“Ourpresence is obviously unnecessary,” commented the other man. “Come Mother.” The older woman took his arm and allowed him to assist her to rise.
“Wait,” ordered the Reeve raising a hand imperiously. “I would like to introduce you to the Lady Shamera, widow of Lord Ervan of Escarpment Keep. Lady Shamera, my mother the Lady Tirra and my brother, Lord Ven.”
Shamera’s shallow curtsy was hampered by the fact that Kerim hadn’t released her hand. She smiled at them and then turned back to Kerim, without waiting to see if they would return the greeting. With her free hand she smoothed the hair out of Kerim’s amused face.
Shamera heard the Lady Tirra draw her breath in to speak as Kerim’s servant came in with a new tray from the kitchen. Sham straightened, took the tray, and gifted the servant with a warm smile for his timely interruption; she wasn’t sure how far she could push Lady Tirra without offending Kerim. Balancing the meal easily on one hand, she lifted the warming covers to reveal a nicely roasted chicken with an assortment of greens.
“Ah, that’smuch better. Thank you, Dickon.”
The servant bowed and retreated to the corner he’d occupied from the beginning as Sham set the richly carved wooden tray on Kerim’s lap rather than on the nearby table. She knelt in front of him, ignoring the damage to the material the dressmaker had so carefully pressed.
“Eat, my Leopard; then we will talk,” she purred in the sultriest tone she could manage; it must have worked because she heard the rustle of crisp fabric as Kerim’s mother stiffened with further outrage.
Without taking his eyes off Shamera, Kerim spoke. “My thanks, Mother, for your concern. It seems that I will not be dining alone tonight after all. The gentlemen of the court are doubtless awaiting your late arrival.”
Lady Tirra left the room without another word, leaving her youngest son to trail after her.
FOUR
As the door closed, Kerim turned to his servant. “Dickon, I believe Talbot will be nearby. Find him and send him in, will you?”
“Very good, my lord.” Dickon bowed and left the room.
As soon as the soft click of the latch reached Sham’s ears, she relaxed and sat back in a more comfortable cross-legged position on the floor.
The Reeve looked at her for an instant and then began laughing softly, his shoulders shaking. “I was wondering how we’d pull this off. You’ll forgive me, but when Talbot proposed this, I thought he was insane.”
“Thievery requires a certain amount of boldness, and a touch of theatrics,” she answered, batting her lashes at him. “I have it on good authority that being a mistress has similar requirements.”
He nodded. “No doubt it does, but I’ve seen warriors quake at the sight of my mother.”
She started to reply, but a soft sound from the corridor caught her attention. A moment later there was a gentle tapping on the door. She stood without tangling her feet in the yards of material that formed her skirt, and strode across the room to open the door for Talbot.
The former sailor entered with his usual rolling gait, aiming a wide grin at the Reeve. “Impressive, isn’t she?” Talbot nodded at Sham with the expression of a doting hen viewing her egg. “Told her that black was for when folks were dead. She raised her brows and looked down her nose and said black was erotic. When she came out looking like that I bought a nice black nightdress for the missus.”
“I didn’t expect her this soon.”
“Mmm, well now, it seems that she’ll not be needing tutoring in court ways—she was brought up here under the old king.”
Kerim turned to her, and Sham nodded, quipping, “ ’Fraid I’m not much credit to my upbringing.”
The Reeve gave her a thoughtful glance, then turned his attention back to Talbot. “No word tonight?”
Talbot looked grim. “Nay, sir, but it’ll come.” Looking at Sham, he explained, “Our killer likes to hunt every eight or nine days: ’tis the only real pattern the thing has. Yesterday was the eighth day and no one died, so tonight’s it.”
She frowned, trying to remember what little she knew about demons. “Is there any pattern to the numbers? Like three times it feeds on the eighth day and then twice on the ninth?”
“I don’t know,” answered Talbot, intrigued, “I hadn’t thought it might be a fixed pattern rather than whimsy. I’ll go through the deaths again and see.”
“Is it important?” asked the Reeve.
“It depends,” she said, helping herself to a roll that was sitting ignored on Kerim’s plate. She found a comfortable chair and tugged it around until it faced the Reeve. Talbot took up a seat on the nearest couch.
“On what?” The Reeve picked up his eating knife and began to carve the chicken.
“On whether or not you believe in demons,” she replied—though she didn’t recall any pattern to demon killings. She waited smugly for his reaction. Intelligent, educated Cybellians did not believe in demons.
“I’ve seen a few,” said the presumably intelligent, educated Cybellian Reeve thoughtfully, “but never anywhere near the city.”
Sham choked and then coughed when she inhaled a crumb.
Kerim ignored her outwardly, though she thought there might be a hint of amusement in the lines around his mouth as he continued, “There is no way that these murders are the work of demons. The last victim died in his room in the middle of the day. He kept thirty-odd servants; if it had been a demon, the thing would have been spotted long before it found Abet’s room.”
“Abet’s locked room,” added Talbot meaningfully, looking at Shamera.
“In any case,” continued the Reeve, “I can’t imagine one of the swamp demons dragging its carcass through the whole of Abet’s mansion without someone noticing. Not only are they loud, but they stink like a week-old fish.”
“Ah,” said Sham, enlightened. “These demons of yours, are they strong and devilishly hard to kill? Roughly human in shape?”
The Reeve nodded, “Sounds like all the ones I’ve met.”
“Uriah,” she said firmly. “I’ve never met one—not that I’m complaining. But I’ll tell you this much, I’d rather face a hundred of the things than take on a demon. Uriah are monsters, abominations created by magic. Demonsare magic.”
“Magic,” barked the Reeve, at last giving her the reaction she’d been waiting for. “Every time you Southwoodsmen hear about something that is not easily explained, you sit around nodding sagely and say ‘magic’—as if the whole pox-ridden world turns on it.”
She laughed, “It does, of course. Only self-blinded Easterners can’t see it.”
Kerim shook his head at her, and resumed his speech-making. “I’ve lived here for almost ten years and I’ve never seen someone work magic. Sleight-of-hand, yes—but nothing that can’t be explained by fast hands and a faster mouth.”
“The wizard-born aren’t stupid, messire,” said Talbot mildly. “Ye weren’t here for the blood that followed the conquest of the city—the witch hunts we have now are nothing in comparison. Proper terrified of magic, yer armies were, an’ they slaughtered any mage they could find. The wizards who survived would prefer ye kept on thinking magic’s what the streetcorner busker uses to pull a coin from behind yer ear.”
“And it’s easier for me this way,” added Shamera, to stir up the Reeve again, who’d begun to let Talbot’s calm voice soothe him. “It gives a thief a decided advantage to be able to use magic where no one believes in it. Who am I to ruin the fun?”
“Do ye remember how long the Castle stood against the Prophet’s armies after Landsend itself had fallen?” asked Talbot, ignoring Sham.
“Nine months,” said Kerim reluctantly.
Talbot nodded. “Nine months on what little food they had stored here. Did ye ever find a water source other than the well that was dry long decades before the siege?”
“No.”
Shamera noticed that the Reeve was beginning to sound huffy, as if he didn’t like the direction that this conversation w
as taking. She had thought that Talbot was only trying to calm Kerim down, not change his mind.
In a spirit of general perversity she said, “The weekly mopping of the secret passages aside—”
“Every other week,” corrected Kerim.
She ignored him. “—I would wager there are still ways out of the Castle that no one knows about. Master Talbot, if the Reeve is determined not to believe in magic it’s a waste of time to try and prove otherwise.”
“If his ignorance is a threat to his life it needs to be altered,” countered Talbot with a touch of heat. “This killer is attacking in the Castle, it might choose the Reeve next.”
“Who could stop it if it did?” replied Shamera, becoming serious. “IfI don’t know what to do with a demon, how could a magicless Cybellian—whether he believed in demons or not?”
“Others have tried to educate me concerning magic,” said Kerim neutrally. “Why don’t you educate me about demons instead?”
“Very well,” agreed Sham. Adopting her best “mysterious sorceress” manner she said, “Demons are creatures of magic, called to this world by death and dying.” She grinned at the expression on the Reeve’s face and switched to more matter-of-fact tones as she continued. “Actually, they are summoned here by black magic.”
“What makes you think that it is a demon we’re hunting, not a man?”
“Because my friend—the one Hirkin said I murdered—was killed by a demon.”
Sham looked at the Reeve carefully, trying to see what he was thinking, but his face was as neutral as his voice. “What makes you so certain?”
She shrugged. “He told me as much before he died.”
Talbot stepped in to keep the Reeve from offering the offense disbelief would be. “I doubt ye ever met him, sir, ye came later to Landsend; but the old man who died was Maur, the last king’s advisor.”
Kerim frowned thoughtfully. “The King’s Sorcerer was tortured before he disappeared from the Castle dungeons, but I didn’t think he was as old as the man who died looked.”
“Wizards,” said Sham, striving to keep the bitterness out of her voice, “—especially those as powerful as Maur, can live longer than mundane people. When he could no longer access his magic, he aged rapidly.”
Kerim looked her in the eye. “I was not here when he was tortured, and I would not have countenanced such an action. Magic or no magic, if the records of his words in the King’s council meetings are accurate, he was a man of rare insight.”
Sham allowed herself to be mollified by his answer. “He was attacked by a demon called Chen Laut. He drove it away, but was mortally wounded before it fled.”
“How did he drive it away?” asked Kerim with obvious patience for her Southwood-barbaric beliefs.
She smiled sweetly. “Magic.”
“I thought Maur couldn’t work magic,” said Talbot, frowning.
Sham shrugged, seeing no need to explain the difference between calling magic and working magic.
“So what does a demon look like?” said Kerim. He ignored her attempt to bait him and finished the last of his food.
Sham smiled in anticipation of his reaction. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see it.”
Kerim paused briefly, then shook his head with an air of long-suffering patience. “Demons are invisible. What else can you tell me about them?”
She shrugged, enjoying herself. “Even in Southwood, most people believe in them the way that you believe in magicians—stories told to keep children in at night. You know—” she switched to a sing-song voice and recited,
“The evening comes, the sun is fled.
Shadows chase the fleeing light.
Let fear inspire your silent tread
When demons walk the world of night.”
“I’ve never heard it.” The Reeve bared his teeth at her. “So tell me a story.”
She returned his smile, such as it was. “Demons, like dragons, are creatures of magic rather than mere users of it. They are almost always evil, though there are tales of some that have offered aid or shelter. Demons never appear unsummoned, and are difficult to get rid of. The Wizard’s Council has forbidden the use of sacrifice or human remains while working magic since just after the Wizard Wars about a thousand years ago. Apparently such things are necessary to get rid of demons as well as to summon them.”
She had meant to stop there. She really had. If only he hadn’t gotten that self-righteous, see-what-an-ignorant-savage-you-are expression on his face.
She leaned forward and lowered her voice dramatically. “The wizards would find a likely young man and kidnap him. Demons have no form here on our world. They must be given one. The ceremony is long and brutal, culminating in the young man’s death as the demon takes his body.” That was true enough, as far as she knew. She decided to add a few of the choicer rumors to go along with it. “Sometimes though, the first victim’s body was not usable, due to the brutal rites that summon the demon. You see, the death spells set to keep the demon’s host body from procreating have a tendency to kill the person, or in this case, body they are set upon if the subject is too weak.” She grinned cheerfully and saw that even Talbot looked grim. “If everything is successfully completed, the wizard had a demon enslaved to his will until the wizard’s death.”
“What happens after the wizard died?” asked Kerim, who had resumed an impartial expression soon after she’d began her last speech. How entertaining to find someone who could resist her baiting.
“The demon was destroyed by a contingency of the original binding—” she replied, “—unless the demon was the one who killed the wizard, in which case the demon controls itself.”
“Ah,” said Kerim, “now, the stories.”
“Tybokk—” she said, nodding at Kerim’s remark, “—is probably the most famous of these. The name of his summoner is lost to time, but for four hundred years, more or less, he would join a Trader Clan as it crossed a certain mountain pass—”
“And kill them all?” offered Kerim blandly.
Shamera shook her head, “No, Tybokk was more creative than that. The travelers would arrive at their destination, every one of them, chanting a simple rhyme, day and night; until, one by one, they killed themselves.”
“The rhyme held the clue that destroyed the demon?” suggested Kerim.
Again she shook her head. “That would make a good story, but no. As far as I have heard the rhyme was something like this:
‘Winds may blow,
To and fro.
But we’ll ne’er more
A roaming go.
Tybokk, Tybokk, Tybokk-O!’
He would probably still be destroying Traders if he hadn’t killed the family clan of the man who was then the ae’Magi.”
“The who?” asked the Reeve.
“The ae’Magi,” replied Talbot, sotto voice. “It’s an old title given to the archmage. He’s the wizard who presides over the Wizard’s Council, the appointed leader of all of the magicians—usually he’s the most powerful, but not always.”
Sham waited until they were through talking before she began again. “The ae’Magi was born to the Trader Clans. When news came to him of the deaths of his family, the ae’Magi went hunting. For three years he traveled over the mountain pass that the demon frequented, accompanying various clans as none seemed to be favored over the other. When a stranger joined the party, not an uncommon occurrence, the ae’Magi would test him, to see if he were a demon.”
“How did he do that?” asked the Reeve.
Sham shrugged. “I don’t know. Since the proscription on demon summoning, many of the magics associated with demons have been lost as well.”
She cleared her throat and continued. “One day, or so the story goes, the clan that the ae’Magi was traveling with came upon a skinny young lad, placing the last stone on a newly dug grave. There was a wagon overturned nearby with both of the horses that pulled it lying dead in their traces. The boy had a few scratches, but was otherwise unh
urt by the wolves that killed his family while he watched from a perch in a tree.
“The boy was accepted with no questions: children are treasured by the Trader Clans. He was a solemn child, but that might have been because of the death of his father. The ae’Magi, like most of the Traders, would sooner have suspected himself of being a demon than he would have suspected a child.
“One night the ae’Magi sat brooding in front of a small fire while his fellow Traders danced and exchanged stories. Gradually the stories changed from acts of heroism to more fearful topics, as is the case with most such story-exchanges. Someone, of course, told the story of Tybokk.
“The ae’Magi turned to leave and caught an unusual expression on the strange boy’s face. The boy was smiling, but not as boys do—his smile was predatory.
“A chill crawled up the ae’Magi’s spine as he realized how well the demon had been disguised by its summoner, and how close the mage had come to being defeated by the creature he hunted.
“A great battle followed, one that is yet spoken of with awe by the descendants of the Traders who witnessed it. In the end, the demon’s body was destroyed. The demon was left without form, unable to do more than watch as the Clan traveled out of the mountains in safety.
“Still today, the pass is called the Demon’s Pass or Tybokk’s Reach, and some say that there is an unnatural mist that occasionally follows those that walk that path at night.”
A small silence followed her story, then the Reeve said, “You should have been a storyteller rather than a thief. You would make more money at it.”
She smiled blandly. “You obviously don’t know how much I make thieving.”
“So you think we have another Tybokk?” asked the Reeve.
She shrugged. “If Maur was right when he named it Chen Laut, then we do.”
“Chen Laut is the monster who eats children who don’t do their chores,” explained Talbot. “My mother used to threaten us with him.”