Stone Unturned: A Legend of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “It’s not mine,” the other man replied. “It came with the house. I think it was cast by a wizard called Erdrik the Grim.”

  “Whoever did it, I’m impressed.” Curious, Hakin reached past the raging demon, to see what the invisible barrier felt like.

  It did not feel like anything at all; his hand passed through it as if it was not there at all.

  “Oh, now that’s interesting,” he said, as he wiggled his fingers.

  The other man thrust his own hand out, and also found it unimpeded. He and Hakin clasped hands briefly, then released.

  Tarker bellowed deafeningly. Hakin cringed.

  “Would you like…” the other began, and then stopped, with a glance at the demon.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t issue any invitations to anyone just now,” Hakin said. On an impulse he squeezed past Tarker and slipped through the doorway, then turned to look at his long-time companion thrashing against empty air.

  “I’m Morvash of the Shadows,” the other man said, holding out a hand. “I’m renting this place from the Wizards’ Guild—or I was; I suspect that whole arrangement has been ruined by today’s events.”

  Hakin took his hand. “Hakin the Demon’s Master,” he said. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve been called lately.”

  “What were you before?”

  Hakin hesitated before admitting, “Hakin of the Hundred-Foot Field.”

  “Ah, I see.” Morvash looked at the demon. “How did that happen?”

  “I don’t mind telling you, but first, how did Karitha the Demonologist wind up in here with you?”

  Tarker let out a howl of rage and frustration; Morvash winced, then closed the door. “Come on upstairs and meet the others,” he said, “and we can tell one another all about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Morvash of the Shadows

  26th of Leafcolor, YS 5238

  By the time Morvash, Karitha, and Hakin had exchanged stories, and the newcomer had been introduced to the former statues, the western sky was streaked with orange and the sun was brushing the rooftops across the street, leaving Old East Avenue mostly in shadow. A dozen or more people were standing in the street in front of the house, watching as Tarker flailed away fruitlessly at doors, walls, and windows. They had apparently concluded that they were safe, that the demon’s attention was directed elsewhere.

  Several of the former statues had been shown the kitchen, and the household’s meager supply of food had been distributed; now a few sat around the kitchen table, while most of the group, including Morvash and the other wizards, idled in the gallery.

  “You know, those are really excellent wards,” Halder Kelder’s son said, “but the demon may wear them down eventually.”

  “Could it?” Morvash asked.

  “It depends how they were done,” Lorgol the Mighty said. “Some protections wear down, some don’t.”

  The guardsman, who had given his name as Bern Bern’s son, was watching out the gallery window; he interrupted the wizards with an exclamation.

  “The guard’s here!”

  Morvash turned and looked. “So they are,” he said.

  Indeed, half a dozen men in the familiar yellow and red uniforms were standing in the street, arranged in two rows of three; all of them wore breastplates and had truncheons hung on their belts, but five were carrying spears, while the center man in the front row wore a sword on his belt.

  “I’d better go talk to them,” Morvash said.

  “Shall I come along?” Hakin asked. “I work with the guard.”

  “I think that might be helpful, yes.” He turned and gestured to Bern. “You, too. Alder, can you keep an eye on Thetta?”

  Alder reluctantly agreed to watch the dancer again, and Bern joined Morvash and Hakin. Together, the three men made their way down to the foyer, where Morvash opened the door. He glanced out to see where Tarker was, and heard roars coming from above. With that in mind he kept his head inside the door, so the demon could not drop down on him, while he cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “Can I help you?”

  The swordsman, presumably the squad commander, turned to look at Morvash. Then he glanced up at the demon. “That depends,” the soldier called back. “Is that thing safe?”

  “The demon? No, of course not; it’s a demon.”

  “Tarker the Unrelenting,” Hakin helpfully called over the wizard’s shoulder.

  “What it is, officer, is completely uninterested in you,” Morvash called. “Or me, for that matter. Unless you give it some reason to think you might aid it, or you get in its way, it will ignore you. Now, would you prefer I came out there, or you came inside, to speak? Because I really do want to talk to you.”

  “I think you had better come out.”

  Morvash turned to Hakin and Bern. “We’ll all go.”

  Bern looked as if he was about to protest, then nodded.

  Morvash paused, gathered himself, then dashed down the steps. When he was out on the street, clear of the house, he turned and looked back.

  Tarker was working its way along the cornice between the second and third floors, systematically bashing it every foot or so, striking the stone a few times in each spot before moving on, obviously looking for some weak spot in Erdrik’s magical defenses—and, thank the gods, not yet finding one.

  Morvash beckoned, and first Hakin, then Bern, came running out. Morvash was mildly irked that they had left the door standing open, but he supposed it did not really matter. He turned and led the threesome over to greet the guardsmen.

  “I am Morvash of the Shadows,” he said. “I have been renting that house to provide a space for certain magical experiments. This is Hakin, and that’s Bern. Bern has spent the last century or so as a piece of bric-a-brac; I restored him to his natural form this morning.”

  “Were you the one that enchanted him in the first place?”

  “Oh, no! I wasn’t even born a hundred years ago. My grandfather wasn’t born. No, it was Erdrik the Grim, the former owner of the house, who enchanted him.”

  “I see.” He glanced at Bern. “As it happens, I have spoken with two of his supposed companions, and their story matches yours.”

  Morvash nodded.

  “Now, what is that demon doing there?”

  Morvash started to turn to Hakin, but the soldier stopped him. “I want to hear it from you first,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know the whole story, but the demon is looking for the demonologist who originally summoned it, seven years ago.”

  “Her name is Karitha,” Hakin offered.

  “Yes,” Morvash said. “Her name is Karitha, and as I understand it, she sent the demon to kill a wizard named Wosten of the Red Robe—and while she was doing that, Wosten conjured a sylph…”

  “A what?” one of the other five soldiers asked.

  “A sylph. An air elemental. A living wind.”

  “Go on,” the commander said.

  “Yes, well, Wosten sent a sylph armed with a spell to turn Karitha to stone, so when the demon returned to say its task was done, Karitha wasn’t there. In fact, the statue she had become had been spirited away—we don’t know exactly how or where, but it eventually wound up in the sculpture collection of the late Lord Landessin, where I found it and resolved to restore her to life.”

  “You did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Morvash opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said, “It seemed like the right thing to do. I took all the statues from Lord Landessin’s gallery that I knew were really enchanted people, and brought them here to restore them.”

  “All right, go on.”

  “Yes, well, when the demon returned, expecting to be released and sent back to its infernal home, it could not
find Karitha, so it was stuck in our world. Hakin, here, befriended it, and has guided it ever since, keeping it busy with heavy labor in the overlord’s employ—until today, when it sensed that Karitha had been restored to life, and it came to find her, so she could release it.”

  “I’d heard there was a demon working in the shipyards; that’s this one?”

  Morvash turned to Hakin, who said, “Yes, sir. Its name is Tarker the Unrelenting.”

  “Fine. So why is it roaring and pounding on walls? Why hasn’t this Karitha sent it back home?”

  “Because she doesn’t remember how,” Morvash explained. “She spent seven years as a statue, and she thought she was dead, so she made no special effort to remember anything. She needs a particular magic word that she had written down, rather than memorizing it. And there are two ways the demon can be released—if she says the magic word, or if it kills her. She doesn’t want to be killed, so she’s staying in Erdrik’s house, behind the most powerful wards I’ve ever seen, where the demon can’t get at her.”

  Hakin hesitated, and then said, “There are actually three ways. And there might be a way it can get at her.”

  “What’s the third?” the officer asked.

  “If she orders it to kill someone else.”

  “No,” Morvash said, “that wouldn’t release it; that would just postpone matters until it kills the new victim.”

  “Oh, but…” Hakin stopped and said, “Oh. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Morvash turned and peered at him. “And what’s this about there might be a way it can get at her?”

  Hakin glanced back at the house, where Tarker was approaching the corner, still hitting the stone cornice. “I don’t want to say,” he said. “Tarker has very good ears. I’m not sure it would work, but it might. If we were somewhere there was no chance Tarker could overhear, I would like to discuss it with you, but not here. But I will say that Tarker may eventually figure it out for itself, just as I did. You might not want to let this present situation go on indefinitely.”

  This made Morvash very curious, but he knew Hakin was probably right. He almost certainly knew better than anyone how good Tarker’s hearing was, after spending seven years with the demon.

  “All right,” the officer said. “That explains the demon, and your well-intentioned experiments explain why I had two men I never heard of reporting back to the barracks a hundred years late. Now, what about Erdrik the Grim? Where does he fit into all this?”

  “Well, it’s his house,” Morvash said. “Or it was, anyway.”

  “But he’s been missing and presumed dead for the last eleven years. I read up on the case before we came here.”

  “Yes, well, he wasn’t dead. He had accidentally trapped himself in a hidden room, and when I cast my spell to restore things to their natural forms, it restored that room to its normal existence, and Erdrik walked right out.”

  “So he’s in there now?”

  “No, he left, hours ago. Before the demon got here. There was a messenger who had come looking for him, and wound up working for me so he could stay in Erdrik’s house; he’s from somewhere far away in the north, and he came to tell Erdrik that his secret project was ready.”

  “What secret project?”

  “I don’t know; Erdrik had put a spell on the messenger so that he couldn’t tell me. But whatever it is, as soon as Erdrik heard it was ready, he took the messenger and left, and I haven’t seen them since.”

  “So he’s loose somewhere in the city? The north part of the city?”

  “Oh, he may well be outside the city by now. The messenger was from somewhere north of Sardiron.”

  “Ah.”

  “I take it, officer, that you were sent to learn what the situation is, and do whatever might be necessary to keep the people of Ethshar safe?”

  “More or less,” the soldier said. “You do know that Erdrik is a wanted criminal, don’t you?”

  Morvash blinked. “Ah…no,” he said. “Ithinia and her agent did not see fit to mention this to me.”

  “Of course they didn’t.” The soldier sighed. “So who else is in the house, besides this demonologist? Is there anyone else who might be dangerous?”

  “Not particularly,” Morvash said.

  “There are more wizards,” Bern announced, speaking for the first time since they left the house.

  “There are more wizards,” Morvash agreed, “but they don’t have their supplies, and aren’t wanted criminals—just a handful of unfortunates. One turned himself to stone accidentally, one was petrified by a rebellious apprentice…that sort of thing. And there are four people who used to be warlocks, but they’re obviously harmless now. Listen, I don’t want to keep them here—there isn’t really room. I said I’d see that the wizards were taken to Ithinia, so she can figure out what to do with them—could you arrange that, maybe? And I was going to send the rest to my uncle’s place on Canal Avenue until we could figure out what to do with them—they’re from all over the World, and from different times in the past. The oldest one was a captured Northern spy from the Great War; there are probably historians at the Palace who would love to talk to him. Assuming they know his language, which no one here does; we only found out who he is by hiring a witch to hear his thoughts.”

  “So you just want to get rid of them?” the soldier asked.

  “Mostly, yes,” Morvash said. “I just wanted to save them from being petrified, I don’t have anything in mind for them now they’re alive again.”

  “It’s like the warlocks all over again,” one of the soldiers said.

  “More or less,” the commander agreed. “But none of them went back more than thirty-five years.”

  “Will you help?” Morvash asked.

  The commander looked past him, at the demon hanging from the cornice by one hand and pounding on the wall below it with its other three. “How long can your magic keep that thing out?”

  Morvash said, “It’s not my magic, it’s Erdrik’s. And I don’t know.”

  “All right, let’s get everyone out of there, and find safe places for them,” the commander said. He turned to one of his men. “Thorun, go back to camp, report to Captain Vengar, and ask him to send more men—maybe a dozen. Istram, run down to Ithinia’s house on Lower Street—the one with the gargoyles, you’ll recognize it—and tell whoever answers the door that we have a situation here that requires the Guild’s attention.”

  “And could you ask her whether Zerra is available?” Morvash asked. “Her flying carpet could be very handy for transporting people.”

  The soldier looked at his commander, who nodded. “Do that,” he said.

  “Zerra? Was that the name?” Istram asked.

  “Yes,” Morvash said. “Zerra the Ageless.”

  “Got it.” With that, he turned and trotted down Old East Avenue, headed north. Thorun set out in the opposite direction, then turned left and vanished around the next corner.

  “Sir,” Morvash said, “there are three people I think should stay in the house, behind protective spells.”

  “I assume one of them is the demonologist?”

  Morvash nodded.

  “Who are the others?”

  “A young couple from the Small Kingdoms. He’s a prince of Melitha, and someone’s after them, possibly an assassin. It might be a dynastic thing. I don’t know if it’s safe for them to come out.”

  “I’m staying until I see what happens to Tarker,” Hakin said.

  “Please yourself,” Morvash said, turning up an empty palm.

  “Fine,” the commander said. “So the wizards go to Lower Street, you keep those three and this man, and the rest go to…where?”

  “My uncle’s house on Canal Avenue,” Morvash said. “Unless you have somewhere better.”

 
“No, that sounds fine. How many people are we talking about?”

  Morvash had lost track of the exact numbers. “About two dozen,” he said.

  “I’ll wait until we have more men, then, but…Dabran! Get directions to this house on Canal Street, and go see that they’re ready for two dozen guests. If you can bring back people to help, do it.”

  Morvash beckoned to Dabran, and explained exactly how to find and recognize Uncle Gror’s place. The soldier nodded, and set out at a trot.

  The commander waited until Morvash had finished with Dabran, then said, “You mentioned something about a magic word the demonologist wrote down. Where is it?”

  “Ah…it was in her workroom somewhere. But that was seven years ago! I doubt it’s still there.”

  “What’s happened to her workroom?” the officer demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Morvash looked at Hakin.

  “I’m not sure,” Hakin admitted. “Shenna of the White Dagger was in charge of the investigation of Karitha’s disappearance, and for a long time she kept me up to date on what they had and hadn’t found there, but that all sort of faded away. I haven’t heard anything for a few years now.”

  “So the workroom was searched?”

  “Very thoroughly, as I understand it.”

  “Was a note found?”

  “I…I don’t know. Shenna might. Or Lord Borlan.”

  “Lord Borlan? The magistrate?” the commander asked.

  “Yes,” Hakin said. “He was in charge of handling Wosten’s murder and Karitha’s disappearance.”

  The commander turned and looked at his two remaining men. “Neran, have you been following all this?”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the spearmen said, straightening up.”

  “Do you know where Lord Borlan’s office is?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve made arrests in the Wizards’ Quarter.”

  “Good. Go find him, tell him Karitha the Demonologist has turned up and the overlord’s pet demon is trying to get at her, and we need a note that was in her workroom when she vanished. He’ll ask you a lot of questions; he always does. Answer them, and do what he tells you, and if you get back here with that note before dawn you’ll get first pick at the barracks’ next pig roast.”