Demon Lord
Bane listened to the girl’s soft movements. 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, yet held his anger in check, 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 today. 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 went on, “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 bright 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.”
“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 the Black Lord’s ebon visage, leaving unrelieved blackness. Bane fell into a shallow, restless sleep, plagued by the endless pain.
Bane rested the following day, stretched out on his bed with an arm over his eyes. The girl sat with him, and he marvelled at her apparently infinite patience, wondering what she was thinking about. Was she lost in a daydream of the peaceful life she longed for? Questions about her role in the conflict nagged him, and he considered the possibility that at least some of what she had said might be true. She must have thought him asleep, for she looked up with a startled expression when he lowered his arm and asked, “Why did the healers leave you in the forest?”
“It was my time to leave the abbey and start my life as a healer.”
“They placed you right in my path, as if they wanted me to find you.”
“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. “Yet they fled themselves.”
“They were afraid. You found out how to torture us.”
“My father says you were sent to kill me.”
“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 ached 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 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, burnt the old bedding and provided 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 had been able to harm him. The snakes’ venom was useless against him, for his father had 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. When he was old enough, he had 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 encounter a demon until he was much older, although now he suspected that some of the attendants 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 suffering. Sympathy and kindness were for the weak, and shunned by the strong.
Eventually, 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 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.