The Demon's Call

by Philip C Anderson

  Pictures, whose tenants moved within their frames, adorned the walls, their occupants the captured essences of bands at least a generation old. Tables wrapped around pillars spaced throughout, and a long one took up the length of the free area off to their right, where people would have danced on a different night. Booths ran along the three walls that didn’t have the bar against them, and the bar took up the whole length of the fourth, where an urlan mixed and poured drinks. A mirror stretched behind it and made the place seem larger than its reality. The table tops had dusted with age and from cleaning product, and the place had repaired the chairs and upholstery with heavy tape and mismatched parts when they broke or tore or came undone, but the atmosphere—to Trent it felt a lot more like home than Karhaal did.

  Karlians sat with their weapons close by; maces, axes, swords, and staves.

  “… I don’t know,” a guy said at the table nearest the entrance. “A training exercise?” He eyed Trent’s hammer when he pulled it off his shoulder and set the head on the floor. “That’s what the Chamberlain said, at least.” His conversation drowned into the sea of voices.

  Waiters, in shorts and button-up flannels, moved around the chaos with subtle surety, coming and going through a door at the bar’s far end, through which the scents of fried foods and smoky wood drifted from the kitchens. A hearth burned on the bar’s other side, where a group of Priests leaned over a table that tucked into the far corner.

  Trent took off his scarf. Despite his memories, he felt out of place amongst the normality—like the rest celebrated a holiday he didn’t observe. Those gathered may have hoped that if they could take a small step back, the demon might be a one-off; that if they waited on this uneasy precipice, didn’t let their lives tip into the chaotic void another War promised, nothing had to be wrong yet.

  No one noticed Trent, but a group of Karlians jeered: “Grenn!”

  “Hey Abernathy,” a girl said, an affable grin across her face. She sat next to Tavit. “Wondered if ya died. Saved ya a seat anyway.” Another guy at the table said something Trent couldn’t hear.

  The rest erupted in laughter, and a small chant emerged: “Nar-the-nar-the-nar-the”—they clinked their steins and drank. Grenn took half a step and stopped.

  Before the young man spoke, Trent said, “S’right. Not my scene anyway.” He remembered how deferential he’d been to Jeom. It felt strange to have someone treat him the same.

  A worn smile spread across Grenn’s lips. “If I don’t see ya before tomorrow morning, I’ll meet ya at the guest inn.”

  “Sure.” Why wouldn’t he stay at the guest’s inn? “Try to get some rest tonight.”

  “Rest?” said a man who stood a head shorter than Grenn. His voice whined at a high tenor. He held a long-staff in his right hand and wore the armor of a Karlian in dark blue. Runes hung in the air around metal rings near either end of his weapon and swam across its surface in time with his hand. “This one? No need.” He observed Grenn’s face. Even in the pub’s low light, the scar gleamed with ointment, and the veins under his eye had glazed purple and orange. “Damn, that’s gonna leave a fuck of a scar.”

  A waiter came to them, his face and jawline sculpted by the cybernetics that shined under his skin. “Boys,” he said, his voice a comfortable baritone that laced with the synthetic node at his throat. “Can I get ya something?” He’d unbuttoned his shirt a button too far, and his chest gleamed, his body powdered with dark hair the same color as his eyes and the mane around his face.

  “This one”—the small guy’s staff stayed upright when he let go of it, and he poked Grenn’s chest—“needs somethin a-nice and strong. He almost died today. You should feel sorry for him.”

  “Poor baby,” said the waiter.

  The small one shook his head. “No sympathy. It’s what the service industry is really missin these days.”

  “Let’s start with somethin light,” said Grenn. “You’ve got a good stout, if I remember.”

  “Best in Vqenna,” the waiter said.

  “I’ll take two o’ those.”

  “Grenn,” his small friend said. “That’s nice of ya.”

  Grenn pointed at the short guy with his thumb. “He can get his own.”

  “The hells, man? First the waiter, now you? What’s next, the Goddess Herself?”

  “She already turned against ya, Lars,” the girl who’d saved a seat for Grenn said. “Remember, you didn’t pray hard enough. That’s why you’re so short.”

  “Then blessings to us all,” said Lars. “What I lack in height, I more than make up for in length.”

  Those at the table roared with laughter. Trent surmised the exchange had age to it.

  Lars turned to the waiter. “If I’m paying my way, I need somethin sour. Can your boy”—he nodded to the urlan—“help me with that?”

  “He can manage,” the waiter said. He looked at Trent. “And for you, sir?”

  “Coal Velour?”

  “Our urlan prefers a different brand. Something about trade-morality relativity. If you ask me, he just doesn’t like the taste, but I can assure you, the liquor he serves is more than fine.”

  “I’ll take it at the corner booth back there,” Trent said, pointing off to the left.

  “So you shall, sir.” Before the exchange finished, the waiter added, “Lars.”

  The small man turned at his name.

  “Is there anything I can help you with? That is a long—staff—you have there.”

  Lars pressed his gaze upon the waiter. “I hope so,” he said with a flit of his brow. “We’ll have ta see, won’t we?”

  The waiter winked at him before heading for the bar.

  “Slut,” Grenn said, jabbing Lars’s right arm.

  The smaller man exaggerated how much force Grenn used and grabbed onto his staff. It stayed upright as he sagged into it. “Goddess, I’ve told you before: I’m fragile. What have they been feeding you in Keep?”

  “You got no idea how this boy been gettin on,” Tavit said. Grenn and Lars joined the middle table. “The way he tells it”—

  Trent made his way toward the corner booth, next to which a door led to a washroom. As he sat, he thought of Cups back in Adjust and wondered if his path would ever carry him there again. Lillie had never been with him to Keep or Willace’s bar or stood with him on meetings with the king; she’d never even seen him as Grand Master. But this booth, he’d sat with her in one like it. The way her smile had lit up a corner of the world that had been theirs alone, how her eyes had traced across his face, the grace of her bare feet on a dance floor, all played liked motion pictures in his head. If Karli’s Light hadn’t manifested in the world, Lillie would have been enough to tell him good existed, so long as those who sought it didn’t stop.

  Yet he sat here, stymied. Each moment he tarried counted another second onto a scale that balanced against him. No one appreciated the need for haste, and Trent felt that he alone struggled against what Coroth faced, understood its danger. Even those in positions to act—the king, the Chamberlain, the Undertaker—tilted toward inaction. He as Grand Master could act, yet he alone wouldn’t be enough.

  But if what Luffy told him proved true, he might have to be.

  A blonde whose hair hung to the middle of her back came with his drink. Urlans served a lot of purposes, but Trent hated when one tended bar. Willace had spoiled him at Cups, for true, but at a bar that served alcohol by the milliliter, an urlan made sure two fingers meant two fingers.

  “Can I get ya anything else?” she asked.

  “In a bit.”

  “Just wave me down, hon.” She knocked on the table and carried her smile with her to the next.

  Trent closed his eyes and inhaled his drink’s bitter scent, so strong it misted his eyes. The path to the Tomb played through his mind, but reaching its end pushed him into a cloud of fog that rattled his vision. His ears plugged as his mind sojourned toward a sheet of great cliffs, and the sounds of the pub dampened until they congealed
into a single note, one that played at him from far away.

  To his left, a girl laughed, and reality and his mindscape merged until—

  “Goddess,” she said. Trent opened his eyes. Across the aisle from him, the girl spoke. Streaks of blonde blended into her dark red hair. “I wish I could have been there. Getting to see a real mastered demon—I can only imagine.”

  “I know,” a young man across from her said. “When my rune got cold, I wanted to get up and just—just do something.”

  “Ooh, so brave.”

  “Look at all of ‘em with their weapons,” another said, her eyes wide with excitement. A shock of gray hair hung down the left side of her face. “Like they’re expecting an attack any moment. Could happen, ya know.” She leaned toward her compatriots and whispered what she said next. Trent heard her mention a professor. “Speaking of, did you see the king yesterday?”

  “No,” said the redhead, “I was in drills. Saw a rerun, though.”

  “He is so fucking hot. Goddess, what I’d give to sleep with him.”

  “What wouldn’t you give?”

  “Shut up,” the gray-haired girl said, and they giggled, something Trent didn’t miss about his youth. “Well, what would you do for the king?”

  “Not much. I like my men a little younger. Bit more pepper on ‘em.”

  “You do realize what this says about you?” the brave young man said. He sounded like a bad impression of the apothecary. “Fire, passion!”

  “Who, then?” asked the girl with gray hair. “What could be better than fucking a king?”

  “Being king?” the guy suggested, his voice back to normal.

  The redhead shrugged. “The prince comes to mind.”

  “Yeah, I bet he does,” said another guy, who sat next to the redhead. He nudged her with his elbow. He’d removed his cloak, and from his shoulders to his wrists, deep-blue lines glowed underneath his skin.

  “Really?” The other girl sounded unimpressed. “The prince.”

  “I mean”—the redhead gestured insistence—“he’s gonna be king.”

  “Yeah, probably. But we don’t know that. Plus, you’re not a Leynar anymore.”

  “Woah, I said I wanted to fuck him, not marry him.” The redhead wrapped her cloak a bit more around herself. “Plus, Priest is just a fancy way of saying I’m better than a Leynar. It’s a new world. He could go for me. And the king is married while we’re on the topic of eligibility.”

  “His Highness is the royal son,” said the guy next to her. “I imagine he’s not hurting in that regard.”

  The rest of their conversation dragged into teenage nonentity, and twenty minutes later, Trent had tucked into his second cup and ordered a cauliflower steak with cheese curds.

  “Comes with a complementary side of pumpkin,” the waiter had told him when he ordered. “Barely got our shipment in from Keep.”

  While Trent waited, he watched the door. More people came inside than left, and soon the place only had standing-room. He saw Georina enter. She combed her hair through her fingers and watched the table where Grenn and the new guard sat, theirs the subject of discussion and envy. An axe hung across her back, its edge curved over three feet and burned with smoldering-red runes. Her gaze found Trent, and they stared at each other for a few seconds before she headed toward his booth.

  “Mind if I sit with you?” she asked. Her armor gleamed in a sourceless light.

  Trent gestured across from him. Like his hammer, she left her ax at the table’s end before she scooted toward the middle of her seat.

  They said nothing for several minutes, except for Georina lamenting, “Wait staff here’s a little dodgy, I guess.” She finally caught a waiter’s attention. “I’ll have the house porter,” she said, and after the waiter left, added to Trent, “How are you?”

  “Not myself.” Several images came to him, the most conspicuous being him floating through space.

  Georina chuckled. “For the last twenty years? Or is this ‘not being yourself’ a more recent development?”

  The waiter returned and set a pint-sized stein and a liter-bottle of dark brown on the table. She winked at Georina before she left.

  “Bit of both,” said Trent. “Having a hard time fitting back in.”

  “Know the feeling.” Georina uncapped the bottle and poured beer into her glass.

  Trent grasped for conversation. “Have you spoken with many others?”

  Georina shook her head. “Almost none of the old guard have returned. Not surprising. If they left during the War, why should they return for this one? No way we’ll get anywhere near a quorum for the session Manifeld wants to call. Not in time, at least, if he calls one too soon.”

  Trent had thought the same on both counts, and in doing so buried himself under a mountain of doubt that piled into regrets, each of which evolved into small hills unto themselves.

  “Even of the few who have returned, I only know of them.”

  “Who are they?” asked Trent.

  “Stinson’s here—well, not here, but she’s in town. Got in about an hour after the show. And Rubble, he’s one of ‘em who came from Yarnle. Goddess, I fell so out of touch. Apart from the few times I’ve come back, Rev is the only member I really talk to.” Georina looked over her shoulder and Trent followed her gaze to a fair-skinned girl who sat on a bench at the middle table’s end. Another young woman shared the seat with her. He’d missed her earlier, but he sufficed that he hadn’t been looking.

  Georina interested herself with the table’s grain, idly picked at the cuticles on her right hand.

  “How’d you two meet?” Trent asked.

  Georina rubbed her hands together. “Me and Rev?”

  Trent nodded.

  “Not that long a story. Not that interesting, either.”

  Trent waved his left hand in an upward arc in want to hear it.

  Georina drafted through the bubbly head of her drink before she spoke, then wiped her mouth neatly with the back of her hand. “Me and her mum were friends in school before I heard my Call. I loved her, in more than the way school girls love their friends. But while I trained, we grew apart, as people who don’t live together are wont to do, and by the time I came back after the War, she’d found a man, a stunning man named Hamil. Not important o’ course. I mean, it is, just not for this story.”

  She smiled. Her left cheek pinched more than her right. “It’s funny. I requested a post in Faahraon, and I went back with the idea that Tiz would have waited for me, that when I returned, we’d be what we could have been if I’d—if I’d been braver before I left.” She sighed and sipped her beer. “Known Revlina almost her whole life, and even if her mother had found someone else—it turns out she never would have gone for me in the first place—I was just glad I got to see her happiness, that I still got to be in her life, even if she didn’t share it with me. And the Goddess sighs.”

  Trent hadn’t heard the expression for a long time, not since it became vogue again a few years into the War after a pop song of the same name released. With his tired mind, he contented himself to say nothing about it and waited for Georina to go on.

  “Our age difference,” she said, “seems off to a lot of people, myself more than any of them. I still remember it, clearer than almost anything in my life—she’d just turned sixteen, and I’ll spare most of the details, but she told me how she felt. About me.” Georina shook her head as she fiddled with her fingers. “I had the audacity to tell her it was puppy love, that I’d known her for her entire life, that it didn’t make sense. She could meet and be with anyone else, find happiness with them. She didn’t want me. And I told her: Once she turned eighteen, if she still wanted—that—we could talk about it again. But she couldn’t bring up before then.”

  “And when did she get her Call?” asked Trent.

  “Seventeen. A Leynar feeling the Goddess’s Call. I hardly understood, but then just a few days later, there came the Karlians, and a strange man in armor kinda like ours
—I mean, you’ve seen it—told us the king had formed a new Order.” She puffed. “That’s how they explained it to Tiz. I didn’t even know it had happened. But Tiz was so glad that Rev had me as a mentor, for guidance.” She paused, and a few seconds later, she went on.

  “The six times I’ve visited Karhaal were all to visit Rev. She turned eighteen here, and she wrote me a message that I didn’t read until the next morning. Because I was too afraid of what it said. Knew what it said anyway.”

  Trent’s whiskey bit the inside of his mouth, and he swallowed. “What did you do?”

  “I prayed.” Her voice came as hardly a whisper. “Karli said nothing, which I took to mean she didn’t disapprove. Why would she? Like the gods care for our individual goings-on, especially someone like me. We kept the relationship secret until she passed her trials, after which she told me she didn’t want to ‘live a lie anymore.’ She wanted to tell her parents even though I advised against it—because a secret does not equate to a lie. Rev said it was a lie of omission, at least. She’s so much braver than I ever was. There again, I guess I never had to be.”

  Trent smirked, even as the image of the greater demon sped through his mind.

  “I mean, I’m not beautiful, but ya know, fuck it, I came to terms with that a long time ago, back when I didn’t even know what the hells I liked. Tiz was always kind to me, but the boys—well, Tiz was prettier than me, too. Yet for the first time in my life, someone wanted me, and Rev said I couldn’t keep running from happiness. For some fucked up reason, she finds it with me. And she didn’t care what her parents thought of it, she just wanted them to know.” Georina drained the last half of her glass and refilled it from the bottle.

  “Turned out I had nothing to worry about. The idea didn’t thrill them at first, but they became supportive in the end, especially Tiz after Rev told ‘em how it happened, how I’d advised her against it. Sometimes you don’t think life will ever work out for you, but once you stop trying to force it—trust in the Goddess, I guess, whatever that means—you get there eventually.” Her voice darkened suddenly. “Don’t know what I’d have done if she’d died today.”