Patricia Briggs - When Demons Walk

Quickly he brought the ends together, fusing them with a touch of magic that caught Lady Sky’s attention. Hidden in the shadows of another building, Sham bit her lip. Halvok’s fate rested on her rune skills, and she’d never had to make a rune of this size before.

As the magic built, the golden thread began to glow, burning brightly beneath the covering sand. Under other circumstances the rune would have been enough to hold its prisoner indefinitely; a demon was as capable of unmaking a rune as Sham or Halvok was, so Halvok knelt where he was and continued to imbue the rune with magic.

“What are you doing?” asked Lady Sky, staring at Lord Halvok in surprise and taking a step back. “Kerim?” her voice rose in fright, “what is he doing to me?”

Coining out of her hiding place. Sham flinched at the fear in Sky’s voice. Looking at her standing alone on the cliff edge it was difficult to remember the reasoning Sham had used to convict her. Instinctively Sham glanced at Kerim, knowing that he’d had his doubts as well. Kerim was frowning as he gripped Dickon’s arm. He gestured as he talked—though Sham couldn’t hear what he said.

Elsic stepped out around a rock, the flute in one hand and his other resting lightly on Talbot’s shoulder. “I know you, demon,” he said, his face turned to Lady Sky. “I’ve felt you in my dreams.”

“What are you talking about? Kerim said the priest killed the demon,” said Lady Sky, looking more frightened than ever, “Kerim?”

“She’s going to send you back,” said Kerim gently, as he approached with Dickon. “Isn’t that where you’ve been trying to go all this time? It’s time for you to go home.”

“No ...” Lady Sky’s voice lost its cultured softness as she wailed despairingly. “You don’t know what she’s trying to do!”

“Nor does she,” said the Shark from just behind Sham, causing her to jump. “But that never stopped her before.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Sham in a voice designed to carry only to the Shark’s ears.

He grinned. “You think I’d miss the most exciting bit of news to happen around here since the Eastern Invasion?”

“Stay back with Kerim,” she warned him. “This could get nasty.”

“Shamera?” asked Lady Sky. “Why are you doing this? I thought you were my friend.”

Sham walked forward until she stood just outside the barrier Halvok held. “Chen Laut,” she said, and gestured.

It was unnecessary to call the demon’s true form in order to send it back to its world, but Sham needed the reassurance of knowing she was right. So she call the demon by a name it had held for centuries. It was not its true name, but it had power all the same.

The sand at Sky’s feet shifted, as if at a strong wind. Sky herself jerked like a marionette in the hands of a toddler, shifting. The body fell limply to the ground, and over it stood the demon.

Larger than a horse it was, a creature of flames the color of magic. Eight fragile limbs held its apparent hulk off the wet sand, but there was nothing arachnoid about the rest of the demon. A tail of gold and red ever-changing flames hit the edge of the rune with a crack, driving Lord Halvok to the ground at the unexpected pain.

But there was no question who was hurt worse. The demon screamed, an unearthly trill that covered the spectrum of sound, as a blue-green light flashed from the rune to its tail. When it was through, the demon crouched in the center of the rune, swaying back and forth.

“Halvok?” called Sham.

“Fine,” he said, though he sounded hoarse. “The rune will hold her.”

“Three times bound was I,” said the creature using Lady Sky’s voice. “Three dead wizards litter the cold earth. Your binding too. I shall come through in better condition than you, wizard. Get what power you can while you may, you will be dead soon enough.”

“I will die,” Sham agreed readily, “as all mortal things do. But before then I will see you home again. Talbot, what’s the tide like?”

“If you destroy me,” continued the demon, “I will haunt you and your children until there is one born I might use, witch. I will take that one’s body and hunt until your descendants walk not upon this earth.”

“Not yet,” answered Elsic, listening to the sea as he fingered the flute, “but soon.”

Talbot gave the blind boy a sharp-eyed look. “It’s still out.”

“Jetsam,” purred the demon, shifting its graceful neck so it was peering at Elsic, “—cast-off selkie garbage. If you aid in my binding, I will seek you out when I am free, and throw you back to the sea where your own people will rend you and feed you to the fish as tribute.”

Elsic smiled sweetly. “I aid in no binding.”

The demon paced sinuously within the outer bonds of the hold-rune. It was careful not to touch the edges.

“Now,” said Elsic.

Dimly Sham heard the muted roar of the returning waves begin. Elsic put the flute to his lips and blew a single pure note that pierced the night as cleanly as a fair-spent arrow. After a few experimental scales, he slipped into an unfamiliar song in a minor key.

Sham felt the magic begin to gather. She took a deep breath, and silently reminded herself that most of the magic she would work were spells she already knew. She’d spent half the night memorizing the only one that was new until she could recite the steps backwards in her sleep. If her concentration or confidence faltered, it would release all the power of the Spirit Tide into flames that would swallow them and Purgatory as well—inspiration for the poorest of students, and she had never been that.

In the original version the death of the sacrifice gave power to the spell. The sympathetic magic of death sent the demon to where it belonged as the soul of the sacrifice traveled home. She intended to replace both functions with the Spirit Tide as it came home to the cliffs.

The magic that the tide generated was formed by the sea, and humans worked only with unformed magic. Like limestone and marble, the two kinds of magic were formed by the same materials with tremendously different results.

Elsic gathered the green magic of the sea, and the flute transformed it into its raw form. Sham had to hold the gathering forces until the last moment before she worked the final spell. There would be no second chances.

Sweat ran off her forehead and she swayed with the effort as the magic grew exponentially with the progress of the monumental wave of water that had begun to swallow the sand. Someone gripped her shoulders briefly and steadied her.

Still the magic grew. The first two spells were easy, nothing that she hadn’t cast a hundred times before. She began to draw on the magic.

First to set the subject.

The demon screamed as she worked the spell, weaving it around the creature.

Second to name its true name.

Demon, Chen Laut, bringer of death, stealthy breaker of bonding spells laid upon it by greedy men. Avenger, killer, lonely exile. Sham understood the demon, and wove her knowledge into the spell. It was enough—she knew it. She could feel the demon trying to break the naming, but it was futile.

“Southwood lord,” called the demon, “Bind me to you and I will help you drive the Easterners from Purgatory. If you allow her to destroy me, they will never go.”

Halvok stiffened, like a hound scenting fox.

“If she chooses to bind rather than destroy, Shamera will not drive them away,” continued the demon persuasively. Sky’s voice rang clear through the growing roar of sea and wind. “She’s in love with the Reeve. She’s too young to really remember how it was, what it felt like to hold your loved ones as they die. But you do, don’t you? You remember your wife. She wasn’t beautiful, was she? Not until she smiled. She was wonderfully kind. Do you remember how much she loved your children? Then the Easterners came, while you were fighting elsewhere. You returned home and found only what the soldiers had left. She fought to protect the children, your wife, even after what they had done to her.”