A Summoning of Demons

by Cate Glass

  “Sssssummoner, I answer. And I. And I. Ssssooo deliciously warm, this place offered…” Not one voice but many. Though they all spoke with Dono’s lips, there were many timbres—smooth, sharp, harsh, hopeful, dull, brilliant, all of them filled with hunger … desire. “Mine own. Nay … mine own. A furnace burns in this one; sssuch pleasures await.…”

  As the voices argued, Dono strained against the thick leather. His fingers twitched. His head thrashed. His eyes blinked. The toes of his boots wriggled. He fought for breath as if he were buried alive. Suffocating.

  Demons. Enthralled and horrified, I now understood why sniffers possessed perceptions ordinary sorcerers lacked. Donato’s reference to sniffers as demons back at Perdition’s Brink had been no lazy metaphor.

  How had Teo described them? Faulty scraps of human souls, formed for obedience, beings who longed for warmth and found it in the hot bowels of the earth. Beings who longed for purpose, though of themselves they had no ability to cross the barrier of flesh. But the Confraternity had discovered this barbaric way to instill them in a living person. No wonder that sniffers howled in pain and madness, when the freedom their spirits—their demons—hungered for was no freedom at all, but sightless, wordless enslavement at the end of a chain.

  As Dono writhed, the pool bubbled and steamed. Chill dampness wafted across my face. The floor and walls were native stone, shaped by flood and fire a millennium past. Livia could tell me of its metamorphoses. But in this hour it seemed to waver … fluid in the shifting light.

  A fleeting streak of red. Glass shattered against the iron bars. The great iron bowl where the fire yet burned rocked alarmingly. A small jar flew off the black table and bounced on the uneven rock. Dono’s magic … triggered by his terror … and the chaos inside him.

  Still the yammering from Dono’s mouth continued. “Sssssummoner, choose this being! No me. No me. Let me live. Thy will shall rule … mine own being is thine to command.”

  Dono’s shaking threatened to bring down the rocks around us. His arms twisted in the wrist bindings, leaving thin bracelets of blood on his skin. His fingers curled into open cups.

  My own tremors mimed his. Surely we should stop it now, before he burst.

  “Vieni vicino,” he said, before I could move. “Avvisami.”

  Spoken in the oldest dialect of the Costa Drago, it was a request for counsel. Companionship. Intimacy.

  The world sighed as if the winds of summer had thawed the ice rivers of the northern mountains, releasing a blast to cool its sweating brow.

  Sweet servant, so weary you are.… A woman’s voice whispered through the heavy air. Heated. Sultry. Not inside me, but very near. The chamber had grown so chill, I shivered, as even the billowing flames rose high from the iron bowl.

  As ever, you hold yourself too much prisoned in this human garb. Let me comfort you and set you free to wreak your will on those who think to master you. How dare they? Taste these sweetmeats you’ve brought me. I’ll gladly share. We’ve no Vodai Guardian to torment us here … and yet someone else is near, a presence I yearn for.…

  In the moment she paused, a great emptiness gaped inside me. I hungered for her touch on my hair, for her warmth to fill my veins. “Choose me,” I murmured.

  A huge, cold paw clamped over my mouth before I could utter another sound. Another hand squeezed my fingers, pinching, distracting, even as a gleaming knife whizzed past my head and clanked on the iron bars. A sharp crack, and a jagged chunk of yellow rock broke from the pool’s rim and skittered across the floor.

  My captor pressed his mouth close to my ear. “You’re afire,” he whispered, forcing my quivering fingers before my eyes. “They must not see you. Time to stop this.”

  They … Dono and Macheon the Enemy, who now looked out of Dono’s eyes.

  Even as fear and desire twisted my gut into a knot, I knew he was right. I nodded and Placidio released me. I unstoppered the blue flask and shoved it into his hand. He crept along the lattice wall through the shadows. For a moment, he crouched behind the black throne, then darted around the chair. Securing Donato’s head in the crook of his arm, he pressed the flask to the young man’s lips.

  Donato roared and jerked. His shoulders writhed; his feet drummed; his arms yanked on the straps until the buckles rattled. Face down, I threw my body across Dono’s lap to keep him still, so Placidio could get the liquid down him. A spray wet the back of my neck. Placidio’s weight, smelling of wine and horse and sweat, pressed down on me as he tightened his grip.

  A snarling gurgle above my head. Surely Dono would die choking.

  Placidio’s weight lifted, and he drew me back into the shadows as Donato gasped and coughed.

  Water. Was there cool water anywhere in this hellish place? The boiling water from the pool would flay a man. I scuttled around to the tall stone table where the fire had dwindled. Indeed an urn sat underneath it. It stank of the pool, but was cool to my touch.

  Ready to empty the urn onto Donato, I peeked around the table.

  He was no longer fighting his bonds, only snapping out words. “Vattene, spiriti rotti. Ritorna al fuoco. Ritorno. Ritorno.” Over and over. And then he added, “La tua vera padrona ti aspetta. La tua vera padroné ti aspetta.”

  Begone, broken spirits, he’d commanded. Return to the fire. Return. And then, Your true mistress awaits. Your true master awaits.

  One expression after another—wonder, hilarity, rage, madness—glanced across his features. But his stone-hard commands erased every one. One surge of satisfied lust—not my own—and then my spirit hollowed.

  The rattling litany ended abruptly, and Dono’s head fell back against the chair. He breathed deep. Then again and exhaled long, slow, tremulous. A very human exercise.

  The Enemy was no longer with us. That I felt bereft nauseated me.

  “To my father’s astonishment and Zattigllia’s,” he said, soft and hoarse, continuing as if nothing had interrupted his tale of horror, “the demons fought over me, not Guillam, even though it was his blood and weakness had drawn them here. Only when Zattiglia gave me the antidote, allowing me to assert my own will, and taught me the words of dismissal and sending would they leave me. Zattiglia had me dispatch one demon to Guillam and the rest of them back to the pool and the earth fires that make it boil. Once he’d cauterized Guillam’s wounds and locked the iron collar about Guillam’s neck, he brought in the inker and the sheather. Thus the boy who had tormented me had a demon prisoned inside him, while I was confined to my bedchamber to contemplate my future. A few days later, my father came to me, gleeful. They had tested Guillam, and, to his amazement and delight, Guillam was able to detect magic on certain artifacts kept for that purpose.”

  “Even though the boy was not truly a sorcerer,” said Placidio.

  “Even though. They had tried many times to find a rite to put a demon into an untainted subject. There are references to such a practice in old journals in the Athenaeum. But in five hundred years no one had managed it.” Dono’s fists clenched. “So you see why my father considers me valuable and will not suffer me to slip from his control.”

  “Because you enable them to use anyone—like Guillam, like youths your father bought from the Cavalieri Teschio.” Disgust and loathing filled my arid emptiness.

  “Yes. He’s out there somewhere. Guillam. Maybe in Cantagna … maybe in some other independency. Once disciplined to the leash, they’re sent where they’re needed most. I once thought that, if ever I was free and sane, I’d try to find him … what’s left of him. But I doubt that could ever happen. They burn out quickly, sniffers, especially those without the taint of magic. Some can be revived here, but most not. This corruption, my father’s and my own, must be ended.”

  Placidio and I unbuckled the bindings. Donato sat for a moment, rubbing his forehead tiredly. Then he rose and began methodically to clean up the room—the broken glass, the fire bowl, the other items his magic had scattered.

  “Father and Zattiglia surmised that it wa
s my innate desire to cleanse myself of the taint made it happen, and that the demon had somehow carried the power of my magic into Guillam. They believed me to be the instrument the universe designed to rid itself of sorcery. I wanted to believe that, too—that my perversion had purpose in our great work. But then came the dreams, and eventually the voices of the dream took form. At first I thought they were gods, approving my work, but the dreams taught me elsewise. As the monster took deeper hold of me, I studied in the Athenaeum, trying to understand what I was. I worked even harder on self-discipline until I could control my magic. Until I could control the dreams and visitations.”

  He glanced up, questioning.

  Everything I thought I understood about him shifted yet again. This time my quivering was a powerful, growing fury. “You’re telling me that last night was no uncontrollable accident. You purposefully invited the monster so you could destroy the Cavalieri. You risked setting the beast free to savage the world only to discover you could not pull back. What kind of stupid, arrogant—?”

  “And here tonight, you did it again,” snapped Placidio. “You summoned the Enemy apurpose. What if you’d lost control again?”

  “You are exactly correct.” Dono paused in his work. “I was an arrogant fool last night, consumed by anger, humiliation, and the fear that has not left me since I first understood I held the taint. I assumed that because I had learned to control my … partnership … with the monster down here, I could wield it as a tool of vengeance. And that I might be able to save one life … do one decent deed after all these years. Clearly I was wrong. And yes, tonight I should have been more forthright. But would you have come here if you knew what I had done? And how could you believe all this, understand the risks of my father’s plans, if you didn’t experience it for yourself? Tonight I was the only one bleeding for the summoning rite, and I used the red flask to ensure I could hold no barrier to the demons. Blood and weakness lure them. Once I drink from the blue flask—the antidote to the red—I can issue the words of sending and dismissal. But over the years, it has become more and more difficult to get the demons out of me. Zattiglia always dispatched the rest of the demons back to the spring—heated by the earth’s fires. If some refused to go, he would lock a bleeding victim inside here, and after a few days, the victim would be dead and the demons would have returned to the hottest place they knew—the pool. One will always take the offer of a living body of its own. But now they know that I can provide an even better destination.”

  “Better?” said Placidio.

  “More and more of them refuse to leave me unless I send them on to their maker.”

  “To Macheon,” I said, despairing in a moment when I thought I could feel nothing more.

  “I think that’s why the monster won’t let me die. Because I send it companions. For now, I send the monster a few of the demons and I’m able to force the pathway closed, as I just did. But clearly I cannot hold forever. Soon it will be impossible to send the demons elsewhere or to close myself to the monster, even in this place where I’m most capable. You see the problem.”

  Donato’s problem—the world’s problem—was imminently clear. Teo had told me that the Enemy’s prison prevented Macheon from devouring his demon servants and thus making himself stronger. Impermeable, he’d said. The demons cannot find their way back to their creator.… Only they had.

  26

  THE FEAST OF THE LONE PRAETORIAN

  VILLA GIUSTI

  AFTER SUNSET

  Fanfares and exuberant cheers filled the night from the Confraternity celebration as Placidio, Donato, and I slipped into the dark stables. After a few moments’ listening, Donato had told us the feast day ceremonies still had some three hours to run. Events would continue after that, but guards and servants would start drifting back to their posts.

  Placidio whistled a round of a favorite drinking song as several of the horses nickered a soft greeting.

  “It’s about time.” Dumond’s words dropped from the top of the loft stairs like old boots. “Between the cheering and the trumpets, I had all sorts of visions of you three being paraded up to a lopsman’s block to finish off the ceremonies.”

  As I topped the stairs, Dumond was leaning against a roof support, shining his pale handlight on a hay door in one corner of the loft—or rather the painted image of one that would look perfectly natural to any ordinary observer. “Are we ready to leave this benighted place?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “We have to decide what to do.”

  “This gentleman’s problem is most definitely problematical,” said Placidio, sitting at the head of the loft ladder. “We’ve a nest of demons—true demons, not human ones—being fed to the Enemy, which is why he’s getting strong enough to rattle the earth. We’ve a nest of vipers—human ones—who believe it’s righteous to infest anyone they please, even non-sorcerers, with said demons, and enslave them as sniffers. These vipers are so obtuse, they have no idea this little ritual is going to bring on the very calamity they claim to be avoiding. And this young fellow here has more secrets than our friend from the Isles of Lesh, and I wish I had leave to beat the last of them out of him.”

  “You’ve heard them all,” said Donato, who did not sit. Rather he looked as if he could wish no better fate than to become one of the boards in the plank wall. “Ask me what you will, and tell me how to unravel this tangle. I’m willing to fight. I’m willing to die if you can figure out how to accomplish that … but only if I can be sure that doesn’t leave matters worse.”

  “I would dearly love to ask our friend from the Isles of Lesh—” Placidio stopped abruptly and leapt to his feet, sword drawn, a hand upheld to hush us all.

  Dumond held his hand steady lest a sudden movement of his handlight attract attention. My hand rested on my dagger.

  From the darkness below, amid the grunts and whuffles of the stable’s residents, rose a clear tenor, singing softly.

  “Damizella, damizella, come and have a feast with me.

  No fish nor fowl nor pig will tell the landlord what they see.

  We can roast them in the firepit, while we wrestle in the hay.…”

  Neri. A knot in my chest that I didn’t even know was there loosened.

  Dumond grinned; his ivory light even revealed the ghost of a smile on Donato’s stony face.

  Placidio lowered his sword and completed the round. “With bellies full and pleasure sate, we’ll laugh the night away.”

  Neri bounded up the ladder and glanced around, bedraggled and uncharacteristically solemn. “I’m not dead. You four are not dead. Guess that’s good news.”

  “What of your charges?” I said, the moment’s relief vanished. Neri was no good at hiding distress.

  “The lady is ready to play the ransomed bride, but she’s nigh on to bursting with wanting to know what’s doing with him.” Neri waved his hand at Dono. “I told her some that seemed safe enough to say. But it wasn’t enough. She swears that she’ll march straight through that burial place and knock on every tomb, if I don’t come back to fetch her to the rest of us.”

  “And Teo?”

  Neri’s mouth worked … but for a moment nothing came out. He didn’t look at me. “By the time we got to the city, his marks were gone. His lips blue. He’d never blinked, Romy. Never moved. So I told him … to do what needed done. That we wished him at peace. He took one breath, but there was a hard rattle to it. I’d only heard such breathing twice—both when Mam birthed a babe didn’t live past a day. The lady agreed he was surely dying, though she came near knifing me when I told her what I was going to do. But I … did like swordmaster said.”

  No, no, no. Teo was the promise … the hope of some grace beyond the tawdry world. I’d been so sure his capacity for healing would revive him, and yet he’d warned me over and again that he was not ready to confront the Enemy.

  “You put him in the river.” Placidio voiced what I could not.

  “I sat there in the shallows with him. He never moved of his
own, else I’d have pulled him out. Never breathed again, never twitched when the water washed over his face or when the current took him. Romy, I tried— I hoped I might hear something from him like you did. But I didn’t. I just believed what—I told myself he’d want to go home.”

  Guilt and grief drove me to my knees. Teo had warned me of the risk, and I had forced him, not considering whether wielding a weapon too early could mean losing it for the coming war. In a cruel irony, my last plea had been that I needed him. And at the end, I’d not been there to beg his forgiveness. Even now, I was consumed by selfish doubt: How in the Night Eternal were we going to solve this problem without him?

  “You did right, lad.” Placidio laid his big hand on Neri’s shoulder. “The river will take him wherever he needs to go. We have to do this without him.”

  For once, I didn’t question Placidio’s uncanny certainty, nor did it annoy me. For once, I just willed him to be right, no matter where Teo’s destination might be.

  “Your friend dead?” said Donato. “I am so sor—”

  “Do not speak that word. Don’t even think it.” I could not stem the rush of murderous resentment. “You have no idea what you and I, in our thoughtless arrogance, have done.”

  He fell silent, eyes closed.

  But we had no time to spend on resentment or sorrow, even though stars, sun, and moon must surely be dimmer from this night forward.

  “All right,” I said. “As Placido says, we must solve this problem on our own.”

  “Shouldn’t we get out of here?” said Neri, looking round uneasily. “That’s a sizeable crowd of hostile folk out to the fountain court.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Donato’s difficulty is worse than we imagined, too. We might need to return to the pérasma.”

  “Let me tell you what we’re dealing with here,” said Placidio, and in an unembellished narrative described the events in the pérasma for Neri and Dumond.