Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3)

by BR Kingsolver

  Aileen introduced him as Rabbi Mordechai Feitler. His voice, deep and strong, belied his apparent age, and the sparkle in his blue eyes revealed someone who was still quite aware and lively.

  Kirsten had learned to cook from her mom, and the dinner Aileen prepared was spectacular. Rabbi Feitler raved about it, and so did the rest of us. After the table was cleared, we were served small cups of thick, black coffee and shots of slivovitz.

  “And so, what is the reason for this bribery?” the rabbi asked. “I’m not complaining, obviously, but I assume there is something you need.”

  I explained our problem.

  “A golem to imitate a demon?” Feitler asked. “Yes, I can create a golem, but I’m not an artist. I doubt very seriously that it will fool this Akashrian. Even with all the illusions you wish to clothe it in, it will still be a mud doll. Demons are very good with illusions, and I would not trust any that I—or you—might cast.”

  I nodded. “My father suggested that our best chance might involve using multiple people’s talents. I don’t know anything about creating a golem, but could you work with an elven sculptor?”

  The old man’s eyes lit up, and he regarded me for a long minute. “It would be interesting to try. Do all the demon goddesses look alike?”

  “No, but my father has seen all three of the ones who exercise power in this realm. He can describe Lakasvian and Delevidat. We can create a physical likeness, but it wouldn’t be alive.”

  “And how are you going to clothe it in magik?” Feitler asked. “The demon won’t be fooled by a magikless golem.”

  “My grandfather says that, working with a witch and a magitek, he thinks he can simulate demon magik,” I said.

  “Very interesting. I’m intrigued. When do you wish to begin?”

  “As soon as possible. The devastation the demons are wreaking is too much to withstand very long.”

  He nodded. “Today is Thursday, tomorrow the Sabbath begins. Let us start on Sunday.”

  We worked out logistics. I would pick him up at his temple Sunday morning and transport him out to Loch Raven. In the meantime, he said he would email me a list of materials, tools, and working conditions he would need.

  As we flew back to Baltimore, I prayed the wild idea would work.

  Chapter 42

  “For the creation of a faithful servant, mute and of great power, resistant to the demons of fire and air,” was written at the top of the email the rabbi sent me. I scanned the list and saw that the process of creating a golem would take the whole week. Luckily, finding the clay he specified wouldn’t be a problem in Maryland, and the rest of the items didn’t look difficult to obtain, either. I passed the list on to my father.

  Kirsten and I picked up the rabbi at his temple in Kemp Mill early Sunday morning.

  “There have been many demon incursions in this area,” he informed us as he climbed into the car. “I would advise taking the roads going north instead of east.”

  I grinned at him. “I hadn’t planned on taking the roads at all. Fasten your seatbelt.”

  When I took the car airborne, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his eyes widen, then he glared at me. But soon he was too busy watching the ground below and seemed to have relaxed.

  Although I saw a few flying demons in the distance, none of them came closer or tried to challenge us. We also saw several Council aircraft, and a couple of them flew close enough to check us out and decide we weren’t a threat. On the whole, the flight was smooth and uneventful.

  I landed and drove up to Mom’s house. She fussed over the rabbi, showed him to his room, and fed us all. Then he sat with Dad, Joren, and Lenokin—the elven sculptor who would be working with him. I saw that they had several full-color drawings labeled “Delevidat,” as viewed from different angles. She was very different-looking than Akashrian. Her form was suggestive of a human woman but far more snake-like and less voluptuous than Akashrian. Long horns grew out of her forehead and swept backwards, ending in sharp points at mid-back. Her face was one of the most human of any demon I had seen, but sharper and crueler than any human face, with tusks similar to a saber-toothed tiger of ancient times.

  “She’s about eight feet tall,” Dad said. “Her body is mostly pink in color, fading to green on her back and tail. The horns are a darker green, and so are her eyes.”

  “Usually, we don’t prettify our golems,” Rabbi Feitler said. “The body must be formed in a single night, and the hands, feet, and mouth are of the first importance. The fingers must be fashioned for grasping and the toes for balance. The legs must be of equal length, or else he limps. I don’t know how I can do all this.”

  Lenokin picked up a cloth-covered bucket he had brought with him. Setting it on the table, he stripped the cloth away and took out a large lump of clay. Placing his hands on either side of it, he stared at it. The lump started to vibrate, twist, and change shape. It took twenty minutes, but when he leaned back in his chair, a rough miniature sculpture of the creature in the drawing sat on the table.

  “If you can cast your spells while I mold the clay,” Lenokin said, “then this will work.”

  The rabbi rose out of his chair and studied the sculpture. “Can I touch it while you work?” he asked.

  The elf shrugged. “I don’t see why not. As long as you don’t change the shape.”

  Feitler looked up from the little statuette. “We won’t know until we try, will we?” he said with a grin and that twinkle in his eye.

  When the old rabbi discovered that my grandfather was actually older than he was, he latched onto Joren and tended to direct his instructions and conversation to his new friend. As a result, Joren was the one who took Feitler to the river to dig the clay to mold the watch-eye.

  The rabbi brought a bucket full of clay back with him and formed the mass into a watch-eye using Kabbalistic spells. He was a little taken aback when he discovered that the kiln the elves provided to bake it was fueled by magik rather than wood, but he adapted. The eye had to bake for three days and three nights until the clay was hard.

  While that was going on, Feitler returned to the river, and with the help of the elves, gathered a large amount of clay. Working at night by candlelight, he and Lenokin fashioned the clay into the semblance of Delevidat. The old man insisted the work must be done in a single night, so they started at sunset on the third day the watch-eye was baking. As dawn broke, the rabbi scooped a hole in the creature’s forehead and embedded the watch-eye. They covered it with the cloth, ate a meal, and went to bed.

  That night, Joren and I flew Feitler to a Jewish graveyard north of DC, and waited while he dug up a small square of dirt. We then flew him back to Loch Raven, where he combined the dirt with silver and his own blood to form an ink.

  He inscribed a spell on a small piece of calfskin parchment. When he finished, he was visibly shaking, pale, and sweating. He explained that with each stroke of his pen, he had infused the spell with his own life essence.

  Next, he chanted a spell over a crystal the size of my fist and inserted the parchment into the creature’s mouth. The body immediately rose and silently stood in front of the rabbi. Absolutely creeped me out.

  “I now control the golem,” Feitler said, sitting heavily on a chair. “I control it by directing my thoughts through the crystal into the eye. The creature will obey as if it is my own flesh.”

  Abruptly, the golem turned, walked across the room, stopped when it reached the wall, turned around, and walked back toward us. It stopped and saluted.

  The rabbi explained that it could not be stopped against his will. Unless Feitler was killed, or the parchment was taken from the golem’s mouth, it would continue to be animated. If the parchment was removed, the creature’s energy would diminish, but it would use its remaining strength to return to its master’s side.

  Mom and Joren helped the old man to bed, and he slept the next twenty-four hours.

  “Okay, we have it,” I said. “Any ideas how to let Akashrian know it�
�s here?”

  “All we need is a major demon,” Dad said. “We show the golem to the demon, and turn the demon loose. Akashrian will know within the day.”

  I was appalled. “I have to go capture a major demon? What should I use for bait? Candy? Human sacrifice?”

  “Relax,” Joren said. “We can supply all the demons you need. A master demon, you say?”

  “Yes,” Dad answered. “Anything lower won’t have any credibility.”

  “Have we figured out how we’re going to imbue this thing with the feeling of demon magik?” I asked.

  Dad smirked. “What exactly does demon magik feel like? Demons are chaotic creatures. We just simply layer on some of every kind of magik we can, and create chaos.”

  “Simple, huh?”

  His grin faded a bit. “Well, that’s the theory, at least.”

  Chapter 43

  We invited so many people to work on the golem that we had to hold the work in the elves’ meeting hall. My father had gotten very creative as to what kinds of magik he thought would contribute to chaos.

  My boss, Tom Whittaker, was an earth mage. Blair, Kirsten’s father, was a master of light and dark witchcraft. Joren was a storm mage, and several other elves had rare and unique talents. It did surprise me when Olivia, an electrokinetic, and Osiris, a pyromancer, flew in from Ireland, completely unannounced. Rabbi Feitler, my boyfriend Aleks, an aeromancer, a hydromancer, and a witch doctor from Africa also showed up. Even several of the Council members showed up to donate their magik to the golem.

  The reunion of my grandmother and father brought tears to my eyes, and the way Mary Sue hugged him as though she was never going to let him go confirmed my suspicions about her parentage.

  The golem stood in the middle of the room, looking quite fearsome.

  “So, how is everyone going to infuse it with all of these different magiks?” I asked my father.

  He chuckled. “They aren’t. You, and I, and Mary Sue are going to do it.”

  My expression caused him to laugh.

  “The golem is really just a kind of machine,” Dad explained, and I saw the rabbi nod. “We’ll take the magik all these people direct at us, and redirect it into the golem, the same way you’d build a magitek storage device using magik from someone else.”

  “But I’ve never tried to combine different kinds of magik in a single device,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  After a moment, I realized he wanted an answer. “Well, because it would get all confused, it would be chaos.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Oh,” I said.

  Dad instructed all the magikers to use their darkest, most potent spell for loading the golem. Then he turned his attention to Mary Sue and me.

  “I know you’ve done this a thousand times, but with the kinds of spells we’re going to be dealing with, you have to stay alert and focused. Treat it the same way you would if the spell was cast at you and you needed to deflect it or shield from it. If you get tired, or feel overwhelmed, take a break. Okay?”

  “What do you mean, ‘deflect it or shield from it’?” I asked. A glance at Mary Sue’s expression told me that she was as confused as I was.

  Dad’s brow furrowed. “You know. Say, if a pyromancer tosses a fireball at you. You choose a place for it to go, grab it with your magik, and send it on. You do know how to do that, right?”

  I thought back to a time I had used Aleks’s spirit magik to destroy the water pipes in the tunnels under the Moncrieff estate.

  “I always use a converter to catch the magik, then redirect it to enhancers,” I said.

  Mary Sue nodded. “Yeah, you need something to catch it.”

  Dad hesitated a moment, then said, “Okay. I can show you another way, but for today, we’ll use what you know how to do.”

  He went over to a satchel he had brought with him and came back with two converter boxes. “You won’t need enhancers. Just redirect the spells into the golem.”

  It took several hours, but by the time we finished, we had stored magik from twenty-three different magik users in the golem. I felt like I’d been through the ringer. I was starving, but all I wanted to do was go to bed for a week. I reached out to touch the golem and drew my hand back immediately. It felt like my fingers had been burned, shocked, and frozen all at the same time.

  Mom, Aileen, Kirsten, and several of the elves laid out a feast for everyone, and then we went back to mom’s house. I dragged myself upstairs and fell into bed. I didn’t even notice when Aleks joined me.

  “Now all we need is a major demon,” Dad said to Joren the following morning.

  “We have five,” Joren responded. “We weren’t sure what kind you might need, so we gathered an assortment.”

  He took us to an elven building. Inside were five cages grown from some kind of wood. They didn’t look substantial enough to contain a demon, but I noticed that all of the demons kept well away from the bars.

  They did have a variety of demons. I could readily identify fire, water, and flying demons. Joren told us the other two were an earth demon and a frost demon.

  “Where did you catch them?” Dad asked.

  “All within a hundred miles of here,” Joren said. “From what you told us, that means they are Akashrian’s creatures, right?”

  Dad nodded. “That’s correct. Now we need to have the rabbi animate the golem, and turn the demons loose.”

  Joren raised an eyebrow. “They aren’t going to be very happy when we let them out, Lucas.”

  “Don’t worry about it. They’ll be far too worried about the golem to pay you any attention.”

  The rabbi took the golem to the dam and had it stand on top. He had told us that distance wasn’t a problem. As long as he had the crystal, he could see and hear what the golem saw and heard, and direct the golem’s actions. We gave the old man an enhanced magitek communicator, then I flew him home in time to adhere to the Sabbath. While I was in Kemp Mill, I confirmed that our setup worked. Using the communicator, Dad could tell the rabbi what he wanted the golem to do.

  Lucas James might have been the only human on earth who was truly fluent in demon. I spoke it, too, but like a little kid. I understood a lot more, and my reading was quite fluent. Using an auditory illusion spell that one of the aeromancers set up, Dad could say something in demon, and it sounded like the golem was talking.

  Before I arrived back at Loch Raven, Joren had freed the captive demons, and our Delevidat golem had given them a challenge to be conveyed to Akashrian. All we had to do was wait—and pray our gambit worked.

  Chapter 44

  After four days, we were truly beginning to wonder if our ploy was going to work. We heard nothing from or about Akashrian, and the demon assaults showed no sign of slacking off.

  Whittaker reported that the Council members were getting antsy.

  “The good news is,” Whittaker said, “they are taking Dani’s suggestion that they get more actively involved seriously. The economic damage is hitting them where it hurts most.”

  In other words, they didn’t give a damn how many people the demons slaughtered, but when their profits shrank to millions instead of billions, it got their attention.

  Olivia helped with that. Having her back where she could visit with Frank Novak and Jorge Domingo forced them to pay attention. She also wanted to come home. The climate in Ireland wasn’t to her taste, and she pressed the other Council members to think about resuming the conflict with Moncrieff and Akiyama to push them out of North America.

  On the fifth day after we introduced the golem to the major demons, the elves standing watch reported that the air over the river—about four hundred yards downstream from the dam—began to shimmer like a heat wave.

  Dad and I rushed to the dam. We watched as the disruption widened, and then a portal opened.

  What I could see through the hole in reality looked like the Waste, rather than the demon world. The light was white instead of red, and the ruins of buildings could be se
en. Dad and I took up our posts and waited. My heart hammered in my chest, but I couldn’t imagine what he might be feeling as he contemplated facing the monster who had held him captive for more than twenty years.

  There was movement on the other side, and then Akashrian came through the portal. She was directly over the river but floated in the air. The statuette—her avatar—was cradled in her left arm, just as she had carried it at the temple. The portal closed behind her, and she let out a roar that shook the world.

  The golem responded with a roar of its own, followed by a stream of Demonish so harsh and nasty that I knew only half of the words.

  Akashrian strode toward us, and when she reached the river’s bank, she unleashed a glowing yellow ball of energy. It hit the golem but didn’t seem to faze it.

  Now, Dani! my father said through my implant.

  I pulled energy from the massive generator inside the dam, directed it through its converter, and triggered my energy projector. A white beam shot out and converged with the beam from my father’s weapon at the other end of the dam.

  At first, Akashrian stood, facing the dam and the golem, bathed in the ravening energy the enhanced weapons discharged. Using the power of the hydroelectric turbines behind me, I poured my magik into the concentrator.

  One of Akashrian’s globes of energy hit the dam directly beneath the place where the golem was standing. A chunk of the dam—five feet deep and five feet wide— disappeared. The golem stumbled and fell to its knees in the rubble, but otherwise, it didn’t seem to be harmed.

  Akashrian tossed another ball of death at the golem, and more of the dam crumbled. A few more strikes like that, and she might reach the level of the water the dam held back.