On Common Ground: The King's Daughter, #3.5

By J. Kathleen Cheney

In this short collection of fiction, four tales from the world of The King's Daughter are brought together for the first time: The Nature of Demons, Whatever Else, The Arranged Marriage, and The Stains of the Past. 

(Includes two stories previously published as individual ebooks.) 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dream Palace Press
• Release date: Aug 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393527695

J. Kathleen Cheney

J. Kathleen Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus, with a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist. She is a member of SFWA, RWA, and Broad Universe. Her works have been published in Jim Baen's Universe, Writers of the Future, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. Her novels, The Golden City, The Seat of Magic, and The Shores of Spain, are published in by Ace/Roc books. Her website can be found at www.jkathleencheney.com

Book preview

PART I

THE NATURE OF DEMONS

ABOUT THE NATURE OF DEMONS

This story is set in a time long before the settlement of Jenear, Verina, or Cantreides. The continent was then inhabited by the Galas and Bremagni—who had once been the same people—and the Menhirre.

The word Menhirre means Menhas’ Children, which was a literal term since Menhas, the aras (Shifter) who brought the Menhirre to the continent, managed to father nearly a thousand children over his long life. After his death, he left behind not only his laws and cultural expectations, but many of his children inherited small portions of his power as well.

The Nature of Demons was originally published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, August 2013.

THE NATURE OF DEMONS

The town elders left the corpse untouched for us to view, now more than a day dead. That the demon had fled the town already, I didn't doubt. Even so, the elders refused to enter that small house on the edge of the woods, retreating with murmurs of damnation.

Once inside, I clapped my hands against my wool-clad arms, trying to keep the stinging cold at bay. The hovel's fire had long ago burned out, and winter's chill seeped within its walls. The cold grew worse every day. I felt it sorely; past fifty, I was no longer a young man.

Smells like sheep, my companion, Menhas, said. His shirt's fringes swayed as he strode around the tiny main room of the house, a form clad head to toe in buff leathers. Even the makeshift mantle he wore belted over his trews was the color of straw, as if no other hue would cling to him.

They raise sheep here, Menhas, I reminded him. His people herded cows and horses, I knew.

Don't like sheep, the man mumbled. He sniffed at the air, like a dog trying to pick up a scent.

I had tried dogs already. I'd brought a pair of hounds from the king's hunting pack out to the mountains to pursue the demon, but they proved useless. Every time they found the scent, they lost it just as quickly. A waste of my time.

The tribesman surveyed the icy room a moment longer before climbing the narrow ladder to the loft. I followed, knowing what we would find there. I witnessed the like often enough those days. I had no heart to view it again, but knew I must.

A straw-filled mattress took up most of the floor in that shallow recess under the thatch. A young woman lay among the tumbled quilts. Her wheaten hair streamed across the pillow, unbound for a lover's touch. Her eyes were closed, but they were likely blue or gray. Her skin, winter fair, displayed no injury when the tribesman drew away the quilts. A greenish pallor discolored her skin, but not a single blemish or bruise remained to show how the girl had died.

Menhas pitched the quilts against the far wall. He didn't hurt her, he observed in his deep voice. Mercifully.

He doesn't kill them with his hands, I said. Demons have other ways.

The tribesman snorted. You think him a demon?

A more educated man would have recognized the signs, I thought. Only a week before, the king had forced Menhas' company on me, naming him a shaman among his tribe—a storyteller and healer. As such, I expected him to have at least a passing familiarity with the hundred forms of demons. Do your people not have stories of these creatures?

No tales of demons, he said. Your people call anything odd a demon. Tell me, do these demons of yours kill, Doctor Antris?

Usually, no, I admitted. In most cases, they deceive the woman, get her with child and then flee, leaving her to raise the child alone.

Menhas laughed then, a cold sound. "And no human man could be responsible for that?"

There are documented cases, I explained, not for the first time. His people have never kept written records, relying on their shamans to pass down the fragmented bits of truth as best they could. They didn't even have a written language, these nomadic cousins of ours, and so suffered from all manner of ignorance. We have records going back more than a hundred years, Menhas. People who actually saw one of the demons in another man's guise... a man known to be dead.

Convenient, he said in a skeptical tone.

I did my best to ignore his mockery. He hadn't read those accounts himself, and never would. He lacked my unhappy familiarity with demons. Do not ridicule these poor women, I snapped with more heat than I meant to show.

Menhas merely raised an eyebrow at me, a scornful expression on his unshaven face. Then he turned and scented the air again. He was here, Menhas said, and he did lie with her.

I retrieved one of the quilts from the pile and covered the girl's nakedness. Not to get her with child, though, I said. He took her life instead.

The tribesman sat back on his haunches. His blond hair fell in untidy braids nearly to his waist. It brushed the ground next to his crouching form when he leaned forward. It was, strangely, almost the same color as mine, although mine showed the seasoning of age. How... and why? he asked himself.

While the man ruminated, I checked the girl's body for signs of poisoning, certain I would find none. Nevertheless, I couldn't risk that someone might try to hide a murder in the shadow of the demon that hunted our womenfolk. The girl's mouth showed no trace of vomitus, nor any evidence of burning as it might with a poison taken in food or drink. Her hands were not torn, bearing witness that she didn't struggle with her killer. The mottled discoloration of her back confirmed for me the elder's estimate of how long she'd lain abandoned here—at least a day.

I had examined a few of the earlier bodies at length to discern the cause of their deaths, even to the point of opening their skulls before their burials. Some might call me a monster for performing those gruesome investigations, but so great was my determination to catch the killer-demon that I would not allow such opportunities for deeper understanding to pass me by.

There is blood in their brains, I told Menhas then, uncertain whether he comprehended the significance of my words. Where it should not be, I mean. The demon causes the... rivers of blood in their brain to overflow. I believe that this flooding kills his unfortunate victims.

Ah, he keeps them excited until their brains burst. Menhas grasped the dead girl's chin, turning her face toward him. I felt an instinctive urge to protect her from his touch but didn't interfere. He is addicted to it, he said, like a man who craves wine and cannot live without it. He cannot stop himself. He eats their passion and needs more and more.

I wondered from what source he drew such reasoning.

He sighed and drew away, flicking back his long braids. She must have been lonely.

The implied accusation of wantonness on the part of this helpless girl offended me. Her husband has been dead only a month, I snapped.

Did no one else say they saw him? he asked.

No. The demon must have appeared to her here in their home, or even in their bed. Perhaps she thought it a dream of her husband returned to her.

He scowled, sniffing at the air again.

I would never confide to this man what first prompted me to study this particular horror, but I recalled my innocent daughter's face. My poor Sarelle, so like her mother in her fragile beauty.

Our stories warned of the demons' abilities to creep into a woman's mind and steal her memories. Thereby they recreated the form and the voice of a loved one so well that the victim never perceived any difference.

Even so, I refused to believe my daughter's claims when she came to me—already months gone with child. Instead, fearing the censure of others, I sent Sarelle to live with her grandmother up in the mountains until the child should be born. Both she and the babe died the following spring when fever swept through the town. Had I been there, I might have saved her. Had she not been there, she would have been safe.

I never forgave myself for sending Sarelle away, for not believing that a demon seduced her in a dream. On my daughter's grave I promised I would never take a woman's