Thaumatology 101 (7 page)

‘You have a nightmare, hun?’ Lily said. Her voice was soft in Ceri’s ear. ‘I got home about twenty minutes ago. I’d just finished getting ready for bed when I heard you screaming.’ Ceri’s brain tried to crawl out of the fug of sleep and nightmare-pain, but the sound of Lily’s voice was so soothing. ‘So I ran across from my room and you were lying there straining like, um, well if you hadn’t been screaming I’d have thought I was interrupting.’ Ceri giggled slightly at the inference. Lily’s skin felt so smooth against hers. The half-succubus smelled really nice too. ‘Can you remember what you were dreaming about?’

Ceri frowned, trying to remember and the concentration began to cut through the mists of sleep. ‘I was in the lab,’ she said, trying to pull the memories of the dream back together. ‘The accident happened all over again, but there was nothing to protect me…’ Lily let out a little, sympathetic gasp and hugged her tighter. Not that Ceri was complaining. ‘It hurt, but…’ Something was intruding on her attempts to remember, but her attempts to remember were confusing her ability to work out what the intrusion was. ‘Um, there was something odd about the circle…’ She realised what the intrusion was; there were two of them and they were pressing into her boobs. ‘Uh, Lil… I’m okay, you can let go now.’

Lily giggled. ‘You were the one hugging me,’ she said, releasing her arms from around Ceri’s ribs. Ceri lay back onto her pillows and immediately regretted it. ‘We’ll need to change the sheets again,’ Lily said, nodding. ‘C’mon, you can sleep in my bed tonight. You can’t sleep on wet sheets.’ She stood, padding toward the door.

‘I’ll, uh, rinse myself off first,’ Ceri said.

‘Sure,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

The bathroom was a spacious one, set between the two bedrooms, and it had a walk-in shower as well as a bath. Ceri showered quickly in lukewarm water, dried herself off, and then walked out and across to Lily’s room. She stopped in the doorway and looked across the double bed to where Lily was lying propped on an elbow, covered to her waist in a sheet. She patted the bed with a grin, but Ceri hesitated. Lily’s face fell. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ she said.

‘It’s not that,’ Ceri replied. In truth, it partially was that she was unsure Lily could keep her hands to herself, but it was mostly because Lily slept in her parents’ room. She had not slept in there since she was ten and afraid of a thunderstorm which had made her wrists tingle. Pushing herself forward with an act of will, Ceri let her towel slip and hung it over the rail at the foot of the bed. Then she climbed in beside Lily.

The half-succubus grinned. ‘Turn on your side,’ she said. Ceri did as asked and Lily curled up behind her. Ceri could almost
feel
the child-like smile on her friend’s face. She could certainly feel the firm breasts pressed against her back. At least the “intrusions” were not there. Lily’s arm curled around Ceri’s waist. ‘Now just relax,’ Lily said. ‘I’m tired. I need rest, not sex, okay?’

Ceri was about to answer when she heard the singing. Lily was singing a soft lullaby, her voice almost a whisper. Ceri did not recognise the language, but the words crept over her like a blanket and, slowly, she began to smile as she drifted off to sleep.

~~~

Birdsong woke her, that and the sunlight streaming in through the window. Lily’s slender arm was still around her waist. She could feel full, firm breasts pressing against her back, hips pressed into her bottom, and thighs resting lightly against her own. Not really sure what time it was, Ceri lay there, feeling warm and comfortable. She would have to move soon, but for now she was content to lie there in her friend’s embrace.

The dream of the night before was little more than flashes of remembered pain and images now. Ceri lay there, trying to pick out the images from the pain. Luckily, pain was hard to remember. You could remember
having been
in pain, but the actual pain tended to fade. All she was really left with was the red shape glowing through the salt which formed the outer circle. She felt she had seen it before, but could not remember where, and the image was fading.

A little reluctantly, Ceri lifted Lily’s arm and slipped out from under it. Lily stirred, making discontented noises before curling up more and settling back into deep sleep. Ceri looked back at her with a smile on her face. She looked absolutely gorgeous; both incredibly sexy and terribly innocent at the same time. Ceri took a half-step back toward the bed and then shook her head. She slipped quietly out through the door and across the landing to her own room.

‘One night in bed with a succubus,’ she muttered, ‘and you’re contemplating being an idiot.’ She found one of the shirts she wore around the house and slipped it on. ‘She
didn’t even try anything,’ she added, and headed for the door. ‘And now you’re talking to yourself!’

‘First sign of madness,’ Twill said as she buzzed past.

‘Yeah, thanks,’ Ceri said wryly.

‘Bad dreams again?’ the fairy asked, hovering over the next landing as Ceri walked down. Ceri nodded, reaching the floor and turning toward the lounge. Twill landed on her shoulder, little hands gripping the cloth. ‘I saw the sheets. Well, one good thing came of it.’

‘You think?’

‘I know. You trusted Lily and yourself enough to sleep in the same bed as her. That’s progress.’ She flicked her wings. ‘What’re you up to?’

Ceri knelt beside the box which still rested beside the seat and started to unpack the contents. ‘There was an image I saw in the dream,’ she said. ‘I want to draw it out before I forget it.’

‘And this… device is going to draw it for you?’ Twill was not really at home with technology.

Ceri giggled. ‘No, but I should be able to use it to draw on.’ She lifted the tablet out and pressed the power button. A green light shone in one corner of the eight by ten inch computer, and the screen flickered once and began to stream boot-up text; apparently, Carter had made sure it was charged and ready for use. The text vanished and a background image appeared. It was an upward-pointing containment circle with “Get Well Soon” printed across it in large, white letters. Ceri grinned; yes, Carter had set the machine up for her. ‘Wow,’ she said, glancing at a corner of the screen, ‘MagiTech Thaumium Six OS. Latest thing. This has the Etherstream networking system, optimised multi-threading, the works.’

‘Does it cook breakfast?’ Twill asked. She sounded unimpressed.

‘No,’ Ceri said, ‘that it doesn’t do.’

‘Then I’ll go do that while you go all gooey over your new love.’ She lifted off Ceri’s shoulder and buzzed out through the lounge door.

Ceri looked at her tablet. She had never used the newest of MagiTech’s operating systems, the university was still on the previous version with no sign of upgrading. However, the new features were supposed to be pretty intuitive, so… She tapped the “Programs” icon in the corner of the screen and, sure enough, a window opened displaying a matrix of software icons. She located a package called “Doodle” and was rewarded with a simple white screen with icons at the top for line width and colour.

Five minutes later, Ceri walked into the kitchen holding the computer, now bearing a rough image of the glyph she had seen in her dream. She sat down at the kitchen table, placed the tablet in front of her, and stared at it. It looked like an enchantment rune, but it was nothing she had seen in class. She was sure she had seen it before, but still could not really think where.

Twill floated over from the cooker while her spatula continued to make sure the bacon did not burn in the frying pan. She looked down. ‘That,’ she said, ‘looks like one of the demonic scripts.’

Ceri looked up. ‘Demonic? I didn’t know you knew any demon languages.’

‘There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Ceri,’ Twill pointed out. ‘However, you’re right, I don’t. On the other hand, however, I
do
know what their glyphs look like because I like to know what to avoid, and that just screams “walk away.” Try your father’s books.’ Ceri started to get up and Twill fixed her with a look. ‘
After
breakfast,’ she said.

‘Yes, Mother,’ Ceri responded, sitting back down and flicking the tablet into sleep mode. Twill had told them she was eighteen, but what that meant to a fairy neither Ceri nor Lily really knew. The tiny fae certainly mothered the pair of them terribly, acting much more like a thirty year old.

‘Any more lip from you and I’ll starch your sheets,’ Twill said. She floated back to the cooker, examining the bacon. Two slices of bread floated out of the bread bin to be buttered by a knife with a mind of its own. ‘Offer some advice to some people and all you get is widderbegotten snark,’ she muttered quite loud enough to be heard. ‘No gratitude from some folks.’

‘Thank you for your suggestion, Twill,’ Ceri said contritely.

‘I should think so too!’ The bacon raised itself from the pan and arranged itself on the bread, and a second or two later Ceri had a plate with a bacon sandwich on it in front of her.

Ceri took a bite from her breakfast. Twill knew how to make bacon sandwiches. ‘And thank you for this lovely breakfast,’ she said once she had swallowed. The swallowing was important. There would have been comments about speaking with her mouth full otherwise.

Twill nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Help yourself to coffee. I made it fresh.’

~~~

Lily padded into the study and settled herself down on the chaise longe. ‘Twill said you were in here,’ she said, ‘and I wanted to see it for myself before I believed it.’

The study was the other room on the middle floor and Ceri liked it slightly less than the lounge. It was where her parents had done their less practical work and she had spent long hours there watching them do just that. Twill entered it once a month to dust, but other than that it remained unused.

‘I needed to look something up,’ Ceri said.

‘Yeah,’ Lily replied, ‘I can kind of tell.’

Ceri was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by books, most of them thick and bound in heavy leather. A couple had locks on them. She waved her tablet at Lily, still displaying the rune she had drawn. ‘I saw this in my nightmare. Twill says it’s demonic.’

Lily yawned. ‘It’s not Devotik,’ she said. Ceri looked up from the text she was reading and raised an eyebrow. ‘What? I’m not allowed to know something? Dad taught me a few words once, and how to read the glyphs. That’s not one of them, far too complex.’

‘I didn’t know you spoke
any
demonic language,’ Ceri said.

Lily grinned a little sheepishly. ‘Yeah well, it was my father. He taught me the numbers up to ten, “hello” and “goodbye,” “yes” and “no,” three totally vile swear words, some… anatomy, and the names of thirteen sexual positions. If you’d like to know what goes in where and what to call the combination when you’ve done it, I’m good, but I can’t even order a beer.’

‘Well,’ Ceri said as she pushed one pile of books away from her, ‘your dad is an incubus.’ Ceri had never met him; Lily had told her he would not come near High Towers, for which she was fairly thankful. She flicked a glance at Lily just as the half-demon yawned and stretched, her arms up over her head, her back arched off the little sofa forming a perfect bridge, before she relaxed back down. Ceri looked away before Lily could see her watching, pulling another book forward and examining it closely.

‘Sorry,’ Lily said, ‘I haven’t really woken up yet. Twill said she’d…’ She stopped as the fairy whisked into the room, a ball of white fairy-light followed by a tray with two mugs on it. ‘Twill, you absolute glory, you’re a life-saver.’ She plucked her mug of coffee from the tray as it approached her and took a satisfied sip.

The tray moved on to settle beside Ceri. ‘Now that’s the kind of appreciation I
should
be getting,’ Twill said. ‘Have you found it yet?’

‘No, but…’ Ceri began, looking up at Twill. She faltered. Lily was lying half on her side, in a relaxed posture with one leg propped up. Her arms were arranged to give a full view of her body; a body which was naked and rather exposed… Ceri snapped out of it and looked back down at her books. ‘There are, like, a dozen distinct demonic languages and some of them have several hundred glyphs…’

‘You need to be more… artistic about it,’ Twill said. ‘Each of the pictographic systems has a style to it. You should be able to narrow the search by determining which group it belongs to.’ She flitted across to hover over a book. ‘Look, it’s clearly not this one because there’s no repetition enumerator at the top.’

Ceri blinked. The tiny fae was right, of course. She pushed that book away, and then a couple more on the same class of ideograms. ‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘it’s probably not either of these. They both use ideogram pairs to form any word and the symbol is probably supposed to mean something on its own.’

Twill lifted from the books, smiling in the same kind of way Doctor Tennant did when she was pleased with someone’s progress. Flitting across the room she quite calmly landed on the side of one of Lily’s breasts and folded herself into a lotus position. Lily gave her a slightly sour expression and then went back to drinking her coffee. Ceri, now thoroughly concentrating on the weeding out process, did not notice the exchange.

Ten minutes later, Ceri looked up and blinked at the sight of Twill, still sat on Lily’s breast, now with her elbows resting on her knees in boredom. ‘Uh…’ Ceri said.

‘You’ve found it now?’ Twill asked.

‘No, but I think I’ve found the language. It’s… uh… I’m not sure I’m pronouncing this right, Ctholnaraeic?’ Her finger moved down the page, following the text. ‘Sorry, I’m translating from Latin… it’s probably the oldest of all demonic languages… hardly ever spoken… used in some of the most powerful of enchantments…’

‘It’s the language the oldest, nastiest demons use amongst themselves,’ Twill said. ‘They say you can still hear it in the Unseelie Court sometimes. Mostly it’s a dead language, seen only in written form, and then rarely as whole sentences.’

‘You trying to scare the crap out of us, fairy,’ Lily said, ‘cos you’re doing a good job on me.’

Ceri turned a page in her book, grinned, double-checked her drawing against it, and started to read. Then she went white. ‘Want something to add to the scare? It’s called Blotherian. It’s the rune of “betrayal, assassination, and the opening of hidden ways.”’