When Demons Walk (13 page)

Sham shrugged. “So I was told—apparently wrongly.”

“It could be anyone, then. Taking one person's shape then another as it chooses.”

She shook her head helplessly. “I don't know.”

“Come.” He spoke curtly as he wheeled out of the room, ignoring the grating sound of metal on wood as his chair caught the frame a second time. “Shut the panel behind you.”

Back in his room, she waited for him to speak. She had the feeling that he would be pacing if he could. Instead,
chained to the chair, he shifted restlessly and stared into the fire.

Abruptly he wheeled back and around, so that he faced her directly. “Magic . . . Could you do this? Take the form of someone else?”

Sham swallowed, not finding the Reeve's impassive face reassuring. “No. Wizards, with very few exceptions, are not capable of doing that. Illusion, yes, but to maintain an illusion of a specific person well enough to fool people who know him, no. My master was once the greatest wizard in Southwood, fourth or fifth most powerful in the world; he could not have done this. Perhaps the Archmage could, but I doubt that he could do it for so long.”

“You think the demon can alter its form?”

“There may be another possibility,” said Sham slowly.

“Tell me.” It was not a request, and she shot him a nasty look.

“Please remember that, despite appearances to the contrary, I am
not
your mistress,” she snapped.

There was a touch of a smile warming Kerim's eyes as he restated his order. “I beg you, Lady, please touch these unworthy ears with the alternative explanation.”

Sham rubbed her chin and sighed, murmuring as if to herself, “I suppose that's good enough.” She cleared her throat and then resumed speaking. “I have never heard that the demons could change their appearance at will. Granted that demonology hasn't a great part in a wizard's education, but I would think that such an ability would have made it into the folktales.”

Kerim broke in softly, “Whatever it is that has worn my brother's appearance sounds like him, moves like him, and uses the same idioms of speech. This morning I spoke to him concerning an incident in our childhood, and he added details I had forgotten.”

“There is always the possibility that the demon is capable of such a thing,” she said, “—but I hope not. The second possibility is not much better. The killer, be he demon or human, might have access to a rare golem—called a simulacrum.” Sham had been speaking Cybellian, but
used the Southern words for golem and simulacrum as there was no Cybellian translation.

“What is a golem?” Kerim switched to Southern so smoothly, Sham wondered if he noticed.

“A golem is any nonliving thing animated by magic,” replied Sham in the same language. “Puppets are often used for such purposes as they are well suited to it, but anything will do.”

She glanced around the room and pointed at a hauberk that was carefully laid out on a table. For effect she said dramatically, “
Ivek meharr votra, evahncey callenahardren!
”

The chainmail rustled, and the hauberk filled out as if there were a person inside the mail. With a discreet brush of Sham's magic, it rose to stand on the end links. This hauberk wasn't the one Kerim had worn the night of the Spirit Tide; its links were heavier, less likely to part under the force of a blow. Over the right shoulder the metal was a slightly different color where it had been repaired.

“Golems are largely useless for anything other than amusement now,” said Sham, making the mail shirt bow once, before it resettled itself on the table with a sound that might have been a sigh of relief. “It is too difficult to create one big or complex enough to do anything useful. For one thing, they don't have a brain so the wizard has to direct every move.”

Kerim was still looking at the hauberk. “I'm not sure I'll ever be able to wear that again.”

She grinned. “That's what it's made for. If you don't use it, you'll hurt its feelings.”

He gave her a black look, spoiling the effect with the twinkle of laughter in his eyes. “Back to the golem.”

“I told you about the forbidden black arts that have to be used to summon a demon,” continued Sham soberly. “Golems weren't always so useless. There are several kinds that may be created, if the wizard is willing to resort to black magic.”

“Black magic requires the use of sacrifices,” said Kerim.

“Or human body parts,” she agreed. “When creating
golems though, human sacrifice is generally required—sometimes more than one, which is the case of the simulacrum. It can take on the aspect of anyone it slays for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that when not under the direct control of its master the golem functions like the person it has slain would.”

She folded her arms and tapped her biceps with a finger, thinking for a moment. “I seem to remember reading that some wizards created golems for their demons to use when they carried out their master's pleasures. I believe the purpose was to save the host body—which was much more difficult to create than the golem.”

“I would have sworn that the man I talked to this morning was my brother,” said Kerim softly, some minutes after she finished speaking. “Is it possible that it is the body we found that is not my brother's, but a careful copy?”

“To what purpose?” responded Sham. “I can think of many reasons for a demon to assume your brother's shape; but none for anyone to kill someone and make it look like Lord Ven. If you would like, though, I could examine the body more closely.”

Kerim shook his head and turned back to the fire. The light playing across his face revealed the sorrow that lived there. Briefly he closed his eyes.

“You don't have any idea how to stop it?” He spoke in Cybellian, as if it were easier to hide his emotions in his own tongue.

Sham shook her head. “I'm sorry. I have a word in with the Whisper, but that is the best I can do. Even if I could find a mage who knows anything about demonology, he won't be anxious to admit to it—it is forbidden magic. Any mage caught using it would be put to death by the wizard's guild if a mob didn't find him first. The Shark has a few wizards who work for him upon occasion who might know something, but no one keeps secrets better than a mage.”

“Can you kill the demon once you find it?”

“I don't know,” she answered honestly.

“So,” he said heavily. “We have a creature that we can't detect, killing people for an unknown reason, and, if
by some chance we stumble onto this thing, we don't know what to do with it.”

“There is this—” she offered hesitantly, “—the demon doesn't know we are aware Lord Ven is dead.”

“If we hide my brother's body for a while longer, we might be able to trap it,” agreed the Reeve so readily that Shamera knew he'd already had the same thought. “But what good does that do us if we have no way to kill the demon?”

“I don't know,” replied Shamera. “I don't know.”

S
ham 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 teaching 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.

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

The rune mark would be somewhere hidden from view, she thought, somewhere a mage wouldn't be 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.