Touch of the Demon

Chapter 24

We went back down the corridor and entered the archway of the solarium. The high ceiling as well as the wall opposite the archway were constructed of glass. It reminded me of Rhyzkahl’s arboretum without the trees. The glass doors stood open to the balcony and the expanse of sea beyond, and fresh air touched with salt flowed over me. The side walls alternated wide vertical bands of the natural dark stone and softly gleaming gold, embossed with scenes of demons and humans. Near the balcony waited two low, comfortable-looking chairs with a table between. It felt as though they’d been arranged for this moment.

Mzatal gestured to one of the chairs. I sat, nerves beginning to set in as he took the other. Shit was about to get real.

“How was your journey?”

“It was very interesting,” I said, smile twitching briefly. Somehow I doubted that Mzatal would have approved of the more dangerous parts. “And I don’t feel like I’m about to break into a million pieces anymore.”

Mzatal smiled—the most genuine smile I’d ever seen on him. “I can feel it. You will be able to move forward now, no longer mired.”

I sighed. “Helori explained why it isn’t in my best interests to return to Earth right now, and how I need to be better prepared, better able to protect myself and others, before I can go home.” I still hated it, but I understood it. “He also says that you can be trusted to abide by your word.”

He gave a quick nod. “I do not break my agreements with summoners.”

I spread my hands on the cool wood of the table. “Then why don’t you start with the terms you desire, and then we can go from there.”

“A simple framework,” Mzatal began. “A five year agreement to provide summoning services from this realm and from Earth, as required and specified in the agreement. One full year of training here before assessing the possibility of return to Earth. You will take no action that is against my best interests—which, by the end of a year, you will know how to discern. I will provide full training—all that you are able to absorb.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Five years?” I asked, incredulous. “No way. Nothing more than three years, and we will decide together the possibility of my return to Earth after six months. And in the event of an impasse, Helori will make the final decision.”

A frown touched his mouth at my counter-offer, but I had a feeling he’d deliberately asked for a larger amount of time, knowing I’d bargain it down. “Consideration at six months or beyond only on the condition that you have passed the shikvihr initiation.”

Shikvihr. I frowned. Where had I heard that before?

From Rayst, I suddenly remembered. “How far along is she in the shikvihr?” he’d asked Rhyzkahl. That ritual foundation thing.

“I can’t agree to that when I have no idea how long that typically takes to master.” I leaned back and folded my arms. “For all I know you could be placing this condition on a skill that takes decades to learn.” Helori said I could trust him at his word. He hadn’t said a damn thing about the part that came before actually swearing the oath.

“Calvus Atilia passed the shikvihr initiation in seven months. The longest any has taken to pass it is eighteen months.”

Well, eighteen months sucked. So I’ll study my ass off, I told myself. “Very well. I also want to be able to send and receive messages from home, via whatever agents you might have in place on Earth or by my own means.”

“It can be arranged,” he said, eyes on mine. “Through me.”

I pursed my lips. “Will you respect my privacy?”

Mzatal inclined his head. “As you will be in agreement to act only in my best interests, yes.”

I steeled myself for the next point I wanted to raise. Rhyzkahl had sworn not to harm me—on Earth, which hadn’t done me a fat lot of good. “I—” My voice cracked. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I want to discuss what would happen in the event that I were to fall into the hands of another lord.” I met his eyes. “I don’t want to become anyone’s thrall.”

He leaned forward. “First, I will do all within my ability to keep that circumstance from arising,” he said. “There are possibilities of implants for recall and such, though there is always the chance of those being detected.” He paused. “There are other, more drastic options.”

I spoke as quietly and calmly as possible, though my voice still had a slight quaver. “I expect you to do all in your ability to keep such a situation from arising and to extricate me should precautions and safeguards fail. I expect you to do me no harm at any time during our agreement, regardless of location, realm, dimension, or other locale, with the sole exception of a scenario where, in your best and most honorable discretion, you believe that I would prefer death, or a scenario in which the lives or fates of innocents would be spared by harming or killing me.”

Mzatal listened carefully. “Define harm.”

“Shit that hurts that I don’t want done to me!” I snapped, then winced at my outburst. “Sorry. I…I mean physical injury or maiming as well as any sort of arcane torture. And no mental harm either. Or memory stripping.” Damn it, I knew I was missing stuff. What good would this agreement do me if I fucked it up? I dropped my hands into my lap and clutched the fabric of my shirt beneath the table.

“There must be conditions,” Mzatal replied calmly, “otherwise training will be impossible. One would be to do you no willful or nonconsensual harm. Accidents can occur in training, as well as times when harm may be a part of the process.” His expression was reassuring. “In other ways, I will not seek to harm you.”

“R-right. Yeah. No willful or nonconsensual harm.”

There was more after that, though nothing anywhere near as unnerving or fraught; details and fine tuning concerning training and protocols, that sort of thing. Nothing leaped out at me as being onerous or untenable, and after what was probably a couple of hours, the sun set and papers were drawn up in English and demon, with Ilana and Helori verifying that the translation was precise. We signed in ordinary ink and then swore to it, with about as much drama as the times I’d been sworn in to testify in court. Yet I had no doubt that the oath was just as binding as if we’d chanted naked and signed in blood. Probably far more so, actually.

With the agreement signed and sworn on, I felt oddly at loose ends, though relieved to have the details out of the way. I pushed down the niggling fear that I’d missed some loophole that Mzatal could use to take advantage of me, and held onto Helori’s assurance that Mzatal was true to his word.

“So what now?” I asked.

“First, the balcony.” Mzatal stood and picked up a wine bottle and glasses from the side table. I followed him out into the pleasantly cool night. He exhaled softly, appearing to relax as soon as he was in the open air. It didn’t seem as if he disliked the indoors, but more as if he craved something that could only be found in wide open spaces. Even sitting behind the glass of the solarium seemed to confine him. Or maybe I was reading far too much into it.

He poured a glass and passed it to me. I took a long drink and looked up at the stars. A sliver of moon shone high overhead with a cluster of stars twinkling near it, looking as if they’d been poured out of the crescent. A thin cloud drifted before the moon, set briefly aglow before it passed on.

Mzatal took a sip, then set his glass aside and stood, hands behind back, as he took a deep breath and released it slowly. “They are so beautiful,” he murmured, looking out at the stars. He wouldn’t get any argument from me. With practically no ambient light to impede viewing, the sky seemed utterly packed with stars. The only time I’d ever seen the sky like that was the day after Hurricane Katrina blew through, and most of south Louisiana had been without power. I’d seen the Milky Way for the first time. And the last time? I wondered. No. I’d get back home. I’d work and study my ass off and do whatever I had to do.

Still, I couldn’t hold back the wistful sigh. “I don’t recognize any of the constellations.”

“Nothing of Earth here,” he said. He looked at me then back at the sky. “I never tire of them.” He gave a small shake of his head. “At times it feels as though I could simply move through them if I chose to.” He pointed to a cluster of stars a handspan above the horizon. “There, the bellowing reyza.” He traced it in a pale light for me to see, then extinguished it.

I smiled a bit. “What others?”

“Many constellations named by the demons seem to have no relevance to their names.” A whisper of amusement touched his eyes. “I will show you some that do. There—the summoner, and the portal, and kzak’s bane,” he said, pointing and lighting each one in turn for me to see.

“I had an encounter with a kzak once,” I remarked, looking up at the constellation. “Still don’t know if it was sent after me or Ryan.”

He looked over at me. “When? What were the circumstances?”

“Not long before I was sworn to—” I grimaced. “Before I was marked. Ryan and I were eating lunch at a kinda shitty restaurant, and a kzak came in and attacked us. We managed to wound it, and then Zack finished it off.”

Mzatal turned to face me. “You. It would have been sent after you. None who could send a kzak would send it after…the other one. It would be futile.”

Sighing, I set my glass down and leaned my forearms on the balcony railing. I looked out toward the grove and let the calm peace of it touch me for a few minutes before I spoke again.

“You should have told me about Rhyzkahl,” I said quietly, controlling the emotion as much as I could. When Mzatal healed me, he’d said he planned to tell me after he removed the mark. Too little, too late. “Even if I hadn’t believed you—which, I admit, I probably wouldn’t have—there was stuff that happened there that I might have questioned, that might have made me suspect.”

He turned to look back out at the stars and remained silent.

Exhaling, I ran my hands through my hair. “Look, if we’re going to work together, I need to know that you’ll share information with me whether you think I’ll believe it or not, whether you think I’ll like it or not, or whether you think it’ll hurt my feelings or not.” I straightened and regarded his profile. “I’m used to building cases based on separate pieces of evidence,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I might not believe you about something, but if I’m faced with a similar bit of evidence elsewhere, then yeah, I’m more likely to take a harder look.”

Mzatal lowered his head. “It was a tragic error on my part,” he said, surprising me with the admission. “Once he made the demand for your return, telling you would have better served both of us.”

“Promise me that you won’t do that again,” I said. “Please.”

He lifted his head. I watched as his gaze focused on the stars. “That which relates to you, I will tell.”

I nodded, throat tight. “Thank you for getting me back. And for not keeping me prisoner.”

He turned to me again and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Kara, I could no more keep you prisoner now than cage the lightning or bottle the surging sea. It is not my desire.”

I blinked, nonplussed. I had a brief impulse to say something snarky or silly to break the sudden, strange mood, but at the same time I didn’t want to do that to this moment. Yet I had no idea what to say.

Fortunately he spoke first. “I am truly pleased that you are here,” he said. He dropped his hands from my shoulders and clasped them behind his back again. “And that the formalities of the agreement are behind us.”

I frowned up at him. “You’ve confused the shit out of me, you know. You summoned, imprisoned, terrified, and threatened me.” My eyes narrowed. “Now you’re pleased that I’m here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful as hell to be here rather with Rhyzkahl, but what’s the fucking deal?”

“When you were first summoned,” he said without hesitation, “many—most—of my actions and your circumstances served as carefully calculated assessment tools. I had but a short time in which to weigh grave risk against enormous benefit.”

That required a moment of mulling. “The risk that I could fuck up your world versus the chance I could be of use to you later,” I said. “It was all a bunch of mind games and extreme bullshit so you could determine whether to kill me or keep me.” It’d been pretty clear at times, but this admission gave me a broader perspective.

“That is a simplistic, though adequately accurate statement.” He paused. “By the time I sought to remove the mark, I knew I wanted to work with you, and that it would be mutually beneficial. And then,” he said with a shake of his head, “you were gone.”

A flush of anger washed through me. “I can’t even begin to tell you how fucked up all of that is. I mean…” I trailed off. Yeah it was a total ethical catastrophe, but I couldn’t get past the fact that, despite his willful domination and abuse of power, he’d pulled my ass away from Rhyzkahl and been more than accommodating since then.

I took a settling breath and shifted to a more in-the-moment question. “You played at everything from being a totally scary motherfucker to halfway decent to get what you wanted from me,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Is ‘Mr. Nice Lord’ another carefully calculated tool to get what you want now?”

He stood silent for a moment, and I had the feeling the question disturbed him. “I cannot deny that everything I do is to get what I want,” he said quietly. “What I want from you is your dedication to becoming the best summoner you can be. That serves your best interests and mine, and will serve to thwart Rhyzkahl and others.”

It didn’t exactly answer my question, but was probably the best I’d get from him. Rhyzkahl. I gave Mzatal a sharp look. “Are you sure—absolutely sure—that Rhyzkahl doesn’t have any way to recall me? No more implants or anything like that?”

“I checked you thoroughly before, during, and after the healing,” he said. “There is a streak of arrogance in Rhyzkahl. Once he had you, he did not think he could lose you.”

Goosebumps skimmed over me that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. “I’d rather not depend on his arrogance,” I said, rubbing my arms. “You were able to hide a recall from him.”

“We did a full purification ritual on you while you slept,” he said. “and found nothing noteworthy.”

A frown tugged at my mouth. “Rhyzkahl found an implant of yours and removed it,” I said. “He told me you’d triggered it to kill me.”

“He lied,” Mzatal said without hesitation. “When you were with Pyrenth at Rhyzkahl’s grove, I sought to activate my primary recall implant, here.” Mzatal lightly touched the center of my chest. “Unfortunately, it failed and unraveled. There was nothing in it to kill you.”

I nodded slowly as I processed his answer. “So you had two implants on me. How—” I couldn’t control the slight shiver that ran through me. “How did you put them in me?”

He exhaled. “The first—the one that failed—I implanted during the purification ritual upon your arrival.”

“And the second?”

“The second was conditional, a failsafe for the first,” he explained. “When you disrupted the removal of the mark, the mark was damaged. We were in a critical window of time with a high chance that Rhyzkahl would recover you before I could remove it completely.” Mzatal’s mouth tightened. “If he did, I knew he would have to remove the mark eventually and replace it. I set the implant to trigger upon its removal, which it did.” He paused before continuing. “I implanted it in the antechamber before we went to the grove, before your escape.”

I blinked in realization. “That weird-as-hell kiss.”

“Only a heartbeat before, it had not been my intention to implant it in that manner,” he said slowly, “but, yes.”

I processed that and decided another change of subject was in order. “What about these?” I asked, touching one of the sigils on my chest. “Could he use these against me somehow? Does he have any connection to them?”

“There are no direct connections,” he told me, “but as was in your mark, there are residuals of both the blade and the rakkuhr that taints it.” A shudder passed through him. “Had any of those sigils been cut with the purpose of recall, there would be no doubt. But they were not.” He exhaled. “As it is, Kara, I cannot be absolutely certain about the potential those sigils hold. Szerain knows more. He was the one who first worked with rakkuhr and determined it was incompatible with us, with this realm. And Rhyzkahl and Jesral, based on what I witnessed of the ritual, have harnessed it in new ways.”

“What is it?” I asked. Memory of its touch brushed me, the foul miasma…Clawing panic rose, and I had to take several deep breaths to fight it down.

“I do not know its full nature as it is a potency alien to this world,” Mzatal replied, eyes darkening. “It subtly alters arcane harmonics, and its use has the potential to cause much disruption.” He grimaced. “It affects me deeply. It affects Idris as well, but not nearly as much.” His eyes went to mine. “Kara, I will do all in my power to keep you from falling into their hands again.” He said it quietly but backed with deep intensity. “Idris has great skill and determination. He will work on this as well.”

Some of the tension in my gut uncoiled with the understanding of his solid support. “When do we start?”

“You should rest tonight, and we will begin your training tomorrow.”

I scrubbed at my face. “I have so much to learn. I mean, I don’t know shit. I don’t know most of the sigils, or the shikvihr, or…”

“These I can teach you,” he reassured me. “I have taught many. And you have a quick mind and innate talent.”

“No pressure,” I said with a weak laugh. “I guess I’d better go get some sleep.” I met his eyes. “Thanks again.”

“You are most welcome, Kara Gillian. Come, this way.” He gestured for me to go with him, and together we walked down the length of the balcony to the corner, the sea to our right and the grove ahead. He passed through the open doors in the glass wall and called up a soft light within. I entered, then stopped, confused.

“These are your rooms.”

“Yes. I would prefer you stay here.”

A protest formed on my lips, but it died unvoiced at one look at his face. He had no intention of taking advantage of me. He wanted me to stay here because that way he could keep a closer watch over me. Guardian, not guard. And, as much I hated the weakness of it, I knew I’d feel safer here as well.

“Um, sure. Okay,” I said instead.

“If, after this night, you truly prefer different quarters,” he said gently, “I will make the arrangements.”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” I replied, shifting uncertainly. “I don’t have any clothes or, uh, night things.”

“The zrila have made a small supply for you,” he told me. “You will find those items in the rose chest in the dressing room off the bath chamber.”

I smiled with only a bit of tension. “I guess I’ll be occupying your bedroom then.”

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Sleep well, Kara,” he said, then departed.

Surprisingly, I did.