When Demons Walk

14

As a result of the golem’s attack, two guardsmen were stationed outside Sham’s door and two more in the passage.

“It’s difficult to hunt the demon when I’m confined to my room,” complained Sham, sitting on a chair in the Reeve’s room. “It’s not like they’ll be helpful against the demon anyway.”

Kerim stopped his slow progress around his room, holding on to a chair for balance, but forcing his legs to bear his weight. “Everyone in the Castle knows that you were abducted, even if they don’t know who took you. If I don’t take some steps to ensure your safety, it will cause talk. Confine your investigations to the court for a while; after a week or so I’ll find a reason to reassign the guards.”

Sham folded her arms and tapped her foot with disapproval. “I haven’t learned anything interesting from the court yet; I can’t imagine that will change any time soon.”

Kerim gave her a wise look. “I’ll come down with you tonight. It will give you a chance to practice staring at me with possessive awe.”

She laughed, letting her anger go. “Like that, do you?”

“What do you think?”

She looked for the humor in his face, but Kerim had resumed walking; the pain and concentration necessary to make his legs work again forced everything else out of his expression.

The dress Sham wore was dark wine silk with silver and gold embroidery—the Reeve’s own colors. Though otherwise modest, it clung with unfashionable tenacity to her well-muscled form.

When she entered the Reeve’s chambers, Kerim frowned at the dress in a puzzled fashion. Dickon, who was behind her, laughed—it sounded rusty, but it was a laugh. Sham smiled and turned her back to the Reeve. With her hair up, the delicately embroidered leopard that covered the back of the dress was clearly visible. It was a dress that might have been suitable for a wife, but worn by a mistress it was a blatant flaunting of her power—as long as Kerim would stop chortling before they entered the court.

“Several of my counselors have been suggesting I have let you gain too much influence over my judgments. I can’t wait to see their faces when they see your dress.”

Sham let her eyes go vacant and smiled, letting her Southwood accent grow thick. “You like this dress? I like big cats, they’re so fierce and splendid, don’t you agree?”

“I would never think to argue with you, my dear,” snickered the Reeve, pushing his chair through the door Dickon opened.

The dress drew gratifying frowns of disapproval from the more conservative Eastern Lords, thoughtful looks from several women, and speculative smiles from the Southwood delegation—including Halvok. Sham spent her evening straightening imaginary wrinkles from Kerim’s tunic and stroking various parts of his anatomy, much to Kerim’s amusement.

Late in the evening Lady Tirra approached with Sky in tow. Kerim’s mother greeted Sham without her usual venom. To Sham’s delight, that caused more of a stir among the gossips than the dress had; even Sky looked somewhat puzzled.

After greeting his mother, Kerim turned to Sky. “You are looking beautiful today.”

She smiled graciously, and stepped nearer to the Reeve, dropping to her knees before him. It was an archaic gesture that had been used by Southwood nobles petitioning the king—Lady Sky imbued it with stately grace. The court grew quieter as the nearest people saw her position.

Sham saw a flush rise to Kerim’s already dark skin as he said, “Do get up, Lady Sky. There is no need for that.”

Obediently, she rose to her feet and looked into the Reeve’s face with serious intent. When she spoke, the room was so quiet her words were clearly audible to most of the straining ears. “I wish to thank you, Lord Kerim, for the help you gave me two nights past. I owe you more than I can say.”

Kerim shifted uncomfortably. “You made Fahill very happy in his last days, Lady Sky—and my brother as well. You owe me nothing.”

Sky smiled and shook her head, her body fairly vibrating with the strength of her intensity. “I owe you everything.”

Sham hoped the surge of jealousy that tightened her fingers on the back of the Reeve’s chair didn’t show. Not because such a response was not appropriate for the Reeve’s mistress, but because it was something she preferred to keep private. She knew, looking at Sky, that the Southwood lady loved Kerim. She also knew that Sky was a much fitter mate for the Reeve than a thief from Purgatory could ever be.

For the next several days, Sham excused herself from court, telling Kerim that she was trying to discover how to destroy the demon. She even managed to avoid the High Priest’s funeral.

No longer plagued by ill health, though he still used his chair in public, Kerim haunted the court, hoping to drum up support among the Eastern nobles for a series of proposed laws. He told her it was doomed for failure, but it might scare the Easterners into softening their positions on several other hard-fought political battles.

Lady Sky had been glued to his side, at the funeral and at court —both the Whisper and Halvok had seen to it that Sham was aware of it. Halvok had taken it upon himself to scold her for her lack of effort.

She’d continued the pretense of being Kerim’s mistress in front of Halvok, for that was the main reason he’d decided to help them. He liked Kerim. At the same time, he hated the Easterners with a fervor that the Shark would be hard-pressed to equal, for all that the wizard hid the hatred very well. Sham’s position gave him a way of reconciling both feelings.

“Why do you disapprove?” Sham had asked. “She’s just what you need—and she’s qualified to be his wife. I’m just a thief who can work a little magic—and if that were well known he’d catch fish bait for putting me in the position of mistress.”

Halvok had shaken his head and said. “Lady Sky is a gracious and beautiful lady—which is precisely the problem. She would no more dirty her hands with politics than any other Southwood lady I know. You, on the other hand, would go toe to toe with Altis if you wanted something—and you know what life in Southwood is like for her natives. Kerim cares this much—” he snapped his fingers, “—for what the court says about his private life, and I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

Sham had laughed at him—but her humor left a sour tinge in her mouth. “He’s become a good actor. Kerim knows what I am better than you do—I am a thief, Lord Halvok, and have been for half my life. I have very little in common with the daughter of the Captain of the Guards I was before the invasion, and even she would never have aspired as high as the ruler of Southwood. I think you might have underestimated Lady Sky—and you could make her life at court much more bearable than it is.”

All he had done was raise his eyebrows and say, “Daughter of the Captain of the Guards—I thought he was noble born,” in such a speculative fashion that she shooed him out of her room in exasperation.

Sham pored over Maur’s book, trying to find anything of use against the demon. Lord Halvok had been correct, the only spell it contained for permanently getting rid of a demon required a human sacrifice. Without that, she couldn’t conceive of a way to produce the power necessary for such a spell.

Talbot, true to his word, was interrogating all the servants in the Castle, ostensibly to find a necklace conveniently missing from Lady Tirra’s jewel box. He left Elsic with Sham most of the time.

Whenever Dickon had a spare moment from the Reeve’s service he would join them, and Sham began teaching him the basics of magic. She’d spent the better part of the morning trying to show Dickon how to form a magelight. It was a simple spell; Sham could feel the power simmering beneath the man’s frowning face, but he couldn’t use it.

“You think about it too much,” said Sham, exasperated.

“Sorry,” he muttered, wiping his forehead.

“Lady Shamera,” said Elsic, feathering several cords lightly on the strings of the old harp.

“Hmm?”

“Why were demons taken from where they belonged? What was their purpose?”

She sat back in her chair. “It was an attempt to gain more power, I think. There are stories of demons telling their wizard masters the secrets of various spells and runes—though a man who would take the word of a slave on how to modify a spell deserves the death that he doubtless received. More importantly, the demon could act as a reservoir of power—like the flute you found in the trunk, but safer for the mage. The wizard would send it out to kill and...” she hesitated, because he looked so young and innocent, sitting on the end of her bed with the harp nestled in his lap, “... do other things that would generate power for the mage to use.”

“What other ways?” asked Dickon.

“Sex,” answered the young innocent on the bed with a smirk.

“I’m going back to work,” Sham muttered, snatching the book from the seat beside her and opening it with a snap that didn’t do the ancient binding any good. Elsic launched, pointedly, Sham thought, into a child’s ditty, while Dickon began to try again to form light from magic.

It wasn’t opened to the section on demonology, but she began reading anyway. The author was expounding on the difference between male and female wizards. Sham tended to think it was nonsense—she’d never noticed her powers changing with moon and tide, but she had noticed that most such treatises were written by men.

Sham felt her lip lift in a sneer. “Leave the great spells for her male counterparts” indeed. By the cute little fishes in the tide pools, she’d never heard such nonsense. She threw down the book in disgust and picked up the other one Halvok had given her. She hadn’t opened it yet, having concentrated on demonology, so she began with the first page.

Runes fascinated her, being beautiful and functional at the same time. The wizard who had drawn the pattern book had a fine hand, making it easy to picture the runes as they would look put together. Runes drawn for pattern books were divided in bits and pieces, deliberately kept powerless—otherwise such a book would not be possible. Sham took her time, admiring the precision of each line with the appreciation of having tried to use patterns set less carefully.

Her stomach rumbled, warning of passing time, but she turned one more page—and there it was. The rune that had been marked on Kerim’s back. She scanned the page behind it. Bonding magic, yes, she’d known that. Set to draw from the one so bound and give strength to the rune maker. Right, she knew that too—or had a good idea that was its purpose. Then she stopped, with her finger marking the page.

Sham rubbed her nose and stopped reading. The demon was someone Kerim was close to, or someone who, at the time the rune was set, had the appearance of such a person. Certainly, from what she’d read, the demon could have used its golem body to place the runes.

Fahill, she remembered, was a close friend. He had died about the time Kerim had fallen ill. Could Fahill have died earlier and the golem have taken his place? Or was it someone else?

What she needed to do before anything else was to question Kerim about what had happened at Fahill keep. It wasn’t a task she relished, but it might narrow down the suspects, bringing her closer to the time when she could leave the Castle. Leave him.

It would be best for her if they found the demon soon, then she could go back to Purgatory—or maybe travel a bit.

She stared at the book for several more minutes, before getting restlessly to her feet. Elsic looked up from coaxing harmonic chords from the strings of the harp, but turned his attention back to his music when she didn’t say anything. Dickon was concentrating so hard on the small flicker of light he held in his hand that it would have taken much more than the sound of her movement to distract him.

“I’m going to see if I can coax something from the kitchens. Stay here with Dickon and I’ll be right back,” said Sham. She wanted to talk with Kerim before she discussed her discovery with anyone else.

Elsic smiled and continued playing; Dickon nodded, staring at the lambent spark of magic he held.

Sham went to the door that had replaced the tapestry only the day before. She didn’t expect him to be there—these days he was out more than in—but she didn’t want to wander the halls with the two guards who were on duty at her hall door.

The newly hung door opened without a sound and Sham shut it behind her. She took a step toward the outer door when the creak of leather drew her attention to the bed.

The first thing she noticed was Kerim’s empty chair. She felt an instant of puzzlement before she realized that Kerim was in the bed ... and he was not alone. If she were not mistaken, the slim, silk-clad back rising out of the bedclothes over Kerim belonged to Lady Sky.

It hurt more than she had thought it would. Sham drew in a deep soundless breath. Grace, she cautioned herself as her mother had taught. When life doesn’t meet your expectations, it was important to take it with grace. Her father had said the same, but in a different way: lick your wounds in private so your enemies don’t see where you are vulnerable.

If only, she thought, stepping silently back to her door, If only Sky weren’t so beautiful, weren’t her friend. It made it harder because Sham understood what Kerim saw in Sky.

She turned to leave them alone, when a short phrase made her catch her breath. “Physical intimacy,” the book had read. She hesitated, wondering if her jealousy had affected her thoughts. Lady Sky the demon?

Quickly she found objections to her speculation. Demon hosts were bound with a death rune that could not be removed—killing any offspring of the host body before they develop, and Sky had been pregnant twice in the past two years.

How would a demon counteract a death rune?

—by shielding the child with life-magic. It would require a tremendous amount of power, though the spell itself was not complex. Sky had miscarried after Sham freed Kerim from the demon’s rune, a rune that had drawn life from Kerim.

The ease with which she found the answer shocked Sham into looking for reasons why Sky could be the demon rather than why she couldn’t.

Sky had been near Kerim when Fahill died. From the expressions she’d caught on Kerim’s face, Sham thought that it was possible that there had been some sort of intimacy between them. She was everything a male wizard would want in a demon host, who would be used as a sex partner to raise magic; beautiful, likable and ... in Kerim’s bed. Sham could work out the details later.

She turned to the connecting door, opened it soundlessly, and then slammed it so hard the shiny new hinges protested—the gods knew what Elsic and Dickon would think of that—as if she were entering the room for the first time.

Sham drew in a loud breath, as if in outrage, then shrieked wildly as she ran toward the bed. She was wryly amused that she didn’t have to feign her fury. As the noise echoed through the stone walls of the room with almost musical effect, Sky jerked around, revealing the loosened ties of her bodice.

From Lady Sky’s relatively decent state, Sham hoped that they had not had time to complete their union. She thanked the powers that they hadn’t been alone long, although the dazed look in Kerim’s eyes filled her with foreboding. He hadn’t even looked away from Sky. All her doubts vanished—he was not a lover, startled by an unwanted interruption, but a man held in thrall by enchantment.

“Slut!” Sham screamed, full into her Lady Shamera role.

She grabbed the ewer of fresh, cold water from where it sat in lone splendor on a small table conveniently near the Reeve’s bed. Gripping the top with one hand and the bottom by the other, she upended the ewer over the bed, mostly on Kerim’s face, before launching herself to the waist-high surface.

She balanced on the edge of the bed with the empty porcelain vessel in her hand. To her relief Kerim sat up slowly and shook the water from his hair, the dullness of ensorcellment fading from his eyes. Lady Sky’s lips twisted with rage.

Sham knew she looked like a madwoman, but that was the effect she wanted. She needed to act like a scorned woman who had found another in her man’s bed—not like a terrified wizard who had found a demon there instead. Since she was both, she set terror aside with the hope that the demon wouldn’t want to expose itself.

She hadn’t had time for a real plan, but the ewer made a convenient weapon and she smashed it into one of the upright posts of the bed. The broken porcelain wasn’t sharp enough to be very effective, but the jagged edge would certainly tear into soft white skin and leave scars. To a demon who depended on her beauty to attract her victims, that might be as effective as a dagger.

Sham launched herself at Lady Sky, who avoided her by rolling off the bed with a speed that the thief envied. Sham gathered her feel underneath her and jumped for Sky again, only to be brought up short by a firm grip on her free arm.

“Shamera ...” Kerim’s voice was slightly slurred, and he sounded puzzled.

“Whore!” shrieked Sham, tugging against Kerim’s grip and waving the broken ewer wildly in the air. Lady Sky took a step back. Sham felt the first touch of relief when the intent expression on Lady Sky’s face was replaced with a look of fear that Sham was certain the demon did not feel. What demon would fear a lunatic waving bits of pottery?

“Witch,” accused Lady Sky, looking appealingly at Kerim. “She’s cast a spell over you Kerim, everyone knows it. They’re saying that she’s controlling you, and you can’t see it.”

“Shameless bitch,” replied Sham venomously. “I’ll see your bones if I catch you in his bed again! Can’t you find your own man?” In contrast to the other woman’s ladylike tones, Shamera could have won a shrilling contest with the Purgatory flesh-mongers.

“Go, Sky,” said Kerim unexpectedly. “I’ll deal with this, but you had better leave for now.”

Lady Sky raised her chin, turned on her heel, and left, shutting the door behind her. Quietly. Sham held her pose for an instant more, before dropping the remains of the ewer to the floor and running a shaking hand over her face.

“You can let go now,” she informed Kerim.

He hesitated, but when she didn’t make any sudden moves when he loosened his grip, he released her completely.

“What was that all about?” he asked, his voice still groggy.

Sham spoke without looking at him, “I think I’ve found the demon.” She hadn’t planned to tell him until she had more facts behind her—or at least had her reasoning straightened well enough that someone else could follow it.

He didn’t react at all for a moment, just gathered the bedclothes and used them to wipe the water from his face.

“I feel as if I was at the long end of a night of drinking myself under the table. Wait a moment and let me collect my thoughts.”

After a bit, he looked up at Sham, who was still standing on the corner of the bed. “Urgent news or not, I have to thank you for stopping me from doing a very stupid thing. Sky isn’t over Fahill’s death yet—let alone Ven’s. What she doesn’t need is to get involved with someone else.”

He shook his head dazedly. “Blessed if I know how I ended up here—last thing I remember clearly is eating in Mother’s rooms with her and Lady Sky. Must have had too much to drink, though I haven’t done anything like that in years.”

Sham pursed her lips, “It wasn’t alcohol, Kerim, it was magic.”

He frowned at her.

“Like that philter you threatened to feed to my guard?”

“Maybe. Kerim, I don’t remember if you ever told me—how did Lady Sky’s husband die?”

“The wasting sickness.”

Sham held on to one of the tall bedposts as Kerim’s shifting weight made the mattress sway beneath her. Her thoughts raced ahead, putting the pieces together. “Tell me, Kerim, could the child that she just miscarried have been yours?”

His face froze, but, after a moment, he nodded, “The night Fahill died, his lady and I sat up far into the night drinking and talking. She was additionally distraught as she’d miscarried only two months earlier. When I awoke, I was in her bed. I don’t remember much about that night—but when she came here pregnant, I wondered.”

“It was on the way back from Fahill’s funeral that your horse stumbled, wrenching your back?”

“Yes,” answered Kerim.

“Lady Sky miscarried shortly after I broke the demon’s hold on you,” said Sham.

“Wait,” he said holding up a hand. “You’re telling me that Lady Sky is the demon.”

She nodded.

He closed his eyes and considered the matter, which was a better reaction that she had thought she’d receive. When he finally opened them, he looked at her perched warily on the corner of his bed and waved impatiently.

“Sit down, you’re making me dizzy.”

Sham complied, sitting cross-legged, leaving a little distance between the two of them. After she was seated, Kerim said, “I hate to admit it, but she’s as likely a candidate as any. Part of me wants to claim that a woman is not capable of such things, but I fought against women in the mercenary troops at Sianim as well as the women warriors at Jetaine—we never managed more than a stand-off with either one.”

Sham grinned briefly.

“I must admit, if Sky had been a man, I would have looked at her a lot more closely.”

“What makes you so certain now?” he asked.

Sham finger-combed her hair. “It wasn’t until I walked in on you that I even considered the possibility. I had come in to talk to you about something I’d just been reading in a ...” She lost track of what she was saying as a few more pieces fell into place, allowing her to recognize just what the demon was trying to accomplish.

“Book?” suggested Kerim after a moment.

“Books, actually. I’ve been reading the two that Lord Halvok gave me. I came in here looking for you because I discovered something that indicated that the demon was someone you trusted,” she said. “When I saw Sky here, all the pieces fit.”

She rubbed her hand across a damp spot on the bedding. “You know that demons are summoned here from someplace else—called by a mage and forced into bondage. They are made slaves to their master’s whims. If the master dies, so too does the demon—unless it manages to kill the wizard itself, which is what our demon managed to do. If you were the demon, what would you want?”

“Vengeance?”

Sham shook her head and looked at the bedding. She was tired: too many emotions, too much thinking. “I was once torn from my home, thrown into a strange and dangerous place. I know how she feels. I wanted vengeance, yes, but what I desired more than anything was to go home.”

He covered her hand with his.

She looked at him then, and gave him a small smile. “I could be wrong, but listen and decide for yourself. I thought at first that the only way for the demon to return to its own world would be to find a black mage who could send it back, but the demon would have to make itself vulnerable to the wizard. It would be easier for the wizard to enslave the demon than send it back. Black wizards, by their very nature, are not honorable; if I were the demon I would be hesitant to trust one with my freedom.”

“Wait,” Kerim broke in. “This demon is working magic. Is there a reason that it can’t send itself back?”

Sham nodded. “Black magic is not as easy to control as normal magic because it is stolen by the mage who is using it. To get home, the demon has to open the gate to its world and enter through it. It cannot hold the gate while inside, not with black magic.”

“But you think it has found a way?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But it can’t use black magic to do it.”

“Not black magic alone,” agreed Sham. “But there is another magic the demon could use. There is magic involved in death and life.”

“This has something to do with Sky’s pregnancies?” asked Kerim, following what she said far more closely than she’d expected.

“The magic released at a birthing is close to death magic in power, but it is bound to the woman giving birth—a situation encountered by mageborn women only a certain number of times. So it is not really considered a counter to death magic, which is much easier to effect.” She had known about that magic before, but the old text from Maur’s book had reminded her of it. Not pregnancy but birth generated power.

“If the demon uses childbirth to return home, what would happen to the child?”

Sham met his eyes squarely. “Not being the demon, I don’t know. But if she kills it and the man who fathered it, she would have much more power than by killing people who are not tied to her.”

Kerim took a deep breath. “I seem to remember you saying that demons could not become pregnant.”

She nodded. “A particularly nasty warding spell was used to prevent the host body from conceiving. Like most warding spells, it conserved energy by remaining passive until its activation conditions are met—in this case the onset of pregnancy. When triggered, the spell begins to extinguish the life-force of the unborn child: death magic.”

“But didn’t you say that most spells can only be active for a few weeks without power? Has the power of this spell faded over the hundreds of years the demon has lived?”

“No, that’s why this so nasty. It’s usually reinforced and maintained by life-energies of the demon. However, to avoid draining the host body, when triggered the spell drains life energy from the unborn child.”

“So Sky can’t be the demon?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Not so,” Sham replied. “The demon could form a barrier between the child and the rune to protect it from harm.”

“Then why bind the demon at all?”

“Because the barrier requires enough strength that it would kill the demon’s host body before the child could be born. I think that our demon discovered another way to power the spell. The rune it used was one that allowed it to drain your strength—killing you slowly as it allowed your child to live.”

“Kerim,” she said, leaning toward him. “The rune had to have been set by someone who was close to you, intimate with you. It was set near the time of Fahill’s death. I believe that it was set by Lady Sky, to protect her baby. When I broke the binding, it killed the child.”

Kerim swallowed and she could tell by his face that he believed her. He clenched his hands in the bedclothes. “Poor little waif.”

“The child was doomed anyway,” said Sham softly. “If I’m right then it was intended to be the sacrifice she used to get home.”

She let him absorb it for a while before she continued. “That would explain why she frequents the Castle. Here she has the most choice among men who are well-nourished and healthy. But she can’t stay here long or she risks detection. My master, Maur, ran into a demon hunting in a village once. The Shark believes it might have been Chen Laut, that it ... she killed Maur because he knew what she looked like.”

Kerim didn’t, say anything, so Sham continued speaking. “Elsic said that she was closer to her goal than she had ever been. Southwood has always been a refuge for wizards and sorcerers, and the Castle has usually had the King’s Wizard. Nine months is a long time to hide from a powerful mage. She must have been excited when chance filled the Castle with Easterners who didn’t believe in magic.”

“You seem to think she was trying to bind me again tonight. Since I’m already weakened, what good would that do her?” asked Kerim.

“Revenge,” said Sham softly.

He watched her narrowly for a minute, then said, “What if it isn’t Lady Sky? This is all speculation.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong,” replied Sham. “But, we’ll have to plan for that contingency as well.”

“So what do we do with her?” asked Kerim.

Sham gave a frustrated shrug. “Damned if I know.”

A soft creaking noise from the connecting door drew Sham’s attention and Elsic stepped tentatively through the resulting opening. “Shamera? Is something wrong?”

Shamera felt her jaw drop as an incredible idea came to her.

While she sat stupefied, Kerim answered for her. “She’s fine.” He paused, looking at her thunderstruck expression. “—I think.”

“Sympathetic magic,” muttered Sham, staring pointedly at Elsic. “They use the death of the sacrifice as a source of power—and sympathetic patterning. The sacrifice’s soul returns to its origin like the demon they are sending home.”

“Shamera?” asked Kerim.

She shook her head, still muttering to herself. “It can’t work, it’s too absurd. The demon will never cooperate, it has no reason to believe we’d try it.”

“Shamera?” asked Elsic.

“Kerim? Do you think you could extend my credit at the dressmaker’s?” she asked.

“What?”

“I think I have a plan. I need to find Halvok.” Muttering to herself, she stalked to the door.