I did so, and then he knelt down to add a few marks to my own. When he was done, I realized that I couldn’t name a single one.
He handed my stick back and then he said, “Ready your pistol, in case this doesn’t work.”
“Are there any extra words I need to say in order to activate your marks?” I asked.
“No.”
We traded places again, and I got as far back as I possibly could and waited. After only a few seconds, the first bang occurred. Colin was pushed back a foot before he regained his footing. Then we heard the menacing sounds of gears grinding from the other side of the makeshift door.
Colin said, “Are you ready Basil? The next time I won’t be able to hold it back.”
I nodded my head in understanding. “Who are you?” I called out. “What do you want?”
All I got was more clicking for my reply.
“I represent the Republic. I can negotiate your demands. Cease and desist this madness now,” I told it. Since I never read a manual or received instruction on how to conduct myself when dealing with mummies, I thought I sounded proper enough to my ears. Colin seemed to agree with me when he nodded his head in return.
“I want to live,” rasped the mechanical mummy in a very low tone. I was more than a little surprised that it could talk at all. “We all want to live… here.”
I replied, “Who wants to live here?”
Our only answer was Colin being pushed again.
“Stop,” I told it.
“I cannot,” the mummy replied.
“Fall back Colin,” I told him, and then I started my chanting to focus energy into the circle to activate it.
He took out his pistol and then stepped back, his intent to pass through circle to reach me. When he was about to exit the circle, he paused.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“It feels thick,” he said and then he leaned into the ochre circle. I saw the angle of his body change, but he didn’t fall down. He should have fallen down. Colin needed to get out of the casting before I finished. He should have been able to easily traverse it, since it was meant only for demons.
“Colin!”
“No, wait, I can make it through… I think.” I knew that the mummy was cranking itself up to spring against the coffin door, which wasn’t being supported by anything other than gravity now. We only had a few seconds to spare. Do I break the circle and chance our bullets, or give Colin the time he needed to go through it? As for the reason why it was preventing him from crossing it, well that would have to wait for a later discussion.
Colin finally stumbled out of the circle at the same instant the coffin exploded into the ceiling above us, which showered dirt and debris around us. As the coffin fell back down, it struck Colin on his back as he fell out of the circle. Then I was confronted with the clockwork mummy.
In the span of a split second, I knew several things at once about the mummy. He was indeed tall, over eight feet if I had to guess. His frame had been elongated by gold mechanical joints, and he had a partial skull augmentation which encompassed his eyes, mouth, and cap.
He didn’t look like he had come for tea and biscuits when he raised a flail in one hand and a crook in his other. He was also still wet from the cistern, as his mechanical parts dripped water on the floor near the sigil. The mummy hybrid took a step into the room, climbing on top of the door, under which Colin was trapped. I worried for him, but then I watched as Colin shucked the door and mummy off of him at the same time, coffin and all.
Then the most amazing thing happened. When the mummy fell, he slid directly into my circle, and I quickly activated the sigil. Once my magic encircled him, the momentum of his fall made his body collapse into a heap of junk and dry rotted flesh outside the circle. However, what surfaced out of the mummy’s body was something that I had never seen before, so I would have to rely on Colin to tell me what I was seeing.
At least, I hoped he could tell me.
Chapter 12
Demons and Liars
Rule number fourteen: Never waste a demon’s time, because time is on their side.
It appeared to be a ghost, but it wasn’t like any I had ever seen. It was mostly transparent with the washed out appearance of an earthbound spirit that were used for security systems.
However, there were several things that marked this one as something other. One was its legs, since it didn’t have any. Rather, it appeared to have two snakelike appendages that ended in fins. He also had two wings which seemed to be made of white smoke that would sometimes coalesce feathers when the light of the dying lantern would flicker brighter for a second.
The other surprise was his face. Its face was cloaked in darkness, but at times, an illusion of several different faces would flicker across it, some human and some not. Ultimately, each one would fade, returning back to its black and fathomless one again.
“What is it?” I asked Colin.
“I’m not certain, but it may be an umbra simulacrum.”
“A shadow idol?”
“Our word for it, not theirs,” he added.
“I thought those were only Summoner folklore.”
“Apparently not.”
Since the circle appeared to be holding it, I asked, “How many levels are there?”
He seemed a little surprised by my question and said, “We only have names for the twenty-two. The last of which is the ghost realm. While we have a decent working knowledge of the realms five through eleven, we only have a rudimentary understanding of the rest of them. If you were curious, they only teach theory up to sixteen in the universities,” he replied.
Since the circle appeared to be holding it, I used the dying lantern to relight the other one. As I relit it, I asked, “How much do you know?”
“My knowledge includes some of the markings for each of the realms up to eighteen. While we have discovered some sigils from higher levels than that, we don’t know what they all mean yet.”
“How did we get those sigils in the first place?” I asked, even though I suspected it from the work of the Summoners who worked at government research facilities.
As I watched the demon spirit test its boundaries, he said, “Our ancestors were more adventurous than we are. They were willing to sacrifice lives to summon the higher dimension entities for knowledge.” More likely their slave masters were willing to sacrifice their slaves for the information. Despite the despicable means used to attain this knowledge, I only felt a moment of bitterness before realizing that without the extra marks that Colin had added to my circle, I doubted it would have held this creature back from us now.
The vapor demon murmured in a tone that did not hurt my ears, but made my bones vibrate, “Let me out of here, and maybe I will spare you a long death.”
“Who are you?” Collin asked.
“Ha! You think I will tell you! Unlike her, you are not even worthy of hearing my voice.”
“Who trapped you in that body?” I asked pointing to the mummy body with all of its mechanical augmentations that laid in a pile outside the circle. To be honest, they were closer to me than I would have preferred.
He said nothing. He must have been one of the few demons that were actually incorporeal in our realm. How futile he must have felt in our measly third dimension.
“Who was that?” I asked pointing to the clockwork mummy.
“What will you trade for this information?” Here we go.
“Facts for facts.”
“Agreed. It was a foolish man,” he said.
“Names please.”
“Chaput.” The parishioners were correct. It was not Periwinkle then.
“Very good. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked.
“As this is another question, no is the answer I will give you. Now you will tell me two things.” Drats, I had broken Grandfather’s fourteenth rule of summoning: Never waste a demon’s time, because time is on their side.
“Ask them,” I said.
“Where
is the one known as Colin Townsssend?” he asked. I slid a sidelong glance Colin’s way, who was wearing a poker face better than a card shark holding five aces. They were indeed gunning for him. He wasn’t my bodyguard at all, because I was his.
I smiled and followed another of Grandfather’s rules: Answer all questions with the least amount of information. “Colin Townsend is in the third dimension.”
The demon made an ugly face. Literally, a face materialized for a second that was hideous and did not look like it was going to accept my answer.
“Stop that. We can help each other, but not when we are trying to trick each other. I will give you the answer to your question, but only if you answer true another of my own.”
“Yes,” the demon said.
“He is within a hundred mile circumference of this town.” I said with as much bravado as I could muster. I was hoping that it would buy us a little more time before we had to face it again, and when we did, he would not be happy that I tricked him. The only good thing about this conversation was that he was not being directly piloted by the Necromancer, or he would be asking me better questions. Nor would he be settling for the shoddy answers I had been giving him.
I waited for the demon to say something, which he finally did. “You may now ask one of your own.” He had bought it.
“Who summoned you and put you in that body?”
“That is two questions and my patience is running out.”
I looked at Colin and considered my choice. It was the Summoner who I thought was the bigger threat at the moment. If the Summoner could be stopped, then the Necromancer wouldn’t be able to put demons into his automaton mummies.
“Who summoned you here?”
“The Master,” he replied.
I sighed and said, “I need a name.”
“I know no names, but I can describe him to you.”
“That is acceptable.”
“He is strong and cloaks himself in brown clothing.” That only described about half of all Convent’s inhabitants.
“This tires me. Release me now,” the demon spirit ordered.
“No,” I pouted, showing my disapproval with his answer.
“You will release me.”
“Why should I?”
“I doubt you are even strong enough to send me back to my plane. Are you capable Summoner?”
I frowned. Honestly, I didn’t even know where to begin. I didn’t even know what realm he was from. I looked over at Colin, and he shook his head minutely to the negative. I didn’t know if I could or not, but I could try.
“Release me from this world, or you’ll never get out of here alive,” he said. Why was he so anxious to go back to his plane? There had to be a reason.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“You drew your marks too big, and they block the only exit out of this room.” I looked down and noted that it spoke the truth. It might indeed make it impossible for us to leave the room without breaking the circle.
“If we release you, will you go back into your mummified body?” Colin asked. “Will you leave us alone, so you can find this Colin Townsend?”
“You can’t offer him that,” I told Colin.
“No Basil, I am negotiating now for our mutual safety. You cannot do what I think you are thinking. It will end badly if you do.” I gave him the stink eye, but said mum.
“Agreed,” the demon replied.
“If we release you, you will take your body and leave us be, never to harm us again,” Colin reiterated.
“Yes, I swear.”
“Very well,” he said before stooping down and picking up the dimmest lamp. He walked over to the collapsed mummy and dripped a little of the oil from it over the body.
“What are you doing?” the demon asked.
“Anointing your limbs.” The demon seemed to relax at that. Then Colin walked over to the circle and said, “Remember your promise. I’m going to free you now.” Then he stooped down and wiped the Wedjat away.
The demon vanished right before our eyes. Then the mummy raised itself up, in a manner that implied it did not follow the rules of gravity. Just before it jumped out the door and down the dark corridor away from us, Colin threw the now sputtering lamp onto the mummy. The parts that were made of decayed flesh lit up as if it were flash paper, eating through the tenuous tendons and dehydrated flesh. The mummy collapsed on the ground before he could pass the mortuary section of the corridor.
We slowly approached it as the room filled with the odor of exotic incense and myrrh amid the smoldering mass of gears and decayed limbs.
“If there is no body, where will the demon go?” he asked
“Hopefully back to its master to tell him to start looking by the sea if we are lucky.”
“And if we aren’t so lucky?”
I was saved from having to answer his question, when some of the remaining gears suddenly began moving towards each other. Colin’s attention was drawn ahead of us and he asked, “Are you up for a fox hunt?”
I nodded my head, and before our eyes, we watched as the metal gears joined back up while still sitting in the hot embers of burnt flesh. The ball of metal pulled some of the remaining bones together, and they formed a small spinning wheel. It slowly started rolling away, but quickly picked up speed the further it sped away from us. We took off down the tunnel to follow it.
It turned the bend, leading us to the cistern. I followed Colin into the water, and was pleasantly surprised to find the water level shallow, being only about two feet in depth. We slushed through after it to the corridor on the other side.
The light from the opening had grown a tad brighter in our absence. It casted flickering, dancing partners of light and shadows along the brick walls of the cistern until I finally caught up to Colin. He was standing at the end of the shaft, which turned out to be another dead end.
We walked slowly back to the cistern and looked up at the tiny hole in the ceiling.
“It’s gone,” Colin said.
“We need to find Pastor Bob.” We would pass the cobbler’s shop en route to the constable’s offices, which I was looking forward to visiting.
“Basil, we should report back to the gate.”
“We’re getting close, and I don’t think the boys at the gate can help us with this. We should move onward. I suspected that there are more secrets in this town than all the threads used in making a Turkish rug. “We’re alive to see another day and I think we should use it.” I smiled and took his ochre dusted hand within my own. “Let’s get those scared little mice up there to open up the hatch so the cats can hunt their true prey.”
“You mean wolves, don’t you?”
I smiled and said, “Wolves it is then.”
Then he returned my smile and grip, before he said, “Its past time you introduced me to this Pastor Bob.”
···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···
Being alive was only momentarily pleasant, because after the lid was raised we found ourselves pelted with all sorts of unpleasant items that were only just short of things you might find in a latrine.
After wiping the remains of a moldy tomato from my face, I called up, “The mechanical mummy is dead.” Well, for all practical purposes it was.
Unfortunately, they either hadn’t heard me or did not believe me, because I was hit with a soggy romaine heart in the shoulder. I was heartened now by my simple clothing choice. Maybe it was for the best that we didn’t have enough time to stop by my favorite Convent clothing shop, Couture Du Jour.
I had fond memories of the shop from my childhood. I recalled how I used to bring in my Parisian fashion magazines to bribe, fool, or threaten poor seamstress, Mrs. Morgan, into making a replica for me to wear. Most of the time she tried, but they usually turned out to be dowdier versions of the illustrations. Her only daughter was named Millie, and she served as the store’s milliner. She was one of the few girls in town who would talk to me after I had been apprenticed to Grandfather. Funny thing how our parents
had high hopes for us. Millie simply fulfilled her namesake, while I was about as far away from being a chef or a farmer as one could get professionally.
Fortunately for the both of us, fashion transcended station and status. I wondered if Millie was still stuck somewhere in this blasted town, maybe even hiding in their shop. I hoped that she hadn’t been one of the demon’s victims. I owed it to her to get her out of this condemned city.
When the ruffians above finally figured out that we weren’t going to kill them, they stopped, and out we finally surfaced. However, the parishioners continued to keep a close eye on the access point leading back into the underground mausoleum.
“Is that thing gone for good?” the boy with the shotgun asked.
“For now it is,” Colin answered him. “But there could be more, so stay here for now.”
I gave them some sage advice before we left, “When the soldiers come a ringing, you better get a going.”
The others agreed to not leave the church, and then we took our leave. Once we were back outside, I led us around to the front of the church, and we took the blackened shale road to the cobbler’s store. The sky was growing darker again, and it reminded me that time was working against us.
“This way,” I said, taking us deeper into the city center. Along the way, the destruction became more apparent, with holes blown out of brick buildings and random fires in the road, some of which were dying down to reveal half cremated corpses. Some were human looking and some were not.
“It was looking for you,” I said as we walked towards Market Street where the cobbler’s store was located.
“Apparently,” he agreed bitterly.
“Once we find someone directly involved in this mess, you’ll be able to identify their ties to others, possibly more important people who want to remain anonymous in case whatever they are trying to do doesn’t work.”
Colin remained quiet for a minute, but finally said, “I don’t like being a liability.”
“Nonsense. It simply means we can trust no one. My only real concern is how far this goes up. Someone is telling everyone to kill you, so whoever this person is, he must know exactly what you are. How did they learn this? It’s not like you are prominently placed on the President’s advisory council.”
The Summoner's Sigil Page 17
