in sunlight, give her only water and vegetables. Weaken the daemon so that her body can fight it.’

  Kyrik shuddered at the thought. ‘She’s my wife, Ogre: when she screams, my soul is lacerated. The whole of Freihaafen suffers when they hear her cries. They already think me cruel for not simply putting an end to her.’

  ‘No, you must not do that: that would give her to the daemon for eternity.’ Ogre’s big hand gripped Kyrik’s arm. ‘You must endure it, as she does. Take her away from your people so they are not distressed and do what must be done, for her sake. That is my counsel.’

  ‘I’ll consider it,’ Kyrik said finally, looking up at his strange companion. It was unsettling, to feel so small when he himself was a big man, but Kyrik liked Ogre; he’d been visiting him regularly since his arrival here in Freihaafen. ‘You shouldn’t isolate yourself, Ogre. You’re welcome in the village, you know that.’ He grinned. ‘Hel, you’re not even our strangest construct.’

  Ogre smiled, then his face reverted to sadness. ‘Ogre must be here, to concentrate. At your village, he is a stranger. Your men and Mantauri try to learn him, but Ogre must solve this riddle.’ He tapped the book. ‘The Master lies behind all this.’

  ‘What does Naxius want?’

  ‘Immortality, omnipotence, dominion: these are the dreams he spoke of to me. And revenge on the Ordo Costruo, for casting him out. He once said that only in vast experiments can the keys to true knowledge be unlocked. A dozen subjects, a hundred, even a thousand were not enough. He wants to make all of Creation his laboratory.’

  Kyrik simply couldn’t comprehend such a desire. ‘But people are more than just . . . subjects for experimentation.’

  ‘Not to the Master.’

  Dear Kore, is that who we truly fight? He must be stopped.

  They sat in silence for a time while Kyrik studied the marks on the walls without comprehension and Ogre munched on the food.

  Finally the construct asked, ‘Is there news of your brother?’

  Kyrik’s brother Valdyr hadn’t been seen since he’d vanished inside Cuz Sarkan, the volcano in the mountains east of Mollachia. Waqar Mubarak had said something about Valdyr ascending a Tree of Light, that he was ‘inside the dwyma’, whatever that meant. To Kyrik it made as little sense as the marks on the cave wall. ‘No news yet. He’s been gone almost two weeks now, so unless wherever he is has water, he’s dead.’

  More likely he simply fell into the lava pit . . .

  ‘Have faith. He will return,’ Ogre said. They fell silent again, then he added, ‘And the war?’

  News of Waqar and Tarita, in other words. Ogre never used the young Merozain woman’s name, Kyrik noticed, but he clearly pined for her; he might be surprisingly intelligent, but he couldn’t hide his emotions. He’s in love with her, but she’s gone away with a prince of Kesh. The world’s opening up for her, but his is closing in.

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’ Abruptly Kyrik rose, because time was passing, and he had
much to do. ‘I must return to the village – we’re holding a meeting this afternoon. We must decide whether to remain here in hiding, or emerge to protect Hegikaro and provide a rallying point for my people.’

  Ogre nodded distractedly, his mind already returning to the puzzle of the book.

  ‘I’d like you to attend, Ogre. Your voice should be heard.’

  The big construct shook his head. ‘Ogre is not used to people.’ He stroked the leather cover of the Daemonicon dourly. ‘Ogre was made to be alone.’

  *

  Ogre wasn’t really alone, though.

  The Master never lets me be.

  Naxius was with him, even here – not in any tangible sense, but reading the Daemonicon took Ogre back to his old life. Every passage resonated with Naxius’ dry rattle of scorn.

  Ogre had first woken to a fully formed body with residual knowledge of certain things, like the nature of stone, fire and water. He’d understood words in a language he later found to be Dhassan, but had swiftly been taught to speak Rondian by the only other being he knew: the Master, Ervyn Naxius, a small, bald, wizened man with a faint lisp and an arch, knowing cruelty. Naxius mocked, Naxius chided, Naxius was bitter, but he was the Master, and although dwarfed by his creation, he could flatten Ogre with a hand-gesture.

  The Master was a harsh, impatient teacher, as Ogre quickly learned. Pain sharpened the mind, but Ogre had a burning need to prove himself worthy anyway, so he endured the savage punishments, the marathon trials of memory and the vicious tests of logic. Naxius was fond of setting him deadly tests, like learning to brew the remedy to a poison he’d already been infected with. Ogre survived, and learned voraciously.

  At night, his master’s voice rattled through his dreams, and when he unlocked a word in the Daemonicon, it was Naxius’ voice he heard in his head, praising and mocking in the same breath. Well done, Brute, but you’re barely scratching the surface.

  So when he heard his Master’s voice in the aether, he barely knew if he was awake or asleep on his feet.

  Ogre? Ogre . . . I know you can hear me, my child . . .