“I told you about the forbidden black arts that have to be used to summon a demon,” continued Sham soberly. “Golems weren’t always so useless. There are several kinds that may be created, if the wizard is willing to resort to black magic.”
“Black magic requires the use of sacrifices,” said Kerim.
“Or human body parts,” she agreed. “When creating golems though, human sacrifice is generally required—sometimes more than one, which is the case of the simulacrum. It can take on the aspect of anyone it slays for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that when not under the direct control of its master the golem functions like the person it has slain would.”
She folded her arms and tapped her biceps with a finger, thinking for a moment. “I seem to remember reading that some wizards created golems for their demons to use when they carried out their master’s pleasures. I believe the purpose was to save the host body—which was much more difficult to create than the golem.”
“I would have sworn that the man I talked to this morning was my brother,” said Kerim softly, some minutes after she finished speaking. “Is it possible that it is the body we found that is not my brother’s, but a careful copy?”
“To what purpose?” responded Sham. “I can think of many reasons for a demon to assume your brother’s shape; but none for anyone to kill someone and make it look like Lord Ven. If you would like, though, I could examine the body more closely.”
Kerim shook his head and turned back to the fire. The light playing across his face revealed the sorrow that lived there. Briefly he closed his eyes.
“You don’t have any idea how to stop it?” He spoke in Cybellian, as if it were easier to hide his emotions in his own tongue.
Sham shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have a word in with the Whisper, but that is the best I can do. Even if I could find a mage who knows anything about demonology, he won’t be anxious to admit to it—it is forbidden magic. Any mage caught using it would be put to death by the wizard’s guild if a mob didn’t find him first. The Shark has a few wizards who work for him upon occasion who might know something, but no one keeps secrets better than a mage.”
“Can you kill the demon once you find it?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“So,” he said heavily. “We have a creature that we can’t detect, killing people for an unknown reason, and, if by some chance we stumble onto this thing, we don’t know what to do with it.”
“There is this—” she offered hesitantly, “—the demon doesn’t know we are aware Lord Ven is dead.”
“If we hide my brother’s body for a while longer, we might be able to trap it,” agreed the Reeve so readily that Shamera knew he’d already had the same thought. “But what good does that do us if we have no way to kill the demon?”
“I don’t know,” replied Shamera. “I don’t know.”
8
Sham sat up abruptly as a low sound echoed through her darkened room. The bed was too soft and hampered her movements; she rolled off and crouched on the floor with her knife in hand. She didn’t feel the presence of the demon, but lit the candles with a breath of magic anyway. The light revealed nothing out of place.
Once again the moan traveled through the room. The soft illumination of the candles dispelled the darkness and allowed her to put aside her initial fears. The sound was coming from the Reeve’s chambers.
The frame had been badly damaged when the Reeve destroyed the door. His carpenters were having a difficult time replacing it, so the tapestry was still the only barrier to the Reeve’s rooms. If the door had still been there, she would never have heard anything.
She lay down on the floor by the tapestried opening and remembered to extinguish the candles in her room before she rolled under the bottom of the heavy wool.
Flames crackled merrily in the Reeve’s fireplace. It was Kerim’s custom to keep the fire well fueled throughout the night to keep the room warm; poor circulation left him easily chilled. The fire provided enough light to allow Sham to see inside the large chamber. When she discovered nothing out of place, she came to her feet and saw what her lowly position near the floor had hidden from her.
Kerim lay stiffly on his bed. As she watched, his back arched and he gasped soundlessly; his face grimaced in pain. Apparently the miracle-worker his mother had found had done more damage than they had realized.
She thought briefly of allowing Kerim his privacy. When she was hurt, she always sought some dark corner to wait it out. She’d even taken a step or two back toward her room when another soft moan came from the bed. Enough, she thought, was enough.
The surface of the Reeve’s bed was waist high, and she couldn’t reach him from the floor. She put her knife on the corner of the bed and levered herself up—gently so she wouldn’t jostle him more than she had to. Leaving the knife where it was, she crawled up on the bed until she sat near him.
Magic was incapable of doing much more than concentrating the effects of herbal medication, speeding healing and setting bones —and even in that, Sham had little experience. Armed with nothing more than a rune that promoted health, a vague recollection of rubbing down her father’s warhorse, and a bottle left on the dresser that smelled suspiciously like horse liniment, Sham set to work.
Kerim helped as Sham rolled him over until he lay face down on the bed. With three quick slices of her knife she rid him of the soft robe he wore. She was tossing the scraps to one side when another spasm twisted the still-impressive muscles of his lower back. The flesh strained and knotted beneath his skin, forcing his spine to twist unnaturally to the side.
She put a few drops of the liquid in the bottle on her hands and rubbed it into her skin. When she felt the familiar warmth begin to seep into her hand, indicating that it was indeed a liniment of some sort, she splattered it liberally on Kerim’s back and set to work.
“Remind me to recommend you to the Stablemaster,” said Kerim, his voice tight with pain. “You need to find more honest work than thievery.”
“Honest?” questioned Sham, pressing deeply into his back with her thumbs. “I’m the most honest thief in Purgatory, just ask the Shark. I pay him a copper a week to say so.”
Kerim’s laughter was broken by a gasp as another muscle spasmed. Sham moved up where it seemed the worst and poured more liniment onto her hands.
She’d heard somewhere that it sometimes helped to distract a person in pain. “I’ve answered some of your questions, would you mind if I ask you a question or two?”
Taking his grunt as consent. Sham set the liniment aside for fear of burning his skin with it and rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you really believe Altis has awakened? That this religion of yours wasn’t just created by men to fulfill their own purposes?”
Kerim drew a deep breath and shifted his head. “Once,” he said, as if he were a storyteller, “there was a young boy, the bastard son of a great lady. He was born a year after the Lady’s husband left on his never-ending pursuit of the perfect battle—nine months after a warrior, traveling to another land, stayed briefly at the manor where she lived. Bastard son of the Lady, but no kin to the Lord, the boy learned early to keep himself out of everyone’s way. He was no one and less than nothing.”
“One day a young man came to the village near the estate where the boy lived. He spoke of a wondrous vision he had been given by an ancient god; a vision that foretold how the small war-torn country that was the boy’s homeland would be powerful, as it had been in the distant past. At last the boy’s life took on a purpose. He would become a great warlord, and his family would honor him for his skills.
“That night he dreamed he was visited by Altis, who told the boy he would indeed grow to become a warrior of legends, that he would lead an invasionary force such as had not been seen on the face of the earth for many generations. Altis bestowed on the boy the gifts of agility and strength, but told him that he must win skill on his own. A man would come, capable of leaching the art of war.” Kerim’s voice gave out briefly as Sham put pressure on a particularly tight area.