The Demon King

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Elena paused and looked around, and everyone knew what she would say next. “Willow Song had a boy child, and they called him Fire Dancer. You see him before you.”

  Han sat stunned, looking from Willo to Dancer and back to Elena. So this was the story that had gone untold about Dancer’s missing father. That Dancer’s father must have been a wizard.

  “Dancer inherited much from his mother,” Elena said, smiling sadly at Dancer. “He is a beloved child of Marisa Pines. He has many gifts, and would have no lack of sponsors in choosing a vocation. But he has inherited gifts from his father as well, and so must follow his own path. Dancer has chosen a vocation none of us can sponsor.”

  Bird had apparently reached her limit for silence. “What are you saying?” she demanded, looking from Elena to Averill to Willo. “What have you chosen, Dancer?”

  “It wasn’t a choice,” Dancer said, barely audible.

  Comprehension dawned on Reid Demonai’s face. “He’s a jinxflinger?” he said, groping for his knife. “Here?”

  Then everyone was talking at once, like a clamor of crows in a cornfield.

  Willo stepped between Reid and Dancer, but spoke to the entire assembly, her voice clear and steady and nearly loud enough to rise above it all.

  “Although we cannot sponsor him here, we have arranged for Dancer’s training. He will go to Oden’s Ford, to the charmcaster academy there, and learn to harness the magic he’s inherited.”

  Han’s head spun as scenes and images came back to him: Dancer’s moodiness over the past months. The conversation Han overheard in the Matriarch Lodge, when he’d wondered if Dancer might be ill.

  But no. He’d taken rowan—meant to protect against sorcery. Dancer had been trying to damp down the magic. Willo would have bent all her skill to that task. And if she couldn’t do it . . . no one could.

  He’d seen Willo and Dancer in Fellsmarch, when she’d healed him at Southbridge Temple. Maybe they were consulting the temple healers. Or maybe they were there to make arrangements for Oden’s Ford.

  Han studied his friend for any telltale signs of wizardry. Dancer looked the same as always, except for being desperately unhappy. There were the blue eyes which must be a gift from his father, so incongruous against his dark skin and hair.

  “You’re going to train up another wizard?” Reid spoke contemptuously. “When there are far too many already?”

  Elena stood her ground. “We are going to give Fire Dancer what he needs to control the gift he’s been given.”

  “That’s not a gift,” Reid said. “It’s a curse. And the world would be better off with one less wizard in it.”

  Shilo nodded, regarding Dancer as if he were a viper she’d found under the porch. “He can’t stay in the Spirits. The Naéming forbids it. You know that.”

  “The boy has stayed here this long,” Averill said sharply. “He can stay until he leaves for Oden’s Ford.”

  Han processed this in fits and starts, seemingly a few steps behind the others. Dancer was leaving? No, he was being exiled. Evicted like a tenant from a slumlord flat.

  He remembered the meeting with Micah Bayar and his friends on Hanalea, when Dancer had confronted the young wizards with this very rule—wizards were not allowed in the Spirit Mountains.

  But Dancer—couldn’t an exception be made? He belonged here. This was his home.

  Han stood, meaning to say as much, even though he had no right since he was only a guest himself. But Willo caught his eye and shook her head.

  Confused, Han sat down again. Did Willo really mean to let this happen? Would she allow her son to be sent south to live among strangers?

  Elena faced Dancer, thrusting her hand into a pouch she wore at her waist. She pulled out something glittering, which she dangled in front of Dancer.

  It was an amulet—carved from a translucent caramel-colored stone. A glowing figure of a clan dancer ringed by flame. Dancer stared at it with a terrible fascination, as if it were a poison he was required to take.

  “Fire Dancer,” Elena said gently, “we in the clans have long been the makers of the tools of high magic, even though we are unable to use them ourselves. For hundreds of years we have been in an uneasy truce with those who can use them. When these gifts are abused, we control access to them. Each mistrusts the other, but each depends upon the other. The Maker in her wisdom has decreed that her gifts be distributed thus, to protect us all.”

  She slid the chain over Dancer’s head so the amulet rested on his chest. He stood stiffly, hands clenched at his sides, as if moving might set it off. A long moment passed, and the amulet began to glow. In answer, something kindled under Dancer’s skin, an incandescence that hadn’t been apparent before.

  “You are a summer born, a child of this camp. And so we bestow this gift directly on you, the amulet that you will take to Oden’s Ford.” Elena shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Still, we hope you will remember where you came from. Perhaps you will be the one who brings wizard and clan together.”

  The hatred on Reid’s face said that would never happen. “You should hold the amulet until the jinxflinger leaves Hanalea,” he said. “Else it isn’t safe.”

  “The elders have spoken, Reid Nightwalker,” Averill said. “Fire Dancer has no sponsor. The amulet will be the connection between us. It is all we can offer him now.”

  “You needn’t worry,” Dancer said. “I have no desire to use anything left to me by my father. And I’ll be gone before you know it.” With that, he ripped off the jacket Willo had made for him and flung it into the fire. Then he stalked off into the woods, leaving silence behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Willo and Bird

  The backwash from the naming ceremony persisted for several days. Dancer disappeared again, and Han spent fruitless hours searching the woods surrounding Marisa Pines, visiting all their familiar haunts. When he did find him two days’ walk away in a hunter’s shelter on the shores of Ghost Lake, Dancer wasn’t fishing, or hunting, or reading. Just sitting, staring out at the lake.

  Dancer had little to say to Han’s suggestions; he seemed to feel he’d exhausted all possibilities.

  “We could go down to the temple in Fellsmarch,” Han said. “The speakers know all sorts of things. Maybe they could help.”

  “We’ve been to see Jemson,” Dancer said. He picked up a rock and sent it skimming over the water. “He tried some things, but none worked.” Dancer glanced over at Han. “Besides, didn’t you say you’re a wanted man down in Fellsmarch?”

  Well. Yes. There was that.

  “What about one of the other camps? Maybe there’s a healer there who would have a new idea.”

  “My mother’s the best. You know that. And Elena knows the other matriarchs; she’s always traveling. If there was something else to try, she would know about it.”

  “If you don’t have an amulet, mightn’t it just . . . stay dormant?”

  Dancer didn’t honor that with an answer.

  Han felt compelled to offer increasingly desperate plans. “We could go to the Northern Isles. That’s where wizards come from, right?”

  “You think that’s better than going to Oden’s Ford?” Dancer asked. “Sailing across the Indio to someplace I’ve never been to find the people that invaded us centuries ago?”

  “You could . . . you could talk to the Wizard Council. You could try to find your father.”

  “The only reason I would look for my father is if I decide to kill him,” Dancer said, his blue eyes hard as topaz.

  Stunned into silence, Han didn’t say anything for a long time. He’d never seen Dancer so bitter. Dancer was the one who always saw the good in people, who was always the peacemaker.

  “I’ll go with you,” Han said finally. “To Oden’s Ford, I mean.”

  “And do what?”

  “I’ll go to the warrior school at Wien House.”

  Dancer looked him up and down and actually grinned. “You? In the army? It’s all about rules. You wou
ldn’t last a week. You’d be asking why all the time. You’d be better off going into temple orders.”

  “It could work,” Han persisted. The more he talked about it, the better he liked it. “All the armies are eager to take on Wien House graduates. I could find one that I fit in with.”

  “How would you pay for that?” Dancer asked. “You don’t have any money.”

  “How are you paying for Mystwerk House?” Han countered.

  “The camps are sponsoring me, over the Demonai warriors’ objection. It’s one way to get me to go away.”

  “What’s the Demonais’ problem?” Han asked.

  Dancer shrugged. “Ask them. But you’re not a soldier. I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not that.”

  When Han arrived back at camp, he told Willo where Dancer was, making it clear that Dancer was frustrated.

  “It’s all right, Hunts Alone,” she said, looking up from her dye pot. She was stirring a cauldron full of bright blue yarn over the fire in front of the Matriarch Lodge. “Leave him be. Dancer needs some time alone. Hanalea soothes him.”

  “What’s he going to do when he has to leave? What’s going to soothe him then?” Han was angry with Willo, like this was all her fault.

  “He will find his way. He has to,” Willo said simply.

  “How long have you known about this?” Han demanded. “That Dancer is a jinxflinger.”

  Willo blotted her sweaty forehead with her forearm. “I knew it was a possibility from the . . . from the beginning. But wizards don’t manifest until they’re older, and I had hopes it wouldn’t happen. I began to see the signs three years ago. And finally he noticed too, and came to me.”

  “There has to be something you can do.” After all, Willo was a gifted healer. Couldn’t she heal her own son?

  It was like she read his mind. “Wizardry is a gift, not an affliction. It’s not amenable to healing. I tried rowan, of course, and certain . . . talismans.” Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her blue-spotted apron. “I should have acted sooner, when he was just a baby. Sometimes wizardry can be held at bay if the intervention is early enough. Otherwise it’s like a cancer that spreads until you can’t cut it away without killing the host.”

  Right, Han thought. It’s a gift. Like a cancer. Willo seemed as confused as everyone else.

  Maybe now was the time to press his suit. He felt nervous—Willo had turned him down before—but surely she’d see the sense of what he suggested.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I need a trade, and I can’t go back to Fellsmarch any time soon. I could go to Oden’s Ford with Dancer and enroll in the warrior’s academy. We’d be in different schools, but I bet we could see each other, anyway. And we could travel back and forth together. It would be safer for both of us.”

  Willo was already shaking her head. “You’re no warrior, Hunts Alone,” she said dismissively.

  “It’s my choice,” he said. “I’m nearly grown. If I was clan I’d already be named.”

  “Why are you asking me, then?” Willo asked, sitting back on her heels.

  “I’ll need money to enroll. I asked Jemson about it, and it costs at least twenty girlies a year, plus board. That’s not counting travel money.”

  Willo studied him. “Are you asking me for money? So you can throw your life away fighting in the flatlander war?”

  This was not going well. Han extended his wrists toward her. “I can pay my own way. I just need you to take these off,” he said. “I know traders who’d pay good money for thick silver like this. They should bring more than enough to keep me on the way south, plus get me enrolled once I’m there.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve told you already. I can’t do that.”

  “Willo, I have nowhere to go,” he persisted, perilously close to begging. “I need to make a living somehow, and I can’t go back to Fellsmarch. There’s nothing for me here. Dancer’s going to Oden’s Ford, and Bird is going to Demonai. Everyone else I know is apprenticed. Nothing’s going to be the same.”

  “There are trades you can learn here at Marisa Pines,” Willo said. “You’re already good at plants and potions. I’ll take you on, if no one else will.”

  “I can’t hide out up here all my life,” Han said, thinking there was little adventure in doing what he had been doing all along, only less.

  “You’re not a warrior, Hunts Alone,” Willo said flatly. “And no amount of money will make you one.” She tossed down her stirring stick and swept into the Matriarch Lodge.

  Han spent the next several days sulking. The continuing presence of the guests from Demonai were as irksome as a pebble in his boot. It was like having houseguests in the middle of a family fight. You just wanted them gone so you could speak your mind.

  Not that he was exactly family, as he kept reminding himself.

  The Demonai warriors in particular frayed his temper. Bird spent all her time with them, of course, all solemn-faced, hanging on Reid Demonai’s every word.

  That was another thing—Han was disappointed in Bird. She could have defended Dancer when Reid Demonai attacked him.

  Just like Han could have defended him too. No matter what Willo said.

  The Demonai warriors fell silent when Dancer passed by, and left the fire circle when he joined it. They watched him constantly, like he was a mad dog or a venomous spider.

  Han couldn’t help worrying that the Demonai warriors might go after Dancer if they caught him on his own. So he became a self-appointed spy, lingering near their fire, watching their comings and goings from camp, and listening in on their conversations.

  Until one day, he was slipping through the forest, following Reid Demonai, probably to the privy, when Bird stepped into his path. She was dressed in her Demonai clothing, and she seemed to materialize out of shadow and sunlight.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed.

  “Doing?” He shrugged. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game is what. Do you think they don’t notice? They’re Demonai warriors,” she said, as if he hadn’t noticed.

  He gave her a “So what?” look. “I’ve been walking in these woods all my life,” he said. “If it makes them jumpy, they should leave.”

  “It’s only fair to warn you, Reid’s patience is wearing thin. He’s about ready to cut your throat.”

  “He can try,” Han said, affecting indifference, though his heart beat faster. A confrontation with Reid Demonai seemed appealing.

  “You don’t understand,” Bird persisted. “They’ve trained for this all their lives. They’re dangerous.”

  “Really? Well, I’m dangerous too.” He felt like he was bragging in the school yard, but he couldn’t help himself. “Looks to me like they’re all bristle and no brains.”

  “Shhh!” Bird glanced around, like Reid might be behind a nearby tree, listening. “Come on.” Moving with her usual catlike grace, she led him off the trail, down into a small ravine, to a place where two slabs of rock had slid together, forming a small cavelike shelter. Maiden’s kiss and columbine cascaded from the crevices, and a small stream tumbled along the floor of the canyon.

  “Sit,” she said, waving him to a flat rock.

  He sat, and she sat across from him.

  “I’ve tried to talk to Dancer,” she said. “And he won’t speak to me.”

  “Do you blame him?” Han asked. And then, after a pause, “I can’t believe you’d want to be in a group that would treat your friend that way.” There. He’d said it.

  Bird bit her lip and stared down at her clasped hands. “It . . . it’s nothing personal,” she said. “But that’s why the Demonai exist. To fight wizards. And the presence of . . . of any wizard on Hanalea is sacrilege.”

  “We’re talking about Dancer,” Han said, thinking of how Dancer had challenged Bayar and his friends. “He was born here. He belongs here.”

  “I know.” She swallowed hard. “But think about when the
jinxflingers invaded the Fells—they were ruthless. They put lytlings to the sword. They captured our queen and forced her into marriage. They evicted the priests from the temples and launched a reign of terror. But the clans held the Spirits, and they were our sanctuary. If not for that, we would have been eradicated as a people.”

  It was a pretty speech. Han wondered if it came from Reid Demonai. He imagined them sitting hip to hip by the fire, Bird looking into his eyes, spellbound. He blinked the image away.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m not sweet on wizards either, but . . .”

  “That was a long time ago, but these are dangerous times,” Bird said. “We have a weak queen. The power of wizards is growing. We in the clan feel less welcome in the Vale. We wield less influence at court.”

  “Averill Demonai is consort to the queen,” Han said. “And father to the princess heir. That sounds influential to me.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Bird said. “Reid says it’s more important than ever to maintain the traditional boundaries against wizards.”

  And I’m not really interested in what Reid says, Han thought. “So what’s the plan?” he asked. “Will you be going back to Demonai with them or what?”

  Bird nodded. “We leave soon. It’s just . . . Reid doesn’t want to leave while Dancer’s still here.”

  “Well, they won’t have to worry about him much longer, will they?” Han said, his own guilt driving the knife home. “Once he leaves, we may never see him again.”

  Bird raked her curls off her sweaty forehead. “Do you . . . do you think it’s a good idea? Dancer going to Oden’s Ford? Training as a wizard?”

  Han stared at her. “What choice does he have? You just said—”

  “Maybe . . . maybe he should just move down into Fellsmarch,” Bird said, not meeting his eyes.

  Han leaned forward. “And do what? He’s no flatlander. The things he’s good at have no value in the city.”

  “He could learn a trade,” she said. “And then ...we could visit him sometimes.” She looked up at him hopefully. “Maybe . . . without training . . . the magic would just . . . go away.”