“Should we ask Cyrus for his help?” asked Elerius. “He’s certainly had experience dealing with a demon.” He paused. “I never have.”
We both looked toward Cyrus. The Dog-Man, the miracle-worker with the key to the city of Caelrhon, the failed seminary student, was huddled in on himself: a broken man without the demon who had long accompanied him. “Not unless we think we could pass off his soul in trade,” I said in disgust. “But at this point I doubt even the devil would want it if it wasn’t long since his.”
“You and me, then,” said Elerius, and we started down the passage toward the ruined chapel. Antonia reluctantly accompanied us, holding both our hands. Either one of us could have sent the demon back to hell at once since it was already imprisoned in a pentagram, but we needed Antonia to start the conversation if we were going to try to negotiate.
At the last minute Cyrus looked up and rose to slink along behind us, but he had the good sense to stop well short of the chapel. A hundred reasons why it would be much better to put this off struck me, but I kept on walking, teeth tight together to keep them from chattering. Knowing the feeling of raw terror was about to strike made it no easier when it did.
The chapel was pitch black, even though outside the windows it was now early morning. The only light came from the demon himself. He was alive, glowing, yet essentially motionless. Our feet slowed and dragged as we crossed the room toward the pentagram. Antonia faced the demon squarely, visibly struggling to keep from sobbing again. He gave her a wide and evil grin, as if she were a dainty morsel he was about to consume.
“By Satan, by Beelzebub,” she brought out between trembling lips, and my heart wrenched to hear her have to say it, “by Lucifer and Mephistopheles.”
At these words of summons he abruptly became twice as alive, twisting in a veil of smoke within the pentagram. “I am yours to obey, Antonia,” he said pleasantly-or his best attempt. “What can I bring you? What enemies of yours can I destroy?”
“I don’t want anything,” she said stubbornly, keeping her eyes on the floor. “But you have to talk to these wizards.”
Not quite the language recommended by the Diplomatica Diabolica, but it would do. “Quick, get back to your mother,” I whispered, giving her a push.
“But I have to help you, Wizard,” she whispered back, retreating only a short distance. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Theodora half way down the corridor and motioned to her.
But before I could make sure Antonia was well on her way the demon spoke again. And he spoke to me.
“Daimbert, what a surprise! Are you back to take me up on some of the offers you rejected last time we met?”
The final scraps of my courage vanished. Just as I had feared. Thousands of demons in hell, and Antonia had summoned this one. Maybe Yurt was his territory just as it was mine.
The demon fixed me with a malevolent eye. “Before we begin,” he said conversationally in his high voice, “you’ll have to let me out of this pentagram so I can work for you. I can take your soul, of course, if you’d like to hand it over, but I assume you’ll want some benefits in return? I thought so. They usually do.”
“No ‘benefits,’ Demon,” I said harshly, trying to make myself furious because it was the only alternative to abject terror. “You’re staying right there until we’ve finished negotiating.”
“But I know someone who would like something from me,” said the demon coyly-or as coyly as something red and bulging could manage. “Antonia,” he called, “come erase the pentagram, even just a single chalk mark as you did before, and I’ll bring you something you’ll really like. Haven’t you always wanted to see a dragon?”
“A dragon? Really?” She turned and took half a step toward us, then looked fully at the enormous mouth and fiery eyes and raced up the passage toward her mother.
I let my breath out all at once and had trouble catching it again. A good thing this demon didn’t have experience trying to be tempting to little girls while trapped inside a pentagram.
“We have come to bargain with you,” I said as firmly as I could. “Let us begin with non-binding conversation.” I glanced toward Elerius, wondering when he was going to add something, and saw him trembling hard. In some ways that was the most terrifying thing I had seen yet.
“Non-binding conversation,” agreed the demon good-naturedly, showing a remarkable number of pointed teeth. “That way you can ask me for whatever you want without worrying about the results.” This was actually not accurate, but the Diplomatica Diabolica did make it clear that one was less likely to be tricked by a demon if the conversation had been declared non-binding.
“You say you want to negotiate,” continued the demon, “but you have, I fear, caught me in a position of weakness.” He gestured at the pentagram with an enormous hand. “You see me imprisoned here. If you and all your friends just walked away, I wouldn’t be able to play any of my little tricks that seem to annoy you so much, I wouldn’t be able to whisper suggestions in Antonia’s ear, and, in short, you could forget I even existed! So your coming around talking of negotiations suggests you’d actually like something from the devil but are just too shy to ask.”
“Not at all,” I said sternly. So far, so good. The temptation to leave him in the ruined chapel and run lasted for only a second. “You know you’d like nothing better than to be left right here.” I glanced surreptitiously at the pentagram; it appeared well-drawn, without flaws. “Sooner or later the chalk would wash away, or dry up and blow away, or someone would come exploring the castle and break the chalk lines without realizing the danger. Leaving you here would only postpone the problem-or make it a hundred times worse if we had to chase you and capture you. I’m not going to walk away and leave you here, and I’m not going to let you out. And I’m also not going to ask you for favors in this world.”
“If you keep on rejecting what I could offer you before I even offer it,” said the demon with a flash of fire from his eyes, “you risk getting nothing at all!”
“Fine,” I said shortly. “I only want Antonia’s safety.”
The negotiations seemed to have begun. “Now, you claim to want no benefits from me,” said the demon, settling himself comfortably in the center of the pentagram, “but you and I both know that’s not true. You’d like to be a better wizard, you’d like to find a way to combine marriage to a witch with continued association in organized wizardry-and, oh yes, I don’t want to forget, you’d like some assurance that your daughter has not yet ‘lost’ her soul, as your so-called religion so quaintly puts it.” He grinned evilly. “This sounds to me like a lot to expect in return for one soul that’s already fairly well stained!”
It was better not to ask how a demon gained knowledge about someone. “You’re starting from the wrong assumptions,” I said roughly. “I don’t want-” I stumbled over the words and started again. “I wouldn’t want any of the rest if I only had it because of you. All I want is the assurance that you have given up any hold over Antonia.”
“That sweet little girl will make an especially tasty mouthful for the devil,” said the demon, licking his lips in anticipation. “Why should I assure you of anything of the sort? After all, she summoned me herself and has already asked for a very large favor. Don’t tell me you think she’s not capable of making her own choices!”
Not yet, she wasn’t, I told myself desperately. She was still only five. And that the demon had tried to tempt her further, with an offer to see a dragon, suggested that he had at least some doubts himself.
Either that or he was toying with me.
“You are not entitled to her soul, Demon,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster, “and you and I both know it.” The room grew slowly but steadily hotter as we talked. “Don’t interrupt! Three reasons. First, she is well short of the age of reason, which is seven, and therefore cannot yet damn herself by her own actions. Secondly, she may have asked a single rather simple favor of you, but it was from the purest motives: she wanted to save another mortal. And third, if she ‘sold’ her soul to you she didn’t get what she wanted in return, for Cyrus is as thoroughly damned as ever.”
The demon waved his hand airily. “You ought to know that the reckoning of mortal years means little to us. Do you imagine that a child who plotted and executed the deaths of all his playmates would be safe just because he desisted the day before his seventh birthday? And, as I am sure she will confirm if you ask, she did not actually ask me to ‘save’ Cyrus, which I would have not done anyway. She only asked me to return another demon to hell.”
“And she asked for your help only from the purest of motives,” I insisted again. “Someone who selflessly gives his life to save another goes straight to heaven. How much more then someone who gives his soul?”
“Nice try, Daimbert,” said the demon, showing all his teeth. “But how could the devil take one soul in exchange for another if you claim that the second thereby saved itself? You’ll be trying to assert that hell has no claims to anyone at this rate.”
“She didn’t even know she was selling her soul,” I said, retreating to a backup position. “Souls are always judged on intention. If you now claim her it is on the merest technicality.”
I had nearly forgotten Elerius was there. Concentrating on the demon and on withstanding my own fears left me no time for anything else. When he suddenly spoke I jerked convulsively.
“The protocol between wizardry and demons has always been clear on this point,” he said, managing to sound impressively calm and assured. “A soul that might be forfeit, although only on the shakiest grounds, can be redeemed by the offering of a human life, not another soul.”
“And therefore,” I said, fast before my lips could freeze in terror, “I am here to offer my own life in return for Antonia’s soul.”
Both Elerius and the demon spoke together. “Not you, Daimbert!” Elerius hissed. “I’m trying to give him Vlad.”
“Not this bargain again, Daimbert!” said the demon with a laugh that made his enormous belly shake. “I unwisely agreed to such a bargain with you once long ago, and you managed to wiggle out of it. Did you think I would be so easy to mislead a second time?”
“All right, then,” said Elerius briskly. I was for the moment unable to speak, filled both with bitter despair that the one way I hoped I might have to rescue Antonia wasn’t going to work, and with a wild, desperate, and shameful relief that I might still live. “We’ll offer you another life instead, the life of a wizard right here in the castle.”
“Elerius, I’m so pleased to have a chance to meet you at last,” said the demon, the flames shooting from his eyes spoiling the effect of his friendly words. The room by now was as hot as a stove. “I can see you’ll be much more engaging to deal with than Daimbert, who always seems suicidally bent on throwing away his life. But you do have to understand something first. If you want me to take the life of this wizard-frog in return for the girl-and that was what you had in mind, was it not? — then it would have to be his own sacrifice. You could if you like give your own soul to the devil by murdering that wizard in cold blood, but if you want to bargain with me there must be less messy ways to do it.”
“There are other protocols to turn to in that case,” said Elerius, sounding abruptly much less assured.
Both my life and my soul, I thought. I could offer them together for Antonia’s release. That might do it. If I was dead as well as damned then I wouldn’t need to worry about the evil I would do to all the people I loved for the next two centuries. I found my mouth too dry to speak.
“Unlike Daimbert,” said the demon to Elerius, shifting his belly to a more comfortable position, “you have never paid much attention to the prattle of your religion. I’m sure you assume you’ll be going to hell in the end anyway, and therefore would be more than willing to gain some spectacular benefits in this world in exchange for a soul that would never have much chance for salvation.”
Suppose, because I was trying to save Antonia, the devil thought my motives were too pure and wouldn’t accept the bargain, even when I offered body and soul together? I might have to have an additional and entirely impure motive. Maybe I could stipulate murdering Cyrus as part of the agreement: an appealing possibility.
“Do not try to tempt me with talk of benefits, Demon,” said Elerius sternly. “We are here to talk about Antonia.”
“And I am delighted to do so. Since you seem so concerned about her, why don’t we arrange a simple trade, your soul for hers? Now before you start to tell me this is an unequal trade,” holding up a huge red hand, “wait until I tell you what else I can give you as part of the bargain.”
“You cannot give me anything I could not obtain on my own,” said Elerius. It came out low and thick.
“Elerius-” I started to say, but he motioned me to silence.
“Don’t interrupt,” he said in an undertone. “I should be able to negotiate better than you can, because I don’t have personal feelings to interfere.”
“You wizards must be the most exasperating mortals there can be to deal with,” said the demon with an evil chuckle. “Even priests aren’t nearly as stubborn, once they get past their initial hesitation. Of course there are things you want, Elerius, that you could not obtain without me. To start with, how about the immediate leadership of the wizards’ school?”
There was a long pause while I waited for Elerius to answer, and he did not.
So far my knees had been holding up fairly well. Now they started to shake so badly that I had to sit down quickly before I fell.
“The school already has a Master,” Elerius brought out at last in a thin, tight voice, completely unlike his normal way of speaking.
“Your choice then. Shall he have a little accident, or will he suddenly decide that failing health makes it necessary for him to step aside?” That was the problem of trying to deal with a demon. He might not know someone’s higher thoughts and aspirations, but he knew all too well the dark imaginings and cravings that one tried to hide even from oneself.
“I choose neither one,” replied Elerius after only a brief pause, appearing to rally slightly. “I plan to take over the school’s direction with my own unaided powers, but not for some years yet.”
“You’re certainly quick now to reject what you know you’ve always wanted,” said the demon softly. I tried unsuccessfully to speak, but this had nothing to do with me. “Why waste the best years of your life, the years of your greatest strength and mature abilities, waiting for an old man whose only real skill is an unusual ability to prolong his own life? Daimbert, I see, would like to give you an argument, but he’ll come around quickly when he realizes that I’ll let his daughter have her soul back as part of our bargain.”
Elerius ran his tongue along dry lips and barked out a very unconvincing laugh. “If I take over the school it will be to help humanity, not to further your own evil plans. This bargain will not help me at all.”
“Just too dismissive,” said the demon, shaking his horned head, “that’s your problem, just too dismissive of good ideas if they don’t accord with your own prejudices. Suppose we add a little rather unusual twist to our agreement? I’ll make sure you take over the school at once, but then I’ll step aside. I won’t try to tempt you further or direct your plans; you’ll be able to do all the ‘good’ you want without my interference. I promise!” He laid a heavy hand over what would have been his heart if he had one.
Dear God, I thought, unable to say anything, shouting mentally at Elerius to refuse at once and getting no response. All the damage a master wizard could do if he had sold his soul flashed through my mind. Between his own powers and the added abilities of black magic, not all the western wizards combined could stand against him. And someone like Elerius, who had always thought that one needed to bend a few rules to reach the final good and justifiable end, would find himself bending more and more rules, and would be quite surprised to find that he was entirely alone in believing that his goals were good.
I had come here intending to find a way to save Antonia. Now it looked like I would have to save Elerius’s soul as well-and it was almost too late.