Knight of the Demon Queen. Barbara Hambly

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      THERE WAS HELL, reflected John, and there was Hell.

      This was something no one—not Gantering Pellus, not Juronal, not the author of the mysterious Elucidus Lapidarus—had known: that not all Hells were the same.

      He had passed beyond any information or assistance from the writings of anyone he had ever read, and he supposed this was why the Demon Queen had wanted him as her agent. Having survived the Hell behind the mirror—as he had survived one dragon slaying, with the assistance of a certain amount of magic—he had learned just enough to survive the next.

      He supposed, too, that the Demon Queen had given him Amayon as a servant because he was the one demon she knew John would hate the most: the demon who had hurt Jenny. The one demon to whose charm John would be almost guaranteed not to yield.

      Not that Amayon didn’t try.

      “That’s very good,” the demon said softly, looking over his shoulder during one of their rests, in the dense shelter of a thorny watercourse between two walls of striated black rock. John sketched the thorns and the shape of the barren upland that stretched beyond; sketched the carry beast, whom he’d named Dobbin, bending its long neck down to the pool to drink, and the shape of the herds of such creatures that could be distantly seen on the top of the opposite cliff. “You’ve captured the look of it well.”

      Amayon now wore the form of a girl, dark curls framing a nymph’s triangular face, fragile hands resting on John’s shoulder as she stood behind him to look at the sketch. She glanced around her nervously at a quick soft scraping sound from the rocks and pressed a little closer to him. Genuine fear? John wondered. Or the imitation of it, to coax him into protectiveness?

      He didn’t know. The landscape in his dream had been without life, but he sensed there was life here.

      Waiting in the shadows. Watching.

      “It’d help if I knew if it was real,” he remarked, sketching the long necks of the herd beasts with a charcoal stub. “I mean, the Queen’s palace behind the mirror was whatever she fancied it to be: we’d pass one window where it was rainin’ outside, and the next there’d be a sandstorm, and the next it’d be a sweet summer night. So maybe the next chap who rides through here isn’t goin’ to see these things at all.”

      “Is that why you’re doing this?” Amayon regarded him through lowered lashes. “To help another who may ride after you?”

      “I’d like to say yes.” John grinned and shoved the parchments into his satchel. “That’d sound a bit noble, wouldn’t it? But it’s just I can’t pass up the chance to make notes of all this, to remember it by.”

      He stepped over the watercourse, holding out his hand in automatic assistance to the delicate girl who followed, though he knew Amayon needed no such assistance. She stumbled a little on the rocks and clung to his arm. There’s a small favor to be thankful for, he thought: The Queen had said that the spells of one Hell’s demons might work in another Hell, and might not. Evidently Amayon’s spells of lust didn’t work, which was a relief.

      “There’s no need for us to be enemies, you know.” Amayon stroked his arm as they came up on Dobbin, who made a noise at them like an angry goose and lashed his heavy tail. “We’re going to be traveling together for quite some time. We need one another, you know.”

      “And you need me for exactly what?” John half turned in the saddle as Amayon arranged her gauzy skirts. Her eyes met his, haunted and beautiful and filled with tears.

      “To help me,” she whispered. “I know I was wrong, to hurt your lady Jenny. You were justified in sending me behind the mirror, to be slave and captive of the Demon Queen. I know that now. But oh, John, she is monstrous, terrible! Nothing, nothing that I ever did merits the things …” She dropped her voice, her eyes, turned her head slightly aside and caught her red underlip between delicate white teeth with the memory of pain. “The things she has done to me.”

      “And you hope I’ll forgive you?” John asked, keeping his voice uninflected. “And help you escape her?”

      Her hand slid over his thigh. “I would do anything to escape her, my lord. I would be your servant for life, your slave. Demons are very loyal to those who treat them kindly. If you knew what she is …”

      John knew what she was. But before he could reply a thin shriek rent the sullen air, and a hairy insectile thing the size of a dog bounded down the watercourse, fleeing in desperate terror from seven or eight greater creatures, now running, now flying—demons or animals, John didn’t know, until the larger beasts caught the small. Instead of eating it they played with it: torturing it, tearing it to pieces while the victim shrieked on and on in undying agony as nerves and flesh and entrails were shredded.

      And Amayon watched, rapt. Drinking in what she saw with trembling nostrils and ecstatic eyes, as if savoring the most exquisite of meals.

      Disgusted, John pushed her hand aside and yanked Dobbin’s reins.

      There was neither night nor day in Hell. The light came from nowhere, without shadow—or maybe the Demon Queen had put on him a magic that enabled him to see in the dark. Dry heat seemed to radiate from the ground and varied from place to place: It was colder, John had noticed, when they’d crossed a limb of the black stone uplands, where bands of Dobbin’s brethren strode with their gangling, purposeful strides. Observing them, he saw they avoided the watercourses for as long as they could: they’d descend, drink quickly, and depart.

      No wonder, he thought, considering the slumped squeaking wights that rustled and darted in the black leathery vegetation that grew along the water. Twice, also, during that first long ride, he glimpsed signs of human hunters, or humaniform creatures anyway: things that walked upright and bore crude weapons. When, in exhaustion, John had just begun to argue with Amayon that they stop and rest—Dobbin was stumbling, too—he heard a stealthy rustling in the thorn along the bank tops that had not the sound of demons and looked up to see a dozen men and women, dirty and clothed in skins.

      “Skin and ream the lot of them,” Amayon muttered, sliding down from Dobbin’s cantle. “Wait here.” She climbed the bank toward them, holding out her hands and speaking in a sweet musical language that John heard as his own in his mind: “Please let us pass, dear friends. My brother and I mean no harm to you or to any in this place.”

      “You have food,” the leader said, the tallest and strongest of the men. Looking up, John saw a face bearded and brutish, and eyes that were filled with suspicion, fear, and rage, but without the curious glitter of a demon’s. These were indeed men and women. Native to Hell? he wondered. Had they been born here? Trapped here while passing through by eating food and drinking water of this place? Had some demon who ruled the place enslaved them, as Aohila had sought to enslave him and trap him forever behind the Mirror of Isychros?

      “We can spare neither food nor drink,” Amayon said, “for our road is long and we cannot tarry to hunt. But another gift I will give you, to show our love for you.” From the tight-laced gauzy bodice of her dress she drew two coins, one СКАЧАТЬ