When Demons Walk

8

Sham sat up abruptly as a low sound echoed through her darkened room. The bed was too soft and hampered her movements; she rolled off and crouched on the floor with her knife in hand. She didn’t feel the presence of the demon, but lit the candles with a breath of magic anyway. The light revealed nothing out of place.

Once again the moan traveled through the room. The soft illumination of the candles dispelled the darkness and allowed her to put aside her initial fears. The sound was coming from the Reeve’s chambers.

The frame had been badly damaged when the Reeve destroyed the door. His carpenters were having a difficult time replacing it, so the tapestry was still the only barrier to the Reeve’s rooms. If the door had still been there, she would never have heard anything.

She lay down on the floor by the tapestried opening and remembered to extinguish the candles in her room before she rolled under the bottom of the heavy wool.

Flames crackled merrily in the Reeve’s fireplace. It was Kerim’s custom to keep the fire well fueled throughout the night to keep the room warm; poor circulation left him easily chilled. The fire provided enough light to allow Sham to see inside the large chamber. When she discovered nothing out of place, she came to her feet and saw what her lowly position near the floor had hidden from her.

Kerim lay stiffly on his bed. As she watched, his back arched and he gasped soundlessly; his face grimaced in pain. Apparently the miracle-worker his mother had found had done more damage than they had realized.

She thought briefly of allowing Kerim his privacy. When she was hurt, she always sought some dark corner to wait it out. She’d even taken a step or two back toward her room when another soft moan came from the bed. Enough, she thought, was enough.

The surface of the Reeve’s bed was waist high, and she couldn’t reach him from the floor. She put her knife on the corner of the bed and levered herself up—gently so she wouldn’t jostle him more than she had to. Leaving the knife where it was, she crawled up on the bed until she sat near him.

Magic was incapable of doing much more than concentrating the effects of herbal medication, speeding healing and setting bones —and even in that, Sham had little experience. Armed with nothing more than a rune that promoted health, a vague recollection of rubbing down her father’s warhorse, and a bottle left on the dresser that smelled suspiciously like horse liniment, Sham set to work.

Kerim helped as Sham rolled him over until he lay face down on the bed. With three quick slices of her knife she rid him of the soft robe he wore. She was tossing the scraps to one side when another spasm twisted the still-impressive muscles of his lower back. The flesh strained and knotted beneath his skin, forcing his spine to twist unnaturally to the side.

She put a few drops of the liquid in the bottle on her hands and rubbed it into her skin. When she felt the familiar warmth begin to seep into her hand, indicating that it was indeed a liniment of some sort, she splattered it liberally on Kerim’s back and set to work.

“Remind me to recommend you to the Stablemaster,” said Kerim, his voice tight with pain. “You need to find more honest work than thievery.”

“Honest?” questioned Sham, pressing deeply into his back with her thumbs. “I’m the most honest thief in Purgatory, just ask the Shark. I pay him a copper a week to say so.”

Kerim’s laughter was broken by a gasp as another muscle spasmed. Sham moved up where it seemed the worst and poured more liniment onto her hands.

She’d heard somewhere that it sometimes helped to distract a person in pain. “I’ve answered some of your questions, would you mind if I ask you a question or two?”

Taking his grunt as consent. Sham set the liniment aside for fear of burning his skin with it and rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you really believe Altis has awakened? That this religion of yours wasn’t just created by men to fulfill their own purposes?”

Kerim drew a deep breath and shifted his head. “Once,” he said, as if he were a storyteller, “there was a young boy, the bastard son of a great lady. He was born a year after the Lady’s husband left on his never-ending pursuit of the perfect battle—nine months after a warrior, traveling to another land, stayed briefly at the manor where she lived. Bastard son of the Lady, but no kin to the Lord, the boy learned early to keep himself out of everyone’s way. He was no one and less than nothing.”

“One day a young man came to the village near the estate where the boy lived. He spoke of a wondrous vision he had been given by an ancient god; a vision that foretold how the small war-torn country that was the boy’s homeland would be powerful, as it had been in the distant past. At last the boy’s life took on a purpose. He would become a great warlord, and his family would honor him for his skills.

“That night he dreamed he was visited by Altis, who told the boy he would indeed grow to become a warrior of legends, that he would lead an invasionary force such as had not been seen on the face of the earth for many generations. Altis bestowed on the boy the gifts of agility and strength, but told him that he must win skill on his own. A man would come, capable of leaching the art of war.” Kerim’s voice gave out briefly as Sham put pressure on a particularly tight area.

“Two days later a man came looking for work. He was a soldier, he said, but willing to work in the stables if that were all an old man was good for. As it happened the stable had need of workers, and the man was given the job. He wasn’t big, this man sent by Altis, but perhaps because of that he had spent much time studying fighting skills. He taught the boy—me—how to battle and, more importantly, when. When the Prophet of Altis called upon the people of Cybelle, I went to him and followed where he led. I fought for Altis with the zeal only a boy is capable of; for him I became the Leopard. As you believe that magic is real, so I believe that Altis is real.”

“You don’t have any of the trappings that most of the followers of Altis have,” she commented. “There are no altars in this wing. I have seen how you revere the High Priest Brath.”

Kerim snorted with what might have been a laugh. “Altis is real, but he is not my god anymore. A man learns things with age, if he is lucky. I woke up one morning and saw a field laden with bodies, and listened to His prophet dedicate that bloody field to Altis. I asked myself what Altis had done to deserve the lives of so many and whether he had done me a favor by creating the Leopard who had wrought such carnage. But I finished what I had started, fought to the last battle.

“After it was over—as over as war ever is—the prophet called me to him and told me to ask for a reward. It is not wise to refuse such an offer. Refusing a reward makes the ruler wonder if you are not looking for greater things—like his position.”

Her massage seemed to be having some effect; he wasn’t tensing against the pain and his voice had recovered its normal tone. “I told him to send me somewhere a warrior would be of use. Hurt that I didn’t ask for a position at his side, he sent me here, among the barbarians, if you will forgive the designation, while he rules the glorious Empire from Cybelle.” Kerim turned his head and granted Shamera a wry smile. “Why are you interested in Altis?”

“It occurred to me to wonder if Altis would permit a demon to worship in his temple,” said Sham slowly—though she hadn’t thought of that until he’d been almost finished.

The Reeve considered her words briefly before shaking his head. “I don’t know. I can tell you that there are any number of people who do not worship Altis: the Southwood nobles, like Halvok, Chanford, or even Lady Sky. For that matter most of the servants are Southwoodsmen and there are even a few Easterners, like Dickon, who decided that worshiping gods is a thankless task even before I ...”

Kerim broke off speaking as a wracking spasm took his breath. Horrified, Sham saw the muscles tighten and cramp, worse than it had been before. His back bowed impossibly; she expected to hear the crack of bone.

Discarding mundane methods, Sham traced the lines of the rune of health on his back where the turmoil seemed to be focused. She closed her eyes, seeking to visualize each muscle relaxing, forcing herself to draw the rune slowly so she would make no mistakes. Finished, she straightened, looking with magic-heightened senses at the rune she’d completed.

The symbol glittered in orange and then began to fade, just as it ought. Kerim sighed and relaxed gradually. When only a faint visible trace of the rune left, it flared brightly, fading to a sullen red glow.

“By the winds of the seven sea gods ...” muttered Sham with true perplexity. The rune should have faded completely ... unless the cause was unnatural.

It wants the Reeve more than it has wanted anything in a thousand years. The words of the blind stableboy echoed in her thoughts. The Reeve had begun losing his health near the time that the first slaying started.

Sham watched, thinking furiously, as the symbol darkened to black and Kerim’s back began to spasm once more.

Urgency lending cleverness to her fingers and power to her work, she traced another rune: a warding against magic. As she toiled, she could feel the rune touch a spell of binding that was beyond her ability to sense otherwise. Startled, she worked another spell.

Slowly, as if it were reluctant to show itself, thin yellow lines appeared. A rune drawn on living flesh had more power than was usual for such things, and this one was drawn by a demon. As the curls and line of the rune became clearer, she was able discern a rune of binding—source of the spell she’d detected—though much of it she didn’t recognize.

A harsh sound was driven out of Kerim as the muscles in his back tightened further. She set her hand tentatively on the demon’s rune and began unweaving it. After several attempts, she realized it wasn’t going to work. But there was another way, if she was fast enough and if the demon was slow enough.

Quickly, she began retracing the demon’s rune, displacing the demon’s power with her own and binding the rune to her. She had completed half the pattern, not nearly as much as she needed, when the demon began to steal back its work. It surprised her at first; she hadn’t known that anything could work runes without being present. After only an instant’s hesitation she started adding touches to the pattern, small things, nonsense things, parts of the rune that were wholly hers. Things the demon couldn’t see.

Sweat beaded on her forehead as Sham struggled to break the demon’s hold. For only an instant the demon became caught up in one of Sham’s useless twists, but it gave her time to finish the rough outline of the main rune. The master pattern hers, she was able to dissolve the complications that blurred the simplicity of the rune, small additions belonging to her weaving and the demon’s, destroying the demon’s hold on the binding rune completely.

The moment the demon’s hold broke, Kerim relaxed limply on the sheets. The hand Sham used to push her hair out of her face shook with fatigue. Taking a deep breath, she unworked the last of the rune, leaving Kerim free of any binding. That done, she stared at the room assessingly.

She had expected the demon to come to the chamber, but it had not needed to do so. Magic didn’t work that way. Magic—all magic—was subject to a few laws, one of which was that a mage could only work magic where he was physically present—unless ... the demon had a focus rune in the room.

“Shamera?” questioned Kerim softly, without moving from his prone position.

“Sssh.” She hushed him, staring out at the room.

The rune mark would be somewhere hidden from view, she thought, somewhere a mage wouldn’t he likely to glance at casually. Her gaze fell on Kerim’s wheeled chair. She rolled off the bed and tipped the chair over.

Kerim turned his head at the clatter of the chair hitting the floor. “Shamera? What are you doing?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” she muttered staring at the underside of the chair’s seat.

The focus was easy to find. It was not drawn with chalk or cut into the bottom of the seat as she would have done it, but scribed deeply with magic, invisible to anyone not mageborn.

With a foul comment, Sham pulled aside the fire screen and rolled the chair into the huge fireplace. The flames drew back, as if the very nature of the mark repelled them.

She raised her arms over her head, chanting a lyrical incantation to aid the fire with the force of her magic. The flames grew suddenly brighter, licking with fierce hunger at the chair. Neither the theatrical gesture nor the chant had been necessary, but it suited her mood.

How stupid of her not to consider such an explanation of Kerim’s “illness”, especially after the selkie, Elsic, had practically told her that Kerim was the focus of the demon’s attack. Human magic was not suited for such use, but she had known that she was dealing with a demon. She knew there were creatures that fed upon pain and despair; certainly the demon had not consumed its other victims in a physical sense.

As she watched the orange tongues flick at the chair, she thought again of the selkie’s warning: ... more than it has wanted anything in a thousand years.

She spoke a spell that would expose any more runes such as she had found on Kerim, but there were no more in the room. A focus rune, though, was much less powerful than an active rune unless it was being used and would not reveal itself easily to her spelling, nor would any other simple rune.

There was no real reason to suspect a second focus rune. They were uncommonly used, for the same reason familiars were avoided —if destroyed they could seriously hurt the mage whose creatures they were. All the same, if the Reeve’s selkie was right, Kerim was important to the demon. She turned on her heel and strode back to the bed.

“Shamera, why did you throw my chair into the fireplace?” Kerim’s voice was abnormally reasonable.

Ignoring him. Sham yanked on the heavy down-filled tick that had settled at the foot of the bed. She searched it thoroughly before throwing it onto the floor. Muttering nastily, she started to tear away the sheets, and her hand touched a section of the robe Kerim had been wearing. With her heightened senses she could almost see the magic imbued in the fabric.

The rune on the robe was a lesser one, not a focus rune but another binding rune—far simpler than the one Kerim had worn. It was the sort of thing one would put on an animal so that it would not wander away. Far easier, she thought, to turn such a simple rune into a stronger, more powerful sign than to try it from scratch. The great mages, she knew, used to transfer a rune from one surface to another. The means had been lost to time, but perhaps the demon still knew the method. Kerim could have been ensorcelled again by morning.

As she stepped through the assorted bedding on the way to the fireplace with the remnants of Kerim’s robe, Sham’s foot knocked her knife from the folds of the tick and sent it clattering across the floor. She scooped it up and continued on her way.

The flames were still spitting high with the magic she’d fed them earlier. With the addition of the bedrobe, they turned purple and shot up through the chimney with such force that it dislodged months of old ashes. As the soot fell into the fireplace, it was consumed in the superheated flames, creating a shower of bright sparkles like a thousand falling stars.

Sham started back toward the bed when she heard the slight scuff of the “secret” panel sliding open behind her. She jumped sideways with reflexive speed, holding her knife in a fighter’s grip as she turned to face the gaping opening in the wall.

For a moment nothing happened, and she took a cautious step toward the dark passage doorway. The dim glint of light on metal was her only warning as a sword swept through the air.

Frantically, she threw herself to one side, rolling over the top of a waist-high table to put it between her and the sword wielder. As her attacker stepped toward her, the firelight threw his face into high relief.

“Ven?” said Kerim, incredulously.

Even knowing that this could not possibly be the Reeve’s brother, Sham couldn’t detect anything about the man that appeared unnatural, not even the aura of magic that she’d felt when the demon had attacked her before.

“What do you want?” she asked, snatching a heavy, leather-covered shield from the wall and heaving it at the golem as she tried to get some distance between herself and the creature. The knife she held was balanced for throwing, but she didn’t want to use it and lose her only weapon.

“Mine. He is mine,” hissed the thing that wore Lord Ven’s body, knocking the shield aside easily as he slid over the table that blocked his path.

“No,” answered Sham as the creature started toward her in a trained warrior’s rush.

She took three steps back and rumpled the rug under his feet with a touch of magic. He stumbled heavily, but recovered faster than she’d hoped: many automatons were clumsy things. Twisting and scrambling, she evaded him, managing to nick his arm with her knife as she slipped past him. She saw the blood on his arm, but knew it had been chance more than skill on her part.

He held the advantage of reach and strength. Sham’s lowborn knife-fighting skills meant nothing unless she risked breaking through his guard and closing in with him. She was deterred by the recollection that one of the attributes the golem enjoyed was disproportionate strength. As if to confirm her thoughts, a blow of his sword reduced a sturdy oaken chair to a broken shadow of itself and she decided to try magic instead.

She began to weave a spell to cause the cloth on his body to stiffen and imprison him in its hold, but she was just an instant too slow. Lord Ven closed in and swung his sword at her throat. She managed to deflect his blow with her knife, but the force of his strike wrenched her wrist painfully. Sham lost control of the magic she’d gathered and the embroidered chair that sat by the fireplace burst into sudden flame. She took a quick step back and hit her elbow painfully against the wall—there was no more room to retreat.

Breathing hard, Sham ducked under Lord Ven’s second strike. As she ran under the blade he reversed his stroke, catching her brutally on the back of her wounded thigh with the pommel. The blow drove her to the ground where she hit her chin on the floor with stunning force.

Face down, she missed exactly what happened next, but there was a shrill cry and the sound of sharp metal imbedding itself in flesh. Frantically, Sham scrabbled forward and then twisted to her feet.

Lord Ven stood facing her with an oddly blank look and something dark pushed out of his chest; Kerim swayed unsteadily behind him—though he stood without aid. Sham jumped to her feet as the Reeve collapsed to his knees, sweat beading his forehead as a tribute to the effort it had cost him to stay on his feet so long.

The demon’s creature fell limply forward, and the great blue sword slipped out of its back and sang out as it hit the floor. Sham stared at the motionless body, gasping hollowly for breath.

“You’re not hurt?” rasped Kerim.

She shook her head. “No, and I have you to thank for it. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer against it.” She chose the neuter pronoun deliberately in order to remind Kerim, if he needed reminding, that the thing he’d just killed had not been his brother.

Nodding, the Reeve collapsed backward until he was seated on the ground with his back supported by a heavy chest. He tilled his head back and closed his eyes.

“Shamera, would you get Dickon? His rooms are down the hall. I think we could use his help to take care of the body.”

“Right,” she replied, frowning with worry as she looked at Kerim’s pale face.

She didn’t realize until she was halfway to the door that she still held her knife in her right hand. Shaking her head at herself, she started to set it on a table. It wouldn’t do for the Reeve’s mistress to run about the Castle at night with a knife.

“Shamera!”

The urgency in the Reeve’s tone caused her to spin around.

Kerim’s blue sword in one hand, Lord Ven’s simulacrum advanced with a stealthy gait that changed to an awkward run as she finished her turn. Almost without thought she ducked under his swing and imbedded her knife deeply into the creature’s eye.

“Plague’s spawn!” spat out Sham in revulsion as she was carried to the floor in the thing’s embrace. She scrambled frantically until she was free of its convulsive movements, jerking her knife out of the body so she’d still have a weapon if it came at her again. “Tide take it! Why can’t this thing just stay dead?”

As she spoke the body, still writhing, vanished with a loud cracking sound, leaving the blue sword behind. She lunged to her feet and spat a filthy word, wiping her forehead with the back of the hand that held her knife.

“Is it coming back?” inquired Kerim in a suspiciously mild tone.

Sham shook her head, but there wasn’t a lot of assurance in her voice as she said, “I don’t think so. I’ll go get Dickon.”

“No, wait,” said Kerim. “I think ... I need an explanation of this night’s events before you go. I feel like I have been thrown blindfolded into a pack of wolves. You might start with what it was you did to me that allowed me use of my legs.”

Sham sank wearily to the floor opposite Kerim’s position. “I think I need to ask you a few questions before I understand enough of it to tell you what’s happened.”

He inclined his head, managing to look regal in spite of being clothed only in sweat and the light cotton knee-length trousers that served as Cybellian undergarments. He wouldn’t have been wearing that much if the trousers had been rune-marked like his robe.

“Something amuses you?” asked Kerim.

Hastily Sham rearranged her face and cleared her throat. “When exactly did your back begin bothering you?”

His eyebrows rose briefly at her question, but he answered her without hesitation. “I was traveling and my horse slipped off a bank while we were crossing a river. I wrenched my back. Perhaps eight or nine months ago.”

“Talbot told me that it has gotten worse in fits and starts, not a steady progression.”

Kerim nodded. “I have a bad spell, like tonight’s, and when it’s over I’m worse than before. The muscles in my back ache constantly with occasional shooting pangs. My legs are ...” he paused and for an instant there was a wild hope in his face that he quickly repressed. “My legs were numb from mid-thigh on down. It felt like they were encased in ice. I was cold all the time.” He looked at Sham intensely. “I didn’t realize how cold until now.”

“Now that it’s gone,” commented Sham with the dawn of an impish grin.

“Now that it’s gone,” he agreed hoarsely. He closed his eyes and swallowed, clenching his hands.

She took pity on him and, looking away, she began to piece together the story out loud. “Somehow, you must have attracted the demon’s attention. I don’t know why it chose to attack you differently than the other victims, or what it was gaining from you, but I can tell you that the demon caused your disability.”

“How can you be certain?”

Shamera glanced at the Reeve and saw that he was still fighting not to hope too much.

She sighed loudly. “I suppose, since you are a Cybellian—” she let her tongue linger over the term as if it were an insult of the highest order, much the same way Kerim habitually said “magic” “—I shall have to begin with a basic lesson on magic. I generally use rune magic rather than casting by voice, gesture, and component. The runes are more subtle and they last longer.”

There was a bare hint of amusement in Kerim’s voice when he interrupted her, “What is a rune?”

Sham sighed a second time and began to speak very slowly, as one might to someone who was very young and uninformed. “Runes are ...” She stopped and swore. “I’m going to have to go simpler than that. I always knew that there was a reason that wizards don’t talk about magic to nonwizards ... hmmm. Magic is a force in the world—like the sun or the wind. There are two ways a mage can harness the magic: spellcasting or runes. Spellcasting uses hand gestures, voice commands, and material components to shape the magic. As a mage gets better he can reduce what he uses.”

“And a rune is?”

“Runes are patterns that do the same thing. They take skill, precision, and time, but last longer than spells. Unless a limit is placed upon them, runes will absorb magic from other sources so that the ending spell is more powerful than it started out to be unless the rune is triggered. When you were hurting, I drew the rune of health on your back. It showed me that there was another rune already there. The demon managed somehow to bind you to it. I broke that rune, but there was another on your robe and a focus rune on your chair.”

Kerim rubbed his temples. “What is a focus rune?”

“Wizards cannot cast magic over long distances without aid. Some mages use an animal that is connected to them—a familiar. But the more common means is the use of a focus rune, a wizard’s mark. It allows the wizard to work magic someplace without being there. Both the rune and the familiar are dangerous to use, because their destruction hurts the spellcaster.”

“So you hurt the demon, and it sent my brother.”

Tiredly she shifted her weight off of one bruise and onto another one. “The demon probably sent the golem when it sensed that I was meddling with the rune on your back. As it happens, my talents lay in the making and unmaking of runes, so I was able to destroy the rune before the golem came.”

Kerim swallowed, but he didn’t ask the question that was on his face; instead he said, “Is it dead?”

“The golem? It was never alive, remember? I suspect it’s still functioning—otherwise the demon would never have risked transporting it out of this room.”

Kerim’s eyes closed again; his mouth was set in grim lines and his hands lay forcibly lax on the ground as he said quietly, “I can feel my feet for the first time in months, and the coldness is gone. But I still don’t have much control over my legs, and I still ache. Am I going to get worse again?”

Sham rubbed weary hands over her eyes like a tired child, then managed to find the magic to cast a quick spell that would allow her to see any magical ties that still bound Kerim to the demon.

“It has no hold on you now,” she said finally. “Tomorrow I’ll clear your rooms of its meddling. Until then you should find someplace else to sleep. As for the rest ...” she shrugged, “I am no healer, but I’d be surprised if you were able to get up and walk right now. I am absolutely amazed that you were able to attack the golem. You should know as well as I that lying around waiting for a wound to heal is almost as incapacitating as the wound itself.”

Kerim nodded once, abruptly. “Lady, would you get Dickon and send him for Talbot? There is much to be done tonight—and I think the four of us need to develop a plan of action.”

Sham nodded and struggled to her feet. She started for the door, but belatedly remembered she was still in her nightgown. Snagging the tick off the floor where she’d left it, she wrapped it around her like a robe before leaving the room.

As she trotted through the hall it occurred to her that Dickon could be the demon. He was very much at home in the Castle. Hadn’t he been one of the ones that Kerim had said did not worship Altis? She stopped in front of his door, and hesitated before knocking.

The hall floor fell cold on the soles of bare feet, and Sham shivered. Deciding that she would drive herself insane trying to discover who the demon was if she resorted to random guessing, she forced herself to knock on the door. Wearing a dressing robe. Dickon opened his door soon after the first knock.

“Lady?” he asked politely, giving no outward sign that it was unusual to be awoke at that hour by a woman splattered liberally with blood and wearing a rather large bed-tick.

Sham drew the thick covering tighter, as if that would warm her feet or ward away demons. “Lord Kerim wants you to collect Talbot from his lodgings and come with him to the Reeve’s private chambers.”

“Is something wrong?” asked Dickon, losing some of his professional demeanor.

She shook her head, “Not at the moment. But ... you might bring a bedrobe for Kerim.”

Dickon looked at her face closely a moment, before nodding and closing the door, presumably to dress.

When Sham entered the Reeve’s chambers again, Kerim had managed to pull himself into a chair. Balancing his chin on his fists, he looked up when she came in.

“Go get dressed,” he said waving a hand toward the covered doorway to her room. “I expect this is going to be a long night and you might as well be warm.”

Sham ducked under the tapestry again and opened her trunk. She saw no need to wear a dress, so she pulled out her second-best working clothes and put them on. She pulled a brush through her hair and washed her hands.

Just before she splashed water on her face, she got a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughed. She must have run her hand across her cheek after stabbing the golem—a swipe of blood as wide as her palm covered her from ear to chin. She was impressed anew by the mildness of Dickon’s reaction when she had knocked at his door.

Clean and dressed, Sham reentered Kerim’s room carrying his tick, to find Kerim asleep. She set the bedding on the floor and quietly found another chair near the wardrobes. She slid her rump to the edge of the seat, propped her feet on a convenient bit of furniture, and settled into a comfortable doze.

A soft knock on the door aroused her, but before she could get up, Kerim called out, “Enter!”

Dickon came in, followed by an anxious-looking Talbot. They stopped just inside the door and took in the chaos that neither Kerim nor Sham had taken the time to clean up. Chairs, tables, and broken glass lay scattered across the floor. Talbot knelt by a dark stain and ran a finger through it.

“Blood,” he commented thoughtfully, rubbing his fingers on his pant leg.

“Pull up some chairs, both of you,” ordered Kerim shortly. “Dickon, I would look upon it as a favor if you would clean my sword and set it back in its sheath. I’d clean it myself, but I doubt that I’d do a good job at this point.”

“Of course, Lord,” replied Dickon.

He handed Kerim a neatly folded bedrobe before picking up the sword and wiping it down with a square of cloth he removed from a drawer. Talbot pulled a pair of chairs near Kerim’s and sat in one, while Kerim struggled into Dickon’s robe.

“I hate to admit it, Talbot,” began Kerim heavily, once everyone was seated, “but you were right; we needed a mage.”

Dickon stopped polishing the sword and gave the Reeve an appalled look before turning his accusing gaze to Sham. She grinned at him and motioned to herself to indicate that she was the mage in question.

Kerim turned to his valet. “Dickon, have you noticed any change in my brother’s behavior in the last few days?”

“No, sir,” came the immediate reply.

Kerim nodded, and rubbed wearily at his temples. “I thought not, but couldn’t be sure. I haven’t been as attentive since I found myself confined to that chair.”

Talbot and Dickon followed Kerim’s gaze to the fireplace where the metal remains of his wheeled chair sat forlornly in the middle of the flames.

Kerim cleared his throat, “Yes, well, that doesn’t seem to be a problem at the moment, does it? Let me start from the beginning so that Dickon knows as much as everyone else. You all know that I’ve been concerned with the random murders that have taken place over the past months. Once the killer began to concentrate on the courtiers, it became obvious that he was comfortable in the court—otherwise someone would have noticed him wandering through the halls.”

“I thought your selkie stable lad had more to do with that determination than the killer’s habits,” commented Sham.

Kerim smiled tiredly. “Yes, I suppose it was good we listened to him, don’t you? Talbot suggested it might be beneficial if we could search the nobles’ houses as well as the apartments in the Castle itself. Although I could have done so in an official manner, it would have caused needless panic and resentment. Talbot suggested that we bring in a thief. I agreed, and he went to the Whisper of the Street to find a skillful thief who could be trusted to do no more than look.”

Sham stood and bowed solemnly.

The Reeve smiled tiredly and continued. “According to the Whisper, Shamera had a personal grudge against the killer. One of the victims was a close friend and she was looking for him on her own. We decided to give her the role of my mistress to allow her easy access to me as well as the court. Both Shamera and Talbot were of the opinion the killer was a demon. Not the things we fought in the Swamp, Dickon—but a magical creature.”

Dickon snorted and shook his head sadly.

Kerim smiled, “That was my thought as well. The second night we were here she was attacked by the killer, but she didn’t get a good look at him.”

“The cuts I sewed up were caused by a knife or a sword; there was nothing magical about them,” commented Dickon briefly.

Sham lowered her voice dramatically. “Demons are wholly evil, highly intelligent, and better magic users than most wizards. They do not age. They hunt humans for sustenance and pleasure, though they have been known to kill other animals as well. They come from another world, akin to the one the gods inhabit, and can come here only if summoned by a mage—and the pox-eaten thing attacked me with a knife.”

“Thank you,” said Kerim with a touch of sarcasm. “I’m sure you’re trying to be helpful, but Dickon might find this more palatable if you keep the dramatics to a minimum.”

Sham tried to look repentant.

“At the time of the first attack,” continued the Reeve. “I also thought it was a human that attacked Shamera. I saw only knife wounds and surmised that the killer had chosen his victim—it fit the pattern of one killing every eight or nine days.”

“Tonight, however, Shamera found proof that convinced me that she and Talbot were right.” Kerim paused, but other than that, there was no emotion in his voice as he continued. “She found the body of my brother, Lord Ven. I examined him myself, and he has clearly been dead for several days.”

“But that’s impossible,” Dickon broke in. “I saw him this evening when I retrieved Lady Shamera.”

“Nonetheless,” replied Kerim, “his body is in the meeting room next to Shamera’s room. Dickon, you and Talbot have both seen enough battle to know how long a body has been dead; after we are through here you are welcome to examine it yourselves.”

He drew in a breath. “After I saw Ven, I thought that Sham and Talbot might be closer to the truth than I thought. When the man who wore my brother’s face attacked later this evening, I was convinced. Sham thinks the thing that attacked us is a simulacrum—a creature animated by the demon that can assume the identity of its victims. Between us, Sham and I managed to drive it off.

“Regardless of the nature of the killer, we are left with several problems. The first of these is my brother’s body. We are not the only ones who have recently spoken to Lord Ven. If we turn his body over to the priests as he is, they will certainly discover the discrepancy between the time of his death and his last appearance. Last year’s riots in Purgatory will be a faint echo of the witch-slaying that will take place if word gets out that there is a killer loose who can look like anyone.”

“Can the priests be reasoned with or bribed to keep the secret?” asked Sham.

Kerim shook his head, but it was Talbot that explained. “Our little priest, Brother Fykall, could keep it a secret if it were anyone but the Reeve’s brother who slipped his rope ... er, died. As it is the High Priest himself will want to prepare the body, and he has bilge to bail with Lord Kerim. It would please him immensely to get the Prophet to remove Lord Kerim from office and replace him with someone more devoted to Altis. A large riot might just put wind in his sails.”

Kerim leaned forward in his chair. “We need some way to conceal how long Ven has been dead.”

“We could stage a fire,” offered Dickon.

Kerim shook his head. “Where? My brother seldom went into the city and I doubt that there is a place inside the castle that can burn hot enough to destroy his body without hurting someone else.”

“We could leave him for a few days,” offered Talbot.

“No,” said Shamera. “In this climate, the body will start to rot soon. It will still be too obvious how long Lord Ven has been dead.”

“But it might work, if no one remembers exactly when the last time they saw Lord Ven was,” said Kerim with obvious reluctance at the thought of leaving his brother’s body untended for so long.

“No,” said Dickon, but he was unable to come up with more of an objection. Sham knew that he was more concerned with Kerim than with the state of Lord Ven’s body.

“I won’t be able to sleep in a room next to a dead man’s rotting body,” lied Sham firmly.

Dickon nodded approvingly at such ladylike sentiments.

Kerim, for his part, shot her an impatient look. “You were willing enough to leave Ven there when we thought that we could use the knowledge of his death to trap the demon.”

Sham dismissed that with an airy gesture. “That was different,” she said.

“What about magic?” said Talbot. “Is there some way that you can make Lord Ven’s body stiffen with rigor mortis again?”

Sham tilted her head in consideration. “Yes, and mask the smell of the blood as well. I’ll need an hour of rest first.”

Dickon looked at her.

“Do you really have some way of changing the appearance of the body?”

Sham grinned cheerfully at him and responded as she usually did to someone who so obviously didn’t believe in magic. “‘I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I wouldn’t expect a Cybellian barbarian to understand.’”

“Parlor tricks,” commented Dickon in thoughtful tones.

Sometime during the past hour, Dickon had lost most of the mannerisms of a servant. Sham looked at him narrowly. Maybe she wasn’t the only one here who was good at playing roles.

After a moment, Dickon shrugged.

“If it works, then it doesn’t matter if it’s chicanery or not. But —” he added with honest offense, “—if you ever call me a Cybellian again, girl, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap. I am Jarnese—” He named another Eastern country. “Cybellians are uncultured, bark-eating barbarians.”

Sham lowered her head in submission, saying in a sweet voice, “If you call me ‘girl’ again, I’ll turn you into a minnow.”

“Children!” said Kerim sharply, as Sham and Dickon exchanged mutually satisfied looks. The hint of amusement in his tone faded as he continued to speak. “Back to the issue at hand. Shamera, go rest. We’ll wake you in an hour to see about my brother’s body. I’ll fill in the details of what we know, for Dickon and Talbot.”

Sham nodded and came to her feet. As she started to duck under the tapestry. Kerim’s voice followed her, “I thought that it bothered you to sleep in a room next to my brother’s body.”

She gave him a sly look and continued into her room.