Patricia Briggs: When Demons Walk

Staring at the roiling water, Kerim wondered at his openness with this Southwood boy who was so visibly unimpressed with the Reeve of Southwood. He hadn’t conversed with anyone this freely since he gave up soldiering and took over the rule of Southwood for the prophet. The only one who dared to chastise him as freely as this boy was his mother, and the boy lacked her malice—though Kerim hadn’t missed the lad’s initial motion toward the armsheath. He hadn’t missed the aristocratic accent the boy spoke with either, and wondered which of the Southwood noblemen had a son wandering about Purgatory in the night.

The novelty of the conversation distracted him momentarily from the familiar cramping of the muscles in his lower back. Soon, he feared, he would have to give up riding altogether. Scorch was becoming confused by the frequent, awkward shifting of his rider’s weight.

The Leopard turned back from the sea, but the boy was gone. Kerim was left alone with an enemy that he feared more than all the other foes he had ever battled; he knew of no way to fight the debilitating cramps in his back or the more disturbing numbness that was creeping up from his feet.

Sham trotted through the narrow streets briskly to keep warm. The cottage she’d found for the Old Man was near the fringes of Purgatory in an area where the city guardsmen still ventured. It was old and small, roughly cobbled together, but it served to keep out the rain and occasional snow.

She didn’t live there with him, although she had used her ill-gotten gains to buy the house. The Whisper kept him safe with their protection, and Sham was well known as a thief among the Purgatory guards. Her presence would have caused them to disturb the Old Man’s hard-won peace, so she only visited him now and again.

The Old Man accepted that, just as he accepted her chosen work. Occupations in Purgatory were limited and tended to shorten lives. Good thieves lived longer than whores or gang members.

Sham dropped to a walk, as the lack of refuse in the streets signaled her nearness to the Old Man’s cottage. She didn’t want to come in out of breath—the Old Man worried if he thought she’d been eluding pursuit.

It was the extra sensitivity necessary to survive in Purgatory that first alerted her that there was something wrong. The street the Old Man lived on was empty of all the little shadowy activities that characterized even the better areas. Something had caused the tough little denizens to scuttle back to their holes.

Sham began to run when she saw the door of the Old Man’s cottage lying broken on the dirty cobbles of the street. She was still running, the dagger from her arm sheath in her hand, when she heard Maur scream in a mixture of rage and terror that echoed hoarsely in the night.

As she reached the dark entrance she stopped, ingrained wariness forcing her to enter cautiously when she wanted to rush in howling like a Uriah in full hunt. She listened for a moment, but other than the initial cry the cottage was still.

As she stepped across the threshold, the tangy smell of blood assailed her nose. Panicked at the thought of losing the old wizard as she had everyone else, she recklessly flooded the small front room with magelight. Blinking furiously, her eyes still accustomed to the dark, she noticed that there was blood everywhere, as if a cloud of the stuff had covered the walls.

The Old Man was on his knees in the corner, one arm raised over his face, bleeding from hundreds of small cuts that shredded clothes and skin alike. There was no one else in the room.

“Master!” she cried out.

At the sound of her voice, he turned toward her. Urgently he said, “Go child, hurry. This is not your battle.”

As he spoke, a broad red slice appeared on his upraised arm as if drawn there by an invisible artist. Though she had caught a bare glimpse of something moving, it was gone before she could tell what it was.

His command was voiced so strongly that Sham took a step backward before she caught herself. The last magic her master had wrought was twelve years before. Blind and crippled, he was as helpless as a child—she wasn’t about to leave him.

Her mouth firmed as another wound appeared, weeping blood down the side of his crippled hand. She gestured, calling a simple spell of detection, hoping to locate the unseen attacker, but the magic in the room was thick and obscured her spell. The assailant seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

She tried a spell to discover the kind of magic the assailant used so that she could try unworking his magic. A cold chill rolled its way down her spine as her spell told her that whatever else it was, it was not human. It was also not one of the creatures who could use natural magic, for what she’d sensed had no connection to the forces stirred by the Spirit Tide. That left only a handful of creatures to choose from, none of them very encouraging.

She dropped the useless dagger to the ground. When the blade clattered to the floor, the flute slid into her hand, as if it had taken advantage of her inattention to slip out of the pocket in her sleeve.

As her fingers closed about its carved surface, it occurred to her that a thing did not have to be sharp to be a weapon. She set the mouthpiece against her lips for the second time that evening and blew softly through the instrument, letting the music fill the air. She would never be a bard-level musician, but she was thankful for the years the Old Man had sought to instill his love of music in her.

As the first notes sounded in the room, she could feel the magic gathering, far more than she would have been able to harness alone. It surrounded her, making her blood sing like rushing water with the heady vortex of power. She would pay for it later, of course—that was the secret of the flute. More than one mage had died after using it, not realizing until it was too late the cost of the power the flute called. Others had died when the magic grew too strong for them to control.

She fought to ignore the euphoria spawned by the rapidly mounting tide of magic. When she felt it push at the edge of her control, she took the flute from her lips.

Her body was numb from the forces she held, and it took more effort than it should have to raise her arms and begin a spell of warding. She watched her hands move, almost able to see the glow of the magic she wrought. She was so caught up in her weaving that when it began to unravel, Sham didn’t immediately understand the cause.

The Old Man had come to his feet and moved close enough to touch her neck with one of his scarred and twisted hands.

“By your leave, my dear,” said the old sorcerer softly as he drew the magic she had gathered.

For a moment she was startled by his action.

All apprentices were bound to their masters. It was necessary to mitigate the risk that the fledgling mages would lose control of the power they called and burn anything around them to cinders.

The bonds of apprenticeship had not been severed when she passed to journeyman as was the usual practice, since only the master can break such a bond, and the Old Man had been unable to summon magic since his crippling. Sham had never considered the possibility that he could work magic already gathered.

“Take as you will,” she said, letting her hands fall to her side.

As the power she had drawn together gathered in the Master’s hands, the old mage smiled. For a moment she saw him as she had the first time: power tempered with wisdom and kindness.

She watched with a keen appreciation the deft touch of the King’s Sorcerer as he wove a warding spell similar to her own but infinitely more complex without resorting to any obvious motion to aid his work. The continued slashes failed to break his formidable concentration. When he finished his spell, the cottage vibrated from the force of his attacker’s frustrated, keening wail. It tested the warding twice before Sham could no longer sense its magic.