Knight of the Demon Queen

by Barbara Hambly

  My friend, she said, and opened her heart and her life.

  She let him breathe his warmth into her, accepting life back within her flesh—accepting all that life might bring.

  With life came grief: for John’s anger over their son, for his absence, for her lost magic.

  And then, cold and terrible, came the recollection of the dreams of Folcalor. The hand with its gold rings passing across the well, calling image after image. A gnome in the North. A mage in the South.

  Demons under the sea, clustered, green and shining, around the gate that the whalemages had closed. Waiting to enter this world, to make it their battleground in their wars against one another, for vengeance and pain. Their hunting ground. Their orchestra for the arts of terror and pain, and their gateway to every world and Hell beyond.

  There is slavery and slavery, the dead sailor had grinned. Did you think you were his slave?

  “Morkeleb,” she said, “can you take me to the South, to the court of the King?”

  “It is what I came here to do,” he replied.

  Since all of them had been awake for close to twenty-four hours, Bort voted for dinner and a night’s sleep before undertaking an invasion of the Universe Towers.

  “If they took him sometime after he closed up last night,” John pointed out, “he’s been like this for the best part of a day, and in my world at least, it gets harder to bring ’em back the longer they’re out of their bodies.” So they rode the subway back to Garrypoot’s apartment, which was not only the closest to District Two Hundred but also the most secure and the best equipped. The young tech looked decidedly squeamish at the suggestion that a mindless and incontinent old man be confined there but, after one glare from Clea, didn’t say so.

  “If a victim of possession can be exorcised within two or three days, he’ll usually recover. After that it’s pretty chancy.”

  “You mean Docket’s—” Garrypoot looked hastily around him at the other occupants of the subway car, who were in any case staying as far away from Docket as possible, and lowered his voice. “—possessed?” He seemed caught between horror at the implications of the situation and awe that at last he was given an opportunity to deal with true magic. “You mean there’s a demon inside him?” He dropped to a whisper, and he leaned around Shamble to look into the old man’s blank, staring eyes.

  “Not exactly. His mind and his soul—his self—were stripped out of him, but no demon went in in its place.” John edged aside as a couple of neatly dressed inputters got on, bound no doubt for a late shift at one of the city bureaus, and gave them a friendly smile. They took one look at Docket and shoehorned themselves into the already-packed rear half of the car. It was fortunately not rush hour. “Didn’t think it worth the trouble, probably, there bein’ no magic here. I wish I could talk to Jen about this one—Jen’s me wife—but I think it’d stump her as well. I’ve got a guess at what’s goin’ on,” he added, as the train slowed and there was a hissing crackle, the lights dimming. There must be water in the tunnels—the stench was a giveaway. Now and again the trains had to turn back, crackling and hissing, for miles. “But there’s no way of tellin’ till we get into ThirtyoneFourFour’s flat.”

  Back at his apartment, Garrypoot hooked his com through the terminal and put in a call to ThirtyoneFour-Four, making note of the system relays it passed through: “He’s in the wet zone,” he said. “Clear out where it’s deep, it looks like: Ninety-fourth and Old Thirtieth Boulevard.”

  “ThirtyoneFourFour?” Clea said disbelievingly, looking from the bathroom door where she was gently sponging Docket in the shower stall. “The deep gangs will kill him out there!”

  “That’s where the relays feed.” The boy cut the signal before ThirtyoneFourFour could respond. “He’s been back from the dead once. Maybe it makes him immortal?” He glanced inquiringly, hungrily, at John.

  “He is immortal,” John said shortly. Dobbin the carry beast came to his mind, bleeding legs rotting beneath him as he staggered up the black rocks of the Hell of the Shining Things. “He doesn’t care whether Thirtyone-FourFour dies or not.” And, seeing Garrypoot’s puzzlement, he explained patiently, “He’s a demon, Poot. He quit being ThirtyoneFourFour back at Econo Health Emergency. The demon’s just riding the body like a horse. The main question is, how long will it take him to get back?”

  “Oh, I have the security codes,” Garrypoot said reassuringly. “We should have all the time we need.”

  Aversin said nothing. But he wondered how much Amayon could hear in his onyx bottle. Could he see, as Jenny had spoken of seeing in dreams? And how long would it take him to contact his fellow wights with the news, Get back at once, they’re raiding your flat?

  Shamble came in with black maintenance coveralls labeled UNIVERSE TOWERS in white. Nobody in the city ever asked why you wanted to rent whatever you wanted to rent, be it plex earrings or assault weapons. It was enough trouble just to keep a roof over your head—literally, for those who slept outdoors in the chemical rain started to deteriorate very quickly after a night or two—and your meds paid up. John had never particularly liked the grinding cold and hunger of living in the Winterlands, to say nothing of the possibility of being killed or enslaved by bandits, but he was beginning to understand that there were worse places.

  The Celestial, Infinity, and Presidential lines all had stops under the Universe Towers. Shamble, a welder and a worker in metals, had done repairs at Universe Station, and he led them unerringly through the half dozen levels of walkways and overpasses and branching tunnels all clogged with ’zine kiosks and vendors of drugs and sausages. John glanced over his shoulder and around him at the crowds and shadow all the way. The door to the maintenance stair opened readily to one of Garrypoot’s bootlegged key cards. After a long climb up sagging plex steps through darkness that hummed with mosquitoes and reeked of rats and sewage, another key card admitted them to the ether feed-control room. The shielding there was a thousand times better than at District, but nevertheless the vibrations were blinding.

  Garrypoot jacked his hand-terminal into one of the dozen black boxes ranged along the wall and quickly fed in a series of commands. “Done,” he said. “Auto-security on floors seventy through seventy-three is going to think everything is just fine for the rest of the cycle, which should be the next”—he checked his watch— “hour and forty minutes. By that time we should be out of there and gone.”

  And none of Garrypoot’s machinations would gain them a damn thing, John thought—fighting the chill of panic—if Amayon had already summoned reinforcements.

  They took a maintenance elevator to the sixty-ninth floor. John half expected it to be incomprehensibly dizzying, but it was no different from being in a room built on the side of a high mountain. It was only a room, in what was clearly a servants’ area. From there another stair led up, starting and ending in small maintenance chambers hidden behind discreet doors.

  “If the Towers are for the rich,” he whispered as they mounted the stairs, “why do they have ad screens in the servants’ section? They can’t need the rent knock-off, surely?” Those they’d passed on the floor below had been huge, numerous, and prominently placed.

  “Are you kidding?” Garrypoot replied. “The servants would quit if they didn’t have screens.”

  Baffled, John shook his head. In many ways the Hell of Winds was easier to understand.

  He had thought—had hoped—that Wan Thirtyone-FourFour might be the man he sought, the face he’d seen in the water before the Mirror of Isychros: that his quest might end here and soon. But the photographs that dotted the walls of the nearly bare study, the huge gray living room, were of a younger man, fair and blue eyed and so perfect of feature John wondered aloud if the pictures were some sort of idealized animation.

  “Well, in a way they are,” Bort said. He kept his voice low as they prowled to the uppermost level of the three, testing doors as they went. “He’s had a lot of work done. You can tell by the cheekbones.” He chuckled
a little at John’s naïveté. “You don’t think any of the rich are born that beautiful, do you?”

  Even so, as they passed swiftly through the ample halls, through rooms sparsely scattered with comfortable furniture and tastefully shuttered screens, John looked for the chamber he’d seen in the water: the heavy curtains stamped with gold, the candlesticks and statues and bowls of bright-gleaming metal.

  But there was none of that here. The walls were plastered and painted light cool hues. Wide electronic windows displayed mountains and sunset clouds, so exquisitely coordinated with one another that had he not known better John would have thought the flat truly was a house set on a mountaintop in some beautiful fastness. Even in these rooms, the roaches endemic to the city flicked away under baseboards and behind expensive curtains as they approached, and something about their presence made John’s hackles prick. When they ascended the stair to the upper levels of the apartment, the insects grew more numerous still. The air-conditioning was powerful, but every now and then he caught, as they passed shut doors, the fugitive reek of blood.

  In a double-locked chamber on the third level of the apartment they found what Aversin expected. The room was set up as a sort of workroom, with terminal, multiple screens, and a small table brightly bathed in light. A stream of ants crept from a ceiling vent, across wall and floor, to disappear beneath a second shut door leading to an inner room. On the lighted table lay the things John sought, in foamplex boxes such as takeout food came in.

  One box contained five jewels: three sapphires, an amethyst, and a ruby, all good quality and all cut in facets after the fashion of the gnomes, a method apparently common in this world. “Naturals!” Bort held the ruby up to the light, awe in his voice. “Not synthetics, I mean. Ether crystals are technically diamonds, in that they’re crystallized carbon charged to align polarities, but they don’t bring the price a natural diamond would. These were probably bought at estate auctions. You don’t get naturals of any kind on the market, seldom even see them at gem and metals nodes on the Link.”

  John nodded, barely hearing. Gold rings and gold chains and neat bundles of gold wire evidently unraveled from some kind of ethertonic equipment were heaped in another of those little boxes. A little scale sat nearby, for weighing the gold.

  “I always wondered if that was one reason magic quit working.” Shamble extended a reverent finger to touch the gems. “All the books talk of using jewels, but of course most jewels now are synthetics. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that truly came out of the ground.”

  John picked up the thing that lay next to the scale—a gold hair clip decorated with a blue enameled butterfly. Stuck in the dried blood on it was a single long snow-white hair.

  “What’s this one?” Garrypoot took an extremely dark amethyst from the box where it had been set apart alone.

  I should have guessed. I should have seen it coming. A lifetime of protecting those who could not protect themselves coalesced into a terrible regret.

  Oh, Tisa.

  He set the hair clip down and gently removed the gem from Poot’s hand.

  “This one,” he said, “is what we’ve come to get.” His hand shook a little as he wrapped the gem in his handkerchief and tucked it in his pocket.

  Tisa leaning against the corner of a building, waiting for her mysterious Lots of Zeroes to come take her to dinner. The one who’s picking me up tonight has really got money…

  Her elfin grin as she’d waved good-bye.

  Against his chest, he felt the onyx ink bottle warm and knew that Amayon fed on his horror and his guilt.

  His fear, too, maybe. The rising uneasiness, the sense of time running out. Wan ThirtyoneFourFour was rich.

  He’d have a fast boat and a crew of private-sector enforcers capable of dealing with any deep-zone gang that got in his way—if the gangs weren’t already in his pay or thrall.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “Now let’s get out. First we’ve got to find…”

  “Moondog—”

  John crossed the room, though he guessed by Bort’s tone what was behind the door that Bort had opened, the doorway into the inner chamber. He guessed it would be bad. No attempt at cleanup had been made, neither after the latest splashes and stains and puddles had been laid down last night, nor on numerous occasions before. Roaches swarmed, fled as the ether panel on the ceiling lit up. The ants just went about their business, as ants will.

  “What in the name of Hell …?” Shamble and Garrypoot trailed at his heels, stared in shock through the door.

  “Aye,” John said softly. “In the name of Hell.” Some of the hair stuck in the blood here, too, was white. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you lot what demons do?”

  They gazed at him, sickened, would-be mages who had talked casually of demons and magic and spells. Children, John thought, switching off the light. Shamble was probably his own age and Bort a good seven years his senior, but children nevertheless. Like young Prince Gareth, who’d sought him in the Winterlands thinking heroes and dragons resembled those in the ballads.

  “Pain is what they do.” He walked back to the table and pocketed the five natural jewels. Not, he thought, that a rich man like Wan ThirtyoneFourFour would have a lot of trouble finding others, but at least this would buy the next-targeted victims some time. “Chaos is what they do. I don’t know how he keeps it from the servants, but maybe in this world, too, it’s possible to find people who don’t care what their masters do, so long as the pay’s good—and anyway I’m sure there’s a drug for that. There seems to be for everythin’ else.”

  He picked up also the golden hair clip, the rage in him rising with the smell of the blood from the other room, the stink of roasted flesh. The hair clip, he realized, had the only depiction he’d seen of insect, animal, or bird since he’d come to the city.

  His hand was shaking.

  “I came to this world to find someone,” he said softly. “Someone who collects gold. Poot, why don’t you download everythin’ off that terminal, and then we get the hell out of here.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They passed Wan ThirtyoneFourFour in Universe Station. The private Redstreak line had a terminal there, on the level above the public lines. John glimpsed him through the triple-thick glass that enclosed the exclusive precinct, recognized the fair hair and impossible cheekbones as he and the White Black Birds descended the crowded stairway to the jumble of home-going salary-persons below. ThirtyoneFourFour, clothed in neat and very expensive black, was—as John had known he would be—accompanied by two very large shaven-headed men who looked like enforcers, men with the bleak, glazed look of strong drugs in their eyes.

  Heat flared in the onyx bottle against John’s chest. ThirtyoneFourFour turned his head as if at a cry.

  “Not that way! What are you doing, Moondog?” Bort pounded after John as he slipped and dodged through the crowd. The barriers designed to protect the private lines’ customers from the common horde was all that saved them, slowing the thugs, but Aversin heard the whining report of a handgun as he plunged down the escalator, ducked around a corner. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard another soft, snarling shot and a struck man’s cry.

  Of course. They’re all drugged. They won’t dodge. He flung himself onto the nearest train. “It’s the wrong line, you fool! You’ll end up on Nine-seventy-fifth Avenue!” Bort wailed from halfway down the platform. The doors hissed.

  Aversin didn’t stop trembling until he reached Garrypoot’s apartment, where Clea was trying to get Docket to drink a little milk. “I gave him the widest-spectrum antibodies I could get.” She looked up despairingly; milk was dribbled everywhere. “He isn’t running a fever, but he won’t eat or drink. He could have caught anything—he wasn’t wearing mask, and the mosquitoes carry IADS and AOAD…”

  “Lay him on the floor.” The old man had been good to him, chatting for hours about gangs and computers and how to survive in the city: all those things that Amayon would have lied to him about. He fished
in his pocket for the amethyst. Master Bliaud had worked spells, he recalled, to return the imprisoned mages to their proper bodies, but such spells had no meaning in this world.

  Gently John opened Old Docket’s mouth and placed the gem inside. He watched the bookseller’s eyes, but they remained blank. Mageborn, the old man still had no idea how to come out of the jewel in which he’d been imprisoned, and there was no wizardry, no adeptness, in his flesh itself.

  “Bugger all.” He removed the jewel and wiped the spittle off it on the hem of his shirt. “We’ll have to do this the hard way. Poot wouldn’t have such a thing as a hammer about, would he, love?” He could only hope that if he released it, the old man’s soul would find its way back to its body. Did they have hammers here?

  It turned out they did, a little to John’s surprise. He hunted around the apartment until he found a small tray of high-impact plex, which he set on the floor as close as he dared beside the old man’s head, then wrapped Clea’s scarf over Docket’s eyes for protection. “Hold his nose and mouth,” he instructed. “When I say now, let him breathe. On the count of three. One, two—” He set the jewel on the tray, raised the hammer high. “Now.”

  The door opened. “What—?” Bort cried as the hammer smashed down, shattering the amethyst inches from Docket’s lips. Clea snatched her hand clear as the old man gasped, coughed, flailed with one hand.

  “Where—?” Docket choked as John whipped the handkerchief from his eyes. “What—?”

  “You all right?” John looked into the terrified gray eyes.

  “What happened to me?” The old man caught at his hands and stared in shock at Bort, Garrypoot, and Shamble as they entered the apartment, shaking rain from their ponchos and caps.

  “Really, Moondog,” Garrypoot fussed, “we’ve been on the subways for hours trying to find you and now you just…”

  “The demon,” Docket gasped, and the others fell silent. “The demon … spoke to me…”