By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  “Hello?” Sart called, but in a wary, hoarse whisper as if afraid of being heard.

  The halls within echoed hollowly.

  “Maybe no one is home,” said Jame. She tried Sart’s grip, but found it unrelenting despite his hesitation. It should have occurred to her that as a member of the Five, Abbotir had the city guards at his command as well the Guild’s. She had been watching for the wrong hunters.

  “We have to go,” hissed Loogan, tugging at her sleeve.

  “Tell him that.”

  Sart ventured in, pulling her with him almost as an afterthought. Part of his training, as Jame remembered from Marc’s tales of guard duty, was to investigate any unexpectedly open door, especially of the rich, and the master of the thieves’ Gold Court was indeed wealthy. Gold must be one of his ruling passions. Statues, gilt furniture, golden brocade, tapestries of spun bullion glimmering in the shadows . . . Jame could imagine him holding back the finest of everything that came through his hands as a guild official.

  Odd, though, how tarnished everything seemed. Yesterday, she had been dazzled. Today, what was this bloom of dust, this dank miasma of decay? Even the air had turned stale, although that might have been because of the makeshift curtains that veiled every window.

  Here was the breakfast room. Here too, the towering windows on either side were draped with everything from ornately embroidered arrases to what appeared to be freshly dyed bed sheets, the servants’ last act, perhaps, before they had fled. The effect was half stained glass, half patchwork quilt. It was also stiflingly hot. Flies bumbled on either side of the cloth, in the room, against the closed windows. More swarmed by the chamber’s high table, which itself was withdrawn into the western shadows of the room.

  Someone sat there, a dark, glowering presence. The table spread before him was that of yesterday’s feast but strangely animate. The trout flopped. The eels seethed. The oatcakes bloomed in many-hued mold except where incorruptible honey touched them. Maggots bred in the porpoise pie, white and wriggling among the blood-red currants. The man at the table helped himself to the latter, scooping up writhing handfuls with clumsy fingers.

  Jame recognized him, barely, as Abbotir.

  “Lord,” said Sart, staring, “what’s happened to you?”

  “What should have happened, you dolt? I am as I always have been, if not more. Should that coward Death take me? I am much stronger than he, and have better allies.”

  Silk rustled. A slender figure clad in fine robes stepped out of the gloom.

  “You are too kind,” said Men-dalis smoothly. “You again.” This, to Jame. “And not yet about my business.”

  “Things keep happening,” said Jame, thinking, That could be my motto. “You still haven’t told me exactly what you want me to do.”

  She thought that, behind him, she caught a glimpse of a fair face and a smile in the weave of shadows. Dally again, waiting. For what?

  Say what you want me to do! she almost cried.

  He was there, so close. What an ache, where she had lost him. Had it been her fault?

  The Sirdan waved a ring-bedecked hand, relegating responsibility yet again. “Oh, I leave the details to you. But, mind you, my other option looks more and more appealing. I will not be disobliged forever. Then too, there is that inn that you love so much. Don’t leave it too late for them, eh?”

  “Speaking of that infernal inn.” Abbotir picked up a dingy scroll from among the dirty dishes and thrust it at Men-dalis. “Here. Do with it what you will.”

  “I thank you.” Men-dalis slid the parchment into a full sleeve. “For this and for all of your other kind attentions.”

  The lord of the Gold Court waved him away. “You keep me from my food. Begone . . . my lord.”

  Men-dalis raised an eyebrow, but retreated with an ironic bow. His eyes lifted to Jame’s. Remember, he mouthed with a smile. Somewhere in the recesses of the chamber, a door softly opened and closed.

  Abbotir started to reach for a distant bowl, but his arm refused to bend. Gripping the afflicted wrist, he jerked it toward his chest. The locked elbow popped and moved—sideways. He reached again, hooked the bowl’s rim, and dragged it to him. Curdled cream and moldy berries sloshed on the tabletop.

  “Ah. I had no appetite before. Now I am ravenous.” He glared at Jame. “You, girl. I said I would have you. Now here you are.”

  Jame pulled out of Sart’s loosened grip. “What did you mean when you said that you had taught Bane how to direct his passions?”

  The master thief leered at her. “You would remember that. Tell me, chit, do you still dream about him? I see in your eyes that you do. True, he was a very handsome boy. He got that from his mother. Would she have liked you? Perhaps. Both of you, after all, are Kencyr, and therefore unnatural women.”

  “I know I am, by the standards of several societies, but why was she?”

  “Ha. I took her in. I gave her a position, wealth, and, I thought, a son. Then she let slip that he was not mine. This happened at the height of an argument between us over how the boy was to be raised. As if there could be any question. I had publicly, accepted him as my own. I would not be shamed by admitting that he was not, so he must do as I said. Before that, though, she had wormed her way into his mind. He must follow that ridiculous code of yours, she said. Honor. Discipline. Self-sacrifice. I saw how ill it suited him.”

  Abbotir thrust back his chair and lurched to his feet. Murky shadows seemed to rise with him as if clinging to his full sleeves. He began to pace behind the table, never in the light, back and forth.

  “I tried to beat it out of him. He never cried. Then I knew: he liked pain, both to inflict and to suffer. Before, he had lashed out at every playmate, every servant, even at himself. I showed him, though. How to cut without killing too soon, even without leaving scars if he so chose. How to savor the kiss of the blade. How to turn pain into art. It calmed him.”

  Back and forth he went, his broken arm dangling, his face anything but calm. A snarl of shadows went with him. One over his shoulder showed the glimmer of yellow eyes and white teeth. Was Pathless the guardian of his soul? Others hinted at demons Jame had seen who had lost or devoured all the secondary souls on whom they depended for strength, if not the prime soul that made them what they were. These clustered, it seemed, where they found power, like flies around rot.

  Jame kept pace with the guild master on the other side of the table, with Sart and Loogan backing nervously out of her way. So far, Abbotir had talked with unusual abandon, as if half to himself. Perhaps he would continue if she kept him going.

  “And his mother?”

  “She saw. She wept. I was avenged on her for deceiving me . . . or so I thought. Yes, he joined the Guild when I insisted, but would he steal? No. Unlike you, I hear. So much for Kencyr honor. Nonetheless, she could not endure the shame. I came to her, but she was cold and still. So much blood. The White Knife, you Kencyr call it, do you not? Rather, a thumb in the eye. Spiteful, selfish woman . . . she couldn’t stand to lose, nor to give me the respect due a winner.”

  He was beginning to stumble and flag. Poke him again.

  “‘You are the bane of my existence.’ She was talking about you, wasn’t she? Not about her son. But you told him otherwise.”

  “It was true enough!”

  “Oh, devious, to play such games with a child’s mind. Nonetheless, I begin to see where Theocandi learned his taste for all things Kencyr. From you. From Bane. Perhaps, even, from Bane’s mother.”

  He whipped about, with a glare wild enough to drive her back a step. “That I deny! It was that bastard Ishtier. He got his claws into all three of them. A little knowledge, a little mystery . . .”

  “You were drawn too.”

  “Argh. What is it that you people know? Why do I feel as if we all dangle on your strings? What you believe is nonsense and yet . . . and yet . . . there is some deep truth in it. This world makes no sense. The worthy wither. The worthless thrive. I . . . I am not where or w
hat I should be. Why? Why?”

  “You have position and wealth. What do you lack?”

  “Power. Love. Ah, forget that last. Love is only a lure for the weak. Respect, though . . . I respected Theocandi. Now there was a master politician and thief.”

  Who could never match his older brother, Penari, thought Jame. Therein lay his weakness, which he tried to overcome by turning to the Book Bound in Pale Leather, that dire Kencyr artifact.

  What are we, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow sought by every fool? The yearned for but mistrusted truth beyond all reality?

  So Ishtier would say, but he also had his weaknesses. So did she, of course, however much she learned, whatever her intentions.

  “But I will have my revenge.” Abbotir drove a fist into the table, splitting knuckles, unsetting a dish of fried crickets that tried to crawl away on brittle, snapping legs. “You, little man”—this, to Loogan, who was staring at him aghast. “Didn’t I tell the Kencyr priests that you and this witch were friends? Haven’t they taken your petty godling to lure her out of hiding? And it has worked, hasn’t it?”

  Loogan goggled at him. His round face suffused with color. “How d-dare you endanger my god to bait your obscene trap?”

  Abbotir laughed at him, choked, and spat among the platters laid out before him. “What is he, who are you, that it should matter?”

  Gorgo’s hierophant drew himself up. “Besides being a priest, I am currently one of the Five. That makes us equals.”

  “Ha. You make me laugh.”

  Loogan turned to Sart Nine-toes. “Wasn’t that why you brought us here? Because he sits on the Council? Then, as his peer, I demand that you take us away.”

  Sart shifted where he stood, uneasy. “That was it, sure enough.” Clearly, he was unnerved by the guild lord’s current state, which he didn’t understand, but he still held him in awe. Loogan, by contrast, didn’t look very impressive.

  Abbotir leaned forward, glaring. The shadows behind him mimicked his move like so many animate, misty gargoyles emerging into the hall’s multicolored gloom. Each had at least one soul to give it substance. Did Abbotir? Where he touched the light, however dim, his flesh smoked.

  “Then hear me now, guard,” he wheezed. “Take this assassin to the Mercy Seat. There she is to be held until night falls and her executioner comes.”

  “Now see here,” Sart began, clearly upset. “We had justice in this city, once. You say that the Talisman is a killer. She says that she isn’t. Who judges her?”

  Abbotir slammed down a fist. “I do! Take her, guard, or be taken yourself.”

  Sart shoved Jame behind him. “I don’t understand this business at all, but it isn’t right.”

  The demons seethed out of the shadows. They descended on Sart in a gray tide and tore at him, each ripping off an element of his being as they reached down for his soul. Thoughts, memories, flesh . . . He bellowed and flailed at them.

  Sudden light flooded the hall. Loogan had ripped down a swathe of curtains. Demons retreated, keening, as even the overcast sun tore strips off of them. Abbotir didn’t move, although smoke continued to rise from his shoulders as if from a pyre.

  “You are marked, guard,” he grated, “no less than those whom you have so foolishly tried to protect.”

  Sart staggered to his feet. “Well,” he said, swaying. Jame and Loogan made a dive to support him. “We’ll just see about that, shall we?”

  They got him out of the palace, one under each arm and no easy load he was to carry. Shadows followed them through the gilded rooms, gibbering, but none dared to attack.

  “That,” said Sart, when at last they emerged into the steaming day, “was unpleasant. What was wrong with m’lord, anyway?”

  “I think he died sometime during the night,” said Loogan. Then, to Jame, “You guessed it too, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. When he shattered the death-lock in his arm. If he had waited for it to release naturally, he needn’t have broken his elbow. I don’t think, though, that Master Abbotir would admit any such weakness. Death is for losers.”

  Sart looked confused. “But haunts don’t have minds.”

  “Some do,” said Jame grimly. “Someday, let me introduce you to Singer Ashe.”

  “That I can well do without. What next?”

  “What else?” said Loogan, straightening, resolute. “We rescue Gorgo.”

  IV

  “HERE I LEAVE YOU,” said Sart Nine-toes.

  They stood in the Lower Town on the edge of the desolation that circled the Kencyr temple.

  “I know when I’m outmatched. Dead gods, haunts, and demons are one thing. Your god, though . . . ugh. And I’m on duty tonight. I’d quit to stand by my love, but we need the money, in case Kithra gets her way and throws us out of the Res aB’tyrr.”

  “She would do that?”

  “So she says, when she loses her temper—which, with Cleppetty, is often enough.”

  “Truly, a marriage off and on?”

  “Mostly on. She’s a strong woman, my Cleppetania, with strong opinions. When those arise, a wise man stands back.”

  They watched him walk off, still rather unsteady but gaining certainty with each stride. A strong man, that, not greatly injured by his recent trial.

  By now it was late afternoon under a brazen sky, the air murky with dust and thick with heat. Grinding sounds still came from above, muffled by clouds. A weight seemed to press down. Jame and Loogan crossed the expanse. Ragged figures rose from the ruins to shamble after them and to line their way. Jame thought that she saw Aden, although so disfigured with dirt as to be barely recognizable. Another figure caught her eye—stout, clothed in rich if tattered finery. She had seen him somewhere before. Yes. In the square before the Skyrrman five years ago as it had gone up in flames. Harr sen Tenko: Harri’s father, the Archiem’s rival. There, too, were the three soulless Kencyr priests huddled together, one drooping—dripping?—between the other two. Again, there was that stench of fetid water and rotting vegetation, again that sharp odor that made Jame sneeze. What did they all want? What, if anything, could she give them?

  Here was the temple door, shut. Jame knocked. No answer. No keyhole, either, with a convenient lock to pick.

  See, little thief? What good are your tricks now?

  “Try again,” said Loogan, anxiously shifting from foot to foot.

  This was no time for subtlety. Jame hefted half a brick and slammed it against the door. The brick crumbled. The door remained unscathed. After a moment, though, a crack opened in the apparently seamless wall and swung wide. There stood Titmouse. He had shed his black coat. The white shirt beneath drooped with sweat and his tufted hair stood more wildly on end than usual, moving in an unfelt breeze. At first he seemed glassy-eyed, barely able to focus on his visitors. Then he blinked.

  “You.”

  “We’ve come for the frog,” Jame said, glowering up at him, and thrust the note into his hands.

  He peered at it, lips moving as he read. Blink, blink. “Oh. Good.”

  They followed him into the temple. The halls thrummed with power, much more fiercely than they had on Jame’s last visit. Her feet didn’t touch the floor at all. This was more like trying to stay afloat in savage rapids. She grabbed Loogan as the current threatened to upend him. Force keened. Hair bristled.

  This time, she saw nothing reminiscent of Bane, unless it was the tangled clots of spider web that twisted in corners.

  “How in Perimal’s name do we get flies inside with only one door and that usually shut?” Titmouse had asked.

  Now spiders? Bane had liked them. Perhaps he was here, in some form, but how? And why?

  From somewhere ahead came a sound: shuffle, shuffle, stomp; shuffle, shuffle, stomp. It reminded Jame of her descent years ago into the Priests’ College at Wilden when the earth had seemed to move around her with ponderous effort.

  The door to the main hall stood open. She and Loogan clutched the posts, left and right, to avoid bei
ng swept inside, where the priests danced. There were more of them than she had expected. Outermost were the brown-clad novices stamping and turning in the kantirs of earth-moving Senetha. Within was a ring of grey acolytes, some flowing as if in swift water, others leaping like flames. Where they crossed paths, the air hissed with steam. Inner still, priests channeled the current into the swift, airborne subtleties of wind-blowing Senetha that fretted the uncertain air into eddies and spirals. All moved independently yet together, the kantirs of one form reflecting its counterparts among the other three, circle rotating within circle. It was the Great Dance, which gathers power and molds it to the dancer’s will.

  One black-robed figure stood at the maelstrom’s still heart, where Jame had once left a whorl in the stones of the tessellated floor. To his right was Titmouse, swaying slightly. To his left, suspended over an unlit fire-pit, was a glass bowl in which floated a green, straddle-legged form.

  “. . . quink . . .” piped tiny Gorgo piteously, scrabbling at the glass with webbed toes.

  The high priest raised his head. The slit of a mouth appeared, then the tip of a long, thin nose. The hood slid back entirely to reveal a skull-like face, the waxy yellow of its brow.

  “We meet again,” said Ishtier, smiling.

  He raised his claw of a hand. It only had three fingers. Jame remembered when the priest had chewed off the fourth, in this very room, after he had been so ill advised as to touch the Book Bound in Pale Leather. As he brought his maimed hand down now, the circle of dancers parted into eddies but never stopped moving.

  “I thought you were dead,” said Jame.

  “You hoped it, certainly. Before I left to reclaim my rightful place here, I heard much about you, little to your credit. The Women’s Halls cast you out, did they not? Then you went to Tentir, of all places. Truly, Randon standards have become lax in this degenerate age. Have they found you out yet? If not, rest assured: they soon will. But before all such misadventures, there was Tai-tastigon. Have you told your brother about your sojourn here?”