Demon Sword

stopped believing. Now he wasn't so sure. When the hexer said he would not see the demon, she implied that she was going to conjure it inside him. In the morning Toby Strangerson might inform the laird that he had changed his mind and would be a loyal servant to Lady Valda; the laird would let him depart as a free man — but how free? And would he be a man at all? What were these four voiceless, masked figures? Were they really human? Would he be another of those?

Lady Valda returned, clutching a vellum scroll. 'Hold your breath and lie still.' She placed a shod foot on his chest and put her weight on it.

He heaved with his shoulders and dislodged her. She stepped down hurriedly to regain her balance. She made a tutting sound of annoyance. 'Don't be foolish, boy. This is your last chance! If you do not cooperate, I shall make you scream at the top of your lungs for a solid hour. A husky lad like you can endure my weight for a few minutes.'

She stepped up and stood full on his chest. She weighed less than he had expected. He could breathe. The manacles dug into his wrists and back, but the pain was bearable, if it did not last too long.

She unrolled the scroll. She read out a proclamation in a guttural language he did not know. It went on for several minutes, the words rolling around the chamber, raising a deep echo he had not noticed before. When she finished, the silence returned. Could a silence grow denser?

She stepped off him and walked back to her table. He drew a long breath. He had a horrible suspicion that his living body had just been dedicated as a sacrifice to… something.

For a while after that, she did not touch him. She walked around him several times, sprinkling various powders from small vials, each time repeating a formula in that same harsh tongue. The flames on the four candles seemed to grow longer. The four human candlesticks never moved. If they blinked, Toby did not catch them at it. She placed a pinch of powder on each of his shoulders, on his heart, his forehead, his sporran. After her next visit to the table, she knelt down beside him, heedless of the damage the rough rock floor could do to her fine gown. She laid the little golden bowl on his chest as if he were a table, and he sensed that the preliminaries were over. How could a man be so cold and still sweat so much? Evil had come to the glen. Terrible things were about to happen.

She had brought the dagger back, too. The quillons were silver, elaborately inlaid with dark red stone. The pommel was a startling yellow gem as big as the top joint of his thumb. She raised both arms as high as she could, clasping the dagger by its quillons, point down. If she dropped it from there, it would go straight into his heart. Her lips moved, but this time she made no sound. She seemed to be addressing the weapon itself, or offering it to some unseen presence near the roof. The jewel on the pommel glittered, reflecting the candlelight. Her victim listened helplessly to his own breath and the thud of his heart.

He noticed… No, he refused to believe… Admit it! The chamber was growing brighter. The vault of the roof was in clear view and parts of the rock walls shone wetly. The candle flames had become almost invisible and the jewel no longer glittered. It was the source of the new light, glowing with an impossible internal brightness. Everything he had seen until now could be cynically dismissed as mere playacting, but that baleful radiance blazing from the dagger could not be denied. It was uncanny. This was real gramarye. Soon the gem was too bright to look upon, illuminating the whole chamber to the farthest corner.

The hexer completed her silent incantation and leaned over him. He wondered what horror was coming next. He saw mad exultation in her eyes, but she seemed unaware of him now. He was only part of the furnishings, an altar for her art. She slipped her left breast out of her dress. Holding it steady with one hand, she cut it with the dagger — an easy, offhand slash at the underside, almost contemptuous. She showed no sign of pain, indeed she watched the blood trickling into the golden bowl with a smile of childlike pleasure.

He felt the warmth of it through the metal. He shuddered and closed his eyes. His heart pounded. His head pounded, too. He wondered if he was about to faint. That could not be just his heart he was hearing. Faint and far away, a drum had begun to tap.

Was that part of her gramarye, or could it possibly be a hope of rescue? Had the laird guessed what sort of guest had infested his house? Or perhaps the shrewd old steward, who had seemed so glum? Dum… Dum… Someone was sounding a tattoo. Rousing the guard to rout the evil from Lochy Castle?

Toby felt the bowl being removed from his chest and opened his eyes quickly. Valda had covered herself, but a spreading dark stain on her bodice showed that the wound still bled. She was holding the bowl in one hand, making passes over it with the dagger, mouthing silently. When she was done, she set the dagger aside by laying it on his belly, as the nearest convenient shelf. He tried not to move at all then.

The drum drew closer, but it did not come from the stairway. It seemed to be inside his head. It could never be the fusiliers. That drummer was not of his world. Sweat trickled across his forehead and along his ribs.

'Aha!' The hexer was gazing at him. Her eyes shone with insane excitement, her red lips were drawn back. 'You feel it already?'

She dipped two fingers in the blood and drew a mark on his chest. It felt cold as ice. Another dip, another mark… She was concentrating hard, tongue between her teeth, inscribing some arcane symbol on him. The cold of it burned his skin. A steady yellow light blazed from the dagger, but he could feel no heat, only the winter cold of the sigil. She worked outward — around his nipples, curving down his ribs, up to his collar bones, down almost to his navel.

Dum… Dum… Thundering, the drumming filled the chamber with its relentless steady beat, and now he knew it for the thump of his own heart, magnified to madness. Was this the sound of death? Why so loud? And why so slow? Dum… Dum… Dum… Stop! Stop!

'There!' The hexer cried out in triumph, yet she was barely audible through the pulsing beat. She set the bowl aside. 'You hear me, my love? It is almost done!'

She took up the dagger with her bloody hand. Whatever else she said, Toby heard only the grotesque drumming of his heart. He tried to move and his muscles failed to obey him. Nothing happened at all. He could only stare at the woman's lips moving as she lowered the dagger. She laid the point on the sigil she had drawn on his chest and added another line, cutting his skin to add his blood to hers. He did not feel it. Another… he saw her eyes widen in sudden dismay. She raised the dagger as if to strike.

Shift…

A boy lay chained on a rock-carved floor — a huge and husky boy, but still only a boy, his eyes and mouth stretched wide in terror. He was bare-chested, his body inscribed with obscene demonic heraldry that flickered and glowed as if it were some foul living fire. Beside him knelt a woman in a rich gown, clutching a dagger whose pommel also flamed with loathsome internal light. Standing guard around them, four shrouded figures that were men and yet not men. The hands clutching the candles were human, the eyes were human, but within the robes swirled darkness like living smoke.

The boy's shoulders heaved and his hands came free, a few links of rusty chain dangling from manacles around his wrists. Even for his size, those hands were big, the hands of one who had milked cows in his youth. A massive fist slammed the woman aside as if swatting a bug. She sprawled bodily; the dagger flew off and its yellow light went out.

The drum thundered on; there was no sound but the inexorable beat of the drum. Dum… Dum… Dum…

The boy reached up and gripped the collar around his neck. One of the robed things dropped its candle and dived for the dagger. It leaped back across the chamber in a single bound, robe flapping like bat wings, landing on its knees beside the boy in a move that would have crippled a human. It raised the dagger to strike at his heart.

The boy had snapped the collar. One of his hands moved impossibly fast. It caught the attacker's wrist and jerked it forward. The robed figure sprawled prone over him, the dagger striking the floor beyond. The hand shifted to the thing's bearded chin, its mate came down on its shoulders… there was a momentary pause, and then the cowled head bent back at an impossible angle. The roiling internal darkness shriveled and waned. The hands hurled the carcass away like a discarded pillow.

All light disappeared as the other three watchers dropped their candles and fled to the stairs. Pitch blackness filled the cellar, yet somehow it was visible. Every stone in the barrel ceiling showed in the dark, and dampness shone on the ancient chisel marks of the rock walls as if revealed by bright moonlight or the eerie lavender of a frozen lightning flash.