by Kevan Dale
Upon the final invocation of the demon’s name, the lines of iron filings lit up with a dull gold, the illumination shifting and brightening as though heated in a forge. Above the circle, the air shimmered.
The demon manifested, unseen.
All around the cabin, wood creaked as boards strained, as the pegs in the beams squealed, as the stones of the hearth cracked. Yet none of it—all potential weapons the demon might hurl at Swaine—gave way, protected by the glyph work he’d enchanted throughout. Frigid currents of air flowed around him, sending his skin prickling into gooseflesh, tightening his scalp. Swaine ignored it all and readied the first incantation of the summoning’s next section.
For that, he needed to create what was known as shadow lock, the first step in the lengthy binding process. He turned to the quartet of candles he’d readied. One at a time, he lifted the candles and coaxed a flame to the wick with the word ignis, placing them at the cardinal points along the glamour.
As he spoke the first lines of the incantation, the demon shrieked, a high, piercing sound that came from everywhere and nowhere, loud enough to send thin spills of dust from the decrepit ceiling falling through the fading light of dusk. Swaine ignored it. The fiend could shriek all it wanted to—it wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, Swaine preferred the demon fuss demonstrably. It made the remainder of the binding easier, as it made it possible read the demon’s stratagems without doubt. Of all possible opening gambits, the only one Swaine dreaded was known as stillness of the silent heart, wherein a subtle fiend would make no sign whatsoever that it had arrived. Not a breeze, not a chill. Not a whisper. Nothing. With no reveal, the summoner was left to carry on with the binding as though alone in a room. And in the silence, a ruinous seed of doubt could take root in the sorcerer’s mind that might lead to a misstep. Doubt was the true bane of sorcerers.
No, he’d much rather the demon make its dismay at being summoned apparent from the start.
While the demon grunted, hissed, screamed, and panted, Swaine proceeded methodically through the steps of the binding. He ended the stitching of the name without incident, satisfied to see the lines of ash lift off the floorboards and turn slowly within the circle of glowing iron. The first half of the next incantation—a lengthy recital of sixteen couplets designed to locate the contours of the demon’s will—went well, but when he reached the ninth couplet, a wave of vertigo came over him.
Such a sensation wasn’t altogether uncommon in sorcery. The phenomenon was known as leaning past the beyond and was related to an incursion of planar forces during an active incantation. Such energies had the power to turn the spells crooked, distorting the careful magical underpinnings as they’re spoken. Worse, it could be an indication that the demon has found a purchase in a different plane in an attempt to wrench itself free.
Swaine fought the urge to steady himself. His eyes wanted to roll as he found himself looking at the glamours as though they were on a vertical wall where he stood, about to slide and collapse onto them. The feeling raced up and down his body, wanting to pitch him forward. Worse, it sent a reflexive jolt of panic through him. At that very moment, one of the four candles flew across the cabin as though struck with a mallet.
Swaine froze.
This far along in the binding, the demon shouldn’t be capable of such disruption, contained as it was within the activated glamours. Worse, the balance of the magic he’d put in place was disturbed, which would only allow for more such malicious efforts by Svaradallanave. Before he had time to even consider any further ramifications, the lines of iron filings flared gold and then white—and lifted sideways, on end like a spare wagon wheel stood up on its tread. The air between this new alignment of the iron glamour and the ash glamour—still on the floor where he’d created it—crackled with strands of miniature lightning, bursting and snapping, reaching out and jolting anything metal within the cabin: the instruments within Swaine’s haversack, the buckles on his shoes, the pendant and chain around his neck.
“Aufhören, höllischer Teufel!” he shouted, using the German version of the most powerful ward against planar intrusion he knew. “Ich entgib dich in eisen, wirf dich zurück in asche. Binde deinen willen. Binde deine kräfte. Binde deine schlechten bemühungen.”
Strands of lightning pushed away from him in a corona as he neared the disrupted glamours, holding his right palm out in front of him. His hair snapped and his sleeves clung to his skin. Crouching by the corner of the binding circle, he lifted his other hand.
“Lucerna mea.”
The deposed candle flew across the room and into his outstretched hand. Repeating the incantation, he slammed the candle back into place. Flames leapt from the three other candles to the wick of the fourth, fire and lightning dancing in the air. Swaine strained against the massive energies until he felt the power of the bindings lock back into place.
Before he could as much as congratulate himself, a tremendous weight crashed into him, sending him splaying out into the binding circle. To break the integrity of the glamours was bad enough—but having been caught unawares left Swaine stunned for a critical few moments. Before he could speak any defensive wards, unseen hands wrenched him into the air, stretching and pulling his limbs.
“Álætan fyrnsceaða—” he began, only to have the phrase cut painfully short as he was slammed to the floor so hard that he couldn’t even grunt. No air remained in his lungs.
The front of his shirt shredded, claws—or teeth—slicing into his flesh. Half a dozen, then a dozen cruel strokes across his chest.
Unable to speak, he reached up and tore the pendant from his throat. By clenching the charm in his fist, the ward within activated—a last ditch protection. A sphere of potent sorcery burst from his closed hand, hurling the demon away from him. The flames on the candles flared, stretching half a foot in height.
Swaine groaned as he rolled to his side, holding the warded pendant aloft.
Magic flared, tracing the sagging ceiling, the warped boards, the stones in the hearth with thin lines of blinding white and yellow that curled and shimmered. Even as Swaine sucked in a thin breath, his gaze snapped to the corner of the cabin. Two grotesque shapes crouched. Long, lean, and jointed in peculiar fashion, the true shapes of the demons—plural, for there were two—revealed themselves against the blast of Swaine’s ward.
Two.
The problem came clear to Swaine instantly. Svaradallanave had been summoned—yet another had appeared with him, perhaps drawn in by Swaine’s presence, perhaps wandered out of the planar confluences that the village appeared riven with.
It made little difference at the moment.
Swaine pushed himself to his feet, managing to fill his lungs with blessed air. His mind ticked through the peril. Svaradallanave was problem enough, the binding disrupted. All wasn’t lost, but Swaine needed to hurry. The second demon was—potentially—a larger problem. It could be anything—anything from an annoying imp to a higher entity of dreadful bearing.
Holding the ward aloft, Swaine staggered out of the glamours toward the demons.
“Svaradallanave!” he shouted. Even saying the demon’s name told him much of the binding held: waves of shivers rolled up and down the demon’s limbs and along his torso, the physical manifestation of the subjugation of infernal will. The demon stretched to full height, still stooping beneath the ceiling, but filling the corner of the cabin. Seven elongated appendages spread out.
Swaine kept most of his attention on Svaradallanave while tracking the movements of the second demon, who had, so far, remained motionless. Whether out of fear or about to pounce—Swaine could only guess. His gaze flicking back and forth between the two fiends, he positioned himself at the terminal apex of the glamours on the floor. The combination of magic within the summoning circle provided some degree of safety in that one spot, by design. He paused, feeling as though he held an asp by the tail—in each hand. One wrong move was death, and he needed both hands to subdue either serpent.
Keeping
the pendant raised at the unknown demon, he spoke the next couplet of the binding. Svaradallanave resisted the lure of the binding, shifting back and forth almost quicker than Swaine’s eyes could track, smashing at the walls from the corner. A terrible howl rose, higher and higher in pitch.
As Swaine shouted the incantation, the lines of magic faded and the outlines of the demons faded back into the shadows. Swaine kept gazing around the darkened cabin. He tried not to let the fear of the second demon break his concentration on the binding.
It didn’t work.
The back of Swaine’s neck rippled. He expected another charge at any moment. A candle, board, or brick flung at his face. More rending, clawing, tearing. Not the proper state of mind to bind a demon. Not at all. Still, half-in already, he had no choice but to continue or risk an even worse outcome. Bringing his focus down to the words of the second Canto, he pushed all other thoughts out of his mind. A breeze rippled past him.
“Won’t you help me?” The voice speaking from just behind him was high and frightened, a child. It came from the hearth. “I’m so frightened. I’m nothing but a trapped bird—who sings of soaring over forests and foothills.”
Swaine didn’t pause the incantation. The sound of disconsolate weeping filled the cabin. At least the second demon wasn’t assaulting him at the moment. As he finished the final couplet, the magic of the glamours flared, revealing the presence of the demon within the circle once again. Better still, he felt the connection of the demon’s mind, the binding to his will established.
If the other demon knew what was going on, this would be the instant to attack, for this moment was the time of peak vulnerability for the summoner. If the demon wasn’t driven into submission—relentlessly, vigorously, without yielding an inch of ground—the channel between the sorcerer and the fiend could be used in the other direction, allowing the demon to subsume the will of the sorcerer. The structure of the binding relied on the reintroduction of the same forces that lured and snared the demon in the first place, all designed to add an unstoppable momentum to the final steps of the binding. All he had to do was release the glamoured wards and—
Claws raked the back of his legs, splitting the material of his breeches at his calves, sending blood flying out across the floor. The pain was immediate, stinging—yet Swaine kept his focus on the binding, pushing aside all other reactions, relying on the willpower he’d developed over a decade. A vast shadow whirled around the outside of the glamour, nudging in, pulling back, circling around for another strike.
Swaine turned, whispering the spell, not pausing. Each syllable brought forth a glare from the circle of ash, one segment at a time, until the entire line blazed. Svaradallanave resisted, his howls of frustration bursting in Swaine’s mind—but the glamours pressed in on the demon from all directions. Svaradallanave heaved back at him, and their wills locked. Nothing else registered for Swaine—not the pain in his chest and legs, not the second demon pressing ever closer, not the plummeting temperature that stung his eyes and made his fingers burn with cold, setting his stomach and chest to shivering.
So he stood, arms outstretched, gazing into the center of the glamours, still as though cast in bronze. Yet for all the outward dispassion and repose of the scene, Swaine fought furiously with Svaradallanave, in full contact with the demon’s mind. Each opening, countered. Each feint, blocked. Each thrust, sweep, slash—met and parried. Lulls, withdrawals. Shifts, swerves, reverses. Threats, promises, pleading. All followed, all leveraged, all deflected.
Minutes meant nothing, for though the hand on his watch barely swept through half a dozen of them, each moment of engagement with the fiend refracted into a spectrum of awareness, as light expanded by a prism. Seconds folded in on themselves, revealing deeper layers of the demon’s will. Swaine followed everything the demon did, not letting it retreat, blocking its attacks.
After crossing the moment where he felt he couldn’t maintain the effort needed, Swaine felt it, the instant Svaradallanave surrendered. Into that sudden void, he spoke the incantation known as the golden spike of shackling.
And there it was, the sensation of the demon shrinking down, down, down, encased in Swaine’s own sorcery. The feeling never failed to amaze him—akin to pressing hard against a wall only to have it transform into a thin plate of tin, then a canvas sail full of wind, then a silken sheet, then a cocoon, then nothing more than a mist, all in under a second.
But in that moment, the mental lurch forward, all that effort finding no more resistance, the second demon struck. Not content with slashing at Swaine’s flesh, the unknown fiend tried to leap into his mind. Swaine cried out. Shadows bloomed behind his eyelids and he felt the intolerable defilement of demonic will flooding his thoughts.
He leaped backward, his voice—already hoarse from the summoning and binding—cracking as he yelled out Hume’s Eleventh Ward, the Ward of Trespass. The demon fled his mind, though not without a ghastly scraping, as though claws tore at the inside of Swaine’s skull. Swaine cried out, grabbing at his head. The demon swept up all the broken, moldered slats and boards in the cabin and shoved them at Swaine, following with a ferocious attack. Swaine stumbled into the glamour on the floor, landing on his back, knocking over the candle on the northern side of the circle, smearing ash and metal filings, feeling the brass key dig into his back.
The demon smothered him, shadows and flashes of deep red crushing him into the floor. Tendrils of malign intent looked for ways into his thoughts. Swaine opened his mouth to shout another ward. The demon wrenched Swaine’s own hand up and into his mouth, gagging him, shoving it against his teeth, filling his mouth with the iron tang of his own blood.
It was no good. He couldn’t speak the ward.
The horror of the end shook Swaine—this was how he would die.
The exigency of sorcery claiming another victim. All his preparations and study failing him in the face of a terrible collection of circumstance, pushing him from the precipice of life into oblivion.
He grabbed, desperate, at the only thing he could: Svaradallanave.
The demon, likely unsure of its new limits and confused by the binding, hesitated.
Pull him from me—use all your strength! Swaine commanded wordlessly.
The two demons tore at each other above Swaine, filling the air with shrieks and howls, sharp gusts of wind and a stinging charge of electricity. He felt Svaradallanave pull the unknown demon into a cruel embrace, bending his own will against the demon.
Swaine ripped his hand free from his mouth. Ignoring the blood, he repeated the golden spike of shackling, some curious intuition welling up inside him. As he did, the light of the displaced glamours blazed.
The second demon joined Svaradallanave in the key, which rang with a lone metallic note then stilled.
Pale light spread in ripples across the inside of the cabin, growing brighter and brighter until every plank, beam, and stone revealed every last detail. Swaine squinted, shading his eyes. Wind shrieked in the hearth and through the missing windows. A massive eruption of planar energy poured down over the glamours. The cabin filled with the screams of the second demon—and then the sound ceased, cut off. At the same moment, the ceiling creaked and shuddered, the wood groaning as it gave way. Swaine crouched by the stones of the fireplace, hands over his head as board and beam crashed into the center of the space, bringing in half the turf atop the cabin with it. Clods of dirt smacked his shoulders. Dust filled his nose. After half a minute the collapse ceased, reduced to trickles of grit.
Swaine lowered his hands and raised his head. Looking up, he saw stars glinting in the heavens. The worst of the damage missed him, thankfully. Shrugging off debris, he got to his feet and raised his hands, a ward ready on his tongue should the stray demon have eluded capture. Nothing. As he extended his sorcerous senses, he felt no infernal presence. He lowered his arms.
If he’d been in the wrong spot, he’d have been gravely injured. Crippled, perhaps—or even killed. Well, if he’d wanted
a safe—and dull—life, he could have become a lawyer like his wretched father. He brushed the dust and dirt from his shoulders and stood.
Swaine pushed his way through the collapsed timbers of the roof, grunting each time he strained with the joists, his ribs complaining with each breath, each contraction of his muscles. The glamours held, thankfully. As he reached the center of them, he felt around until his fingers closed over the key. Frigid to the touch, he nonetheless held it tight in his fist. He paused so, on his knees, panting, the exhilaration of a successful binding washing over him.
He thought about what he’d done. “Two,” he whispered.
Two demons, bound at once, together. One known—or suspected—and the other a random infernal intruder.
But how?
He worked his way through the implications, even as dusk sunk into night and the stars blinked alive in the sky open above the cabin. It was only when the dripping of blood onto the floor in front of him registered that he noticed the slashes across his chest. He put his free hand to his tattered shirt and waistcoat, shocked at how sodden they were. Warm blood ran between his fingers.
He got to his feet, steadying himself on the weathered wood.
Scratches would heal. Cuts could be stitched shut. But a breakthrough as he’d just experienced?
A price he’d happily pay again.
9
Blossoms of Flame
As the dark figure of Swaine, a shade in the starlit night, passed off into the old road and into the forest’s edge, a quiet voice in the cabin—the voice of a child—sang a lullaby. Softly at first, then growing in volume, broken here and there with giggles, the song drifted out into the night. Soon, blossoms of flame sprouted in the corners of the fallen cabin. The dried wood caught quickly. Soon the flames climbed the walls and engulfed the roof as though hungry for the stars themselves.