The Demon Lord (18 page)

Gritting his teeth, the Vlechan cut again with as much strength as he dared employ, and cried out in a thin, nasal whine like a hurt dog as the flint gouged into his flesh. Frantic to be done with this self-inflicted torment, Voord leaned still harder—and suddenly the stone blade was sharp again, shearing deeper than he had intended until it crunched jarringly into the mosaic of bones that made up the structure of his hand. He shrieked then, the sound filled with as much surprise as anguish, and collapsed forward over the mangled, spurting mass of flesh. Blood spewed inexorably from the ragged wound, sufficient to satisfy any summoned spirit, and even as his mind teetered near a swoon Voord knew why the ancient powers were sometimes called “the Cruel Ones.” They feasted on pain, on wounds to the spirit as much as on flesh and blood, and they had a sardonic sense of humour indeed if they could force a torturer to torture himself for their sakes.

The hand was irreparably crippled, dislocated bone and severed tendons already drawing the fingers into that crooked claw he knew so well from the interrogations he had supervised. It throbbed and burned as if he had dipped it into molten lead. It hurt so
much
... Voord rocked back and forth, cradling his mutilated limb close to his chest as if it was a child, sobbing with the shock of what he had done to himself. All the words of ritual were quite forgotten; there was no longer any room for such coherent thought in his reeling brain. But no matter how much he now regretted it, the sacrifice had been made.

And accepted.

Between one jolting heartbeat and the next, the silence of past midnight was fragmented by a tearing crash of thunder which boomed and rumbled massively across the heavens until the very dust-motes drifting in the air vibrated with its echoes. Yet there was no cloud of such necessary magnitude remaining in the moonlit sky, and since late that afternoon there had been no rain nor even the brief flickering of summer lightning which needs no storm to give it birth. There was no reason for the thunder whatsoever. As if, even calm and detached, the Vlechan’s mind could have convinced him that mere weather was its cause at all…

The library grew cold, then colder still until Voord’s breath smoked white around his face and coils of steam rose from the blood which pulsed sluggishly past the shattered fingers and the whole. But with that grinding chill came a surcease of pain and an end to bleeding; the flesh of Voord’s left hand was pallid now, blue about the nails, bloodless and dead—as if, from wrist to fingertips, it had been drained dry. The
eldheisart’s
taut body sagged; with nothing for his will to fight against, he was sure that he would faint.

He did not. Unconsciousness eluded him as surely as the ability to tear his eyes free of the mirror of seeing. He stared at it like a bird at a snake, trapped and fascinated, unable even to blink; and in a time that no beginning and would never have an end, he learned what it meant when mortals called upon the Old Ones…

Sedna heard nothing of the thunder. She completed a final—the final—diagram, bowed politely and weighed the relative merits of tidying up against those of going to bed at once. She was tired. Then she coughed, and as tears stung her eyes realised there was a third alternative: something to drink. Her throat felt harsh and dry, an acrid taste lay on her tongue; both results of the bitter aromatic smoke which filled the room, and of chanting seemingly interminable formulae in a hoarse contrabasso scarcely suited to a woman’s vocal organs. So much trouble over a small spell, she thought wryly, and pressed both hands hard into the small of her back in the vain hope that it would somehow ease the aches of repeated stooping.

Wine… Cool white wine from the southland to refresh and soothe her mouth, relax her muscles, calm her nerves—perhaps even give her sufficient courage to challenge Crisen Geruath, if she drank enough of it. But not
Eldheisart
Voord. Never Voord. No wine in all the world, no beer, no ale, no ardent spirits could make her brave enough for that…

There was always wine in this cellar; before she came to Seghar it had been filled with kegs and barrels, stoneware flasks of fine imported vintages and leather bottles of the dry, rough local red. Now, depending on her mood, there might be a silver pitcher and two goblets, or a simple jug and cups of red-ware. Sedna knew she drank too much and had been drinking more these few days past: since Voord and his soldiers came, she realised, as if the knowledge was new to her. Fear did it. No, not fear… apprehension. Crisen was a stranger to her when the Vlechan was about, and she muttered brief thanks that his visits to Seghar were always short and infrequent.

On this night there was an elegant carafe three-quarters full of straw-pale wine, and two stemmed glasses; all were in the simple, understated Alban style, made from blown crystal and consequently rare and costly. Splashing wine into one of the glasses, Sedna drank it rapidly and took a deep breath to help the fumes mount quickly to her head. More glasses followed the first until she observed with some surprise that she had almost emptied the carafe without really intending to. “So… ?” she muttered in response to a pang of self-criticism, and already her voice was growing blurred.

Sedna could see now, with the clarity of sudden drunkenness, what she would have to do for her safety’s sake. Self-respect, peace of mind, honour—if witches were permitted that aristocratic foible—would go by the board, but at least she might sleep sound at night. She would leave. Leave Crisen, leave Seghar, leave all the Jouvaine provinces far behind her and go home, back to Vreijaur where men and women indulged honest, normal vices and where the animals which roamed the woods were only that and not… Not more than they seemed.

“Leave all this luxury?” Sedna asked herself as light was caught and refracted in the facets of her crystal cup. “Why not?” she answered. “You can live without it. You did before.” She refused to voice the thought which had flashed meteorically across the conscious surface of her mind: that if she stayed here much longer, she might not live at all.

“Crisen can make his own magic,” she said as decisively as she could—
Father, Mother, Maiden, I am truly drunk tonight
!—and even as she said it found herself wondering why Crisen had asked her to prepare a summoning spell. The last time she had done that he had learned unwanted things about his ancestry, so why again… ?

The wine turned to hot acid in her stomach. A stark-edged shadow—
her
shadow—was smeared as black and dense as pitch across the floor and up the wall before her. And shadows were created by…

Light! Greenish radiance danced at Sedna’s back, above the centre of the circle drawn with such care on the crimson floor. Perspiration broke out all over her body, gluing the thin robe to her skin as it soaked up the moisture, and slowly, with an awful reluctance, she turned around.

The crystal goblet in her hand exploded into shards as the hand clenched to a fist, and though splinters drove deep she felt nothing. No pain, at least. Only terror…

The spell-circle was occupied. Compressed into a towering unstable column by the restrictive limit of the holding-pattern was a thing that—mercifully—she had never seen before in all her life. But she had looked between the woman’s-leather covers of
Enciervanul Doamnisoar
not twenty hours before, and the memory of what she had seen—and
not
seen where it should be—still burned like a dark hot cinder in the shuttered places of her brain. Though this… this Thing had neither definite shape nor constant colour, she knew what It was, well enough at least to put a name to It.
Ythek’ter auythyu an-shri
. Warden of Gateways, Guardian of the portals which lie between men and the Outer Dark. The Herald of the Ancient Ones. Ythek Shri.

“Who has called thee now?” Sedna managed the question only after three attempts, knowing that all such entities were bound by certain rules and one such was the answering of questions. There was no immediate response and in that brief time she suddenly didn’t want to hear Ythek’s reply. She wanted rid of It. At once!

“You came in obedience,” she said firmly, fighting down the quaver in her voice because she knew that no such obedience was owed to her. “Depart in obedience. Return to your proper place. Go back to the Void. I, Sedna ar Gethin, command it!” Immediately the words were out she knew that she had made a mistake: she had made the demon a free gift of her name. Swallowing bitterness, she recited a charm of dismissal and made the swift gesture which sealed it, watching as the shadowy mass shifted a little, bulging and contracting, swirling in and out of itself like ink poured into water. But it did not fade, did not vanish… Did not alter at all.

Sedna repeated the charm again and again, stammering in her haste as she varied the rhythm and order of its phrases. Still they had no effect. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she walked as steadily as she was able towards the lectern where she had left her grimoire. Opening the weighty volume, she leafed quickly through its pages, trying all the time to remain calm, to avoid panic, and yet feeling the desire to run begin to tremble in the sinews of her legs.
Do not run
! Never run, never show fear… not even when dread has turned the marrow of your bones to meal…

The whole cellar vibrated slightly, as if a deep-sea swell had rolled beneath the floor, and became cold. It was not the sharp, exhilarating chill of a bright day in winter, but a heavy rigor like the inside of a long-forgotten tomb; the kind of cold which penetrated flesh and blood and marrow until they would never feel warm and alive again. Sedna’s damp robe frosted over, white rime on white silk, until it became so stiff that each fold crackled as she moved. She felt, too, a sense of malice emanating from the core of the slowly twisting pillar of darkness. Muted tones of dull green, grey and sullen blue slithered across its convoluted surface, and with the malevolence came a low, moaning wind. Sparks whipped from the smouldering incense and the candle-flames fluttered wildly; fingers of moving air lashed the sorceress’s face with strands of her own hair.

Refusing to be distracted, she found her page at last and laid one slim finger on the spell, an exorcism held to be effective against all demons. The words were archaic, difficult and complex in their nuances of meaning, and Sedna muttered them under her breath before daring to speak the incantation aloud. Ythek Shri congealed from an amorphous cloud to something more clearly defined and in doing so gave her a brief, appalling hint of what its true shape might be.

Otherwise her great spell had no effect.

Again panic bubbled up inside her; gripping her entrails in an icy clutch that made breathing difficult and full of effort. With a shocking oath she flung the useless spellbook at the circle and its occupant. As Sedna might have guessed, her curse did nothing. But the book produced results, although they were not such results as she would have wished…

Fifteen pounds of leather and parchment hurled with the strength of fear and hatred struck and toppled one of the tall bronze censers, so that not only the grimoire but a spray of perfumed charcoal went flying to the floor. One alone might have been insufficient; both together were more than enough to disrupt the patterns of the circle’s double rim.

The wind gusted to a screeching gale and as suddenly fell away into silence. Only a single candle remained alight, its unsteady flame doing eldritch things to the many shadows which now crowded into the cellar. Sedna wasted no time in staring. With hands that shook she ripped the tops from jars and drew protective signs around herself in coloured dust, joining them into a broad, unbroken ring of power. Again there came that lurching sensation of an ocean wave surging under the floor. Red-stained boards rose and fell like the deck of a ship, sending a rack of bottles crashing into ruin, and Sedna stared fearfully towards the dark column, knowing It to be the source. The cloudy mass no longer swirled, but hung immobile as a rag suspended from the ceiling. It exuded an air of patience—and there was movement near its base.

The solitary candle showed no detail and only the vaguest of impressions, its feeble light falling into the darkness that absorbed it as a sponge drinks water, but there was enough for Sedna to realise what was happening. And when she did, the horror of that instant brought vomit spewing from her throat. Whatever was confined by the holding-pattern was spreading the scattered ashes, using them to erase the lines of force which penned it in. Enlarging the breach which
she
had made.

Something gross and glistening bulged from the blackness, paused, then with a mucous sucking sound forced itself a little farther out. Nothing was visible except the candle-flame’s reflection on moist and moving surfaces. Its distorted yellow gleam shifted in another long, slow heave as the shape slid inexorably from its confinement.

Sedna wiped her mouth and cursed herself for not running when first she had the chance. It was too late now. Talons extended across the floor, clicked, flexed and gouged deep in search of anchorage, sinking effortlessly through floor-timbers into the solid stone beneath. Within her circle the Vreijek sorceress cringed. Home seemed,, very far away now.

The ponderous mass that was Ythek
an-shri
came loose in three rippling contractions, swayed on slender limbs and rose upright in utter silence. There was a slight, harsh scraping as a length of spike-tipped tail coiled heavily around the demon herald’s claws. Then there was silence once more. The silence of the grave.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Sedna studied the entity for a long time. She had the impression that it was exhausted by the effort of dragging itself into the world of men; that it suffered the exertions of mother, midwife and child simultaneously. Perhaps it was asleep… perhaps the very air was proving poisonous. A muscle in her thigh jerked and quivered in protest at her lack of movement. Wincing, she massaged the cramped limb and measured her distance to the door, remembering the heavy lock that would surely be strong enough to hold it shut while she fled. Sedna decided not to waste time warning the citadel’s household; if the demon was secured there would be no need, and if it broke out— the thought was callous but accurate—they would know without requiring her to tell them. If only she had known the thing would take so long escaping… If only her blind rage and terror had not breached the circle in the first place…