The Demon Lord

The Demon Lord by Peter Morwood Page B

Book: The Demon Lord by Peter Morwood Read Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Morwood
Tags: Fantasy
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his conscious self, they would no longer affect his actions unless he desired it.
    Or events required it.
    He continued his walk towards the mound, concentrating on it, forcing himself to be calm by letting the tranquil images of antiquity cool what still seethed in his brain. Aldric paused, rested one hand against the rough surface of a fallen sarsen and looked back towards Ev-than. The hunter was barely visible; indeed, he seemed to be backing apprehensively away from the clearing, from the mound, from the moonlight and into the comfortable darkness under the trees. Aldric shivered at that, finding the massive trunks and their ink-thick blots of shadow far from comforting. Even in such a place as this, he preferred to have the sky above his head. With that unspoken preference in mind, he appreciated the rich irony of his next three steps, which brought him under the great stones of the burial chamber and into a confined space of dark and silence.
----
    That the dome would be so complete as to exclude all light was a possibility which had not occurred to him. Expecting cracks and crevices—perhaps even the gaping access hole left by whatever grave-robbers the Overlord had employed—he was surprised, unsettled and more than a little shocked by just how black inside the cist really was. Un-light pressed all around him like the intangible folds of some heavy cloth, and even though the pupils of his grey-green eyes expanded to enormous proportions in their quest for a glimmer of useful luminescence the involuntary effort was entirely wasted.
    Aldric reached out warily until his outstretched fingers touched the great blocks of the dry-laid chamber wall, and only then moved cautiously forward, trusting to luck and any irregularities in the stones for a warning of the floor abruptly sloping down beneath him. Then he stopped again, muttering a soft, annoyed oath at himself, and reached into the pouch pendant from his belt. In it was a tinderbox and a thick candle of best-quality white beeswax, something he always carried but never had use for—and consequently forgot about, most of the time…
    Half-closing his light-sensitive eyes to guard them from its flash of sparks, Aldric tripped the spring of the tinder box. Then
tsked
in annoyance and did it again, twice, before the fluffed linen wisps caught fire sufficiently for him to ignite the candle’s triple-thickness braided wick. Unused, it smouldered furiously for a few seconds until a blue-cored yellow bud swelled from the stem of the wick, blossoming rapidly into a tall, saffron flame-flower. Only when he was assured that it would not go out, and had fixed its brass shield-ring to catch any potential drips, did Aldric look about him. And when he did, it was enough to make him catch his breath in wonderment.
    The roof of the hollow hill hung grey and huge an arm’s length above his head. He had not known what to expect, for every mound that he had seen before had been intact, the secrets of construction hidden under high-heaped soil and green grass. Aldric knew that each had at least one chamber in its heart, where the dead were laid, but how those chambers were formed had been a mystery to him until now.
    That grey roof was a single colossal slab balanced with ponderous delicacy on three tapering pillars, and only the strength born of great grief or great piety could have raised such a structure. Even though it had stood thus for maybe forty centuries, its presence looming over him sent a shudder fluttering through the marrow of his bones. If something—anything at all—made the capstone fall, then he, like the owner of the tomb, would be nothing but a memory.
    Shadows crawled out of the crevices between the stones as he raised the candle for a better look. There was a strangeness to the barrow, something so obvious that for a few moments it escaped him. Then awareness dawned. The place was clean… There was no earth trodden between the slabs of the floor, no trace of

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