Heir to the Shadows (28 page)

The High Lord had made no mention of the girl being ill until the Council requested to see her the first time.

Jorval stroked his dark beard with a thin hand and shook his head. There was no evidence. Only the word of a man who couldn't be found.

Murmurs, speculations, whisssspers.

3 / The Twisted Kingdom

He clung to the sharp grass on the crumbling island of
maybe
and watched the sticks float toward him.

They were evenly spaced like the boards of a rope bridge strung across the endless sea. But the footing would be precarious at best, and there were no ropes to hang on to. If he tried to use them, he would sink beneath the vast sea of blood.

He was going to sink anyway. The island continued to crumble. Eventually there wouldn't be enough left to hold him.

He was tired. He was willing to let it suck him down.

The sticks broke formation, swirled and re-formed, swirled and re-formed over and over again into rough letters.

You are my instrument.

Words lie. Blood doesn't.

Butchering whore.

He tried to scramble away from that side of the island, but the other side kept crumbling, crumbling.

There was only enough room now for him to lie there, helpless.

Something moved beneath the sea of blood, disturbing the sticks and their endless words. The sticks swirled around his small island, bumped against the crumbling

edges of
maybe,
and piled up against each other to form a fragile, protective wall.

He leaned over the edge and watched the face float upward, sapphire eyes staring at nothing, golden hair spread out like a fan.

The lips moved.
Daemon.

He reached down and gently lifted the face out of the sea of blood. Not a head, just a face, as smooth and lifeless as a mask.

The lips moved again. The word sounded like the sigh of the night wind, like a caress.
Daemon.

The face dissolved, oozed through his fingers.

Sobbing, he tried to hold it, tried to re-form it into that beloved face. The harder he tried, the quicker it slipped through his fingers until there was nothing left.

Shadows in the bloody sea. A woman's face, full of compassion and understanding, surrounded by a mass of tangled black hair.

Wait,
she said.
Walt. The threads are not yet in place.

She vanished in the ripples.

Finally, there was an easy thing to do, a thing without pain, without fear.

Making himself as comfortable as possible, he settled down to wait.

4 / Kaeleer

Saetan wondered if there was something wrong with the bookcases behind his desk or if there was something wrong with his butler, because Beale had been staring at the same spot for almost a minute.

"High Lord," Beale said stiffly, still staring at the bookcases.

"Beale," Saetan replied cautiously.

"There's a Warlord to see you."

Saetan carefully set bis glasses on top of the papers covering his desk, and folded his hands to keep them from shaking. "Is he cringing?"

Scale's lips twitched. "No, High Lord."

Saetan sagged in his chair. "Thank the Darkness. At least he's not here because of something the girls have done."

"I don't believe the Ladies are involved, High Lord."

"Then send him in."

The Warlord who entered the study was a head taller than Saetan, twice as wide, and solid muscle. His hands were big enough to engulf a man's skull and strong enough to crush one. He looked like a rough man who would wrench what he wanted from the land or from other people. But beneath that massive body and roaring voice was a heart filled with simple joy and a soul too sensitive to bear harsh treatment.

He was Dujae. Five hundred years ago, he had been the finest artist in Kaeleer. Now he was a demon.

Saetan knew it was hypocritical to be angry with Dujae for coming here since Mephis, Andulvar, and Prothvar were all frequently in residence at the Hall since Jaenelle had returned with him, and they all had contact with the children. Even so, keeping the Dark Realm separated from the living Realms had always been a knife-edged dance, and he was uncomfortably aware that, even when living, he'd straddled that line. Now with all the children spending the summer at the Hall and the Dark Council pressuring him for an interview with Jaenelle, having demons coming into Kaeleer for an audience with him was beyond tolerance.

"Twice a month I hold an audience in Hell for any who wish to come before me," he said coldly. "You've no business here, Lord Dujae."

Dujae stared at the floor, his long, thick fingers pulling at the brim of the shabby blue cap he held in his hands. "I know, High Lord. Forgive me. I should not have come here, but I could not wait."

Saetan could, and did.

Dujae crushed the cap in his hands. When he finally looked up, there was only despair in his eyes. "I am so tired, High Lord. There is nothing left to paint, no one to teach, to share with. No purpose, no joy.

There is nothing. Please, High Lord."

Saetan closed his eyes, his anger forgotten. It happened sometimes. Hell was a cold, cruel, blasted Realm, but it

had its measure of kindness. It was a place where the Blood could make peace with their lives, a suspended time to take care of unfinished business. Some did nothing with that last gift, enduring weeks or years or centuries of tedium before finally fading into the Darkness. Others embraced that time to nurture talents they'd ignored while living or chosen to forsake in order to follow another road. Others, cut off before they were finished, continued as they had lived. Dujae had died in his prime, suddenly, unexpectedly. When he realized he could still paint, he had accepted being demon-dead with a joyous heart.

Now he was asking Saetan to release him from the dead flesh, to consume the last of his psychic strength and let him become a whisper in the Darkness.

It happened sometimes. Not often, thankfully, but sometimes the desire to continue faded before the psychic strength. When that happened, a demon came to him and asked for a swift release. And because he was the High Lord, he honored those requests.

Saetan opened his eyes and blinked hard to clear his vision. "Dujae, are you sure?"

"I'm—"

Karla exploded into the room. "That overbearing, overdressed, overscented sewer rat says my drawing is deficient!" Her eyes filled with tears as she flung a sketch pad onto Saetan's desk.

He vanished his glasses before the sketch pad landed on them.

"He's a grubby-minded prick," Karla wailed. "This isn't my life's work, this isn't my road. This is supposed to be fun!"

Saetan surged out of his chair. There had been so many tutors coming and going in the past three weeks he couldn't remember this particular ass's name, but if the man could reduce Karla to tears, he was probably shredding Kalush and Morghann, to say nothing of Jaenelle.

Dujae reached for the sketch pad.

"No!" Karla dove for the pad, too upset to remember she could vanish it before Dujae's hand closed around it.

Her forehead hit Dujae's arm. She stumbled backward

into Saetan. He wrapped his arms around her and ground his teeth, hating the anguish pouring out of her.

Dujae studied the sketch. He shook his head slowly. "This is terrible," he rumbled, flipping the pages back to earlier sketches. "Obscene," he roared. He shook the sketch pad at Karla. "You call him sewer rat? You are too kind, Lady. He's a—"

"Dujae," Saetan warned, first to prevent Dujae from possibly teaching Karla a pithy phrase she didn't already know and second because he'd felt Karla perk up.

Dujae looked at Saetan and took a deep breath. "He is not a good instructor," he finished lamely.

Karla sniffed. "You don't think my drawings are good either."

Dujae flipped to the last sketch. "What is this?" he demanded, stabbing the paper with his finger.

Karla pulled her shoulders back and narrowed her eyes.

Saetan stifled a groan and held on tighter.

"It's a vase," she said coolly.

"Vase. Bah!" Dujae ripped the page from the pad, crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder. He pointed at Karla.

Did Dujae realize just how close his finger was to Karla's teeth?

"You are a Queen, yes?" Dujae continued to roar. "You do this for fun when you are finished with the hard lessons of your Craft, yes? You do this because Ladies must learn many things to be good Queens, yes? You do not make polite, itsy-bitsy drawings." He scrunched up his shoulders, scrunched up his face, tucked his wrist under his chin, and made tiny scratching motions. "Bah!" He pulled Karla out of Saetan's arms, spun her around, engulfed her hand in his own, and began making large, circular motions. "There is fire in your heart, yes? That fire needs charcoal and a large pad to express itself. Then when you want to draw a vase, you draw a vase."

"B-but—" Karla stammered, watching her hand sweep round and round.

"That vase you try to draw, that is someone else's vase. Use it as a model. Models are good. Then you drawyour

vase,the one that reveals the fire, the one that says I am a" witch, I am a Queen, I am—" Dujae finally hesitated.

"Karla," she said meekly.

"karla!"Dujae roared.

"What's going on?" Jaenelle asked from the doorway. Gabrielle stood beside her.

Saetan settled on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, resigned to whatever the little darlings were about to do.

Seeing the other girls, Dujae released Karla and stepped back.

"Do we have any charcoal?" Karla asked, wiping her eyes.

"We have some, but Lord Stuffy says charcoal is messy and not the proper medium for Ladies,"

Gabrielle said tartly.

Saetan stared at Gabrielle and wondered what sort of idiot he'd hired as an art instructor.

Then he felt the blood rush out of his head. He gripped the desk, willing himself not to faint. He'd never fainted. This would be a very bad time to start.

With the other girls around them, he hadn't recognized the triangle of power. Karla, Gabrielle, Jaenelle.

Three strong Queens who were also natural Black Widows.

May the Darkness be merciful,he thought.
That trio could tear apart anything or anyone
—
or build
anything they wanted.

"High Lord?"

Saetan blinked. He took a deep breath. His lungs still worked, sort of. Finally sure he wasn't going to keel over, he looked around. Dujae was the only one left in the room.

Dujae twisted his cap. "I did not mean to interfere."

"Too late now," Saetan muttered.

Three blond heads appeared at the study door.

"Hey," Karla said. "We've got the charcoal and large sketch pads. Aren't you coming?"

Dujae continued to twist his cap. "I cannot, Ladies."

"Why not?" Jaenelle asked as the three of them entered the study.

Dujae looked beseechingly at Saetan, who refused to look at anything but the point of his shoe.

"I—I am Dujae, Lady."

Jaenelle looked pleased. "You painted
Descent into Hell"

Dujae's eyes widened.

"Why can't you give us drawing lessons?" Gabrielle said.

"I am a demon."

Silence.

Karla cocked a hip and crossed her arms. "What, there's some rule that says drawing has to be taught in the daytime? Besides, the sun's up now and you're here."

"That's because the Hall retains enough dark power so that sunlight doesn't bother the demon-dead when they're inside," Jaenelle said.

"So that's not a problem," Karla said.

"And if you don't want to be here during the daylight hours, candle-lights or balls of witch light would make a room bright enough to work in," Gabrielle said.

Dujae looked helplessly at Saetan. Saetan studied his other shoe.

"Is your ego so puffed up that it's beneath you to teach a few little witches how to draw?" Karla asked with sweet malevolence.

"Puffed up? No, no, Ladies, I would be honored but—"

"But?" Jaenelle asked softly in her midnight voice.

Dujae shuddered. Saetan shivered.

"I am a demon."

Silence.

Finally Karla snorted. "If you don't want to teach us, just say so, but stop using a paltry excuse to weasel out of it."

They left, closing the study door behind them.

Dujae twisted his cap.

Saetan stared at his shoe. "Dujae," he said quietly, "it takes a strong but sensitive personality to deal with these young Ladies, not to mention talent. If you decide to become their art instructor, I can either provide you with wages which, I admit, aren't much use in the Dark Realm, or you can add whatever you want for your own projects to the list of supplies you'll provide me for them. However, if you decide to decline"—he looked Dujae in the eye—
"you
can go out there and try to explain it to them."

There was panic in Dujae's eyes. There was also only one door out of the study.

"But, High Lord, I am a demon."

"Didn't impress them, did it?"

Dujae sagged. "No." Then he shrugged and smiled. "It has been a long time since I have done portraits, and they have interesting faces, yes? And too much fire to be wasted on polite, itsy-bitsy drawings."

Saetan waited half an hour before strolling into the great hall. Staying well in the background, he watched the coven.

The girls were sitting on the floor in a circle, busily sketching a still life of vase, apple, and trinket box.

Dujae squatted next to Kalush, explaining something in a rumbling murmur before turning to Morghann, who had a stick of charcoal poised above her sketch pad.

Jaenelle put down her pad, wiped her fingers on the towel she was sharing with Karla, and approached him, smiling, nothing more than a delightful, delighted woman-child enjoying a creative endeavor.

Saetan slipped an arm around her waist. "The truth, witch-child," he said quietly. "Was the other one really a bad instructor?"

Jaenelle ran her finger down the gold chain that held his Birthright Red Jewel. "He wasn't right for us, any of us, and—"

He wouldn't let her duck her head, wouldn't let her hide the eyes he was learning to read so well, that told him so much. "And?"