The Summoner's Sigil

by Renee Sebastian

  I stepped back out of the circle and then allowed the energies in the air to spool within me. I knelt down and touched an inner sigil, and activated it by pushing energy into it. This magic required no verbal mumbo jumbo to enable it work. Most of the magic had been front loaded into the making of the discs.

  Then we waited.

  Nothing.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. From experience, I knew the token spell had worked when I used it for parallel worlds, so maybe it wouldn’t work if it were used in a land bridge scenario.

  “I’m going to try and summon him using his sigil and calling name.”

  “Do you think that he is in another dimension?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.” I drew the sigil to summon him from another plane. With that done, I attempted to summon him. Nothing happened. Once again, I was met with defeat.

  Then the monster draug roared outside again, and this time the rafters shook with his bellowing. Dust fell down upon us like snow. Next, a book fell down from a shelf and when it hit the floor, it opened up. I was not about to take chance for granted, so I went over to the book.

  “We’re out of time,” I said as I identified the book as Folklore of the Ancient Summoners. It had opened to a page with instructions for travelling to other places using water as a transient medium, which was similar to when I had used a mirror in the past.

  I looked around the room. Someone had chosen this book and this page for me. Fire was the only sure manner of removing these draugs, but it needed to be an extremely intense fire. Better still would be if it were a supernatural fire, so it wouldn’t eat through the stick frame construction of the house in minutes. I needed demon fire. I needed Calidum.

  “I’m going back down.”

  “No,” he said firmly. I thought how differently Stephen would have reacted. He would have said that he was going down right then with me, with his blunderbuss blazing in one hand and his sabre in the other. But when I looked into Colin’s eyes, I saw a protectiveness that reminded me more of Wendy.

  “I must,” I told him. “We are outnumbered and outclassed. I’m going to summon Calidum from the bathroom, since he can kill these draugs quickly using his fire. The longer we wait, the better the chance the draugs will have of overtaking the house. If whoever has him encircles him, then he will no longer be attainable by anyone, let alone me.”

  He clenched his jaw, but said, “All right, but I’m going to cover you.”

  “That was what I was hoping you were going to say.”

  I went to the door in the ceiling and pulled it back open again. No one was below. I dropped the ladder down and prepared to scale down the rope ladder, when Colin grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back deeper into the attic.

  “I’m going down first,” he told me. Then he proceeded to climb down so swiftly that I never had a chance to protest it. I followed closely behind him, and when I was down, I used the candle lighter to push the ladder back into the recessed spot.

  Colin made himself busy by reinforcing the door, by pushing whatever furniture he could, up against it, which consisted mainly of the dresser and a desk. It was a bad omen that none of the draugs came to investigate what he was doing, since he made quite a bit of commotion when he dragged the furniture across the floor.

  I went to the adjoining bathroom door and listened. I was envious of Wendy’s ability to sense life behind closed doors, but this girl had to rely on only her five senses. I didn’t hear anything, so I opened the door.

  A draug jumped out at me, but thankfully, Colin shot it in the head before it could do anything. It fell down on me, but I kept both my eyes and mouth closed, and I tried not to breathe as I shoved it off of me. After we dragged it out of the bathroom’s entryway, Colin brought a desk chair whose seat was missing in with us. He locked the lavatory’s doorknob and then shoved the top of the chair under the doorknob for extra support.

  I turned on the water in the claw footed tub, and thankfully, it started filling up. We listened to knocking sounds that were coming from the first floor, while we waited for the water to reach the top. Before it was done, the water cut off. They must have broken a pipe. A half-filled tub would have to do.

  I pulled out a tin that was kept underneath the tub. Thank goodness, this hadn’t been disturbed. I reached in my hand and threw several copious handfuls of salt into the water. I was hoping to change the ionic charge of the water and force a mild polarity change. Hopefully, the small modification would be enough to alter the token’s properties and force it to transport me to Calidum, instead of him to me.

  I immediately started to cast the sigil in the water. I closed my eyes and drew the marks in the water using my finger, as instructed by the book. If I had a mirror, I could have breathed onto it, fogging it up before writing on it, but the one I had planned on using had been shattered. Doing it this way added a level of difficulty that I was unaccustomed to, since I had to hold the marks from the book in my mind as I drew them.

  I closed my good eye, and watched the marks that I had drawn sparkling blue on the water’s surface. I also noted that the sigils weren’t quite matching up. I traced them once more and felt them ripple and move together into one sigil, as they should. Once I felt them take hold, I sensed the circle bubble up to cling to the surface tension of the liquid and malleable surface.

  “I’m going in.”

  “Wait. I thought you were going to summon him, not you go to him.”

  “I’m going to summon myself to wherever Calidum is.”

  He clenched his jaw and said, “I don’t like this.”

  “Are you going to be able to hold them off while I’m preoccupied?” I asked.

  He huffed out a breath and said, “Yes, I will hold them off. Hurry up and do it before I allow good sense to rise up so I prevent you from doing this,” he replied before cocking the rifle. He was a fast study.

  We heard a crashing sound come from the doorway behind us. Something was trying to break through into the bedroom. I just hoped it wasn’t the goliath, or at least not until I got back.

  “If it looks like you can’t hold them off, jump in with me.”

  “I hope things won’t turn that dire,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  I jumped into the tub and broke through the surface never feeling the chill of the water. A gray fog surrounded me, but quickly dissipated, revealing another dimension that I had never visited before now. It sure was bright, with two golden suns in a royal blue sky. It also felt like electricity was humming through my bones, starting with my feet, which rested on white sand. I tried to look around me, but all I could see were white sandy floors and blue skies. In the distance, it was almost as if I was seeing a double vision mirage of nothingness.

  I didn’t see Calidum, but decided I should try to use the Verlangen Teufel token again. Maybe it would work here. I drew a sigil in the white sand with a stick of ochre I always kept on me, which trailed as lines of gold, rather than the normal terracotta color.

  While I was drawing on the floor the fifth seal, I felt a strong pulse along the ground. It left enough of a current to make the loose tendrils of my hair rise up off my neck and float in the air around me momentarily. I looked up again and since I could only see the white floor stretching into infinity, I returned my attention to my craft.

  Before I could finish, I felt the strong pulse again and was forced to stop. I stood up and proclaimed, “I am Basil Beckenbauer. Who are you?”

  “I am a messenger,” a male’s voice echoed all around me, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  “If you are a messenger, then what is your message?”

  “Do not trust friends or family and embrace strangers,” the disembodied voice sang as if it were a nursery rhyme.

  “That sounds like sound advice coming from a demon.”

  “The spider sends her regards,” the voice said.

  The spider? Did he mean the infernal witch who turned
my eye milky and gave me the ability to make portals in mirrors and now apparently with water?

  “Wait!” I called out.

  Nothing.

  I looked behind me and saw the flat sheen of a mirror like oval disc was hovering vertically behind me. That must have been the tub, which would be my pass back to my reality. When I looked through my bad eye only, I could see the bathroom beyond it, but I could not see Colin. Where was he? It wasn’t as if the bathroom was large enough for him to hide from me.

  “Where are you? Who are you?” I yelled out.

  “I am everywhere!” it bellowed and then its cackled laughter faded into the distance. It was gone, or at least it wanted me to think it was gone. Either way, I doubted that it would speak to me again. That laugh sounded pretty final to my ears.

  I called out, “Calidum, are you here?”

  Nothing.

  I decided to activate the token. I finished the marking in the sand and then threw it into the center of my calling circle. Then a strange popping noise occurred. I was familiar with this noise, since it was the same sound that prefaced the summoning of the Autumnal Queen. It meant that it was working. Then Calidum abruptly appeared in the sigil.

  He was stooped over, obviously wounded, and bleeding from several wounds. I slashed open the circle of containment with my foot, and then I scooped him up in my arms. At first, he didn’t know how to respond, but eventually his little scrawny arms wrapped tightly around my neck.

  “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “We’ve been busy with draugs.”

  “Are they gone?”

  I leaned back and looked at him. I said very carefully while looking him over for wounds, “No. Can you help us with that?”

  “I think I can.” He looked pitiful, blueish black blood oozing from at least ten separate slashes. I looked behind me and Colin still wasn’t there.

  “Good, we need to get back.” I picked him up and walked back to the water mirror. Along the way, I asked him, “What happened to you?”

  “They found me and did this. I don’t want to talk about it.” I could understand that.

  “Where is this place?” I asked next.

  “Somewhere we don’t want to be,” he said as he shuddered. I wondered why the blood led us here. Who was here, and what did they want with our realm?

  I tried to console him by saying, “I promise you three catfish once we are done cleaning the house.”

  “Cleaning the house?”

  “Clearing the vermin out.” I led him to the portal and asked, “Do you like to eat vermin?”

  “I am not picky when it comes to my meals.”

  “Well, don’t eat these. Just light them on fire and let them die.”

  “Yes Mistress.”

  We made it to the portal and I pierced it with my ochre stick. Sound rushed out and I realized that all hell had broken loose while I had been fetching Calidum. I jumped through the portal and out of the tub at the same time. I slid across the slippery bathroom floor, which caused me to lose my balance and fall hard to my knees. The door had been torn off of its hinges and thrown across the room. Worse yet, Colin was gone.

  My breath involuntarily sped up in dread. I told myself that I couldn’t have developed feelings beyond a simple physical attraction for him yet. I’ve only known him the span of one day. I told myself that I simply didn’t want another human to die under my watch.

  Calidum slammed into me from his leap. I frantically snatched my flint stone from its sheath and struck an athame against it. Sparks flew. He caught one of them and started to grow into a fiery mass of destruction.

  “Put a foot in the tub, I don’t want you getting too big. Oh, and try to not set my house on fire with your demon flame.”

  “Anything else Mistress?”

  “Stop calling me Mistress.”

  He dutifully stuck his foot into the water and kept his size to a respectable eight feet. As it was, he would still have to duck the doorframes, but he would have an easy four feet clearance from the ceilings. Besides Calidum, I had little experience with fire demons, but I knew enough to know that they could be selective as to what they want to catch on fire most of the time.

  I heard a roar from outside followed by a growl. I snatched the rifle that had been left behind, and then checked it for bullets. It was empty. I spared a minute to climb back up into the library, took a handful of bullets, most of which I put into a pocket, and then loaded up the gun.

  After I climbed back down, I rushed out of the room and found the way clear. Besides the dead bodies I had to dodge around in the bedroom, where were all the draugs? I attempted to take the stairs first, but Calidum rushed around me and beat me to them. He leapt the entire way down in one go, while I could only manage two steps at a time. Sooty prints outlined the few steps he made in the wood on his way out the door, but nothing caught on fire.

  A draug attempted to grab him once he reached the door, but I shot it in the head. Down it went.

  “Remember, don’t eat them Calidum. They’ll give you indigestion.” Truthfully, I didn’t know what would happen if he were to eat one. Would they recombine with his DNA and make him into something totally different? Something that was evil and unstoppable?

  I didn’t know if he heard me or not, as he was out the front door before I knew it. I shot another two draugs that tried to surprise me while hiding behind the corners of rooms that I passed. When I finally made it outside, I was stunned by what I saw. A ring of draugs still encircled the Goliath in the water. Calidum was useless if they were still out in the water.

  But the biggest surprise by far was Colin. He was slowly sizing up his opponents, pacing in the shin high water. I could only see the back of him, but his shirt was off and somehow he seemed bigger, stronger, and meaner.

  Since they were moving around each other, surrounded by draugs, I had no clear shot. Could I make it back up to the vent? Could I see well enough by Calidum’s light to shoot the monster in the head? I wasn’t naïve enough to think one bullet would be enough, but I had to try. I mentally added exploding rounds to the list of things I needed next time I was having a shopping day in Convent.

  I kept shifting my point of view to accommodate the shifting of the draug bodies surrounding them, but I did manage to see the goliath jump at Colin, while he dove for the draug’s legs. After Colin slid under him, he slid out behind the draug. Then he contorted his body and jumped onto the back of the enormous monster. He wrapped his arm around his neck and then he set his hold tightly around it, obviously aiming to choke the life out of him. The goliath attempted to sling him off, but Colin held on with a tenaciousness that worried me. I realized that he was the sort of person that once he set his mind to something, then he would never give up until he attained it, regardless of the consequences.

  I counted the draugs separating me from them. Thirteen. I next looked at the dead draugs that littered the estate like leaves at fall. I couldn’t help but notice that an equal number of lifeless wolves laid among them. None of the wolves had yet to turn into a draug, so they must have had some sort of natural immunity to the disease. I next looked around the swamp. There was no telling if the swamp witch was anywhere nearby.

  I lifted my gun, and by the light of Calidum, I shot five draugs in the head, even though only one of them fell and didn’t get back up. When the mob turned on me, I turned tail and ran back to the house. Calidum moved into position, between the lake and the house, and the first one that ran out of the lake died by his fire. I secretly hoped Calidum would take the last ten draugs, because if we were relying only on my sharpshooting skills, then Lord help us all.

  After dashing back into the house, I ran up the stairs. I made it to the bedroom, but saw that the ladder was down again. Hadn’t I pushed it back up after I had retrieved the rifle rounds? I listened very closely, and then I heard a little tune being hummed by a deep female voice. It was coming from up in the attic library.

  “Alouette, gentile alou
tte. Allouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai les yeux. Je te plumerai les yeux,” sang the voice, followed by a ripping of papers. Several of which came floating down to the ground out of the hole. She was singing about plucking the eye out of a lark’s head. Did she mean my milky eye?

  “Come on up my little lark. I know you are waiting down there,” she called down.

  “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  “Miss Beckenbauer, you really should come up here. Someone wants to talk with you.”

  “Who else is up there with you?”

  I saw two hands clutching at the rim of the opening, followed by a head. It was Miss Delia Del La Cruz, the Tomb Talker from Convent who was reputably dead, but even that was not entirely true, since technically she was the undead.

  “He says that he is Stephen Carlisle,” she cackled down at me. I frowned at that. I didn’t know if I was ready for that conversation. She had been recently dug up, if judging by the grave dirt still under her fingernails, even though she only had about half of those left. She looked very dehydrated and her hair was quite sparse.

  Then she said, “He says that your grandfather isn’t ready to talk to you yet, but he wants you to know that he is working on him.”

  I gulped. If what she said was true, then Grandfather must still be mad at me. If anyone could persuade him to talk with me, I had no doubt that it would be Captain Carlisle. He could be quite persistent. Still… she was a deader, and the person controlling her might be able to access her memories of this.

  Being in this situation made me more determined to create another whip with my sigils drawn onto it, then I could snap it around her blackened neck. It would ensnare her in a makeshift circle of sorts, breaking her connection to her master. I had created the first one several months ago, but they weren’t terribly durable. The last one fell apart when I tried to ensnare a Neverbird, who decided to make a permanent roost in the Tower of London. Magchains were more durable. Since I didn’t have either, I had to use what I did have available.