by P. J. Fox
Tristan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you—what are you really?”
Simon shrugged.
That his appearance had been oddly fortuitous, Tristan couldn’t argue. Simon had wandered out of a storm much like this one, that had gripped the castle for the past three nights, and asked courteously for shelter. Tristan had given it to him, and they’d talked, and by the morning things had been…different. Forever. But until this night, Tristan had never questioned Simon’s arrival. Never questioned how Simon had just seemed to know that he was needed.
Regardless, whatever Simon claimed—and whatever he was—Tristan also knew in his heart of hearts that he’d done what he’d done for love. And duty. Didn’t that count for something? But for the war, he never would have looked twice at Simon. He glanced up from his cup, meeting the old man’s eyes, and saw in them a horrible sort of knowledge.
Simon would argue that but for temptation, few men chose evil.
“It’s time to perform the ritual,” Simon said.
“I can’t.” Tristan’s tone was flat. Final.
“Do you think,” Simon asked, “that she’ll remain here, with you?”
“Yes.” Tristan’s tone was stiff.
“Even when you look like me?” There was a note of humor in his tone, and also of derision. He looked down on Tristan for being naïve. All necromancers thought that they would be the ones to escape the curse; that they would keep their looks, and their charm. But the pleasures of the grave came at a steep price—for all.
As handsome as he was now, Tristan knew that eventually he’d look just like Simon. Or worse. And if not a particularly vain man, Tristan knew that he was handsome. He cherished his looks, not so much as a sign of his virility but as a sign of his humanity. He didn’t want to lose who he was; he was terrified that he would. He was terrified, at times like these, that he already had, and that the voice of conscience whispering in his ear was little more than a ghost.
“I won’t—”
Simon chuckled.
“I refuse to hurt Brenna.” What Simon proposed was madness.
“Then let her leave.”
“No.”
“Then you’ve answered your own question.”
“No!” Tristan repeated. “If I let her leave, she’ll be raped or enslaved or—worse. She has to remain here, for her own protection.” And there was some truth to that claim; some of the tribesmen were in the habit of abducting women and making them so-called forest wives. Few, if any of those women had ever returned although Tristan wondered if that was for the reasons people assumed. As a woman, he could see the appeal of living in a world beyond the law. Among the tribes, men and women were equal. They hunted, raided, and went into battle—if they so chose. They could remain behind and tend the fires or they could die right along side their husbands. Would not such freedom act as an intoxicant?
He stared into his cup, willing for there to be answers in the wine.
He and Simon had had this discussion before. This ritual of which he spoke wasn’t a sacrifice; it was a bonding ritual, for lack of a better term. It wasn’t unknown to Tristan, nor was the idea of such a thing—in the abstract, at least—particularly distasteful. The power of the necromancer extended far beyond what most people thought. To them, necromancers were evil sorcerers who performed…unnatural rituals. They raised the dead and communed with demons; they drank the blood of their enemies. Enemies they sacrificed on stone altars to strange gods. And necromancers did do these things, of course. But they also had other, hidden arts: arts of both physical and mental dominion.
To call the practice mind control was ham-fisted and inaccurate; among his breed, a true adept was capable of something far more sophisticated. And far more deadly. He could lead his victim into believing something he—or she—didn’t; he could control that person’s thoughts, and actions, without his influence even being detected. The ritual that Simon proposed would bind Brenna to Tristan, making it impossible for her to leave him or, more importantly, reveal his secrets. Should he choose, he could prevent her from discussing certain topics entirely. In Tristan’s mind, the ritual should ideally be a bond of trust between two consenting adults; not a master’s subjugation of his slave.
He thought idly of the demon. Did demons consider themselves ill-used? He doubted very much that demons considered much of anything at all. They weren’t real people, not like he and even Simon were. Like Brenna was. And Brenna…he didn’t know what represented the bigger risk: binding her to him or refusing to do so and thus leaving her free to place herself in harm’s way. That she’d do so unwittingly made her predicament all the more dangerous.
“No,” he repeated more calmly.
SIX
The demon had no gender, as such, but it had always thought of itself as a man. Even when it took female form to please its master, it thought of itself as a man and felt odd in the form. Its needs were a man’s needs; its wants, a man’s wants. It wondered if, were Morven a less male-centric place, this would still be so and decided that it would. Although the demon’s natural temperament certainly made it more suited to a man’s life, in this world; that argument it couldn’t deny. It was opinionated and decisive and didn’t shrink from conflict. It was ambitious—to live, not as a slave, but as a self-determining creature. A right it believed it had earned, more than earned, over the past few months.
Once a necromancer had established a relationship with a specific demon, a formal summoning ritual was no longer required. The necromancer had merely to speak a few abbreviated words, calling to mind that relationship, and the demon appeared. The question, in this situation, was one of will: the first time or the thousandth, the summoner’s will controlled the summoned. Even the smallest lapse in concentration could produce catastrophic results.
Thus, the wise conjurer occasionally reaffirmed his power. It was…inadvisable to let the relationship grow too casual. The demon knew all these things, as Tristan was not its first master. It had been alive much longer than Tristan, who fancied himself wise at a mere thirty winters. Tristan, who played at controlling powers he couldn’t even begin to understand. His desires were all so…simplistic. So one-dimensional. Save his family’s good name, fulfill his duty to both father and liege lord, protect the damsel in distress.
Were the demon capable of sighing, it would have done so.
Instead it hovered in midair, invisible, watching as Tristan moved through the rituals of summoning. Just as a necromancer was wise to reassert himself as master, a demon was wise never to reveal the limits of its power. The demon had long ago figured out how to come and go as it pleased. It allowed Tristan to believe himself in charge, for its own reasons. First and foremost among those reasons was the simple truth that if Tristan knew he would cease to summon the demon. And wisely so. But the demon wanted to remain; couldn’t bear the thought of being cast out like refuse from the life it had come to love.
From the woman it had come to love.
It had seen the world through Tristan’s eyes for too long not to share something of his—if not feelings in the strictest sense, then perceptions. It wanted what he wanted; its goals, at this point, were his goals. It, too, wanted Caer Addanc to be safe, along with its people. It wanted for all of Darkling Reach to be safe, and to come through the war as unscathed as possible. It wanted to rule; but unlike Tristan, the demon had no difficulty in admitting its lust for power. It had no human rulebook telling it to feel guilt, or to lie to itself about its true motivations. It had not been raised with a knowledge of sin, although it had grown to understand this concept in the abstract sense from its interaction with various masters. It felt a certain allegiance to Tristan, because it was in a sense his doppelganger: his dark half, sent forth on Tristan’s behalf to do the things that Tristan could not.
But the demon also knew that it could rule Darkling Reach far more effectively than Tristan. It had no guilt, and thus no indecision. And indecision, at times like these, was perilous. More perilous than
evil intent. The more the demon grew to understand its master’s motives and to share them, the more the demon resented him for the strictures placed upon it.
Tristan needed it, more than he realized; and yet he treated it like nothing more than a slave. An object, without thought or need or purpose. Several times now, the demon had disagreed with Tristan about his proposed handling of certain situations. It had found itself in the unenviable position of carrying out orders in which it did not believe, and which it was convinced were hurting its—Tristan’s—cause.
The demon wanted life. It wanted to tell Tristan no. To grasp a sword, or a bow, for itself. To address its people and tell them not to be afraid; not to be bound like this, to silence, by Tristan’s wrong-headed belief that these were merely superstitious peasants and thus beneath his concern. Fear, the demon knew, could do terrible things to the mind and to the hand it directed. Unless Tristan acted, his people would rise up—and rightly so.
It wanted to comfort Brenna, as Tristan should do; to face their situation, however unpleasant, together. To move forward as a team instead of waiting for some mythical as-yet imagined time when things would be perfect. Things would never be perfect, and life was uncertain. Tristan needed to marry Brenna, while he still could. To gain what comfort there was to be had from her embrace, and her love.
Tristan should hold her, the demon knew, and tell her he loved her, even if those sentiments no longer rang true to him. Whatever ice gripped his heart, she had the needs of a woman. If he had to lie to her, then he should. Perversely, it was Tristan’s fixation on honor that pulled him and Brenna apart. Moreover, Tristan had changed, grown beyond what might be thought of as merely human. He no longer felt things as he once had, a truth he’d shared with Brenna because honor dictated that he do so. He was too good to lie, when what he didn’t understand was that she would have rather he lied.
She wanted to be loved, to be cherished, not to face daily the truth of her lover’s destruction. Of his increasingly alien nature. How the demon, who had no emotions as such, saw this and Tristan did not the demon couldn’t begin to fathom. Perhaps, it had concluded, feelings were a handicap. They prevented the clarity of thought necessary to achieve happiness. The demon might be unburdened by what its master called love, but it could nevertheless love Brenna better than he.
And it wanted to. No creature, whatever its origins, was meant to be alone forever. The demon was tired of being alone; it wanted someone who understood it, who wanted to understand it. Someone with whom it could share its thoughts, as equals; a companion with whom it could have conversations. Someone who wouldn’t demand that it take the form of his—or her—lover or parent or dead spouse.
Having inhabited Tristan’s life now for so long, the demon had come to see Brenna through his eyes. Beautiful Brenna of the chestnut curls, famous throughout Darkling Reach for her grace and charm. What man could fail to want her?
Tristan, so like the demon in so many ways and so unlike him, moved through the steps of the ritual.
He drew the circle on the tile floor, using a line of chalk. He was very practiced at the art, and the circle was all but perfect. As wide as he was tall, it enclosed a sort of star pattern that necromancers called a pentagram. A sigil that had no meaning in the demon’s world. It watched nevertheless, interested in all the pomp and circumstance that must of need attend such a ritual for the human sorcerer. The demon, in Tristan’s place, would need no such crutches. No candles or chalk or athamae, merely its will.
Tristan placed a candle in each quarter of the circle: earth in the north, air in the east, fire in the south and water in the west.
The north, the earth, was the most significant for the necromancer as it represented the substance from which all life grew—and, in turn, into which all life returned. The earth was decay, and regeneration; it was the time of growth, and the time of wait. It represented midnight, and winter, as well as wisdom.
The north of Morven rejected the church and its gods, preferring instead the God and Goddess of the old religion. In peasant huts all over Darkling Reach, as well as in the symbolism of Tristan’s ritual, the Goddess appeared in her guise as the Crone. The God was not present, either in the blizzard outside or in front of the fireplace, having descended this season into the underworld. He would reemerge, or so the legend went, in the spring.
The elemental being associated with this element was the gnome, a species that did in fact exist. The peasants that Tristan so despised knew so, and placated the creatures with gifts of bread and mead. For they were not the jolly, chubby creatures that the south thought them; wearing pointy little hats and no more real than the garden statues in which they were represented.
A gnome was an evil creature, fearsome in aspect, that lived in the snow-capped hills and preyed on children and small animals. Unnaturally thin, almost skeletally so, they were possessed of long, tentacle-like fingers that could grasp and shred as well as caress. The demon had always felt a certain kinship with them, because they looked like nothing so much as animated corpses. And the demon felt comfortable with death. It disliked that people feared it; death, and the gnomes, meanwhile, feared nothing.
Tristan invoked each quarter and then, beseeching the Dark One to aid him, called forth the demon.
The demon flickered into view. It took a form that amused it, the aspect of one so-called demon from a liturgical book that it had once seen. The church’s viewpoint on demons had nothing to do with it, of course; demons had existed long before the church and its pathetic excuse for a savior was as relevant to its existence as the children’s fable about Johann and the beanstalk. But it enjoyed showing its masters what they expected to see.
And it enjoyed frightening them.
“Murmur,” he said, addressing the demon.
That wasn’t the demon’s true name, of course, only the name that Tristan had given it. Tristan had never inquired whether the demon had a name, and even if he had the demon had no intention of answering. Which Tristan certainly knew.
To know something’s true name was to understand its secret nature and thus wield power over it. A name meant everything. It was more than simply the words by which something was called; it was a summation of that thing’s very being. Tristan, needing something by which to call his servant, had merely called it after a figure from his church’s teachings. The church, for all its avowed rejection of the dark arts, remained fascinated with them and with demons in particular. Murmur was the name of the great Arch Duke of Hell; according to the scriptures he had thirty legions of demons under his command and taught philosophy. A juxtaposition of ideas that struck both the demon and Tristan as supremely ironic.
Nevertheless, the demon had accepted the name because it felt flattered.
“Murmur,” it replied smoothly, “is depicted as a soldier riding a vulture. Not as a maiden.” Its name suited its voice, which was quiet. However fluent the demon had become in human speech, the sounds were not natural to it. When it spoke it sounded, not so much like a true man might, but like the rustling of leaves across stone. A conjunction of sounds from nature that just happened to form words.
“And you appear as neither tonight,” Tristan pointed out.
“This is so,” the demon agreed. “Murmur can also oblige the souls of the deceased to appear before the conjurer to answer every desired question,” it continued, the words a direct reference to their current situation. “And yet here it is I who oblige you.” The challenge issued, it waited, watching Tristan to see what he would do.
“Because I,” Tristan countered, “am the master. And you are the servant.”
“What is it you want with me tonight, O master?”
“Your assistance.” Tristan helped himself to another cup of wine. There was no need to rest on formalities, tonight. He thought himself a powerful necromancer, and the demon—his pet—content within its circle. Or at least trapped there. And, the demon supposed, Tristan was powerful enough. He’d be more powerful, if he wasn
’t so naïve.
Tristan returned from the sideboard and seated himself in the settle before the circle, one leg crossed negligently over the other and his free arm extended out on the back rest. The demon hovered between him and the fire behind, roaring in its grate against the storm that buffeted the walls and rattled the glass panes in their sockets. He looked up at the demon. There was no noise, save the crackling of the logs and the high keening of the wind. Even the owls had hidden from the storm.
“I want,” he said, sipping his wine, “for you to do something for me.” He paused. And then he spoke the words that the demon had feared hearing now for weeks: that he wanted the demon to help him betray the king.
“I want you,” Tristan explained, “to help me communicate with General Ruth. He is in the best position to help us, I believe.”
Ruth was one of the most powerful men in the entire southern force, often half-jokingly referred to as The Southern General. Although there was no supreme commander in any of the armies currently involved in this travesty of a conflict, each side had its de facto leaders. Ruth was the South’s and, by extension, the West’s, since the West had allied with the South. “And he,” Tristan added, “is moving north on the first leg of a newly proposed offensive. I’ve just received word of this tonight.”
“And you,” the demon asked in its whispering voice, “propose switching sides?”
“What I propose,” Tristan said coldly, “is of no concern to you.”
“No concern,” the demon echoed.
“Your role is simply to do as ordered.” Tristan’s eyes flashed.
His knuckles, on the pewter cup, were white. His increasingly pale skin might be attributed to his wealth; Tristan, like all the high nobility, dined from trenchers and cups made of pewter and displayed it in his home lavishly. Pewter, which was toxic. An alloy of tin and lead, its beauty hid within it pale skin, tooth loss, and madness. Those exposed to too much of it as children were forever marked: slower they should be, and foolish. The peasants, who supped from plates of stale bread and drank from cups carved of wood, were ever heartier than their wealthier peers.
