The Road to Magic (Book 1 of the Way of the Demon Series) (27 page)

Suddenly Oleg heard a quiet whisper: ‘Have pity… the child. Don’t… kill… it…’ whispered the shapeshifter.

‘I said I wouldn’t harm her! I don’t pick fights with pregnant women, no matter whose their children might be. If you hadn’t attacked, I wouldn’t have touched you, either! We’d have made it look as if I had captured you, then you could have run away and that would have been it. Why did you attack?’

‘I had… to try… You knew about her… I decided … not to risk it… People are slow… I would have done it… You’re not a human!... I only realized… when I hit you… Try to help… her… Have pi…’ The shapeshifter didn’t manage to say the last word. The transformation was complete, and the naked body of a man of thirty was spread in front of Oleg, his chest run through with a sword. The body shuddered weakly for the last time, a little stream of dark blood flowed from the mouth and the shapeshifter lay still. Oleg looked around.

The peasants had fled during the shapeshifter’s attack and now they were sitting behind their fences in the nearby yards. The most heroic among them had bravely watched what had been happening on the square through a crack in the shutters. The village chief was desperately tugging at his trousers which had caught on the fence as he had tried to scramble over, sticking his considerable backside out. Mariska was sobbing bitterly not far off.

Oleg went over to her: ‘Don’t cry. Otherwise the villagers may suspect something. He was a good man, even though he was a shapeshifter. But you can cry at home. And another thing, when you give birth, make sure there is someone at your side who’s reliable even if they’re not experienced. Someone who knows what form the child will take. And teach him to hide himself when he’s young. Don’t let him transform himself in front of people. Do you need any money?’

‘No. Go away! Murderer!’

‘I offered to end it peacefully. But I know you can’t understand that now. Don’t worry. I’ll go. But you’d do better not to stay here, either. And don’t go up to the body. They’re watching us and they might suspect you. Go away!’

Oleg watched the girl, stumbling and hiding her face as she moved towards the gates of the square. And then he went over to the village chief hanging on the fence. Hearing steps behind him, he twitched desperately. A crack rang out and, leaving a considerable scrap of his trousers on the fence, and Nezhdan tumbled down. Without wasting time to see what was approaching him, he scrambled swiftly up a tall apple tree growing in the garden. Oleg couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Where are you going, venerable chief?’ he called. Nezhdan jerked frantically, almost breaking the branch he was sitting on, and finally turned around. On seeing Oleg, he gave a huge sigh of relief.

‘Ah, it’s you, Hunter! And where is it?’ He pulled a ghastly face which evidently was meant to indicate the shapeshifter.

‘In the square.’

‘Have you killed it?’ The village chief began to calm down, but didn’t let go of the trunk of his apple tree.

‘Yes, yes, I killed it,’ Oleg reassured him, and called out loudly: ‘Hey, you can come out now. Your shapeshifter’s dead!’

The people looked cautiously out from behind the doors and seeing Oleg standing there calmly, they came out onto the square. Some of them were already looking at the body of the shapeshifter, cautiously poking it with their feet.

‘Why, it’s Vadek,’ one of them recognized the dead man. ‘A hired man from outside the village. Frol hired him last year. He was a quiet, peaceful chap. No-one would have thought it!’

Oleg walked away from the fence.

‘Burn the body,’ he ordered. ‘Oh, and someone help our venerable Nezhdan,’ he added glancing at the creaking apple tree.

All eyes turned on the village chief. Under the gaze of his fellow villagers he wriggled vigorously on his branch, trying to hide the tear in his trousers. The first laugh rang out. The chief jerked, trying to get down. The branch couldn’t withstand his efforts and broke with a great swish. The laughter turned to guffaws. With a loud and very unprintable noise the chief landed in a patch of nettles which was growing under the apple tree. Some of the villagers, unable to stand up for laughing, collapsed right onto the cobbles. The chief’s flow of unprintable words turned into a long and extremely heated speech in which particular attention was paid to the fragile tree with brittle branches, the cursed shapeshifter and the nettles, as well as to the idiotic villagers and their extremely perverted sexual relations with one another and with him, the venerable village chief Nezhdan The latter had a clear hint at homosexuality and the chief was always in the active position. By the end of his speech more than half the villagers were rolling around in fits of laughter. Oleg decided to raise the temperature a little more and uttered with an imperturbable expression on his face:

‘Venerable Nezhdan has already made his own way down, with a little help from the law of gravity, and as such the former order is annulled. Now, would someone help him crawl out of the nettles.’

At that the laughter infected even the most stoical.

In the afternoon Oleg set off along the main road once again. His newly-earned three hundred gold pieces jingled in his purse and a record that he had killed a shapeshifter had appeared in his “Hunter’s Certificate”, so he was one step further to achieving one of his goals – imperial nobility. If he obtained that, it might considerably ease his time at the Academy of magicians, since the majority of magicians were from the gentry and Oleg suspected that relations between students without a good family line and their more aristocratic fellow-students – and maybe even the teachers, too – might be less than the best. He certainly didn’t want to turn the whole five-year course into one long uninterrupted battle with everyone, so for that he had to collect enough dead Unclean over the next month to hand in an application to the relevant imperial office. There was virtually no bureaucracy in the Empire, so such matters, which were under the direct patronage of the Emperor himself, should not take long at all. The main thing was to collect enough monsters.

Despite all this reasoning, Oleg was not too happy about the second record in his “Certificate”. If anything, quite the opposite. Although it was a very weighty record – shapeshifters were considered dangerous opponents – it was the first time Oleg had killed an intelligent being, not to save his own life or that of his friends, but simply for money. And what’s more, right in front of the woman the shapeshifter was defending. Oleg’s conscience suddenly woke up and tried to interrogate him. He had already prepared himself for a long moral lecture when suddenly the resilient scales of a demon rose up to meet Conscience’s sharp claws.

‘He attacked by himself! I gave him the chance to leave in peace!’

But Conscience didn’t give in. It made another attempt to penetrate his shield.

‘He attacked because he was defending his beloved. With your careless words you could have given their secret away and then they would have killed her! What else could he have done? You killed him, and then afterwards you offered money to the woman carrying his child. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

And a reply came to Oleg’s mind; a complete and all-embracing answer. It was a reply that would explain not only his action but also the fact that, although he was admittedly feeling a certain amount of discomfort, he was nevertheless not torturing himself too much over it…

‘I am a demon! I defended my life! And if some shapeshifter tries to attack me again, I will kill it again, even if a whole harem of pregnant females is waiting for it! And now, shut up! I’m hungry!’

Oleg was really starving. Tucking in heartily to the cheese and sausage sandwiches he’d bought in the village and washing them down with some light local wine from his flask he continued pondering whether there was much of a human left in him. He came to the conclusion that, after he had lost the ability to feel pangs of conscience, there was really very little. But oddly enough, he didn’t experience any particular disappointment. Was it the imperceptible and gradual transformation of ethical norms, or the fact that, had he remained a human sticking strictly to the commandment “thou shalt not kill”, he would have been dead many times over? It didn’t matter. The main thing was that, thinking over Heliona’s warning about the possibility of becoming a demon, Oleg no longer felt his former fear and repulsion. What’s more, such thoughts didn’t in any way diminish his resolve to enter the Academy and to finally become a magician.

Chapter Ten

Imperial Prince

Oleg had been riding through the Trir Empire for three weeks. In that short time he’d managed to complete over twenty commissions, more than the required number of killed Unclean. Now the magically made copy of his “Certificate” filled with entries of the monsters he’d killed was making its arduous journey in the innards of the Imperial Office while Oleg himself set off with hurried steps towards Volgrad, the Imperial town closest to Valensia. That was where the session of the committee for conferring titles was to be held.

The sun had already passed its zenith and was relentlessly dipping toward sunset when Oleg rode up to the next fork in the imperial high road. A small settlement could be seen not far off and Oleg fell to thinking. He would be able to ride another ten miles before sundown but in that case he would most likely have to spend the night in the open. On the other hand, stopping at this little village would mean that his journey would be over for the day.

He didn’t just want to waste time idly. There were only three weeks left until the start of the Academy’s entrance exams and his personal account of slain unclean was almost complete – well, he could add two or three werewolves to round things off - and that is why a delay on the road to Volgrad was undesirable.

Finally, his mind made up, he spurred his stallion on. What the heck, he still had some money. And the chance to sit in a cosy inn with a mug of beer and food cooked over an open fire was too good to pass up. What’s more, his ribs were constantly griping that despite all its faults, a soft mattress on a bed in an inn was way better than bare, hard earth. Fortunately, his demonic scales were impervious not only to those unclean creatures who inhabited various gullies and impasses but also to those more earthly six-legged ones who multiplied in the local bedcovers and went by the name of bed bugs.

‘I wonder, do they have good beer in the local inn?’ Oleg mused as he bobbed up and down regularly on the back of his four-hoofed, one horse powered land rover, contentedly watching the tilled fields floating by on either side of the road. ‘I hope so... If push comes to shove, and the inn keeper tries to pushes some crap under my nose, I’ll smash his face in. As God is holy, I’ll beat the hell out of him!

At this point he interrupted his high-brow musings and took a good look at a woman who was coming towards him. She was not very tall - Oleg reckoned she wouldn’t even come up to his chest – rather pale, with an unremarkable face, but she was so wonderfully formed that just one look at her was enough to make Oleg remember with great regret that it was a long, long time – since he had left Maidell – since he had had the chance of close contact with the fairer sex. Alas. Travelling through Trir, not halting anywhere for long, he had not had time for any even slightly prolonged courtship and as for availing himself of the services of the bar maids, well, simple, basic squeamishness kept him in check.

Looking at the proudly held, elegant head, the crowning mane of long, fair hair freely flowing considerably lower than the slim waist emphasized by a graceful pinafore dress, he bitterly regretted not being able to stay in this village for more than twenty-four hours.

Once he’d ridden up to the girl he decided to call out to her seeing as she didn’t seem at all shy of strangers. To all appearances, the local baron rigorously fulfilled his aristocratic duty to protect his peasants.

‘Greetings, O beautiful stranger,’ he began, using deliberately refined language, well aware that this formula coupled with his appearance as an Imperial Hunter - in other words, a nobleman - would have the best possible effect on a village beauty. ‘Pray tell a lost traveller, what is this village I see before me?’

‘With the highest assent of the universe, the said settlement was so built that it bears a sad name, for Tearful is it called.’

Oleg froze, dumbstruck – such an answer was in the best traditions of refined language of a distinguished lady in the highest circles of the Trir Empire, and certainly not from those of some simple peasant girl!

‘Might it please you to know anything else, Lir Knight? I would gladly help a nobleman, though hurry I must, for t’is my wish to be home by sundown.’

‘No, I thank you, Lady,’ Oleg replied, automatically switching into an equally refined register. ‘There is but one matter irking my soul – it would please me to know the name of the splendid lady whom I met on my way to the Abode of Tears. Might it be you have, perchance, strayed from your path? Might you require, perchance, some assistance to reach your dwelling?’

On taking a closer look Oleg realised that the lady approaching him was no peasant. The bare feet of the lone beauty coming towards him had fooled him. What peasant wench could afford to wear a pinafore dress of real spider’s silk, worth two or three whole hamlets like the one in front of him? And those elegant hands which had obviously never held anything heavier than an embroidery needle could in no way belong to a lady of lowly birth.

‘Looks as though I’ve somehow run into a mournful lady from the highest echelons of the aristocracy,’ Oleg thought. ‘Pity... Such a beauty and completely crazy... what normal girl would start addressing the first hunter she met in ‘high’ language? I hope her retinue, or whoever is meant to be keeping an eye out for her, is not far away.’

‘My name is... but is it really important? Though you may call me Korrie.’

And she suddenly broke off her speech and finished very simply: ‘And there’s no need to take me anywhere. I live close by.’ She waved her hand in the direction of a small river flowing nearby – actually it was more like a creek, its bank thickly overgrown with rushes.

Hesitating slightly, the girl raised her eyes and Oleg – barely holding back a gasp of wonder – literally drowned in her bottomless, unbelievably, impossibly blue eyes, just like the surface of the sea, still and glassy as a mirror.

‘Come by this evening,’ she said, averting her gaze, and suddenly stepped abruptly to one side, almost instantly hiding herself in the high wheat.

‘Hey, but where?’ Oleg called after her but there was no reply. The wind gently ruffled the wheat and if Oleg had not just seen with his own eyes how the girl had walked into it, he could have sworn that there was nothing larger than a cat or a mouse in that field.

‘Is she crawling off on all fours or what?’ he wondered as he rode up to the edge of the village. ‘Ah to hell with it!’ Oleg dropped the puzzle of this enigmatic, crazy girl as he rode up to the edge of the hamlet. No matter how lovely her external appearance was, no matter how intense and alluring the look in her mysterious eyes, a cold beer and a warm bed were much more appealing to the weary traveller.

‘Is there at least one decent inn in this stone age camp?’ Oleg asked a dirty-faced little lad as he ran by.

‘That there is!’ he called out cheerily. ‘You need to go to Uncle Griv’s. That’s his place, there,’ and he pointed with a wave of his hand.

‘Are you sure it’s decent?’

‘Surely, surely,’ confirmed the lad cheerily. ‘It’s the most decent, and the most indecent, for there is no other! T’is the only one we have.’

Smiling at this reasoning, Oleg tossed the home-spun philosopher a copper and turned his horse towards Uncle Griv’s inn.

To his surprise, the inn was indeed not bad. At least, judging from the careful way he handled the fighting stallion, the stable boy who took Thunder was experienced enough and the four copper coins he asked for oats for the horse was a perfectly normal and acceptable price.

What’s more, as became apparent a little later, the inn keeper’s beer was not bad at all, and the pork stew was hot – simply fantastic!

Relaxed, Oleg unhurriedly sipped another mug of beer, savouring it as he thought over a most difficult dilemma: should he go up to his room straight away once this blessed liquid finished, or let another one or two mugs in?

On the one hand, the beer was good and a chance like this - the chance for a hunter to really relax – was a rare commodity in his nomadic life. Oleg knew himself pretty well and could suppose with some certainty that if he said: ‘just one more’ now then the matter would most certainly not end with just one and that meant getting up tomorrow would be delayed and difficult. Which, taking into account his all too meager funds, would be most a most sorry occurrence. And anyway, a hangover is not a pleasant thing at all.

It was at that very moment that a delicate little cough resounded near his table. Looking up Oleg saw a stumpy little man who was clearly beyond middle age, shuffling from one foot to the other and screwing a simple hat in his hands.

‘You, er, your honour, wouldn’t happen to be a hunter, would you?’ he asked once he was sure he had Oleg’s attention.

‘The very same,’ Oleg nodded, putting down his unfinished beer mug with a heavy sigh and silently rejoicing that he hadn’t managed to get himself seriously drunk already. It looked as though there might be work for him in this village and engaging in hunting monsters in a drunken state – well, that was by far not the best form of suicide.

‘Well, have a seat, honourable...’ he paused.

‘Terpin. The village chief I am,’ the man replied promptly. ‘I have business for you, honourable hunter... Sad business...’

‘My name is Arioch,’ Oleg introduced himself with a slight nod of the head. ‘How can I help you?’

‘There’s a korrigan among us,’ the chief hung his head sadly. ‘There you are. Five hundred gold pieces. It’s all I’ve managed to collect. Alas, our village is not a wealthy one.’

‘A korrigan?’ said Oleg, amazed, throwing himself back in his chair. ‘But they were all exterminated long ago!’ And indeed, those river maidens or ‘spidery widows’ as the local peasants called them, a type of unclean living in the creeks of Trir and making men fall in love with them – with usually fatal consequences– had been considered destroyed more than a decade ago.

‘Exterminated, aye, exterminated they may be, but there’s one resides here... May Hel take her!’ the chief cursed. ‘Well, will you take it?’ and he pushed the purse over to Oleg who was thinking it over seriously. On the one hand, his hunter’s account was almost full and there was no need at all to risk taking on such a dangerous opponent as a korrigan. The couple of fog beings he had destroyed last week were quite enough to arouse the Committee for Nobility’s respect, so he could easily manage without taking any risks. He only needed to destroy two or three lower vampires or werewolves on the way to Volgrad.

On the other hand, the sum the village chief was offering was very tempting and besides, one of the last – if not THE last – korrigan would look very good on his “resume”. Admittedly, there was another sticking point here. Korrigans belonged to the so-called “intelligent” unclean and Oleg had had no desire to hunt them down.

Weighing all these arguments, Oleg happened to glance into Terpin’s eyes and was struck by the anguish they held.

‘Were there many victims?’ he asked rather unexpectedly.

‘I buried my son last week,’ Terpin answered hoarsely, turning his eyes away.

‘The korrigan?’

‘The very same...! She was his bride. We were planning the wedding but he went out of the yard one evening, thought the cow was mooing kind of funny, and he only came back the next morning... fell under the Song, he did.... his eyes were crazed, he obviously weren’t himself... he was consumed in three days... So will you take this job?’ the chief asked persistently, looking at Oleg searchingly.

‘I’ll take it!’ Oleg said decisively, taking the purse. ‘Hey, inn keeper! A ginger beer! – I’ll go this evening,’ he said in reply to the chief’s silent question, sipping the refreshing drink from his mug and straining to remember everything he knew about korrigans.

And indeed, not that much was known about them at all. Korrigans - splendid maidens of the creeks - had lived in Trir since ancient times. They appeared as incredibly beautiful and attractive women, especially at night. They had been considered one of the best matches for the highest nobility and not a few offspring of well-known families had spent their nights by creeks where a korrigan had been noticed in the hopes that the beautiful stream maiden might turn her attention on them.

But alas, the curse sent on Trir had hit them, too. The korrigan turned from splendid, loving maidens and wives into devilish darkness. Since then, the Song of Love which the stream maidens sang had become the Song of Death, bewitching men and luring them into the singer’s dwelling. The night which had formerly been the harbinger of a joyous wedding turned into the night of death. Once you’d known the caress of a korrigan it was impossible to survive. And the bones of the hapless husbands were fashioned into wonderful arbours on the river banks into which, on moonlit nights, the korrigan would sit and entice new victims.

And there was more. If, either from fright or from love of their own girl or bride, anyone summoned up the strength to refuse the love of the ‘she-spiders’ – that is what the country folk called the transformed korrigan – then not three days would pass before that man died as though consumed by an invisible fire.

As luck would have it, the korrigan themselves were rather vulnerable. You could kill them with ordinary steel, let alone with silvered weapons. Or enchanted ones. However, victory over a korrigan in close combat was far from easy and many bones which had formerly belonged to Hunters of the Unclean now served as building materials for the graceful arbours on the river banks.

***

Twilight fell unnoticed. With a sigh, Oleg looked his sword over for the last time, ran his fingers over the blade, tested the point, yelped, licked the scratch and thrust his trusty blade into the scabbard. It was time to begin the hunt.

Going beyond the village fence he made his way down to the creek and slowly strolled by the flowing water. He didn’t have to wait long.

It was as though the mysterious twinklings of moonlight suddenly blinked, transforming into previously unnoticed shades, as though the rushes rustled with a slightly different sound, the murmuring of the brook suddenly mingled with a most intricate and tender melody, and Oleg heard the wordless and compelling song of the korrigan.