When Demons Walk

12

The thunderous pounding on Kerim’s door was loud enough to force Sham to sit up in her bed and curse under her breath. From the weight of her eyelids, she estimated she’d been asleep less than an hour.

She thought seriously about ignoring the noise and going back to sleep, but anything worth waking up the Reeve at such an obscene hour of the night was worth investigating.

Knowing her intrusion might not be welcomed, she stretched out on the floor and raised the bottom of the tapestry until she could see into Kerim’s room.

Kerim had already thrown on his bedrobe and was using his quarterstaff for balance as he hobbled painfully across the room.

“Yes?” he called out, before he opened the door.

“My Lord, Lady Tirra sent me to tell you that Lady Sky is in danger.”

Sham heard Kerim throwing the bolt on his door and the hinges squeaked once. A chest obscured her view, so she had to rely on her ears.

“I don’t know the exact circumstances, but Lady Tirra seems to feel it may be due to the Lady’s recent miscarriage.” From his voice the messenger was painfully young.

Kerim reappeared in Sham’s sight. He grunted as he settled himself in his wheeled chair and tossed the quarterstaff on his bed. Wasting no time he left the room.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Sham leapt to her feet and opened her trunk, shuffling through the assorted mess until her hand closed on damp cloth. She preferred her wel thieving clothes to court dress. As she wrestled with recalcitrant fabric, she realized she hadn’t had to unlock her trunk. Once decently clothed, she slammed a hand on the leather and wood top and spelled it closed without bothering with the latch.

Quickly she opened the panel into the passages and slipped through. By this time, she knew the passages of the Castle better than she knew the halls where more conventional people traveled from place to place in the Castle. There were only three short sections of main thoroughfare she had to cross. Either luck or the lateness of the hour blessed her with empty halls, and there was no one to see when she cautiously scurried from one passage to the next on her way to Lady Sky’s quarters.

Like most of the occupied rooms, the spyhole to Lady Sky’s bedchamber had been sealed. It took Sham less than a wisp of magic to pull the board off the wall. Before she pulled the board completely away, Sham doused the magelight. Luckily, Lady Sky lived on the third floor where all the unmarried ladies of the court stayed, so there were several windows to let moonlight into the room.

Lady Sky might almost have been posed for an artist. The silvery light of the moon played upon her fair hair and caressed her graceful figure, which was as slender as if her pregnancy had never been. The white muslin gown that she wore made her appear younger than she was. She sat cross-legged on her bed, staring down at a dagger she held in both hands.

Sham couldn’t see her face except for the corner of her jaw, but she had a clear view of Lady Sky’s fine-boned hands turning the dagger over and over, as if she were examining the knife at a marketplace, looking for flaws.

Sham began searching for a hidden door that would let her enter the room. Purgatory had eliminated any sympathy she might have had for people who took the easy way out, but the lady had the excuse of her recent miscarriage: It was common knowledge that such women were overly emotional. Sky had become as close to a friend as she had among the women at court, and Sham didn’t want anything to happen to her. She was exploring a likely looking area when she heard Kerim’s voice. Quickly she darted back to her spyhole and set her eye against it.

“Give me the dagger, Sky.”

The bolt must not have been thrown on the door, for Kerim’s chair had stopped just inside the threshold. Lady Sky held the dagger up until the moonlight danced on the blade.

“This was my husband’s,” she said in conversational tones. “He was very careful that all his weapons were kept sharp.”

“Sky, do you know how hard it is to kill yourself with a dagger? Unless you know what you’re doing, it can take days to die of such a wound. Despite Fahill’s axioms, dagger wounds are very painful ... and messy.” Kerim matched her conversational tones exactly, as, with an easy push, he sent his chair rolling toward her bed.

A fresh breeze blew in from the window, causing the modest white muslin of Lady Sky’s nightgown to flutter softly against her skin. Wheels touching the edge of her bed, Kerim waited patiently for her reply.

“They all die,” Lady Sky said finally, in a child’s soft bewildered voice. “My babies, my parents, my husband. Ven—everyone. I think perhaps I’m cursed. There are so many people dying here—if I am dead too, maybe it will stop.”

“Sky, dying never stops.” Kerim’s voice was gentle but implacable. “The only certainty life contains is death. Would your parents, Fahill, or Ven want you to die for no reason’? Should there be one less person mourning their deaths and one more person to mourn? Fahill loved you. I fought side by side with the man, and he was a withdrawn, embittered warrior until you came to him. During the few months he had you, he was happier than he had ever been. He would not like it if you used his death as a reason to destroy something he loved so.”

In the passage, Sham backed away from the spyhole. There was no threat to Kerim here, and somewhere along the line she’d developed faith in the Leopard’s abilities—he would talk Sky out of her foolishness without her help.

Shamera needed to get away from Sky’s voice. It wasn’t death that was hard, or the dying, though the tides knew it could be bad enough: it was finding a reason to keep on living. She wished Sky luck.

From the lady’s room, Sham heard the sound of a dagger flung to the floor, followed by sobs muffled against a man’s shoulder. Sham stopped, and turned back to the spyhole.

Kerim held Sky in his lap, petting her hair gently as her shoulders trembled with grief. Sham bit her tip and turned away. There, in the dark passage listening to the sounds of another woman’s sorrow, she admitted what she would not admit in the light of day: Sham the Thief loved the Reeve of Southwood.

Tiredly, she walked back to her room. She threw her clothes back in the trunk, and found her nightgown. Then she climbed into her bed, pulled the covers over her head, and waited for sleep to come.

The door to Sham’s room hit the wall with a loud bang. She awoke abruptly to find herself in an unladylike crouch on the edge of her bed, her dagger clutched in one hand. Frowning blearily, she peered at the intruders.

Talbot’s raised eyebrows caused her to remember just what the Reeve’s mistress wore for nightgowns, and she dove back under the covers. Elsic, of course, was immune to the sight.

“Sorry to trouble ye, Lady,” said Talbot, smothering a laugh, “but the Reeve is in a meeting, and I have work to do sorting through records that the temple sent down. I waited as long as I could, as Kerim said ye were out until the wee hours. It’s now past luncheon and someone needs to see the lad here—” Talbot clapped the boy’s shoulder with a heavy hand, “—doesn’t get himself mob-eaten.”

Sham scowled at Talbot. “It is customary to knock, before throwing open a door.”

He grinned at her. “Worry about knocking do ye, thief? First I ever heard of it.”

Laughing, Shamera raised her hands in defeat. “Welcome, Elsic. Shove off, Talbot. We’ll keep each other out of trouble. I’ll fight off mobs and Elsic can handle the nobles.”

Elsic grinned. “For you, Lady, anything.”

Sham shook her head at Talbot. “From stableboy to courtier in one night. Shame on you for corrupting youth.”

“Me?” answered Talbot indignantly, “‘It was the womenfolk. Cursed I am with a pack of daughters who look upon any unrelated male as fair game, especially a lad as fair and mysterious as this one.”

“Ah,” said Sham knowingly, “—the real reason to move Elsic into the Castle for the day.”

Talbot grinned at her and left. Sham started to get out of bed, then hesitated, glancing at Elsic.

“I really can’t see you,” he assured her with a wicked smile. Obviously an evening spent with Talbot’s family had been good for him—he looked a good deal less lost than he had in the stables yesterday.

“I think you can wait in Kerim’s room until I’m dressed, my lad. If you walk straight about four paces—” she waited as he complied, “—left a step, then six paces to the wall. Turn right and walk until you find the tapestry. Under the tapestry is a doorway to Kerim’s bedroom.”

When he was safely out of her room, she threw back the covers and pulled out a dress at random. It was a flowered silk in flaming orange golds and deep indigo, with slits on either side of the skirt to the top of her hips. She had to rummage further to find the slip—little more than colored silk strips hung on a string. It was based on some of the dresses the Trading Clan women wore, but far more provocative—it also had relatively few buttons, and the ones Sham couldn’t work didn’t make the dress any more revealing than it already was.

As she started toward Kerim’s room, her gaze fell on the pair of books that waited patiently on the nightstand that had mysteriously appeared to replace the one she’d destroyed. She was going to have to find some way to occupy Elsic while she worked through the black grimoire, as well as a better place to keep it when she wasn’t in the room. Her trunk would work to keep the book out of innocent hands, but that wouldn’t disguise what it held from any magic user.

Sham heard the soft sounds of someone tuning a harp. She ducked under the tapestry to find that Elsic had located a small bard’s harp amidst the weaponry that littered the room and was sitting at the foot of the Reeve’s bed tuning it. There was a smudge on the bedclothes that looked suspiciously as if he’d used it to dust off the harp.

Elsic looked up when she came into the room and left off touching the strings. “Kerim lets me play this when I am here. It’s a fine instrument.”

Sham looked at the harp doubtfully. It wouldn’t bring more than three coppers at the market, and that only if someone cleaned and polished it; the wood was old, and the finish marred as if it had indeed been carried by a bard through several lifetimes of wandering.

“Did he teach you to play?” she asked, unwilling to comment on the harp’s quality.

Elsic shook his head and began running his hands over the strings again. “No. I already knew how to play, though I didn’t remember it until I held the harp. Lord Kerim says his fingers are too cumbersome for the strings, but he’ll sing with me sometimes.”

The tune that he played was unfamiliar, but its haunting tone caused a shiver to run up her unsentimental spine. She had always accounted the Old Man a master of music, but he’d never approached the skill that Elsic displayed as he called the music from the old, worn harp. The strings wept with the sorrow of his song.

Unable to find any words that didn’t sound trite, Sham found a seat and closed her eyes, letting the music wash over her. After few refrains, Elsic traded the melancholy air for the more familiar melody of a feast-day song. He played the lilting verse through once before adding his voice to the harp’s.

Sham smiled in contentment, pulling her bare feet to the velvet seat of her chair. The skirt she was wearing made the position less than modest, but Elsic and she were the only ones in the room. At the end of the last chorus, he set the harp aside, flexing his fingers and laughing self-consciously when Sham applauded him.

“It’s the harp—” he explained, “—anyone could make such an instrument sound good.”

“Not I,” replied Sham, “nor my master who was a talented musician by all accounts. I have some reading to do. If you would like to continue playing, I’ll bring my book in here where the chairs are more comfortable.”

Rather than answering her with words, Elsic took up the harp again. Sham ducked back into her room, and got the book Lord Halvok had given her. Returning to Kerim’s room, she settled comfortably in a chair and started to unwork the binding spells on the book.

Elsic stopped playing and cocked his head to one side. “What are you doing?”

She released the first of the spells and stopped to answer him. “Magic.”

He frowned. “It feels ... odd somehow ... not like the magic I know.”

Sham thought about that for a moment, trying to decide just how the magic the Spirit Tide generated was different from the magic she used.

“It is different than what you do,” she said finally, “I don’t understand your kind of magic very well; I don’t know if any human does. I can sense it sometimes if it’s strong enough, the way you can sense what I do. The magic that you use is already shaped by the forces of nature—like the ocean tides. The magic I use is unformed. I impose it on the book, or whatever I want to affect.”

“There’s something else,” said Elsic after a pause, his voice tentative, “Something I don’t like.”

“Ah, that,” she said. “The book I’m reading has a rather large section of demonology. There is magic that feeds—”

“—upon death,” he interrupted, having come to alert like a fine hunting hound.

“Even so. I’m not working the spells, but even writing about such things taints the pages.”

“Ah,” said Elsic in a fine imitation of her tones earlier. He nodded once, and resumed playing. He didn’t appear unhappy, just thoughtful, so she left him to his music.

It was interesting to read the detailed explanation of the proper ceremony for summoning the dead accompanied by “How the Cow Ate the Roof” and “The Maiden’s Caress.” There were worse choices, she supposed, but somehow the simple country songs made the sacrifice of three piglets in a particularly cruel manner even more distressing in comparison. It was a relief when someone knocked on her door, and gave her an excuse to quit reading.

She ducked under the tapestry, tossing the book in the trunk, which was unaccountably unlocked again, as she passed it to reach her door. She looked at the trunk and frowned, but the knocking resumed.

“Coming,” she called, opening the door.

Talbot ran his eye over her outlandish costume and shook his head. “And here, I’ve heard ye’ve become an old maid in your choice of clothing. First time I’ve seen an old maid wearing orange.”

Sham batted her eyelashes at him and cooed, “Oh, but sir, a woman never likes to be predictable.”

Talbot laughed, stepping in the room at her motion of invitation. “And where have ye stowed the lad, eh? Under the bed?”

“Actually we were taking advantage of the more comfortable furnishings in Kerim’s rooms.”

Talbot’s eyebrows climbed. “If a man weren’t to know better, I’d say ye were sleeping with him the way you make so free of his rooms.”

Sham flashed the Reeve’s Mistress’s most enigmatic smile at him without answering the real question in his eyes. Elsic ducked under the tapestry and negotiated the room as if he’d been in it a hundred times rather than one.

“Through with business, Master Talbot?” he asked.

“For the nonce, lad.” Talbot turned back to Shamera. “There’s enough evidence of the story the old mage told ye to warrant a closer look, though I haven’t found anything interesting yet. I have a few meetings tomorrow as well, I don’t dare leave Elsic to my lassies—they’ll eat him alive.”

“By all means bring him here. All I’m doing now is reading. Given my material, it’s good to have another person here so I don’t scare myself silly,” she invited truthfully.

Talbot laughed. “Right, Now if I don’t get us home soon, the missus will have thrown the last of supper to the neighbor’s dog. Come along, Elsic.”

Talbot tucked Elsic’s hand in the crook of his arm and took his leave. Before she shut the door Sham heard Talbot say in a fatherly voice, “Now the missus said she had a nice fat duck to roast. Ye’ll want to avoid the gravy if ye can, but ye’ll not find better stuffing in all of ...”

The outside air was crisp and fresh, so Sham pulled her hood lower over her face. The stablemen had seen her in both her guises so she hoped the hooded cloak, aided by the darkness of late evening, would allow her to look like a lady meeting her lover in secret. She’d received the Whisperer’s message on her dinner tray, but because it had taken her time to get out of the house unseen she wasn’t certain the messenger would still be waiting.

“Ah, such fair countenance should never be hidden away like lost treasure.” The Shark’s voice rumbled out of the darkness of the hay barn.

Sham dodged into the shadows where the Shark waited and watched the stableyard warily until she was sure no one was taking undue notice of her actions before snapping impatiently, “Leave off with the manure; the stable has more than enough as it is. Why didn’t you just send another letter?”

He sank into a stack of hay and pulled a strand loose to chew on. “I thought I’d better check on you and see that you don’t grow too attached to your feathers—” he nodded at her clothes, “—and forget you are not a peacock, but a fox.”

Sham folded her arms and frowned at him. “What do you have for me, Sir Fox?”

“Halvok studied magic under Cauldehel of Reth for twelve years. I don’t know why that little fact escaped all the other times I’ve asked for information on him, but I got this one from Halvok’s half-sister myself.”

Sham raised her brows. “You’ve been masquerading as nobility again? That’s a hanging offense.”

The Shark gave her one of his dangerous smiles. “Ah, but I have some influence with the Reeve. I happen to be very close friends with his mistress.”

“And who was cautioning me a moment ago to remember that the Reeve really doesn’t have a mistress?” asked Sham with a grin.

“Guilty,” he replied with a flourishing bow. “I also asked around about the story of the Castle’s demon. It seems that there is indeed such a tale, though nothing I heard connects it with the name Chen Laut. I’ve gotten two or three versions of the story, but most of the particulars fit with the wizard’s account.”

Sham nodded. “Good. Talbot’s been looking through the old records. It looks like there’s enough information to confirm the story Halvok told us.”

The Shark spat the hay strand on the ground. “The third bit of interest that I picked up might be the reason the demon attacked the Old Man. It seems Maur had a run-in with a demon before he became the King’s Sorcerer. He’d been called to help a village, where a series of odd murders took place. He discovered a demon, hiding among a group of players who had stopped to winter at the village. He was able to drive it away, but couldn’t destroy it.”

“The Chen Laut?” she asked.

“My source didn’t know. If it was, Maur might have been able to identify it.”

“The old man was blind,” Sham reminded him.

“If he knew what the demon’s human form looked like, he could have described him well enough to identify who it is. It would explain why the demon attacked him.”

“I can feel this pattern coming together,” she said ruefully, “but I feel as if I am looking at the whole picture from the wrong side.”

“I hope you find that demon before it can kill again. I have a feeling that you’re not high on its list of favorite people.”

Sham laughed, “I’ve had that thought several times lately. I’ll be careful.”

The Shark snorted, “And I’ll be a fisherman. Just be smarter than it is.”

With Elsic’s music in her ears, Sham read the spell to return the demon to its origins for the fifth time. Somewhere beneath the neatly laid out recipe was a philosophy that dictated it. There seemed to be some special significance to the death of the sacrifice beyond the power of death magic.

As she read the spell again, goosebumps crawled up her arms. She ignored it at first, as a natural reaction to the nature of the spell she was exploring. Only gradually did she realize that her nerves were tingling from very real presence of magic. She looked up from her book and noticed Elsic wasn’t in the room with her. His music was coming from her room—and it wasn’t a harp he was playing.

A chill crept up her spine as she heard the clear tones of Maur’s flute. She must have left the trunk unlocked again ... it wasn’t like her to forget to lock her trunk. Yet at least on two occasions and now apparently a third, she’d done just that. Plaguing flute ...

She tucked her book under her arm and ducked under the tapestry. In her room the magic was so thick, she felt she might choke on it. She’d known the flute had a nasty habit of calling to someone who could use it. With his magic and musical ability, Elsic would have been especially sensitive to its call.

He played the flute softly, perched on the edge of her bed with a dreamy expression on his face, so absorbed by the music, that Sham thought he probably had no idea of the mounting storm of magic. On the principle that it was dangerous to interrupt someone working magic, Sham sat on the bed next to Elsic, with the intention of breaking his focus on the music slowly.

Unfortunately, he stopped playing immediately.

“I’m sorry ...” He didn’t get the chance to finish before the gathering magic broke free of the fetters of the flute’s music and began to shape itself to fire—as all wild magic did. Smoke curled up from the bottom of the tapestry and little flames flickered here and there on the carpets, the upholstery, and anything else marginally flammable.

Instinctively Sham reached for control before her reason told her there was no chance she could work green magic. She started to pull back and look for another way to undo the damage the magic was causing before the smoke in the room became dangerous when two things occurred to her.

The first was that it was only human magic that tended to turn to fire when loosed unshaped; by its very nature, green magic was already shaped before it was called. The second was that when she’d reached for control of the magic, it had responded to her. She didn’t waste time wondering why Elsic had called human magic with the flute. The smoke burning acridly in her lungs was reminder enough of the lack of time.

She sought control again. It was difficult to contain magic she hadn’t summoned—Elsic was not her bound apprentice—and this was more power than she’d ever used at one time. As she wrestled with it, she was peripherally aware that flames leapt from the bedclothes sparked by the magic escaping her hold.

It struck her that it might be easier to channel the magic into a spell, rather than try to contain it. Deciding a fire in the fireplace was as likely a candidate for dispersing it as any, she fed the magic into the logs that were prepared for lighting.

This time her effort was much more successful. The wood burst into flame and erupted into glorious fury, burning to ash in an instant. She used the last touch of magic to dispel the random fires and the smoke. In a moment it was quiet in the room—though a good deal warmer than it had been.

“What happened?” asked Elsic in a subdued voice.

Sham laughed a bit shakily. “That is a very good question. The flute is a device designed to allow a magician to gather magic easier and faster than he normally could. Apparently it works for green magic as well as human—but the magic it gathers is still the raw stuff human mages like me use. Human magic disperses itself in flame if the person who draws it can’t control it.”

“I suppose that means I shouldn’t play it.” The regret in his voice was reflected in his face.

“I suppose not,” she agreed firmly, tucking the flute back inside the trunk and keying the lock-spell into place. The next Spirit Tide she was going to put the stupid flute in the caves where it wouldn’t be a problem—she hoped.

Rubbing her eyes tiredly, Sham spelled the book closed. Talbot had collected Elsic and left several hours ago. Sometime after that Dickon had brought her dinner with a message from the Reeve. Kerim would stop by after he was through with his meetings, but it would be very late.

Sham was contemplating trying for some sleep when someone knocked gently on her door. It was the outer door so it probably wasn’t Kerim, and the knock was too soft for Dickon.

“Who is it?” she called, in the heavily accented Cybellian the Reeve’s mistress affected.

“A message for you, Lady,” replied an unfamiliar male voice.

She hesitated, then opened her trunk and set the book inside. With the trunk carefully relocked, she fluttered. “A moment ...”

Briefly, she checked her appearance in the mirror. Satisfied that she looked as she should. Sham opened the door.

The man who stood outside the door wore the colors of a Castle servant. In his gloved hands he held a small wooden box that he extended to her. A gift then, she thought, like the others left for her in attempts to curry favor.

She took the box and examined it, as any greedy woman would. The dark wood was covered with a multitude of carved birds, no two alike. She wondered briefly if this was the gift, but as she turned it something rattled in the box.

“You may go now,” she commanded haughtily, deciding she didn’t need an audience.

“I am sorry, Lady, but I was told to wait until you had opened the box.”

Shrugging, Sham worked the small catch. Nestled in black cloth was a polished star-ruby set in a gold ring. Her experienced eye calculated how much such a ring was worth: more than the small treasure of gold coins in her sea cave. The man who sent was either a fool or he had a specific favor in mind. There was no note in the box.

“Who sent this?” she asked.

“It was sent in confidence, Lady. I am to see that the gift fits before returning.”

Sham frowned at him, but it was one of Kerim’s mistress’s frowns: lightweight and frivolous. She didn’t really expect that it would affect a servant used to dealing with Lady Tirra. Deciding it was the easiest way to get rid of the man, she slipped the ring in place.

The sleep-spell took effect so fast she didn’t have time to berate herself for stupidity. Her frantic attempt to counter the spell ended stillborn.

Impassively the servant caught the woman before she fell and threw her over his shoulder. He stepped inside her room and shut the door, throwing the bolt. He set the Reeve’s mistress temporarily on her bed while he pulled off the servant’s tunic and trousers. Under these he wore a plain brown shirt and loose, dark pants.

Hefting the woman over his shoulder again, he worked the panel opening near the fireplace and stepped into the passage.