Queen of Demons by David Drake

Author:David Drake
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

Cashel eyed the bulge of rock above them as best he could by the light of a few stars. It didn’t look very high. At least it wasn’t as high as it was steep. “Zahag, you go up and I’ll hand Aria to you,” he said.

Something was chuckling in the darkness to their right. It went on the way a brook runs, mindless and gurgling.

The chuckling thing had been keeping parallel with Cashel and his companions all the way up the slope. It could’ve been any distance away, from miles to close enough to hit if Cashel spat into the encircling night.

“Well, I don’t know,” the ape said in a subdued voice. He was hunched at Cashel’s feet—literally: he pressed his coarse-furred flank against Cashel’s shin. “I don’t think I want to lead.”

“Get up there,” Cashel said. He wasn’t going to raise his voice, but his hands squeezed his quarterstaff hard. “Or go your own way, Zahag. And may the Shepherd forsake me if I have any more to do with you!”

Well, maybe he’d raised his voice a little after all. The chuckling stopped briefly while the echoes died away.

“Yes, chief,” the ape said. He clambered up the rock face as easily as he’d have walked the same distance on the flat. His arms covered an amazing span. With his short legs gripping also, Zahag looked like an enormous crab spider.

“Send the female up!” he called from close above. An arm reached down; the ape’s hand was half again as long as Cashel’s own.

“I’ll show you that I’m worthy, Cashel,” the princess said in a tiny, frightened voice.

Instead of making a stirrup with both hands, Cashel put his left palm against the rock and said, “Hop onto the back of my wrist, Princess. Then grab Zahag’s hand, all right?”

“Whatever you say, Cashel,” Aria piped in a desperate and completely failed attempt to sound cheerful. She stepped on his arm in a gingerly fashion and waved her right arm overhead until Zahag caught it. She must have closed her eyes.

Cashel didn’t blame her for being frightened. He hadn’t been willing to lean his staff against the rock so he had both hands free to lift her.

Besides, she didn’t weigh anything. Purple finches sometimes landed on Cashel’s shoulder while he waited to turn the oxen at the end of a furrow. Aria didn’t seem much heavier.

“I can see the light!” Aria cried. “It’s right ahead of us. It’s coming from a cave but there’s a rock in the entrance!”

The moon came out from behind the high clouds in which it’d hidden for most of the night. Cashel didn’t have any great affection for the moon. When it was full, the animals got restless.

Cashel had never thought of moonlight as being hostile before, though. Maybe it was the things it shone on in this place.

The slope had been a succession of crags, each a barrier but no single one so high that Cashel couldn’t climb it. Even Aria could manage with help. The path they followed was barren, but on either side scrub pines found soil enough in crevices to grow.

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