The Demon Lord

For Sandra who knows why

“... and did take enseizen of Dunrath-fortress, where was yslayen
HARANIL
, most Honourable of
LORDES
, and with him nygh-all of clan
TALVALIN
...

... which Exile was of four yeares. Upon his returning to Dunrath in company with
RYNERT-KING
and an hoste both of Horse and Foote,
LORDE
ALDRIC
did by dyveres secret ways make essay to come unto ye citadel thereof, wherein was ye Necromancer Duergar Vathach. And there by poweres enstryven of that good Enchanter Gemmel, the same that did give him comfort in tyme of sore Distress,
LORDE
ALDRIC
did bring Deathe most well-deserved to his foe and thus ykepen oath unto his Father
HARANIL
. And by
HEAVENES
grace (it is said) he did vanquish Kalarr cu Ruruc, who first fell and was yslayen at Baelen Fyghte but was restored unto lyfe for endoen of great Evill to this lande of
ALBA
...

Yet took
LORDE
ALDRIC
no delight in Victory, enhaven rather exceeding Sadness that all folke of his Blood were no more, and to ye
KING
made declaration of soche sorrowful Memories as were in Dunrath. Now to the wonderment and great Amaze of all then setten him forth into ye Empyre of Drusul to find forgetfulness.

But some privy to ye
KINGES
counsels noise abroad that this
LORDE
was bidden thence for his own Honoures sake…”

Ylver Vlethanek an-Caerdur
The Book of Years, Cerdor

What is life, except

Excuse for death, or death but

An escape from life?

kailin-eir Aldric-erhan, ilauem-arluth
Talvalin

The forest was titanic, stretching from the Vreijek border to the eastern edge of sight in a single unbroken sweep of trees. By its size alone it defied belief, but enforced that same belief with its own vast reality. The forest was not a part of the Imperial province known to men as the Jevaiden—it
was
the province. And yet few people lived there, for all its lush, abundant growth. The forest did not invite guests. It was too… strange. A thin fringe of humanity dwelt along its edges and some scattered villages had boldly sprouted up a small way within it. But nothing more. Except—on this day—for two impudent, intrusive specks.

Although it was no more than early evening and near midsummer, the forest was already growing dark. Thick, rain-swollen clouds had overlaid the sky with grey, choking all heat and light from an invisible sun. Within the shadow of the trees, where a tang of pine resin scented the air, it was cold and very still.

Until the stillness was shattered by a crash and clatter as horses moved swiftly through the undergrowth, bursting at a gallop from the bracken into a clearing where they skidded to a snorting, stamping halt.

There were three horses—one of them a pack-pony— and two riders. One of the men wore the greens and russets of a forester, and his high-coloured face was crossed by the crescent sweep of a heavy moustache. It was a cheery face, the land where smiles would be frequent, but he was not smiling now. “Satisfied?” he demanded, out of breath and irritable. “Content we’ve shaken them—if they were ever there at all… ?”

His companion did not reply. Ominous in stark, unrelieved black, looking on his sable horse like a part of the oncoming night, he gestured for silence with a gloved right hand and then rose in his stirrups, head cocked to listen for sounds in the forest that were not sounds
of
the forest.

There was nothing—until a crow cawed mocking comment of his unvoiced thoughts and spread dark wings in clattering flight from a branch above him. Its glide across the clearing ended suddenly and violently, when the horseman jerked a weapon from its saddle holster, tracked the bird for a moment and transfixed its body with a dart. He had half-expected the crow to change when his missile struck, and change it did—from a living creature to a bundle of black feathers flung carelessly against a tree trunk near the ground. The smack of its impact was an ugly thing to hear. One leg kicked, then relaxed… It did not move again.

“Lady Mother Tesh! It was only a crow, Aldric! Only a crow… !”

“I can see that now.” Aldric Talvalin’s voice was quiet and controlled. “But I do not like crows.” Any further criticism was hushed by the
telek
still gripped casually in his ringed left hand. And by his eyes.

They were grey-green, those eyes. Feline. And they betrayed nothing of the thoughts behind them. If a man’s eyes were the windows to his soul, as some philosophers maintained, then these windows had been locked and shuttered long ago. They were set in a face whose youth—he was not yet twenty-four—was masked by a studied veneer of weary cynicism… A mask which he could hide behind. Its skin was tanned, clean-shaven, but marred—or maybe enhanced in the eyes of some—by the inch-long scar scratched white along its right cheekbone.

“And, friend Youenn,” he continued in the same soft voice, “I told you before. Within the Empire, I am no longer Aldric. Remember it!”

He was no longer so many things, for all that they had been regained with a deal of blood; some of that he had spilled with his sword, but some he had spilled from his veins… Aldric could still feel the echoes of pain deep inside him, from hurts to both body and spirit.
Ilauem-arluth
Talvalin. He had been clan-lord for so short a time it seemed only a dream. Unreal; like the others, those he drowned with wine to let him sleep. Lord of a clan which no longer existed and master of a citadel whose every stone reminded him of things he would rather forget. And which he would have forgotten, given time. Except that he had not been given time. Not now that he was here, to retain what he had regained by proof of his allegiance. By proof he could be trusted… By obeying his lord the king.

By killing a man he had never even met…

Aldric could feel moisture on the palms of both his hands as he returned the
telek
to its holster, and the knowledge of it shamed him. Yet he could not help it, for he loathed this place. He had realised that from the first moment he set eyes on its green sprawl beyond the town of Ternon. He loathed its silence, its claustrophobic gloom—and most of all he loathed the memories which it brought flooding back.

Once, in a forest much like this, he had been hunted. Harried through the trees like an animal, for sport. The terror of that time had been avenged a thousandfold, and he himself had never hunted since—but the memories remained, festering in the secret places of his mind like wounds that would not heal.

“I tell you,” Youenn Sicard insisted, “so few people travel this part of the Jevaiden that almost any track is secret until you’ve travelled it yourself!”

“Almost,” returned Aldric flatly, “is not enough. We were being followed.” He seemed to dare the Vreijek to deny it. “And I’m still not sure…” His voice trailed off and a frown drew his brows together as he twisted in his saddle, one hand already reaching for the nearest holstered
telek
.

Then he kicked one foot from its stirrup and fell sideways,
kailin-style
, as something flickered through the space where he had been with an insect-whirr that ended with a noise like a nail driving home as it slammed deep into a tree.

Time seemed to run slow, each second minutes long. Aldric had sensed the arrow before he heard it, had not seen it at all and had scarcely managed to avoid its flight. The soft black leather of his sleeve parted in a straight slit as clean as the stroke of a razor, the bicep beneath marked with a matching pallid pink scrape where a strip of skin had been planed away; for one long heartbeat it seemed harmless, like the scratch left by a thorn. And then it split wide open and his blood came pulsing out.

“
Down!”
the Alban screamed, pain edging the urgency in his voice as the wound began to hurt with all the focused fury of a white-hot wire threaded into the torn muscle. That pain, and the appalling shock of feeling his own flesh sliced open, could freeze a man for long enough to die. It could also freeze an unhurt man who had not seen such injuries before—and Youenn gaped in startled disbelief, uncomprehending and unmoving for that killing instant whilst his horse began to jib as blood-reek filled its nostrils.

Two more arrows followed the first: humming-bulb arrows, signalling devices used now for another purpose-to frighten horses. Their shaped heads shrilled an atonal ululation which horrified the Vreijek’s untrained steed and it reared as the missiles shrieked to either side, squealing and fighting the air so that Youenn could do nothing more than grip reins, mane and saddle in a frantic bid to keep his seat.

There was a crashing in the undergrowth at the far end of the clearing and four horsemen rode clear of the ferns and brambles. Aldric caught an inverted glimpse of them under the arch of his own mount’s neck: bandits—or men dressed as bandits for some purpose of their own, for no thieves that he knew of would ride in military skirmishing formation with Drusalan guard hounds at their heels. Ignoring the throb which now stabbed clear from fingertips to shoulder of his left arm, he swung upright—then saw three bows loosed and ducked flat as the arrows wailed above him.

The sound which followed tore through that summer evening like a thunderclap, penetrating with a dreadful familiarity even the uproar caused by dogs and horses, hoarsely yelling men and the hammer of Aldric’s own heart. It was a thudding slap, three impacts following so closely on each other as to seem just one, and the Alban knew what he would see when, regardless of the threat from other arrows, he glanced back.

Youenn Sicard clawed at a chest which sprouted feathers from a morass of bloody cloth. The shafts which Aldric had so cleverly avoided… At such close range they had driven fletching-deep to skewer everything in their path, and as the Vreijek sagged forward Aldric could see plainly where his back was quilled like that of a porcupine. Except that these barbed quills had pierced him through.

“No…” the Alban whispered, his voice thick with that awful helplessness he knew so very well. Youenn’s glazing eyes met his with a puzzled question in them, and the Vreijek’s mouth stammered open in an attempt to speak it.
Why me
... ? he tried to say.

But only blood came out.

The eyes dulled and rolled back in their sockets as the feeble glimmer of life-light drained out of them, and Youenn Sicard pitched headlong to the ground.

“No!” Aldric repeated uselessly. He had seen death too often not to recognise its presence now. Then something snapped within him and his lips drew from clenched teeth. If death was present, let it at least feed full…

Slamming heels against his courser’s flanks, pack-horse perforce in tow, he charged headlong towards his enemies. Had they known Albans they might have expected such a reaction, but their ignorance took all four men off-guard.

Longsword drawn and in both hands as he passed between the foremost pair of horsemen, Aldric cut right and left in a single whirring figure-eight which emptied both saddles and left a glistening trail of scarlet globules on the air. Each time the sword-blade jolted home he felt the warmth of blood from his own wound splattering against his face.

As the remaining riders flinched away in horror, his black war-horse stumbled for an instant when its hooves crunched down on something softly yielding, then recovered as the screeching hound was pulped beneath steel shoes.

A single hasty arrow wavered after Aldric as he plunged into the forest; it missed and went rattling harmlessly out of sight among the branches. One of the horsemen nocked another shaft to his bowstring and rode a few wary yards along the Alban’s trail, which was clear, distinct and would be easy to follow. The man paused at that. Perhaps too easy… He glanced back at his companion and saw a negative jerk of the head. Both knew that if they pursued their intended victim there was every chance that they might catch him. And they loved life too much for that. With luck the forest might succeed where they had failed—but there would be no more pursuit.

Gasping, breathless and sweaty with pain and shock, Aldric slackened his wild pace at last. The real wonder about the past five minutes was that no low branch had hacked him from his saddle… Memories, he thought with a blurred mind—running like a madman through the woods with an arrow-damaged arm. The longsword was still clutched in his left hand, blade and fist and arm all dark and crusting with the mingling of blood that filmed them. He could hear nothing behind him— nothing to either side—nothing ahead of him. Aldric grinned a hard, cold grin without a trace of humour in it. He had lost them. Then he looked back, remembering Youenn, and the grin went sour and crooked. Not only because the Vreijek guide was dead; but because without Youenn Sicard, Aldric had lost himself as well…