The Demon and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “Wait,” he said aloud.

  Nikolon stopped. The view in front of her was clearly the remains of a bed, crumpled and scorched, and on it was a small pile of ash. Some smell came through the ash to him, a faint trace that set him thinking about the hunger of fires and stirred the desire to call a fire to life in the practice tent. “Sift through the ash,” he said. “Show me anything unusual.”

  I cannot say what is usual, Nikolon replied, but obliged him by diving her perspective into the ash.

  Kip shook his head, expecting a cloud of soot in his nose, but of course he caught only the thick smell of the ash, and then Nikolon’s perspective stopped and the demon’s voice came to him, flatter than her normal affect. This is unusual.

  In her view was a small bead, perhaps half an inch across, made of some kind of opalescent glass with flickers of red and gold. “What is it?” Kip asked.

  It is demon-made.

  “But what is it?”

  It is…glass.

  Kip examined it further. “All right. Bring it up here now.”

  Nikolon didn’t answer, but the bead remained in her sight as she navigated through debris and back through the roof. And then the bead worked its way through a gap between boards and rolled to Kip’s knees. “Thank you. Resume the search.”

  He picked up the bead and rolled it between two fingers as Nikolon’s sight and smells overlaid his again. The glass, smooth and cool to his touch, held no blemishes or marks that he could find. It became too distracting to look at it while also focusing on Nikolon’s explorations, so Kip set the bead back on the ground to investigate later.

  The next stretch of time—half an hour? An hour?—passed in a similar haze of torn and ruined clothing, broken furniture, charcoal and ash, and nothing that stood out as unusual to him. He did come across more of the glass beads, often in the same general location as beds, and a horrible thought came to him after the fifth of these. “Nikolon, could these beads be the remains of people?”

  Nikolon hesitated. Anything is possible.

  “Do you think they are the remains of people?”

  A longer hesitation. And then: Yes.

  Kip swallowed. He pressed fingers to his eyes. “Can you search for a small glass bottle, the length of my finger? If there is a label still on it, it would read ‘Rosewater and Amber.’”

  “Here,” Kip said, pushing the small bottle into Saul’s hand. “Can’t have you smelling worse than all the other apprentices.”

  The tall boy laughed and slung an arm around Kip’s shoulders. “Always lookin’ out for me. Don’t worry, though, when I get a calyx you know I’ll send for you.”

  Kip’s tail vibrated with excitement. To get to see the college from the inside, with one of his closest friends… “I don’t know if my father wants me to be a calyx, but I know I’d be a good one.” He’d almost told Saul then about the spellbook his father had brought home only a month before, about how he’d already learned to reach out to the magic in the earth and call it to him and how he thought he saw a violet glow dance around his paws when he did. But his father had impressed upon him that if the sorcerers found out, they would take the book away and maybe worse.

  If Saul were a Calatian, Kip would have trusted him with the secret. But if he were a Calatian, he would not be enrolling in the college to foster his magical ability.

  “I can’t wait,” was all Kip said. “Come and tell me about the magic you’re learning when you can.”

  “Oh, I’ll do more than tell you.” Saul grinned. “You’re the smartest Calatian I know.”

  At the time, Kip had been so excited to hear that; later, he had mentioned the remark to his father and had been upset that his father hadn’t been happy for him. But later, when Saul had enrolled at the college, his father had explained to him the difference between “smartest Calatian” and “smartest person,” and though Kip still cherished his friendship with Saul, it took on a different cast from that point on.

  But still, language and semantics aside, Saul had promised that Kip would be allowed to come to the college and see the grounds.

  Nikolon moved in a blur of motion that made Kip queasy, but he could not shut his eyes to it. Here, the demon said, but the bottle that swam into view was not the right one.

  “No,” Kip said. “Keep looking.”

  Two more times Nikolon stopped, and neither time was it the right one. I have finished searching these ruins, she said.

  “Did you find more of these glass beads?” The one she’d brought up lay on the wood. Kip didn’t want to touch it anymore.

  Yes. Many of them. Do you wish them brought up?

  “No.” Then he thought that it might be good to give them a consecrated burial, but the enormity of that task overwhelmed him. “Not yet. Go search the ruins under the dining tent.”

  He didn’t know exactly where Saul had been housed. His friend had never made it to Selection; that was to be in late May, Kip thought. A week or two away when the attack had killed all of the current and aspiring apprentices.

  Or…nearly all. Forrest, the apprentice who’d survived, had never spoken coherently about anything, let alone what he’d witnessed that night. Studying spiritual magic was said to be dangerous to one’s sanity, but it was just as likely that the devastation and loss of all of his friends had been too much for him.

  Nikolon’s sight moved through dense earth, the smell refreshingly healthy, and then back into rubble and ash. Kip tuned out the blur again until Nikolon said, I have found it, and he found himself looking at a small glass bottle that he recognized instantly from his father’s shop. The label had been only partly burned, enough that he could still read “Rosew” and “Penfol” in his father’s precise script.

  He wanted desperately in that moment to talk to his father, and then he remembered the experience of the calyx and what his father had gone through, and his fists clenched again.

  Master?

  “Is there one of those glass beads nearby?”

  A quick scan through ash and then a glimmer. Yes.

  “Bring the bead and the bottle both here, please.”

  Again, Nikolon obeyed without comment. There was more disruption; the larger bottle did not pass as easily through debris and earth, and Nikolon was obliged to sear a hole in one of the wooden planks over the ruins to get it out.

  This caused a bit of a stir as people were eating in the dining tent, but Kip only saw the scene through Nikolon’s eyes and he had not asked the demon to transmit sound, so he got the smells of cold roasted chicken and fresh bread, and the sight of people jumping back from the floating bottle, and then the bottle was out and into the night air, and then it was inside his tent.

  “Thank you, Nikolon. Stop showing me what you see and smell.”

  His double vision and smell vanished as the bottle and bead dropped neatly into his paw. Very carefully, he pried the cap from the bottle, releasing a powerful burst of rose and amber scent, and dropped the bead into it. He exhaled when the cap was firmly back on the bottle.

  Nikolon did not reappear, but Kip knew she was still present from the feel of his binding in addition to the peppermint tingle in his nose. He kept the bottle in one paw as he spoke. “Nikolon? Have you seen anything like this effect before? Humans reduced to…” He held the bottle up, trying not to remember that it contained all that was left of his friend.

  No.

  “Do you know anything about what demon might have done this?”

  No.

  “You did react to finding it, though. Can you explain why?”

  The naked vixen shimmered into view, but merely sat cross-legged in front of Kip, as a comrade rather than a would-be seductress. “It was unexpected and unusual.”

  “Even to a demon? You said you couldn’t judge what was usual.” When Nikolon didn’t say anything, Kip realized he hadn’t asked a question or given an order. “Please explain what you mean by ‘unusual.’”

  “We have not seen all things. We exist
in a dimension that has little to do with the real world and now find it confining. Still, it is troubling when…” The vixen fixed Kip with a gaze. “When the unreality of our world finds its way into this one.”

  “All right. Thank you.” The light strain of holding the binding reminded him that he’d never held a demon this long. He could have held the binding for much longer, if the strain only grew at this rate, but he had been thinking about calyxes, and the demon’s Calatian form provoked further thoughts. “How long may you be bound in this world before it becomes intolerable?”

  The vixen gazed at him fixedly with her strange stiff ears. “Anything may be tolerated for any length of time. A greater time exacts a greater price.”

  Kip sighed. “How long before the price is too great?”

  “Who can say what is too great?”

  “For you?”

  “I have not yet experienced that point.” Nikolon kept her expression neutral.

  “I see. I hope that if that point arrives while you are under my binding, you will inform me.”

  “If you order me to do so, master, I surely will.”

  Kip shook his head. Perhaps Master Odden had been right about the usefulness of talking to demons. “I will call you again when I have need of you.” He took a breath, wrapped his paw around the glass bottle, and spoke the banishment words.

  The vixen bowed her head as she disappeared. Kip kept looking through the empty space and then brought the bottle to his nose and eyes. The bead inside glowed very faintly with the remnants of fire magic, not enough to pull Kip to cast a spell, but like a scent that was , over a year old, one that he had to put his nose right up to to get.

  This, then, was perhaps all that was left of his friend. He had mourned Saul’s death months ago, but the tragedy had remained hidden below earth and rubble and tents, and he’d lost sight of it with the urgency of his studies. Now he wrapped one paw warmly around the bottle, picked up the loose bead, and left the practice tent.

  Kip wasn’t hungry, so rather than join his friends in the dining tent, he returned to the basement. He tucked both beads under one corner of his bedroll, gave Neddy some paper, and then paced back and forth, thinking about the demon’s discovery. Talking to someone who’d seen the attack might not shed any new light on what kind of fire had been used, but he wanted badly to hear about it.

  Staring at Neddy’s tracery of glowing skin, Kip couldn’t stop thinking about what the fire that had reduced people to glass beads had looked like. Had the fire struck everyone in a flash? Had it spread like lightning in a streak or popped from one room to the other? The ruins had been the cold ashes of a fireplace that showed him nothing about what the fire had been like when it was alive.

  Of course he would tell Odden about the beads, and Odden would know what the sorcerers who had survived the attack had seen. Kip had likely heard all of their stories already, so he doubted anyone would have more insight. But there had been another survivor, hadn’t there?

  Forrest kept to himself, and the few times he’d spoken he’d seemed to be a few drops short of a full bottle. If approached and asked directly, gently, about the night in question, maybe with a specific question about fire, he might be forthcoming. At least he’d be more satisfying than a demon to talk to. And perhaps Kip could get a riddle to pore over with Emily and Coppy and Malcolm. Or at least Coppy, if Emily were still going on about independence.

  Kip had an excellent excuse to see the apprentice, too: As far as any of them knew, Forrest lived in the orchard, and a human sleeping out in this cold would not be having a good time of it. Why had they never thought of him before when the nights had dropped to below frost levels and the wind cut across Founders’ Hill like a frigid waterfall?

  The wind had actually died down by the time Kip was halfway to the orchard. He brought his ears up, thanking God for small favors. Then he hesitated, wondering if he should get food from the dining tent, but he was already too far, and Forrest had survived this long somehow; he clearly didn’t need help.

  As the fox approached the orchard, he scanned the frost-limned grass and leafless trees for any signs of life, but whatever movement he’d seen before was not repeated. He would have to search for Forrest by scent—difficult in the breezeless cold air—and sight, which became clearer as he drew closer. His eyes might not be good at distance, but the light of the stars was enough to illuminate the world for him twenty or thirty yards away.

  Ears and nose alert, he crunched through snow and frozen grass off the path. As he drew closer to the trees, he caught the scent of Forrest’s rank body odor, but could not see the apprentice himself until he had one paw on a cold tree trunk.

  Forrest lay curled on the ground in his dirty white robe, his face gaunt and as pale as the snow he rested on. Kip hurried to his side and knelt beside him. The apprentice’s dirty blond hair lay in streaks across his face, one stirred faintly by his breath. To the touch of Kip’s rough pads, his skin felt cold and rigid as the tree trunk, though it did warm the air for a claw’s breadth around him. If Kip’s fingers were skin, perhaps he’d be able to discern further traces of life or tell whether Forrest was near death or simply in a kind of hibernation.

  But the black spots on his ears could not be a good sign, and the young man didn’t respond to pressure on his shoulders or to being shaken. Kip rocked back on his heels and considered. He could take Forrest into the Tower, but perhaps it would be better to warm him right here, and Kip had the means to do it.

  Away from the trees, he cleared a space and then called a fire into being there. He wasn’t confident in his ability to bind it to a small area, but with concentration he could keep it from growing. The key was to keep it away from Forrest’s robes…

  A high-pitched scream cut the air at the same time as the dirty white robes flapped and the still form sprang to life, leaping on the fire. In a panic, Kip pulled the fire back as the smell of burning cloth filled the air, and soon they were plunged into the relative darkness of a starlit night.

  But the screaming continued and now Forrest leapt up to flail with his fists at Kip’s shoulders. “No fire! No fire! The trees!”

  “Hey!” The blows didn’t hurt, but Kip fell back under the passion of the man’s cries. “I had it under control! You need to get warm!”

  “No fire!”

  Kip trapped both wrists in his paws. “That fire wouldn’t hurt you!”

  Only then did he notice a soft brown light over the pale white hands he held. He released them. “Wait—”

  He stood among the trees alone on a humid night, late spring or early summer. The quarter-moon lit the night, but not as brightly as Kip would expect, even though the sky was cloudless. The smells of grass and apple flowers surrounded him, but again, muted. And yet the outlines of the four buildings surrounding the Tower stood out crisply against the starry sky, as did the faint lines that marked the gates in the distance. High in the dark walls of the Tower, light glimmered in a single window and then went out. Warmth flickered inside the buildings that he thought at first was fire, but no; the windows were dark. What was he sensing, then? Not scent; the only scents on the night air were of grass and trees and flowers, dull and muted as though he had a cold. Or—

  He was seeing through someone else’s eyes, smelling through their nose. He hadn’t noticed it until he’d noticed the differences in what he could see and smell.

  And hear. In his ear whispered a voice, but when he turned there was nobody there. The voice was in an alien language, high and whistling, but Kip understood what it was asking. “I felt I should be with the trees,” he replied with Forrest’s voice. “They need me.”

  He placed one hand against the nearest tree trunk as the voice spoke again. “You may stay as long as you wish,” he replied.

  The normality of Forrest’s voice unsettled Kip more than the dulled senses. He tried to ask, “Who are you?” but he could not affect what he was perceiving. This was a memory, he knew, and he knew what night it
was, and that filled him with excitement and dread.

  “Someone else is awake, or was.” Forrest’s arm pointed up at the Tower. Seeing his own hand, white and furless, jolted Kip, but the memory did not falter. “Was that Master Jaeger’s window?” The reedy voice spoke again. Forrest nodded. “I shall ask him tomorrow.”

  And then the hair on the back of his neck stood up. A tide of magical energy like an undertow pulled him toward the buildings. One arm was not enough to brace him against the tree; he hugged it with both and watched the College. “Something’s wrong,” he said, his voice higher with alarm, but the reedy voice did not answer. “Go tell—”

  Fire burst from each of the four surrounding buildings, bright reddish flames shooting from each window and door, and a deep, rumbling roar filled the air. Panic surrounded Kip, not just his own but also emanating from the tree he held and the others around it. He held on to the tree desperately as it cried out with a deep, resonating thrum inside him, and he made a keening noise himself. In the four buildings, the flickers of warmth he’d felt earlier vanished all at once, leaving cold emptiness in the wake of the bright gouts of flame.

  And as soon as the lives had been extinguished, the fire died down. With a rumble like thunder, each of the four buildings slowly collapsed inward under its own weight. Clouds of dust and ash rose in the air, and even with a human’s nose Kip could smell it.

  Sparks skittered up the walls of the Tower but died before getting very far. There, the warmth of life persisted, and he clung to that even as he wept against the tree. “Why didn’t I get them all outside?” he cried. “I could have saved them!”

  The trees joined his lament and he turned his grief to comfort. “You’re still here, my trees, my dearest. I’ll save you,” he promised. “I’ll never let the fire get you. Never.”