A demon and his dwarf (part 3)
Mother squee-ed with delight when he entered the dining room. She rose so fast, her knife clattered to the floor, and the succulent chicken that was her breakfast splattered off the plate. “Grih-ling, my darling, you are back!”
Father lifted an eyebrow at him, probably in surprise that he was still alive. A’Grih stopped just inside the door, straightened and held out the brooch, and announced, “I have found a gift for the Lady Ekira.” And then he added, nervously, “and I think I have a magic Gift too.”
The second brow lifted. “Almost impressing me, runt. What sort?”
Mother took the brooch and studied him with hungry eyes.
A’Grih felt himself sweat and redden. “Illusion,” he mumbled.
Father laughed. “Well, I guess that’s worthy of a piece of elf hide. Leave the bauble here, and go practice your dainty tricks. Maybe the Lady will like it.”
A’Grih forced himself to just slightly nod, and back out of the room. He closed the door behind him, and let the shadows and tricks partly cover the sound of father’s well, I guess that was all we could hope for. And mother’s let him entertain Lady Ekira – it may appeal to her feminine side.
The Lady’s house was a little fortress; towers in stone guarding a mansion over three floors, and manned walls surrounding the property. Farmlands belonging to her stretched for miles around, and A’Grih was sore by the time they arrived. Mother insisted on riding, and of course father couldn’t walk beside her like a servant or common soldier, so they all rode – despite the goatlegs of the males in the family not being particularly suited to it. The riding beasts were distant cousins, sentenced to the lowest caste for the crime of having four legs, rather than the more civilized form of two hands and two legs that most of the Solar people were blessed with. A’Grih had always tried to be kind to his beast; treating it to snacks and a gentler hand than what mother used on them.
His thoughts turned to that Source he had found in the Ashen hills. He promised himself that if he found it again, he would treat it at least as kindly as he treated the riding beast. He had been dreaming about the young dwarf every night, the softness, the scared and gentle eyes, like a newborn calf. But there was no way his parents would approve of it, so he sighed quietly and resigned himself to the fact that he might be Gifted – but he would never be able to use it to full power. He absentmindedly scratched the furry neck of the riding beast, and it grunted pleasantly.
He noticed mother looking at him, and he grabbed the reins again. She was tight faced and stern.
The guards bowed to father as they let the family in. He was wearing the open tailcoat, but had pinned all his medals to it, and beside him hung the ancestral sabre, heavily decorated with furs and feathers and a lock of hair from an elf. The story was that father had defeated one of the most ancient elves in single combat, and ripped the hair from its head, at the same time as the sabre sliced its throat.
Father brought them at once to the Lady Ekira in her great hall. She was standing on a staircase leading up to other parts of the mansion, a few steps up from the guests, so that she might keep an eye on the proceedings. Behind her were two guards with the hindlegs of a wolf, chestplates gleaming on their wide torsos and muscles that rippled as they grasped their spears. Father stopped a step beneath her, mother stood beside A’Grih a step below that, with a hand firmly on the boy’s shoulder.
Father bowed and offered the Lady his sabre. “I hope my service is still to your liking, oh my commander.”
She touched the hilt with a long, slender finger. A short gesture of acceptance, and father put it back in its sheath. “Certainly,” the Lady said. “You have always done well. But I am getting on in years, and the most courageous I can do is be a planner of new battles and bring forth new generations of warriors.” She smirked and glanced behind herself at one of the guards, “thanks to these two, I am sure my offspring will be of superior quality.”
Father stepped to the side, and said, “fighters fight, but for the truly superior seed, you need a Gifted to fertilize it.”
Mother pushed A’Grih up a step, and he almost stumbled. Shaking, he lifted the brooch and let his Gift surround it, making it pulsate in colour, the red swirling, the gold sparkling, the whole brooch disappearing into blackness for a moment, and then returning to normal in his hand.
Lady Ekira graced him with a smirking smile and pinned the brooch to her cloak. “I find him acceptable. Enjoy yourselves.”
The stone room, covered with tapestries and wall hangings, was crowded with the up and coming, the veterans and the hangers on. Servants milled between them, clad in the Lady Ekira’s colours; black and orange, carrying trays filled with every delicacy under the Sun. The crowd whispered, rumoured, enticed and goaded, each voice competing with another. A’Grih looked around nervously. Ekira herself stood halfway up the staircase to the second floor, quietly observing the proceedings. Her eyes touched A’Grih’s for only a moment before passing coolly onwards.
In the crowd was also a massive beast-form with a woman’s head and lion’s paws. A’Grih suspected it was someone’s pet or guard animal. It walked freely among the demons though, and somehow it made him sweat with fear.
The party had socialised for maybe an hour, when the Lady Ekira spoke up, clearly and neutrally. “My friends, my subjects, my colleagues and my mates, I have a very special guest here tonight.”
The crowd fell silent, but A’Grih could see them casting glances at each other – or up the stairs in case the guest was there.
She continued, “this guest is a Favoured of the Blessed Queen.”
Shocked gasps; a Favoured one? There were not many – they were Her servants, Her generals, Her handful of specially appointed. A’Grih felt slightly faint. Noone stepped forward – only the lioness-beast padded to the staircase and sat down on its haunches, with the tail curled around the paws.
Lady Ekira bowed to it.
It was only a curt nod, cold, neutral, but it acknowledged the rank and superiority of a beastformed demon. She looked at the shocked crowd. “Let me introduce to you E’Rechto Phasa, Favoured by the Queen as Her Huntress.” Moonhuntress, the name said.
The beast, E’Rechto, opened its mouth and spoke in a woman’s voice, yet deep and with a hidden menace, “thank you, Ekira. For your invitation and your welcome.” She rose and prowled into the whispering and murmuring crowd. “I hunt the Moons’ people,” she growled. “Those that are of that blood, or are allied with them.”
People parted almost reluctantly around her where she walked, and one stood broad legged before her. “I will not bow to a riderbeast,” he scowled.
She gazed at him for a moment, then she simply swatted him with an enormous clawed front paw. A’Grih swallowed hard, seeing the man’s guts spill out through the gashes. E’Rechto turned her head slowly to gaze around the room. “Anyone else?” she asked into the silence. There was no reply. She moved towards one or another then, sniffing them, and they scampered aside.
A’Grih wanted to run, too when she stopped in front of him, but he was frozen with terror.
“I smell Moon on you,” she said. “What say you?”
He couldn’t breathe. The eyes that stared into his were on fire. Flames of the Sun goddess burned into his mind, laying him bare to the will of that exalted beast. “I have a Source,” he gasped, the words stumbling from his mouth.
“The Sun-touched boy is blessed! Lady Ekira has received a handsome gift!” she purred, but looked at him and continued, “…. and?”
A’Grih grasped his horns to stop his hands from shaking. He felt the fur between his thighs become wet. “It is a dwarf,” he whispered. It was like a thundering roar into the stunned crowd. He fainted, and his last thought was that he hoped father would forgive him for being afraid in the face of the Favoured.