Knight of the Demon Queen. Barbara Hambly

his shirt, dragged loose the stopper, wondered if the Stone would trap Amayon as well.

      Evidently it didn’t, for he could hear the demon shrieking curses at him, as if from some great distance away. Then the curses stopped, and there was only a slow-growing weariness, like weight too heavy to be borne or fought. A sinew-cracking drag that could not be resisted …

      He felt the Stone’s hold break and shift, diverted to something else, and in that momentary relaxation of its power he rolled, scrambled, dragged himself across the rock and away from the thing. Small hands grabbed his wrists and pulled him farther away, and he heard Amayon call his name. “Wake up! Wake up, damn you!”

      “I’m all right.” Gasping, John looked back past the fragile, half-bared shoulder. Dobbin lay uncurled in death. A young hunter of the savages sprawled just where the Drinking Stone had been. John couldn’t make out his face—even at two feet it would have been a blur to him-but his body lay disposed calmly, without sign of struggle, his spear still grasped in his hand. Of the Stone itself there was no sign.

      “You blundering, imbecelic fool …” Amayon’s hands were as cold as marble. Odd, thought John, after the warmth of the ink bottle. Must make a note of that.

      “Would it have got you, too, then?” He scratched his hair and squinted hard at Dobbin’s carcass, beside which, if he recalled, he’d left his spectacles. He couldn’t see them-he was lucky, he reflected, that he could see the carcass—and got up to make a move in that direction, then stopped and glanced inquiringly at the demon.

      “It’s gone.” Amayon still sounded shaken to pieces. “And no, it wouldn’t have ‘got’ me, too. I just don’t fancy remaining trapped in an onyx bottle for eternity because of some bumpkin’s prudishness.”

      John edged cautiously nearer and found the light frame of wire and glass where he’d left it, unbroken in all the ruckus—the spell Jenny had long ago put on them seemed to be still in force. He put them on, then knelt beside the young hunter. At his touch the man opened his eyes, but they were blank, empty. A trickle of drool ran down through the fair beard.

      “The Stone has drunk him.”

      John looked up quickly at the voice. The tall hunter leader stood nearby, spear in hand. A woman whom John had not seen before was with him, gray haired and tough, with bitter eyes.

      “He left us with a cry and ran toward this place,” the hunter woman said, her words speaking in John’s mind, though he understood that they used another language than his own. “That girl of yours called to him.” From around her neck she took a fragment of smoky glass tied on a piece of braided sinew. This she held up, and like a mirror John saw reflected in it his own face. The woman regarded the reflection, then walked to Amayon and did the same.

      Whatever she saw in the glass caused her to say “Faugh!” and step back in loathing.

      “Take her,” she said. “Take your demon whore and go from here. She has saved your life by bringing Lug here to the Stone. Now Lug must die, that the spirits by the river will not enter into his body, for the Stone has drunk away his mind.”

      John stood back while the woman and the hunter got Lug to his feet. The young hunter seemed dazed, his eyes empty and dead. From the corner of his eye John could see the flickering movement of the small glowing wights of the riverbed, moving cautiously out over the rock toward them. When Amayon came near to him, he said, “You brought him here for the Stone to take, instead of me.” He felt shocked and empty, glad to be living still but hating the demon.

      “Well, I couldn’t very well get him to continue the Queen’s stinking quest.” Amayon swished her skirts and stepped across to Dobbin’s side. “Drat,” she added. “I was afraid it would come to this in the end. I will truly see to it that that bitch Aohila gets trussed and left for a satyr of iron.”

      She pressed her hands to the dead beast’s outstretched head. Her body melted to smoke, and the smoke then flowed into Dobbin’s nostrils and slack mouth. A moment later the beast rolled lightly to its feet, shook itself, and strode to John with the same swagger that characterized Amayon’s walk.

      The hunter and the woman watched all of this, stone faced, and made no move while John saddled and bridled the demon beast. Looking back as he rode away, John saw the young hunter stretched on the ground again, the two elders walking off in the other direction. Demons were already chittering around the new corpse, fighting one another over its blood.