cobbled lane and heading toward the shuttered window that was its objective. “The two assassins charged with securing the escape way are arrived. Paterfamilias.”
“Unneeded, now!” The daemon was exhilarated by the prospect of the conclusion of his hunt, the kill and the feeding. The ether was torn just at that moment by the arrival of the force. “Now, my dear hound! Into that place, and we will have our sport!”
With the vital energy of its procreator filling its body and mind, Rheachan, hound and child, felt as if it could conquer the multiverse. How great and all-knowing the Paterfamilias was! Perhaps if it did well this night, that one would consent to mingle with Rheachan always, so that Rheachan would be as strong and smart as Poxpanus. It sent its desire to the Paterfamilias, along with its hound’s lust for savage killing and devouring of blood… and soul, too. This primordial urge swept through Rheachan and into Poxpanus, and both were one and glad.
“I have it now,” the daemon crooned mentally to its hound-child. “The life of the sprat, the vibrations of the bitch who was to care for it-so easy to read, to know, to find anywhere now.”
“No need to think of future hunts. Paterfamilias. I will rend them both for you now.”
Then the liquid stuff struck Rheachan, and the agony of its burning made Poxpanus writhe in his hidden cell as if the Netherlord himself had been subjected to the assault. In the confusion of the pain, the daemon allowed his hound free rein. The pain drove Rheachan into a murderous frenzy, of course, and the thing forgot all caution in its desire to avenge itself upon the miserable human female who had dared to so harm its corporeal form. Then the cylinder too went home, and the nether-hound and its father were suffused with even greater torment as the blessed silver struck, vaporized, and destroyed the eye of the hound.
“Revenge!” The mental scream shook Rheachan and infused it with new strength and purpose. So too the assurance that followed: “Slay, feed, and then I will bring you to me, hound-child. Your eye will grow again, your vision be better still, for I will suffuse your being with more of me!”
It was a fleeting communication, one that scarcely required any consideration. Rheachan reached forth, and the offending female human was no more. There was no reason for feeding, not on such a puny force as that one offered. Neither was the other female worthwhile… at least not immediately. A tiny human cub was there before Rheachan’s remaining eye, and its vitality belied its diminutive size. That one’s blood was ten times more desirable than the others’. The nether-hound reached greedily for the babe.
“Wait!”
The mental cry of warning reached the hound-thing too late-or perhaps Rheachan ignored the call. Rage and hunger had driven it beyond thought. This made it quite unaware of other forces that were suddenly impinging upon the space it was in. More than impinging. The forces were indeed in the room almost Instantly. They attacked Rheachan then, and it baffled the hound-thing. All it desired was to devour the infant, and there was something in its way, something that tore at the hound and prevented Rheachan from its evil desire. Then the nether-hound howled and ravened and died.
The very web that Poxpanus had woven to protect himself prevented the daemon from assisting his offspring. The netherlord could have been with Rheachan in a split-second, using his powers to prevent what occurred, but his own wards prevented that. Only the mental link was possible, and that was now unbreakable as well. When Poxpanus tried to disengage the bond he found that something interfered.
The umbilical connection between daemon and hound-child was affixed by some outside force that Poxpanus could not fight, locked just as the netherlord was kept tight within a fortress of his own construction. As Rheachan howled and ravened and was destroyed, a similar fate befell the daemon sire of the hound.
It wasn’t actually death to Poxpanus, of course. The netherlord suffered pain and loss, but at least here, on this plane, it could not be slain. Not so the hound-child. And when Rheachan shed its ichor and died, a portion of Poxpanus, progenitor of the monstrosity, was annihilated. The shock of the loss was traumatic in many ways. The daemon lord tried to see its tormentors through Rheachan’s dying eye. The glaring orb revealed nothing to him, and when it flickered into nothingness, something within the daemon snapped. Poxpanus raged round his carefully created fortress, destroying it as a maddened boar would tear the earth when wounded. With occult forces went wood and stone too, until the chamber was a gaping wreckage of rubble and slag.
Colvetis Pol’s personal servants found the place in this state the next day and reported the fact to their master. The priest pondered long on It thereafter, when servants of his master informed him that the daemon lord was now chained in Hades until his madness could work itself out and Poxpanus could assume some minor role in the hierarchy of the nether planes once again. Pol disappeared shortly after that. Some said he went to Hades to serve Nerull, but others whispered that the once-priest was now a hermit seeking holiness in the wilderness.
Chapter 5
“Eat that gruel, you miserable little bastard, or I’ll thump your gourd!”
Leena the crone was in a fairly cheerful mood this morning, so she didn’t bother to carry out her threat. Satisfied with a sharp pinch that made the toddler yowl, she went off to see what she could discover in the refuse heaps along the Old City’s nearby wall. The day was warm, and that made her feel less irritable than usual. Cold made her old bones ache and her temper more foul than was usual even for Leena.
Why did she bother to care for the nasty little runt? The question bothered Leena, for she couldn’t honestly and fully answer it. Somehow she felt the brat had something to do with her luck, or perhaps her very existence. She wasn’t certain of that-but then again, she was not certain about a lot of important matters, including who she really was, where she came from, or why she didn’t just end her misery by ending her own life.
Leena thought she knew one important thing, though. The brat’s presence seemed to have something to do with her being able to continue to stay alive… at least, as long as she was inclined to do so. Some benefactor of the little bastard must watch over the place they lived in. Sometimes when Leena returned from one of her forays, when the hovel she and the runt shared had been empty for a while, she found evidence of that. One time a small sack of meal would appear, another time a pot of soup, and sometimes even a few small coins or a nice piece of woolen cloth.
“Stay out of here, witch-crone!” The warning came from a stick-thin drab who had taken up residence near the Slum Quarter’s refuse dump. Leena didn’t see the woman’s old man around, so instead of trying to avoid trouble, she stopped and stared at her.
“Shrivel your teats!” Leena shouted, and then she cackled loudly as she continued to glare at the drab. The whole display wasn’t much of a threat, but it did seem to have the desired effect, for the skinny woman covered her face and ducked inside the decaying old structure that housed her and the hairy old ragpicker who lived with her. A rock came sailing out of the doorway, but landed ineffectually a few feet away from where Leena stood.
Still cackling, Leena shuffled on her way. Being old and ugly had its advantages, yes indeed. When had she been young? Lovely? Leena knew that there must have been such a time. Deep inside herself she was sure of it. But she had no conscious memory of being anything other than Leena the Crone, no recollection of a time when she had done anything other than care for the skinny brat who shared her slovenly home.
The gangs of boys from the Labor Quarter and the Beggars Quarter were her worst nightmare. Sometimes Leena dreamed about them, and they took the shapes of terrible monsters as they came near. Then a noble warrior would intervene, or the brat would come into her dream and change into a giant who frightened off the dirty pack of boy-demons. Some laugh, that. Leena kept a long knife under her dirty old blanket, the same wrap that served her as a cloak when she went out. That way she was certain that she had real protection. The witch stuff, the shouting and cackling, didn’t work as well with the gangs as it did with other sorts of adversaries. But they usually only bothered her when she strayed from the area between the rubbish dump and her place in the abandoned tannery, so with care there was no problem-other than finding food and a few little things to add to her comfort.
“Glory!” The exclamation sprang unbidden to her lips. A whole bundle of wax tapers had been discarded along with someone’s garbage. The breaks in the candles weren’t too bad, and the oiled cloth they were rolled in was a minor treasure in itself. Leena bent down and began scrabbling around in earnest in that particular pile of debris. Perhaps there was more good stuff to be had.
At an earlier time inside Old City, even within the slums, and outside in the New Town as well, others conducted their own searches even more carefully than old Leena scavenged for the means to stay alive. The word
