Slowly, Sham continued darkening the room. Moving to the fireplace, she extinguished the three large candles placed on the far end of the mantel. As she moved, she forced herself to keep her hands steady.
Warding spells were effective against magical beings like demons and dragons only if the warding was around the spellcaster’s home and cast by someone who understood the exact nature of the creature. Even if she had been better-versed in demonology, she was caught fairly on the demon’s hunting grounds —and she was beginning to feel like dinner.
After she’d extinguished the last candle, Sham casually set the snuffer against the fireplace and stared at the polished floor as if in deep thought—the sea could freeze before she’d crawl into that bed with its hampering blankets while there was a plaguing demon in the room. It wasn’t the best time to remember that the demon was overdue for a kill.
Sham caught a bare glimpse of something as a light touch stroked her shoulder. She didn’t realize it had been an attack until she felt the warmth of her blood sliding down her arm. Whatever it used to cut her with was so sharp that she did not hurt initially—an oversight soon corrected.
Deciding that staying in character might have its advantages, she screamed for help. She hoped the walls were thinner than they looked, so Kerim might hear her. The demon had been avoiding a public display, for reasons of its own; Sham hoped that it would continue the pattern. She didn’t have the knowledge she needed to destroy the demon yet, though she had the Whisper looking for any wizard that might. Without intervention, there was a better than even chance that she wouldn’t survive the night.
Hand to her shoulder, she spun around, looking frantically for her attacker while carefully maintaining the mannerisms she’d adopted in her role as the Reeve’s mistress. The room was quiet and appeared as empty as it had before the attack. All she could hear was the harshness of her own breathing.
Just as in the Old Man’s cottage, the intruder wasn’t using conventional methods of invisibility. No matter how powerful a sight aversion spell was, a wizard who was aware of the spellcaster could overcome it—as he could any other illusion. Sham couldn’t see anything out of place. Warm fluid dripped off her fingers, but she didn’t look down at the growing stain on the floor.
It had fed its hunger only last night, so it had only come to watch the newcomer—although it had placed the dagger on the mantel for possible use. Weapons were difficult to carry in its own insubstantial form.
The Chen Laut breathed deeply. The scent of the woman’s terror-inspired sweat was titillating—much too arousing to resist. She was so vulnerable, pitiful really. A millennium of evading human detection told it that it was taking unnecessary risks. Even a decade ago, it would have resisted hurting the human for fear of betraying itself.
But the Castle was held by fools who didn’t believe in magic or demons. And this woman played where she didn’t belong. It considered the crippled human that it could hear struggling to the wheeled chair on the other side of the door, and dismissed him with the last of its caution.
Upon entering the room, the demon had changed into its secondary form, counting upon magic to hide its body from the woman. As a noncorporeal entity, the demon needed a physical form to affect things in this world. The Summoner had provided two. The first form must be protected; without it the demon would be powerless, cut adrift here forever. But the second form, though infinitely more useful, was not necessary to survival.
Slowly Sham backed against the stonework and stretched a hand behind her, fumbling amid the implements that hung on hooks near the hearth. Her magic was unlikely to hurt it until she understood better what she was fighting, so she decided to try something else. The most obvious tool for a frightened woman to grasp was the poker. She had no intention of getting close enough to the demon to use such an ineffective weapon. Deliberately Sham knocked the poker loudly to the ground and snatched the small shovel instead, as if she had missed her target. She held the iron handle with an awkwardness that was not completely feigned; her shoulder hurt.
There was a soft sound to her right as if something hard scraped across an expanse of floor that the rugs didn’t cover. She was certain that the demon was as capable of masking sounds as Sham herself was. It was goading her.
The next sound was louder, and to her right again. She turned toward the fire and dipped the shovel in the hot coals. Continuing her turn, she cast the fiery lumps in the general direction of the second sound.
When she faced it, Sham saw the vague form of her attacker. Though magic concealed its face, it appeared to be a man. She must have hit it with some of the coals, because it shrieked in an inhumanly high tone. As the sound died down, she could hear someone rattle the catch on the door to Kerim’s room.
As Sham turned to the door, the intruder grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her towards the far wall. She landed on the polished nightstand, an improvement to the well-being of neither her nor the small, formerly sturdy piece of furniture. Used to street fighting, though no one had actually thrown her across a room before, she managed to roll to her feet, shaking off bits and pieces of wood as she did so.
The demon had summoned the shadows around itself, using the same spell that Sham favored in the dark streets of Purgatory. In the dark room, the unnatural shadows covered the whole area until the only things Sham could see were the coats that had landed on the bedclothes and started to ignite the cloth.
As she peered into the darkness, the demon surprised a cry out of her when it cut her bared calf. She looked down before it had completed its stroke, and she caught a glimpse of something metallic in the darkness: the pox-eaten thing was using a knife!
For some reason that turned her fear into fury. She was being attacked by a demon, a legendary creature of song and story—and it was using a knife like a common thief.
She crouched with a snarl, but the entire room was encased in the peculiar shroud of shadow and the demon’s presence was too strong to pinpoint. Smoke from the small fires amid the bedding and the rugs began to fill the room, making her eyes water, and she acquired another wound, this one on her thigh. Sham growled with frustrated anger.
A deafening crack echoed in the room, followed by an assortment of sounds, including the opening and closing of the outer door as the intruder escaped into the anonymity of the hall.
The demon ran cautiously through the halls until it was far from possible pursuit. The Reeve would be more interested in protecting his woman than finding her attacker. In the shadows of an unused room, it examined the body it wore. The damage the coals had inflicted was minor, though it would require a fair amount of power to return the golem to wholeness. The mild irritation it felt toward the Reeve’s mistress flamed to momentary rage. It calmed itself by deciding the woman would be its next meal, seven days hence. Until then, she could do little harm.
As the unnatural shadows dissolved, Shamera could see that the door by the fireplace had been split down the center. The half with the latch lay on the floor, tangled in the tapestries that had covered the doorway; the other half hung awkwardly from the lower hinge. The upper hinge clung tenaciously to the door, pale splinters of wood attesting to the force that had ripped it from the door frame.
She turned her gaze from the door to the Reeve, who was dressed in night robes with a wicked-looking war axe in one hand; his chair was placed sideways to the door frame to allow him to strike effectively. She gave him a grin of sheer relief.