The Demon Lord (5 page)

Like Widowmaker, the spring-gun was not a hunter’s weapon, but it had distinct advantages over a sword— principally that of range. This one could project its steel darts with fair accuracy and considerable force for some twelve paces—almost forty feet—and could do so as fast as Aldric could crank its cocking-lever and squeeze the trigger. Adjusting the holster’s straps and laces until it hung snugly against the left side of his chest, he drew out the
telek
and turned it over in his hands. It was a beautiful thing, if a weapon could properly be called so; its stock was not the usual walnut, but lustrous maple wood carved and shaped to fit his hand so that aiming was as natural as pointing a finger. Unlike the
telekin
he was accustomed to, with their clumsy box magazines, this had an eight-chambered rotary cylinder which—most modern—turned on a ratchet as the weapon’s heavy drive-spring was racked back so that cocking and reloading were completed in one swift movement.

He broke the
telek’s
action, swung magazine and barrel downwards and checked the sear and trigger-clips before emptying the polished cylinder of half its darts. After a swift over-shoulder glance towards the closed door at his back, he withdrew their replacements from his belt-pouch. Like the arrows cased beside his bow, they too were tipped with silver. Evthan might have seen the arrows, but no one, he was sure, had seen the darts— and he intended to keep it that way. Sliding each one into its respective chamber, he rotated the cylinder once more and then snapped it shut, engaging the safety-slide with a push of his thumb.

Behind him, the stable door creaked open and Aldric turned with shocking speed, the
telek
rising to shooting position almost of its own volition. Gueynor stood framed in the doorway, gilded by the sunlight at her back, wide eyes fixed on the unwavering muzzle which hung bare inches from her face. There was a wicker basket in her hands. Aldric watched her but said nothing as he returned the spring-gun to its holster, observing even as he did so that she had shown no fear. Surprise,

certainly—the
telek
had thrust out at the end of his arm like the head of a striking snake—but not even a tremor of fright. And he wondered how much of her hysteria in the forge had been a skilful act… He was curious to hear what reason she had found to bring her back— and glad within himself that there was any cause at all.

“I thought… my aunt asked me to bring you these. She said they might be of some use.”

He took the proffered basket and glanced inside; it was full of small sealed jars and bunches of herbs.

“Provisions for the hunt?” he hazarded uncertainly.

The girl shook her head, but did not elaborate. Aldric set out two or three of the stoneware pots, noticing how their stoppers were tied down, sealed with wax into which a character of the Drusalan language had been scored. He could speak it but not read it, so the lettering made little sense. Nor did the dried pieces of vegetation help at first, even though he recognized some of them: a stalk of withered foxglove, two roots and the cowled dark flower of monkshood, a handful of dwale berries…

Dwale… ? Aldric realised suddenly what was in the basket. “
Awos arl’ih Dew
!” he muttered, setting it down very carefully. “Poison! Enough poison, I think, to kill this entire village a score of times. Yes?”

“Yes,” Gueynor echoed, her voice toneless.

“But why?”

“My aunt said they might be useful,” she reiterated..

“Your aunt... but not yourself? Never mind? I’ll find some use for them,- one way or another.”

Gueynor nodded, gazed at him for a few seconds without expression and then backed away, closing the door behind her. Aldric stared at the blank wooden surface without really seeing it and tried to make some sense out of the brief exchange. Poison was of no use against a werewolf: did the girl’s sinister gift mean that she had guessed much less than he suspected, or had it another meaning altogether? That difference between Gueynor and the other peasants he had met still nagged at him. There was a
wrongness
somewhere, if he could only define it…

Aldric found himself reluctant to touch the jars now that he knew what they contained; he had the
kailin-eir’s
deeply ingrained detestation of poison in any form, and especially as a weapon. Its use, cowardly and secret, went against all the honour-codes. But still…

The wax seal cracked across and across as he ran his thumbnail under it, releasing a faint sour odour that prickled unpleasantly in his nostrils. From the bunch of dried herbs fastened to it by a length of cord, Aldric guessed that this jar held a .distillate of monkshood. His lips drew back very slightly from his teeth in a smile that had no humour in it; in Elthan and Prytenon this same root was called wolfsbane. The irony was appropriate, and appreciated.

He drew out the
telek
holstered at his side, broke it, and systematically packed in the interstices of each openwork steel point with gummy black toxin, taking extreme care not to scratch or prick his skin in doing so. Then he grimaced, shrugged slightly and did the same for the four darts tipped with silver. Perhaps if one did not work, the other would.

And if neither did—goodnight, my lord.

It was warm in the forest, and very still; no breeze blew to cool the heavy air. Under the spreading canopy of branches sunlight became a green, translucent glow, filtering through layered leaves until the tall trunks looked like sunken pillars in some drowned and long-forgotten hall. Though occasionally a bird sang, the liquid notes were oddly flat and lifeless and soon died in the oppressive silence. Aldric’s moccasin boots hissed softly through the grass and bracken, while Evthan the hunter made no sound at all.

That there were no dogs had been a source of some slight friction between the two men. Laine had refused to let his precious pets be subjected to the lurking dangers of the woods, and Evthan had not pressed him over-hard. Aldric might have done so but for lack of time—and a feeling that Evthan’s reluctance could well prove significant.

He paused, uncased his heavy composite bow and nocked an arrow to the string. His fingers were clumsy, and when he saw Evthan was watching he restrained a scowl—he would have preferred the Jouvaine not to see that momentary fumble. The latest bird to risk a chirrup faltered and went quiet, and as each leaden minute trickled by it seemed the forest held its breath.

As the sun slid down the western sky the air grew cool; light dimmed and shadows lengthened. Aldric’s nerves were stretched by waiting, watching, listening for the movement which would betray… whatever made it. Evthan, by contrast, appeared relaxed; there seemed to be no alertness in him, and he was silent apparently only through long habit. This struck Aldric as peculiar; the hunter was not behaving as might be expected.

“Which way now?” the Alban asked. His voice was startlingly loud, an alien and unwelcome sound.

Evthan looked about him, then raised an arm to point north-east.

“Into the Deepwood,” he replied, and walked on without waiting for a response.

There was none; Aldric was slightly puzzled by the Jouvaine’s form of speech, using a noun instead of an adjective as if he meant a place rather than just thicker woods. That did nothing to relieve Aldric’s tension; instead it made him feel worse, for now the scrutiny of every tiny forest creature was acting on his senses, making him jumpy, causing him to start at nothing more than a stoat or a squirrel—above all making him mentally exhausted, less attentive and more careless.

Aldric had no need to ask when they had reached what Evthan called the Deepwood; it was only too obvious why it had been given the name, which was singularly well-deserved. The woodland near Valden had been, he realised, cleared of undergrowth for the hunting pleasure of the Overlord and his noble guests; it was virtually parkland—like an open meadow compared with the thick, claustrophobic tangle of brush, brambles and dark, sinister evergreens. After half an hour Aldric’s eyes yearned for the sight of a beech-tree or an oak, anything to relieve the sombre monotony of the pines— living, dying or dead, but all upright in one another’s close-meshed needled embrace.

They were old, as old as anything that he had ever seen. There was a monstrous, brooding stillness in the Deepwood, a darkness and a sense of such vast antiquity that even he, high-clan Alban,
cseirin-born
, brought up with a history of nigh on sixty generations, felt insignificant and an intruder on the peace of long, slow ages.

“Evthan,” he said, his voice hushed as if he feared to wake whatever ancient presence slumbered here in the warm, close confines, “turn about. Go back to the village. Now.” He was not commanding any more.

Evthan looked at him with what might have become a smile tugging at the corners of his thin mouth. But the smile—if such it was—did not extend beyond that twitch of muscles; instead he nodded, turned in his tracks and moved back the way he had come. Aldric stood quite still with only his dark, gloom-dilated eyes following the hunter, and felt the blood of shame burn in his face. He had come so very close to pleading, and not even because of honest fear which anyone might feel—even
kailinin-eir
. Oh, no. He was just nervous, that was all, aware that he was a trespasser in this quiet place; out of his depth in a hostile environment where he was neither welcome nor had any right to be. Or was it more than that… ? He almost called Evthan back, to insist that they continue; then glanced over his shoulder at the dim encroachment of dusk and walked quickly after the Jouvaine. But not
too
quickly.

He was whistling a soft, sad little tune as he drew level with Evthan, and the hunter gave him another of those half-amused looks, sidelong, without turning his head. He said nothing. Above their heads, far beyond the confines of the Jevaiden Deepwood, the sky became a smoky blue-grey which dissolved to saffron as it swept down to the horizon and the last faint residue of sunset. That cool amber light beyond the trees transformed them into hard-edged silhouettes, every branch, every twig, every leaf and needle etched precise and black against the afterglow. Aldric glanced from side to side as his world grew dark… and ceased to be the world he knew at all.

Unconsciously he lengthened his stride to keep up with the hunter; it was difficult to match long legs that could keep pace with a war-horse. All around him were small sounds as the night-forest came to life: tiny creaks and twitterings, an occasional snap and rustle of minute movement. Little noises, usual in the evening, and undisturbed by the Alban’s own muted musical contribution. Then his whistle faltered, began again uncertainly and trailed away in a scatter of unconnected notes. An eerie tingling sensation crawled over the skin of neck and arms like the half-forgotten memory of a shiver. But he knew instinctively what it was… and why it was.

Someone—or some
thing
—was close behind him.

Aldric stopped, holding his breath to hear more clearly while his grey-green eyes, narrowed now and wary, raked the undergrowth. There was nothing but a slither of fern-fronds and then silence, so that it seemed he had heard only the echoes of his own passage through the bracken. Except that this “echo” came from maybe thirty feet off to his right. And why had everything else gone quiet… ?

He knew the answer to his own unspoken question almost at once; because the lurking presence was still out there, invisible in the thick vegetation, studying him, assessing him with interest and curiosity but no malice… for the present. It had stopped whenever he had stopped, which made him reluctant to move again for fear of what might follow.

“Evthan,” he said quietly. There was no reply. His head snapped round and with an ugly tremor of shock the young Alban found he was alone. Or, more accurately, was not alone at all. That awareness was driven home with dreadful emphasis by the soft crunching as something huge moved purposefully closer. A metallic tang beneath his tongue soured Aldric’s dry mouth, and one hand flicked up to the
telek
holstered under his left arm. It cleared leather with a harsh scrape that normally would have angered him but this time could no be loud enough, then click-clicked sharply as he wrenched back on the cocking lever.

The slow movement in the forest ceased at once.

Aldric could feel the clammy embrace of sweat-saturated cloth against his skin, and the all-too-familiar queasiness in his stomach. Fighting a desire to turn and run, he reversed along the narrow track which was all that Evthan had left him to ease his route through the Deepwood. There was no sound of pursuit. Then all at once he noticed something which, however briefly, took his mind away from whatever he had faced down in the forest. The polished metal of the
telek
was glinting in the moonlight.

Moonlight… ?

Aldric’s head jerked back, his gaze shooting up between the tree trunks to what little of the sky was visible between their lowering columns, and if he had been uneasy before it was as nothing to how he felt when he saw the moon. It perched like some obscenely bloated fruit on the extremity of a branch, shining ever more brilliantly as dusk crawled into night.

Regardless now of what might—indeed, certainly would—hear him, Aldric yelled, “Evthan!
Evthaaan
!” at the top of his voice. In his heart the last thing that he expected was an answer.

“What’s wrong, man?” The hunter seemed to coalesce from a jumble of shadows and Aldric almost jumped out of his skin, then sagged with a relief that he made no attempt to conceal, trying to get his breath back and thankful that the darkness could not betray how much he was shaking. Evthan Wolfbane was not a fool, whatever else the Alban suspected he might be; after a single glance at his companion’s shocked, white face he jerked an arrow from the quiver at his back and set it to his longbow’s string. “Or should I say, what’s out there?”

Aldric managed a false, inadequate laugh. “The Beast, maybe. Or a bear. Or a rabbit. Or something out of my own head. Dear God in Heaven, Evthan, I didn’t want to wait and see!”