The Demon's Call

by Philip C Anderson

  “There’s a place in the Lower City called Rhine’s. I’m friends with a few girls there.”

  “Friends? You?”

  “Acquaintances if you’d prefer,” she said as he stepped outside.

  To his left, a fountain cackled. Water erupted in a ten-foot arc from the mouth of a golden fish and clacked into the surrounding basin. To his right, the way they’d come now ended in an alley where two buildings slumped together. The sky had darkened to a merle-navy, and clouds had descended from the mountains to the southwest on a high and wispy wind.

  “Where are we?”

  “Oh shit, that’s right.” Kendra hung her head out the front door, bracing herself against its frame. “Made my house implacable a few years ago, and now it”—she waved her hand above her head—“ends up everywhere. Except the monorail. I made that mistake one too many times. But I don’t think we’re in the Upper City.” She sniffed the air. “Smells like we might be downtown in the Old District. At least we’re not in the Hills, I guess.”

  “If you say so,” Russ said, his tone impatient.

  “Head north”—she paused a few seconds. “Yeah, north, and you’ll hit a main street where you can get a cab.”

  “Sure.” Russ turned. For a second, he almost didn’t want to leave. “Tomorrow.” The word hung between them. “How will I find this place again?”

  Kendra shrugged. “Just find me.”

  “That simple?”

  “So long as you don’t wanna hurt me.” She reached behind her, then held out the stone he’d forgotten on her coffee table. “I assume you want this back.”

  He did. “Yeah, but”—Russ took the other from the pouch on his belt—“I’ll trade ya for it.” They tossed the stones between them, and he pocketed the one from Arnin. “I’m sure you can find somethin fun to do with that.”

  “Fun’s a word,” she said, examining it.

  A diamondback slithered across Kendra’s porch. It didn’t pay either of them mind. Still, Russ recoiled and a surprised syllable escaped his mouth.

  Kendra laughed. “Gods, Russ, it’s a snake. Probably doesn’t even care about you—just coming in from the desert to get cool.”

  “Goddess alive, makes me miss serrens.”

  Kendra winked. “See ya tomorrow, friend.” She shut the door behind her.

  5

  Russ followed Kendra’s advice, and fourteen minutes later, after getting lost in a trackback of alleys and asking an older lady he met on a side street for directions to the main road—“You’ve gone the wrong way, love,” she’d said and corrected his course—he waved down a taxi.

  The urlan inside eyed him as he climbed on and sat. “Where to?” she asked.

  “Need an inn near the Lower City’s hub.”

  “I can take you to my affiliate. Fine establishment, I guarantee it.”

  “Headin for a place called Rhine’s.”

  “Right-e-o, sir.” The car pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic. “Be about forty minutes. Traffic’s awful this time of day.”

  “Sure,” Russ said, distracted by his own body. He felt his face, the contours of which reminded him of returning to an old, disused home, where any semblance of familiarity had vanished long ago. He’d often wondered what he would have accomplished by the time he got back around to being Russell Hollowman, and even in two decades, he’d managed to fail every expectation he’d put upon himself.

  Yet he also butted against those metrics: circumstance and age had removed him too far from the man who had set them.

  “Can take the higher road.” The urlan looked at him over her shoulder. “Takes a little longer, but once the city lights up, especially Rilbin Tower—that big one—it’s a sight you’ll not wanna miss.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Aw-right.” The urlan merged onto a ramp that climbed above the tops of buildings and said, “Joins a loop that goes clear around the city. Sometimes I like to tell tourists you can almost see the ocean over the mountains.” She laughed. “It’s bullshit, of course. Get nowhere near high enough to see any water unless you count the oasis south of here. But his kingship made that a preservation for something. I don’t even fucking understand what’s goin on at Arnin anymore.”

  Russ didn’t respond.

  “Not a talkative one, huh? Must be a celebrity or somethin. Swear I recognize you from somewhere.”

  “Not famous. Infamous if anything.”

  “Well ya look fuckin miserable. Sure you don’t wanna go somewhere else first? Maybe lighten ya mood? One of my affiliates”—

  “No,” said Russ. “Stop advertising, please.”

  “Will do, boss-man.”

  Most of the city lay in early-evening darkness, but as the urlan pulled onto the loop, Rilbin Tower’s marquis lit and blazed, even from across the river.

  “Oh, praise the gods,” the cabbie said. “So lucky ya get to see that.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Russ said, unimpressed. At the end of the day, it objectively meant nothing.

  “Ah, come on. I love seein that shit. It’s like a burst of salvation amongst the gathering darkness. One time I heard the dark is full of horrors or somethin like that. Well who’s gonna be scared of the dark with that around?”

  “Anyone who dreads the dark doesn’t understand what it is. It’s what’s in the dark you gotta fear.”

  “Yeah, never understood the line myself. Not in my programming, ya dig?” She peered at Russ in the rearview mirror, then she burst into a fit of laughter. “Oh gods. Can’t help but giggle at my own jokes. If ya can’t laugh at yourself, who will?”

  Russ didn’t speak for rest of the ride, his mind afire with being himself again and the stake of the next day. He tried to fit everything else that needed to happen with what had happened, and his mind settled on an idea he’d apprise Kendra of once he got to Rhine’s.

  “Thanks for the tip, mister,” the urlan said.

  Russ stepped off the caravan onto the sidewalk in front of the—establishment would have been a good word.

  The hotel spanned four city blocks. Black marble made the exterior, and guillotine windows ran up the building’s face in neat rows and columns until the top floor, where they spaced out and grew into balconies dozens of stories overhead. Its first floor disappeared every few dozen meters to make way for access to side streets. Inside, a chandelier hung from the foyer’s ceiling and shined yellow light across the floor, walls, and banisters, all the same black marble as the building’s face. Accents caught the light in grafts of gold that streamed through the precious stone.

  A woman stood behind a counter. Surprise carved her face when she first saw Russ, but a trained smile remedied her mask. “Welcome to Rhine’s, sir. How may I be of service tonight?”

  “My friend told me this would be a good place to stay.” Russ set his hammer on the floor next to him when he stopped in front of her.

  The woman’s demeanor faltered for a fraction of a second when the weapon thunked against the choice decoration. “Do you have a reservation?” She typed before he answered. “Karhaal probably put one in for you.”

  “No, they didn’t know I was coming.” Russ handed over his tablet. “First floor if ya can.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the girl said, tapping and swiping across her screen. “If I’d known we had a Karlian staying with us tonight, I would have saved whatever room you liked, but”—she shook her head—“I’m sorry, I can’t find anything in the database.”

  “There’s nothin to find,” Russ said, reiterating as gently as he could. “I’ll take whatever ya got.”

  “The first floor is fully booked—always is, weeks in advance, mind you. How’s the second floor?”

  “Fine.”

  “All right, sir.” She held his tablet under a scanner. It beeped, then she handed it back to him. “Have a wonderful stay.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Russ climbed a flight of stairs to the second story, where a turquo
ise rug extended the floor’s length over stark white tile. His room waited for him, fresh and stainless, two down from the stairs, and he set his hammer near the door inside.

  Fluffy white carpet scuffed under his boots as he walked the room’s length, and at its end, a movement to his left caught his attention in the washroom’s mirror. He stepped out of his armor and set the breastplate on the floor against his leggings near the room’s window. The street outside had only gotten busier.

  While he washed up, Russ tried not to stare at himself. Lines on his face had sunken into his skin and etched patterns he didn’t recognize, and less gray salted his head and face than it did on Trent.

  His terminal buzzed against his armor and made an audible chirp, and he finished at the sink with a swipe of his hand over his chin. Sieku had responded.

  ‘Wonderful to hear from you, sir. Glad you found Ms. Drander—she’d been using a different name—without my assistance, which was just behind you as soon as service returned. I’ve uploaded those old journal entries you had me find—that wasn’t easy, by the way, almost like you hadn’t wanted to find them again. Karhaal also tried to inform you of a missed call with the king. Leadership told them you’d left already. His Majesty wasn’t pleased.’

  A message waited for him from Brech as well. ‘Wanted to check in and apprise you of what my counselors have said since my address. Until I hear from you, I hope all’s well.’ A digital signature appended the correspondence in a hasty scribble across the page’s lower half that read: ‘His Majesty, Holder of the Scepter, Leader of the United Peoples, King Brech, the First of His Name, of House Breseway, Chancellor of the Western Lowlands.’

  Russ looked at the ring Brech had given him. It had been so important at the time to get it, and if he hadn’t found Kendra here… But he had, much faster than he thought he would—way faster.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and swiped through the programs on his tablet until he found an old journaling application he’d stopped using early in his exile. The last entry, dated seventeen years ago, written by a man he didn’t recognize as himself, read in part, ‘The days piece together. This will be my final entry.’ One a few weeks before that, perhaps the shortest entry in the program, read, ‘I got it.’

  Before he delved further into his readings, he wrote a message to Kendra. ‘Been thinking. I’m gonna bring that Priest with us tomorrow.’ He perused other entries while he awaited her response. Most that garnered his interest pertained to the time during the War. One, from a day when the Order had sustained heavy losses during a raid on Uosis, a city near the equator over in Yarnle, had earned three pages in one sitting from him and documented a day-and-a-half of counter-work.

  Then he found an entry of three paragraphs, dated about a year-and-a-half before he stopped journaling. The last sentence—‘Kendra left, and may the gods’ Will never bring her this way again.’—caused a dose of sadness to settle on his gut. But earlier in the journal’s content, much earlier, on a page that captured an auspicious day before the War had even started, Russ found the date he searched for, and his mind filled with the image of his own words.

  Russ sat in a booth at the Withering Ox, waiting under the cover of nocturne for a clandestine meeting. ‘I need to see you,’ a message had read, and Russ now sipped his second finger, the girl he waited on already twenty minutes late. Tempura batter and dirty oil scented the air, and the last of the night’s patrons drank in miserly silence or hopeful destitution; he made a game of trying to discern which. Management had quieted the music as the night stretched on, and now a whisper of a popular rhythm-and-rock song about dragon’s wings came from the jukebox near the entrance behind him.

  The front door squealed in its track. Russ looked over his shoulder. A man at the bar raised his glass toward the three men who entered, and after a second’s recognition, the newcomers all said, “Ha!” in drunken sequence as they stumbled inside. The bartender and her urlan looked unimpressed when they put in their drink order.

  “Nuh uh,” the bartender said. Her dark skin glinted in the firelight. “You gotta pay upfront after last time.”

  “Come on, Teryn,” said the tallest of them. His voice rumbled an octave below what humans should have been able to reach, a gravelly accompaniment to the bright blue lines etched into his jaw and neck. “You know we’re good furrit.”

  “Then pay me for last time.” Teryn’s wiry hair bounced when she bobbed her head. “If not, you’re shit outta luck.”

  “Hey, fuck you”—at the word, the urlan leapt from behind the counter and barred the man across his chest. A booster activated on the android’s back, and it and the man flew toward a table behind them.

  “Miss Teryn told you the stipulations of the transaction,” the urlan said in an overly mechanized voice. He easily held the man on his back. “If they’re unappealing, you are free to take your business elsewhere. In lieu of that, pay, or I’ll call the authorities.”

  “Tonc,” Teryn said, “Get off him. He’s just drunk.”

  The urlan righted himself and hopped back over the bar. He grabbed a rag as he eyed the sot.

  “Yeah, Tonc.” The man grabbed his throat, even though the urlan hadn’t touched it. “Fuck you, too, man. What are ya gonna do? Call a Karlian?”

  “Dude,” Teryn said, incredulous. “Keep it up and I’ll order him to do that next time.”

  “I’ll do it, too.” The urlan pointed a knife at him. “No one would even blame me for it. And stop swearing. What the”—his voice module produced a tone in place of a word—“did I tell you?”

  “All right, gods.” The man pulled a wallet from his jacket pocket. “How much do I owe ya?”

  Goddess alive, Russ thought as he drained the last of his cup, urlans have to shape up a bit before I get one. His fingers tingled when he set the glass down. A puddle of amber settled unevenly across its bottom. Teryn looked toward him. He waved her off. His watch showed twenty-two minutes past one, and Russ covered his face with his hands, rubbing against shallow guilt and deep wear. Lillie hopefully still slept where he’d left her at home. He wished he could be there too.

  “Russ,” Kendra said. He opened his eyes. She pushed her hood back, and the room became a little lighter for the blue under her brow and the honest smile on her face. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “As usual.”

  She didn’t mind the jab. That smile remained glued to her lips, like she couldn’t rid herself of the affectation. “Thanks for coming.”

  “It’s fine, but I don’t want to be gone too long.”

  “Then just—listen,” she said, excited. Her tone caused an inkling of foreboding in Russ’s gut. “I got promoted.”

  “Great.” He hoped she hadn’t called him just to tell him that. “Who’d you have to evocate to get that?”

  Kendra’s mouth opened in mock-incredulity. “No one. That would be an enchantment anyway, come on.” They laughed. “But yeah. Years ahead of when I thought I would. Russ, it’s the big one.”

  “No. The Ollerian post?”

  Kendra nodded, giggling. She covered half her face with her hand when she saw Russ narrow his eyes at her. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Not looking at you like anything. Just not sure I’ve ever heard you giggle like this.” If anything, the suddenness of her appointment surprised him, but being almost ten years older, her getting high-profile appointments had only been a matter of ‘when.’ “Guess we won’t be seeing much of each other. For a while, at least.”

  She giggled again, though this time it sounded out of nerves, lower pitched and shorter than her last. Her mood quickly sobered, and she lowered her gaze to the table. She remained silent for two breaths. Then a third. “That’s—that’s why I wanted to talk.” Almost daringly, she looked Russ in the eye, silently pleading with him to understand what she didn’t want to say. “It’s because of you.”

  He waited.

  “I’ve finally got it,” she said. “Figured out everything in my lif
e, and I am inches—inches—from having it.” Her arm snaked across the table toward him, and she took his hand in her own. As she leaned forward, her robe fell away from her body, and Russ’s eyes flicked toward her exposed chest. She followed his gaze with her own and laughed before she pushed the robe fully off her right shoulder to expose the side of her body on the inside of the booth. “Nothing you haven’t seen before, right?”

  He returned his gaze to her face, could feel her trying to lighten the mood, and he waited for her to go on, failing to keep his face plain. A frown draped across his brow.

  “Russ, when we’re together, it’s great”—she exhaled. After a short silence, she said, “Gods damn it, I’m fucking this up.”

  “Fucking what up?”

  Kendra threw her other hand into the air next to her face in a gesture of indifferent displeasure. “I had a whole speech planned, and now that I’m here, it’s—it’s escaping me. Sounds stupid now.” Her hand played with his. “Sorry it’s taken me so long to figure it out, but when we’re together we’re—we’re fucking unstoppable. That’s how I feel, at least. I mean, you’re moving up in the Order really quickly; for the gods’ sake, you’re Jeom’s squire. And now, with me getting Ollerian”—she stopped and angled her cloak against her body to shield herself from a passing couple.

  Russ had been fine with their relationship; at least he pretended to be. It was what it was, he’d thought to himself whenever the inklings of more stirred for his friend. Yet now, of all the times for her to want to start, his mind met hers with grinding reticence.

  “Kendie.” He let his voice settle around her name before he continued. “Lillie and I just got moved into Vqenna.”

  “Into that shitty apartment,” Kendra said, perhaps meaner than she’d meant.

  Russ chuckled. “Yeah, but it’s our shitty apartment.”

  “I get how complicated this is. There’s no easy way through it, and it’s—more involved—than it would have been just ten months ago. But there aren’t so many intangibles that we couldn’t. I’ll hate myself forever if I—if I lose you.”