Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

M alissa immediately regretted what she had just said. She wished she had worded it differently, wished her voice had not been so rife with desperation. But then, she was desperate. Nervous too. And who wouldn't be? She was, after all, conversing with a demon.

Or at least she had been… until now.

As soon as she blurted out her desire for a baby, Beliath had fallen silent, but Malissa could still sense the demon's presence lurking within the darkstone ring, even though she couldn't actually see him.

She shivered, but not from cold. The night air was warm against her bare skin. Around the clearing, the forest was as dark as sin, but those shadows no longer filled her with fear. The real horror was right there in front of her, in the center of the darkstone ring.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting, Malissa mustered the courage to speak again.

"Will you grant my wish?" she asked.

"Perhaps," the demon answered, and Malissa's skin goosed at the sound of that disembodied voice. "But first, I have some questions for you."

Malissa stood up straight and tried her best to look regal. It was not easy to do without any clothes on.

"I did not come here to be interviewed," she said. "I came to make a deal."

"And perhaps you shall, but as I have already stated, you have no power to command me. You may summon me, and you may banish me, but what happens in between is dependent upon many things."

"Such as?"

"Before I make a deal with a mortal, I like to know who I'm dealing with."

"I already told you, I am Queen Malissa of Drachenval, wife of—"

" Silence! "

Beliath's roar seemed to shake the very pillars of the darkstone ring, and Malissa felt it rumbling deep within her bones. The fact that she couldn't actually see the creature making that sound only made it that much more terrifying. She almost took off running into the forest again, but she forced herself to remain steadfast.

The demon could not harm her as long as the magic barrier contained him. Otherwise, he would have done so already. Malissa was sure of it.

"Very well," she said. "What do you wish to know?"

"Are you a priestess?"

"No."

In spite of the circumstances, Malissa was almost tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the question. She had read about the priestesses in her grimoire. Woman-mages who spoke with spirits. Their ancient religion had been dead for a long, long time, replaced by the order of the Ecclesiarchy. There were no priestesses anymore.

"A witch then?" the demon asked.

Malissa shook her head. "Until tonight, I have never performed a magic ritual of any kind. I wasn't even sure if such things were really possible."

"Then how did you summon me?"

"The grimoire," she said, nodding toward the leatherbound book lying atop her satchel, just outside of the perimeter of the darkstone ring.

"Ah," the demon said, with a hint of amusement. "Of course. Books are such dangerous things. The priestesses who bound me here never used them. They preferred memory and word of mouth, lest their secret knowledge fall into the wrong hands."

Was the demon suggesting that hers were the wrong hands? If so, he was probably right. Malissa knew she was meddling with powers beyond her understanding, and she couldn't help thinking this whole thing had been a terrible mistake.

But it was too late to turn back now.

"How did you come into possession of this book?" the demon asked.

"It was my mother's."

"So, your mother was a witch?"

"Yes."

Malissa felt a twinge of uncertainty, but she hoped it didn't come through in her voice. The truth was, she had never really known her mother. There had always been whisperings that her mother had dabbled in the dark arts, but Malissa had never really believed those rumors—until she had found the grimoire.

If Beliath noticed the uncertainty in her answer, he did not pursue it, and Malissa experienced a wave of relief when the demon changed the subject, though his new line of questioning was no more pleasant than the previous one.

"You said you want a baby," Beliath's voice purred. "Why come to me? Surely your husband can provide one for you, no?"

Malissa sighed.

"King Wulfgang is much older than I am," she explained. "And I am not his first wife. He's had a dozen wives before me, and all of them have failed to give him an heir."

"I see," the demon said. "It sounds as though this Wulfgang has incredibly bad luck when it comes to picking a fertile wife."

There was an ironic note in the demon's voice indicating he knew the real problem, the obvious problem. If one scatters seeds on a dozen different fields, and they fail to bear fruit, at some point one must suspect that the problem lies not with the soil, but with the seeds themselves.

Of course, no one dared mention that to the king.

"My husband is a pious man," Malissa went on, infusing her words with some irony of her own. "He would never choose to divorce a wife simply because she did not bear him any children. The Ecclesiarchy would frown on such behavior. Fortunately for Wulfgang, divorce has never been a necessity. His first wife was thrown from her horse and broke her neck. His second died from eating tainted food. It seems that some poisonous mushrooms made their way into her supper, but not anyone else's. His third wife was taken by a melancholic mood and stabbed herself in the heart, though the poor woman made quite a mess of it, I'm told. The palms of her hands were covered with cuts, almost as if she'd been trying to defend herself from an assassin, but I'm sure she only fumbled with the knife."

"I see," the demon said. "And I suppose your other nine predecessors also met with similar untimely fates?"

Malissa nodded.

"And now you're afraid that such a fate is waiting for you."

"The king told me as much. He has been away for some time now, gone to fight the Galadonian armies in the west. When he departed, he kissed me on the cheek, then whispered in my ear: ‘When I return, dear wife, I hope for your sake that you are big with child.' For your sake! He actually said that!"

"He also said he wanted you ‘big with child,' but he didn't specify it had to be his own. You're a comely woman, Malissa. Surely you would have no trouble finding a virile young man to give you what your husband cannot? A randy young stable boy, perhaps?"

Malissa flushed with shame.

Such an idea had occurred to her, but she knew it would never work. The timing was all wrong.

"The last time Wulfgang bedded me was the night before he left for war, and that was nearly three months ago."

She shuddered at the memory of that night, and the many nights of unwanted coupling that had preceded it. Her body had loathed the feeling of that cold, loveless man on top of her and inside her, but she'd been forced to accept it, the same way she'd been forced to accept his hand in marriage when her own father had sold her to him like a whore.

"So let me get this straight," the demon said. "You need a healthy child in your womb. You need it to gestate in only six months, rather than the usual nine. And, presumably, you need it to be a male, so it can be your husband's heir."

Malissa nodded.

"That is a tall order, woman. And a rather selfish one, if I may say so."

"Selfish?"

"You're talking about bringing a new life into this world. A soul who will suffer and wither and die. And you're doing it merely to save your own selfish hide."

"That's not fair! " Malissa cried, tears springing to her eyes. "I never asked to be put in this position, and I'm not being selfish! I do want a child. I will love him and care for him, just as I would a child begotten in the… in the natural fashion."

A silence descended over the clearing. Aside from her own racing heart, the only sounds Malissa could hear were the sizzling wicks of the candles and the cry of a night bird way off in the distance. She could feel the demon's eyes examining her, peeling away layers of her the way a man might peel an apple with a blade. It made her tummy flutter with fear… and other feelings she didn't care to examine.

"Very well," the demon said at last, "I will give you what you ask."

Malissa realized she'd been holding her breath in anticipation, and now she let it out in a long, trembling sigh of relief. But then she felt a slow, creeping sensation at the base of her spine.

"What would you ask in return?"

"Free me," the demon answered.

Malissa's heart stopped. The blood went cold inside her veins.

"Free you?"

"That's right. I've been trapped inside this darkstone ring for far too long. Now I want out. So, I will give you your child, Queen Malissa of Drachenval, but I will place a curse on you at the same time. If you do not return and set me free before your pregnancy is finished, you will die during childbirth."

"How do I know you won't kill me as soon as I set you free?"

"That would be a cruel way to reward my liberator."

"You are a demon," she pointed out.

Beliath gave her one of those deep, rumbling chuckles that made her insides squirm.

"Very true," he said. "Very true. But that doesn't mean I have no sense of justice. I suppose you'll just have to trust me. Maybe I'll hurt you, maybe not. You won't know for sure until the time comes… but you know for a certainty what your husband will do to you if you don't give him an heir."

The demon had a point.

Of course, even if the demon didn't kill her, she would still be doing a great evil by setting him loose upon the world.

Malissa decided she could live with that. Beliath was right, she was selfish.

"My mother's grimoire has a spell to release a spirit from a darkstone ring, but—"

The demon finished her sentence: "But it will only work at certain times of the year, when the barrier between this world and the next is at its weakest, either on the solstice or the equinox."

"The summer solstice already passed a fortnight ago."

"Then you must return at the autumn equinox to set me free. That will be more than enough time for you to know that I have upheld my end of the bargain."

Malissa hesitated, but only for a moment.

"Very well. I shall return and free you on the equinox."

"Good. Well then, let's begin, shall we?"

"Begin? What do you mean?"

Another dark chuckle. "Come now, woman. Surely you know how babies are made. So what are you waiting for? All you have to do is step inside the ring with me, spread those pretty legs, and let my fat prick take care of the rest."