The Demon and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “Ah!” Malcolm cried, and a smile broke over his face. “Do you know, I’ll add that saying to my store.”

  The image of Malcolm saying to someone in the future, “My friend Kip used to say…” struck the fox, and he let out a laugh. Like Emily’s earlier, it caught at the end, as any release of emotion was going to for a while yet, but it felt good all the same. “You may have it,” he said.

  Malcolm reached out in the generally correct direction of Kip’s arm, and the fox obliged him by moving into his reach. Fingers closed around his fur. “Em’s caught me up on what’s happened,” he said in a soft voice. “That Windsor deserves all he got and worse, and when I think of the times we had him right in our basement…” He squeezed Kip’s arm and shook his head. “What I mean to say is, you and Em both were braver than you had any right to be. We’re a bunch of children still, and you two faced down two experienced sorcerers and won.”

  Kip made a noise, and Malcolm went on. “At a cost, aye, a terrible one and one we won’t forget, not ever. But you brought back yourself safe and Emily brought herself back too, and for that I will forever be grateful to you both.” His other hand had found Emily’s. “I believe that whatever we set out to do, the three of us can do. And by the three of us I mean mainly you two, but I’ll be following right behind you and just you try to stop me.”

  Kip’s eyes were wet again, and Emily’s had a matching shine. He put a paw on Malcolm’s chest. “Just try and leave,” he said. “See how far you’ll get.”

  Master Jaeger came looking for Kip not too long after and found him still in the infirmary room. “A word, Penfold.”

  Kip nodded to Emily and gave Malcolm’s chest a pat, and padded out of the room, past the still-immobile Farley. The old master moved slowly, so it took them several minutes to gain the hallway, after which he stopped with one hand on the wall. “Master Splint tells me I must walk every so often,” he said, “but I find it tiring.” He nodded slightly in a rhythm as though singing a song in his head. A moment later, he rose half a foot off the floor. “Much better. Come.”

  At a brisker pace, Kip followed the floating wizard up to his office. Rather than a desk, Jaeger had in his outer office a wooden surface much like a draftsman’s table, set at an angle with no chair in front of it. He passed that to drift to the other side of the outer office, where he seated himself upon a chaise longue covered in dusty pillows. Kip stood beside the drafting table and waited.

  “I wished to talk to you up here,” Jaeger said, “about the spirit in the walls. Barrett is in conference with Patris, so you may trust that our conversation will remain very private.” He held up a wrinkled hand. “I understand that you feel you have been entrusted with this secret, so allow me to speak first, and you may confirm or deny what I have found, and after that we may proceed. Yes?”

  Kip nodded. He didn’t dare call out to Peter in the presence of a spiritual sorcerer, but he felt that the fox spirit was listening. Jaeger went on. “You told David Windsor that you believed a spirit to be bound in the walls.”

  This reminder of his mistake made the fox squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. “As was right and natural,” Jaeger went on. “He was your tutor, and you felt the burden of your Selection rested with him. There was no way you could have known his intentions. He hid them successfully from experienced spiritual sorcerers. So. This belief made its way to me via various states of incredulity and curiosity, and while Barrett dismissed it as ‘hedge-witch nonsense,’ I thought it merited investigation. You will remember that I taught you how to break a spiritual hold. As it happened, I don’t believe you had cause to use that spell, but caution is rarely wasted.”

  “I did use it,” Kip said, “but it wasn’t here, not the first time. Albright put spiritual holds on me.”

  “Ah. Even better.” Jaeger nodded, his hand describing loose circles in the air as he went on. “For my part, I conducted a series of investigations here, along much the same lines, I believe, as David, though with an entirely different end. Obviously.”

  If only he’d trusted Jaeger.

  “A bound spirit such as a demon might be able to stop another demon. A demon bound to stone—such a thing has been done, but the result is generally a cursed object sooner or later, because the original summoner either breaks the binding or dies, and then the demon is free to pursue its own desires while held to this earthly plane by the connection to stone. It usually results in a terrible mess, often a tragedy, and sorcerers must undertake to unbind the demon from the stone or destroy it, which takes much more power, but is a last resort when unbinding is not known or not effective.” He coughed. “I beg your pardon. I have not taught in years, and perhaps I miss it.”

  “It’s interesting,” Kip said. And it gave his mind something to focus on besides the memory of blood and thick brown fur.

  “Thank you. At any rate, I wondered if perhaps a demon could be bound and made to serve an ongoing order. Or, alternately, if the spirit of a person could be bound. We are enjoined from experimenting on human spirits, of course, but this was a new world and it is possible that an ambitious spiritual sorcerer might have made one or more essays and succeeded.”

  He stopped and looked at Kip, and Kip tried to figure out what to do next. Peter, if he was there, remained silent. “I believe,” the fox said finally, “that your intentions toward whatever spirit I have been talking to are noble and honorable.”

  “They are,” Jaeger said. “What’s more, I believe that ultimately it would benefit the defense of this Tower and college for a living sorcerer—only one—to be entrusted with the secret. There could be a way, when our outer buildings are rebuilt, to extend the spirit’s influence over them.”

  “And Prince Philip’s school,” Kip said. “If we knew how, we could possibly guard that school as well, when it’s built.”

  “Yes.” Master Jaeger looked around the room as though expecting the spirit to materialize.

  Kip waited as well, but listened for an inner voice. I trust him, he said down into the stone, not caring whether Jaeger could hear him. You may talk to him without telling him your name.

  In the other room, Blacktalon croaked. Both Kip and Jaeger ignored him.

  And then, softly, It has been a very long time.

  Jaeger’s face lit with joy. “Hello,” he said. “Spirit, I have so many questions for you.”

  “And company,” Kip said. “You needn’t be lonely any more.”

  “What shall I call you?” the old sorcerer asked the air.

  Before Peter could answer, Kip remembered the first thing Peter had said to him, and his promise to Peter more recently. “He was the first Calatian sorcerer,” he said. “Two hundred years before me. You can call him ‘Fox.’”

  Epilogue

  “Imagine a maelstrom,” Kip said, “but instead of water, it’s formed of magic. And each of the eddies, the big ones and little ones and everything in between, each one of those is a demon.”

  “Are you reciting or are those your own words?” Malcolm sat cross-legged on the grass outside the Tower. It was the first day of spring that couldn’t properly be called “cold,” though it wouldn't be called “warm,” either, not by most. But Kip had not sat out in grass with his tail lying through the blades in a long time, and Malcolm liked the sun on his face, so they were outside. There was another reason, too, that Kip could not bear to stay inside the White Tower for very long even now, two months later, even though Malcolm and Emily had moved upstairs to stay with their masters and nothing remained in the basement save for moldering papers and a clear semicircle of floor covered in char.

  Malcolm’s fingers rested lightly on Kip’s arm; he didn’t need the touch, but Kip knew it reassured him and helped ground him, and the first time after his curse that he’d touched Kip’s fur he’d said with wonder that he’d never realized how wonderful and complicated a fox’s fur was. Kip enjoyed the connection as well, for reasons he couldn’t articulate.

  “My words. Or, I
suppose, a demon’s words, whoever it was that Master Odden summoned months ago. I asked him. Her. It.”

  “Surely you can tell the difference.” Even without eyes, Malcolm could raise eyebrows and turn the corner of his mouth up into a smile.

  “Heh. They take whatever form they feel appropriate. Often it is female because they want to distract us, but becomes male for other reasons.”

  “Perhaps to distract those of us who might not be tempted by the female form.”

  “Perhaps,” Kip said, thinking of lying next to Coppy. He thought of the otter every day, but in the last two weeks he was able to do so without his throat closing up. It felt like a betrayal that his grief should fade so quickly, but Emily and Malcolm both reminded him (often) that Coppy would not wish him to grieve. What helped him more was that they shared his grief and understood it. “In any case, you won’t have to worry on that score.”

  “What if she attempts other methods of seduction?” Malcolm asked. “I’m missing my eyes, but all the rest of my body is in perfect working order.”

  “You’ve resisted Emily for months, and what demon would be the equal of her?” Kip asked.

  “I’ll not tell her you said that.” But Malcolm laughed as he replied. “All right, I’m picturing it. What’s the name I’m searching for?”

  “Daravont,” Kip said.

  “Daravont, Daravont, where might you be?” Malcolm gathered magic, and as his arms glowed orange, he spoke the summoning spell. Kip prepared a binding in case Malcolm needed it, but this time, too, there was no need. The spell cast out like a wide net, and came back empty.

  “I thought I had something that time,” Malcolm said. “I was closer, I know it.”

  “Ready for me to summon Nikolon yet?” Kip asked.

  “Not yet. It’s only my second lesson, and I’m getting it already. I don’t know what I’d ask a demon, after all; I’ve never summoned something.” He breathed, arranged his legs to provide a more stable base, but did not gather magic again. “Give me a minute to think on what I did.”

  “Of course.” Kip had gotten used to verbalizing more often when around Malcolm. He leaned back on his elbows and watched the clouds move across the blue sky. “How are Emily’s meetings going?”

  “Well enough. Since you were here last, Patris has shaken hands with Mr. J. Q. Adams. It was a momentous occasion. And she’s brought four women from Boston this time. They’ll be a majority before you know it. What do you hear from London?”

  Kip shook his head. “Nothing. I still haven’t heard back from the headmaster, not since I told him about what happened. Nobody else seems to know anything about Albright being gone. There was that Lord Castlereagh fellow he worked for, but that was a long time ago and I’m hesitant to go spy on the London government.” Cott, of course, took very little interest in any of it except to ask whether they had found the name of the demon among Windsor’s possessions. They had not, and so he considered their task undone and insisted that they keep at it, though Kip learned quickly that that was mostly an excuse to keep teaching him fire sorcery. Kip, however, pursued the investigation on his own initiative. Coppy had died in the course of it, and he would not allow that death to be meaningless.

  “You might have to before long,” Malcolm said, and Kip knew what he meant without having to ask.

  He’d forced himself to return to the cabin when Emily took Master Patris there, to confront the thing he’d done. Emily was the one who couldn’t stand to look at Windsor’s charred body; Kip smelled the blood in the room and the anger rose in him again, setting his ears back and bringing a snarl to his muzzle, and if Windsor had been magically resurrected, he would have incinerated him again, and Albright too, given the chance. Patris had regarded the body with curious dispassion, though he had given Kip a look of respect afterwards. His display of emotion came when he picked up the lone paper on the plain wooden table and scanned it. His brow darkened and he pushed the paper into a pocket of his robe, but not before both Kip and Emily had seen a large, elaborate wax seal that Emily later said bore a crown.

  The cottage was in Australia, Patris had determined, a land recently discovered and home only to a small trading port fifty miles from where the cottage had been built. He would not allow anyone else to visit it, and made Kip and Emily swear to bring nobody else there.

  Malcolm broke into Kip’s reverie. “Mr. Adams says they will send their demands to London in the coming month. It would be best for you to return here permanently before that.”

  “I hate leaving the Calatians,” Kip said. “Dotta wants to hear more stories of—of Coppy, and every time I have to leave it tears at me. Abel has only introduced me to a third of the Isle so far. And he was going to take me—or let me take him—up to Bath. It’s supposed to be outside Bath that the Calatians were created, and nearby, Birk, is where they held the council that declared us people.”

  “Oh?” Malcolm leaned forward. “Do you make pilgrimages there?”

  Kip took a new shoot of grass in his fingers and broke it, rubbing it between his pads. “No. We honor our past but we dedicate ourselves to our future. So they think there will be war?”

  “They hope not.”

  “There’d be no need to call me home if they thought there would be peace.”

  “Sharp like a fox,” Malcolm said. “Aye. Mr. Adams is an idealist, and even he says, ‘If King George has a change of heart,’ or ‘if we can convince enough ministers,’ which sounds to me like, ‘if we can jump high enough we can catch those clouds,’ aye?”

  “Aye.” Kip closed his eyes and sighed toward the future. He would be called to fight, of course; that was what fire sorcerers did. Fire was for destruction and fear. He wondered whether he would meet Cott on the battlefield one day.

  “Might I remind you,” Malcolm broke into his reverie, “that you promised to tell me what you found in the library after our lesson, and here it is many minutes following the lesson and you’ve still not told me.”

  Kip cracked an eye open and smiled. “You haven’t summoned a demon, have you?”

  The Irishman tapped Kip’s arm. “The lesson is the teacher’s work; the learning is the student’s. I’ll master it in time, sure enough, but for now I want to hear what you’ve found.”

  “I’d hoped to wait until Emily was back, but…” The fox looked toward the Tower.

  “She’s in her element, making plans with all those sorcerers and politicians. I don’t want to wait hours for those meetings to be over.”

  “All right, all right.” Kip smiled. With the permission of Headmaster Cross, Kip had visited the Royal Library. Five times he’d wandered with a librarian through the dusty shelves, telling the young man everything he remembered from Gugin’s memory. On the fifth visit, the librarian had found a book that felt familiar, and Kip spent two hours reading through its pages until he found what he’d been looking for.

  Here on the grass, nobody else was within earshot, and the tingle of demon presence did not sting his nose. So he rummaged in his bag and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “I hope you’re not planning to taunt me with written words,” Malcolm said.

  “If you’d summoned the demon, you could have it read them,” Kip told him with a smile, and then went on to read. “I copied this out of the book. I don’t know how much help it will be. The book is actually a transcription of a text recovered from Egypt off a scroll or something, or maybe carved on a wall and recopied, and the story is second or third-hand.”

  “Get on with it,” Malcolm said amiably.

  “All right. So. ‘Then Setka perceived from his position overlooking the temple that the Phoenician sorcerer Azmelqart raised his arms and from the temple erupted great gouts of flame as though the interior had been coated in pitch and set alight with a hundred torches at once. But the flames subsided before Setka could let out his breath. And then the Phoenicians marched into the temple and emerged holding their trophies held aloft, small crystals that Azmelqart caused to b
e set in his helmet, saying that the glass contained the spirits of his vanquished foes. And thus did the Temple of Isis at Tarsis meet its end.’”

  Malcolm waited until Kip replaced the paper in his bag. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all about the beads. There’s a little more about Azmelqart. He was killed in a shipwreck that may or may not have been an attack on him or might have just been a storm. Unless someone claimed responsibility for stuff like that, in those days, you never knew. And sometimes people claimed responsibility when they were later proven to not be responsible, so, you know.”

  “He sounds like the sort of person for whom drowning in a storm was getting off easy.”

  “Quite.” Kip exhaled. “I don’t know where to go from here. Obviously he knew the name of the demon, so I suppose I shall have to search for his records. If Albright was worried enough about this to kill Gugin, there must be more to it than a horrible old story. Maybe there are records somewhere else in the world. Headmaster Cross told me that Albright spent a year studying in Egypt, so perhaps I need to go there.”

  “Maybe Azmelqart was the demon?”

  “I thought of that.” The fox thought back to the hours poring over old books. “But this guy Setka, or whoever was telling his story, he knew the name of the sorcerer. We keep demon names so secret, why would they broadcast theirs?” He shook his head. “The Phoenicians—a lot of these old cultures—they made heroes of their sorcerers. Azmelqart isn’t one of the better known ones but he fits the type.”

  “Become a star history student, you have.”

  Kip snorted. “Try spending days reading through old accounts and not learning a little something.”

  “Hold up.” Malcolm sat up straight. “How did he summon the demon without a calyx? There were no Calatians then.”