The Hidden City (67 page)

Sigurne nodded. “Most men—and women—do. They outgrow their bedside stories, conquer their fear of them, and move more freely in a world larger in all ways than they imagined when those tales had the power to frighten them.

“But there is always some seed of truth—no matter how twisted it has grown—in the oldest of tales.” She closed her eyes; felt the hard curve of wood press into her shoulder blades. For a moment, she thought better of continuing, but the moment passed in the wind's howl. “The demons do not call themselves demons, of course.”

Rath's brow rose slightly. “Then where does the word originate?”

It was not entirely the question she had been expecting, but Ararath had professed an interest in Old Weston, and she was not unaccustomed to this type of interruption; had she been one to take offense, she would have either died of frustration years ago, or would have strangled any number of the members of her Order. “We believe it has roots in Old Torra, but we are not entirely certain; it is not—quite—a Weston word. Nor for that matter,” she added, “is angel.”

“Are there?”

“Angels?” She shrugged. “If there are, they guard their names so well none has ever been summoned. Or perhaps the summoners chose not to write of their experience; history is a matter of both record and story, and of angelae, we have only story.”

“And demons?”

“More,” she whispered. “They are not men; there are some among their kind who can take on the shape and form of man, and some who can create and sustain the illusion of mortality. The latter are more common; they cannot bend flesh to their will, but they have the power to bend minds to suggestion.

“The former are more dangerous.”

“Why?”

“We are not entirely certain. But the more human a demon appears, the more powerful it is.” She paused. “Demons do not learn language in the way that we do; they appear to absorb it from their summoner. Nor do they appear to require sustenance; they neither eat nor sleep unless ordered to it by their master. They don't fear drowning because they don't need to breathe. They seldom fear fire or cold; the seasons are an echo of the elemental forces, and they can pass through the bitterest of Northern Winters untouched.”

Rath lifted a hand. It was perfectly steady.

“Yes?”

“I fear to hear more,” he said quietly. “I know your edicts, Sigurne. And I am aware—as perhaps few others are—that you have killed greater men than I for exercising their curiosity about this particular subject.”

She nodded genially. Felt the smile that drew creases around the corners of her mouth. “You are not a member of the Order,” she told him wryly. “There is not one among them who would seek to stop me from speaking at this juncture.”

“I have learned, in the past few decades, to temper curiosity with caution; it is why I am now called old.” His smile was fuller than hers, but his eyes were darker. “How much about demons must I understand to understand the answer to my question?”

“It is hard to say. Less, perhaps, than I have said. Or more. Judge for yourself, in the end, as you must.” She gestured, placing one hand on the surface of the table. Rath was frowning.

It was often said that honest men could not be lied to, and she had often wondered why people
believed
this. It was men—like Rath—who skirted the edges of truth, mixing just the right amount of falsehood into the blend, who were adept at spotting prevarication; men, like Rath, who were capable of hoarding expressions, and offering them only where they might have the most effect, as if they were genuine.

“The Ice Mage studied the forbidden arts.”

“He did not come to their study in the North.”

“No. He was a full member of the Order of Knowledge; he claimed to be of the First Circle, and as that is an internal matter, I will neither confirm nor deny. But he lived some years upon the Isle, in this building, and while he learned to master the arts of the warrior-mage, his researches must have led him, in the end, to information that we have since eradicated.

“He was not discovered while he began to develop mastery of this particular craft within the halls of the Order; he was not discovered while he worked—as many of the more powerful mages do—under the auspices of the Houses. But he must have felt that discovery was inevitable; when he at last chose to abandon the Isle, he left in haste, and took with him only the most damning of the evidence that would have been used as justification for his execution.

“We have no records of how he traveled; we presume, given later investigation, that he chose to cloud-walk. It is a colloquial term,” she added. “And for the purposes of this discussion, it means he traveled quickly by aid of magic. It is not an instant form of travel, but to travel instantly from Averalaan to
any
point, be it in the Empire or no, would be to invite investigation; the power required would leave a signature that could be read for miles by even the least talented of our students.

“He arrived in Brockhelm when I was perhaps eight years old. He had ruled in Dimkirk for two years before Brockhelm was subject to his whim, and we little suspected his existence until that day; in the far North, travel between villages is not common, at least not by those who dwell within the villages themselves. When he came, many died, and those that did not, chose to accept his rule. From us, he demanded little, but we were no longer free to travel. He expected pursuit, and he wished no warning of his whereabouts to escape before he felt himself ready.

“That pursuit was late in coming.” She lifted a hand to her brow. “When I was twelve, I met the first demon. I did not know him as demon; I would have said he was a tall man with cold eyes, no more and no less. He wore clothing in the Northern fashion, and seemed little affected by the cold; were it not for the rule of the Ice Mage, we would have thought him a merchant far from home.

“But he came with the men who served the Ice Mage—and by this time, they numbered perhaps a hundred strong—and ordered the villagers to gather in the village center. There was some anxiety,” she added, “but no thought of disobedience. We gathered. He came.

“And he left, after giving us each the barest of glances.”

“He was looking for the talent-born?”

“Yes, but I did not know it at the time. He came once a year, after that.”

“When did you leave the village?”

“I left Brockhelm at his command in my sixteenth year; I had turned fifteen two weeks before. I did not, at that time, understand why I was being taken from home; I understood only that I had no choice. The Winter makes us harsh,” she added softly, “a harsh people for a bitter clime. My mother and father were silent; I was silent. My brother, younger, was only barely silent, but he understood that any word, any action, on his part would mean the loss—in one day—to my parents of both their children, and he said nothing. We accepted the inevitable.”

Rath did not speak. He had no words to offer this woman. No words of comfort, no words of sympathy, no words of admiration. By her simple statement, her flat, uninflected voice denied him even the effort of finding them.

“Were there no Priests in your villages?” he asked at last, for the silence demanded something.

No. We had perhaps three before the Ice Mage came, but none of them god-born. Had he found the god-born among the villagers, I believe he would have fled farther North; what the god-born see, the gods know, and what the gods know, the Kings, inevitably, will come to know. He was no fool. He desired power, but he was patient and cautious.

“Cautious in almost all things.”

“But not the demons.”

“Not the demons, no,” she said softly. “Their first love is terror, primal terror; their second love is pain. For those creatures who look as if they stepped out of the rhythm of childhood story, the gratification of their desire is a simple—but bloody and messy—affair. But those who are more human in seeming are not without subtlety, and even in captivity, they are powerful.”

“Is it not for their power they are summoned?”

“Ah, I forget myself. The past always makes an uncertain country of the present. Yes, it is for their strength or power that they are summoned, but even leashed, they can be compelling, and if they cannot satisfy their desire for fear or pain quickly, they will find another path to it; they think of it as a type of ripening. You are not talent-born,” she added softly, “but with both words and weapons forged by men who were, likewise, born without such power, you are dangerous.”

He nodded.

“Understand, then, that these creatures can see the darkness of even so slight an evil as thought almost before we can think it.”

“They can hear your thoughts?”

“Nothing so concrete. They sense the darker thoughts the way sailors sense the storm. But sailors avoid the storm; the demons thrive on it. If they can find the seed, they will grow it; if the seed does not exist, they will plant it. And they will do so with subtlety, where subtlety is required.

“Where it is not, they will do so with glee and malice.” She could not help herself; she rose. Her hand drifted away from the tabletop, and a web of light came with it, invisible, she knew, to Rath's eye.

“Understand that I was young,” she said softly, “and away from home for the first time. Understand that I knew, from the moment the tower became my home, that I was never to return. I was not expected to be servant to the Ice Mage; he had those in abundance, although servant is too kind a word.”

“They were demons?”

“He was not a fool. Where people would do, he used them. In the early years,” she added softly. “In later years, he grew arrogant, certain of himself and his control, and in those years, he dismissed—often fatally—his household.

“To contain one demon is difficult. And the one that he had never released—the one who could sense talent, and find it—was a danger to him. He was, as demons are, arrogant; he was proud of bearing. But he was also almost human in seeming. He wore the clothing of the North as if he was born to it; he spoke the tongue. Where the lesser kin—for they are called, among other things, the kin—seemed almost bestial in their savagery, he appeared to consider such wildness beneath him.

“And he served for years. Served faithfully, as if unaware, in the end, of the leash. The Ice Mage was no fool,” she added again, “but no man can be cautious and completely in control for his entire life.”

“It does not seem—from my vantage—that he ever tried.”

She laughed; it was a hollow sound, and spoke of age and pain. “He prided himself on his control.”

Ararath offered no more.

“He summoned demons often. Testing himself against them, testing his hold over their names, became a matter of bitter pride, and it carried with it the edge of possible failure; I think he thrived on that possibility, while at the same time denying it.”

“I remember the first day I saw him summon a demon. He spent hours tracing the necessary containments, and I was forbidden to move from the stool upon which he had placed me. He offered me to the demon,” she added, “and I was afraid, then.

“But it was the fear he wanted. He understood that fear was their wine, and that some creatures were less immune to its effect than others.”

“I was not the only witness,” she said quietly. “The demon who had found me was present.”

“Had he a name?”

Sigurne nodded. “They all have names,” she said quietly. “But the names they give are not the names by which they are summoned; I do not think it possible to speak those names in any tongue save their own, and none without power can even attempt it.”

“He told you this.”

She was surprised. She knew that Ararath referred to the demon, and not to the Ice Mage.

“Yes. He told me.”

“And much else.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You are perceptive, Ararath. Yes. He told me much. It was a way of gaining my confidence; of gaining, perhaps, my trust—for we were both birds in a cage, and we both obeyed the same master, if for different reasons. I told you: I was young, and given to the thoughts of the young and the isolated. I lived in fear, those early years, and he—trapped, to my mind at the time—far more intimately and more invasively than even I—showed none. Where the Ice Mage was quick to anger—and to kill—the demon was not. And when the demon was sent to kill, when I was sent to witness, he killed cleanly.

“It must have taken a great effort of will on his part, those simple, clean deaths,” she added bitterly. “But in all things, where he had choice—and where we were thrown together—he seemed to me somehow better than the Ice Mage. I did not fear him, then, although I had begun my lessons, and the Ice Mage was very clear on the nature of demons.” She paused for a moment, remembering. To this place, unlike so many others, she seldom returned; it gave her nothing. Nothing, in the end, but pain.

“I was eventually sent to the villages when the Ice Mage was otherwise occupied. I think it pleased him; I felt I was on parade, and I
knew
I was hated. If I had dreamed— against all certainty—of returning to my family, these visits on his behalf, as his emissary, were death to even dreams.

“But he did not trust the villagers; he therefore sent the demon who found me as my guard. With us went a dozen men, armed and armored as is our custom, but these men were men I disdained. They served willingly, and even with pride; they were warriors, and they little cared which war they fought, as long as they
could
fight. But the demon and I—we were different. We had no choice.”

Oh, the bitterness of the words, the
lie
of them. The worst lies one told were always the ones that one told oneself. Time and again she was reminded of this.