The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  “I live humbly in the ways of my forefathers,” she said, not at all humbly. “I serve and I labor and need naught of a daemon’s allurements. All know the Souleater’s mark is pride. When the angels flay you on the last day, it will make the sight all the more pleasurable to watch.”

  The sentiments didn’t sound like Marta, who had forever chafed at Coverge’s strict and gloomy interpretations of Temple teaching. Did her face reveal a rebellion her words denied?

  “Trouble not, sister mine and loving mother,” I said. “I’ll speak to my father before he dies. Then I’ll depart, and threaten your souls no more.”

  “Never,” said my mother. “You’ll not set foot—”

  “ ’Tis not yours to say, neither of you,” said Andero. “Da’s asked for him, and he’s not come all this way just to leave again. He lies in their bed, Dante, where it always was. On your way in, you can admire my fine new latch.”

  Warned by his hint, I fingered the bar-and-hoop latch rather than reaching for the old handle. It was surely the height of vanity to hide my incapacity from these people. My belly churning—an entirely nonsensical relic of childhood—I shut the door firmly behind me.

  The stench near drove me straight out again. Charred, putrid flesh. Billowing smoke from the firepit. The bitter soap, ash water, and boiled herbs my mother swore by for healing, purification, and every other practice of ignorance and superstition—odors that would forever reignite the agony of my ruined hand.

  But I had come here to learn. I had gambled lives and safety because I believed this was not merely a personal journey, but something larger.

  Ten steps to the loft ladder. Five more to the curtained niche where the seven of us were begotten in wordless rutting. The curtain was open. My father’s breathing ground like a slurry of crushed rock.

  I kicked aside the stool I knew would be next the bed. Nothing would have changed. “Da.”

  The labored heaving stilled. “Benno?” His croaking whisper bubbled and wheezed. “Renit?”

  “Neither.” Returned to the demesne of my long silence, I could scarce force words from my mouth.

  He cleared his throat painfully. “If they’d open the shutters, I could see ye.”

  “You’ve another son.”

  “Dante?” Though his fingers could yet pinch to the bone, I no longer flinched from his grasp. “Come to gloat, have ye? Come to taunt?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Ye’ve no care for your kin.”

  “And so I do not. I’ll not lie and say elsewise.”

  “Aagh, prideful still. ’Tis thy daemon nature. Tha’rt Fallen, Dante. Darkborn in frost-cold blood. Suckled on pain. Thy repentance was ever a lie.”

  “My repentance? On the day you half killed me? I was fourteen!”

  “Had to beat the evil out of ye. As I tried when ye were a nub.”

  “So you knew all along my claims were true.”

  “Expected it. Spawn of sin and devilry. Come the last day of the world, the Souleater will flay thee naked and prison thee in ice. But here—” He coughed, struggling for breath, his bruising grip drawing me close. His breath stank of putrefaction and his fever near scorched me. “Tha’rt shifty, Dante…cruel. I shaped the chain as I was told: the setting of silver wire drawn fine as hair, each night a new link from pure silver, each night the sigil graved on it, fine and perfect—”

  “A chain? I’ve come to hear of your dream and the angel who had a message for me.”

  “Aye.” His voice was naught but a throaty whisper. “She said ye’d come did I send to thee. Who could deny her? Never saw such a creature. She said forging the chain to prison thee would ensure my soul’s passage through Ixtador. And in each dream another sigil appeared, writ in green fire, that I must grave on the links. But the dreams stopped before she told how to bind thee, before even the full length of the chain was done. I feared I had angered her. Drabbing fool. Couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t sleep. At the end, I decided to melt down the last link and rework it, lest I’d fashioned it wrong, but that’s when the silver grew like a fungus and boiled and spewed fire. And then, lying here in death’s maw, I weened what had transpired.”

  I scrambled to make sense of what he told. Spawn of sin? A chain to bind me? Iron links could mangle any spellwork, inhibiting a sorcerer. But silver wouldn’t, unless the sigils…Could the enchantress send spells through dreams, too? That fit with nothing I understood of magic.

  Da yanked me closer, as if every smat of bile he had left gave strength to his arm. “Ye vanquished her, didn’t ye? The madness…the boiling silver…the fire…this be thy vengeance, because I wet the mold and maimed thee with the mark of the Fallen. But hear this, daemon: thy hate has undone thee anyways. She said I’d given her time to fetch your false saint from his hiding place and bury him where you’ll never find him. The chain may not be finished, but the dream showed me what is to be.”

  Coughing scoured his lungs, leaving him gasping. His hand fell away.

  “What?” I shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “What did you see?”

  “I looked into the great emerald and saw him—the Righteous Defender, the fairest of all beings immortal or mortal. He will take you down, Daemon. You are bound to him, Fallen to angel, as was ever the Creator’s plan. So say the prophets: And so will come the last battle of the War for Heaven and guardianship of the Living Realm, when the Righteous Defender will rise from the ashes and battle the Daemon. He waits for you.”

  My father’s chortling dissolved into wet gurgling, hawking, choking. A warm flood spewed from his mouth over my hand. Blood. And so was the frenzy triggered by my brother’s letter, the mania that had resulted in twenty dead, answered, only to be replaced by horror.

  I backed away from my father’s bed. It was not Temple myths of heavenly wars that wrenched my gut, and certainly not my father’s appraisal of my soul’s allegiance. I’d heard such tales and accusations since infancy. But the “false saint” could be none but Portier.

  De Gautier had believed the incessant dying and return of a reborn saint—Portier—could preserve the opening in the Eternal Veil so that the living and dead could be exchanged at our pleasure. Anne and I had kept Portier from drowning at Mont Voilline, her power enabling me to draw him back to life whenever I lost him. But now this enchantress planned to bury him living…and we weren’t there to preserve him…because I had let Anne go…because I had allowed myself to be lured to this vile man’s bedside with the one thing I could not resist—a mystery bound in magic. She had driven me four hundred kilometres in the wrong direction so I could not save Portier.

  “Begone, daemon!” My mother and sister crowded between me and the bed.

  Nausea overwhelmed me. I stumbled backward. Find the door; find the latch; breathe.

  I burst through the door and across the frigid yard until I could embrace the scratchy bulk of the great oak.

  Stupid, arrogant, weak-minded fool of a sorcerer. A diversion. A trap. Portier, my only friend in this blighted world…buried alive. Those two words told me that this was not about some Kadr spelltrap in the desert, but my worst fears realized. This was all about rending the Veil. About Ixtador. About leaching the souls of the dead. This was about the remnants of conspiracy—and very likely about Jacard de Viole. Jacard was the surviving member of the de Gautier inner circle, those who knew of Kajetan’s contention that Portier could not die and how that might be used in rites that could violate the order of nature. Kajetan had known of Masson

  de Cuvier’s dream, and Jacard had Kajetan’s books and papers. And no matter his magical incompetence, Jacard knew that I would never allow Portier to be taken so he could start up the wickedness again. Then came the next question.…Jacard knew Anne had killed his uncle, but did he have any idea of her magic?

  “No!” Thunder exploded from my ancille.

  I dropped the staff lest I slaughter the next person to draw close. Roaring, I grasped the nearest branch of the oak, wrenching a
nd twisting as if I could tear it from the bole and stuff it down the devil woman’s throat. When it failed to loosen, I sagged against the tree, my forehead pressed to the rough bark. “Wretched, god-blasted, everlasting night…”

  A great hand clamped my aching shoulder. “I’m glad to find you still here. Thought for a moment we might lose you and Da both.”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Even as I yelled and whirled on him, I trapped my hands under my arms. Madmen…both of us. I could easily have broken his arm. And yet…

  “I must leave here,” I said, scarce able to control my frenzy. “This was all a mistake, a fool’s errand to take me away from my responsibilities. Portier, the friend I told you of, the librarian, is in dreadful danger, and I need to get to him. Find him. Save him…”

  Every nightmare of my life rose to haunt me. Long before de Gautier and Jacard’s vengeance, long before I understood what happened to unlucky miners, the dark had terrified me. In our crowded loft, I had pinched and bullied my younger brothers for the space nearest the wall, so I could breathe the air through the seams in the logs and glimpse the light of moon or stars. My first visit to the coal pits had left me screaming, earning my first beating and my father’s everlasting scorn. Darkness. Suffocation.

  “…and Anne. These people who tried to capture me might aim for her, too. Please, brother, you’ve got to help me.” Pride, the glue I had created to hold myself together since leaving this place, lay in shreds.

  The Temple pursuit was only a nuisance. It was these others I had to fear. If Ilario had left any of the last four attackers standing, they’d be waiting along the foot track. Perhaps they had fellows on the wagon road, too. They could be lurking in the village already. No one in Raghinne mentioned strangers.

  I summoned reason, reexamining theories formed in panic. “They know I’ll go after Portier. I’ve power enough to defeat them, but…” Not without aid. Not anymore. If I was isolated…helpless…they could take me. “I don’t think they want me dead. They want me alone.”

  “Here, pick up your stick—I’m not fool enough to touch it—and let’s walk,” said Andero, taking a firm hold on my arm and shoulder. Though his voice exuded a calm wholly at odds with my ragged wildness, his touch demonstrated a fierce urgency. “While you were inside, I spied riders descending Harrow’s Drop. We’ve perhaps two hours till they’re here. And by now, none from Raghinne is going to mistake who you are or where to find you.”

  My sweat congealed. “Then I need—”

  “I’ve ears and a mind, Dante. You need to get away fast and secret, and it sorely wears on you to manage it all yourself. So I’ll take you through the Sweats; I’ve always had a fondness for them. None here will imagine we’d go that way. But I’ve a task or two to do before I can— Now, hold your fidgeting. ’Twould be a fool that set out from Raghinne in Desen’s month without provision, and I’ll not leave my dogs to starve.”

  “But no one—”

  “None will know but that we’ve gone to choose which pit to throw Da in when he crosses. So we’re taking a stroll out the spoils, and I’m going to leave you stewing for a bit. We’ve time. A stranger’s got to learn our ways ere he’ll get much of an answer, even about such a fright as you.”

  He forced me to a reasonable pace. A bitter wind nipped my cheeks and cut through my jerkin and shirt like honed steel through paper. I’d left my heavy cloak and gloves next Andero’s hearth. One night in the mountains without and I’d be frozen sure, ready for the Souleater’s flaying.

  HALF AN HOUR…AN HOUR…half a day…I’d no means to judge how long I sat amid Raghinne’s spoil heaps, trapped in a wasteland pocked with dangers. How stupid I was to trust a man I’d not seen since childhood. He could be leaving me out here to stew while charging my pursuers a pretty price to bring them down on my head. Or was it merely a reflection of my own villainy that I could not believe Andero the genial, stalwart man he seemed? Maddening to know that my odds of survival were no worse to wait for his treachery than to take out on my own.

  Muffled hoofbeats and a single pair of boots, too light for Andero, drew me to my feet, my finger on my staff’s crescent sigil.

  “This is no simple poulon,” I said, softly, lest someone mistake my ancille for a fighting staff. I angled its head toward the newcomer and fed power into the waiting spell. “Identify yourself.”

  “I’ve heard the Souleater devours the flesh in exchange for his favored gifts. First the hand, then the eyes. It looks as if he gnaws the very flesh from your bones.” Marta’s voice snapped like a hot chestnut in the cold air, not at all humble. “He must have gifted you fairly.”

  “What do you want?”

  A few more steps, hers and a horse’s. A bony hand, as rough and cold as the ice crowns on Tark’s Spine, thrust reins into my hand. With a gentle whuffle, Devil nosed my neck and pockets, his warm breath enveloping me.

  “I’ve provisioned your steed and brought him as I was asked. None heeds the smith’s spinster daughter. Now, get thee gone, and leave Andero out of your schemes. He’s kind, and—” Her steel-edged voice near cracked.

  With six of us run off or married, Marta would have borne the brunt of my parents’ abusive attention all these years. Until Andero’s return.

  “Perhaps you should run, too,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t whore for Da,” she said, emotions tucked away behind her bitter wall. “Why would I whore in unfamiliar streets?”

  Bile stung my throat. Of course Da would have tried to rent her. With only two of seven respectably married, he would have craved better surety for his failing years. Whoring a daughter paid almost as well as a son’s labor or a husband’s tithe. If she had defied him, he would have whipped her publicly, ensuring no man would ever take her to wife. She’d whore or starve. But Andero had come home and given her a choice.

  “You might find something other to do with yourself in the world.” But likely not, unless…“Do you—? Does Mam—? Da said something about beating the evil out of her. Have either of you some talent for magic?”

  She hissed scorn. “Once when she was drunk, Mam told me she’d heard that the daemon Panthia would trade magic for a child born in the dark. So Mam birthed each of us in Grymouth Caves. Her firstborn she left down in the cave, believing Panthia would take her. The babe starved, of course. The second, Mam cut and held until he died. Still Panthia did not come with her gift. When Andero was born, Mam offered his blood and her milk to summon the daemon. But Panthia still did not come, and she took Andero home, and so on with each of us seven. When you showed daemon signs as a babe—talking to people who weren’t there, altering small things when you screamed—the hope rose in her. She would leave you in the caves alone for days, telling Da her milk was slow and you needed wet-nursing. But the daemon never took you. Mam hated you for that. When you were older and held yourself above the rest of us, I watched Mam try charm setting till Da beat her will away entire. I tried, too. Every day. Every night. But there’s naught of magic in our family’s blood save what the Souleater has gifted you. Send Andero back whole or I’ll sell my own soul to lay a death curse on thee.”

  “Marta—” As so often, words failed. I could neither remedy such ignorance nor reconcile such sorrow, save by leaving. But I shifted my fingers on the ancille and called up a small spell I’d worked in the long years of my double life, little more than an illusion of a lighthouse on a stormy coast. I could no longer see the gray-green sea or the lighthouse with its fiery beacon, but even here surrounded by Raghinne’s misery, I could smell the salt air I conjured and hear the faint cries of gulls and the crash of waves. In the days before I’d heard Anne’s voice in the aether, the illusion had reminded me of a world that was not solely death and turmoil.

  My sister’s quick inhalation…a held breath…told me she experienced the illusion.

  “Get out of this place,” I said as I let it fade. “There is life beyond what we were born to.”

  “Daemon…”
/>   “I am just a man with skills. Daemons cannot create beauty.” Of all things, I knew the vision beautiful.

  She spat at my feet. “Whyever not? Dimios himself is said to be the fairest of the Creator’s works, and he knows exactly the cruelest torments, the vilest temptations to lay before a human soul. By the name of the Creator Spirit I bid thee go from here, Fallen. Take no one and nothing, and never darken this vale again.”

  Born in a cave. I might have known.

  CHAPTER 9

  RAGHINNE

  “Spirits’ blood, Dante, I told you to wait for me.” Andero forced Devil and me to halt, as I crept through the interminable spoil heaps toward the narrow end of the valley. “Are you loony?”

  With Devil’s lead wrapped about my dead hand, I had used my staff to feel out each step and my seeing spell to judge the shape of the landscape. I knew I needed to go up. Meanwhile I’d racked my mind to recall everything I could about the Sweats, a rugged, stepped plateau of scalding mud pits that lay beyond.