“How did he drive it away?” asked Kerim with obvious patience for her Southwood-barbaric beliefs.
She smiled sweetly. “Magic.”
“I thought Maur couldn’t work magic,” said Talbot, frowning.
Sham shrugged, seeing no need to explain the difference between calling magic and working magic.
“So what does a demon look like?” said Kerim. He ignored her attempt to bait him and finished the last of his food.
Sham smiled in anticipation of his reaction. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see it.”
Kerim paused briefly, then shook his head with an air of long-suffering patience. “Demons are invisible. What else can you tell me about them?”
She shrugged, enjoying herself. “Even in Southwood, most people believe in them the way that you believe in magicians—stories told to keep children in at night. You know—” she switched to a sing-song voice and recited,
“I’ve never heard it.” The Reeve bared his teeth at her. “So tell me a story.”
She returned his smile, such as it was. “Demons, like dragons, are creatures of magic rather than mere users of it. They are almost always evil, though there are tales of some that have offered aid or shelter. Demons never appear unsummoned, and are difficult to get rid of. The Wizard’s Council has forbidden the use of sacrifice or human remains while working magic since just after the Wizard Wars about a thousand years ago. Apparently such things are necessary to get rid of demons as well as to summon them.”
She had meant to stop there. She really had. If only he hadn’t gotten that self-righteous, see-what-an-ignorant-savage-you-are expression on his face.
She leaned forward and lowered her voice dramatically. “The wizards would find a likely young man and kidnap him. Demons have no form here on our world. They must be given one. The ceremony is long and brutal, culminating in the young man’s death as the demon takes his body.” That was true enough, as far as she knew. She decided to add a few of the choicer rumors to go along with it.
“Sometimes though, the first victim’s body was not usable, due to the brutal rites that summon the demon. You see, the death spells set to keep the demon’s host body from procreating have a tendency to kill the person, or in this case, body they are set upon if the subject is too weak.” She grinned cheerfully and saw that even Talbot looked grim. “If everything is successfully completed, the wizard has a demon enslaved to his will until the wizard’s death.”
“What happens after the wizard died?” asked Kerim, who had resumed an impartial expression soon after she’d began her last speech. How entertaining to find someone who could resist her baiting.
“The demon was destroyed by a contingency of the original binding—” she replied, “—unless the demon was the one who killed the wizard, in which case the demon controls itself.”
“Ah,” said Kerim, “now, the stories.”
“Tybokk—” she said, nodding at Kerim’s remark, “—is probably the most famous of these. The name of his summoner is lost to time, but for four hundred years, more or less, he would join a Trader Clan as it crossed a certain mountain pass—”
“And kill them all?” offered Kerim blandly.
Shamera shook her head, “No, Tybokk was more creative than that. The travelers would arrive at their destination, every one of them, chanting a simple rhyme, day and night; until, one by one, they killed themselves.”
“The rhyme held the clue that destroyed the demon?” suggested Kerim.
Again she shook her head. “That would make a good story, but no. As far as I have heard the rhyme was something like this:
He would probably still be destroying Traders if he hadn’t killed the family clan of the man who was then the ae’Magi.”
“The who?” asked the Reeve.
“The ae’Magi,” replied Talbot, sotto voce. “It’s an old title given to the archmage. He’s the wizard who presides over the Wizard’s Council, the appointed leader of all of the magicians—usually he’s the most powerful, but not always.”
Sham waited until they were through talking before she began again. “The ae’Magi was born to the Trader Clans. When news came to him of the deaths of his family, the ae’Magi went hunting. For three years he traveled over the mountain pass that the demon frequented, accompanying various clans as none seemed to be favored over the other. When a stranger joined the party, not an uncommon occurrence, the ae’Magi would test him, to see if he were a demon.”
“How did he do that?” asked the Reeve.
Sham shrugged, “I don’t know. Since the proscription on demon summoning, many of the magics associated with demons have been lost as well.”
She cleared her throat and continued. “One day, or so the story goes, the clan that the ae’Magi was traveling with came upon a skinny young lad, placing the last stone on a newly dug grave. There was a wagon overturned nearby with both of the horses that pulled it lying dead in their traces. The boy had a few scratches, but was otherwise unhurt by the wolves that killed his family while he watched from a perch in a tree.
“The boy was accepted with no questions: children are treasured by the Trader Clans. He was a solemn child, but that might have been because of the death of his father. The ae’Magi, like most of the Traders, would sooner have suspected himself of being a demon than he would have suspected a child.
“One night the ae’Magi sat brooding in front of a small fire while his fellow Traders danced and exchanged stories. Gradually the stories changed from acts of heroism to more fearful topics, as is the case with most such story-exchanges. Someone, of course, told the story of Tybokk.
“The ae’Magi turned to leave and caught an unusual expression on the strange boy’s face. The boy was smiling, but not as boys do —his smile was predatory.
“A chill crawled up the ae’Magi’s spine as he realized how well the demon had been disguised by its summoner, and how close the mage had come to being defeated by the creature he hunted.
“A great battle followed, one that is yet spoken of with awe by the descendants of the Traders who witnessed it. In the end, the demon’s body was destroyed. The demon was left without form, unable to do more than watch as the Clan traveled out of the mountains in safety.
“Still today, the pass is called the Demon’s Pass or Tybokk’s Reach, and some say that there is an unnatural mist that occasionally follows those that walk that path at night.”
A small silence followed her story, then the Reeve said, “You should have been a storyteller rather than a thief. You would make more money at it.”
She smiled blandly. “You obviously don’t know how much I make thieving.”
“So you think we have another Tybokk?” asked the Reeve.
She shrugged. “If Maur was right when he named it Chen Laut, then we do.”
“Chen Laut is the monster who eats children who don’t do their chores,” explained Talbot. “My mother used to threaten us with him.”
“If the King’s Sorcerer was mistaken?” Kerim asked.
“Then perhaps we have a man who enjoys killing,” she replied. “He works seven or eight days in a row with the eighth or ninth day off, or perhaps his wife visits her mother every eighth or ninth day. He travels freely among the upper classes—a servant of some kind, or perhaps a noble himself. He can pick locks and skulk in shadows so skillfully, I didn’t see him when I entered the old man’s cottage.”
There was a slight pause, then Kerim nodded his head. “As long as you are willing to continue to look for a human culprit, I will listen to anything you have to say concerning demons.”