James Davis - Circle of Skulls

He sighed in frustration, contemplating more direct means of eliminating the deva without disturbing the delicate details of his work. He no longer required the stealth of the past month, but secrecy was paramount lest he fail as famously as those who had gone before him-or worse. Mere thought of the circle of skulls sickened him, their desperate hunger and practical impotence a fate worse than death, though he suspected his own fate, should he falter, would be legendary, delivered not by a prince among devils, but by a god.

"Mere days," he whispered hoarsely, banishing the imagined terrors. "Then I shall breathe easier, should I require breath at all."

Quessahn sat in the dark, keeping silent as Mara made her way from one arched window of Pages Curious to the next, tracing the edge of each drawn curtain with whispered incantations. Gold needlework in the cloth flared at the woman's touch then faded as she passed, warding the interior of the shop against intruders or eavesdroppers. From the front of the shop to the back, Quessahn marveled at the collection of old magic, pre-Spellplague items of effortless function, the nearness of their energy feeling like the presence of an old friend.

Her circuit completed, Mara settled over a wide table of books and scrolls in the back corner and blew to life an enchanted candle. Quessahn edged close to the table, her eyes drawn to the candlelight and in particular the ornate candleholder it sat in. She narrowed her eyes at the worked silver, noting the alarmingly familiar design of a sword within an archway, encircled by a stylized shield.

"You are a thief as well?" she asked, gesturing to the candleholder and crossing her arms, recognizing the mark of one of the House of Wonder's masters. "Where did you get that?"

Mara looked up from the scrolls, her eyes flashing with anger as she slid the candle closer to herself and out of the eladrin's reach.

"It was a gift," Mara answered sharply. "One of very few that-" She stopped, sighed angrily, and turned back to her work upon the table. "I am no thief. Well, no common thief at least."

Even in the candle's light, it seemed that shadows deepened in Mara's presence, the effect lingering in places where she had been for long moments. The strange woman appeared and acted human, but there was a timeless spark in Mara's gaze that gave Quessahn pause. She kept her guard up, ritual dagger at hand and spells on the tip of her tongue, as they waited in silence for Jinn's arrival.

A click at the back door sent a cold chill down Quessahn's spine. She spun around, a spell on her lips, before finding the deva's gold eyes in the dark. She relaxed as he closed and locked the door, sliding a kissed finger over the bolt that caused it to snap tight with a flash of light.

"Any trouble?" Mara asked.

"No more than usual," he replied, throwing his greatcoat over a cushioned chair. "Any news?"

"A little more than usual," Mara answered. She pulled a large tome close to the candle's glow. "It seems these murders have happened before."

Quessahn's frustration at being ignored by the pair faded as interest in the book took over. She edged closer to the table, trying to read as Jinn perused the page, a look of confusion crossing his smooth features. He glanced at her once, as if noticing her for the first time, then returned to the book.

"How is this possible?" he asked. "The broadsheets would have been selling out toes to heels at news like this."

"And they might well have been," Mara said and flipped the book closed, pointing to the cover. "Around three hundred years ago."

"Toes to heels?" Quessahn muttered as she leaned close, the book's leather cover showing the date The Year of Sinking Sails, 1180 Dale Reckoning.

"From the poor to the rich," Jinn answered absently, running his fingers over the date as his golden eyes darkened. "When did the circle of skulls first appear?"

"Sometime thereabouts," Quessahn said, "if I'm not mistaken."

Jinn and Mara looked at her in unison, still bearing the same expression of having been interrupted, as if she'd disrupted a well-practiced routine. She saw in that look the years they had worked together, both committed to some task that seemed to have consumed them, isolating them from the normal lives of others. The look concerned her and made her fear for the possible victims they might find in the coming days. She wondered if Jinn still had the capacity to care for the lives of others in the midst of the war he fought.

"What about the sigils?" Jinn asked, breaking her troubled line of thought.

"Difficult, but the signs are striking," she answered, laying her sketches on the table beside Jinn's chapbook. "These are a kind of spell, a ritual, but they're incomplete. However, the patterns, the

… context of their proximity makes some sense."

"I see," Mara said, turning the sketches around and tracing them lightly with a painted fingernail. "Almost like a cipher."

"What's the connection?" Jinn asked.

"It is a spell of a sort, only it's still being cast," Quessahn said. "These are just random sets of runes, from one body to the next, sort of like reading a book, but only reading every tenth word at a time."

"But the Watch has destroyed many of the bodies," Jinn said thoughtfully. "Would that not break the spell?"

"The sigils have already been cast," Mara answered. "Their place in the overall pattern is taken and they"-she twirled her hand as if searching for the right word- "exist, until the spell is completed or until it fails."

Jinnaoth stood perfectly still, head bowed, as though frozen in thought. Quessahn fought the urge to place a hand on his arm, shocked by the impulse and stepping away from the deva lest she forget herself.

Her gaze lingered on the way he kept one finger on the middle of his chin, just at the terminus of a swirling design that rose from beneath his collar. She smiled, but stopped when she caught Mara staring at her.

"So I suppose all that remains is the question of the day," Jinn said at length, leaning on the table. "What kind of spell?"

"Impossible to say," Quessahn said, pulling her eyes away from the knowing gaze of Mara. "Though, considering the method of casting, I'm not sure I'd want to find out."

"We must find out." Jinn turned to Mara, once again seeming to lock Quessahn out of some private understanding. He tapped a finger on the sketched sigils. "This is what we were looking for; this is what will lead us."

Quessahn was troubled by the strange light in Jinn's eyes, the cruel smile on Mara's lips. They turned to the books, ignoring her as she observed them, fuming with disbelief and feeling betrayed by the dim hope that Jinn had truly changed since she'd last seen him.

She recalled the face of a murdered child, the body she'd last seen being taken away by the Watch, and rounded on the pair.

"Why didn't you mention the fingers?" she asked, stealing Jinn's attention though Mara only glanced at her with a knowing smile before returning to her study. "What does it mean?"

"The left hand is a symbol," Jinn said after some consideration. "Many religions hold some significance for it, primarily because most people are dominantly right-handed. In this case it is a symbol of divine will, the hand bound to the purpose of a god's law… the law of Asmodeus."

"Asmodeus?" Quessahn uttered the name in a whisper, a hundred different depictions of Hells and devils rising to the forefront of her mind, classical images of both speculation and arcane fact.

"The left hand of Asmodeus represents the forceful nature of domination, fierce loyalty, and wrath," he continued, holding up his hand and bending the ring finger forward. "The ring finger symbolizes the covenant made and the bound soul." "And when severed?" she asked.

"The soul is claimed, and the body is forfeit, either abandoned or controlled," Mara said, not looking up from her book. "Not that the how of the matter is truly important, but the symbolism of the act-"