Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (40 page)

“I will give him one last chance, tonight,” he told Scaum-Durna. “If he will not serve me as I wish, you may do as you see fit with him.”

The winds were howling outside. The vehement force of them could be heard despite the thick stone walls of the castle. Rain lashed the parapets. It would be a miserable night outside for the guardsmen on duty. But it was warm and dry in the library, where the dark, smoky shadow of Scaum-Durna twisted and writhed within the magical bounds of the chalk circle that Speer had drawn before summoning the demon with one of the spells the demon itself had taught him.

“What are you doing?” Cajarc shouted, red-faced with fury as he strode in through the door.

Speer looked up from his codex, a history of one of the early dynasties of the Thauronian kings, who appeared to have been an exceptionally bloodthirsty lot, even by Wagran standards.

“I had some ideas I wanted to discuss with Scaum-Durna. I didn’t want that damn bird flapping about here crapping on everything.”

“This is too dangerous! Do you not realize you are dealing with an ancient and very powerful spirit here? You do not summon a fell spirit of that sort of age and power outside of the spell chamber downstairs! Ever! Do you not understand the risks you are taking?”

“I would not harm the little brother,” the demon addressed the sorcerer. “If you recall correctly, you said as much yourself.”

“Stay out of this, Scaum-Durna!” Cajarc snapped. “I mean you no disrespect, but this does not concern you, it concerns Ar Dauragh’s judgment—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the lack of it!”

The demon subsided and continued to coil about itself in the confines of the magical circle, all the while staring malevolently at the sorcerer.

Cajarc turned back to face Speer.

“Well?” he demanded. “Banish it now! We’ll dredge it up again in the chamber downstairs tomorrow.”

Speer leaned back and closed his codex with a loud snap that caused a small cloud of dust to rise up from the well-weathered leather.

“Of course, just as soon as I can locate a suitable bell. But I’m glad you’re here, Cajarc. I wanted to ask if you are still staunchly opposed to my plan to raise up an army from the wolves of the islands.”

The sorcerer’s face no longer resembled an overripe raspberry, but he was clearly still irritated, judging by the dismissive tone of his voice.

“Yes, Ar Dauragh, it was a dreadful idea yesterday, it remains a dreadful idea today, and it will be a dreadful idea tomorrow. There are lines even a Witchking dare not cross. Why do you think your father and his fellows did not resort to such abominations even when they found themselves at the mercy of the elves?”

Speer nodded. “It is hard to argue with that. My apologies, Cajarc. I am well aware of all that you have done for me, and I treasure your counsel. As you so delicately did not say, my youth, at times, may render my judgment suspect.”

What remained of his anger faded from the little Écarlatean’s eyes, and he reached out to touch Speer’s hand in an avuncular manner. “I fear you will find intelligence is seldom an adequate substitute for experience, my lord. And the wise man learns from the failure of others rather than his own. Now, if you will be so kind as to see our honored guest departs the premises, I have a rather urgent matter awaiting me in my chambers.”

Speer laughed, knowing that a plump young widow from Raegedal had arrived with the town’s annual contribution to the castle’s upkeep in the afternoon. “Then far be it from me to disturb you. Good night, Cajarc.”

“Good night, my lord,” Cajarc said, bowing slightly before turning and walking hastily out of the library.

Speer snorted, amused, and returned to his codex. He read about the extraordinarily inventive way that one of the princes of Thauron, deprived of his inheritance by his younger brother, went about seeking his vengeance, which culminated in a feast that rather made his stomach turn.

A baleful rumbling from the inchoate form of the demon on the other side of the library interrupted his reading.

“Be patient. If nothing else, the man deserves one last simple pleasure.”

“You don’t think I can offer him a more intriguing experience than a sow from the village?” The dark smoke abruptly coagulated in a vaguely obscene female shape.

“Oh, very well.” Speer flicked his fingers and moved a small amount of salt to one side.

The circle now broken, Scaum-Durna flowed out from it like a serpentine shadow.

“Don’t kill the woman,” Speer said. “She may be of use.”

“As you say, little brother.”

He returned to the codex. It occurred to him that it could be said he was committing a betrayal every bit as terrible as those about which he now read. Then again, had Cajarc himself not taught him of the importance of learning from the mistakes of others? His father and the other Witchkings had refrained from abomination, that much was true. It did not escape Speer’s attention that they had also been defeated.

After abandoning the savage Thauronians, Speer turned to a grimoire and attempted for the second time to make sense of a spell called The Ephandril of Glyceranus, neither the purpose nor the preparations for which appeared to be coherent in any meaningful way. He was still puzzling over the meaning of the term “pylocatabasis” when he heard someone entering the library.

It was a blonde woman, large of hips and bust, with eyes that were far too aware and malevolent for her stolid, peasant face. She stood there in the doorway naked, with blood dripping from the corners of her mouth onto her fat, blue-veined breasts. Both her hands and arms were covered with blood up to the elbows. She looked very pleased with herself.

“For fanden!” Speer swore. “Are you out of your infernal mind?”

“You said I couldn’t kill the woman,” Scaum-Durna said with a crimson-stained smile. “You never said I couldn’t kill him.”

• • •

The preparations for the great working took longer than Speer anticipated. Finding and trapping a wolf bitch took the tongueless men nearly two weeks. The wolves of the isles named after them had learned to be wary of men and their deadly bows. No one asked, either by word or by sign, what had happened to Cajarc, and if they trod warily around the strange peasant woman who stalked, naked, dirty, and more often than not, bloodstained, through Mordlis as if she owned it, Speer could hardly blame them.

But they tolerated her readily enough, most likely because the demon went about satiating its craving for pleasures of the flesh with such abandon that Speer began to wonder if he would have to send out for younger reinforcements. Most of the guardsmen were in their forties and fifties, and only by virtue of their numbers were they able to collectively bear the burden imposed upon them by Scaum-Durna.

Speer himself was far too busy with the complex minutiae required for his working to spare even a moment for his physical needs, let alone pleasures. He caught his reflection in a well-polished brass lantern one afternoon and winced: He was unshaven, hollow-eyed, and gaunt from weeks of missed and half-eaten meals.

But at last he was ready, and in time for the Blood Moon, when Arbhadis alone could be seen in the night sky. He had the unholy relics: the skull of a burned witch, the dried umbilical cords of three babies ripped untimely from their mothers’ wombs, a feather from the wing of a fallen angel, a demon’s fang, the knucklebone of a thief, and the severed tongue of a fraud. He had written out all seven sheets of the spell in the blood of a male virgin on the skin of a coward who had died in battle, and in a language that was old when the demonic spirits were still walking the Earth in their own flesh. And the wolf bitch was being held in a cell in the dungeon.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked Scaum-Durna as they stood outside the growling wolf’s cell. “Are you frightened at all?”

The demon looked at him in puzzlement he could see through the woman's eyes. “Why would I be frightened?”

“How many generations do you expect to retain your consciousness with your spirit divided into so many souls?”

His question provoked a disturbing howl of laughter. “You think I’m going to serve as the demonic element, little brother?”

“I’m certainly not. I can’t. The remnants are too weak in me to fuel an entire new line.”

“I know.” Scaum-Durna took him by the hand and let him into the great summoning chamber, in which very nearly all of their materials for the working were waiting for them. “How fortunate that we have a pentagram strong enough to hold the spirit we’re going to use.”

Speer’s eyes narrowed. He had always known Scaum-Durna had its own purposes in mind, but what they might be beyond the gift of the womanly flesh it already possessed was beyond his ability to even guess.

“Your forefathers were good enough to aid me in removing one threat to me,” the demon told him. “Did you think I was speaking metaphorically when I first called you little brother? Adar-malik, who was once an angel, begot three sons on Ilae of the Shining Hair when he ruled over the great city of Gulan Cazhdal. The last, and least, was called Karak. The middle son was Durna. And his eldest son, and heir, was Vorbis.”

“Scaum-Durna…Prince Durna?”

“Even so. The spirits of the soulless cannot die, but they can be shattered. You are what remains of Scaum-Karak. And the weapon you seek shall be forged of Scaum-Vorbis. For twenty thousand years he has lorded it over me. He still styles himself the King of Gulan Cazhdal even though the city was long ago buried beneath earth and water. He is among the foulest of the foul spirits, and his power is great indeed. You could not ask for a better source for your army of vengeance. He will give you fierce warriors, killers full of hate and fury.”

Speer nodded. “Very well. So long as he is not so powerful that the spell cannot shatter him and bind him to the seed.”

“Which you must contribute,” the demon said, stepping close to him and running one dirty, rust-encrusted fingernail across his chin, before it bent down and picked up an empty bowl from amidst the various accoutrements and ingredients gathered for the spell. Despite its fetid breath and the feral madness in its eyes, he could feel himself responding to the warmth of its voluptuous female presence. “I can help. Unless, of course, you prefer to mount the wolf-bitch directly.”

Speer cupped one of the demon’s large breasts in his hand and brushed his thumb across it. For all its heft, it was still firm, and it had been weeks since he had last had a woman.

“I think we can spare the poor beast the indignity.”

>

It didn’t take long before their preparations were complete. Speer did the summoning, which with the true name of Scaum-Vorbis was considerably easier than many he’d previously performed.

When he completed it, which took him through only the first half of the second page of the long spell, the entire chamber went completely black for a moment, as every candle in the candleholders at each point of the pentagram went out. Then there was a silent flash, like lightning without thunder, and the center of the pentagram was filled with the shadowy form of a huge, angry demon with a bull’s head, black-feathered wings, and three pairs of arms.

“You!” the demon roared at the naked form of the woman standing at his side. “What in the name of our Fallen Father have you done? How dare you!”

“Hello, elder brother,” Scaum-Durna said with a self-satisfied smile on its face. “I cannot tell you what a joy it is to see you again after all these years. Particularly in circumstances such as these.”

“What has he told you, magician?” the trapped demon demanded of Speer. “Release me, and I shall give you more than you can imagine! I ask nothing more than for you to release me and allow me to punish my brother for his insolence!”

“Magician? Are you truly so blind you do not recognize your own family? Are you so stupid you do not realize what we are going to do to you?”

Scaum-Vorbis fell silent for a moment and stared at Speer, its huge bovine eyes blank with incomprehension. Then awareness dawned and it screamed in sheer terror.

“No, no, no!” it cried. “Brothers, you cannot do this thing! In the name of Adar-malik, in the name of Ilae of the Shining Hair, I beg you, do not do this to me!”

Even so, they did. And the King of long-dead Gulan Cazhdal finally went the way of his ancient city.

• • •

It was exactly sixty-four days later when the wolf bitch whelped her pups. There were seven in all. One was a strange, twisted thing that was a horror to behold. It breathed with great difficulty and died before nightfall. Five promised to be the warriors of his martial vision. The last was a disappointment, a mundane animal.

Two male pups and three females had the heads of beasts, but underneath the fur that covered their bodies, he could see their bodies were more or less in the shape of the human form, although with limbs that ended in claws rather than hands and feet. They were intelligent—he could see it in their eyes, which as soon as they opened burned with an inexplicable rage, fueled by the fury of the demonic spirit trapped inside each of them. The five unnatural creatures were grey like their dam, but the sixth one, a male pup, was nothing more than a simple wolf, although its fur was black as midnight.

That boundless rage would serve the fuel for a fire that would one day devour the elven race and its four kingdoms. It would destroy them just as they had destroyed his race, Speer vowed. For these would be the only children he would ever have, these small, mewling abominations would have to serve as the foundation of his father’s vengeance. The hate was the demon’s gift, but Speer would give them a target for it.

“What about the black one?” he asked Scaum-Durna, who, much to Speer’s relief, had moved into the body of a giant grey wolf. “It’s just a wolf. Shall we drown it or simply leave it with the mother?”

“Neither,” said the demon in a voice that was uncharacteristically full of awe. “That one is the special one. That one is our masterwork!”

“I don’t understand. It looks like any other wolf pup.”