I cannot begin to locate in the most unfathomable segment of my mind what led me to the Slaughtered Lamb that day. Perhaps it was the scent of aged ale, dust and cobwebs that sparked my fancy, or perhaps it was the crumbled brick here and there that spoke of a strange underlying age beyond the present. All I can remember was the sheer desperation with which I had fled the city cemetery, my hands and face covered in a cold sweat that left me chilled to the bone. Every time I came to visit her, every time I remembered her warm voice and careful teaching, I wanted to scream, to throw my hands around her neck and kill her myself for the reckless position she had accepted. If she had stayed in Kings’ Bough, if she’d thrown our family’s wealth to the dust and dogs, the outcome might have been different. Instead she played her part, the fool, the beloved fool! Now her life lay forfeit at the hands of some fiend, some long since dead remnant that perhaps was as pitiful as I was now, lost without a cause or purpose to call its own.
Why my sister was chosen by its whims I could not understand; why she’d agreed to those whims was even more impenetrable. All I knew was that the combined memories of furious hatred and unspeakable grief had left me sick, both in body and in heart, for the year and a half since her death, and every visit I’d promised her I would make drove me deeper into a sickness of the mind. No more could I stand at the shoulder of her tomb and sob for my own loss; I had to leave, and leave at once. Anywhere would have served; but the Slaughtered Lamb was where my feet carried me at the end of my flight.
Rumors were rampant about the place; about how no self-respecting citizen would ever dare to traverse its commons and come out alive, much less as a tolerable member of society. Perhaps that was the reason I chose the Lamb of all places to run, though it would take time for me to come to that realization. The more inconspicuous, the more silent, the blacker and more alone the setting, the better the choice for me in the fog of my mind, and the Lamb was all too happy to oblige. The rain ushered me in at a rapid pace, and I threw off my dripping cloak at once upon greeting the threshold, blinking into the darkness that flooded the commons.
With time my vision acclimatized to the limited light flickering from the lanterns and torches that provided the patrons a dim glimpse of the drinks they carried against the encroachment of their own sorrows and little else. One of the three patrons bothered to acknowledge my entrance; with a hearty “‘Ello there mistress – might ye be lookin’ fer a good time, then?” and a nasty laugh that set every hair on my body alert, he saluted me with the backside of a tankard and tipped it forward, splashing the majority of it down the front of his already stained tunic rather than into his mouth. I was gone from his attention in the span of a heartbeat as he shouted for another drink to replace his faulty one.
My weary and sodden feet led me to a table in the far corner, unoccupied by drunkards, fellow grievers, or anything else save a small flickering lantern casting a shaded light across the surface of the table. Within moments I realized that another person had taken notice of my arrival; the bartender rose from his stool behind the bar and made his way in my direction, stopping once to admonish the drunkard that had spoken to me and then realize the futility of his speech. He arrived at my table and nodded to me, pulling a tablet of parchment from his back pocket and producing a quill from behind his ear. “I hope you’ll pardon Jhim, milady. He’s got sorrows that no one knows, and with the amount of rot-gut he tosses back I’m not sure I’d like to know them in the end.” A careless smile spread across his face. “But enough on that – what’ll you have? A fine lady like you deserves better, ma’am, no disrespect meant. Our fine establishment here does its best, but the Keep has better.”
I turned my face to him and watched as he let out an involuntary shudder at the sight of my reddened eyes, sweaty countenance, and dripping hem. His eye had been for the cut and fabric of my robe, not for me, and he was very mistaken if he thought I was going to accept his groveling on a night such as the one in question. “Let us make a bargain, barkeep. If you agree not to lick my soaking, aching feet any more than you already have tonight, you may serve me the most expensive shot in your arsenal and I will pay my tab without complaint. Are we agreed?”
He let out a full-bellied laugh in response, his eyes the merriest thing in the entire world against the tragedies laid bare in his establishment. “Pardon me, lady. No licking tonight, I assure you. If you want to be treated like the lowest tavern scum I’d be glad to do that for you too. Anything you ask.” He turned to fill my unusual request, adding, “Besides, with His Majesty here who needs one more high-born to please?”
At first my mouth went dry – the boy Wrynn, in this place of all places on this night of all nights? What could a child king want from a tavern rumored by most to be damned? However, as the bartender made his way back to his station, my wandering gaze settled on another man in the tavern that seemed to fit the bill of nobility. His robe and cloak were of fine and powerful makes, and the adornments he wore on his neck and fingers heightened the sense of command he seemed to carry even from my seat behind him. He stood before a small fireplace in the rear of the tavern, his broad shoulders making a proud and dark line against the flickering flames. His dark hair lay unkempt and careless past his shoulders, blocking his face from view.
The other remarkable things I could discern were the markings that had been branded up the length of his bared arms in black ink. The strange designs were ones I had indeed seen in my learning from her, damn her intelligence and wisdom to the darkest reaches of the Twisting Nether! Those designs would have raised any eyebrow in the world in any other place but this one, where nothing seemed to matter but sorrow, money and the reigning rot-gut. Demonic etchings were something you showed to no company but your own if you expected to survive the night.
With feigned disinterest I studied him out of a need to stare at something other than my own table or my own person. As time passed, I realized he was making small but graceful gestures with his overlarge hands as the shadows from his signing swept across the floor. The bartender approached my table, left the drink I requested and returned again to his bar without interruption as I watched the strange and powerful figure, trying to ascertain the nature of the grand pattern his hands wove. My sister would have known what he was attempting to do; her infernal knowledge of everything had seemed to reach to impossible lengths! If she’d just had the time to teach me before she had gone and gotten herself murdered…
My fist came down hard on the table to halt my wandering memories at the same moment his signing ceased. He whirled around to locate the source of the noise that split the silence, and in that same moment my gaze locked dead with the result of his unintelligible designs – a glowing and twisted entity at his feet that reached up to the middle of his calves. The warped thing babbled in a language I couldn’t fathom, tugging at its master’s robe and pointing in my general direction with a ferocity that excited my sense of survival; if a fight was going to break out I had no time for such pleasantries – drowning my sorrows was far preferable.
It occurred to me that running might have proven foolish anyway against this foe, for now it was obvious the nature of his power and signage. He was a Warlock, the bane of humankind and the unwelcome no matter where he followed or led; and the creature at his feet was nothing more than a summoned demon from the depths of the netherworld. I began to question where I had fled on this night of all nights; what civilized place would allow a demon summoning in public? Yet sure enough, the bartender studied his dishes with a clear deliberation, and the other patrons were too drunk to even notice the glowing menace as anything more than the result of excessive intoxication.
My gaze slid from the twisted being on the floor to its master’s face. His study of me was equal in depth to my own study of him, and he conducted it through tiny owlish eyes that seemed to glitter with a threatening fire. The lines on his darkened face were sharp and thin against the musculature of his body, and it seemed as if a smile had been too afraid to cross his wide lips since the day he was born. Cruelty and hatred were the mistresses of this man who commanded demons; and content he was to be seen in their company.
After enough time had passed that he determined I wasn’t going to attack or run for the authorities to report his actions, his alert stance faded into his previous proud one, and the beast at his feet ceased its pointing. Dusting his massive palms on the material of his well-made robe, he picked up his belongings and began to head in the direction of my table, creature in tow, his intent to discuss the unusual happenstances of our meeting written in every assured movement. Unable to leave in a fast enough fashion to escape him, I lifted the forgotten drink on my table to my lips. Sociability on this night with such a questionable pair would require the aid of a good drink.
He reached my table and pulled back a chair, not stopping to ask if he was welcome. In one deliberate movement he swung the chair around and sat backwards in it, his robe forced to bare his legs which were swathed in a pair of comfortable pants beneath his robe. The demon next to him filled the silence with chatters and cackles, switching between staring at me with its beady eyes and checking on its master to assure itself that no orders had been given during its preoccupation with me. The Warlock’s gaze again sought mine, and the barest hint of a smile crossed his cruel lips when he found it. “I am Mardux Oros – should you choose to forget that name I would not blame you. In fact I’d recommend it – and I will be glad to do the same for you once this night is over. I assume you too would prefer to forget you were ever here, milady.”
The inflection of his voice said that he knew my lineage was good, despite the current state of my being. It was also obvious that he intended to have my name, at least for the purposes of this conversation. He was a master at commanding, and I was in no mood to lead.
“I don’t know who you are, of course, since I just forgot – but the name’s Maleva. Maleva Greymourne. Charmed I’m sure.”
The smile on his face widened just a hair. “We understand each other then. Good. Greymourne you say? What’s a good little girl like you doing in a place like this so late at night? Bad things happen here, or so I’m told.” The demon cackled at his feet, and he laughed in response, a low soft chuckle that sent shivers down my spine. “You might just see something you aren’t supposed to, and then where would we be?”
“Dead I suppose. Though the one everyone would miss is already six feet under. They’d just hold a quiet service for me, if even that.” I took a long drink from the glass at my table. “You dabble in the netherworld I see; guaranteed I’d run into you or her after a time, and we all know that’s the last thing I’d want.”
Again that low chuckle resonated in his throat. “What an impressive temper. As with most who suffer from an unhealthy dose of ignorance, loss has made you bitter.”
I set my glass down a bit harder than I expected to. “And you have the right to question my intellect and behavior why? I should think I’m the one that ought to be questioning why you have any business with me. I thought people like you had bigger and so-called better goals at hand than mouthing off to some high-born who’s worth less than this drink and cares even less than that. If I was going to turn you in I’d have done it already, so why are you still here?”
“You’re a powerful woman, milady Greymourne; I can tell you that much by looking at you. You may look like a drowned kitten dragged from the well right now, but I sense there’s more to it than that. If we got you cleaned up you might even be pretty. I can see the threat of a powerful and beautiful woman; I’m no fool.”
The glass creaked as my hand closed tighter around it. “Look, if you’re just going to make advances, I’ll do the leaving instead. I already got that from the drunken fellow over there.” I gestured toward the drunk, who had fallen asleep in a puddle of outpoured rot-gut with a blissful smile on his face. “No doubt he’s dreaming about what I didn’t give him as we speak.” Oros laughed again, amusement open on his face, and I shook my head, tired of the direction the conversation was moving. “I might have been powerful someday. Now I’m just a failure, and I’ll never be anything more than that with my teacher dead and buried. The family agreed to pay to have her taught, not me. I’m just the one left behind. If you want to kill me there’s nothing stopping you.”
All traces of sarcasm and mirth vanished in an instant from his angular face and haunting eyes as I spoke. “You haven’t reached your true potential yet. Few mages do.” His demon chattered again, and he glared at it in order to gain a measure of silence, which he received after a short bout of grumbling from the creature. “You’re half trained, which makes you even more powerful – and dangerous. You know just enough to get yourself in trouble, my drowned kitten. What if I could teach you how to harness your power combined with all that anger you have locked away and become stronger than you ever could before?”
“No thanks. I’d rather just die if you can manage it.” I finished my drink and saluted him with the empty glass. “The reason I learned this much was because she thought I could. And then instead of remembering that, she went and left me.” Despite my best attempts at hiding them, tears came unbidden to my eyes, much as they always did when I was forced to remember her and her abrupt death. “She didn’t care about me or my power, so why should you? I don’t even know you! For all I know you could train me and then kill me so you’ll just have twice the power for yourself!” I didn’t know much about Warlocks; my sister’s training had never strayed into the forbidden out of a fear of exposure, and my overwrought emotions and anger were bringing forth accusations that made at best marginal sense. “Get lost, Oros. Please just get lost. All I want is to be left alone for one damned night in a thousand and you’ve already ruined that.”
When I looked up at him his eyes were blazing again, almost compelling me to look into their depths. Unable to look away from the fury and the power I felt resonating from his gaze, I met him stare for stare in an attempt to challenge his unnatural hold over me. If it were magic he used to attain my undivided attention, he would soon learn the error of his ways! As the mental challenge lay between us, however, I began to realize that the power he held over me was no magic; it sprang from a far more basic and natural grounding. Since my birth I had learned how little control over my life I held in my own hands, and the realization had come to gall me since my first suspicion of it. The man before me radiated power and control – be he demon or man, it was clear to me that Mardux Oros would never suffer such a failing of command with regard to his own path in life. He made life the way he wanted it, and didn’t care what others thought of him for doing so.
The darkest part was that through it all, he’d found a place where he was accepted. Here in this tavern, this strange place where demons could be summoned and no one looked up; he was at home and chose his own destiny. Me? I was here for the rot-gut. I was no better than the drunken man, sound asleep in his spillage, looking for solace at the bottom of a tankard. Reviled by these allegations inside my own head, I attempted to rise from the table and exit the Lamb, but one of Oros’ overlarge hands shot out and wrapped itself around my wrist, halting my flight. His grip was so tight that it hurt; in a sudden flare of anger I brought my other hand around to hit him with every ounce of strength I possessed in my tired and soul-weary body for trying to impede my freedom, but he was ready for that too and caught my other wrist mid-strike. It seemed he knew more about physical fighting than a noble-bred brat as well as how to live his own life, which just added insult to injury.
“Listen to me, you damned noble she-devil, and you listen well,” he snarled, thrusting his face so close to mine that I could smell the remnants of his own drink intermingled with the scent of his breath. For a stunning heartbeat I recognized true and undeniable fear in my own heart born from the anger in his voice, and I wondered if my demand to die had once and for all earned me my deepest and most selfish wish. “Power requires sacrifice, that’s the way of life. To gain, you must give up something that’s dear to you. But in my line of work, there are no sacrifices that you don’t order!” I tried to twist my wrists free of his mighty grasp, but Oros was not about to release me from his rage so soon.
“I’m telling you that what happened to your sister will happen to you if you continue the path you’re on, learning her skills in her place like the good little girl you are. Your power will burn you out in the end, fighting an enemy you don’t even understand! If you do nothing, as you’re trying to convince me is best, and go to die a quiet death, you’ll have no power at all! What good is that to you? You don’t want that life; you’re too strong and too proud for that. You want the power to command yourself, don’t you? You hate me right now for holding you here when all you want to do is run away; don’t even try to deny me! Every time you run away, that desire to control, to create order, to demand the attention you deserve, goes unchecked. You can’t get what you want by dying, my kitten. That won’t help anyone. If I thought it would, I’d put you out of the pathetic fit you call misery right now – I don’t have to sit here and listen to you whine. I’d just rather not lose a gifted and talented soul with such underlying potential to the useless power that is Death. I can give you the control you want, if you’re willing to command it instead of sitting here telling me you’d rather die!”
He thrust me away from him, and I fell back into my seat with a crash, my back aching from the impact. Whatever gentleness Oros displayed in his summoning, he had none of in his normal dealings! He returned to his own seat, breathing hard and resting his head in his hands, attempting to gain some measure of control over himself. Over his bowed frame I glimpsed the furious sight of the barkeep, his muscles taut and his face like a thundercloud; it was clear that the man intended to intervene in this disturbance within his establishment, and I doubted my ability to tolerate another unwelcome savior.
Meeting his gaze, I made every effort to shake my head in an unobtrusive manner, hoping to avoid Oros’ realization of the barkeep’s involvement in our situation; something in my mind whispered that he wouldn’t be able to control himself a second time should he aim his fury at a simple barkeep. The man frowned, chivalry and wisdom at war behind his eyes; at last he sighed, perching once again on his barstool. I didn’t need the ability to read minds to know what he was thinking. High-born nobles and their games; it seems blue blood must come from the lack of oxygen in their brains!
When Oros could again lift his gaze to mine, the rest of his violent anger dissipated at the sight of my face, which had gone white at the thought of my own sudden demise by so great a power as the one he commanded. “I’m sorry; I don’t control my temper very well. People like us just need power to survive. Without it, we die, and what good are we then? I’d rather know that I could help someone of your power survive to make use of it. If not for this power I’d be where you are now. You’re not as alone as you think you are.” In an acid tone he added, “And it looks like you don’t want to die after all. If you did you wouldn’t be shaking right now.”
I shifted my gaze to my hands and, reluctant, came to the realization that he was right. I was shaking like the noble-born weakling that I was in truth. Whether my reaction stemmed from the depths of the dark majesty and power that resonated inside him, or from the complexity of the sudden imperilment of my life despite my original wishes to die, I couldn’t be certain – but he was right. He was right about a lot of things; there was no sense in denying it further. The desire to control my own destiny and the destinies of those around me was compelling to say the least. All my life I’d been a puppet for someone else; for my parents first, and then for the court, and last of all for my sister, though her love and teaching gave me a reason to live. What had I to lose by accepting the power to control, if indeed it gave me the freedom that Mardux Oros had? I looked down at Oros’ demon, who had managed to remain silent throughout his master’s outburst. It watched me back, a twinkle in its eye. It was obeying its master – why shouldn’t his claims be true, then? What had I to lose if they weren’t?
Taking a deep breath to compose myself, I clenched my hands into fists to steady them against the shaking. “You realize that if anyone finds out I’m doing this, you’re a dead man and I’m off to the asylum.”
He smiled again, and it was a cruel smile more than one of mirth. “Rest assured, my kitten – I will never be a dead man, even if someone does find out about us. With this power I can stop all those who challenge me, and make them beg for my mercy. I will be doing the killing – make no mistake on that. I control who lives and who dies, not them.” He stood up and I stood with him, and he offered me a hand that seemed too gentle for the violence spent just moments before. “Come now, my kitten, my lady…let us go to your first teaching.”
For the first time since my sister’s death, I had come home, even if home had become a stranger in a strange land determined to open my eyes to the world just beyond and beneath my own.