The Red Knight (21 page)

‘All three of you are man’s best practice for dealing with demons,’ he said as he fed them fresh salmon, new caught in the River Albin and sold in the market.

They ignored him and ate, and then rubbed against him with loud protests of eternal love.

But his words gave him pause, and he unlocked the heavy oak door to the tower chamber and walked down one hundred and twenty-two steps to his sitting room where Mastiff, the Queen’s man,
sat reading in an armchair. The man leapt to his feet when the Magus appeared.

The Magus raised an eyebrow and the man bowed. But Harmodius was in a hurry – a hurry of passion – and little incivilities would have to wait. ‘Be so kind as to hurry and beg
the Queen’s indulgence: would she do me the kindness to pay me a visit?’ he asked, and handed the man a plain copper coin – a sign between them. ‘And ask my laundress to pay
me a visit?.’ He handed over a handful of small silver change. Some of the coins were as small as sequins.

Mastiff took the coins and bowed. He was used to the Magus and his odd ways, so he hurried off as if his life depended on the journey.

The Magus poured himself a cup of wine and drank it off, stared out the window, and tried to convince himself to let it go for a day. Who would care?

But he felt ten years younger, and when he thought of what he was about to prove he shook his head, and his hand trembled on the cup.

He heard her light step in the hall, and he rose and bowed deeply when she entered.

‘La,’ she said, and her presence seemed to fill the room. ‘I was just saying to my Mary – I’m bored!’ She laughed, and her laugh rose to the high rafters.

‘I need you, your Grace,’ he said with a deep bow.

She smiled at him, and the warmth of it left him more light headed still. Afterwards, he could never decide whether lust played a part in what he felt for her; the feeling was strong,
possessive, awesome, and dangerous.

‘I am determined to work a summoning, your Grace, and would have you by me to steady my hand. I hope it will be wonderful.’ He bowed over hers.

‘My dear old man, she looked at him tenderly. He felt in her regard a flaw – she pitied him. ‘I honour your efforts, but don’t tax yourself to impress me!’

He refused to be annoyed. ‘Your Grace, I have made such summonings many times. They are always fraught with peril, and like swimming, only a fool does such a thing alone.’ In his
mind’s eye, he imagined swimming with her, and he swallowed heavily.

‘I doubt that I can do anything to support a mighty practitioner such as you – I, who only feel the sun’s rays on my skin, and you, who feel his power in your very soul.’
But she went to the base of the long staircase eagerly and led him to the top, her feet lighter on the treads than his by half a century. And yet he was not breathing hard when they reached the
top.

She kicked off her red shoes on the landing and entered his chamber carefully, barefoot, avoiding the precise markings on the floor. She paused to look at them. ‘Master, I have never seen
you work something so – daring!’ she said, and this time her admiration was unfeigned.

She went to stand in the sun which now covered the east wall instead of the west. She stood there studying the equations and lines of poetry, and then she began to scratch the ears of the old
fat cat.

He purred a moment, sank his fangs into her palm, and mewed when she swatted him with her other hand.

Harmodius shook his head and poured honey on the punctures the cat had left. ‘I’ve never known him to bite before,’ he said.

She shrugged with an impish smile and licked the honey.

He, too, removed his shoes.

He went to his wall of writing and pushed his nose close, reading two lines written in silver pencil. Then, taking up a small ebony wand, he wrote the two lines in the air, and left letters of
bright fire behind – thinner than the thinnest hair, and yet perfectly visible from where either of them stood.

‘Oh!’ said the Queen.

He smiled at her. He had the briefest temptation to kiss her and another desire, equal but virtually opposite, to back out of the whole thing.

She reminded him of—

‘Bah,’ he said. ‘Are you ready, your Grace?’

She smiled and nodded.

‘Kaleo se, CHARUN,’
the Magus said, and the light over the pentagram paled.

The Queen took a step to the right, and stood in the full beam of the sun from the high windows, and the old cat rubbed against her bare leg.

Shadow began to fill the pentagram. The Magus took up his staff, and held the hollow golden end like a spear point between himself and the inscribed sign on the floor.

‘Who calls me?’ came a whisper from the fissure in light that flickered like a butterfly above the pentagram.

‘
KALEO
,’ Harmodius insisted.

Charun manifested beneath the shadow. The Magus felt his ears pop, and the sun seemed dimmed.

‘Ahhh,’ he hissed.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said.

The shadows were drawn into a creature that was like a man, except he was taller than the highest bookcase, naked, a deep white veined in blue like old marble, with tough, leathery wings that
swept majestically from well above his head to the floor in a perfect arc that any artist would have admired.

The smell he brought with him was alien – like the smell of lye soap being burned. Neither clean nor foul. And his eyes were a perfect, black blank. He carried a sword as tall as a man and
wickedly barbed, and his head held both alien horror and angelic beauty in one – an ebony-black beak inlaid with gold; huge, almond shaped eyes, deep and endless blue like twin sapphires, and
a bony crest filled with hair, like the decoration on an Archaic helmet.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said again.

The demon’s blank eyes regarded him. Who knew what they thought? They seldom spoke, and they didn’t often understand what a magus asked.

And then, as swiftly as an eagle seizes a rabbit, the sword shot out and cut the circle.

Harmodius’s eyes narrowed, but he had not lived as long as he had by giving in to panic. ‘
Sol et scutum Dominus Deus
,’ he said.

The second strike of the sword licked out through the circle but rang off the shield that had formed over the demon. The creature looked at the shield, glowing a bubbly purple shot with white,
and began to prod it with the sword. Sparks began to cascade down the sides of the shield, shaped like a bright bell of colour suspended over the daemon. Smoke began to rise from the floor.

Harmodius struck his staff against the edge of the circle where the sword had cut his pattern. ‘
Sol et scutum Dominus Deus!
’ he roared.

The rift in the circle closed, and the creature reared back and hissed.

The Queen leaned in towards it, and Harmodius felt a pang of pure terror that she would unwittingly cross the circle. But he could not say anything to her. To do so would be to betray the energy
of his summoning – his entire will was bent on the creature that had manifested, and the circle, the pentagram, and the shield.

He was, he realised, juggling too many balls.

He considered letting the shield go – right up until the demon breathed fire.

It blossomed like a flower, flowing to cover the entire surface of the shield, and the room was suddenly hot. The fire could not pass the shield – but the heat from it could, and the
deamon’s heat changed the contest of wills utterly. Even as he began to consider the possibility that he might be defeated, Harmodius’ mind viewed this fact with fascination. Despite
the shield, he could smell the creature, and he could feel the heat.

As suddenly as they had appeared, the flames retreated from the edges of the circle and fled back into the creature’s mouth. The heat dropped perceptibly.

Desiderata leaned in until her nose touched the unsolid surface of the shield. And she
laughed.

The demon turned to her, head cocked, for all the world like a puppy. And then he laughed back.

She curtsied, and then began to dance.

The demon watched her, rapt, and so did the Magus.

She expressed herself in her hips, and in the rise of her hands above her head as she danced a mere dozen steps – a dance of spring, naïve and unflawed by practice.

The creature inside the bubble of power shook his head. ‘
Eyah!
’

He took a step towards her, and his head touched the edge of the pentagram, and he howled with rage and swept his sword across the sigil, cutting a gouge in the slate floor that broke the
circle.

She extended a foot and crossed her toes over the break, and it was healed.

Harmodius breathed again. Quick as a terrier after a rat, he struck his staff through the shield and poured the power he had collected from his phantasm into the demon.

It whirled from the Queen to face the Magus, sword poised – but took no action. Its mighty chest rose and fell. Its aspect changed, suddenly – it rose into the air, glowing white, an
angel with wings of a swan, and then it fell to the slate floor and its writhing changed to the hideous controlled motion of a millipede larger than a horse, cramped in the confines of the shield.
Harmodius raised his wand, joy surging though his heart – the pure joy of having truly tested a theory and found it to contain more gold than dross.

Harmodius’ took his staff from the circle and spat ‘
Ithi!
’

The pentagram was empty.

Harmodius was too proud to slump. But he went to the Queen’s side and threw his arms around her with a familiarity he never knew he dared.

She kissed him tenderly.

‘You are an old fool,’ she said. ‘But a brilliant, brave old fool, Harmodius.’ Her smile was warm and congratulatory. ‘I had no idea – I’ve never seen
you do anything like it.’

‘Oh,’ he said, into the smell of her neck – and a galaxy of new learning occurred to him in that moment. But he backed away and bowed. ‘I owe you my life,’ he said.
‘What are you?’

She laughed, and her laugh threatened to mock all evil straight out of fashion. ‘What am I?’ she asked. She shook her head. ‘You dearest old fool.’

‘Still wise enough to worship at
your
feet, your Grace.’ He bowed very low.

‘You are like a boy who attacks a hornet’s nest to see what will come out. And yet I smell the triumph of the small boy on you, Harmodius. What have we learned today?’ She
subsided suddenly into a chair, ignoring the scrolls that covered it. ‘And where did this sudden burst of daring come from? You are a byword for caution in this court.’ She smiled, and
for a moment, she was not a naïve young girl, but an ancient and very knowing queen. ‘Some say you have no power, and are a sort of Royal Mountebank.’ Her eyes flicked to the
pentagram. ‘Apparently, they are wrong.’

He followed the wave of her hand and hurried to pour her wine. ‘I cannot say for certain sure what we learned today,’ he said carefully. Already his careful manner was reasserting
itself. But he
knew
he was right.

‘Talk to me as if I was a student – a stupid squire bent on acquiring the rudiments of hermeticism,’ she said. She sipped his wine and her look of contentment and the flinging
back of her head told him that she, too had known a moment of terror. She was mortal. He was not always sure of that. ‘Because I can use power, I think you assume that I know how it
functions. That we have the same knowledge. But nothing can be further from the truth. The sun touches me, and I feel God’s touch, and sometimes, with his help, I can work a miracle.’
She smiled.

He thought that her self-assurance could, if unchecked, make her more terrifying than any monster.

‘Very well, your Grace. You know there are two schools of power – two sources for the working of any phantasm.’ He laid his staff carefully in a corner and then knelt to wipe
the pentagram from the floor.

‘White and black,’ she said.

He glared at her.

She shrugged with a smile. ‘You are so easy, my Magus. There is the power of the sun, pure as light, unfettered, un-beholden – the very sign of the pleasure of God in all creation.
And there is the power of the Wild – for which, every iota must be exchanged with one of the creatures that possess it, and each bargain sealed in blood.’

Harmodius rolled his eyes. ‘Sealed. Bargained for. Blood does not really enter into it.’ He nodded. ‘But the power is there – it rises from the very ground – from
grass, from the trees, from the creatures that live among the trees.’

She smiled. ‘Yes. I can feel it, although it is no friend to me.’

‘Really?’ he asked, cursing himself for a fool. Why had he
not
asked the Queen earlier? A safer experiment sprang to his mind. But what was done was done. ‘You can feel
the power of the Wild?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Stronger and weaker – even in those poor dead things that decorate the hall.’

He shook his head at his own foolishness – his hubris.

‘Do you sense any power of the Wild in this room?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘The green lamp is an artefact of the Wild, is it not? A faery lamp?’

He nodded. ‘Can you take any of the power it pours forth and use it, your Grace?’

She shuddered. ‘Why would you even ask such a thing? Now I think you dull, Magus.’

Hah
, he thought.
Not so hubristic as all that.

‘And yet I conjured a powerful demon of the abyss – did I not?’ he asked her.

She smiled. ‘Not one of the greatest, perhaps. But yes.’

‘Allied to the Wild – would you say?’ he asked.

‘
God is the sun and the power of the sun – and Satan dwells in the power of the Wild.
’ She sang the lines like a schoolgirl. ‘
Daemons must use the power of the
Wild. When Satan broke with God and led his legions to hell, then was magic broken into two powers, the green and the gold. Gold for the servants of God. Green for the servants of
Satan.
’

He nodded. Sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But of course, it is more complicated than that.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, showing that glacial self-assurance again. ‘I think men often seek to overcomplicate things. The nuns taught me this. Are you saying that they
lied?’