The Demon's Call

by Philip C Anderson

  “She didn’t,” Trent said.

  Georina shook her head. “No one’s prepared for this. We all floundered, most of us. Manifeld himself retreated to the temple while you stayed out there and beat the damned thing.”

  “I’d have done nothing without that Priest.” A honed edge poked through his voice. “We all have someone else to thank for how today turned out.”

  Georina twisted her left hand next to her head to gesture acquiescence and shrugged. She peered over her shoulder again, and this time her gaze met Rev’s. They waved to each other, then they closed their hands and pretended to tuck something into their armor before they returned to their company. A dark man spoke halfway down Revlina’s table, and she joined in the laughter, though Trent suspected she hadn’t caught what he said.

  A song came on. The singer uttered the chorus’s first words of a nu-metal group’s single. Trent didn’t catch the name of either. “When everyone’s a winner, we all become the losers”—

  Georina watched him. “She thinks we should trust you.”

  “Does she? What of you?”

  She knocked on the table. “Russell Hollowman saved more lives than anyone else in the last hundred years, setting aside Master Jeom. A couple billion? Maybe three?” She gestured to the lounge. “A dozen’s dozen here, at least. How many countless lives did you touch just because you didn’t shirk your duty, then and today?”

  “Hopefully enough to make up for those I didn’t,” said Trent. He stared into his cup and repeated himself: “It wasn’t just me.”

  “Modesty,” Georina said, a smirk across her wide mouth. “It’s refreshing. Leadership around here lack that little character quirk. But Revlina talked on this back in our room: The Priest isn’t who banished it. We all felt the power you channeled, saw how terrifying your position was. Yet you faced it like it was nothing.” She swigged her beer. “She says you’re the bravest man she’s ever seen. But, to her credit, she may be a little starstruck.” Georina chuckled when Trent rolled his eyes. “You and your squire, though, that’s how she tells it. To her, that cat-girl wouldn’t have stayed unless you had first.”

  Trent didn’t agree, but he remained silent. A lot of people tried to be brave and had succeeded in their endeavor. They just died for it.

  “We need you to be him. The alternatives are stretching and baseless, drummed up because Manifeld needs Hollowman to be alive but doesn’t want him here. So long as he—you—stay that way, the Chamberlain gets to sit in his little chair.”

  “Seems like not much’ll change.” Or maybe everything’ll change. What do I know? “But now everyone here is more prepared for the next time, grisly though the preparations were. If there is a next time.”

  “How did the demon even make it inside, do ya think? Rev wondered whether Manifeld could have lowered the protections around town.”

  “Why would he?” Trent asked.

  “Just to—make a point, I guess?”

  “No.” Trent remembered what Luffy had told him. “He’s a petty fuck, but he doesn’t have the balls to do somethin like that. How would he even get a greater demon to respond? Unless she also thinks he’s a Warlock.”

  “You underestimate people,” Georina said. “I brought up the same arguments with her, but she can be—stubborn. Do you remember Karles, from those couple months you helped train us?”

  Trent cocked his head. “Not much. Just did what we told him. I never thought he’d have the spine for any o’ this—that any of you had much of a spine at all, to be honest.”

  Georina chortled. “He and I were in the same class, ya know, and I can tell you almost nothing has changed. He’s the same walking stain now that he was then. But you left an impression on us, even if we don’t leave one on you. We called you the Young Boar. I don’t know if you ever heard that.”

  Trent shook his head.

  A trace of a smile remained on Georina’s lips. “It’s weird—no, I guess weird’s the wrong word—but it’s a thing. Rev says there’s no denying who you are.”

  Trent didn’t respond.

  “Goddess, she’s so tough. Told her we didn’t have to come out tonight. But ‘It’s fine,’ she told me. ‘I’m fine. Just a little shaken.’ Said she needed to be here for others.” She looked toward her partner, whose eyes shone green in the firelight.

  “Do you believe her?”

  Georina considered. After a few seconds’ quiet, she said, “Yeah.”

  Their conversation lulled for half a minute, filled by the ever-growing crowd and their myriad conversations, all of which blended into an ignorable knot of voices.

  “Can I be honest with you?” Georina asked.

  “I won’t stop you.” It had taken Trent a while to learn people didn’t have to be truthful, especially when they didn’t owe the truth to someone. People often don’t like it, as though fact proved too mundane, too bitter for everyday life, and the honest had to insure themselves against others’ sensibilities, lest they cause offense. Trent had never, he hoped, held the verity of someone’s word against them.

  “It scared me,” she said after a silence. “Not today. I mean, I was scared a bit today, but not of having to fight or anything. Facing that demon and dying wouldn’t have been how anyone wanted to go. But it’s odd: I wonder if I’ll ever be in situation like that again.” She picked at her left thumb’s cuticle. “I don’t get how you guys did it. Back when I was young, I wanted this. At least I told myself I did. Join the Karlians, fight the fight. But reality almost never lives up to your expectations. Back then, if Jeom hadn’t done what he did, saved everyone, even if only for a short time”—she shook her head, tried to laugh—“I’d have run away. I’ve been ashamed of it for so many years. How could any of us live up to him? To you? Then none of us had to. I’ve spent the last nineteen years getting somewhat bitter about it.”

  “Sounds about right.” Trent swirled the last of his whiskey, lamenting its end. “The fear, I mean. That never goes away, you just get faster at thinking through it. That’s all it comes down to: being just quicker than them.”

  Georina stared at him. A smiled cracked her face and crept toward her left cheek. A quick laugh blew through her nose. “Goddess, maybe you are just human.”

  Trent hadn’t thought much about the answer; just a fair appraisal of how War worked. He gulped the last of his drink. “There’s nothing special about me. But fear”—he cleared his throat—“it kills the mind, makes you duller when you don’t need to be, and you learn apace there’s no point being afraid of your own death. That’s what most are frightened of. Others are the ones who might suffer for it, but for you, it’s a quick slash through the air and some blood or your head gets caved in or whatever.”

  Georina’s brow creased. “Cripes, I haven’t seen enough to talk about this, I guess. But don’t knock yourself. It’s not bullshit that Karli anointed you. We all owe you, even though”—she paused.

  “I disappeared for twenty years?”

  “Showed up just in time regardless. And that’s how it seems to a lot of us. If you hadn’t been here today and that demon—that tracker, whatever you want to call it—had just gotten to run free, wreak havoc, it would have killed a lot more people. Maybe gotten into the city.”

  Trent had no intention of telling her that the demon had sought him out, had only been here today because of him. “I don’t matter much. Missed that one a long time ago.”

  Their food came a few minutes later. Georina had ordered fried fish with no side, but they came with pumpkin anyway. She scoffed and pushed the fruit away from her entrée. “Pumpkin,” she said, repulsed, then she noticed Trent watching her. “These can’t be your pumpkins, can they?”

  Trent cocked a half-smile as he cut into his cauliflower. “No need to apologize. Sometimes people just don’t like pumpkin.”

  “When you puke orange for a day and a half, it can sully your opinion.” She broke her fish into quarters.

  Their conversation turned to the goings
-on at Karhaal. Georina had asked about his short meeting with the leadership—“If it’s not out of kind for me to ask,” she’d said.

  “… Couldn’t convince him of the demons, even,” Trent said, chewing a bite of cauliflower. The chef hadn’t cooked it long enough to make it fully tender. “Not ‘til the tracker showed up. Tried to show him a picture I got of the one on my farm, but he said I’d probably just doctored it.”

  “Goddess.” Georina bit the end of a piece of fish she’d dipped in a white sauce. “Horrible what he’s done to the place, getting mixed up with the kind he has.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Trent. He waited, a piece of cauliflower on the end of his fork, while Georina chortled and took another bite of fish.

  A few moments’ silence made her look at him. “Do you really not know?”

  Trent watched her a moment, then ate his next bite of food.

  “I wondered why you stopped in the outskirts. It was a shock for me the first time, too. Can’t say what all Manifeld’s done, but the way Rev talks, it’s always been like this.” She shook her head. “That’s not true, of course. Manifeld’s just run the place into the ground—tariffs, taxes. When the Priests got here, even disputes in underlying Leynar philosophies. The Towers in Vqenna were inoperable about four years ago. Did you know that?”

  Trent shook his head. “Didn’t, but Grenn told me some of the same stuff.” Though he didn’t say it—wouldn’t have said it—he’d damned everyone on Coroth to the consequences of his trespasses. How far will they reach? But could the blame fully rest on him for everything that had happened?

  “I thought that was why the king had brought in the Undertaker. To bring a semblance of order back to the Order. Get us out of this Yarnle mess, but”—she shrugged—“no luck. Well, maybe a little bit, but I’m biased.”

  “Yarnle mess?” If the Priests’ leader knew of dealings with Yarnle, surely the king did as well.

  “Yeah, making deals with Yarnle is partly what’s ruined this place.”

  It unsettled Trent how matter-of-factly Georina spoke. He remembered the words of the old quartermaster, who had despised the world’s other side with a fiery spirit. “There’s a reason we left the continent all those eons ago. We need the iron from the Karhaadin Mountains, but other than that, it’s shit. Its people are shit. And unfortunately, that’s the nicest things I can say about the place.”

  Georina frowned before she returned to her food. The way she ate reminded Trent of a group of ancient Karlians who had called themselves the Aseities. Among other eccentricities, they hadn’t eaten adorned food. They ate their sustenance in its purest form possible, mostly raw, the idea being that humans are born pure, and every morsel they consumed needed to match that ideal. Their kind had ended, but their zealotry had left the Order in a state for three centuries that protected Coroth through two Wars. Though Georina ate her fish fried and with sauce, Trent couldn’t help but take note, even if uselessly, that she ate her food with bare hands.

  The rest of their meal passed in silence, and Trent’s mind wandered, yielding the preponderance of its employ to the Undertaker, the player in all this who, especially after what Luff told him, had quickly become the largest mystery.

  At a quarter ‘til eight, Trent checked his watch. “A quarter ‘til”—he stopped when Markil walked through the pub’s main entrance, his hair folded in disheveled parts. The young man searched the lounge with bugged eyes, and his body visibly relaxed when he found Trent. His sword banged into tables and the backs of chairs as he hurried through the grown crowd.

  Trent didn’t hear at first what the young man said, the latter’s voice lost in the sea of sound. The music had become steadily louder.

  “This about the Chamberlain?” Trent asked.

  “What?” Markil said. “Yeah.” He raised his voice. “The urlans got the last of the fallen to the Chantry. The Chamberlain wants the convocation done tonight.”

  “Does he want to see me afterwards?”

  “What? No. Not that I know of, at least.”

  Trent nodded. “Thanks. Send a message on the intranet about it.”

  “I will, Grand Master.” He pulled out his screen and found his way to the new guard’s table through the throng of people.

  Trent looked at Georina. “Want to see this? I’ve not done one before. Might be a disaster.”

  Georina laughed. “A convocation?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “I’ll go if Rev wants to, but I’ve no interest in seeing one for myself just yet.”

  Trent put down a couple five-pieces and knocked on the table in goodbye to Georina. A young man heading inside held the door open, his foot placed against the automatic slides.

  On Third Street proper, the city quieted. Trent’s time in the pub had given the weather time to sharpen its icy spears as it settled over the city. He imagined being inside any of the houses or apartments he passed, how cozy it would be to tuck away with loved ones, and he longed briefly for a life he didn’t have.

  He couldn’t be here longer than tomorrow morning, regardless of the meeting he needed with the leadership. But short of going to the temple tonight, which he didn’t have the constitution to do anyway, he’d run out of options except to force their hand. To try, at least.

  A man and two women walked the street, approaching the city gate, and Trent’s buzzed mind winged a pithy plan. He pulled his scarf over his face.

  “Scuse me,” Trent said, catching the man by the arm. Two dozen thin plates hung from his hips to his boots and fanned when he moved. His sleeves and chest piece covered his thin body in gold, ornamented so fine, only Befiennean wisps could have etched the choice metal. A belt hung slanted across his waist and hung off his left hip, fashioned as a chain of chrysanthemums in rose gold. Peeking from under his cloak, a besagew showed the depiction of a raven over his right shoulder. Leynars did funny things for their cuts at magic. Priests, as it were. “Ya look like ya know your way around here. Could you deliver a message to the Undertaker for me?”

  Bewilderment masked the Priest’s face. “Perhaps. I guess. What—why”—

  “Sorry. I’d do it myself, but—that pretender’s wantin me to say somethin to her. Assumes I might have more clout or whatever, but I don’t fuckin know her any better than I know him.”

  Surprise morphed the Priest’s face to a more amenable version of itself. “I know her pretty well.”

  “Thanks so much,” said Trent, taking the assumption. “Gone for years, and this damn rune, ya know”—he shook his head—“never thought I’d feel that happen again, let me tell ya. Mighta been a mistake to even come back. Like anyone here’d have missed me.”

  The girl with him had noticed the Priest had stopped to talk with Trent. “Thad, what’s goin on?” Her cloak fully enwrapped her body, and her hood shadowed her face.

  “Just a sec,” said Thad. He turned to Trent, his green eyes earnest under tousled blond. “What do you need?”

  “Pardon me,” Trent said, chuckling. “Tell her—the Madam Undertaker—the pretender will hold counsel with her in the morning. And if she doesn’t, he’ll leave without it.” Trent raised his hands to the distrusting gaze Thad cast on him. “That’s what he said. It’s what he said.”

  “Tonight?” asked Thad.

  “Course tonight.” The question bothered him. “If it could wait ‘til tomorrow, I’d do it myself.”

  “Thad,” said the young woman, insistent.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Thad told him after a few seconds.

  The young Priest rejoined the girl, who held out her hand to take his. Their quiet voices, but not their words, carried to Trent in the damp night air. He watched them pass through the city gate, and a minute later, he flashed the rune on his left arm to the attending guard and made his way into Karhaal.

  Where the obelisk served as a beacon seen from thousands of miles around, the Chantry slumped lower than the city’s walls, un-gilded and plain so those who entered might remember the
solemnity of what took place within. A plaque on a pedestal outside the building told the tale of how Karhaal had gained its shape. That story ran through Trent’s mind as he made his way through his city’s mist-filled streets.

  The builders had erected the Chantry in Karhaal’s northeast corner, when the sun had risen in the west and set in the east, before the gods had done their reversal and joined Coroth to their universal constant of up and down. Trent didn’t understand how the builders did it tens of millennia ago, but history codices told of how Karlians had worked night and day to move each brick one-hundred-eighty degrees across the city from where the holy founders had originally set them, with respect to north now pointing toward the constellation that Plainari called Nimona. They set the holy site aright—even replaced the stonework at the temple, relaying every brick except those of the Bastion—the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and they’d implanted the Chantry into Karhaal’s proper southwest corner.

  Trent ignored those who socialized outside, sparse as they waited, and descended the crypt’s steps. A small foyer stretched a hundred meters either way and fed into rooms and other hallways that spanned under a small section of Karhaal and Vqenna. Several buildings in the outer city had nothing in them, and their doors couldn’t open from the outside.

  He set his hammer in front of him, held onto its hilt, and bowed his head, trying to clear his mind of the day’s viscera, willing the Goddess’s Light to flow through him, to sober him and calm his nerves. Exhaustion set upon him instead of the reverence with which he’d observed past convocations, and the aches of his day burgeoned further into his muscles, frayed the edges of his mind.

  While he meditated, Trent again eschewed the particular idea that all the corpses laid in the Chantry because of him. No amount of self-pity would change the past or mend his future, he told himself.

  His mind settled. When he opened his eyes, everyone had cleared from the foyer, and the shrine’s doors stood open before him. Those gathered remained quiet when he stepped inside, save for their whispers as he walked toward the altar.