“Move the chalk,” I repeated, not understanding. In a moment, I thought, my mind would go, and then he would be able to do whatever he wanted with me.
“You’ve seen, surely, the five piles of white stone outside the moat, forming a pentagram to keep me in the royal castle of Yurt. If you move the stones, I’ll leave Yurt and never bother you again.”
“But where will you go?”
“Does it matter?” he said with a wave of his hand. He fixed me with his enormous eyes. It looked as though he had tiny flames where a human should have pupils. “I’ll be gone, and I won’t try to capture anyone else’s soul. I promise!”
I reminded myself that this was a non-binding conversation. Besides, his words were not even close to the words which, according to the Diplomatica Diabolica, would actually engage a demon.
“A demon loose in the world is too dangerous,” I said. “And the Lady Maria’s soul would still be forfeit.”
The demon leaned forward and touched me on the knee. I had somehow expected his touch to be insubstantial, that of an apparition, but it was solid as iron and hot as fire. If he had touched my bare skin, I think it would have blistered.
“Why are you so worried about the Lady Maria?” he asked in tones of reasonableness. “If she didn’t know the consequences of asking favors of a demon, she certainly should have. She may have ‘imperiled’ her soul by talking to me, as you might put it, but there’s something you ought to know.”
“What’s that?” I said as he paused.
“I can see the future. Even if you romantically throw your life away for her, in two years she will commit a mortal sin so great that even the saints will turn their backs on her.”
“And what’s that?” I burst out.
“Are you asking for information?”
“No,” I cried, adding quickly in the Hidden Language, “I seek no help or information from you!” This was too close an escape for comfort.
He fell silent for a moment, watching my face. I tried ineffectively to wipe my forehead with a wet sleeve. If he tricked me into asking for knowledge beyond that possible in the natural world, I would be well on the way to selling my own soul.
But could he be right about the Lady Maria? There was no way to know, but I had to act as though he were wrong. “You’re lying,” I said firmly. “I don’t want to have a conversation with a lying demon.”
“I’m telling the perfect truth,” he said easily. “Even if you don’t believe me, you certainly should realize I have the power to discover such things.”
“You can’t know the future, even you,” I said, trying desperately to remember a fragment of a conversation I had once had with the chaplain. “Only the past is knowable and repeatable. If the future were fixed, that would deny free will.”
The demon dismissed this. “If you’d rather believe a priest than someone who has actually seen what will happen- But think, Daimbert. Even if you could ‘save’ the Lady Maria’s soul, why throw away your life for someone you don’t even particularly like?”
“I’m responsible for her and for everyone else in my kingdom,” I said stubbornly, “and you imperil them all.”
“But you’ve asked yourself the same thing, haven’t you, Daimbert?”
I didn’t dare answer.
The demon leaned back in his chair. “You’re surprisingly obstinate,” he said in a macabre parody of good-fellowship. “I gave you a good excuse with my apparitions to go back without having to meet me, but you kept coming anyway.”
“I should have known all along you were here,” I said. “From the moment you first broke the magic lock on my chambers, you’ve been teasing me, eluding me. I’m not going to let you do it any more.”
The demon shrugged. “Why don’t we leave for the moment the question of ‘saving’ a soul that will fall into mortal sin in a short time anyway. Instead, if you’re determined to die, maybe you and I can agree on something that will make your final days of life more pleasant.”
“I’m not agreeing to anything,” I said cautiously.
“Let me offer it before you agree!” he said pleasantly.
“I came to make a different bargain!” Although I had long since despaired of my life, and my body would not stop trembling, my mind was momentarily clear. I was almost beyond terror. The demon had first tried to frighten me away before I had even reached him, I told myself, and now was trying to distract me with pointless conversation, because he knew that my bargaining position was sound.
The demon seemed to be growing again, and the chair he was sitting on with him. “Suppose I accept your bargain, Daimbert,” he said, “your life for the Lady Maria’s soul. That is what you’re offering? Good. Now, why should you have to die today? I’d be happy to put off your death if you would.”
Against my will, I felt hope surging up.
“Think what you could do if you and I just added a few details to our bargain. It would be easy enough for me to offer you whatever you want.”
“I don’t want anything.”
He laughed again. “You know that’s not true. You’re just being stubborn. I know perfectly well what you want, Daimbert. You want to be a master wizard.”
He had me there. I closed my eyes and clamped my jaw shut.
“Why should you and I be enemies? You and I are so similar in so many ways. We’ve both failed: you in being a competent wizard, and me in being an angel. You knew, didn’t you, that demons are fallen angels?”
“I have nothing in common with you,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You’ve had to get by with halfway knowledge and the occasional brilliant improvisation,” the demon continued, his high voice almost gentle. “Think about it: with me working with you, you could have magic powers beyond the imaginings of any of the other students of your wizards’ school, even beyond that of the teachers.”
I kept my eyes closed, but a series of images raced across my unwilling mind. I could see myself returning to the school in triumph, performing magic that would stun Zahlfast and the other teachers. “No,” I said to these images, and “No,” I managed to say out loud. “I’m not becoming involved in black magic. I want to save the Lady Maria’s soul, but I’m not going to lose my own.”
“And why are you so sure about that?” asked the demon, softer than ever. “Did you ever think that you might belong to the devil already?”
At this I had to open my eyes, although I immediately wished I hadn’t, for the demon smiled at my expression, and his mouth was full of dozens of razor-sharp teeth. As he grew, he looked less and less human.
“Yes, Daimbert,” he said companionably. “Your soul is already ‘lost.’ You can’t give me an argument about free will there. I know your soul, and I know the sins you have already committed.”
“You’re lying.” I felt I was rapidly losing whatever advantage I might once have had, but there seemed no way to stop this conversation.
“Not at all. Think about it for yourself: have you always had the impossibly ‘pure’ mind and heart that your religion laughingly makes the condition for what it calls salvation? As long as you belong to the devil anyway, why not take advantage of it during the next two hundred years?”
I almost believed him. But the Diplomatica Diabolica made it clear how full of trickery a demon could be. I had no more competence or good ideas; all I had left was stubbornness. “No,” I said again. “You wouldn’t now be offering me anything for my soul if you already had it.”
“So you aren’t interested in the powers black magic could give you,” the demon said thoughtfully. “Maybe this will interest you. I can offer you the queen.”
I gasped so suddenly that my mouth was full of the evil fumes I had been trying hard not to breathe. By the time I had finished coughing, I was able to make my lips say, “No,” although at the last moment they almost said, “Yes.”
“But think about it!” I was thinking about it. “That head of midnight hair lying on the pillow next to yours, thos
e emerald eyes and that smile greeting you every morning, those soft arms greeting you every night-”
“You can’t know what I think!” I cried.
“And you could prolong her life to match your own. Two hundred years of bliss together! And for what? Agreeing to give up a soul you’ve already thrown away years ago. I’d even let the Lady Maria go.”
“But-what about the king?”
“He’s an old man already. He won’t be a problem.”
I breathed very shallowly, feeling I was choking. “You’ve made a mistake there, Demon. I’m not going to do anything that would hurt the king. You lost your chance that the Lady Maria gave you, to take the rest of his years from him, and you’re not going to get a second chance from me.”
“So wait a little while, and the problem will solve itself anyway,” said the demon casually. “When he dies naturally, as you know he will within a few years, I can make sure the queen’s affections turn at once toward you.”
“No,” I repeated, looking at the floor because I did not dare look at him. A viper was crawling near my foot but I didn’t even bother to move. “I would not consider two hundred years with her as two hundred years of bliss if I knew I owed her love to you.”
The demon laughed, a deep laugh now that seemed to resonate in his belly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you liked the Lady Maria better than the queen!”
The viper moved away. I forced myself to look up again. His mention of the Lady Maria brought me back to the knowledge of why I was here in the first place. “I’m only making one bargain with you,” I said. I had to drag this discussion back to the reason I had originally come, before the demon tricked me out of my soul without conceding anything, or he simply killed me with fear.
He was now more than twice as large as I was. An enormous belly hung over his knees, and he leered down at me from near the ceiling. “You can’t bargain for the Lady Maria. She sold herself to the devil.”
“One can always bargain with the devil,” I said with as much confidence as I could. I was moving back now toward the points set out in the Diplomatica Diabolica. But I wondered how I could ever have imagined the negotiations would be straightforward.
“A soul for a soul, of course,” said the demon in deep, resonant tones. “But why should the devil make any bargains for your soul when it already belongs to him?”
“I do not offer my soul,” I said formally in the Hidden Language. “Besides,” I added firmly, “my soul does not belong to the devil.” The black despair in the pit of my stomach did not believe that, but maybe the demon did. “I offer only my life.”
“A life for a soul is not a good bargain.”
“It is if the soul isn’t really yours to begin with!” I stopped myself. This was not the prescribed negotiating language, but I did not think I had made any serious mistakes so far. “Binding negotiations!” I remembered then to say.
The demon nodded his enormous head. He once again had grown horns.
I put my hand over my eyes, visualizing the page in the book. “First and most importantly, her intention was never evil. A soul is judged on intent, and if you took her soul you took it on the flimsiest grounds. Secondly!” as the demon seemed about to interrupt. “She may have gained some advantages for herself, but she brought no evil to anyone else.”
“She nearly killed the king,” said the demon with another leer.
“No, you nearly killed the king. She has never wished any harm to anyone.”
The demon did not answer. Taking his silence for agreement, I pushed desperately on. “Her soul may be yours, but only on the slimmest technicality. Therefore!” I paused to make sure I had the words absolutely right before I spoke. “I have come to offer you the following bargain. You shall release the Lady Maria’s soul and return at once without it to hell. Before you go, you can take my life, but my soul must be judged on its own merits.”
“But I like it here in Yurt,” said the demon with what would have been petulance in a smaller being.
The last of my strength gathered itself into fury. If the demon was able to delay for only a few more moments, I would throw myself at his feet and promise anything in return for my life, and he knew it. “Binding negotiations!” I cried. “You have to answer!”
“All right,” he said with a slow smile. “I would be delighted to take your life. I agree.”
“Formally!” I shouted as the enormous mouth opened, revealing more teeth than ever. “You must agree formally!”
The mouth closed slowly, and long flames darted from the demon’s eyes. “By Satan, by Beelzebub, by Lucifer and Mephistopheles,” he said finally.
This at last was the beginning of the correct terms of a binding engagement. I concentrated as hard as I could through the roaring in my ears, watching for the slightest deviant word.
“In the space of what you in the natural world call one minute, I shall return to hell, not to return to this world unless deliberately summoned by woman or man.”
Joachim had told me, I reminded myself, that he thought that someone who gave his life for another would save his own soul. But I also remembered that he would have to ask the bishop to be sure in a case like this.
“I release, give up, and free the soul of the Lady Maria.”
So far, so good.
“But before I go, you shall die.” The demon’s last semblance of a human form was going fast, but he still had a face that grinned at me. “Agreed and accepted?”
I started to speak, could not, swallowed twice, and tried again. “Agreed and accepted.”
My eyes went black as the enormous mouth full of razor-sharp teeth bent toward my neck. The last thing I heard was the demon’s booming voice. “See you in the afterlife, Daimbert!” The last thing I felt, even before the jaws reached me, was his iron forefinger burning against my chest. It passed effortlessly through skin, muscle, and bone, until it touched my heart, which leaped once more and was still.
III
The afterlife was wet and extremely cold. For a long time, which could have been hours and could have been months-although I expected they reckoned time differently here-there had been nothing but confusion, of colors, black, white, and red, of giant wings, of spaces in which I knew nothing and spaces in which I could hear myself screaming. But now everything was calm and completely dark.
I wondered with mild curiosity where I was. Purgatory, probably, which meant that they hadn’t yet decided what to do with me. At least hell would have to be warmer than lying in purgatory in half an inch of icy water.
Very far away, I heard a door creaking. Maybe they had made up their minds. Steps were coming toward me, deliberate and slow. I turned my head stiffly, interested enough to want to know if it was an angel coming for me or the devil. To my surprise, it was carrying a candle. Somehow I had not expected them to need candles in the afterlife.
I couldn’t see the angel’s or devil’s face behind the candle, although the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open properly may have had much to do with it. I lay back and awaited my fate.
The candle was put down by my head. I could see its light, pink through my closed eyelids. There was a slight creak of joints as the angel or the devil knelt beside me.
He put his hand lightly over my heart, and then I could feel his hair tickle my nose as he put his ear to my mouth. He was so gentle that I decided he had to be an angel.
“Thank God,” said the angel in Joachim’s voice. “He is alive.”
I tried to speak but managed only a faint croak. I moved one of my arms experimentally and was able slowly to reach up to feel a pair of clasped hands and a cheek wet with tears.
Joachim put his arms around me, under my shoulders, and drew me partly up and out of the water. “Can you hear me?” he asked quietly. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”
I tried again to speak. This time I was more successful. “I thought I was dead.”
“I think you were. But it’s no good your coming back from
the dead if you then die of pneumonia.”
“Did you ever contact the bishop?” I croaked. It had been my final thought.
“Yes; I asked him to send me an answer here in Yurt, and it was here when I arrived.” He tried to ease me into a sitting position. “He said that if someone lets himself be killed, even killed by a demon, for completely pure reasons, his soul will go straight to heaven.”
Just my luck. Probably the only time in my entire adult life my soul would ever be completely pure, and I’d wasted my chance by coming back to life.
“But how did you get here?” I asked, realizing I had last seen him thirty miles away, in the duchess’s castle.
“When you flew away, I knew at once I had to follow you. As soon as I’d sent the message to the bishop, I went to the stable and took the queen’s stallion-I didn’t give the stable boys a chance to argue. I was here by mid afternoon.” There was a sound that would have been a chuckle from anyone else. “I’ve never been on a horse that went that fast. I found the drawbridge down when I arrived.”
“I’d lowered it.”
“I had intended to rush down into the cellars after you. But great choking clouds of yellow brimstone were billowing out, and vipers and scorpions were crawling up the stairs. It was clear that no one could walk a dozen yards into the cellars and live. I got as far as the door and couldn’t go any further. I knew then the only way I could help you was through prayer.
“So I rubbed down the stallion, went to the dovecot in the south tower for the bishop’s answer, and then to the chapel, and I’ve been there ever since.”
He tried to pull me further out of the water. “Do you think you could walk if I supported you? I could probably carry you, but I’m afraid of dropping you with the floor so slippery.”
“Help me up.” Although all my joints ached excruciatingly, I could actually stand. I checked my throat for fang marks and my chest for a hole and found nothing. But my red velvet jacket streamed with water, now as thoroughly ruined as my new suit.
“But why did you come down now?”
“Just now, fifteen minutes ago, I felt a sudden certainty that whatever was going to happen was over. Whether the demon would go or stay, or you would live or die-and when I reached the cellars, most of the brimstone was gone.”
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