The Demon and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “Yes, sir.” Kip kept his voice low, hoping that Odden would hear and perhaps Patris might not. He knew this about demons, because when Kip had tried to gain admission to apply to the college, the demon guarding the gates had also been maddeningly precise in his interpretation of his orders.

  “I only wish to please,” Eichann said in a thick Celtic brogue.

  “Of course you do. You also hope that this pathetic display will cause me to lose concentration and thereby unbind you. Penfold, would you care to dismiss him?”

  The demon’s eyes lit up as he took in the fox. “Oh, no calyx this, eh?”

  “And don’t speak to demons, except to order them,” Patris said from his chair. “It can provide no benefit.”

  “Don’t cast such aspersions on my conversation,” Eichann said.

  “Quiet, Eichann,” Odden ordered, and the demon stopped talking.

  “But…” Kip stopped himself, remembering his master’s previous objection, but this time Odden did not interrupt him. “Sir, the time I learned to summon elementals, I talked to them to gain an understanding of what their home looked like. I’ve talked to Burkle—a little—and from your text I have an idea of what to reach for, but if I might ask Eichann a question?”

  “As Patris has said, asking questions of demons is rarely fruitful. They perceive truth subjectively, so ordering them to tell only the truth restricts them only to telling the truth as they see it, which can be anything. I have heard demons claim that our world is but a dream in the mind of the greatest of demons, I have heard them play on a sorcerer’s sympathy by claiming to be pained by the binding and even that they were once human, I have heard them claim that, ahem, inappropriate physical contact with a demon’s corporeal form can grant you the demon’s powers, and so on.”

  At this last one, Odden looked away from Kip. The fox suspected that perhaps Odden had directly experienced the disproof of that one, but did not feel inclined to ask. “No other sorcerer has learned sorcery in the way I have,” he said. “So perhaps none has asked the questions I would like to. Can it hurt to try?”

  “It can waste all of our time.” Patris spoke up with a sneer.

  Odden, if he heard, ignored the headmaster. “Suit yourself. Eichann, you will answer the questions of Penfold as fully and truthfully as you can.”

  The demon’s face took on a slightly mocking cast as he turned to Kip, attentive. Kip faced him and said, “How does your home smell?”

  “Home?” Eichann said. “I have no home, and therefore it has the smell of absence, of nonexistence, of void.”

  “The place where you are summoned from.” Kip kept his composure. “What does it smell like?”

  “Ah, well, everyone smells differently, do they not? You with your fox’s nose may smell the memory of pine where I smell only the dog lying on the wooden bench.”

  “What does it smell like to you, then?” Kip asked.

  “To me? To me it smells like magic and decay, the thick power in corruption and rot. Magic swirls like a tide around us and each demon has his individual scent of power, the greatest of maelstroms and the least of eddies. Imagine the smell of a boneyard if each corpse contained within seeped magic to the surface rather than putrefaction.”

  Patris made a noise of exasperation. Odden raised a hand. “Enough.” To Kip, he said, “You see what I mean about talking to demons. Smell of magic, indeed. Please banish him now.”

  “Indeed,” Kip murmured. As he gathered magic and the familiar purple glow rose around his paws to match the power in him, he stopped before speaking the spell. “Do I not need…enhancement?” He kept his muzzle level with Odden’s black hair, ignoring the smell in his nose and the gleam of pewter.

  “You shouldn’t, for Eichann. But if you find your power insufficient, we can try again with the calyx.”

  No. He would be sufficient. He raised his paws and recited the banishment spell he’d learned, focusing the power of the words on the demon in front of him as he spoke its name.

  Magic crackled through his fur, left him in the form of the spell, and then Eichann vanished, taking with him the tingle in Kip’s nostrils.

  Odden’s hand stroked his beard. “Well done,” he said, though quietly and with a reservation that raised Kip’s hackles. Hadn’t he cast the spell perfectly the first time? “Now you try a summoning.”

  The pewter goblet sat on the desk like a demon itself, one Kip could not banish with a spell. “Sir,” he said, “since I was able to—”

  “Drink, Penfold,” Odden ordered. “All of what remains.”

  He had to walk past Patris to pick up the goblet, and the white-maned headmaster’s eyes never left him. His paw shook slightly as he grasped it; he hoped the headmaster hadn’t seen that. Kip steeled himself, faced Odden, and raised the blood to his lips.

  He held his breath so the smell wouldn’t overwhelm him, but the warmth and taste were nearly as bad. It wasn’t that the taste was objectionable; it was that the blood tasted like raw meat but with a sharp bitterness to it that Kip could only associate with the person it had come from. He gagged, but forced himself to swallow.

  “Now,” his master said, handing him a cloth, “you should feel stronger when gathering magic. Prepare the binding spell and then summon Nikolon.”

  Kip wiped his muzzle. Ignoring his stomach, which threatened to revolt, he focused on his feet on the stone floor, one step and then another back toward Master Odden and the work area, putting Patris at his back, though not out of his mind. One deep breath, two, and then he stood next to his master and pulled magic into his paws again.

  The process did not feel much different than it had before, though perhaps it was easier to gather magic. This time was nothing like the rush of magic he’d gotten the first time he’d touched the walls of the White Tower, when he’d heard a voice in his head say Fox? and had levitated himself in a panic to get rid of the magic. There was a stronger urge to cast a spell now than he was used to, but not much stronger; that was the main difference he felt.

  “Your magic looks stronger.” Odden gestured to the purple glow around Kip’s paws, brighter than before. “Cast the spell.”

  The words of the binding spell were the same he’d learned before, and the feeling of it was the same as the one he’d used to bind the phosphorus elemental. He created the spell, an empty cage, and then he spoke the words of the summoning. As he spoke, he called to his memory the image of a boneyard and imagined himself standing there with the sharp peppermint sting in his nostrils stronger than he’d ever felt it in real life. Imaginary Kip reached down into the soil and said the name: “Nikolon.”

  The air in the office shimmered; the tingle burst into Kip’s nostrils again with the appearance of an olive-skinned slender woman, as naked as Eichann had been, but without any monstrous substitutions in her anatomy. When she saw Kip, her eyes widened, and in a moment her form changed to that of a naked female fox-Calatian, her breasts flattening, russet and white fur sprouting all over her body, a bushy tail growing from just over her buttocks, and her Roman features replaced with the narrow muzzle, black ears, and slit-pupiled yellow eyes of a fox. “What a surprise,” she purred.

  Behind them, Patris made a choked noise. “Hold the binding, Penfold,” Odden said. The master’s eyes had widened. “Well done.”

  “I’ve got it.” Nikolon—wasn’t that a male name?—struggled at the binding magically even as her fingers explored the furred curves of her body, but Kip’s will and power kept her in place easily.

  “They let you cast magic now?” Nikolon took a step toward Kip. “The world is changing.”

  “Stop,” he ordered her, and she froze every muscle, those yellow eyes still fixed on his.

  “That is a good command to use,” Odden said, just as Nikolon took another step. “However, you did not specify for how long to stop.”

  “Do not come closer than two feet from me,” Kip said, and then quickly added, “and do not move farther than five feet from me.” />
  Nikolon stopped outside the two-foot boundary and rested a black paw on her white midriff, teasing the fingers through the fur there. “This form is rather delightful,” she said. “I can see what you like about it.”

  “I was born with it,” Kip said.

  “But,” Nikolon continued, “it must get dreadfully warm. And dirty.” Small hairs drifted from her fingers to the ground, but vanished before they could touch the stone.

  “The usual command,” Odden murmured. “Even though you mean to dismiss her immediately.”

  Kip nodded and recited. “Make no move save on my order; speak no word save on my order; exert no power save on my order.”

  Nikolon straightened and composed herself, perfectly attentive.

  “Excellent,” Odden said, and though Kip appreciated the praise, he felt ill. Here was a demon, yes, but in the form of a Calatian, bound to do his bidding, summoned with the blood he could still taste on his tongue. It’s not a living creature, he told himself, and yet the commanded obedience still rankled with him. The thought crossed his mind that this was what humans felt like, and he shook his head to dismiss it. Even slaves could not be commanded so completely, and Calatians were not slaves.

  So he gathered magic again and spoke the dismissal spell, and just as Eichann had done, Nikolon vanished, taking with her the sharp smell of demons.

  “Very good, Penfold,” Odden said.

  “You’re not to summon any demons save on the order of a master.” Patris had stood, Kip could tell from the elevation of his voice.

  “I was getting to that, Patris.” Kip’s master took a breath. “You will of course use this spell only under my supervision or order.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kip said.

  “Then I think that is enough for today.”

  Kip hoped that Patris would remain behind when he left Odden’s office, but the headmaster followed him out. “You seemed remarkably untroubled by the ritual,” the sorcerer said once they were out in the hallway. “Did your father really tell you nothing about it in the nineteen years up to now?”

  “Nothing,” Kip said. “I swear it.”

  Patris remained uncomfortably close to Kip in the narrow hallway. He smelled of laundry soap and sweat, of suppressed fear. “You understand the necessity of it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You understand that your apprenticeship was made over my objection and continues to exist on my sufferance that you abide strictly and completely by the rules of the College?”

  “As I expect all apprentices must, yes, sir,” Kip said.

  “Good.” Patris strode ahead and Kip let him gain distance. At the stairs, though, the headmaster turned. “And do not forget that you, too, have now participated in the ritual.”

  He stomped up the stairs with a determined tread. Kip leaned against the wall for a moment and then hurried down, the taste of Jacob’s blood still coppery in his mouth and nose.

  2

  The Fight

  Kip’s indecision over whether to tell his friends about the calyx ritual lasted all of four minutes once they were again all together in the basement. “They drink the blood of Calatians!” he said, pacing back and forth through the old papers and dusty stone floor.

  Coppy, the otter-Calatian who’d also become an apprentice, didn’t react with the horror Kip had hoped. “I thought it might be something like that,” he said.

  “You never said. We talked about it for months!”

  “I know.” Coppy rested a paw on Kip’s arm. “Didn’t want to upset you. People do horrible things to Calatians in London and I heard summat about blood when I was a cub there.”

  Kip’s tail lashed back and forth. “I wish you’d told me.”

  “I couldn’t.” Coppy squeezed his forearm. “It was your dad. If he wouldn’t tell you, ’twasn’t my place.”

  “You don’t have to protect me all the time,” Kip said.

  The otter lifted his paw and rubbed at his whiskers. “But I really didn’t know for sure. Why start trouble with rumours?”

  “Now we know, though.” Emily Carswell, a young woman in her early twenties, sat outside a cleared half-circle against one wall, in which a phosphorus elemental waited. She picked up a sheet of old paper, crumpled it, and tossed it to the lizard. “It’s revolting. I won’t drink blood.”

  “If you want to summon a demon, you will,” Kip said. “Or if you want to perform any other strong magic.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Emily said. “Calyxes weren’t even around for three of the Great Feats. So how were they cast?”

  “You can’t cast a Great Feat every time you want to summon a demon.” Leaning against the door to the basement, Malcolm O’Brien folded his arms and smiled. The Irishman’s black hair hung into his green eyes, but he made no effort to brush it away. “Might as well bring down a barn to kill a mouse, my da used to say.”

  “Tch.” Emily held out her hands to the glowing lizard. “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Aye, and all the sorcerers simply prefer to bind themselves to Calatians, drinking blood to do magic. Much easier than this other way.”

  “They’d never had a woman or Calatian sorcerer, either,” Emily said. “It’s an age of new things.” She turned to Kip. “You didn’t have to drink any of the blood, did you?”

  Kip flattened his ears and stared fixedly at Neddy, the phosphorus elemental. “Oh, Kip,” Emily said.

  “Sure, and what would you do?” Malcolm asked. “If your master orders you to?”

  “Patris was there.” Kip lowered his voice. “He made it clear—again—that if there’s something I don’t wish to do, I need only tell him and he’ll be all too pleased to end my association with the College.”

  Emily tried to recover from her earlier scolding tone. “Isn’t he supposed to be having lessons with Adamson?”

  “Oh.” Coppy adopted a snooty voice. “I’m certain Master Adamson can teach himself quite well, thank you.”

  They all chuckled, the tension broken, and Kip smiled gratefully at the otter. “How was your lesson with Windsor?”

  Coppy’s broad, whiskered muzzle turned up to his. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t have to drink any blood, so I suppose it was better than yours that way. Not in any others though.”

  “I thought he’d be easier on you now you’re his apprentice,” Malcolm said.

  “Hah.” Emily tossed her head. “You don’t know him at all.”

  “Not as well as you,” Malcolm agreed. “Aye, if these masters weren’t teaching us sorcery, it’d hardly be worth doing these lessons at all.”

  “So, Kip.” Emily pointedly gave him her full attention. “What are you going to do?”

  Coppy, too, shifted on the floor, and Kip felt the weight of the otter’s stare. “I…I have to become a sorcerer, right? That’s the only way I’ll be able to change anything. Get more Calatians admitted, find an alternative to calyxes…”

  “Ha.” Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “Next to that, mucker, finding out who destroyed the college will be easy.”

  “One thing at a time.” Kip returned Malcolm’s smile with a little difficulty. He’d drunk enough water to kill the taste of blood in his mouth, but the memory was more difficult to dispel.

  “Who was it?” Coppy asked.

  “Jacob Thomas. The dormouse.”

  “Oh, aye.” Coppy rubbed his whiskers thoughtfully.

  “One of your friends in town, or less so?” Emily asked.

  Kip shook his head. “I don’t know that he cared what I was doing. I didn’t even know he was a calyx until today.”

  Malcolm uncrossed his arms and stepped forward into the basement. “Didn’t think you’d many friends left in town.”

  “He’s still betrothed,” Emily reminded him.

  “Oh, aye, but that’s not quite friendship, is it?” Malcolm grinned at Kip. “Good job she wasn’t the calyx, eh?”

  Kip shuddered. “She’s too young, and I don’t know any calyxes who were wo
men.”

  “There was Bridget Markham,” Coppy said.

  “Oh?”

  The otter nodded. “Your father mentioned her once. And there were some back home in London as well. Not common, but not unknown.”

  “Then I’m glad it wasn’t her as well.” Kip sighed. “That might have ended the engagement permanently.”

  “What are you meant to do with a demon, then?” Malcolm sat on the other side of Kip from Coppy and Emily, and Kip lowered himself to the ground as well, curling his tail over his leg so it wouldn’t rest on the dusty paper.

  “Investigate the ruins. The Masters have already looked for any elemental traces left behind, but Master Odden wants me to send a demon down there and search more thoroughly for any clue. He thinks it was demons and not elementals anyway.”

  “Demons wouldn’t leave traces, would they?”

  Kip shrugged, and Emily replied, “That’s what he’s going to find out.”

  “Sounds like grim work,” Malcolm said as Coppy rested a paw on Kip’s.

  “It’s all right.” Kip sighed.

  In the ensuing silence, Emily cleared her throat. “Kip, Coppy, I’ve got news as well. I don’t think it’ll make up for your day, but…my old teacher from Boston sent me a letter today.”

  “There was mail?”

  She nodded quickly and held up a piece of folded paper. “Nothing for you. Sorry. But Master Hobstone said that he and some other sorcerers have been meeting with the independence movement.”

  “The rebels, you mean.”

  Her expression soured. “It sounds dirty when you say it that way.”

  Kip shared a look with Malcolm. “They’re hoping to rebel against the Empire, aren’t they?”

  “They’d like to achieve independence by peaceful means.”

  “Which is why they’re recruiting sorcerers?”

  Emily read from the paper. “‘We sincerely hope that we may enact a peaceful separation from our Mother Country, to lay claim to the rights that should be ours as native-born citizens of the American colonies, but should London resist, we must needs be prepared for a battle.’”