“It’s
her
as wants him, you know. Denas has no time for schooling prisoners. He’d as soon see you all dead.”
“I’m well aware of Denas’s disregard for yladdi . . . but I thought he wished to question this one himself.” Merryt seemed discomfited.
“Nope. It’s her.”
“What use does Vallyne have for him?”
“It’s just more of this confounded bargain that’s set them quarreling. Can’t have a decent game without their arguing getting in the way of it. Everyone is over there”—Seffyd waved a limp hand into the gloom—“somewhere. Who knows? Have you seen Vilgor these past hours? He’s supposed to bring me a new game, but no one’s seen him. He’s usually prompt—”
“Perhaps Vilgor has let his loose tongue wag once too often.” Merryt tugged at my arm. “I’m sorry, Seffyd, but Denas wants the prisoner right away, so I’d best move on.”
“Ah, no matter. You’re no challenge at a game anyway. A Gastai has more wit.” The gold-clad man sniffed and went on his way, crowding past us in the aisle and knocking over a small wooden table, which shattered into a thousand pieces.
Merryt, muttering to himself, gave me a rough shove. I stumbled and came near falling into a frozen pool before he caught me. “Sorry, lad. These cursed demons . . . always keeping a man out of balance. Always lying. You never know what they’ll do.” The man nudged me forward more gently, whispering in my ear as we wound through the forest of furnishings. “For example, never beat Seffyd at draughts—or any other game for that matter. He’s a fearsome loser. I’ve seen him send opponents to the pits for winning too often, and he’d likely do worse if they were human.”
I was trying to sort it out. “They send their own—other rai-kirah—to the Gastai?”
“Well, they like to have something other than just annoying each other or clapping each other in dungeons. Gives them a nasty bit of fun. They can force each other to take solid form and do all the things they did to you and worse. But it takes a wickedly powerful demon to kill another one. Most of them can’t do it, especially one that’s in their own circle.” Merryt slowed for a moment and jerked his head toward the silver lamps ahead of us. “Watch yourself, my friend. These you will meet are very old. Cunning. Dangerous. The Nevai dress themselves up like something fine, but the faces you will see are no more real than the seven-headed dragons you met in your days as a Warden. They can make your life livable, or they can make it worse than what you faced before.”
I nodded and wished yet again that I’d had some time to sleep before needing wits again. How many hours had it been since the purple-robed Vilgor had dragged me away from my dark prison? I followed Merryt toward the sound of talk and laughter under the silver lamps. Music was playing . . . all too familiar . . . the dissonant harmonies of demon enchantment, not just a nerve-scraping reflection in the mind, but in full grotesque voice of harps and flutes and viols. The aura of demon—the soul-wrenching certainty of their presence gleaned from smell, taste, hearing, and the very touch of the air, and recognizable from hundreds of mortal encounters—grew so strong that my feet slowed and my hand cried out for a blade.
“You’ll get used to it.” Merryt dragged me on until we stepped beyond a folding screen of intricate silver work into the blazing light of the silver lamps. At least fifty demons occupied that room. Perhaps more. Some wore physical bodies as Seffyd did, with solid flesh and hair, clothes and features that looked like those of any humans, save for a lingering corona of colored light that hovered at their edges. Others appeared in their gleaming, light-drawn forms, their faces and shapes sometimes visible, sometimes not as they turned in and out of my view. Those who wore physical bodies were arrayed in extravagant costumes of silver and gold satin, trimmed with ruffled collars and feathered caps, rich embroidery and an emperor’s treasury of jewels. The others—those who were light-formed—appeared in simpler attire, softly draped tunics and breeches or skirts of vivid, jewellike colors that were a startling contrast to the washed-out hues visible everywhere else in the demon realm.
Whether formed of flesh or light, the guests were engaged in lively activity. Some were dancing to the dreadful music on the floor of black-and-white-patterned tiles, some were sitting on red velvet couches or fat cushions of blue satin, engaged in animated conversation. Some were drinking pale wine from crystal goblets, and some were playing at games with ornate game pieces of ivory, jade, and ebony.
But as Merryt led me into the light, all conversation, laughter, and music stopped. The silent, staring crowd parted, moving smoothly to the sides as if a slave were drawing them apart like his master’s bed curtains. We walked between them until we faced only a group of three rai-kirah: one a light-drawn figure of golden radiance, two with forms of flesh. The golden demon, tall and powerfully built, stood looking on in annoyance as the other two faced each other across a small table, apparently playing a game. I needed no introduction. The handsome, fair-haired Nevai appeared something near my own age, and the haughty brilliance of his presence left me no doubt that he was the owner of the castle. Though he did not wear a physical body, there was more solidity and substance to his shimmering form than in most humans I had known. When his cold stare shifted to me, it came near halting my steps. Yet my eyes did not linger on the demon lord. The two other players took my breath.
They alone among the crowd kept on with their activity, the intensity of their friendly combat causing the rest of the world to fade into insubstantiality. On the left was a woman arrayed in a silver gown, studded with diamonds that sparkled in the light as she leaned forward to move the carved game pieces. Her hair was a cloud of gold, caught up on one side with a diamond butterfly. Her laugh was the sound of chiming bells I had heard earlier, and her porcelain cheek flushed with triumphant delight as she knocked her opponent’s game piece away with a slender hand, ringed with sapphires. I wanted to close my eyes before I looked into hers. Cold blue demon fire had no place in a vision so strikingly beautiful.
Her opponent was less remarkable in appearance than either of the others, a slender, fair-haired man of middle age and middling height, with a short, neatly trimmed beard. His aura was a brilliance of blue and purple and swirling gray-green, and indeed he wore a tight-fitting shirt and trousers of deep-hued blue and purple, shining black boots, and a gray-green cloak that shimmered like water in dappled sunlight. Yet it was on his face that my eyes settled and with his laughter of resigned good-humor that my blood took fire. He stood and bowed to the lady, yielding the field of battle to the beautiful victor, and when he at last turned his face to me, I saw a cocky smile and eyes that burned blue with demon fire and unending good humor. He was the one, the rai-kirah of my last battle, the cheerful being who had destroyed my life, who had driven me mad with dreams, the demon who had lured me away from the world I knew and into the heart of all my fears.
CHAPTER 23
“So what shall we call him, Vallyne? You know it will be three hundred years until he yields his name. He’s shown himself a stubborn fellow. Can’t just call him Yddrass. There’d be unending confusion, since we now have two Wardens, even though we do not abuse Merryt’s name—much to his sorrow.” The slight, blond-bearded demon wrinkled his nose in distaste at my escort, then chuckled and walked around me as if I were a piece of statuary. “I suppose we’ll have to make something up, like ‘Visitor,’ or ‘Horse thief’—not to offend you, ylad, as I’ve no reason to believe you have ever stolen a horse—or ‘Bonechewer.’ I think the Gastai once called him that. Or maybe we could call him ‘Scarface.’ ” With his hands clasped behind his back, he stood on his toes and peered at my left cheek. Nothing in his frivolous chattering gave any sign that he had ever encountered me before.
“I see no need to call him anything,” said Denas. The storm that had gathered during our first interview had only receded. The brooding anger was an extension of his luminous form, spreading across the room as if the lack of solid boundaries to his body allowed his raw emotions to spill out. “He is ylad filth.” With nothing more than a slight tip of his head, the grim demon lord dismissed the rest of the murmuring onlookers. The gaudy crowd retreated slowly—reluctantly it seemed—into the cluttered shadows of the vast room.
The lady did not move from her seat at the game table, but rested her chin on her hand as she watched the rest of us, amusement playing over her features. I kept trying to look away, to judge and learn of this place and its inhabitants, but I found it very difficult. She was extraordinarily lovely. Her lips were wider than the accepted form of beauty in my world, but they balanced her wide-set eyes perfectly, as if nature had saved such a combination only for its most sublime subject. Those eyes—their radiance promising mystery and magic like the stars of the night sky—were huge and green. Of course no artifice of color could mask the truth of her nature. Yet never had a demon been housed in such a pleasing form, and never had I felt such danger as I did in the moment of her attention. “I think we shall call him
Fyadd
.” Her voice was low and warm, disturbing senses I believed long dead beneath the ruin of my flesh. Exile, she named me.
I bowed to her, not trusting my voice to answer, hiding my shaking hands behind my back. Their condition was not likely to improve if I was to see much of the lady.
She fastened her green eyes upon my own and smiled, a radiant beam of sunlight piercing that gloomy world. “And don’t think to carry him off to your den of torment, dear Vyx. He is my very own. Denas offered me any gift of my choosing to prove his affection, and this is what I’ve chosen. I think my lord is much annoyed with me and not affectionate at all. I think perhaps he rues his bargain.” Her wicked humor had the demon lord bristling, and I wrenched my eyes away from the two of them, lest my noting of it set loose the hurricane he held in check by such thin tethers.
The slender, bearded demon she called Vyx spun about in an eye-blurring twirl, ending up reclined on a cushion at the lady’s feet. His physical body had disappeared, and only his light-drawn image remained—the same mischievous face, the same slender shape, but the purple and blue and swirling gray-green were now his essence and not just the color of his clothing. “Ah, but lady, to find you trifling with grim Denas and a mind-dead ylad . . . it is just too wretched. I thought you were to be mine alone.”
“What you thought is of no consequence, mad sprite. I’ve heard tales of this Warden, and I
will
have him as my companion. Denas is full of himself and his plans for glory. You are full of mischief and your wanderings. You’ve left me without amusement for far too long. No, this one is mine until I tire of him, and you’ll have to devise some quite spectacular entertainment to get him away from me. Now go. Summon a servant to put him with my other pets.”
“As you say, dear lady.” Vyx bowed elaborately and vanished.
Denas growled and folded his well-muscled arms. “You’ve no idea what you’re playing at, Vallyne. Merryt says he is half a simpleton, but he is still an yddrass, and he killed the Naghidda. We should interrogate him and be done with it. There are important questions to be answered before Rhadit leads us . . .” Denas glanced at me with bitter hatred. “. . . to our destiny.”
“We had a bargain, good sir” said the lady. “I claim my prize, and you can do nothing about it. What do I care for your quest for glory?” The lady, her silver gown and her diamonds glittering in the light, smiled wickedly and held out her empty wineglass to Denas, who snatched a carafe from the table and refilled it. She took a sip, then raised the glass to the guests who yet lingered in the shadows. “No matter where fate and plotting take the rest of you, my life will ever be here in Kir’Vagonoth.”
Only when her eyes passed over my companion did Vallyne’s radiance dim. “If you remember, dear Denas, I told you to keep your vile messenger out of my presence.” She drained her glass of wine and beckoned another demon to her game table.
Denas jerked his head at Merryt. Merryt nodded politely, but his fingers dug deep into my already bruised arms until I thought the bone might snap. “What the devil does she want with you?” he mumbled. As a shimmering green figure appeared in front of me, extending a cold demon hand to wrap itself about my neck, the Ezzarian bowed to the lady’s back, whispering from the side of his mouth, “If there is a rotted soul among these villains, friend, it is she who claims you. Watch your tongue and your back. I’ll find you again when I can.”
Merryt’s advice was lost on me. The lady was laughing as I was led away, and despite every warning, including the screaming signals of doom inside my own head, I let the music of it fill my emptiness. Chiming bells, singing strings of harp and lute, the first birdsong after silent winter—never had I heard melodies so lovely, played on an instrument so sweet. Even the parting glare from Denas gave me no pause. All I wanted was to sleep forever with that music playing inside my head. I was so very tired.
Fortunately my desires were modest. I sensed that I would derive little enlightenment from the next phase of my life in Kir’Vagonoth—the name the demons gave to their land of snow and wind and frost butterflies. With his invisible leash the green-clad demon dragged me through room after room of opulent furnishings and magnificently set tables—all of them dim and deserted—into a barren courtyard paved with gray brick and sheltered from the worst of snow and wind by high walls and a latticed roof. There he gave me a green loincloth in exchange for Merryt’s lovely warm cloak, boots, and clothing, and promptly deposited me in a corner with fifteen snarling dogs.
“You will speak to no one without the mistress’s command. The gate to this yard is locked and will warn us if you attempt to escape. The penalties for disobedience will be severe.” He tightened his invisible grip on my lungs, shutting off my breathing quite effectively until my eyes went dark. When the demon let go and I had breath again, I nodded and shrank back into the corner, sinking to the floor with my back to the cold brick wall. I understood severe.