The Demon King Read online

  Byrne met the wizard’s eyes unapologetically, his windburned face impassive. “That may be, but it’s not the clans I’m worried about.”

  “Well, obviously.” Bayar smiled thinly. “When you and the royal consort have repeatedly delivered young Princess Raisa right into their hands.” Distaste flickered over his face.

  That was another thing that annoyed Raisa: Lord Bayar never used her father’s name. He called Averill Lightfoot Demonai the royal consort, as if it were an appointed office that anyone could hold. Many in the Vale aristocracy despised Raisa’s father because he was a clan trader who’d made a marriage many of them wanted for themselves.

  But, in fact, the queen of the Fells had not married lightly. Averill had brought with him the support of the clans and counter-balanced the power of the Wizard Council. Which, naturally, the High Wizard did not like.

  “Lord Bayar!” the queen said sharply. “You know very well that Princess Raisa is fostered with the clans as required by the Naéming.”

  The Naéming was the agreement between the clans and the Wizard Council that had ended the Breaking—the magical calamity that had nearly destroyed the world.

  “But surely it is unnecessary for Princess Raisa to spend so much time away from court,” Bayar said, smiling at the queen. “Poor thing. Think of all the dances and pageants and parties she’s missed.”

  And stitchery and elocution classes, Raisa added to herself. A bloody shame.

  Byrne studied Raisa as he might a horse he was thinking of buying, then said in his blunt fashion, “She doesn’t look any the worse for wear to me. And she rides like a Demonai warrior.”

  That was high praise, coming from Byrne. Raisa sat up a little straighter.

  Queen Marianna put her hand on Byrne’s arm. “Do you really think it’s so dangerous, Edon?” She was always eager to bring any argument to a close as quickly as possible, even if it meant throwing a bandage over a boil.

  Byrne looked down at the queen’s hand on his arm, then up into her face. His craggy features softened a fraction. “Your Majesty, I know how much you love the hunt. If it comes to following the herds into the mountains, Lord Bayar will be unable to accompany you. The borderlands are full of refugees. When a man’s family is starving, he’ll do whatever it takes to get them fed. There’s armies of mercenaries traveling through, heading to and from the Ardenine Wars. The Queen of the Fells would be a valuable prize.”

  “Is that all you’re worried about, Captain Byrne?” Bayar retorted, eyes narrowed.

  Byrne didn’t blink. “Is there something else I should be worried about, my lord? Something you’d like to tell me?”

  “Perhaps we should go on,” Queen Marianna said, decisively snapping her reins. “Micah and the others should have no difficulty catching us up.”

  Lord Bayar nodded stiffly. Micah’s going to hear about this, Raisa thought. The High Wizard looked as though he could bite off someone’s head and spit out the teeth. She urged Switcher forward, claiming the lead. Byrne maneuvered his great bay horse so that he rode beside her, with the rest following after.

  Their trail climbed through lush upland meadows sparkling with starflowers and buttercups. Red-winged blackbirds clung impossibly to swaying seedheads left over from the previous year. Raisa drank in the details like a painter deprived of color.

  Byrne looked about as well, but to a different purpose. He scanned the forest to either side, his back straight, reins held loosely in his hands. His men fanned out around them, riding three miles to their one, scouting the way ahead and monitoring their back trail.

  “When does Amon come home?” Raisa asked, trying out her hard-learned conversational skills on the dour captain.

  Byrne studied her face for a long moment before answering. “We expect him any time, Your Highness. Because of the fighting in Arden, he’s had to take the long way around from Oden’s Ford.”

  It had been more than three years since Raisa had seen Amon—Byrne’s eldest son. After her three years at Demonai Camp, she’d returned to court at solstice to find that Amon was gone to Wien House, the military school at Oden’s Ford. He meant to follow in his father’s footsteps, and soldiers began their training early.

  She and Amon had been fast friends since childhood, when despite their difference in station, a lack of other children at court had forced them together. Fellsmarch Castle had been lonely without him (not that she’d had much time to be lonely). When I’m queen, Raisa thought, I’m going to keep my friends close by. It was one more entry on a long list of good intentions.

  Now Amon was on his way back to the Fells, traveling the hundreds of miles from Oden’s Ford on his own. Raisa envied him. Even among the clans, she always traveled with some kind of guard. What would it be like, choosing her own way, sleeping when and where she liked, each day brilliant with possibility and risk?

  The hunting party turned west, following a trail that stitched its way along the side of the valley. Though they were hundreds of feet above the Dyrnnewater, the roar of its cascades floated up to them.

  They passed through a narrow canyon, and it grew noticeably cooler as the stone walls closed in on either side of them. Raisa shivered, feeling a twinge of worry, a vibration in her bones as if the rich web of life around her had been plucked by unseen fingers.

  Switcher snorted and tossed her head, nearly ripping the reins from Raisa’s hands. The gloom on either side of the trail seemed to coalesce into gray shadows loping alongside her, their bodies compressing and extending.

  Gray wolves, the symbol of her house. Raisa caught a glimpse of narrow lupine heads and amber eyes, tongues lolling over razor-sharp teeth, and then they disappeared.

  Wolves were said to appear to the blooded queens at turning points: times of danger and opportunity. They had never appeared to Raisa before, which wasn’t surprising since she was not yet queen.

  She glanced back at her mother, who was laughing at something Lord Bayar had said. The queen hadn’t seemed to notice anything unusual.

  Had Raisa been riding out from Demonai with her clan friends, they’d have taken her premonition as an omen, poking and prodding at it like a snake in the dirt, studying over its possible meaning. Being of the Gray Wolf lineage, Raisa was expected to have the second sight, and this skill was respected.

  A voice broke into her thoughts. “Are you well, Your Highness?”

  Startled, Raisa looked up into Byrne’s worried eyes, gray as the ocean under a winter sky. He’d come up next to her and taken hold of Switcher’s bridle, inclining his head so he could hear her answer.

  “Well ...um ... I ...” she stammered, for once at a loss for words. She thought of saying, I have a peculiar feeling we’re in danger, Captain Byrne, or, By chance did you see any wolves along the way?

  Even if the gruff captain took her seriously, what could he do?

  “I’m fine, Captain,” she said. “It’s been a long time since breakfast is all.”

  “Would you like a biscuit?” he asked, digging into his saddlebag. “I’ve some in my—”

  “That’s all right,” she said hastily. “We’ll have lunch soon, right?”

  The canyon opened into a pretty, upland meadow. The deer herd had been seen grazing there a week ago, but they were gone now. In this season they were likely heading to higher ground, and with the wizard Lord Bayar along, the hunting group couldn’t follow. They were pushing at clan boundaries as it was.

  They stopped for their midday in the meadow, just outside the mouth of the narrow canyon. The meal was an elaborate affair, laid out on fancy cloths, with cheese and cold meats, fruit, and bottles of wine and cider. While the rest of them ate, two of Byrne’s soldiers scouted ahead, looking for traces of the missing herd.

  Raisa had little appetite. She sat, arms wrapped around her knees, still unable to shake the feeling of disquiet that pressed down upon her, pinning her to the ground. It was just noon, but the day seemed to darken, and the sunlight and shadow that dappled the ground
dissolved away. Gray shapes prowled the gloom, returning each time she blinked them away.

  She peered up through the leafy canopy overhead. Although the sky to the south was a clear blue, overhead it had gone milky gray, the sun a bright disk swimming in a gathering haze. Raisa sniffed the air. Her nose stung with the scent of burning leaves.

  “Is something burning?” she asked nobody in particular. She’d spoken so quietly she didn’t think anyone had heard, but Byrne rose from his seat at the edge of the woods and walked to the center of the meadow, scanning the slopes on all sides. Frowning, he gazed at the sky for a long moment, then looked over at the horses. They shifted, stamping their feet and straining at their tethers.

  Raisa felt the growing conviction that something was terribly wrong. The air seemed to catch in her throat, and she coughed.

  “Load up the horses,” Captain Byrne ordered, setting his men to clearing the camp and packing up the picnic things.

  “Oh, do let’s stay longer, Edon.” Queen Marianna raised a glass of wine. “It’s so pretty here. It doesn’t matter if we don’t take a deer.”

  Lord Bayar sprawled next to her. “I can’t climb much farther without violating the Naéming and all that. But you go on, Captain Byrne, and find our princesses a deer. I will stay here and look after the queen.”

  Raisa stared at the scene before her—the blanket spread under the trees, the darkly handsome wizard with his boots crossed at the ankles, bejeweled hand resting on the blanket. Her pretty blond mother, a confection even in her riding clothes, cheeks flushed like a girl’s.

  It reminded Raisa of a painting in the galleries at home— a frozen moment that left you wondering about what had happened before, and would happen after.

  “I’ll stay with you, Mama,” Raisa said, plunking herself down at the edge of the blanket and looking the High Wizard in the eye, knowing instinctively that they were enemies. Wishing her father didn’t spend so much time away.

  Byrne’s soldiers had continued to load the increasingly restive horses, though it wasn’t easy. Now the tall captain came and stood over them. “Your Grace, I think we’d best go back. There’s a fire close by, and it’s headed this way.”

  “A fire,” Lord Bayar said. He scooped up a handful of damp leaves, crushed it in his gloved palm, and let the soggy mass drop. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, Lord Bayar,” Byrne said doggedly. “It doesn’t make sense. But there is one, and it’s upslope from us on Hanalea. I’ve seen them come down on people before they can get out of harm’s way.”

  “But that’s only in late summer,” Queen Marianna said. “Not early spring.”

  “Exactly.” Lord Bayar rolled his eyes. “You’re an alarmist, Byrne.”

  Queen Marianna touched Bayar’s arm, looking anxiously from him to Byrne. “I do smell smoke, Gavan. Perhaps we should listen to the captain.”

  While they talked a sullen dusk had fallen over the meadow. An odd wind sprang up, blowing upslope, carrying the smoke away from them, like some hidden beast inhaling. Raisa scrambled to her feet and walked out into the clearing, looking back toward Hanalea. As she watched, a dense, purplish cloud billowed skyward from the ridge above, under-lit by orange and green fire. A whorl of flame rose from the ground, a fire tornado sixty feet tall. She could hear it now, too, the pitch pines snapping in the heat, the throaty roar of the inferno.

  It was like one of those dreams where you try to scream and it takes several tries to make a sound. “Captain Byrne!” Her voice seemed small against the howl of the fire. She pointed. “It is a fire. Look!”

  Just then, a dozen deer exploded from the trees, bounded across the meadow, and raced into the canyon, oblivious to the would-be hunters in their path.

  Immediately after, Raisa heard the pounding of hooves, and three riders burst into the meadow from the direction the deer had come. Their horses were lathered and wild-eyed, the riders only a little less so.

  “It’s coming! Right behind us! A wildfire! Run!” shouted the rider in the lead, and it took Raisa a moment to recognize cool, sardonic Micah Bayar behind that soot-smudged face. It was the missing Micah and his cousins Arkeda and Miphis Mander.

  By now, everyone was up, the picnic forgotten.

  “Micah?” Lord Bayar blinked at his son. “How did you ...? What did you . . . ?” Raisa had never seen the High Wizard so inarticulate.

  “We were on our way up to meet you and saw the fire,” Micah gasped, his face pale under the dirt, his hair hanging in dank strands. There were deep cuts on his hands and what looked to be a nasty burn on his right arm. “We . . . we tried to fight it, but . . .”

  Byrne led Queen Marianna’s horse, Spirit, over to her side. “Your Majesty. Quickly now.” Holding firmly to Spirit’s bridle with one hand, he scooped the queen one-armed into the saddle. “Careful,” he said. “Sit tight. She’s spooked.”

  Raisa squirmed up onto Switcher’s back, murmuring reassurances to the mare. Only a hundred yards away now, the forest canopy was alight. The fire bore down on them, flames leaping from tree to tree in a mad rush downhill, traveling much faster than seemed possible in this season. The air scorched Raisa’s lungs, and she pressed her sleeve over her mouth and nose.

  Lord Bayar stood frozen a moment, eyes narrowed, looking from Micah to Arkeda to Miphis, and up at the onrushing flames. Then he caught his own horse and swung up into the saddle. Angling his horse close to Micah’s, he grabbed a fistful of Micah’s coat and pulled his son close, speaking to him with their faces inches apart. Micah nodded once, looking terrified. Lord Bayar abruptly released him and wrenched his horse away, digging his heels into the stallion’s sides, leaving his son to follow or burn.

  Raisa stared at them, bewildered. Did the High Wizard expect his son to have put the fire out on his own? Micah was powerful, but he didn’t even have an amulet, and he’d not yet been to the academy.

  “Your Highness! Hurry!” Byrne shouted.

  They all rode hard for the mouth of the canyon.

  If Raisa had hoped to find shelter in the canyon, she found it a mixed blessing. Embers were no longer falling on their heads, but a blisteringly hot wind roared between the walls, so thick with smoke she couldn’t see the horse in front of her. It seemed to muffle sound, though she could hear people coughing and choking ahead of and behind her. The way was so narrow that at least they couldn’t get lost, but she worried they’d asphyxiate before they emerged on the other side.

  Byrne rode up next to her again. “Dismount and lead your horse, Your Highness,” he said. “The air is fresher near the ground. Be sure to keep tight hold of the reins.” He moved down the line, passing the word.

  Raisa climbed down off Switcher, wound the leather reins around her hand, and stumbled down the rocky streambed. Byrne was right: the breathing was easier below. The skin on her face felt brittle and hot, like the skin on a roasted chicken. She was tempted to kneel down and bathe her face in the water, but Byrne harried them along relentlessly. The air grew even thicker as they neared the exit from the canyon, and Raisa’s eyes stung, her vision blurred by tears.

  When she blinked the tears away, she was again surrounded by wolves, the size of small ponies, their backs at shoulder height on her. They crowded in around her, snapping and growling, their wild scent competing with the stench of smoke, their stiff guard hairs brushing her skin, pressing against her legs as if to force her from the trail.

  “Hanalea, have mercy,” Raisa whispered. No one else seemed to notice. Was she hallucinating, or could they be real, forced to share the trail by the advance of the flame?

  Raisa was so focused on the wolf pack that she nearly collided with Micah, who’d stopped abruptly in front of her. The wolves faded into smoke. Somewhere ahead, she heard Byrne swearing forcefully. Thrusting her reins into Micah’s hand, she fought her way past the others to the front of the line.

  “Stay back, Your Highness,” Byrne said, pushing her behind him. She could see that the trail beyond t
he exit was awash in flame. The fire had split around the ridge, pouring down the slope on either side of the canyon. They were trapped.

  “All right!” Byrne said, his voice ringing through the canyon. “I want all of you down in the stream. Lie flat and immerse yourself if you can.”

  Gavan Bayar forced his way to the front. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Why have we stopped?”

  Byrne stepped aside, allowing Bayar a clear view. The wizard stared out at the inferno for a long moment. Then turned and called, “Micah! Arkeda and Miphis! Come here.”

  The three boys shuffled forward until they stood before the High Wizard. They were shaking, teeth chattering, and looked scared to death. Bayar yanked off his fine leather gloves and stowed them in his pocket. He drew a heavy silver chain from his pocket, fastened one end around his wrist and the other around Micah’s.

  “Arkeda and Miphis. Grip the chain here and here,” Bayar said, pointing. They each took hold of the chain between Bayar and Micah as if it were a poisonous snake. “Don’t let go or you’ll regret it,” the wizard said. “But not for long.” He turned to face the fire, seized his amulet with his free hand, and began speaking a charm.

  As he spoke, the three boys staggered and gasped and cried out as if they’d been struck a heavy blow. The two in the middle kept a desperate hold on the chain, while all three turned paler and paler as if they were being drained dry. Beads of sweat formed on Lord Bayar’s face, then evaporated in the searing heat. The High Wizard’s seductive voice wound over and through the roar of the fire, the crackle and hiss of exploding trees, and the boys’ labored breathing.

  Finally, grudgingly, the fire responded. The flames flickered and shriveled and rolled away from the mouth of the canyon like a retreating tide, leaving a desolate, smoking landscape behind. Bayar kept at it, beating back the fire with sorcerous words until the flames were entirely gone, though it still looked as dark as the end of the world. He slid the chain from his wrist and made one final gesture. The skies opened up and rain came pouring down, hissing as it struck the hot earth.