"I told you, I would give you a form that would make you powerful against them. The sorceress' geas prevents her from allowing any harm to befall a woman -- so I merely made you woman in reality, to match the woman you were in illusion. They will be powerless against you now, your enemies and mine -- "
"But I am not a woman! I can't be a woman!" She looked around her for something to throw at the demon's laughing face, and finding nothing, hurled curses instead. "Make me a man again, damn you! Make me a man!"
"Perhaps. Later, perhaps. When you have earned a boon from me. You still retain your strength and your weapon's expertise. Only the swordswoman could be any danger to you now, and the sorceress will be bound to see that she cannot touch you. My bargain now, bandit." The demon smiled still wider. "Serve me, and it may well be I shall make you a man again. But your new body serves me far better than your old would have. And meanwhile -- "
He drew a swirl of flame about himself. When he emerged from it, he had assumed the shape of a handsome human man, quite naked; one whose beauty repulsed even as it attracted. He was still larger than a normal human in every regard, but he no longer filled a quarter of the cellar. He stepped confidently across the boundaries of the circle, reached forward and gathered the frozen woman to him. She struggled wildly; he delighted in her struggles.
"Oh, you make a charming wench, little toy; you play the part as if you had been born to it! A man would have sought to slay me, but you think only to flee. And I do not think a man would have guessed my intentions, but you have, haven't you, little one. I think I can teach you some of the pleasures of being a female, as well as the fears, hmm? Perhaps I can make you forget you ever were anything else -- "
His laughter echoed through the entire house -- but the rest of the inhabitants did no more than check the fastenings of their doors and return to the safety of their beds, hoping that whatever it was that was laughing would overlook them.
With another gesture, the demon transformed the bleak basement into a setting from a whore's nightmare; with his other hand he held his victim crushed against his chest while he reached into her mind with his.
She gasped in shock and dismay, feeling her will crumble before his, feeling him take over her senses, and feeling those senses rousing as he wished them to. He ran his hands over her body, stripping away the rags until she was as nude as he, and in the wake of his hands her skin burned with fever she could not repress.
As the last remains of her will fell to dust before his onslaught, her body, too, betrayed her; responding as the demon desired.
And at the end, she did, indeed, forget for that one moment what it had been like to be a man.
* * *
Kethry twined a lock of amber hair around her fingers, leaned over her cup and hid a smile. She found the side of herself that her swordswomanpartner was revealing disarming, and quite delightful -- but she doubted Tarma would appreciate her amusement.
The common room of their inn was far from being crowded, and the atmosphere was relaxed and convivial. This was really the best such place they'd stayed in for months; it was well-lit, the food was excellent, the beds comfortable and free of vermin, the prices not outrageously extortionate. And Tarma was certainly enjoying the company.
As she had been every night for the past three, Tarma was embroiled in a religious discussion -- a discussion, not an argument; although the two participants often waxed passionate, neither ever found offense or became angered during their disagreements.
Her fellow-scholar was a plump little priest of Anathei of the Purifying Flame. He was certainly a full priest, and might even (from his cultured accent) be a higher prelate, yet he wore only the same soft, dark brown, unornamented robes of the least of his order's acolytes. He was clean-shaven and quite bald, and his cheerful brown eyes seemed to regard everything and everyone with the openhearted joy of an unspoiled child. No straitlaced ascetic, he -- he and Tarma had been trading rounds of good wine; tonight reds, last night whites.
Tarma looked even more out of place seated across from him than she did with her sorceress-partner. She towered over him by a head, her every movement proclaiming she knew very well how to manage that sword slung on her back, her hawklike face and ice-blue eyes holding a controlled intensity that could easily have been frightening or intimidating to a stranger. With every article of her weaponry and earth-brown clothing so precisely arranged that what she wore might almost have been some kind of uniform, and her coarse black hair braided and coiled with militant neatness, she looked as much the priest or more than he -- half-barbarian priest of some warlike order, that is. She hardly looked as if she could have anything in common with the scholarly little priest.
She hardly looked literate. Certainly no one would expect erudite philosophy from her lips, not with the warlike accoutrements she bore; yet she had been quoting fully as many learned tomes as the priest -- to his evident delight and Kethry's mild surprise. It would appear that service as a Sworn One did not exclude knowledge as a possible arena of combat. Kethry had long known that Tarma was literate, and in more than one language, but she had never before guessed that her partner was so erudite.
Kethry herself was staying out of the conversation for the moment. This evening she and her partner had had an argument, the first serious disagreement of their association. She wanted to give Tarma a chance to cool down -- and to mull over what she'd said.
Because while it had been unpleasant, it was also, unfortunately, nothing less than the truth.
"You're not going out there alone, are you?" Tarma had asked doubtfully, when Kethry had voiced her intention to prowl the rather dubious quarter that housed the gypsy-mages. Kethry had heard that one of her old classmates had taken up with the wanderers, and was looking for news of him.
"Why not?" she asked, a little more sharply than she had intended.
"Because it's no place for a woman alone."
"Dammit, Tarma, I'm not just any woman! I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself!"
"Look -- even I can get taken out by a gang of street toughs."
"In the name of the gods, Tarma, leave me alone for once! You're smothering me! I can't go anywhere or do anything without you rushing to wrap me in gauze, like a piece of china -- "
She'd stopped then, appalled by the stricken look on her partner's face.
Then, like lightning, the expression changed. "You're imagining things," Tarma replied flatly.
"All right -- have it your way." Kethry was too tired to fight with her. "You will anyway. Any time you hear something you don't like, you deny it and shut down on me -- just like you're doing now."
And she had turned on her heel and led the way into the inn's common room, ignoring the fact that Tarma looked as if the sorceress had just slapped her.
The voice of the little priest penetrated her musing.
"Nay," he said. "Nay, I cannot agree. Our teaching is that evil is not a thing of itself; it is simply good that has not been brought to see the truth. We hold that even a demon can be redeemed -- that even the most vile of such creatures could become a blessed spirit if someone with time and patience were to give him the proper redirection."
"Always supposing your proselytizer managed to keep from being devoured or ripped to shreds before he got a single word out," Tarma croaked wryly, draping herself more comfortably over the edge of the worn wooden table. "He'd better be either agile or one damned powerful mage! No, I can't agree with you, my friend. Aside from what Magister Tenavril has to say about them, I've dealt with a few demons up close and on a quite personal basis. I have to side with the Twin Suns school; the demonic beings must have been created purely of evil forces. It isn't just the Abyssal dwellers that are bad clear through, either; I've known a few humans who could pass for demons. Evil is real and a reality in and of itself. It likes being that way. It wouldn't choose to be anything else. And it has to be destroyed whenever a body gets the chance, or it'll spread. Evil is easier to follow than good, and we
humans like the easy path."
"I cannot agree. Those who are evil simply don't know what good is."
"Oh, they know, all right; and they reject it to follow pure selfishness."
"I -- " the little priest blinked in the candlelight.
"Can you give me even one instance of great evil turned to good once good has been pointed out to it?"
"Uh -- " he thought hard for a moment, then smiled triumphantly. "The Great Demon-Wolf of Hastandell!"
"Oh, that's too easy. Warrl!"
A shadow in a corner of the hearth uncoiled itself, and proved to be no shadow at all, but the kyree, whose shoulder came nearly as high as Tarma's waist. Closer inspection would reveal that Warrl's body was more like that of one of the great huntingcats of the plains than a lupine, built for climbing and short bursts of high speed, not the endurance of a true wolf. But the fur and head and tail were sufficiently wolflike that this was how Tarma generally thought of him.
He padded over to the table and benches shared by the ill-assorted trio. The conversation of all the other occupants of the inn died for a moment as he moved, but soon picked back up again. After three days, the patrons of the inn were growing a little more accustomed to the monster beast in their midst. Tarma had helped that along by coaxing him to demean himself with a few tricks to entertain them the first night of their stay. Now, while the sight of him still unsettled a few of them, they had come to regard him as harmless. They had no notion of his true nature; Tarma and Kethry had tactfully refrained from revealing that he was just as intelligent as any of them -- and quite probably could beat any one of them at chess.
"Here's your Demon-Wolf -- one of his kin, rather." Tarma cocked her head to one side, her eyes far away as if she was listening. "Kyree is what they call themselves; they come from the Pelagir Hills. Warrl says to tell you that he knows that story -- that Ourra didn't know the sheep he'd been feeding on belonged to anyone; when he prowled the village at night he was just being curious. Warrl says Ourra had never seen humans before that lot moved in and settled; he thought they were just odd beasts and that the houses were some kind of dead growths -- believe me, I have seen some of what grows naturally in the Pelagirs -- it isn't stretching the imagination to think that huts could grow of themselves once you've seen some of the bushes and trees. Well, Warrl wants you to know that when the priestess went out and gave Ourra a royal tongue-lashing for eating the stock, Ourra was quite embarrassed. Without there being someone like me or Kethry, with the kind of mind that he could talk to, there wasn't much he could do by way of apology, but he did his best to make it up to the village.
His people have a very high sense of honor. Sorry, little man -- Qurra is disqualified."
"He talks to you?" the little priest said, momentarily diverted. "That creature truly talks? I thought him just a well-trained beast!"
"Oh, after all our conversation, I figured you to be open-minded enough to let in on the 'secret.' Kyree have a lot of talents -- they're as bright as you or me. Brighter, maybe -- I have no doubt he could give you a good battle at taroc, and that's one game I have no gift for. As for talking -- Warrior's Oath -- sometimes I wish I could get him to stop! Oh, yes, he talks to me all right -- gives me no few pieces of unsolicited advice and criticism, and usually with an 'I told you so' appended." She ruffled the great beast's fur affectionately as he grinned a toothy, tongue-lolling grin. Kethry tossed him one of the bones left from their dinner; he caught it neatly on the fly, and settled down beside her to enjoy it. Behind them, the hum of voices continued.
"Now I'll give you one -- evil that served only itself. Thalhkarsh. We had firsthand experience of that one. He had plenty of opportunity to see good -- it wasn't just the trollops he had stolen for his rites. Or are you not familiar with that tale?"
"Not the whole of it. Certainly not from one of the participants!"
"Right enough then -- this is a long and thirsty story. Oskar?" Tarma signaled the host, a plump, shortsighted man who hurried to answer her summons. "Another round -- no, make it a pitcher, this may take a while. Here -- " she tossed him a coin, as it was her turn to pay; the innkeeper trotted off and returned with a brimming ear then vessel. Kethry was amused to see that he did not return to his station behind the counter after placing it on the table between Tarma and the priest. Instead he hovered just within earshot, polishing the tables next to them with studious care. Well, she didn't blame him, this was a tale Tarma didn't tell often, and it wasn't likely anyone in Oberdorn had ever heard a firsthand account of it. Oskar would be attracting folk to his tables for months after they'd gone with repetitions of the story.
"From all we could put together afterward, Thalhkarsh was a demon that had been summoned purely by mistake. It was a mistake the mage who called him paid for -- well, that's usually the case when something like that happens. This time though, things were evidently a little different," she nodded at Kethry, who took up the thread of the story while Tarma took a sip of wine.
"Thalhkarsh had ambition. He didn't want to live in his own Abyssal Planes anymore, he wanted to escape them. More than that, he wanted far more power than he had already; he wanted to become a god, or a godling, at least. He knew that the quickest ways of gaining power are by worship, pain, and death. The second two he already had a taste of, and he craved more. The first -- well, he calculated that he knew ways of gaining that, too. He transformed himself into a very potently sexual and pleasing shape, built himself a temple with a human pawn as his High Priest, and set up a religion."
"It was a religion tailored to his peculiar tastes. From what I know most of the demonic types wouldn't think of copulating with a human anymore than you or I would with a dog; Thalhkarsh thought otherwise." Tarma grimaced. "Of course a part of that is simply because of the amount of pain he could cause while engaging in his recreations -- but it may be he also discovered that sex is another very potent way of raising power. Whatever the reason, that was what the whole religion was founded on. The rituals always culminated with Thalhkarsh taking a half-dozen women, torturing and killing them when he'd done with them, in the full view of his worshipers. There's a kind of mind that finds that stimulating; before too long, he had a full congregation and was well on his way to achieving his purpose. That was where we came in."
"You know our reputation for helping women?" Kethry put in.
"You have a geas?" ventured the little priest.
"Something like that. Well, since Thalhkarsh's chosen victims were almost exclusively female, we found ourselves involved. We slipped into the temple in disguise and went for the High Priest -- figuring if he was the one in charge, that might solve the problem. We didn't know he was a puppet, though I had guessed he might be, and then dismissed the idea." Kethry sighed. "Then we found our troubles had only begun. He had used this as a kind of impromptu test of the mettle of his servant; when the servant failed, he offered me the position. I was tempted with anything I might want; nearly unlimited power, beauty, wealth -- and him. He was incredibly seductive, I can't begin to tell you how much. To try and give you a notion of his power, every one of his victims ran to him willingly when he called her, even though they knew what their fate would be. Well, I guess I resisted him a little too long; he became impatient with me and knocked me into a wall -- unconscious, or so he thought."
"Then he made me the same offer," Tarma continued. "Only with me he demonstrated his power rather than just promising things. He totally transformed me -- when he was done kings would have paid money for the privilege of laying their crowns at my feet. He also came damned close to breaking my bond with the Star-Eyed; I swear to you, I was within inches of letting him seduce me -- except that the more he roused my body, the more he roused my anger. That was his mistake; I pretended to give in when I saw Kethry sneaking up behind him. Then I broke his focus just as she stabbed him; he lost control over his form and his worshipers' minds. When they saw what he really was, they deserted him -- that broke his power, and it was all over."
<
br /> "She' enedra, you were in no danger of breaking; your will is too strong, he'd have needed either more time to work on you or power to equal the Warrior's."
"Maybe. It was a damn near thing; too near for my liking. Well he was absolute evil for the sake of it -- and I should well know, I had that evil crawling around in my mind. Besides that, there were other things that came out afterward. We know he took a few innocent girls who just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place; we think some clerics went in to try and exorcise him. It's hard to say for certain since they were hedge-priests; wanderers with no set temple. We do know they disappeared between one night and the next; that they did not leave town by the gates, and that they had been talking about dealing with Thalhkarsh before they vanished."
She trailed off, the set of her mouth grim, her eyes bleak. "We can only assume they went the way of all of his victims, since they were never seen or heard from again. So Thalhkarsh had plenty of opportunity to see good and the Light -- and he apparently saw it only as another thing to crush."
The little priest said nothing; there seemed nothing appropriate to say. Instead, he took a sip of his wine; from the distant look in his eyes he was evidently thinking hard.
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