CHAPTER 13 #2
“I don’t know, something paladin-y!”
Caliban smiled sourly. “Sure, I can take your confession and grant you absolution so you die with a clean conscience.”
“Very funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
Step…step…step…lurch…step…
“I’m not confessing anything to you.”
“Suit yourself.” He wasn’t entirely sure he could have done it anyway—the Dreaming God had broad definitions of what constituted confession, but Caliban really didn’t want to die listening to a recitation of the assassin’s sins.
The door to the earthlodge opened.
Rune filed in behind the rats. Foreshortened as his view was, Caliban could only see their faces and the heavy antlers of the males, rising like winter trees above their brows. Firelight painted lurid orange across their green cheekbones.
After a moment, he realized that they were moving in time to the music as well. They were not as awkward as the rats—they froze, ears upswept, at the missed beats, instead of stumbling—but it was the same dance.
Whatever’s got the rats has them, too.
“Brenner?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’ve got a knife stashed anywhere, this might be a good time.”
“I don’t. If I did, I’d have used it by now.”
“Sorry.”
“Might even have cut you loose, too.”
“You’re too kind.”
One of the rune, a stag-man taller than Caliban, stepped down into the circle. The rats parted before him then danced back together to fill the space.
The rune lifted a knife. His antlers were wrapped with beads. Black and white feathers and bits of bone swung as he knelt down behind the knight.
Dreaming God, I commend my soul into your hands, assuming you still want it—
The ropes between his feet were cut. Caliban sagged, partially from relief and partially from the scream of blood back into tormented muscles.
A surprised grunt next to him indicated that Brenner was receiving the same treatment. Then a heavy hand was lifting him up, and Caliban found himself on his knees, the assassin beside him. Their hands were still tied behind them, but just to sit up was an excruciating relief.
The stag-man stood behind them, the knife still in his hand. Caliban looked over his shoulder and saw that alone among the rune, the knife-bearer was not moving in time to the music.
A dark figure appeared behind the circle of rats. It walked forward with excruciating slowness, approaching the edge of the circle.
Shaman. Has to be.
The music stopped. The rats dropped simultaneously, as if dead, which many of them already were. A wave of tiny bodies fell at the figure’s feet, a sweeping rodent obeisance. Their bones crunched under the shaman’s hooves.
“NGGHAAAA—!” Caliban’s demon clawed at him, screaming so loudly that the knight bit his tongue to keep from yelling aloud. Blood welled up under his teeth and filled his mouth with salt.
Along the walls, the rune shuddered, their ears drooping.
The shaman stepped down into the circle.
At first, Caliban thought it was another stag-man.
The rack of antlers over its head was huge, twice the size of that of any of the other males, hung with bones.
Round stones with holes in them clicked against something that looked disturbingly like human fingerbones.
It wore a cloak of woodpecker feathers that dazzled the eye with spots and stripes until the shape under them seemed to swim in the firelight.
Then it spread its arms, and the stag-man behind them rushed to take its cloak away, and he saw that it was a female.
An antlered doe. Shaman—and judging by the number of points, a very old one.
The doe’s face did not wrinkle like a human’s would, but the long planes of her muzzle were sunken, the bones in fine relief, and the hairs had gone white, turning her skin a frosted green.
Her spine was bent slightly forward, possibly under the weight of those magnificent antlers, and her breasts were flat sacks against her chest.
The doe’s eyes were milky with cataracts, but they narrowed with unnerving clarity on his face.
Caliban swallowed a mouthful of blood. The demon had gone so silent that it was like being alone in his head for the first time in months.
“You,” said the antlered doe, in a low, throbbing voice, mourning dove rather than sparrow. “Why here, you?”
Caliban had to swallow again before he could speak. “It was an accident. We were on the road, and the storm drove us off.”
“Lie, you.”
“No lie.”
“Bring demons here, you.”
Uh-oh.
“We didn’t mean—”
She took a step forward, her eyes narrowing, and struck him across the face. The strength in those delicate limbs was astonishing. His head snapped back. The demon yammered, briefly, and then fell back into that terrified silence.
“Lie, you! Demon inside you, you!”
Despite the fear and the pain and everything else, Caliban felt a sense of vindication so powerful that it was practically a venial sin. He turned his head and stared at Brenner.
The assassin said “Heh,” and made a kind of full facial shrug. He had the decency to look embarrassed.
“The one inside me is dead,” Caliban said, turning back to the rune. “I swear, it is no harm to anyone.”
The rune-shaman’s nostrils flared. She put her face down practically next to his and inhaled.
“Could be, you. Or could be lies, you.”
“No lie. I swear it.”
She tilted her head. “Ye-e-es. Maybe, you. What other demons though, you?”
Is she asking if I have any other demons? God, isn’t one enough?
“What other demons?” asked Brenner.
The antlered doe turned and looked at him, then stepped forward, her head darting forward. She walked like a bird or a lizard, oddly jerky. “Others, you. Clanking, clicking, tearing. Four-leg, six-leg. Know, you?”
Brenner inhaled. “I think she means the Clockwork Boys.”
“The Clockwork Boys? Have they come here?”
She glowered. “Not know clokwerk, me. Know demons. Demons come, rune territory, my territory. Kill rune. Want kill me. Know, you?”
“We’re not with them,” said Caliban. “Not our demons. We want to stop them.”
Her ears went back. “Lie, you.”
“No. We’re going to where these demons come from. To stop them.”
The antlered doe fell back and paced around them in a circle. Caliban got a crick in his neck trying to watch her, and looked at Brenner instead. The assassin shook his head minutely.
“I wonder why she thinks they’re demons,” Caliban murmured.
“Maybe they are.”
Her face thrust next between them. “Those demons kill me, take territory. Kill me, take territory, you?”
“We haven’t killed any rune. We don’t want your territory. We’re just passing through.”
“Lie, you! Else bring demon why, why, you?”
“I swear, I don’t want your territory. My demon is dead. It doesn’t want anything.” Except maybe to be left alone.
She wrinkled her muzzle. “Not believe, me.”
“I don’t know how I can prove it to you.”
She grinned. Her teeth were flat and herbivorous, but she had wickedly sharp canines. “Know, me.” She turned away, leaping out of the sunken circle, kicking up the bodies of dead rats like dust.
And just like that, watching her move, he knew.
Oh, Dreaming God…
“There’s a demon in her,” he said aloud.
“What?” Brenner stared at him.
Caliban tried to swallow, found his throat tight, and spat blood on the dirt floor. “There’s a demon in her. A live one. I should have realized from the rats—some of them can control vermin, but I never saw anything like this. She’s possessed.”
Shit, I must be out of practice. A year ago I would have known the minute I looked in her eyes.
There was a slim possibility that the rune shaman had accepted possession willingly. It did happen. Not oft en, but it did happen. Such demons were nearly impossible to spot, as Caliban knew to his sorrow.
“I wonder if they know,” said Brenner, glancing at the other rune. They were as silent as the rats.
“I doubt it.” Caliban’s heart ached for the rune, that their shaman, who should have been wise, was host to a monster instead.
“Well, so, you’re a demonslayer, then,” said Brenner eagerly. “What do we do now?”
Caliban sighed. “We die.”
“What? You’re the bloody Knight-Champion!”
“I’m the former bloody Knight-Champion, and I don’t have a sword to kill her, or salt and holy water to exorcise her, and my purity of heart with which to exhort her has been pretty shaky lately, as somebody keeps reminding me!”
“Bloody hell,” said Brenner, with feeling.
The rune returned. She was carrying an abalone shell which trailed a thin stream of smoke.
A collective moan went up from the rune watching. They were sagging where they stood, their mouths open and panting. Whatever force had slain the rats did not seem to be treating them much better.
The demon rune crouched before Caliban, her antlers hanging over him. Bands of shadow crossed his face like bars. He could see inside the abalone shell now, a pile of leaves burning atop a bed of clear white salt.
Nghaaaaaa…!
For the first time, the knight felt a rush of almost camaraderie for his demon. I’m scared too, believe me…
He licked his lips. Salt and holy water were only there to focus the mind. If your heart was pure, you didn’t need them.
The sword…well, the sword would have been very useful.
He had not felt the Dreaming God’s presence in a very long time. Without it, what use was he?
Still …
He took a deep breath and said, in the paladin’s voice, “Halt.”
She paused. Just for an instant, just long enough to hope.
Then: “Think you command me, you?”
“Well, it was worth a try,” he said, not looking at Brenner.
“See now, me,” she said, and grinned with those wicked sharp teeth. Far down in her pupils, something alien looked out at him and laughed.
The antlered doe bent her muzzle to the abalone shell and inhaled deeply. Smoke rushed into those broad nostrils, and the coals flared.
She lifted her head and exhaled the smoke in twin streams into his face.
Caliban tried to hold his breath, instinctively. The rune behind him caught his hair and jerked his head sharply back. He gasped at the unexpected pain, and smoke rushed in.
It smelled sweet and acrid, like burning hay. He coughed and with each cough the world lurched sideways and farther away, as if he were moving backward, except that he was still kneeling in the dirt, unmoving.
Darkness closed around him.