The Vessel of Ra

by Catherine Schaff-Stump

  No. Her father was wrong. Lucy need not have died this way. Octavia had seen it. Lucy was more powerful, even though Father had kept her ignorant for Octavia’s sake. Octavia couldn’t reverse what had happened, but she decided she could punish her father for what he had made.

  Where was Khun? She had never been without Khun, and she couldn’t feel him.

  Put Khun aside.

  Ra and his desire for the Solomon Scroll consumed her. Together they would command all the demons of the Abyss.

  They weren’t demons, were they? If they weren’t demons, was being with Khun so very wrong, so very shameful?

  We need to eliminate Borgia. He is dangerous to us.

  Octavia studied the old man. She’d forgotten about him. He looked like a mud doll to her now. Octavia was a god and she could do what she wanted.

  Octavia!

  She shook her head. Paolo was the dangerous one, crafty and sly. He had tricked Lucy into freeing Ra. He had caused this. He had failed to save her and Lucy. Not that she wanted to be saved. Not that she wanted Lucy alive. Poor Lucy.

  “What shall I do with you, old man?” She was one with Ra, their wishes of the same accord. “You are dangerous. You wanted to control me.”

  “You can’t blame me for trying,” said Paolo. “You’re not the only one who wants power.”

  “You would presume to control Ra when you are not under contract with him? You are no Binder. He would devour your body and soul.”

  “I’ve had some practice with demons,” said Paolo. “You’re right, but I would’ve lasted long enough to do what I needed to do.”

  Octavia slanted a smile at him. “You failed. Your whole life has been failure, hasn’t it?”

  “I play the long game,” said Paolo.

  “What should I do with you?” Octavia repeated. “Should we rip you to shreds, like Lucy?”

  “I’m no threat to you,” said Paolo. “I’m an old man. You’ve beaten me.”

  “You are a threat. You are like a fox.” Octavia tilted her head.

  “Do nothing,” said Paolo. “There is nothing I can do to you. I have no demon, no allies, and I am old. I will die soon enough without your interference. Ra should find me beneath him.”

  He is beneath us. Ra’s voice echoed inside her head. Yet the world is tidier when refuse is swept away. Send him to the Abyss.

  Octavia sliced the air with her hands. It cracked, brimstone and fire shooting into the sky.

  Paolo stood, his movements stiff like a marionette’s. “I see. Banishment.”

  “You are not beneath our notice,” said Octavia. “If you do survive, you will have our admiration.”

  Paolo nodded. “If I do survive, I will come back for you. I’ll make sure to bring a suitable souvenir.”

  Octavia lashed around Paolo with a shadow. With a whipping action, she pushed him into the fire. Reality knit back together with a clap.

  “Now,” said Octavia. “We need to find Drusus.”

  You do not need him. We want the scroll.

  “My father and Neith will fight us.”

  We are more than a match for Neith.

  “Yes,” Octavia agreed. “I have matters to settle with Father.” Octavia took to the air using Ra’s wings. Venice was a fetid, stinking city drowning in its own filth and decay. The old Octavia died here. From this point forward, she would shape the new world in her image—Ra’s image.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After a short time, Carlo lost sight of the swamps and grasslands of Venice. They moved with speed, the wind pulsing like the sea in his ears. After his stomach settled and his brain decided he wasn’t going to fall, he found excitement in being pulled along in Drusus’ wake, the liberation of the air fighting off exhaustion. Underneath them rolled the hills and trees of Tuscany. Olive groves zigzagged under them like rustic lace. So much land! How could people live on so much land?

  Underlying the flight was a tremor in Drusus’ command of the sky. He was straining from the effort of keeping them aloft. The turbulence was a distraction from Carlo’s grief for Paolo and Lucy. When they began to plummet and Drusus pulled them up at the penultimate moment, Carlo decided to take definitive action.

  “Stop!” Carlo shouted over the wind.

  “No,” said Drusus.

  “Yes. Enough. I want to look at your arm, clean you up a little. We’re out of immediate danger.” He hoped.

  The grass, warmed by the sun, smelled fresh. At this time of year, gray was a constant in Venice. Tuscany was vivid green as far as the eye could see.

  Drusus sucked on his teeth as he landed. “You’re a doctor now?”

  “I’m the next best thing.” Carlo’s feet hit the firm road and he found solid ground novel, earth, which did not sink into mush. “I have many things with me for healing. If nothing else, we can bandage your eye.”

  “You’re a Borgia. How do I know you won’t poison me?” Carlo helped Drusus ease to the ground.

  “Make no mistake. If I decide you are too broken, I will put you out of your misery. Then I’ll disappear into Greece or somewhere and leave all this behind me. I should escape while I can.” Carlo sifted through the ingredients in his cloak pockets. He found a hard, flat package and pulled it out.

  “What’s in the package?” asked Drusus.

  “I don’t know.” He pulled back the wrapping.

  The spearhead. Carlo touched the edge of it, and his finger stung. He breathed in sharply.

  “Are you well?” Drusus struggled up.

  “Stay put. I’ve burned myself is all. The blade Nonno used to cut the tie between Lucy and Ra. How did I get it?”

  “You had to be the old man’s contingency plan for keeping it safe.”

  Carlo covered it with cloth and put it back in the cloak, not touching the blade. A spell of transferring things to your grandson? Did such an incantation exist?

  He located the vial of witch hazel and ripped some lining from the upper part of his cloak, leaving a hole near the collar. As he dabbed at Drusus’ eye, the man winced.

  “This looks horrible, but there’s no danger of losing the eye. The arm?”

  Drusus gritted his teeth as Carlo touched it. “Broken.”

  “It’s possible you have dislocated your shoulder.” Carlo prodded as gingerly as possible. Drusus squeezed his eyes shut. Carlo felt the bone. “You’re right. Broken. Not neatly either. Pulverized. You may not have proper use of this arm again. Let’s splint it.”

  The sticks Carlo came up with were cut from a green tree. More strips from the cloak lining and he was ready to work. “Do you want some laudanum?”

  “I think it is best to have our wits about us.”

  “Masochist. Lay down.”

  Drusus yelled out once and cut it off with a click of his jaw.

  “You know,” said Carlo, “I think your efrit isn’t paying attention. Massive magical ripples, a demon with the wrong Binder, and here we are on our way through Tuscany. Our slow way through Tuscany.”

  Drusus’ voice was edged with effort. “We are a long way from Erasmus’ Temple.”

  Carlo edged Drusus’ arm with the sticks and knotted the strips of tightened cloth. “What good is it being a mystical watchdog if you don’t do your job? There.” Carlo sat back on his haunches. “How do you like that?”

  “I think I felt better before, Carlo.”

  Carlo smiled at the use of his name. “Well. In regard to your healing, I am playing the long game. We are not flying anymore. That’s flat.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do? It will take us weeks without magic.”

  “You know nothing of conjuring efrits?”

  “Not my specialty.” Drusus shifted, hissing with pain.

  “Efrits should be your specialty, what with all your electricity and lightning and so on. I wish we had a magic lamp.”

  “Don’t confuse efrits with djinn. A magic lamp only summons a particular djinn, besides.”

  Carlo placed the flat spearh
ead on the ground. “Perhaps we have a metaphorical magic lamp. If this is powerful enough to separate Lucy and Ra, it should be a beacon to the Klaereon’s cautious guardian.”

  Carlo wasn’t certain Drusus heard him. The man sat up to stare into the distance. “Do you see it?” Drusus asked Carlo. “Do you feel it?”

  Carlo squinted. “The shimmering?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “If it were summer, I would say heat. Since it is not summer, I think I should examine it more closely. “

  “We should.”

  “Fine,” said Carlo. He couldn’t leave Drusus here. Even injured, Octavia’s husband was more useful than Carlo was whole.

  As Carlo pulled Drusus up, he felt sweat run down the nape of his neck. The air was hot and hard to breathe.

  “Watch out!” Drusus shouted.

  Carlo managed to get Drusus to his feet scant seconds before the wavering haze of heat passed over them with a pop. Carlo’s hearing muffled and then his ears opened with resounding clarity.

  The Klaereon family efrit had noticed the spear. Carlo couldn’t come up with any other explanation for where they were now: the barren wastes of a desert somewhere in the world. Magic could have been gentler with them, given Drusus’ condition and their lack of a map.

  The air was an inferno. Around him, sand shimmered like it had been tossed with diamonds. The sun was a glaring eye in an intense blue sky. Carlo’s skin slicked with sweat like he was melting. He peeled off his dark cloak and his grandfather’s coat, dropping them to the ground. He fought with his stiff collar, hands smudging his shirt with dried mud. “Desert,” he appraised. “Efrits are from deserts.”

  “I rather thought Balthazar would come to us,” said Drusus. “Closer to the actual threat.” He smoothed his wet hair back with his good arm.

  “Magic means you can commit all sorts of inconveniences. Drusus, can you make rain from nothing?”

  “It might be better to get in the shade.”

  “That was humor on your part, I surmise.” Carlo transferred as many bottles to Paolo’s jacket as possible. They wouldn’t all fit. He sorted, trying to guess which items might be more useful against a mystical efrit. “Which way do we head?”

  “I have no sense of it,” Drusus said, his voice weak.

  Carlo wished Paolo had taught him something, anything useful about magic. He rubbed grit off his upper lip. Solomon’s servant might destroy him for his demonic heritage, or he and Drusus might die of exposure in the Egyptian desert, or worse, some alternate dimension where efrits hid Solomon Scrolls.

  Drusus’ skin was ash-pale. He was in pain, but they were both lucky he hadn’t drunk laudanum, given the situation.

  “Should we wait for him to come to us?” Carlo didn’t care for the idea as soon as he said it out loud, but there was no convenient compass in Carlo’s cloak or Paolo’s pockets, and he was empty of ideas about how to pull something from nothing. He picked up a fistful of sand. With this and the right container, he could tell time, not direction.

  An idea dawned. Carlo smiled. For the first time in his life, he would use magic for his own good. “Maybe I have a sense of it.” Carlo closed his eyes and let himself feel the heat, the crunch of sand, the bleached bones and underground life. A slight tingle; the magic he felt when Octavia had challenged him, had transformed him, flared inside him, and he nursed the flame of his demon nature.

  He heard Drusus in the distance, but he shut the noise out. Sudden shame swelled in his chest as he realized he was letting his demon nature surface. His mother’s voice reminded him how unholy he was.

  Carlo squashed his feelings. Instead he opened his eyes and took step after step toward the temple, which had sheltered Solomon’s Scroll for years, the faint feel of demon magic pulling him forward. When he wasn’t sure of the way, he closed his eyes, silenced his doubt, and picked up the magical threads, which wrapped around him and pulled him in the right direction. He had enough sense to know Drusus dragged himself along behind him.

  The sand gave way to rough rock. His instincts told him where he wanted to go was over a mountain. He studied his hands. Could he climb a mountain? Buildings were a different type of practice, but he thought there might be some overlap between the two tasks. He hated to do it, but he put his jacket back on. “Drusus?” His voice sounded thick.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Discovering my heritage. I’m going to have to climb. I don’t trust you to have enough left in you to lift us both, but I do think it would be better if you tried to fly over the cliff yourself.”

  “Yes. I’ll try.” Drusus untied his shirt and it flopped open at the neck.

  Carlo tested the rock and found two depressions his hands liked. “Try not to crash and kill yourself. God willing, we’ll meet each other on the other side.”

  Carlo foisted himself upward. His entire body was tired, pummeled, defeated. He would succeed in this climb, he would find out what was on the other side, and then he would… well, he would figure his plan out once he arrived. Could he and Drusus manage to survive this episode, defeat Octavia, avenge Lucy, and even rescue Paolo? He decided as he labored over hot rocks that he should keep the last question to himself. He reached the top. The hardest of the climb was over surely. He began to climb down.

  He glanced up. Drusus hovered above him. Carlo used his sleeve to wipe sweat out of his eyes. “Will you fly over already?” Carlo muttered. “You can barely hold your head up.” Drusus could hardly fight his better nature, but Carlo didn’t need another distraction as he began down the slope. He turned his attention to the task at hand.

  The rocks were loose. They rolled as Carlo moved down the slope, the scrabble following him, rolling past him. Carlo slipped. His heart leaped into his mouth. He tumbled down the last eight feet, gravel ripping his clothes and embedding in his arms. At the bottom, he decided to rest in the rubble for a moment, sand coating sweat and grime, giving the appearance of a clay golem waiting to be discovered.

  Nothing broken, as near as he could tell. His hair was stiff with dust and dirt, resistant as he tried to smooth it. He stood, one joint, one inch at a time, testing the ground for landslides and solid footing.

  In front of him were the ruins of a temple. Pillars had fallen, crushing each other, rolling away into the desert, half of one left standing with its jagged edge silhouetted against the darkening sky. Old stone steps led downward to a sand blockage. The angry sun mellowed in the west and stars winked in the evening, uncertain they should come out. Carlo limped onto the uneven remains of the courtyard floor. Night should not be falling. The climb had taken some time, but not that long.

  Drusus slumped against an arch between two pillars. Carlo raced to him, grabbed his wrist, and waited. A pulse. Thready, but a pulse.

  Drusus opened his good eye and groaned. “I see you made it.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” Carlo looked at Drusus’ uneven pupils. “This time I mean it. No more flying.”

  Drusus tried to stand, but faltered. “Yes, doctor.”

  The ruined stones glowed red. A giant man appeared. His skin was sunburned an angry maroon. He wore wide pants that gathered at the ankles, and shoes, which turned up at the toes. His clothing was tan and red and tan again, depending on when one looked. One braid of hair fell from the efrit’s bald head. His ears were pointed, gold earrings dangling from them. The planes of his face were cut from desert stone, flat, shadowed, folded.

  “Buona sera,” said Carlo. English made no more sense talking to Balthazar than the language he knew the best. “Are you the servant of Solomon?”

  “What are you?” the giant sneered, as though talking to muddy, unclean vagabonds from Venice was beneath his dignity.

  “I’m a man.” Mostly, he thought.

  “If you were a man, you would not understand me. You are a magician, or you are something else.”

  Carlo swallowed. “I am a magician.”

  The man sniffed. “There is something odd
about you.”

  “You are the servant of Solomon?”

  “Who else would he be?” said Drusus. “Help me up. I wonder if you know who I am, Balthazar?”

  “Husband of Octavia.”

  “I am.”

  “Your wife was commended to your care, but you have done a poor job caring for her.”

  “I am aware,” said Drusus. Carlo helped him inch up the pillar, and Drusus leaned against it.

  “Were you not aware of her curse?”

  Carlo whispered. “What curse?”

  “Octavia hears voices,” said Drusus. “I believed Khun was tormenting her.”

  “She torments herself!” Balthazar’s eyes narrowed. “A Binder is cursed. My mistress removes the curse during the Trial, but Octavia did not accept the necessary tools to be assisted, and there was no true Binding. Octavia hears nothing but her own mind and is pulled apart by her darker desires.”

  “So,” said Carlo. Had Paolo taught him about Binders only three days ago? “Octavia did not Bind Khun. Did he Bind her?”

  Drusus shook his head. “No. The Klaereons would have killed Octavia. She would have killed Lucy under the same circumstances, as experience has taught us.”

  “In Octavia’s case, there was no decision to Bind or Banish.” Balthazar came closer. He towered over Carlo by at least three feet. “Khun did not take her. She succumbed to her temptation, and they pretended she had won.”

  Drusus straightened. “You knew she had failed? And you did nothing to help her?”

  “These are not my decisions to make. Octavia’s punishment is the life she has led thus far. If she had been Demon Bound, I would have killed her to save her soul. But she was not Demon Bound and I will not kill a human soul, regardless of how flawed that soul is.” Balthazar’s gaze swiveled and settled on Carlo. “Which brings me to you, demon.”

  “No,” said Carlo. “I’m not. Not exactly. My grandmother, whoever she might have been, was a demon. The rest of my makeup is human.”