by Ken Hood
"What shadow? Whose shadow?"
"The thief's. Longdirk tell you about the missing gold?"
"Of course."
"He hid himself with gramarye," the hexer mumbled. "My watchers didn't see him, but they saw his shadow." His hands continued to fidget as if playing a dozen chess games.
"You're sure it was a man's shadow?"
"No, but tonight my aura has that same shadow across it!"
Because it was his own shadow. He had contrived the theft himself for no sane reason. Lots of hexers went crazy. Consort with demons long enough and sooner or later you wouldn't know your armpit from an anthill. Fischart's gnawing guilt made him an obvious candidate for the chaos chorus.
"Across mine, too?"
"No, not yours."
"Then you stay here, and I'll go alone." That was sheer braggadocio. Hamish could not possibly handle the powers required. His new and untried agents in Siena had almost no chance of finding the countess by material means. In fact their bumbling inquiries were more likely to attract the signory's attention and thus drag her farther into danger. If the Fiend's minions had not already located her, the only practical way to find her was with gramarye. Coursing was tricky enough with dogs and with demons would be a roll in a snake pit. So he needed the hexer, and there could be no delay, for the propinquity of the severed kerchief must be fading fast.
"No. I'll come." The old man held out a hand. "Give me back Corte."
Hamish removed his ring. "Why can't I keep it for tonight?"
"Because it is conjured to whip you out of the way of any serious danger. Tonight you have to stay and enjoy it." Fischart dropped the guarddemon in a small casket of ivory and closed the lid. That box was familiar. Toby and the don had worked some real wonders with it once, including saving Hamish's life. He saw several things he recognized in the dust-coated litter on the table, but others were disturbingly strange—a furred hand with too many fingers, a lump of rock crystal containing what looked like golden feathers, a tortoise in a bottle, a basket holding embers that still glowed with worms of red fire and yet did not burn the basket, a small, brownish skull with teeth that were definitely not human...
"Have you ever considered becoming a hexer?"
Hamish looked up with an angry retort ready on his lips and was taken aback by the Fischart's pasty smile. The adept's humor was usually mocking, but this time he seemed almost wistful, and something like sincerity might be lurking in the rheumy eyes. That smile and the question were equally disconcerting.
Of course he had. Anyone who enjoyed books and learning as much as he did must at some time consider taking up the spiritual arts, and that was especially true in Italy, for almost every adept in Europe had spent time at the Cardinal College in Rome. Hexers, acolytes serving the spirits in shrines or tutelaries in sanctuaries—almost all were graduates of the College, and so were many of the Khan's shamans. The College would not willingly train a hexer, so only members of religious orders were accepted as students, and only by swearing fearful oaths could anyone join such an order, whatever he or she might do with the learning in later life.
"Too dangerous for me," Hamish said. "I'd rather keep on following Toby around and watching him rattle the world." Besides, the training took years, and its requirements included poverty, chastity, and obedience. Nothing much wrong with poverty or obedience, but chastity was altogether too plentiful already. No wonder adepts went crazy. Who would ever want to become anything like this cobwebby, memory-tortured old mummy?
"I see," said the mummy drily. "I have demonized the horses. Yours is named Westlea."
"It understands English?"
"It understands my English. What you call English is not what the English do. It knows Latin. I have also prepared two rings for you. Lupus will bring you back here the moment you utter the word 'Panoply.'"
"One word? Is that safe?"
The hexer's customary sneer returned. "No. And be warned—I have worded my edicts as carefully as I know how, but Lupus has a sense of humor. If you happen to be clutching a doorframe when you pronounce the word, it may rip your hand off. Or bring the house, too, and drop it on top of you."
"Charming! Is that possible? A house?"
"Perhaps not, but Lupus is an exceptionally powerful demon."
Gulp! Exceptionally powerful and a one-word leash? Dangerous! But if gramarye could flash him back here from Siena with one word, why did he have to endure a demon ride to get there? The mummy was waiting for him to ask. Hamish rummaged through his knowledge of gramarye in search of an answer and saw that Lupus could be assigned a specific target for the return—here—but there was no way to define an equally safe destination in Siena. Given any leeway at all, a demon would drop him in fire, open water, a cesspool, anything to cause pain and adversity.
"Tell me about the other one."
"The other is Zangliveri, and you must wear it on your sword hand. If we meet with any trouble, point your blade at it and say, 'Vestige.' The target will be destroyed."
"Destroyed? People, too?"
"Certainly."
The ethics of murder were troubling enough without wondering how the tutelary would react to strangers slaughtering people with gramarye. It might let them get away with killing other strangers, as long as they left its flock alone—or it might not. "You play for high stakes, Maestro."
"There can be no higher stakes than these."
"Is Zangliveri as strong as Lupus?"
"Stronger. You should be able to open paths through stone walls with Zangliveri."
Hamish nodded and cleared his throat, which felt strangely dry, as if he were starting a cold. "Panoply for a fast getaway, Vestige to strike dead."
Fischart stared at him sourly. "You need to practice them again, or may I open the casket now?"
"I think I've got it."
"Good. I'd hate Zangliveri to turn the floor under your feet into an inferno." He opened the box and lifted out two rings of gold. One bore a blue stone, and the other a black. "Zangliveri. And Lupus."
"Pleased to meet you, Your Maleficences." Hamish slid them onto fingers of his right hand. They went on readily enough, then became painfully tight, but that was just the demons playing tricks. A demon would vent its hatred in any evil it could get away with, which might be plenty when it was held by a mere one-word conjuration. "What's the plan?"
Toby defined a plan as "The least likely sequence of events."
Fischart came around the end of the table. "You ride to Siena, and I follow. We release the steeds, locate Her Maj... the countess... if we can, and thereafter proceed according to our judgment and the turn of events." He had at least a dozen rings sparkling on his fingers—how many of them had been pre-conjured to react to a single word like Zangliveri and Lupus? The man was a walking powder keg.
Panoply, Hamish thought. Panoply. Vestige and panoply. What are we waiting for?
The adept wrung his hands. "I am very reluctant to use my skills against innocent men, Master Campbell. I am not as agile as I was, either. So, while I believe I can handle any gramarye Gonzaga is capable of applying against us and can probably distract the tutelary long enough for our purposes, I shall rely on your reflexes and keen eye if we meet with mortal resistance."
It was a nasty shock to realize that the celebrated hexer was as scared as he was. "Fear not!" Hamish proclaimed. "I am dauntless as a cornered rat unless I have time to think. Let's go." He headed for the door. The nauseating knot of apprehension in his belly went with him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hamish untethered the first demon steed and held its head while Fischart mounted. The brutes looked wrong for horses, acted wrong, smelled wrong, and their hate-filled eyes glowed faintly in the dark. He approached the other carefully, alert for iron-shod hooves and demon teeth that could rip chunks out of a man's flesh, but the hexer must have bound the Westlea demon well, for he was able to mount without trouble. Then he let go the reins and folded his arms. That was a point of honor for a dem
on rider, because in his terror he might seriously injure the horse's mouth. It was also rank bravado, but only a maniac would attempt this anyway.
"Ready, Maestro?"
"Ready, lad." The hexer's voice was a croak—comforting! "Pivkas, I bid you bear me after Westlea, going unseen."
Hamish wet his lips. "Westlea, I bid you bear me southward, passing east of Florence, going unseen. Go!"
The horse leaped into a place of demons, taking him with it. The first time he had ridden a demon steed, he had screamed for what felt like a solid hour, although in fact he had returned to reality after only a few minutes. Men had been known to go crazy, or faint and fall off, forever lost. One never knew what to expect, except that it would be torment and nightmare. In this case he rode beneath a sky of liquid black, devoid of sun, moon, or stars, and yet there was light of a sort, for the earth was visible from horizon to horizon, barren rock and ash bereft of shadows or color. Buildings were ruined, roofless, and tumbledown. People? There were no people as people, but vague glows writhed here and there like tormented wraiths trying to crawl up out of the soil, wailing appeals as the demon steeds thundered by them. If that was speech they were attempting, it was drowned by the discordant howl of a wind that stirred eye-nipping clouds of dust and once in a while peppered his face with sand. Blasts of feverish heat alternated with skin-freezing cold, both of them bringing rank, repulsive stenches.
He risked a glance behind him and shuddered. All he could see of the hexer was a skeleton astride a skeleton horse. Bones and metal—horseshoes and dagger, boot buckles and coins in a belt pouch. Conversation was impossible in the shrieking wind, but he decided that the old man was coping. His arm bones hung down in front of him, so he must be hanging on to the pommel of his saddle. That seemed like a good idea. Hamish could not see his own saddle, but he could feel it and cling to it. He tried not to look at his own bones or the sword dangling unsupported at his side. The gale tugged at his invisible cloak.
Florence was a ruin and an ancient one, as it might look a hundred years after the Fiend had sacked it, all crumbling walls and hills of rubble. He reminded himself that demons could not prophesy, and it was obvious that a pillar of light marked the sanctuary and lesser glows shone from the many shrines, defying the demonic illusion. To look at them hurt Hamish's eyes. He was not in a state of grace at the moment.
He could not, would not, stand this torment for very long. Coughing at the grit and filth in his mouth, he shouted, "Westlea, I bid you go faster!" A few moments later he repeated the command. Now the demon steed hurtled over the nightmare landscape like a stooping hawk. It crossed the dry bed of the Arno in three or four leaps and raced up the hills beyond. Had the demon world been ruled by the same laws as the world of mankind, it would have left a dust cloud a league long.
The baron was still with him. Either the old mummy was tougher than he looked or he had reinforced himself with some gramarye that he had not offered to Hamish. Either way—
"Westlea, I bid you go faster!"
Now the drum of hooves blended into a roar, like rain. The eldritch scenery rushed by in a blur. Southward he flew over the Chianti Hills, past Impruneta, Greve, and Castellina, retracing his journey of the last two days in a tiny fraction of that time. It just felt longer.
He came at last to a demonized vision of Siena, but the spirits burned there as bright as in Florence and would not take kindly to demons within their domain. Hamish halted Westlea in a field just outside the city wall. Then the air was sweet again, the stars shone above living trees. He bade his steed stand absolutely still and leaped to the ground. He shouted the same command to Pivkas—glad that he had remembered its name—and caught Fischart as he tumbled from the saddle.
A few minutes' rest on the grass, and the old man had recovered enough to start being unpleasant again, berating Hamish for the pace he had set.
"You may enjoy that; I don't," Hamish retorted. "You could have made the cursed thing go more slowly if you wanted. Now get rid of these incarnates before the tutelary blasts all of us!"
Muttering, the hexer clambered to his feet and spoke his commands, immuring the demons back in their jewels. Then the horses were only horses, whinnying with alarm at finding themselves where they had not been before. Hamish tied their reins up out of harm's way, loosened their saddle girths, and left them as a pleasant surprise for some lucky Sienese. His hands had almost stopped shaking. Whatever happened now, the worst of the night was over.
"The scarf," said the hexer. "You hold one end, let me have the other."
Hamish pulled out Lisa's kerchief, felt the maestro grip it also, heard a single guttural word, Halstuch!... and waited, shuffling from one foot to the other.
"What's happening?"
"El Bayahd's looking for the rest of it."
Searching the whole city? Every cesspit, every slop bucket? And what, pray, were the tutelary and its kindred spirits up to while these intruders disturbed the peace with exhibitions of gr—
The night exploded around him as the demon snatched him away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Silence. Gasp for breath...
He stood beside Fischart, with his feet on mud and his nose almost touching the back of a coach. Beetling eaves showed high overhead against a sky just starting to think about dawn. A horse whinnied shrilly and jangled harness, as if it sensed the demon's passage, but no human voice was raised in alarm. Hooves stamped impatiently, clumping and clopping on stone. A man cursed, making Hamish's hand tighten on the hilt of his sword.
Someone very rich must be arriving or departing, for the carriage was no dainty gig for a jaunt to market but a lumbering shed on wheels that almost filled the roadway and would need a full team of eight. The voice had come from the side, probably a flunky waiting by the footboard. He must have been speaking to someone and there might well be another man holding the horses, possibly a driver on the box as well. Hamish abandoned his hopes that this escapade would involve nothing more vigorous than a tap on a lady's chamber door and a graceful bow as he was presented by her old friend Karl Fischart. Activities more strenuous now seemed imminent.
He leaned around the tall rear wheel to peek along the gap between coach and wall. He saw a bright streak where a house door stood ajar, a protruding footboard directly opposite it, and beyond both of those, two men silhouetted against the glow of lanterns on the front of the carriage. Just standing there waiting for something, but armed, and therefore more than mere grooms and postilions... Flames! How many more tending the horses? How many altogether? How much use was Fischart going to be when the trouble started?
"Taking a crappy long time, ain't he?" grumbled one of the two.
In English!
Granted that Italy was overrun with refugees from a dozen lands, common sense screamed that men skulking around long after curfew in Siena speaking English were those same Nevil agents who had tried to abduct Lisa two days ago. A demon had testified that the missing scraps of Lisa's kerchief lay somewhere amid the street garbage, so this must be the countess's residence. Common sense told Hamish to whip out his rapier and unleash demon Zangliveri to even up the odds a little. He tightened his grip on the hilt—
His hand refused to do more. His logic might be wrong. He could not blast men down without more evidence. He squirmed with frustration. He was crazy. Toby would have taken both of them by now, probably with his bare hands, but he was not Toby. Any minute now one of those bravos would decide to take a stroll around the coach and...
The house door creaked and brighter light flared up like a sunrise, revealing greasy pavement, footboard, the two guards. They were armed with both sword and dagger and wore no excessive clothing that might hamper their movements. They did not look especially villainous. They looked young and fit and dangerous as hell.
A dark figure ducked out from the door of the house, then raised its lantern and turned to light the way. A woman followed, muffled in a dark cloak. Her hat concealed her hair, so there was no way to
tell if she was Queen Blanche, who in her youth had been called the White Princess, but she was tall enough to stoop for the lintel, and she stumbled awkwardly in doing so. Her arms were behind her, and there was another man right at her back. Abduction?
Of course it was an abduction! Get on with it!
Hamish drew his sword and took three steps to poke the man who held the lantern. "Vestige!"
His head jumped from his shoulders in a spray of air and blood. The lantern clattered to the ground with his hand still attached, then the rest of him collapsed into a blood-soaked pile of meat and garments. His head rolled into the gutter. The lantern had already gone out, but there was enough light coming from the doorway to establish that he had been completely disassembled. There could not be an intact human body in that heap. Several people screamed, probably including Hamish himself. Certainly his stomach heaved so violently that for a moment he was incapable of doing anything. Then a lot of things happened all at once.
Spooked by the blood odor or the demon, the horses reared, screamed, lunged against the collars. A man holding the leaders yelled and fell back. As the rig began to move, another man jumped down from the footboard to join the fray. Shouting, "Blanche! Majesty! It's me, Karl!" Fischart jostled past Hamish, throwing him against the wheel so the hub jarred his elbow and he almost dropped his rapier. The countess was hauled bodily back into the house by her captor. The two bravos flashed out their swords and daggers in an unnerving display of proficiency. Hamish recoiled off the carriage and stumbled over the gruesome stack of flesh that had been the first casualty. Fischart tried to follow the countess into the house, and one of the swordsmen ran him through. He screamed and fell. The door slammed, cutting off the light.
The carriage had departed, so the road was cleared for battle—Hamish Campbell versus no less than four opponents, possibly more. The darkness was on his side, but at least one of the enemy must be Gonzaga, the hexer he had bested two nights before. This time he was not wearing a guarddemon.
