The Summoner's Handbook

by Taran Matharu

  Day 367

  I inspected another hut, found among the burned trees from when we moved up the trenches. This one was more of a temporary shelter than a permanent living space, perhaps belonging to an orc scout watching our positions. Somehow, the fire only singed the outside. There were orc runes scratched on the walls within, which I took some pleasure in translating. I am quite pleased with how I did it.

  You see, when King Corwin arrived here all those years ago, he initially had a peace treaty with the orcs. That treaty, a lengthy, flowery diatribe, was recorded in both languages, with phonetic pronunciations scrawled beneath the orcish runes. I was able to dig up a copy in the library’s mustiest archives a while back—though Lord Etherington had to send a Shrike demon to bring it to me yesterday. It is likely where the treatise I found on orc phonetics (that I used to name the Akhlut) came from.

  Sadly, not all the words were translatable, but what I managed appeared to be a poem, or perhaps a song, about an orcish maiden. It was quite rude, truth be told. Lord Etherington was not amused.

  Day 382

  I went into the jungles tonight. I write this with a shaking hand just minutes after my return. It terrified me to my core.

  Lord Etherington cares not a jot for my survival. I bet he already has another errand boy being trained up somewhere, ready to fill my place when I fall.

  I was summoned in the darkest of night by Captain Bambridge, and I was ordered to rouse my platoon. An orc had been seen crouched in the darkness of the jungle’s edge, spotted by an enterprising young captain who was testing the cat’s-eye spell.

  We were ordered to attempt to capture it, and I could tell by the reluctance in Bambridge’s voice that he did not agree with this order. It must have come from Lord Etherington directly.

  My men, who had so often complained about latrine duty, likely now wanted to do nothing else but go back to filling in the stinking troughs.

  I decided speed would be of the essence. So we lined up behind the trench, and at my order, we charged across the blackened landscape.

  As I ran ahead, my men panicked. Shots whistled over my head as they fired early. I had no choice but to dive to the ground as musket balls whipped past my ears.

  I charged again as they stopped to reload, Sable zooming ahead of me, her better eyesight giving her the advantage. I stumbled to the edge, my sword drawn, but it was too late. I flared up a wyrdlight and saw the orc had died, a lucky musket ball lodged somewhere in its skull. I was relieved. What was I thinking, charging alone against a foe in his own territory? Had my men not fired in their panic, I would likely be dead by now, smashed by the orc club that lay beside the corpse.

  It took some convincing for the men to come to the jungle edge, but eventually they came to join me and we dragged it back to the front lines.

  Men cheered our courage as we came back into view, dragging our prize behind us.

  “Our lieutenant’s a nutter!” called one of my men. “Charged an orc on ’is own, tried to capture the bleedin’ thing.”

  I think some of the other soldiers thought I had killed it myself, and I am shamed to say I did not correct them.

  Men clapped me on the back, applauding my bravery, but the effect was slightly spoiled as I heaved the contents of my stomach onto my boots. Still, it was interesting to see a real orc in the flesh for the first time.

  It was a giant at over seven feet tall, proportionally human but with a strange topknot braid and two tusks jutting from its lips. It was an ugly thing, adorned with bone piercings and body paint. Only a grass skirt protected its modesty.

  I ordered my men to bury it and retreated to my tent before I voided my stomach once more.

  Is it strange that I feel only shame as I write this? Shame and fear.

  I need to get away from here.

  Day 383

  Lord Etherington berated me for killing the orc. I reminded him that no orc had ever been captured and that the attack had been foolhardy at best, but this only seemed to make him more angry.

  He was desperate for the orc keys; that is more than obvious. We are losing the war. The cost of keeping so many men here is bankrupting the kingdom, and our men are cowards. They run at the first sign of trouble, so he said.

  As he shouted, he paced back and forth in the room, muttering to himself like a madman. This is the man I have entrusted with my life?

  I left without being dismissed, and he barely noticed. Just kept muttering to himself.

  Lord Cavendish. If only I had listened.

  Day 407

  I want to succeed. It is easy to forget my parents and friends back home, here on the front lines. If we lost the war and the orcs broke through, my town would be one of the first to be slaughtered. So I will do my duty, just as these other soldiers are doing.

  Even if Lord Etherington puts me at risk. It will show them all that I am worth something. They’ll owe me then.

  Day 412

  As a fighter, I am near useless to the army. That is clear to me now. Their strength lies in their muskets and their battlemages, not untrained weaklings such as I. It is my mind that is my true talent.

  But here, I rot away. Yes, I have made progress … but if I let Lord Etherington’s mad schemes kill me, it will go to waste. What I need is somewhere safe to continue my research. Oh, to be back in the library, soaking up the knowledge of a millennium.

  If I have a chance to go into the jungles, I shall take it. My family still needs me, and the orc keys could change the fate of the war. But at the same time, if there is another place where my skills would be better put to use, then that is where I should go.

  I have written to Electra, asking where there might be other writings to study. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I can convince Lord Etherington to send me there.

  Day 413

  Electra’s reply is both exhilarating and disappointing. There is but one place that holds knowledge of summoning. Ancient scrolls, even older than our own! Hundreds of them, if the rumors are true.

  But where are they? With the ELVES!

  We are not on good terms with the elves. They will not pay the taxes we demand to keep their southern borders safe, so we declared war on them. It was a stupid reaction, because we now need even more men to defend our border to the north.

  Still, I am preparing my arguments to be allowed to go there. I have set up a time to speak with Lord Etherington tomorrow.

  Day 414

  Lord Etherington laughed in my face. He said I am becoming complacent, that I need a reminder of why I am here. He told me to fetch Captain Bambridge to him after our meeting, but did not say why. He only smiled at me, and I saw that same, mad look in his eye.

  In other news, I hear that our trenches are to be moved up once more, perhaps in a few weeks. More digging for us.

  Day 436

  They found something while deepening the trenches to the east of us just in case the orcs counterattack when the trenches are moved forward. It’s an old camp full of bones, perhaps hundreds of years old. I shall investigate further soon. For now, they are finishing their digging and are not to be disturbed.

  Day 439

  It is now a year to the day since Lord Etherington ordered my research to begin; yet I am no closer to discovering a new way into the ether. The pentacles the orc shamans use have different keys from ours, of that I am certain now.

  Yet they cover their tracks with surprising regularity. I am yet to re-create them with success, but I am sure that should I venture into terrain unmolested by Hominum’s touch, clues to what they are may be found. I must therefore make every effort to advance beyond the front lines, where I might see an orc perform a summoning and perhaps catch a glimpse of their pentacle. It is essential we discover which keys they use and in what order.

  Today my search finally bore fruit, but not the kind I had hoped for. In my digs at the remains of an old orc encampment, I discovered an incantation, etched on a scroll made of human skin. I have found a surprising joy in its tr
anslation; the orc language is brutalist in its expression, but there is an untamed beauty to it that I cannot explain.

  I suspect the scroll imparts a demon to the adept who reads it. In all likelihood this demon will be a low-level imp gifted from an older shaman to his apprentice to start him in the learning of the dark art. This will be a rare opportunity to examine a demon from a different part of the ether. Perhaps through more careful scrutiny, this imp will point me in the right direction. With each failure, my resolve grows, yet I cannot shake the feeling that my mission is perceived by my colleagues as a fool’s errand. Though my demon is weak, I will prove to the naysayers that I have just as much right to be an officer as those of noble blood.

  Now I must away, for my commanding officer has called me to his tent. Perhaps this will be my first opportunity to cross into enemy territory.

  TREATISE ON THE BASICS OF SUMMONING

  by James Baker

  The ability to summon is passed down through the blood. The firstborn child always inherits the gift, while their younger siblings have a much smaller chance.

  Every summoner must at first be gifted a demon through the reading aloud of a summoning scroll, usually through a parent or sponsor. Once summoned, the demons act as familiars and share a mental and emotional connection with their human counterparts. Without a demon, a summoner would be almost indistinguishable from a normal person, although some exhibit the early ability to produce small sparks or flames. The source of their true power is the channeling of mana from their demons.

  Demons can be infused within their summoner when they are not needed, allowing them to recover their mana and rest. While within, the demon can see all that the summoner does. In order to be summoned or infused, the demon must be standing upon a pentacle, which must be comprised of or inscribed on organic material. A summoner must power up the pentacle with mana before the summoning or infusion may occur.

  Demons are captured from a disk-shaped world called the ether. Around the edge of this world is an abyss, where warped, tentacled demons known as Ceteans live. The outer rim is made of a Mars-like desert called the deadlands, followed by jungles, seas, mountains and volcanoes as you come closer to the center, where most of the demons can be found.

  The ether is accessed by a keyed pentacle, differing from the pentacle needed for summoning in that it has symbols on each point of the star, acting as coordinates for an approximate location in the ether. This portal must be fueled with mana at all times to keep it open. Summoners are unable to enter the ether unless wearing a suit, not unlike a deep-sea diver’s, as the air is poisonous. They will usually use their demons to hunt for others in the ether, dragging them back through the portal so their summoner can infuse them and thus capture them.

  Summoners are able to use scrying crystals to see and hear what their demons do while they are in the ether—all scrying crystals are made from corundum crystal. Corundum crystal is also used in charging stones, a column made up of crystals of the same color.

  Demonic species come in all shapes and sizes, from small beetle demons known as Mites to larger ones, such as Griffins and Wendigos. The demons will also have a fixed amount of mana and a level, depending on their species. Summoners also have levels, which improve as time goes by and they become more experienced. The more powerful a summoner, the higher the level of demon they are capable of summoning. For example, a level-ten summoner could own ten Mites, which are level one, or one Minotaur, which is level ten.

  Finally, there are the spells. To perform a spell, a summoner must etch a symbol in the air with a glowing finger, leaving a blue glyph that will eventually “fix” and follow their fingertip as if attached by an invisible frame. Only when the mana is channeled through this glyph does it become a spell.

  A note from Dame Fairhaven

  That was the last entry in Baker’s diary. I mourned for the boy when Fletcher Raleigh first brought this to me, for he was a kindhearted soul. I only wish I had known what he was going through at the time. I hope that no other child under my care will ever feel such loneliness as he did. Was I blind to the bullying? Or did I not want to see?

  I have asked Fletcher to recount what Sergeant Rotherham told him of Baker’s final moments, which I have transcribed here below. I wanted to ask the sergeant myself, but tragically, this is not possible anymore. Fletcher has done his best to keep the story as close to verbatim as possible, but memory is a fickle thing. This is the best he could do.

  “Their orders were to scout out the next forward line. The trenches were advancing again. It was darker than a stack of black cats that night, barely a sliver of a moon to light their way. Apparently they made more noise than a rhino charging as they made their way through the thickets, and it was a miracle they made it more than ten minutes without being noticed.

  “Baker led the way, because his demon had good night vision. It didn’t help much, but it kept them in the right direction, even if they kept tripping and nearly firing their muskets. Rotherham thought it was a suicide mission—a way of getting the older soldiers off the king’s pay.

  “Eventually they became lost, as the few stars that Baker had been using to navigate became covered by rain clouds. This compounded the soldiers’ predicament: Muskets won’t fire with wet gunpowder.

  “They were ambushed soon after the rain. Javelins whistled through the trees and plucked men from the earth as if the world had flipped sideways. They didn’t even see their attackers, but half the platoon was dead in the first volley, and Rotherham was already running before the second. Baker led the retreat, following the chirps of his demon. In the end, Baker collapsed, and Rotherham noticed that he had been winged by a javelin in his side. There was a lot of blood, and Rotherham thought he was a dead man already, but the demon wouldn’t leave without him. Rotherham carried him the rest of the way.

  “Rotherham took his pack, knowing Baker wouldn’t need it anymore. I’m not sure what happened after that, only that the demon stayed by Baker’s side and refused to leave it for some time.”

  It was this last point that gave me pause. You see (and this next part is for the novices reading), when a summoner dies, their demon fades into the ether. Usually, they do not hang around for long, unless they have some special task to perform, in which case they resist the ether’s call. But this demon stayed, and for a while it seems. Why?

  So, I investigated further. Unfortunately, Lord Etherington died in the Battle of Vocans, so I could not speak to him directly. Instead, I spoke to the soldiers in Lord Etherington’s battalion, and Captain Bambridge.

  Yet no matter how many men I spoke to, not a single one could remember what had happened to Baker’s body. Nobody buried him. It was as if the morning came, and then they moved the trenches up, charging the jungle once more and burning their way forward. In the chaos of it all, Baker’s body disappeared. One assumed that some kind soul had taken it upon themselves to bury the boy, perhaps a friend of his.

  But this wasn’t enough for me. And there was something else too. When I interviewed Fletcher at his home in Raleighshire, he was being visited by his elven friend Sylva. In fact, it seems the two are working closely together; she is always there when I visit the gremlins (they have become my latest area of study—there is almost nothing in our archives about them!). It took me several visits to Raleightown to catch Fletcher for an interview, truth be told, as they are always flying off on Sylva’s Griffin, scouting the jungles for signs of orc attacks. They are so diligent, sometimes they don’t return until the dead of night. I only wish I had their work ethic.

  In any case, when I was telling Fletcher about my progress with Baker’s journal, Sylva’s eyes lit up with what seemed to me an unusual interest. She clung to my every word.

  So, after my interview, I took her aside and asked her, quite plainly, what she was hiding. She was flustered, but seemed to calm when I asked her again what she knew of Baker. She thought for a moment, then shrugged and told me all. The war was practically over, she s
aid, so telling me couldn’t do any harm.

  You see … when Sylva arrived at Vocans, she was already able to infuse her demon on her own. She had knowledge of many things she should not have, but claimed she had learned them from ancient elven books. I believed her. But … as it turns out … she had a tutor.

  James Baker did not die on that godforsaken mission. Somehow he survived and made his way in secret to the Great Forest. There, he offered his services to the elves in exchange for sanctuary and access to their most ancient of books. Sylva kept his secret all these years, even from her closest friends, for she knew he would face charges of desertion and be summarily executed if he were to be found out.

  You may be wondering why I am outing James in this way. Well, King Harold has offered him a full pardon, thanks, in no small part, to the fact that over the years he has sent dozens of anonymous letters to Electra, helping her advance Hominum’s summoning research. He called himself Captain Jacoby in his messages and delivered them through his Chamrosh in the dead of night. Sylva confirmed that Baker did indeed increase in level and capture a Chamrosh, though he kept his Mite as well. At no point did Electra know Baker’s true identity, but it was he who identified the Medusa, Stheno and Euryale plants, as well as sharing spells such as the ethereal blade, among others. A dozen new demons were also added to Vocans’s official demonology.

  I have written to Baker in the hopes that someday he will come back to Vocans and take over as librarian when I retire. No reply as of yet. But I live in hope.