Demon Scroll

by Tim Niederriter

  "I confess, I do not know either, your serenity."

  "You acted to save me without thought to your survival. You may have been born in my lands, but anyone who does such a bold service to the seat of Mercy and the person who sits it will be given a reward. I promise all of you this.” She motioned to the assembled nobles and petitioners filling the rest of the room. “Tell me, Melissa Dorian, how can I repay your act of heroism?"

  Melissa met the governor's gaze, fighting the urge of the bile rising in her stomach.

  "Please, your serenity, give me the honor to serve you as a battle mage. I will need training but I've always wished to learn the ways of magic."

  "Not money or holdings? You truly ask me for training?"

  "In my travels, I've seen nothing to compare to what mages can do." She bit her lip and considered the way the magister’s guild controlled the training of mages in Soucot and its environs. The governor would refuse if she wanted to maintain respect for her alliance with the guild that had banned Melissa from practicing the craft.

  "It shall be done," said the governor. "You will have every resource I can offer so long as you serve my seat of Mercy. With that, I will give you one more gift, though you may not yet understand why I offer it."

  Melissa nodded.

  "I will let you choose again when you wish to leave my service. Until that day, I welcome you to my court, Melissa Dorian."

  "Your serenity is generous."

  "Am I not?" Governor Lokoth smiled.

  Saben

  When the storm arrived in Soucot, the fisher left Saben and Jaswei on the shore outside the city. The moment the two of them climbed off his back, the fisher slithered to the edge of the water and disappeared into the surf.

  "Now what?" asked Jaswei, turning from the roiling sea.

  "We find a scroll, then reach the city," said Saben. He took a moment to blow warm air into his hands, dripping wet and shaking from the chill of sea spray. He cursed the storm silently.

  "The city? It’s over there." Jaswei pointed toward the walls of Soucot, visible over the beaches and treetops around it.

  "You know what I mean," said Saben. "Not a human city." He waved at the sky. "The demon city on the ring."

  "You aren't going to give that up, even after all this time?"

  "I came all here for my mission. Leaving Naje was necessary for all kinds of reasons, but I keep this one foremost in my mind." He began walking toward Soucot.

  Jaswei followed, still carrying her half of the luggage with ease, despite it looking larger than her whole body.

  "Suppose you get there. Then what?"

  "Then I take revenge on the monsters that attacked my village."

  "Look, I'm not saying you need to forgive them..."

  He didn't look at her as they kept walking.

  "...I just think you should keep your mind open to the possibility that when you get to the city you won't want to destroy the demons. Who knows if the ones who attacked your village are even there?"

  He shrugged his head.

  "I'll think about it."

  "You probably won't.”

  "Right."

  They trudged through the rain, leaving the beach behind. Just a half a mile across open ground to the trees, then another quarter mile to the walls themselves, and the tall northern gates of Soucot. Even in the rain, the sound of the Tancuonese language dominated as they moved through the crowds of people. Locals and travelers alike came and went, running slick over flat stones turned slick by the downpour.

  They reached an inn just beyond the walls and got a table near the hearth to rest and dry. A meal cost them the last of their coin and trade of one of Jaswei's finer sets of clothes, somehow kept dry from sea and storm in the perfectly sealed cases of her luggage.

  With food, a smoky roast of local pork, and a roof over their heads, Saben took a moment to avoid misery. The flight over the white-capped waves had been harrowing, cold, and wet.

  A curse on that man in the moon mask for offering the means to them.

  The trek to the city had left him hungry and tired. His journey continued. The city of demons lay far away and high above the world he and all other mortals knew.

  "What are you thinking about?" Jaswei asked, smiling.

  "How far we've come. Where we can go."

  Her smile slipped away.

  "The demon city? No need to worry about that. I mean, don't get ahead of yourself, Saben."

  "I know. But in a city like this, I think I can find a scroll, the kind I need."

  "Did you say something about a scroll, stranger?" A man leaned toward them from the next table over. He was heavyset. A lute sat opposite him, propped in the chair, taking up space normally reserved for one's companion.

  Saben tried his Tancuonese.

  "I did."

  "You want a sacra scroll," said the man. "I'm a musician not a mage but I know where you can find that sort of thing, in exchange for a good turn."

  "We don't have any money," said Saben.

  “Lucky you, my information isn’t expensive.”

  “I’m not often that lucky.”

  The man laughed and patted his round belly.

  “Fine. I happen to want something inside the library too.”

  Jaswei leaned forward, brows furrowed as she tried to follow their conversation. Even if this man tried to trick them, he didn’t look like much of a fighter. Saben and Jaswei could handle a few local goons if it came to that.

  “Where is the library?” he asked.

  “The name is Rond. I’ll take you there if you agree to help me get what I want from inside.”

  Saben nodded to the man.

  “I’ll need to confer with my friend.”

  “Don’t take too long. I won’t be here forever.”

  “No one could be,” said Saben under his breath. He turned to Jaswei and said in Najean. “How much did you get of that?”

  “He wants to deal.”

  “He can show us to a library with an archive of magical scrolls.”

  “What does he want in exchange? I had trouble following that part.”

  “He wants us to take something from inside for him.”

  “Seems fair.”

  Saben turned to Rond.

  “I hope you don’t slow us down, friend.”

  “I won’t.” The fat man grinned through his whiskery beard.

  The rain slackened off by the next morning. Saben, Jaswei, and Rond took up a vantage atop a roof on the low hill overlooking the library of Soucot. Though it looked like a temple or church with extra wings added on half-randomly, the building retained a bit of the grandeur of its original design.

  Saben noted tall steeples on either end of the main structure, a wheel of towers sprouting from the far caps at the end of each additional archive, themselves large enough to dwarf many of the smaller structures around the building. Jaswei whistled.

  "Big ugly building," she said in an accented attempt at Tancuonese.

  Rond nodded.

  "The northeastern wing has the magic scrolls. That's where we want to go."

  "Agreed," said Saben. "You know how to get inside?"

  "Ordinary citizens are allowed in. I live in Lowenrane. Have all my life, no matter what I look like." He laughed.

  Saben could tell he’d missed the minstrel’s joke.

  "You don't look like a local?"

  Rond shook his head.

  "You speak the language so well, I forget you're a foreigner. Truth is, you look more local than I do with this Palavian hair." He tugged at the end of his thin yellow beard. "But in the land of mercy, all sorts get along, somehow."

  "That so?" Saben folded his arms. “Answer. Who guards the library?"

  "Mostly the city's archivist monks. Their cloisters are along the south wall of the city, so we won't have to worry about them if we move fast."

  "Can you move fast?" asked Saben.

  "As fast as you, I'd bet, my big friend."

  "You'
d better be right."

  Curses walk the same roads as the overconfident.

  Rond shrugged.

  "Oh, I am."

  "The library is guarded by monks?" Jaswei asked.

  "A few of them," said Rond. "There are also house guards from the governor's palace. They change them every few hours. Those are the ones who check you at the door."

  "You can get us past them, I take it, Rond?" Saben said.

  Rond nodded.

  "Between my papers and our appearances, we’ll get inside. It's getting into the mage wing that’ll be more difficult."

  "Why is that?"

  "The way I heard it, the governor has a demon guarding the entrance inside."

  "A demon?" Saben's brow furrowed. "What kind of demon?"

  "One of her guards. Not like we see a lot of demons around these parts. We're too far south to worry like they do in my family’s homeland. Not many wells around here. Truth is, you two look like you could take one of the governor’s fellows."

  "Do you know what it's called?" asked Saben. "This demon?"

  "Not sure. The governor's guards are supposed to come from on high, though, the house of Mother Mercy herself."

  Saben grunted.

  "That's a name only you Tancuonese use," he said. "If the guard is a lesser demon, I have a way to handle such creatures." He turned over his palm, revealing the demon seal tattooed on it. "One of them shouldn't trouble us."

  As the sky cleared of rainclouds, Saben and Jaswei left Rond to explore the city on their own. Saben didn't trust the man. The Tancuonese people trusted demons too much. No man or woman should consort so closely with the immortals of the higher world.

  His father once told him something similar, though the exact words were lost with his village, his family, and his father's life. Saben’s gut clenched at the thought of the burning trees. The thatch work of rooftops they’d spent the whole season repairing, collapsed like kindling as demons bounded through the village.

  Saben's family name from back then could be translated as Thatcher. A curse on straw and tar, long gone. Even the deck of cards his sister and he played with until that day burned. Except for one. The flowering black ace of kadias remained, clutched in his hand while the others scattered outside his hiding place within the chimney of the house.

  He once thought them safe from raiders, despite their nearness to a demon well by a river in the nearby valley. Each child in his village trained to draw control seals and had one to stop demons tattooed on his or her hand. Those seals kept them safe just as those hands worked to build everything else they had in the quiet hills where the village was built.

  Those hands, all traced with demon control seals throughout, had not been enough to stop the monstrous attack.

  When Saben emerged every single villager lay dead or vanished as if into the air itself.

  Where people had fought back, they lay dead. The hands that bore their demon control seals were severed.

  His sister. His parents. And Saben, though he was nearly a man at fourteen years old, clutched the card to his chest and cried.

  That was when the white-clad demon standing in the town square nearby noticed him. He turned his blank gaze in a smooth eyeless face toward Saben. A thin mouth drew back. Above the demon’s grin, the dome of his face became a void of reasonless, uncaring darkness lit as if by the twinkle of countless distant stars.

  The demon smiled at the boy. Saben had no curses left for the monster back then.

  As he walked through Soucot with Jaswei, he recalled the situation and imagined what he would say when he found that beast once more. He would lay every hex and verse of ill will he could upon the beast who took everything from him.

  With power in his hands and anger in his sword, he would impale the demon with all his might. He would lean close and whisper in the evil thing's abominable face.

  "Justice is mine."

  At last he would roar in fury, as he once screamed in the ruined village, but finally, his voice would be strong enough to end that immortal life.

  In the present, he moved through the city of Soucot. In the future, he would track demons through the streets of their city. He quietly vowed to take a scroll from the library the moment he could get inside. By the ghosts of memory, he wouldn’t wait longer. Laws of Tancuon be damned.

  Elaine

  When Lady Nasibron wanted Elaine to learn faster, she tapped her cheek with one finger. Such moments seemed more and more frequent lately. Lady Nasibron tapped her cheek and frowned.

  The two of them stood in the yard of Governor Lokoth's palace, their shoes growing wet in grass still vibrant green and fresh from the previous day's rain. Elaine wanted to learn as quickly as she could. She knew her studies were taking longer than most. For one, the pupils she began studying with under Lady Nasibron were all journeying witches or greater already. Some even found households or courts to settle in.

  Elaine took a deep breath and worked to balance her sprites, matching those in her hand to those in the clump of rock and dirt her teacher had given her to hold at the start of the lesson. Sweat beaded on Elaine's brow.

  Lady Nasibron tapped her cheek again.

  "You aren't changing."

  "Not even a little?"

  "No such thing as a little change in the current case. Have you found your equilibrium, niece?"

  "I'm trying. I have the image I need."

  "Hold that image in your mind. Focus on it."

  Elaine pictured the barren hill above the northern slope of the Chos Valley, overlooking the tangle of tree branches and mist. She pictured the castle where she had grown up, the home she’d not seen in almost two years. She always planned to return there as soon as she could. Her mother and father still lived in that place, and she would see them again. They would welcome her in, welcome her as their daughter, a true and honorable member of the family.

  She imagined them as they had been when she last left them. Mother’s hair had begun to turn from Palavian gold to silver. She wore a kind smile on her face. Father held his powerful arms crossed. He would be so pleased to know his daughter could fend for herself at last. Elaine would be safe, and they would be secure in their later years.

  She pushed the feeling of safety, of security, of purposeful balance from her heart to her hand. The stones remained, but the sprite song in her heart matched the low reverberations of the ground below. Her body formed a bridge between the soil at her feet and the stone in her hand. She opened her eyes to see the skin on her hand hardening, taking on the texture and properties of stone.

  Lady Nasibron's finger paused in mid-tap, hovering beside her cheek.

  "Maintain that," she said, but the hint of a smile crept into her voice. "Elaine, I dare say you're making progress."

  Elaine gave her aunt a half nod. She spread the form of the earth from her hand to her arm to her body. She became as living stone, balancing every sprite and bane in her being with the others over the next few minutes. She could still move, thanks to the effort she spent retaining her human shape, but she opted to avoid any large gestures to focus mentally. She became a statue, waiting for Lady Nasibron to tell her what to do next.

  Her teacher watched the sky.

  "That man..." she said under her breath.

  Elaine's stony brows bent slightly. Could Lady Nasibron be looking for Deckard Hadrian?

  Elaine's gaze followed her aunt’s eyes skyward. She smoothed her expression, making it resemble nothing so much as a stone from the bottom of a river, the kind children picked up and marveled at while they were still wet, then left behind on the riverbank to dry and become dull. She turned her attention to maintaining her mimicry of the rock. She was finally getting it, and inner security was the key, at least for material such as this.

  "You're doing well," said Lady Nasibron, nodding to her. "You'll be a witch yet, my patient student."

  "Thank you," said Elaine.

  Lady Nasibron turned to the sky.

  "Hmm..." she sa
id. "I think its best you return to ordinary," she said. "You ought to look your best when Hadrian arrives."

  "Is he flying nearby?" asked Elaine.

  "I could tell by the breeze," said her teacher. "When you get older you may learn to tell when the air is moving unnaturally."

  "He can control the winds," said Elaine, shifting her body from stone to flesh little by little, in reverse order to that which she'd first transformed. "But I've never known wind strong enough to make a person fly that was also so quiet."

  "You picked up on that, did you?" Lady Nasibron gave Elaine an approving nod. "Deckard Hadrian is called lord of winds, but that's not the only secret to how he flies. Any mage worth her salt could create the force to push something into the air in some way. It's staying aloft most of us find difficult."

  Elaine finished her reversal of the stone transformation. She set the rock she'd been holding on the grass in front of her.

  "He has a secret, then?"

  "More than one, my dear. More than one."

  "Do you know him well, Lady Nasibron?"

  She shook her head.

  "We've met before. I would say I wished I knew him better, but that would be a lie. He's an intemperate soul, the kind its best you keep away from, especially given his proclivities."

  "Proclivities?"

  "Mercy, Elaine, you are a woman now, even if you're still a student. The man has a way when talking to young people of our sex, so take care around him."

  Elaine frowned.

  "He takes advantage of girls? That's awful, Lady Nasibron!"

  "I didn't say that, Elaine. He carries sweet notes in his voice, usually when he has a bottle in his hand."

  "A drinker too? Should you speak so about an immortal?"

  "I'll speak however I want about anyone but Mother Mercy herself, Elaine."

  "I'm just surprised. That's all."

  "Well, heed my advice. He is a pretty face and a strong ally. Just don't take one to mean anything for the other."

  "Governor Lokoth seemed to think you knew more about Lord Hadrian than she did."

  "I would say I do," said Lady Nasibron. "I've fought alongside him before."

  "When?"

  "Before you were born, in the Chos Valley. We confronted a renegade wizard."