He had succeeded in frightening her and not many people had ever managed that.

Perhaps it had not been him but the things that looked out of his eyes. She had sensed them there, the Elder world demon and its victims. He had partaken of its forbidden knowledge and she wondered whether it would destroy him in the end.

It was such knowledge that had really destroyed her father. Malkior had become ever more erratic in recent years. No mind, human or Terrarch, was capable of devouring another one and remaining completely sane. There was no way to integrate so many conflicting memories. Even Terrarchs, whose vastly longer lives meant more memories than humans, could not do that, and humans went insane swiftly when they practised thanatomancy. It would be interesting to see which part of his heritage won out. Perhaps it would be the true test of whether Rik was human or Terrarch.

She forced herself to rise and walk over to the pack she had stowed with her travelling gear. Within it was a silver flask and within the flask was moonglow wine. She took off the stopper and drank some, letting the cool rich taste run over her tongue and down her throat until it settled, burning in her belly. A morsel of strength returned.

She returned to the chair, set the bottle beside her and the runic dagger on her lap. Malkior was dead, she thought. Her father was dead. And she was glad although it was a gladness alloyed with many other emotions.

She remembered him from when she was a child, watching her proudly as she spelled out the runes in her book, and telling her wonderful tales of the world the Terrarchs had lost and would one day have again. He had been bad to the bone even then, but she had not known it, and had merely looked at him with the eyes of a doting daughter.

She fumbled with the locket at her breast and opened it. Within, in opposite faces of the casing were two miniature portraits of her parents. The likenesses were good, showing their ageless Terrarch beauty.

He looked poised and confident, the soul of charm, and she was sure that there had been a time when her mother had loved him. It had most likely been finding out what he really was that had driven her mother mad in the end. Lady Alysa had married a monster and given birth to another and it had been one of her father’s pleasures at the end to torment her with this knowledge, when she was too sick to tell anyone, and even those servants who listened to her ravings had thought her mad. There was sadness in the features the miniature portrayed, as if even then her mother had known what was to come.

She remembered the kindly, beautiful woman of her early years and supposed she must have loved her too once before her father had turned her against Alysa with his subtle words, his silent disrespect, the things he did not say that were more damning than the things he did. Her mother had spent many years trapped in the huge echoing mansion on their enormous estate, cut off from her friends and family, surrounded by servants who were her fathers slaves, watched constantly even by her maids. For decades, she had been unable to think of her mother except with contempt. It had taken a long time for her to realise how much her father had encouraged her in it. He brooked no rivals in her affections.

Why had they married? Her mother had loved her father she knew and perhaps there had been a time when in his own twisted way, he had loved her. Perhaps that’s why he had kept her a virtual prisoner, taken the time to subject her to his most exquisite mental cruelties, returned home after his many affairs. Of course, there had been other reasons. His mother was the last survivor of an ancient line, immensely rich, inheritor of many magical treasures, and her father had been a collector of such things, as many powerful sorcerers were. Perhaps her mother had merely been another thing he had collected.

She looked down at the blade. It had come from her father’s trove, part of the dowry her mother had brought, a product of the ancient magical arts of Al’Terra.