by Thom Lane
I used to help that along, make it happen, work my little secret magics to nudge my life into a better place. No longer. Now it was my master’s life that was my care, and I wasn’t allowed to help him except in a crisis, except in the ways that a slave’s service can always make their owner’s life a little easier. Which is what they keep us for, after all.
All too soon, Master Jensen’s hand fell away from my neck. He patted my rump lightly and stepped forward, leaving me to drop into my proper place, two short steps behind him.
Ahead of us, Master Lucan had stepped off the road, onto a narrow trail that wound through grassland into a stand of trees. His boy followed him as I followed my master, and soon we were out of sight among the shadowed trunks.
“Good enough,” Master Lucan said, as we came into a clearing. “Now all we need is a gate fee.”
“A gate fee?” Master Jensen repeated, as puzzled as I was. His hand reached towards the purse in his belt, and Master Lucan laughed briefly.
“Oh, not in coin—even if you had any. There is always a price, but your tokens would never cover it, nor your letter of credit. True gold might have done, but—well, that’s why we’re here.”
Tam swallowed audibly, and took a little step forward. “You always have me, Master.”
“I know I do—and I intend to keep you. Didn’t I say, I wouldn’t use you that way again?”
Tam bit a smile down, and shook his head boldly. “No, Master. You never did actually say that.”
“Well. It’s true nonetheless, and you know it. Which means I can’t use your boy either, Jensen; I can’t ask you to risk what I’m not prepared to gamble on my own behalf, and I still think he might prove useful. Besides, this is just a swift reconnoiter: in and out. Even if I’m coming in company, the cost won’t be high. I think…”
He lifted his hand, and murmured something to the air. There was a flurry overhead, as something burst through the leaf cover in a shower of twigs. If my master betrayed himself by flinching, I didn’t see it. I was too busy ducking and reaching for him both at once, not really clear if I was trying to shelter him or seeking shelter myself. My heart was pounding in alarm, my skin prickled with sweat—and then I heard Tam’s soft giggle, and Master Lucan’s laconic contempt. “Well, really! It’s just a bird. Demons come later. You should save your fear for when you’ll need it more.”
I lifted my head, just in time for Master Jensen to cuff it neatly. But he kept hold of me in any case, and when my dizzy eyes cleared I saw a vivid parrot perched calmly on Master Lucan’s sleeve.
“Some lady’s fancy, I’d guess,” he went on, “flown away in a maid’s careless moment. Living free for a while by the look of it, until it came to this.” To his hand, he meant, summoned by magic and subdued by magic, facing some dread ending far beyond the power of its bird brain to imagine. It should have stayed in its lady’s cage, I thought. Freedom might look alluring, but it always comes at a cost—and not just to the poor girl who’d doubtless earned herself a whipping, the day she let it go.
Master Lucan passed the bird from his arm to Tam’s shoulder, then glanced at my master. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he said, grimly cheerful, closing his hand on my wrist; whatever came next, he meant to be sure of me. There was some comfort in that.
Master Lucan nodded, then moved his hand in a swift, complex gesture, and started forward. For a moment, he looked like he was walking directly into a tree trunk—and then suddenly he wasn’t, because he and the tree stood in different worlds. I could see them both, and they both seemed equally solid: just set in separate places, that somehow overlapped.
He had opened a door to hell, and he was holding it open for all of us. With some impatience, apparently, to judge by his sharp glance and sharper gesture. Tam stepped swiftly through to stand beside his master; his look back was more simply encouraging. Master Jensen swallowed audibly, squeezed my wrist more tightly, and walked forward with a brisk tug on my arm.
We stepped through together, into a whole other world: my master striding out and looking bolder than he felt, me stumbling at his heels and looking maybe more reluctant than I was. He didn’t really need that tug to fetch me along, unless he needed it and me both to make sure that he went himself, because he’d have looked such a fool if he’d tugged and then faltered, lost his nerve, brought me thudding into the back of him because he just couldn’t take that necessary step.
Me, I’d have followed in any case, in simple obedience, quite untugged; or in stubbornness, if he’d tried to leave me behind. I think he knew that. Both of those.
But he tugged in any case, and we both stepped, and we went to hell almost hand in hand, almost side by side.
I don’t suppose that all of hell is the same. Maybe there are cities in hell, shadows of our own; even an Amaranth peopled with demons, maybe.
But where we went, it was like an echo of the land we left: the same contours, the same hills and valleys, even the same road more or less, except that everything was dust and sour drought. No trees, no grass, no green at all. The most prominent thing in that bare, drab landscape was a post beside the path, not far from us: not far at all, not far enough. Not by a distance. Skewered on the top of the post was a demon’s severed head, and it was glowering at us.
Licking its lips.
I guess maybe I was staring. It’s foolish enough to be impertinent to free folk back in the world, in the empire; it might be stupidity itself to do the same thing in hell, to demon folk. Even so: Master Jensen didn’t need to cuff me quite so hard, or push me behind him quite so abruptly. I couldn’t see a thing then, beyond his broad shoulders; and my poor ears were ringing so loudly I could barely hear Master Luke when he talked to the head on the stick. I only really knew that he did because I heard the demon’s answer.
“Two of you, Lucan, and a bird to pay for both?” Its voice was a horror, like the hissing of soil as the rocks beneath break apart, as the whole hillside comes tumbling down in a landslide. “I’ll take a boy too. Either one.”
Master Lucan laughed, and spoke again, and I still couldn’t make out what he was saying; but the demon didn’t eat Tam, and it didn’t eat me either. I guess it did eat the bird, because there was a terrible gulping sound and a squawk cut off too suddenly. I don’t know where the swallowed bird could have gone, because below its ragged open throat the demon had only the post that pierced it; but when I could see it at last, when our masters headed off down the path and we slaves could follow at their heels like good boys, I saw bright feathers still clinging to the awful thing’s lips. As I looked, it licked them away—and then its eyes caught mine, and that long, long tongue was suddenly stretching out impossibly long, reaching for me, threatening…
Maybe it was joking; maybe it only wanted to taste the sweat on my skin. Maybe it meant to seize me and swallow me whole. Its gaping mouth looked big enough. I don’t know; all I do know is that I scurried hurriedly forward, crowding my master so closely I should have earned myself more than another cuffing. Behind me, I heard its croaking laughter, and I felt the flick of that tongue like a whip’s caress across my bare thighs, a quick snap and a lingering sting.
Maybe Master Jensen needs to work more on my manners. A slave should just accept anything that comes his way, from anyone not slave themselves; and certainly he shouldn’t risk his master’s safety as well as his own, in a flash of temper. I did it, though. I didn’t even think about it; I just whipped my head around and choke on it, scuppermug…
I hadn’t meant to use my magic. I was usually so careful—and besides, Master Jensen had forbidden it. But I was startled and angry and afraid, all at once, and almost beyond his control, let alone my own. And besides, he’d only said not to use it on free folk; he hadn’t said a word about demons.
So I did it, and only when it was done did I think how stupid that was, to play with raw magic here in hell, in the company of a master mage, in the face of a demon.
But the demon’s fac
e was almost funny suddenly, startled on its own account as its tongue snapped back into its mouth, and for a moment I think it really was choking as it tried to swallow the slimy, ropy thing.
I didn’t have more than a moment to feel smug, before Master Jensen’s hard hand was reminding me how to walk properly to heel, while his rough whisper spelled out just what I could expect if I didn’t remember my manners instantly. Of course he hadn’t seen the tongue business, because of course he’d been looking ahead and simply trusting me to follow in his wake. A free man learns early on not to show any concern for a slave; it weakens his control, draws mockery from his friends, encourages us to take advantage, wreaks havoc in all manner of ways. Sometimes I think they have to discipline themselves as strictly as they do us.
Master Lucan didn’t seem to notice anything at all. Maybe that was just free folk’s manners, not to interfere between another man and his belongings; but I thought he really didn’t know that I’d dared to use my magic here. I guess even a master mage can’t be aware of everything all around him all the time, especially when he’s so closely focused on what lies ahead.
Master Jensen too had turned all his attention forward, once he’d put me strictly in my place. Just as well that he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, or he’d have been reaching for the switch in his boot; I might be walking properly to heel, but for a moment there I was positively strutting. Just a slave boy, but I’d taught a demon to think twice before it took advantage, and in hell too, in its own domain…
Slave boys do well to keep their heads down and their cockiness in check. Something obscured the sun abruptly; my master and I both gawped upward like the innocents we were.
“Don’t look!” That was Master Lucan’s voice, low and sharp and insistent. “Do not look up at it!”
Obedience is ingrained; I jerked my gaze away on the word, before I’d really seen what was up there, long before my slow mind could catch up with what it was. Even so I had a lingering sensation of dread in my bones, the cold relief of a snare snapped shut behind me. It was a time to be grateful for slave training, the way we respond without thought, the crack of a voice as good as the crack of a whip to get our muscles moving.
Master Jensen didn’t have that advantage. His head was still turned skyward, his neck twisting as he kept his eyes riveted on the thing that overhung us. My own brief glimpse had burned a notion of it like acid into my brain, a nightmare of tentacles and wings and shadowed horror; I could only imagine what more my master was seeing. And what it was doing to him, deep inside, the snare closed on its living prey…
I could call out ahead, for Master Lucan’s help—but he’d have to tackle the demon head-on, and I didn’t know if he had the strength, and in any case that would risk drawing more attention, other demons, just what we didn’t want. This was meant to be reconnaissance only, a swift in and out; we weren’t here to do battle.
I could ram my shoulder into my master’s back, send him sprawling, break his gaze by main force—but it might be too late. The creature might already have infested his mind. Or its mental hold might be so strong that his neck would break. Or the sudden snap of the snare might draw its attention, bring it down on all four of us, its writhing tentacles far far worse than its mental grip.
I could try to cloud its mind, and turn it away from us—but I’d have to look up again to do that, and then it might snare me as easily as it had my master. Or its mind might just be too strong for me, or it might sense me as Master Lucan had when I tried to lean on him, or…
Or I had one other choice, and permission now to use it. I slid my mind into Master Jensen’s thoughts as lightly and as boldly as I might slip my hand into his: not to make him dance like a puppet to my impertinent will, but just to distract him, to slip like a cloud between his eyes and his mind, to break his concentration and befuddle him, so that there was nothing there for the snare to grip.
See the shadow drift like smoke behind your eyes. See it thicken, till you can see nothing else; nothing through it, nothing beyond it. Forget what you saw before. Cut loose, drift like shadow yourself, like a bird on the wind in a cloud. There’s nothing to see, just fog all around…
When he stumbled, I was right there to catch his elbow and steady him. He gazed round at me, blinking, bewildered; I smiled, squeezed his arm, pressed my cheek against his shoulder.
“All right now, Master?”
“Yes, I think so. Yes. What…?”
“Never mind; it’s gone now. Let it go, until we’re back in the world.” I didn’t even want to talk about the thing, for fear of summoning it again. The shadow had moved on across the landscape ahead of us, and hopefully the creature that made it hadn’t even noticed that its snare had caught something, let alone that its prey had escaped. I kept my eyes averted, and my master’s eyes on me. Just in case.
“Jensen!” That was Master Lucan again, looking back now that the danger was past, seeing his foolish young companion dallying with his slave boy rather than keeping up with the team and the task in hand. “Stay close, stay focused! Distraction can be deadly here!”
It almost had been, I thought. But I said nothing, and neither did my master; he just slapped my butt lightly—aware, I thought, that I had done something to help him, though his muzzy brain was still not quite clear what that might have been—and hurried to catch up.
I followed, close as his shadow and just as short of choices. Where he went, I went. It really was as simple as that. And would be, until he sent me away or left me behind or sold me. And even then, I thought I might find I wasn’t such a good slave boy after all; I might go after him regardless.
For now, we walked through hell, in a growing, brooding silence. Tam and I didn’t talk because good boys don’t, but our free folk were just as quiet. Maybe they were only trying not to draw anything’s attention; I thought my master was even trying to tread more lightly than usual, and I didn’t blame him one bit. That made it harder for me to play the game of treading only in his boot marks, the way I liked to do with no one looking, but never mind. I was almost tiptoeing myself, anyway. Mostly, though, I thought the bare bleak landscape and the heavy smoky sky just smothered any tendency to talk.
I had no sense of direction here, no clue to which way north might lie. There was no sign of any sun, only a uniform glow behind lowering clouds that surely carried nothing as healthy or as welcome as rain. I wasn’t sure that Master Jensen had any better idea where we were, or where we were going. Luckily, Master Lucan knew, or seemed to know. Left to ourselves, I think we’d just have followed the road into whatever trouble it might lead us; instead he struck away from it and we followed, keeping to his heels as obedient and unquestioning as Tam.
As it turned out, he really did know. I don’t think anyone was surprised. Master Luke radiates a kind of confidence built on rock-solid foundations. He’s sure because he’s right, and that’s all there is to it.
He led us up a slope to a ridge edged with rocks. A wave of his hand sent us into shelter there, peeking from cover into the valley below.
At least, my master peeked. I knelt quietly at his feet and waited for permission, his hand in my hair and his whisper coming down to me, “You’d better take a look, Jay. Just don’t stick your head out too far.”
He made sure that I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t; his fist closed in my collar, and I’ve never felt so grateful to be so tightly controlled.
I wrapped one arm around his leg for added security, and peered over a lip of rock. Down in the valley, I saw figures and movements and shapes that took me a moment to understand; and even when I’d worked out just what I was seeing, I still didn’t really understand it.
Partly that was because the figures themselves were outlandish, unreal. At least the flying monstrosity that had passed above us wasn’t there. Even after I’d stopped being afraid that it was hunting us, I’d still been afraid that it was headed for the same place, right here, that it would turn out to be our enemy. Seemingly not,
it had flown over and gone its way; either it was just a random horror of hell, or else it looked down and saw that the work wasn’t done yet so it had no cause to stay. That was something to be glad of, grateful for.
In honesty, there wasn’t much else.
Down on the valley floor I could see maybe a dozen demons laboring to build an arch of rock. It was hard to tell scale from this far away, looking from this angle, but even so I was sure enough that any one of them would outmatch any two of us. Twice the size of a man, perhaps, with long, long arms and a wicked strength, the way they heaved those massive rocks around; and there was another that watched them work, bigger yet, with wings furled on its back. There was something about the way it stood over the laborers, something intensely familiar despite the strangeness of their bodies…
And then the overseer lifted its arm and shook something loose that looked like a stiff length of string from up here, which must have been a whip as thick as my arm; and cracked it, and the noise it made echoed off the valley walls, and the sudden vicious spark at its tip reflected darkly off the wrists of the nearest laborer demon, and I realized that it was wearing chains.
Even demonkind kept slaves, apparently, even in hell. Slaves of their own sort, as free folk do all through the empire.
Who could ever have guessed that I would find myself feeling sorry for a demon? For a dozen demons yet, as they sweated under that dreadful lash, my chain-brothers. Squinting to see better, I realized at last what those little boxes were, beneath the rising arch. Those were the chests of gold that we’d last seen in the banker’s tent, my master and I. I recognized the steel bands that held them locked, the reinforcement at the corners. And I knew how big they were, so now I could judge the demons better.
Twice our size, did I say? Three times, more like. Which made the arch vast, and the rocks they built it from. No two men, no four men could lift such rocks, that the demons were handling alone; they must be as big as these we were hiding behind…
