I scrambled to my feet. This all had to be a mistake. A mistake! I stopped myself just in time from driving my fist against the stone wall. Of course she had summoned a demon, and asked it for favors, a process that both wizardry and religion agreed led to eternal damnation. But she was only five years old!
Unlike Cyrus, she’d had the sense to keep it imprisoned in a pentagram rather than letting it run around loose. But that reminded me. There must still be unconscious children in the room with it, awash in the terror beyond terror of death which flowed from a demon, even an imprisoned one.
I hurried back to find that Paul and Gwennie so far had been able to shift about two dozen of the children. I needed to do something, anything, even worse than the king did. A demon, even an enormous horned demon who kept giving me a knowing smile, was not the most terrifying thing I could imagine. Lifting limp boys and girls with magic-I could manage five or six at once-and carrying them away from the chapel was an excellent alternative to dissecting Cyrus bone by bone and nerve by nerve.
He sat huddled in a corner by the arcading, his hands over his head, and Justinia, sitting a dozen yards from him, seemed to have given up trying, but Gwennie and the king kept grimly running up and down the passageway. She was strong and could easily carry two children at a time. Theodora settled Antonia in a corner and came to help.
The others made wide detours around the demon, but I, running with my head down, didn’t care-until my foot skidded and almost slid across the chalk line, which would by breaking the pentagram have let the demon out.
I wiped cold sweat from my forehead with a damp sleeve. All the things they had taught us in demonology class came rushing back. Someone who had sold his soul is even more dangerous to those around him than someone who has damned himself through ordinary sins. Cyrus had barely begun. First the demon fills a person with anger and bitterness, then offers spectacular ways to harm those with whom he imagines he is angry. And why worry about a few murders? His soul is already long gone.
And, if the demon is loose and able to work his own tricks, the situation only grows worse.
The children started to revive once they were away from the chapel. One little boy opened his eyes to find himself in Paul’s arms and asked with delighted surprise, “Are you the brave knight?”
“I guess I’d better be,” he said with a grin, ruffling the boy’s hair for a minute before putting him down and starting back for more.
In ten minutes we had them all spread out in the arcade, well away from the passage that led to the chapel. The king flopped to the floor and leaned back against the wall. He reached up with one hand to pull Gwennie down beside him. Her face was running with sweat and looked exhausted, terrified, and grimly satisfied. “You’ve always been the best friend I’ve ever had,” Paul said, meaning it. He gave her a hard hug as she settled herself on the floor, with no more romantic passion in it than the dozens of hugs he had just been giving children. “Once we’re home I’m changing your title from acting castle constable to permanent constable. When you told me you thought you could handle the duties, did you ever expect them to include facing a demon?”
We caught our breaths for a minute. All a big mistake, I told myself again. Baptized children went straight to heaven, as long as they had not yet reached the age of reason and therefore could not commit intentional sin. Didn’t they? What was the age of reason? Seven for sure. Yes, that was right. Seven. Antonia was only five.
Did demons recognize how old a person was in human years, or did they ask only if they had functioning reasoning abilities-if, for example, they could read and work magic?
“When I was little,” said Paul, “I always thought it would be exciting to meet a demon. Now that I have met one, I can’t say I particularly care to repeat the experience. Did you see that belly? Those eyes? But I do remember learning about pentagrams. Looks like your daughter, Wizard, must have drawn a pentagram to imprison it-she’s an amazing little girl, and you have no reason at all to hide her. One of her chalk lines, I couldn’t help noticing, looked scuffed, but it was redrawn carefully. And the demon appears pretty well trapped now.”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “It can’t move away or hide, and it can’t make itself invisible. As long as no one lets it out, it shouldn’t be able to do anything to terrify us, such as bringing more vipers and apparitions.”
“Oh, I’m terrified quite enough already, if it asks,” said Paul cheerfully. “But it looks like we’ve won, then! Cyrus seems to have broken down completely without his demon to help him,” with a glance in his direction, “and Vlad’s a frog, so once it’s a little lighter outside one of us can fly the carpet back to Caelrhon and tell the parents all their children are safe.”
That reminded me. I had better try to find Vlad again.
“And I guess sending the demon back to hell is something you wizards know how to do,” Paul continued lightly. He looked around at children starting to sit up groggily, many of them apparently deciding the whole episode had been a nightmare and lying down to sleep again. The Princess Margareta was awake but lay silently, as though trying to make it all make sense in her own mind.
“Maybe Mother has a point,” the king went on. “If I got married I could have children. Maybe not a hundred. Say, a dozen or so. Wouldn’t that be great, to have a dozen little princes and princesses running around the castle?”
“You’d better consult your queen on that.” Gwennie managed to say it as a joke. Margareta, looking startled, rose on her elbows.
Paul laughed without seeming to notice either’s reaction. For him, all our troubles were over rather than just beginning. “All right. Maybe I’ll settle for three or four. Too bad I don’t have any brothers or sisters of my own, or I could have nieces and nephews. And if the duchess’s daughters aren’t going to marry-” He stopped. “That reminds me, Wizard. Is Celia a novice nun now?”
I had completely forgotten about the twins since leaving them at the nunnery. “I suppose so. They would have had to finish the ceremony without a spiritual sponsor.”
“I’ll ride down there in a few days,” said Paul lazily. “They probably won’t let me see her, but at least I can find out if everything is going smoothly. I was looking through some old ledgers-thanks again, Gwennie, by the way, for helping me find them-and it looks as though previous kings of Yurt sometimes made gifts to the nunnery, so maybe I should too.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, a voice floated through the window. “Hello!” It sounded magically amplified. “Is anyone there?”
I knew that voice. I jumped up so fast I almost slipped and leaped to the window. Outside, hovering somewhat tentatively in mid-air, were two wizards, one black-bearded and one with a red bandit’s beard: Elerius and Evrard.
Paul joined me at the window and waved enthusiastically. “What’s that older wizard’s name, Elerius, is that right?” he asked me with a low chuckle. “It seems like he’s always showing up just a few minutes too late, just after you’ve finished disposing of the enemy. You’re going to make him jealous at this rate, Wizard!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him how wrong he was.
“We’d been combing Caelrhon almost inch by inch for any sign of you and the children,” said Evrard. “At first Elerius”-with a nod toward the other wizard-“was able to pick up the remnants of the tracer spell you’d put on the flying carpet earlier this summer, but the spell disappeared as we came upriver. And we could have sworn this castle wasn’t even here!”
Elerius meanwhile was introducing himself to Theodora. They had spoken on the telephone but never actually met. “So this is the witch of Caelrhon,” said Elerius pleasantly, regarding her from under peaked eyebrows, “for whom Daimbert has been willing to flount all the traditions of wizardry.”
“But about half an hour ago,” said Evrard, continuing his story, “Elerius said he could sense a major spell breaking up somewhere in this direction. And as we approached a ruined castle suddenly materialized before us, towers, battlements, and all!” His cheerful blue eyes looked concerned for a moment. “And there wasn’t much question about the presence of the supernatural….”
I flew down to the base of the cliffs to retrieve the carpet, and Paul and Gwennie began loading children. Justinia, with no desire whatsoever to stay in this castle, agreed to pilot it back to Caelrhon. “We should be able to take them all in three or four trips,” said Paul. “Princess Margareta had better be in the first group, or it could provoke an international incident!” He laughed at his own humor. “Yes, that’s right,” to one of the children. “You’ll be back with your mother very soon.”
“So the demon’s already trapped in a pentagram, I gather,” said Elerius, looking at me thoughtfully. “That certainly saves the hard magic of chasing it around the castle. We won’t need the demonology experts from the school; the person who summoned it can just send it back.” He waited expectantly.
The first carpet-load of children took off, awake and laughing now. The king and Gwennie accompanied them, while Theodora stayed with the rest. Antonia was still asleep, curled up on the hard stone floor with her chestnut hair loose across her face.
I turned back to see Elerius still looking at me. I realized slowly that he was wondering just how desperate I had been to rescue her. Evrard himself was just working out that I even had a daughter and seemed shocked-at least in part, I thought, because everyone here but he seemed to know about it.
I took a deep breath. This was going to take all the wizardry we knew between us. “I didn’t summon the demon myself,” I said, not mentioning that in only slightly different circumstances I might have. I went on to tell them how Cyrus had long been working with a demon, ever since his apprenticeship days in the eastern kingdoms with Vlad-who I still hadn’t found-and how Antonia had decided the easiest way to save him from it and to get all the children rescued was to summon a demon herself.
“What did you say she was, five?” said Evrard. “Too young to have to worry about her soul, then. Pretty sharp move, Daimbert!” giving me a punch on the shoulder as though it had all been my idea. “Let’s wake her up and have her return it to hell. If she could lisp out the words to call it she should be able to send it back all right.”
Elerius had known Antonia; Evrard had not. The former had the good taste not to take for granted that there was no problem. He gave me a long, sober look from his tawny hazel eyes. “I swear on all the powers of magic, Daimbert,” he said quietly, “I did not teach her any demonology.”
Evrard looked back and forth between us, realizing there was more going on than he realized. I shook my head. “I didn’t think you had. That’s not what’s bothering me.”
Elerius nodded slowly. “If someone has sold his or her soul, the only chance to get it back is through negotiation, before rather than after the demon returns to hell.”
Evrard wrinkled his forehead in surprise. “Aren’t the two of you getting a little overexcited here? Wizardry doesn’t worry about people’s souls. And even if she didn’t get off for being so young, she’d still have seventy years or so to worry about it. And-”
Before he had a chance to tell me reassuringly that she would probably damn herself a dozen different ways in the next seventy years anyway, Evrard found himself propelled backwards hard and fast through the air. He hit the wall and subsided slowly.
“All right, all right, I get the hint,” he said good-naturedly.
“Daimbert!” said Theodora, who had been following our conversation from a little distance away.
But that hadn’t been my magic. That had been Elerius.
We sat quietly, close together, our eyes locked. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you trying to help me?” In part I realized I was stalling; as long as Antonia was asleep, as long as the demon down in the ruined chapel was imprisoned in the pentagram, things could not get any worse than they already were. But in part I wanted to understand.
“We all take oaths to help humanity,” he said slowly. “A little girl is part of humanity. But there is of course more, Daimbert, as you and I know. If we called the school, the demonology experts would doubtless tell us that the theoretical danger to a girl’s soul, a danger they would have to discuss with the priests to assess properly-which they have no intention of doing-is nothing compared to the very real danger of a demon loose in the world. Back to hell with it at once, the school’s masters would tell us, before it breaks out of the pentagram, and if one girl is sacrificed it’s still worth it.”
The castle was quiet around us. The children dozed again while waiting, and the only sounds came from Cyrus, who sat a short distance from us, his head in his hands and muttering. Evrard and Theodora were listening but could have been miles away. “That sounds like the kind of logic that would appeal to you, Elerius,” I said. “You always claim to be working for the greater good of humanity, even if a few standards or a few people have to be sacrificed along the way.”
He was not insulted. “I am speaking openly, Daimbert. I know perfectly well that in trying to help Antonia-and she is a delightful little girl, one that anyone of any sensitivity would want to help-I am not following the school’s standards. But there is a higher good here. I have spoken to you of this before. Someday, probably sooner than they think, the masters of the school will have to step aside for younger leadership. It’s no secret that everyone assumes-including me-that I shall be part of that leadership. And when that time comes I will want your help.”
I looked away, not able to meet his calculating gaze any longer. “You said all this once before, but I would have thought it would be clear now that I could never join the school faculty. They don’t want wizards who have families.”
“Because such a wizard would let his judgment be swayed by personal considerations?” said Elerius with half a smile. “It is a good policy, but I may have to make an exception here. Certainly I will not now tell the school what you yourself have managed remarkably well to keep hidden from them. By the time I assume the leadership I will be in a position to make my own rules. I don’t know what it is about you, Daimbert. Your grasp of academic magic is scarcely better than Evrard’s”-the red-headed wizard cringed-“and yet somehow you are always in the right place at the right time.”
I seemed at the moment to be in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time, but I didn’t interrupt.
“And you have imagination and a flair for improvisation, and you have a daughter who knows more magic at five than most first-year wizardry students-someone who, if she is not perverted by a demon, could be very useful to organized wizardry herself when just a little older. Yet you have always been suspicious of me. Call this calculation if you like, but I want your friendship. Trying to save Antonia is but a small price to pay for that friendship.”
I was not quite persuaded yet. “You realize,” I said slowly, “that if these negotiations go the way I think they may, I won’t even be around to help you in your plans and projects.”
“That is why you need me now, Daimbert: another wizard to give you a chance to get both of you out of this alive. Unless your mistrust of me weighs heavier than your fears for Antonia?”
“I’d deal with the devil himself to save her,” I said, looking at him quickly and then away. “And it looks as though I will.”
We woke Antonia gently. She didn’t want to wake up and kept digging her knuckles into her eyes and trying to turn away from the light. But when she spotted Elerius she sat up in my lap and gave him a broad smile. “I remembered everything you taught me about frogs,” she said with enthusiasm.
I myself had nearly been forced to leave the wizards’ school because of all my trouble with those frogs in Zahlfast’s transformations practical. She had to get this ability from Theodora.
“So that was you who turned the man into a frog?” Elerius asked. We had sent Evrard off to scour the castle for Vlad.
“That’s right. He really was a bad man. After I’d summoned the demon he came running into the room where we all were, very excited. I think he was looking for the Dog-Man. He had been very quiet and pretend-polite when I saw him before, so it made me even more scared because he was shouting and threatening- That’s when I turned him into a frog.” She smiled happily. “I think he was surprised.”
“I’m sure he was,” said Theodora from across the room. “I still can’t do transformations myself.” So the Lord knew where she had gotten this ability.
And the devil knew where she would get her next startling abilities if we couldn’t reclaim her soul.
“But I want to hear more about how you summoned the demon,” said Elerius gently.
Antonia would clearly have preferred to discuss the frog some more, but she reluctantly agreed to provide details. “When he appeared in the pentagram I told him I wanted a dem-a demastr-a demonstration. The book said sometimes they would do one for free. And I said for my demonstration he should catch the other demon and make him go back to hell.” She laughed. “That’s like a joke-demon, demonstration.”
“And what did he say?” I said, abruptly hoping against hope. Maybe Evrard was right, and I’d gotten myself all worked up for nothing.
“He said that was too hard to be a demonstration. That’s when I told him I was Mistress of the Pentagrams and he had to do it whether he wanted to or not. He did, too,” she said, pleased at the memory of wielding such power. “I had to make an opening in the pentagram to let him out, but I told him I only did it if he promised to come right back. I made the second pentagram to hold the demon he caught while I was waiting for them.” She sighed. “That was probably the worst part of all, with two demons right there in the room, before the Dog-Man’s disappeared and I was able to redraw the line to keep mine in.”
Elerius and I exchanged glances. We might be able to persuade the demon to return to hell with no one’s soul, to convince him that all of this fell into the category of demonstrating demonic powers before reaching agreement on a soul’s sale. I doubted it.
“Don’t you think,” suggested Antonia, “that now that the Dog-Man doesn’t have a demon any more he’ll be happier?” Cyrus was making low whimpering noises at the moment. It was a nice thought on Antonia’s part, but it hadn’t worked: with the demon back in hell he had simultaneously lost his power to do black magic in this world and any hope for the redemption of his soul in the next.
I stood up, clenched and unclenched my fists, and walked over to Theodora. I had been kissing her for over a minute before she realized that this public display of affection meant that I was saying good-bye.