by Faith Hunter
The daywalker stumbled and fell to one knee. I heard the swing of a sword, and the thunk of bone as a blade impacted the walker’s calf. He dropped me, and as we separated, my heart thundered in my ears. The fall to the ground took two heartbeats, heartbeats coiled with pain from the stab wound. I hit and rolled, the breath knocked from me. My prime blazed.
I lay staring at the black sky, trying to remember how to breathe. My skin flared with pain as melted snow drenched through my clothes. Snowmelt stung like liquid fire, draining my energies pulling power from the primes to protect me. Water saturated the acidic spawn blood absorbed in my clothes, washing it against my flesh. If I’d been able, I would have screamed.
The torment flared, doubling, as I took a breath. The prime amulet in my hand was hot to the touch, flooding my body with stone power. I released it. One-handed, I felt my side. And found nothing, no torn flesh, no spur amulet, though my hand came away bloody.
I heard feet racing near me, one set, uneven. Two blades hit the ground near my outstretched legs. The tantos, by the sound of them. They’d need serious attention from the ill usage of this night.
Two breaths later, I rolled to my knees and followed the footsteps, plucking the weapons Audric had tossed out of the ground. Audric was chasing the walker in the general direction of my spring. I almost laughed.
I drew on the amulets, all of them, to stabilize my heartbeat and breathing, and to fight the poison of the psychic injury. I veered around Audric and the wounded walker. Shaken, slowed, I was still fast. The walker’s blood sprayed in arterial spurts across the wet ground, brighter in the snow as they headed uphill. Audric grunted with each breath, limping.
I herded them both toward the ring of stones and my spring. It was protected with a conjure to keep it hidden from the attention of any nonhuman, and to capture any supernat that touched its ringing stones. Circling around, I came hard from the south.
Just as Malashe-el limped past the spring, I threw one of the tantos. It thumped into the walker, the blade penetrating under its right arm. It fell, one hand out to catch itself, and touched a rounded boulder that ringed the spring.
The first part of the double-whammy conjure snapped into place with a sizzle of sound, the trap-shield rising and covering the spring and the boulders that contained the power for the conjure. This part was little more than an inverted shield, meant to keep prey in, not predators out. As Malashe-el fell and rolled, the spring erupted with part two of the incantation, drenching the walker with water, the conjure draining much of its Dark power. Malashe-el screamed, the keen long and furious, then pained, as if it were two instead of one.
Audric skidded to a halt, staring at the spring. It was the most complicated conjure I had ever attempted. I was apt to use raw power to bully my way through most problems. This was a thing of beauty. As an unanticipated side effect of trapping it, the pain in my side lessened. I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. Breathing was suddenly easier.
Gasping, Audric sat on the frozen ground, landing hard, his longsword across his thighs, the shortsword on the ground. Both dripped blood onto the snow. I sat beside him on a rock peeking from the ground, the remaining tanto reversed, pointing behind me. “Very nice,” he said, catching his breath.
“Thanks.” Sitting in the dark, watching the walker howl and roll in pain, I handed Audric a final healing amulet. “Put it over the fang punctures. It’ll neutralize the toxins.” A human might have died from the venom in the saliva, but Audric wouldn’t. He’d be sicker than plague-stricken monkeys, however, unless we counteracted the poison. I had made some amulets following my last encounter with spawn. I couldn’t count on the presence of a friendly, helpful seraph every time I got into trouble. Seraphs hadn’t given the human world much attention in the last few decades, and the neomage world even less.
In its cage, luminous blue and green energies and gold sparkles arcing over the spring, Malashe-el writhed and cursed and beat against the walls. Its red eyes spit hatred each time they landed on me. It pulled the tanto from its side with a gush of blood and threw the blade at the shield. It bounced off, clanging on the stones.
“Will it live?” Audric asked, breathing hard.
“Probably. If it gets control of itself in time to reserve some blood. If it gets to eat.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Audric asked after a few minutes. His voice sounded more normal.
“I don’t know. But see its eyes? They used to be blue-green, like labradorite stone. Almost incandescent.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t think it was originally pure Darkness. I think it was created out of the genetic patterns of a Major Darkness and something else.” When Audric didn’t laugh or shoot down my theory, I said, “Either it chose Darkness, or it’s possessed. If it chose the Dark, we’ll kill it. If it’s possessed against its will, the control will lessen with daylight.” Thinking about the questions Lolo hadn’t answered, I said, “Maybe we could get some information out of it.”
Seconds passed. Audric watched Malashe-el thrash. The daywalker pulled the spur amulet from its pocket and attacked the shield, stabbing at the energies with ferocity and speed that was hard to follow. The shield was unchanged, though it sizzled with the blows. When Audric spoke, his tone was deceptively casual. “You know how to exorcise a demon?”
“Not yet. But I might by morning.”
“And the weakness in your side, left from your vision underground? I saw what the touch of that amulet did to you.” I had nothing to say to that. We both knew I had a problem.
“Hey! You want to let me out of here?” a voice shouted. “Thorn?”
“Oops. Forgot about Zeddy,” I said.
“I’ll keep watch over your daywalker,” Audric said. “You release the boy and tell Rupert what happened. Ask him to bring me a sandwich and some water. Maybe a blanket.”
“You don’t have to stay here. The trap won’t fail. The walker was drenched with water from the spring. It’s stuck until I release it.” Zeddy shouted again, wondering if I was alive. I shouted back to hold his horses, hoping the humor would give him some patience.
As if he hadn’t heard me, Audric said, “I’ll wait here until you try an exorcism. Or until it dies. But you get to clean up the spawn. They’ll stink by morning, even in the cold.”
He was right. Spawn smelled like rotting meat, their decay process fast. As helpful townspeople had yet to appear, I’d pay Zeddy to pile and burn them, but I didn’t think it would be cheap. And I wondered what the town would say about the unwanted mage attracting a horde of spawn. Whatever they came up with, it wouldn’t be nice. They would have let me die out here, and probably been tickled pink about it. Tired, aching, feeling the pain in my side like a boil, I rose and went to the loft.
I showered fast and hung a healing amulet inside my T-SHIRT when I dressed, one that would help the acid burns, the cuts, and the pain in my side. As I dressed, I realized that Joseph Barefoot hadn’t appeared to help with the spawn either. Maybe if I’d had time to hang a cloth in my window, I thought wryly.
After the bath, wrapped in an afghan, I ate cottage cheese, frozen blueberries, a bowl of canned beans, and a fresh pear, which had been trucked in on a mule train. The pear had cost me dearly, but was worth every dollar. Fresh fruit in winter was for rich people. Or someone willing to do without necessities. I fit into the latter category, and had gone without much protein for the past month. In an ice age, one had to choose between survival supplies and pleasure. Paying for the pear had been one such choice. I ate every part of the fruit except the seeds, which I kept for Rupert and Jacey. I couldn’t grow weeds in summer, but my best friends had greener thumbs. Maybe they could grow a pear tree.
With my aches and pains relieved, and appetite appeased, I curled in bed and studied the Book of Workings, trying not to think about Audric out in the night, watching over my detainee. The Book of Workings wasn’t a magical book. It had no special powers or energies, and few ready-
made incantations. It was more a roadmap, a schoolbook, a compilation of the learnings of the first neomages. Having no teachers, they had been trying to find out what they were, and what they could do. The book was divided into three parts, the back of the book devoted to warfare. It was to that section that I turned, covers up under my chin, two blades in the bed, and my amulets around my neck.
Toward midnight the smell of burning and rotting spawn filtered in, the scent harsh as burned feathers in the back of my throat. I was breathing the foul flavor when I found the pages on exorcism. Unlike seraphs, mages are mortal and, unlike humans, we have no souls. Mortal and soulless, mages can’t call on the One True God, God the Victorious, for help. Prayer doesn’t work for us. He doesn’t hear us. Seraphs will hear us if we, or innocents, are near death, but many theologians insist that God won’t. Other theologians contend that if he doesn’t hear an intelligent creature, it proves he isn’t real and never was, but that was a theological argument for passionate believers and heretics, and all I wanted to do was cast out an evil demon, if it could be done without calling on the name of the Most High.
To my knowledge, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews did not traditionally cast out demons when their people were possessed. Some Hindus tried to placate Darkness, leaving offerings so demons would depart. Only Christians historically cast out minions of the Darkness. Christians, who, by faith, called on the blood and name of Christ to overpower a possessing demon. Blood given in willing sacrifice had great power over evil. I had been raised Christian by my parents and the Enclave priestess, who hoped to persuade the Most High to give us souls. It hadn’t happened. And since I had become an outcast, I hadn’t really worshipped, the faith of my childhood waning. Ergo, I wasn’t equipped to deal with a case of possession.
In the pages on exorcism, I discovered two things that might help me. A conjure to track a Darkness through mage blood, and a seraph who offered its power to first bind and then exorcise demons. The winged-warrior Mutuol promised his name and power to help mages defeat evil in one-on-one spiritual combat. I studied the implements and methods offered in the resource book for mages.
Once bound, the incantation on exorcism might work. A daywalker was not technically a demon—an immortal being who was spirit but could manifest in one or two physical forms. A daywalker was mortal, a Minor Darkness, restricted to one physical shape. It was soulless—much like neomages, though few mages would have accepted the similarity. My Bible beside me, my blades on the tables and floor around me, I studied the incantation suggestions, sought scriptures to bring Light and power to them, and made copious notes.
This wasn’t some conjure to heat bathwater. This was warfare. I had to do it right or I might die in the process. Many early neomages had.
Chapter 12
They threw him into the cell, weak with blood loss. He fell hard on his severed wings, the bones bending with his weight, buried his head in his arms, and wept. He didn’t hide his sobs, his voice broken, like cracked bells and splintered flutes. The pain was beyond anything he had experienced since they’d first clipped his wings, rendering him unable to fly from the deeps of the pit, unable to defeat time, unable to contact another of his kind. Since that time, the Darkness had merely shaved the stubs of his wings every twenty-four hours, the trimming keeping him bound. Until today, they had merely allowed the heat-driven mage to try to force him to mate. Merely.
Today, to punish him, they had cut him deeper, much deeper. Using human steel, daywalkers had removed his wings to the shoulders. They had broken him utterly. It was the smell that ruined him. The growing aroma of sex and death, like nothing he had ever smelled before. He had failed the Most High. Because of the scent, the strange odor, he hadn’t been able to prevent them from taking his essence.
Fists clenched, he beat his bed until his hands bled, screaming, his broken voice echoing down the hallways. His blood trickled across his naked back and onto his feathers, blood that smelled of life and Light, of blooming flowers, scents that taunted, recalling the earth that he had once loved enough to abandon heaven. The scent nearly overpowered the smell of the walkers he had killed, their rancid blood sprayed against the walls and spilled over the floor. His blood, a thing of life and healing, a construct of heaven, had been turned against him. He screamed, his agony long and loud. Somewhere near, he knew the Darkness was laughing.
“Watcher?”
His cries stopped, breath ragged.
“Watcher?” It was the bell-like voice he had heard before while in pain.
He laughed, the sound ugly, defeated; raw with the torture he had endured. “What? What do you want now? I did what you suggested. I fought. I killed them with my fists.” He remembered the sound of bones breaking; the heated spatter of blood. “But they had locked the cell door behind them. I was still trapped. And more came.” He dashed tears from his face. Across his back, dried blood cracked with the motion. “They clipped my wings to the shoulder. I am ruined.”
“You are not ruined. A mage is near. You can call her. She will come.”
“I don’t need another mage,” he said, his tone heavy with loathing. “They took my essence today. And they gave it to a mage. She will deliver a litter of first-generation kylen to the Dark. The Most High will condemn and drain me utterly. I will have no more chance of penance until the end of time and the human judgment.”
“There is hope,” one voice trilled in his head. “Help is at hand.”
“A mage has freed my wheels,” another voice belled, higher-pitched, softer. “She will rescue us.”
“The Most High will not drain you unto death, Watcher. When we are freed, we will carry your claim to Him. We will trust you, and you will trust us.”
Slowly he sat up, severed nerves flooding exquisite agony through him. His unhealed flesh split, blood running in rivulets. “You say we. Yet I have heard only the name of Zadkiel.”
“I stand above my mate’s prison, a place the Dark One created to trap her.”
“Your mate? A cherub?” he whispered, startled. Except for the Watchers who had allied with the High Host, no Darkness had ever successfully trapped a winged-warrior. And he had never even considered that one of the cherubim could be imprisoned.
“Yes. She feared for me,” he crooned. “She left the Most High in the Last Battle Glorious, the battle where I was nearly destroyed. Her prison and the snare that holds me are new constructs. New things such as I have never seen.”
“There are no new things,” Barak said, his mind racing with possibility.
“So we had thought. ‘No seraph, Holy or Fallen, has imagined or created any new thing,’ ” he quoted from the Book of the Light, “ ‘except for sin. Except for sin. Selah. Only the Most High can create a new thing, only God the Victorious and his humans, who breathe with his breath, may dream, devising that which they have not seen, humans with their stories, songs, and poems, humans with their machines which they imagine and build. So it has always been,’ ” he finished the quote, his tone dropping low with disquiet. “Until now.”
He wrapped his knees with his arms to stop their trembling. “And now?”
“Beasts, dragonets, have entwined themselves upon me. They smell of Mole Man, and the scent slows my defense. Though I still have my wings, I am unable to fly, unable to transmogrify, trapped in a substance that secures me. My mate is chained and imprisoned within my sight. All this is new. Selah,” he whispered, seraphic for, “Think of that.”
“Humans built it? Humans working with Darkness?”
“Humans and mages. But a mage has seen us, possibly one of the foretold ones.” His tone rang with awe. “The essence of this mage, this daughter of man, was similarly trapped, yet she escaped. She is still near. She can save us. You can summon her.”
“How? I have no token of hers.”
“You have access to the daywalker, the boy. She claims him. She takes his blood,” Zadkiel said.
“The boy is mine,” Amethyst belled softly. “Mine.” Barak wasn’t
sure what they meant, but if they offered freedom, he would agree to anything. “If your words are faithful and your bargain fair, call me by my true name.” It was a test and a barter. No seraph called a Fallen One by his true name, that given by the Most High at creation, the name forfeited at his abandonment of the Light. Watchers were Fallen, even those like him, who hoped for redemption, who allied with and fought beside the High Host in the ongoing war. No Watcher was sanctified. No Watcher was holy.
“Baraqyal,” the two voices belled together. “Baraqyal.” And the seraph said, “Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals.” It was a warning to prepare for battle.
Audric didn’t wake me Friday morning by sneaking in for my daily beating; my eyes opened on their own. My head was resting on my arms, neck cricked into the pillow. The black-pig wall clock chimed. I’d slept two hours. Roosters sounded, their calls demanding. The charcoal sky held a silver wedge of clouds in the east. Beneath my cheek was a page of notes and a finished incantation. Groggy, I sat up and reread the paraphrased text taken from the Old Testament. It would have helped if I knew Forcas’ true name because then I could have used it in the binding, but even so, it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.
Stretching to ease my petrified muscles, I went to the back door and out onto the deck. The scent of coffee reached me. Audric toasted me with a cup in the dim light. He was wrapped in blankets, sitting before a secluded fire. Rupert was a bump beside him, unmoving. I held both fists out to Audric and flashed my fingers open three times. He toasted me again and nudged Rupert, who rolled over.
I ate and pulled through the primary moves of savage-chi, stretching protesting muscles. Dressed in two sets of underleggings and tees, extra socks, and my dobok, I made sure the seams were straight, the blades easy to pull, and that the amulet necklace was secure around my waist. Then I phoned Jacey, told her what I needed, gathered up supplies and my pages, the result of my wakeful night, and went into the cold, my breath misting in small puffs.