The Demon Lord (6 page)

The hunter’s teeth gleamed as he smiled reassuringly. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “The Deepwood after dark is no place for a novice hunter, especially one who is…” he altered a word on the very tip of his tongue, “... ill at ease in thick forest. As you are. Yes?”

The forced bravado drained from Aldric’s face and in the moonlight only shame remained. “You mean frightened, don’t you?” His voice was a low, grim monotone. “Scared out of my wits!”

Evthan shook his head. “I do not. Every man has his own special fear: close confinement; open space; a high place. I have that fear—I can climb a tree at need, but in truth would rather not. So with you and the forest. But I am no more ashamed of my fear than I am of having blue eyes when my father’s were brown.”

Aldric’s own eyes widened fractionally—what had made the Jouvaine shape his words like that? There was no way in the world that he could know… was there? The
cseirin-born
—the lord’s immediate family—of Alba’s ancient high clans all shared hereditary features as distinctive as their crests, and the marks of clan Talvalin were height, fair hair and blue eyes. It was ironic therefore that the last clan-lord of all should have none of these things, and this had rankled deep down for a long time now. He made a wordless noise in reply to Evthan’s philosophising, and noted coldly that this peasant hunter was once more proving to be more than he appeared.

How much more would doubtless be revealed, for Aldric as he grew calmer had made one observation which left him far from comfortable in Evthan’s presence after dark: the moon was not yet full. He had known as much in the light of day, but his assurance had been badly shaken by the apparently complete silver disk peering at him through the trees. Looking again without the magnification of fear, it plainly lacked the merest nail-paring along the rim. Which meant that tomorrow night was still to come. The night of the full moon, and the night of the summer solstice. Aldric slid his
telek
back into its holster, but was not inclined to buckle down the peace-strap which normally secured it there. Not yet.

So far as the Alban could tell, Evthan’s route out of the Deepwood was much more direct than that which he had followed on the way in. Why that should be, Aldric did not know—unless maybe it was out of consideration for himself. And if that was the case, then he was not sure that he wished to be patronised to that extent. He was still trying to phrase a reply which would not insult a gesture offered in honest kindness when he became aware of two things: one was that Evthan had become almost as nervous as he himself had been a half-hour earlier, and the other was that even in the shadow-streaked uncertain light, he could see that they were walking along a path. It was narrow, true, twisting and uneven, flanked closely on either side by trees, but still a path. In the Deepwood… ?

And then he saw the clearing.

It glistened under the moon like a pool of quicksilver, and at its centre was a solitary tree. Not growing; once it might have been an oak—or an ash or an elm—but now it was unrecognisable, centuries dead, a split and blasted monument to the fury of some long-forgotten storm. Grateful for an open space at last, Aldric paused to rest his Deepwood-wearied eyes on it. Perhaps fivescore yards from where he stood, the forest began again as if the hands of men had never interrupted it. For this was no natural clearing; northward, beyond the shattered tree, was the remnant of a mound ringed by standing stones. The place exuded a sense of profound age, for the megaliths were everywhere: some upright; some leaning crazily askew; others lintelled, one laid across two others like colossal doorways into nowhere; a few fallen and half-hidden in the grass.

His brain aswirl with images that made his scalp prickle, Aldric took a cautious step towards the ruined mound. He had seen things like this before, for his own long-dead bloodkin—
an Mergh-Arlethen
, the Horse Lords—slept in such mounds scattered throughout the southern part of Alba. Their great barrows were not round like this had been, but long, reminiscent of the ships which had brought them and their tall steeds across the deep sea, and they dotted Cerenau and Prytenon up past Andor and Segelin to the very eaves of the forest of Guelerd. In his homeland they were untouched, undisturbed, honoured as much for their many years as for what they were.

But here, on the fringes of the Empire… This mound was already open to the sky and Aldric knew what to expect: the tomb torn apart by disrespectful hands, its burial chamber violated in search of any treasures buried with the dead, the poor old bones scattered and their long rest disturbed. To any Alban such thoughts were repellent, and especially to
ilauem-arluth
Talvalin whose reverence for his ancestors came close to worship now that they were all he had. Yet some strange, sad curiosity compelled him to look closer, almost as if he might make some amends for the rude treatment meted out by others.

Then Evthan’s hand closed on Aldric’s left bicep, holding him back—and in that grip discovering the meshed mail and splinted steel beneath the Alban’s leather sleeve. If the revelation startled him he gave no apparent sign, but met the younger man’s eyes without blinking as Aldric’s head swung round in annoyance. “Do not go into… that place,” he said, his voice low and intense.

“Why not?” The annoyance did not colour the flat way in which Aldric asked his question, and that in itself was faintly ominous, as if something was being held in check—something which might be unleashed if the reply proved unsatisfactory.

“Because… Because it was once a holy circle of the Flint Men, where they worshipped gods who were before the Gods.”

Religion, thought Aldric, and almost smiled. Never debate a man’s religion, politics or taste in women.

But then Evthan muttered, “Would that it still was, instead of being…” and let his words tail off in a way that Aldric did not like. Maybe it was more than just religion after all.

“Instead of being what, Evthan?” he prompted.

“Instead of being what it is now! Unhallowed and evil! Keep away from the ring of stones, Kourgath. Avoid it, as everyone else does.”

“AH the more reason for me to look, then. I sense nothing evil about either the ring or the mound—and the dead have never done the living harm.” Even as the words left his mouth he knew that they had been spoken impulsively, and were a lie; for he remembered the
traugarin
raised out of death by Duergar the necromancer, and Kalarr cu Ruruc who had first died before the Clan Wars five centuries ago… “At least, the peaceful dead,” he amended quietly.

“But why should the lord beneath the hill be at peace?” Evthan argued with inexorable logic. “His great sleep ended when
they
broke open his tomb.”

“
They
... ?” The single soft word did not invite excuses. “Explain to me—who are
they
?”

Evthan hesitated, then shrugged. Aldric caught the little movement. “Do you not know—or not wish to tell me?”

“I know,” the hunter answered.

“And, I think, so do I. Lord Crisen. The name which appears too many times without an adequate reason for it.”

“He, and his father. Lord Geruath searched for ancient weapons—he collects them in his tower at Seghar as another man might gather works of art. But the other—”

“Lord Crisen.”

“—Sought other things.”

“And did he find them?”

Evthan’s teeth showed in a hard, tight smile. “Now, Kourgath—Aldric—how much would you expect a mere hunter to know of the private doings of his Overlord?” It was a roundabout way of saying that he would hear nothing more, and like it or not, the Alban accepted it without protest.

“I should like to meet your Overlord—and his son,” was all he said.

“And I should like to be there to see that meeting,” returned Evthan.

“Perhaps you will. But for now I’ll be content to see this holy place—which may no longer be holy, but certainly grows more interesting by the moment.”

“But I told you—” Evthan started to protest.

“Nothing but a superstition which convinces me of nothing. But I’ll give the mound-king your respects if I should chance to meet him.” The hunter flinched at that and Aldric saw him flinch. Was it because of his own casual, thoughtless remark… or for some other reason? Soon, he promised inwardly, soon all the questions will be answered.

He walked slowly out across the moonlit clearing, towards the mound—and from the shadows he was watched by unseen eyes.

Things hidden by the long grass gave way beneath his soft-soled boots with sharp, dry cracking sounds. They were not twigs, not branches. Aldric knew what they were and twice he stopped, knelt, and lifted them into the thin wash of silvery light to see the objects better. It was something he would not have done in daylight, for this was viper country if ever he had seen it—on a hot day the big lethal snakes would have been out everywhere, basking. In the cool of the night they were all gone, leaving him alone to impudently fumble with old sacrificial bones. He found their very age a reassurance, and on both occasions that he took a closer look the remnants proved to be those of animals—sheep, maybe, or goats.

But then something crunched under his heel and skidded slightly in a manner so uniquely nasty, and so unlike any sensation which had gone before, that for several seconds curiosity and distaste were evenly matched. Curiosity, inevitably, won—and Aldric was to regret that it had done so.

For what he picked up was a human hand. The phalanges were shattered—that had been the crunch which he had felt as much as heard, like treading barefoot on a snail—and its pulpy, putrefying flesh had burst and smeared under his weight. It had lain on the ground for a month or more, and he was thankful that his own hands were gloved as a foul ooze soiled the black leather covering them and a thick reek of rottenness wafted past his nostrils, offending the clean air of evening. But it was neither of these far-too-familiar horrors which brought his stomach to the brink of nausea, nor was it the griping pain of that incipient retch which stung his eyes to tears.

It was realisation that this hand had been a child’s.

He was already drawing breath to summon Evthan when he remembered what the man had told him at their first meeting, and the recollection shut his mouth with an audible click of clenching teeth. The most cruel thing in all the world would be to let the Jouvaine hunter see what he had found, because he guessed that this pathetic remnant was a leaving of the Beast. Perhaps all that remained of Evthan’s daughter… Aldric hoped not. He gently laid down the fragment and, with an effort, kept any hint of revulsion from the way he wiped his fingers clean. Then he drew his
tsepan
from its lacquered sheath and used the needle point to scratch out a little grave. In other circumstances he would have muttered an apology for dishonouring the dirk with such a menial task, but not now. The needs of simple decency were worthy of an honourable weapon.

After he had finished and pressed the acid soil back into place, Aldric remained on his knees, head bowed and eyes tight shut as he tried to force himself back to calmness. Instead of the detached regret he might have expected, he was filed with such a rage as he would never have imagined possible over the death of some unknown foreign peasant’s unknown child. Its intensity made his whole body tremble, so that frosty reflections danced along his
tsepan’s
blade. For once Crisen Ger-uath and the inner turmoil of his own honour ceased to be important. If by razing the Jevaiden down to bare black rock he could have been assured of the obliteration of the Beast, he would have fired the forest without a second thought.

As that first spasm of impotent fury faded to a leashed-in killing mood—something infinitely more dangerous— Aldric realised bitterly why Evthan was subject to such strange fits of brooding. If he, outlander,
hlensyarl
, could be so overwhelmed by grief and anger at the evidence of a single slaying, then what state must the Jouvaine’s mind be in now that thirty people, many of them known to him, had been ripped apart and eaten? And how many of that thirty had walked all unaware into the jaws of the Beast because they trusted the protection of a man they called the finest hunter in the province… ?

There was a film of icy perspiration on the Alban’s face as he rose, and a little twitch of terror in the way he slid the
tsepan
out of sight. In Evthan’s place he would have been expected to use the wicked blade as it was meant to be used, and be grateful for the privilege of an honourable end. Except for one thing: in this situation not even the most sincerely contrite ritual suicide would help either the dead or those still living. It would help only the Beast. Aldric bared his teeth viciously.

And then, because there was nothing of any immediacy to be done, he clamped down on his feelings and pushed them to the back of his mind. Not that they ceased to have substance—no man’s willpower was so powerful—but distanced from his conscious self, they would no longer affect his actions unless he desired it.

Or events required it.

He continued his walk towards the mound, concentrating on it, forcing himself to be calm by letting the tranquil images of antiquity cool what still seethed in his brain. Aldric paused, rested one hand against the rough surface of a fallen sarsen and looked back towards Ev-than. The hunter was barely visible; indeed, he seemed to be backing apprehensively away from the clearing, from the mound, from the moonlight and into the comfortable darkness under the trees. Aldric shivered at that, finding the massive trunks and their ink-thick blots of shadow far from comforting. Even in such a place as this, he preferred to have the sky above his head. With that unspoken preference in mind, he appreciated the rich irony of his next three steps, which brought him under the great stones of the burial chamber and into a confined space of dark and silence.

That the dome would be so complete as to exclude all light was a possibility which had not occurred to him. Expecting cracks and crevices—perhaps even the gaping access hole left by whatever grave-robbers the Overlord had employed—he was surprised, unsettled and more than a little shocked by just how black inside the cist really was. Un-light pressed all around him like the intangible folds of some heavy cloth, and even though the pupils of his grey-green eyes expanded to enormous proportions in their quest for a glimmer of useful luminescence the involuntary effort was entirely wasted.