Prince of Demons Read online

Darris disengaged in a slow, nonthreatening manner. Eyes fixed on his opponents, he slid his blade into its sheath. Apparently reassured by this action, those fighting him did the same. The leader said something Matrinka could not hear. Easterners began to back away from Rantire, restoring their weapons as they did so. Finally, the last few stepped aside to reveal the Renshai lying quietly on the rocky ground. Swords and knives found casings. Hammers, axes, and clubs slid into proper position on hips and packs. The Easterners’ leader approached.

  Matrinka froze, her eyes on Rantire. As the leader drifted toward her, the urge seized her to run to the Renshai’s side. Darris turned her a warning glance that begged her to remain in place. Mior verbalized the concern. *Too much tension. The wrong motion or word might see us all dead.*

  *She needs me,* Matrinka had to return.

  *A moment is unlikely to make a difference.*

  Sorrow engulfed Matrinka, but the tears would not come. She had cried herself out over companions lost to the Southern Sea. *A moment could make the difference between life and death.*

  *It could,* the cat conceded. *But it probably won’t.*

  “I’m sorry, Lord.” The leader’s heavily accented trading tongue came from so close Matrinka started. Worry for Rantire had caused her to forget the man’s presence. “We didn’t know you traveled with these.” He indicated Matrinka, Darris, and Rantire with a broad wave.

  Captain’s amber eyes glittered in the sunlight, and his expression scarcely revealed emotion. Matrinka thought she read anger there. “Well, I do. And I’ll thank you not to attack my companions.” No one acknowledged the irony. Rantire, not the Easterners, had initiated the battle. Captain made a grand gesture. “Matrinka, tend her.”

  Matrinka did not hesitate for an instant but scuttled to Rantire’s side, Easterners parting in front of her. Not a corner of Matrinka’s mind turned to the danger they represented; they could have been trees for all the heed she paid them. When Matrinka took her turn at the staff-test, and it found her unworthy for queenship, she had pledged to discover another way to serve her family’s kingdom. Swordplay had proved a foreign concept she seemed incapable of learning. All her knowledge of vital organs and their functions disappeared in the irrational chaos of battle. Herbs and healing came more naturally. Now, a protector of Béarn’s heirs needed her aid. Nothing else mattered.

  Blood splattered and pooled around Rantire. The closed eyes revealed nothing. Matrinka saw none of the natural deep rise and fall that would indicate breathing, although she did believe she saw a fluttering. Handle active bleeding first. Training surfaced mechanically. Her vision blurred, making the search difficult. If she did not staunch the bleeding, no other ministration mattered. Breaths and heartbeats accomplished nothing for empty veins.

  Matrinka worked with swift efficiency, focusing on her craft to keep emotion at bay. To think of Rantire as the alert, healthy person she had been moments before might cripple Matrinka with grief. Using bandages and fingers to apply pressure to holes in Rantire’s calf and side and a slash across the abdomen, Matrinka stemmed the flow to a trickle. The warmth of fluid and flesh was encouraging. Ignoring bruises, scars, and the swelling lump on Rantire’s scalp, Matrinka turned her attention to breathing and pulse. Though unconscious and in pain, Rantire lived. It might strain Matrinka’s skills to their limit to maintain that spark, especially when she no longer carried herbs or healing devices.

  Rantire awakened when Matrinka had scarcely half finished. Gray eyes whisked open, and she grabbed for her sword faster than Matrinka would have believed possible. Startled, Matrinka darted back with a scream. The blade carved the air in front of her, then Rantire took a defensive stance.

  Shock fizzled into anger. “Stupid woman! You’ll reopen everything!”

  “And kill your healer,” Darris added, rushing to Matrinka’s aid. “Lie still.”

  A shiver racked Rantire as she fought the pain reignited by her sudden movement. Matrinka suffered a flash of joy at the poetic justice and immediately felt guilty for it. She watched as Rantire scanned the pass where Captain talked with the Eastern leader and Griff stood beside the elf. Ignoring her need for continued ministration, Rantire limped to Griff’s side.

  “You’re welcome,” Darris muttered dourly.

  Oddly, his irritation spared Matrinka any of her own. “She’s Renshai,” Matrinka explained away the rudeness. Kevral had served as her personal bodyguard long enough to assure Matrinka that Rantire would worry for her charge above all else. For Renshai, the preciousness of life came of spending it on a cause.

  Darris grunted something unintelligible, took Matrinka’s arm, and led her back toward their other companions. He worried, as she did not, that the Easterners’ peace might end as swiftly as it had begun.

  Captain’s manner had become uncharacteristically commanding and inflexible. He pointed toward Béarn. “. . . and you will announce my presence before we are forced to deal with others of your men. There will be no more attacks. No more mistakes like this one.”

  “Yes, Lord.” The leader bowed. “Sorry, Lord.” He bowed again, then trotted off to relay the orders.

  Matrinka inspected her handiwork as she and Darris drew up to the others. The bandages held, though dark blood had soaked through the one on Rantire’s leg. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

  Griff shrugged. Darris had, apparently, heard enough to speculate. He cleared his throat and sang a cappella, scarcely above a whisper:

  “The elves devised, would be my guess

  An end to travel, east or west.

  Easterners paid to prevent ourselves

  And let through no one but the elves.”

  Matrinka nodded, horrified, though she had known of the Easterners’ ambushes long ago. Then, she had believed they followed an agenda of their own. Now, the implications appeared much more far-reaching. “Why would the elves do such a thing?”

  Rantire saved Darris the need for lengthy song. “They want to destroy all humans.” She added, pain making her curt. “Remember?”

  Matrinka gestured to indicate she sought the answer to a different interpretation of her question. “Why would any humans assist such a thing? And why attack people on the roads. Why not whole villages?”

  “One and the same answer.” Rantire kept her gaze on the Easterners while she talked. “Some people will do anything for money, and the elves probably lied about their purpose anyway. But not everyone will do anything for money so, at least I hope, the elves haven’t bought enough people to attack whole villages.”

  “But they’re magic,” Matrinka said. “It wouldn’t take that many humans with magic behind them.”

  Captain sighed deeply. “Let’s hope they don’t figure that out for a long time.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Let’s go before Dh’arlo’mé gets word to these men that I’m outcast.”

  The group mobilized swiftly, heading toward Béarn. Matrinka watched Rantire hobble, skin pale even for a Renshai and movements uncharacteristically awkward. They could not survive another attack.

  * * *

  Dh’arlo’mé awakened with a snort, startled to full awareness by no sight or sound he could discern. He raised his head from the Northern Sorceress’ book and slid his arm carefully from the pages. Soreness stiffened his hips, left thigh, and buttocks where the hard, wooden chair had stamped impressions into flesh. His private room on the sixth floor of the elves’ common house had filled with night’s gloom, and only dollops of wax remained from his candle. Moonlight beamed through the window, splattered to a diffuse purple glow by the thickness of the glass.

  Damn. The human expletive came naturally where the elfin language failed Dh’arlo’mé. He freed strands of red-blond hair plastered to his cheeks. The need for sleep had become a nearly intolerable curse that he could not wholly blame on mankind. Centuries ago, he had willingly become the Northern Sorceress’ apprentice, and the demand for sleep had accompanied a level of worry and responsibility beyond what any elf before
him had confronted. Now it had wrested away the burdens three days of desperate study had ceased to dispel. Nowhere in the Northern Sorceress’ texts had he found further answer to ridding the elves of a demon bent on their destruction. Their only hope lay with the banishment spell that had already failed once.

  Elves waited for the demon in double shifts, those most skilled at magic teamed with strong chanters. One group lashed ceaseless storms upon the waters in an effort to stop or, at least, delay the demon. The others prepared for battle. While his followers ground the banishment spell into rote, Dh’arlo’mé desperately sought the answers that eluded him. Yet the sleep he despised brought others he had not thought to seek. Having centered his study on demons and the chaos they embodied, he had learned much about both. Everything he read assured him that the demon would operate without strategy. Bound to the service Baheth’rin had detailed, it would home in on the Sea Seraph without need to hunt. It would attack until it either completed its mission or was destroyed in the process. Then, freed, it would devastate the elves without delay. Afterward, it might go on to annihilate the world; only magic could return it to the plain to which Odin had banished the primordial chaos.

  Therefore, no logic could explain the time that had passed in peace for the elves. No human could survive three days and nights in battle. Only two possibilities existed; either Dh’arlo’mé had managed to dispel the demon with his final, crucial, spell, or the humans had killed the creature. The last thought sent a shiver through Dh’arlo’mé. If a handful of humans could slaughter such a creature, the elves could not hope to stand against all of mankind. He had sorely underestimated the enemy. And he needed a new strategy.

  Dh’arlo’mé rose and walked to the window, his light step a mockery of the turmoil grinding within him. He glanced outside, more from habit than purpose. The darkness and warped glass combined to show him nothing, yet he stared outward, his mind too full to process vision anyway. Even had a map of the world stretched in panorama before him, he would have had to shift his concentration to notice it. Wild for a solution, he had discarded all readings not pertinent to the matter at hand. Sleep, however, had allowed his thoughts to wander. Now he found other details springing to the fore, ones desperation had forced him to ignore.

  Toward the end of the Sorceress’ narrative, one theme repeatedly reappeared. The word “chaos” always referred to the Staff of Chaos she believed Colbey Calistinsson, who was then the Western Wizard, had wielded. In hindsight, Dh’arlo’mé could see the insidious changes the Staff of Chaos had wrought upon the Eastern Wizard, Shadimar. The Northern Sorceress’ books revealed a story only Dh’arlo’mé and the gods could properly conclude. The only other witnesses, Wizards and mortals, were long dead. Shadimar had believed he championed the Staff of Law, fooled by Colbey Calistinsson and the lies of the staff. After winning both staves from Odin, Colbey had voluntarily handed one to his wizardly opposite along with the warning that he had given the Cardinal Wizards the one thing that could stop him from loosing chaos on man’s world. The Wizards had believed he’d turned over the Staff of Law, their vanity never entertaining the possibility that the only way they could stop him from releasing chaos was to wield it themselves.

  If the Staff of Chaos could destroy the wisest and most capable, what effect would it have on humans already willing to betray, enslave, and slaughter for wealth or power? The possibilities seemed endless. The freedom that sleep had accorded Dh’arlo’mé’s mind brought a connection he had not previously made. Prince Xyxthris had mentioned the staff-test for Béarnian rulers on more than one occasion. Dh’arlo’mé recalled Baltraine’s description: two identical, unadorned staves given to mankind so that they could judge the worth and neutrality of future kings. Could these be the Staves of Law and Chaos? Dh’arlo’mé’s heart pounded. He touched his hands to the glass, allowing the cold to seep into his palms. Someone, most likely Odin, had found a means to bring the staves together. Yet everything Dh’arlo’mé read revealed the deadly animosity between those powers. If he separated those staves, could he reawaken their supernatural power and desperate struggle to oppose one another? In the right hands, Dh’arlo’mé felt certain, the Staff of Chaos could destroy mankind from within, without need of elfin interference or risk. Analyzing the staves, he believed, would bring those answers.

  Dh’arlo’mé whirled suddenly and dashed to the exit. His door whipped open onto a common room filled with elves. Some huddled in groups, discussing the situation in hushed tones so as not to awaken the many sleeping around them. Others sat alone in thought, and some huddled in miserable silence. Most looked up as Dh’arlo’mé approached, and some called khohlar or spoken greetings. He ignored them all, too fascinated with strategy to bother with amenities. Down the stairs he charged, through the door, and into the night.

  Slender trees with serrated leaves swayed and rattled in the breeze. The elfin compound held few buildings, their shadows ugly against the natural beauty of the island they called Nualfheim. In the millennia they had lived without danger or weather, they had had no use for dwellings of any kind. They had copied man’s constructions here, trusting humans to have developed those most appropriate for a world that, until then, had belonged exclusively to them. Little of human nature made sense to Dh’arlo’mé: their desire to shut themselves into boxes as often as possible; their fascination with shiny metals and colored stones; their individuality, and their desire for personal power and gain. It seemed strange that a race which spent so much time indoors would consider imprisonment a punishment. Working with humans over time had given Dh’arlo’mé rare insight into a system that had once seemed without point or purpose. Still, he relied on his human informants to handle much he could not understand.

  Dh’arlo’mé avoided the beach where his followers gathered, some casting and others staring out over the turbulent sea in search of the returning demon. They would continue to guard in shifts, and he saw no reason to call them away. If he had misjudged, and the demon did return, his presence or absence would make no difference. If it had been killed, as he believed it must have, then it did no harm to ward Nualfheim with storms and elves guarding seaward. He had to assume Captain, and at least some of the humans, had reached the shore safely. If so, war might ensue.

  The familiar woodlands rolled swiftly past, a welcome change from the suffocating interior of a building, though the broad trees and viny foliage little resembled Alfheim. At length he came to the magical gate. The first time elves had created this route into Béarn’s castle, they had cast spells into the courtyard, animating bear statues that killed several of the king’s youngest heirs. Once crafted, the gate remained permanently in place, a connection between Béarn and Nualfheim through which only Prince Xyxthris and a few elves had passed. To further protect against the possibility of accidental trespass, Baltraine had turned the fourth-floor study room onto which the gate opened into a bedroom for Dh’arlo’mé. No one, not even cleaning staff, had permission to enter.

  Sensing the gate’s location as a prickle like crawling insects against his skin, Dh’arlo’mé closed his eyes and passed through it. White light slammed his lids, visible even through the membranes. A moment later, he opened his eyes, to find himself standing in a corner of his room in Béarn’s keep. Everything remained as he had left it. The bed was made, not from any penchant for neatness but because Dh’arlo’mé slept on the floor from habit. Aside from desks and chairs, elves had found little purpose to human furniture. Here, however, his room held matching pieces—a desk, two chairs, and a wardrobe crafted from cedar and patterned with sweeping bulges and spirals. The woven carpet felt stiff and unyielding beneath feet accustomed to thick, spongy grasses, yet it still seemed far superior to bare floor. Dh’arlo’mé paused only long enough to glance at his reflection in the full-length mirror that occupied the space between wardrobe and desk before whisking toward the door.

  The image stopped him with a hand on the knob. Bare feet and rumpled clothing of scanty, elfin cut w
ould ill fit the dignified image he had, thus far, given Béarn’s help. Thin, disheveled hair did nothing to hide the high-swept cheekbones and canted, uniform eyes that set him apart from humanity. The Béarnides had already grown accustomed to his strange appearance, attributing it to the barbarian alfen blood he claimed; but Dh’arlo’mé saw no reason to raise doubts. The more he downplayed his differences, the longer the citizenry would trust him.

  Reluctantly, Dh’arlo’mé exchanged his elfin costume for a tunic, robe, and sandals, wondering what shame caused humans to hide their bodies so completely. He combed his hair into the bangs that minimized his elfin features, though it went against all vanity and inbred custom. Only then did he open the door and step out into the hallway. The curtains over the room’s single window fluttered in the draft. Near his door lay dishes smeared with a brownish sauce and speckled with stems, bits of roots, and chewed gristle, as arranged. It would not do for the Béarnides to learn that their king’s healer regularly disappeared to another part of the world. A society wholly without magic for over three hundred years, and limited to four Wizards of dubious existence for millennia prior, could not accept such a thing. So the illusion of Dh’arlo’mé as a reclusive studier had been created and nurtured. Servants brought food to his door daily, and Baltraine saw to it that it appeared Dh’arlo’mé ate some of it.

  Dh’arlo’mé closed the door and waited. Despite the hour, a young page soon happened down the hallway, straight sandy hair combed simply, tabard flapping the Béarnian bear tan against a blue background. Catching sight of Dh’arlo’mé, the boy stopped short and bowed. “Good evening—” He corrected himself. “I mean, morning, Lord. Good morning. Yes, morning.”

  “Good morning,” Dh’arlo’mé returned gently, trying not to intimidate the youth. The servants became notably nervous around him, more so than he could explain simply by the tendency of humans to broadcast their feelings with relatively exaggerated gestures and expressions. “Could you please call the prime minister to my quarters?”