Demon Lord (25 page)

To her surprise, he did not
summon the demon steed to carry him back to the camp, but limped
over to the fallen stone. Mirra followed, and he shot her a baleful
glare, the sweat-sheened skin of his brow wrinkled in a deep
frown.

"You should rest, Bane."

"The ward is not broken, lack
wit."

"Do it tomorrow."

Bane spun as if to hit her, but
she was out of reach, and he teetered. "Do not tell me what to
do."

Mirra sighed as he bent over the
stone and placed his palm upon it. She guessed he was trying to
avoid multiple headaches by using the power as seldom as possible,
and had no wish to earn himself another one tomorrow. That made
sense, but it did nothing to ease her concern for his health, even
though he displayed inhuman strength. He summoned the power again,
channelling it into the stone. A dull report came from beneath it
as the ward broke, and four runes on the altar began to glow with
soft blue light. Bane glanced at them with a frown as they winked
out one by one.

The standing stones exploded
with stunning force. An immense flash of blue fire engulfed the
temple, accompanied by a massive thunderclap. Great chunks of
flying rock filled the air, thudding into the ground like cannon
balls amid a storm of shrapnel. The explosion flung Mirra several
feet, and the maelstrom of flying rock would have killed her had
she been powerless. She landed hard and rolled into a ball,
covering her head as the bits of rock that had been flung upwards
rained down in a hail of stone. The explosion's echoes rolled away
through the mountains in a harsh, deep-throated rumble, like a
giant's bellow of rage.

As soon as the rocks stopped
falling, Mirra sat up and gazed around, her eyes widening in
amazement. The circle of stones was gone, and where the temple had
been there was now a mass of white rubble, like churned snow. It
thinned as it radiated outwards, scattered over the grass. Mord
writhed and whimpered a short distance away, his shaggy hide oozing
blood from dozens of small wounds. Only his thick pelt and tough
skin had saved him, and she ran over to heal him, then grabbed the
pot and turned to Bane.

Incredibly, the Demon Lord
struggled to sit up, shaking his head groggily, gasping and
clutching his ribs, the wind clearly knocked out of him by the
force of the explosion. Blood soaked the tattered remnant of his
tunic, and it trickled down his face from a cut on his temple. The
shirt and cloak had shielded him somewhat, but his skin was gashed
and scraped in dozens of places, and some sharp shards were
imbedded in his flesh. He plucked them out, his jaw ridged as he
gritted his teeth, and flashed her an angry glance when she
approached him. She controlled her instinctive urge to heal him and
held out the pot instead. He took it, smearing the paste on the
oozing cuts while she marvelled that he had escaped serious injury,
for he had been even closer to the explosion than she had.

When he had rubbed the burning
ointment into the wounds he could reach, he glared at the useless
troll, who cowered, then turned his baleful eyes on Mirra. He
thrust the pot at her, and she took it with a smile, but he gripped
her wrist in an icy, vice-like hold.

"You touch me with that damned
power of yours and I will kill you, witch. Now is your chance to
prove you do want to help, and believe me, if you try anything, you
will die before I do."

Mirra nodded, stunned by his
threats. He unclipped his cloak and let it fall, and the paste
stung her fingers as she daubed it on the bleeding cuts in his
back. The shirt impeded her, and he ripped it apart with a vicious
jerk, revealing pale skin mottled with pink bruises and cuts. She
plucked out some slivers of rock, dabbing the burning paste on the
lacerations, her fingers on fire as she hunted for more cuts.

He snarled, "Hurry up, damn
you."

"I - I do not want to miss
any."

Bane growled, but sat still
until she was satisfied and handed back the jar, then checked
himself again to make sure all the bleeding was stopped. There were
fewer injuries on his legs and buttocks; the tougher material of
his trousers seemed to have deflected all but a few larger chunks,
and those cuts he tended through the holes in the material. His
skin bore dozens of puckered black wounds, and one of the runes
glowed, a scratch running through it. A graze marred his cheek and
a bruise swelled on his forehead. Mirra wiped the burning paste off
on a patch of grass. Bane capped the jar and hurled it at Mord, who
whimpered.

"Useless troll!" Bane lurched to
his feet, and Mord fled to the camp, where most of the army stood
gazing in their direction, curious about the explosion but
unwilling to investigate. Bane glared around at the destruction,
his shirt hanging about his hips in tatters.

"Another sharp mage. Two traps,
the first obvious, the second a surprise. Very neat." He sat on the
fallen ward stone, the only one still intact. "But I am still here,
and you missed your chance, girl. You will not get another."

Mirra's jaw dropped in surprise,
but she knew the futility of protesting her innocence and contented
herself with a shake of her head. Bane regarded her until the demon
steed thundered up at his command, then rode back to the camp. By
the time Mirra got there, carrying his discarded cloak, he lay on
his bed, an empty cup beside him. He stared at the roof with
bloodshot eyes, and she settled on the floor.

Bane listened to the girl's soft
movements, his mind filled with confusion as well as the hammering
pain. He had tested her, and she had not tried to harm him. Why?
Perhaps she waited for a better opportunity. How ironic that she
had been sent to kill him, yet he could not even harm her now. The
walk through Torlock Keep had been strange, to say the least.

The mangled bodies had not
bothered him, but her horror had. His reaction had angered him,
amazed that he wanted to spare her the pain. It still brought him
immense satisfaction to see the puny humans die, so why did he feel
so differently about her? The pain of his injuries joined with the
familiar pounding of his head in an all-encompassing throbbing that
kept him awake for several hours, despite his exhaustion.

Bane summoned
his father into his dreams that night. Normally the Black Lord came
when he wished, but this night Bane called him.
His father seemed disgruntled by this, yet held his anger
back, his inky visage expressionless. The mood vision was a sullen
desert of wind-blown red sand glowering under a ruddy sky in which
a crimson cloud glowed with a nimbus of black fire.

Bane asked, "Father, how do you
know the girl was sent to kill me?"

The Black Lord's glowing eyes
brightened. "She was placed in your path, son. Two days before your
men found her, the healers from the abbey took her to the hut in
the woods. They travelled towards you to leave her there. Why else
would they do that?"

Bane shook his head. "They are
strange people, but she helped me tonight. I broke the fourth ward
-"

"I know, well done." The desert
landscape lightened a little and the wind died, leaving rippled
sand. In the foreground, the Black Lord's red maw twisted into a
parody of a smile.

Bane ignored his father's
congratulations. "But it had two traps, and the second one injured
me. She helped me. I expected her to try something, but she did
not."

The Black Lord regarded Bane
with flat yellow eyes, the pupils contracted to flecks of darkness,
as if Bane gave off a shining light. "Son, you are a stranger to
the world of men. They can be extremely devious. She is trying to
win your trust, pretending to be your ally and even helping you. No
trickery is beneath her. She will bide her time, then when you
trust her, she will kill you."

Bane frowned. "This worries me.
Her spell grows stronger, and I cannot break it. I do not know
how."

"Hurry and break the next ward.
Once I am there I will help you."

The dream
darkened, swallowing up the Black Lord's ebon visage, leaving
unrelieved blackness.
Bane fell into a
shallow, restless sleep, plagued by the aches of his injuries and
the pounding in his skull.

The next day, Bane rested,
stretched out on his bed with an arm over his eyes. Mirra sat with
him, lost in a daydream of the peaceful life she longed for. From
his even breaths, she thought him asleep, so she was surprised when
he spoke, and looked up to find him studying her with bloodshot
eyes set in an unnaturally pale face.

"Why did the healers leave you
in the forest?"

"It was my time to leave the
abbey and start my life as a healer."

Bane frowned. "They placed you
right in my path, as if they wanted me to find you."

Mirra remembered the fleeing
people and Elder Mother's terse explanation. Now she knew they had
been fleeing from the Demon Lord, yet Ellese had not mentioned him.
She could not believe that they had deliberately put her in danger,
however. It had to be as Mother had said; she was put there to heal
the war's casualties.

"Mother told me there was a war,
and I was to heal those in need, as all healers do. I think they
simply went on with their life as they had always done, and trusted
the Lady to protect me. Healers are never harmed, even by invading
armies, for we heal any who come to us, so why would they kill
us?"

Bane grunted, lay back and
stared at the roof. "Yet they fled themselves."

"They were afraid. You found out
how to torture us."

"My father says you were sent to
kill me."

Mirra shook her head. "He is
wrong. Who would send a healer to kill?"

Bane rubbed his forehead,
frustrated by the pain that would not let him think. His father
could not be wrong. The Black Lord was never wrong. The healer was
devious, and was trying to win his trust, that was the only
explanation that made any sense. His foot throbbed, cuts burnt all
over him, and he wished he could sleep. Rest was denied him,
however, and he stared at the dull brown leather above him. He
thought about his father and his life in the Underworld, which he
still missed.

His first memories were of lying
on a urine-soaked bed, waving chubby arms and wailing for
attention. The droge who had been assigned to care for him was
seldom about; too busy with her own concerns to worry about him.
This struck him as strange, for the Black Lord's son had deserved
better care than that. Droges were condemned spirits, and
essentially powerless, able to form physical bodies only when the
Black Lord allowed them the power. Bane had lain in his excrement
until the droge chose to clean him, burning the old bedding and
providing fresh. Initially he had lived in the cooler caverns near
the surface, where the Dark Lord did not have to shield him from
the intense heat below.

As a toddler, he had crawled
about the caverns, scraping his knees on the rocks as he played
with the scuttling creatures that lived there. Nothing could harm
him; the venomous snakes' poison was useless against him, for his
father protected him. Still, their bites had been painful, and
things with claws had nipped him from crannies. He had learnt to
winkle them out and smash their shells with stones, becoming a
hunter of anything that hurt him. By the time he was seven, he
avenged any insult to his person by the small creatures of the
Underworld, and took pleasure in it. He had stalked the dark
caverns like a naked, dirty animal, his hair long and matted.

As he had grown older and
ventured further afield, he had come across larger, more fearsome
creatures. He had armed himself with a stone club made from a
snapped stalactite and used it with great affect, the constant
danger of injury honing his reactions. He did not see a demon until
he was ten, although now he suspected that some of the droges who
had tormented him in his younger days had been demons. The droge
had taught him to talk, read and write the Overworld language, and
he had received numerous slaps and blows if he was too slow,
although he seldom required more than one lesson to master a
skill.

No one had ever shown him
kindness. Often he was punished even when he had done nothing
wrong. If he fell in the dim caverns and hurt himself, his wails
went unanswered unless it was to be slapped and told to be quiet.
There were other, more unpleasant memories of the tricks and
torments the demons had subjected him to, but he shied away from
them. Pain had always been a part of his life, and his father had
assured him that strength was built on pain and suffering. Sympathy
and kindness were for the weak, and shunned by the strong.

By the time he was eleven, he
had no longer cried when he was hurt, and took pride in his
courage. He had even learnt to defy the demons that had tormented
him and strike back occasionally at the droges who had beaten him.
His pitiful, childish defiance had only amused his tormentors,
however, and made their games more frequent and malicious. He
thrust those memories aside again, refusing to dwell on them.

It made the witch's feigned
concern all the more galling and unwelcome. He needed no help or
sympathy; he had learnt to live without it. Perhaps she sought to
weaken him with it, trying to undermine his courage and fear the
pain. It would not work, he thought grimly, his life had been too
hard for anyone to change him now.

Chapter Eleven

The City

A kick woke Mirra, and she
looked up in surprise to find Bane frowning down at her.

"Get up, we are leaving."

Mirra scrambled to her feet and
hurried outside as the tent collapsed behind her, Mord rolling it
up swiftly. Pale morning light bathed the mountains and dew frosted
the grass beneath a thick blanket of mist. Bane strode to the demon
steed with hardly a trace of a limp, even though his foot was
undoubtedly crushed. Mirra rubbed her eyes and yawned, glancing
around. The soldiers still roused from their bedrolls, stretching
and yawning, shaking out their blankets and gathering up their
packs.