The Summoning (29 page)

“But if you don’t eat them,” I said, “what do you want them for? And where did you get them?” I asked the last question to see what he’d say, but I was beginning to suspect that I knew.

He stepped closer to the shelves and stared up at them with greed as though he did not already possess them all. “Oh,” he said over his shoulder, “so the little adept does not yet know everything. I see that I may still teach you something after all.” Then he pulled me through the open doorway to the left, into his lab.

I had to stop myself from ripping away from him. The sense memory of that room screamed at me, with terror and pain, hatred and despair. I jerked as we crossed the threshold, but he just grabbed me harder and pulled me in.

“You see,” he announced with a flourish, “my workroom.”

A stainless steel operating table gleamed under the ceiling lights. The counters were strewn with books and equipment. A set of pincers, laid out from smallest to largest, tiny to immense, stood by a modern gas burner. A heavy, iron-banded door at the far end of the room lay between two sets of shelves stuffed with more books, scrolls, and tools. I took that all in at a glance because it was hard to look at anything but the table, the source of the emanation of past suffering. The leather cuffs at each of the corners, ready to secure unwilling subjects, were stiffened with years of sweat and blood. Some working had been done to damp the fear in the room. The working had been done over and over, but the fear still won through.

The wall next to me had a set of three shelves, one crowded with bottles that held more souls, stoppered and glowing with that eerie luminescence. The shelf below was full of the same bottles, but these had no stoppers and they did not glow. They were empty.

Through the far door two of his children materialized, a son and a daughter, and came to stand with bowed heads and clasped hands next to that ominous table. I turned to him.

“Of course,” he said with a laugh, “I may teach you some things that you may not want to learn. My children—” He gestured to the two standing unmoving by the operating table, “—have learned a few things of that nature. But I am their father. I teach them what I will. Why else do we have offspring?”

This guy was beginning to scare me.

“You mean some of the souls come from…” I nodded toward his children.

“Some from them, some from others.” He herded me toward the table, and all the nice smiles and expressions were wiped from his face. “At the next full moon, one will be from you. Would you like to choose the vessel I will put it in? I sometimes allow that, in those whom I especially favor. And I will favor you, I will, because you are going to be so useful to me!”

“Yeah?” I asked him. “What am I going to do for you?”

He turned to his children. “You see? Already she asks how she can help me. She should be a model to you. Ingrates. Fools.” He took a long step and cracked the nearest one, the girl, upside the head. She was knocked sideways by the blow. She caught herself on the table, straightened, and then stood as she had been before, though the shawl that covered her head was now a little askew, and there was a dull red mark on her cheek. She stood there without expression, as though nothing had happened, but there were tears in her eyes.

He turned to me, his eyes limpid once more with passion and kindliness. “Seekers of knowledge such as you and I know that sacrifices are always necessary if there is to be advancement. I, for one, have never hesitated when such sacrifices must be made, and I expect no less from my family, and…” He sized me up with his eyes. “—from others of my discipline. Yes, I require souls. I must have souls. For how else am I to live, and perfect my art?” He snapped his fingers at his children, and they seemed to know immediately what he wanted, for the guy came forward instantly and brought a chair from the wall, which he held as his father seated himself. They didn’t offer me one. I gathered my status had changed, now that I was wearing handcuffs.

His hands rose once again as he explained himself, the shadows of his sleeves crossing and re-crossing the floor and the walls as he spoke. “You must know that I am descended from the family of magi, the so-called apostates of the true line, who discovered the means, crude but effective, of sharing the life-essence of another being. Of strengthening their own souls from those of others. I have gone far beyond others of my family in this study. At first this practice was used only to guard and enhance the life of the head of the family. But I have realized—” His voice rose suddenly as he turned to include his children in what he was saying. “—as my father did before me—” He turned in his chair and finished at a roar. “—that the strength of the head of the house
is
the strength of the family! That what benefits me benefits us all!” He turned back to me, smiling again. I smiled back. I let my teeth show. I don’t think he noticed, or maybe he didn’t know what that means.

His chair had been set so that I was standing in front of him. I walked away now, moving along the shelf of vessels, looking at one after another. I wondered what you could tell about the person who had owned the soul by scenting it. I wondered if people who had done evil had differently-colored souls from, say, those of children, who hadn’t had them long enough to really soil them. He turned in his chair to follow me as I went. I pretended I wasn’t paying much attention.

“Now you have something that would benefit me. Two things. You shall give me the first, and I shall take the second myself.”

“Yeah?” I asked, my back still to him. “What things?”

He leaned forward and said, “You are going to give me the name of your demon. You are going to tell me how you summoned it, and you are going to show me exactly how you did it.”

I thought about this, then turned back toward him. “How are you going to
take
that?”

He shook his head, lifted his hand again. “No, no, you misunderstand. Or rather, I miscounted. First, you will tell me everything I want to know regarding your demon. You will show me how you achieved mastery over him, and give that mastery to me. That is the first thing. For the second thing…” He was out of his chair more quickly than I’d have expected. He caught me by the shoulder and leaned in close. His fear was very distant now. What colored his scent was something like anger, but not quite, and lust, but not quite that either. A little of each, perhaps, with the fear feeding both of them. “For the second thing, when the next full moon comes, I am going to wait until the change comes upon you, and then I am going to take your soul from you.” He let me go, looking up at his treasured collection. “A wolf soul, imagine. I wonder what difference it will make, to my thoughts, my senses, when I imbibe yours slowly. I wonder if your powers will become my own?”

Well, he would wait a long time for the change to come upon me if I didn’t damn well feel like changing. Why did he think it mattered which of my two natures I was wearing when he took my soul? Not that I was going to ask him that. I didn’t want to give him any ideas.

“What makes you think,” I asked conversationally, “that I’m going to tell you anything?”

Well, that was a mistake. He reached down and yanked up hard on the chains around my ankles. He may have been an old guy, but he was strong enough to pull my feet out from under me with the right leverage, which he held in his hand. I landed hard, on the same hip I’d hit before, but this time he followed up with a kick to the stomach that I was not expecting. That knocked the wind out of me. I lay there breathless, my mouth open, aching, waiting to be able to breathe again, holding away that stupid panic that I wasn’t ever going to breathe again, while he turned me onto my back with his foot and then stood looking down at me. “You probably realize by now that I have been alive for a long time.” His gaze lifted, his eyes rose to the vessels above us, and they lit his face softly as he spoke. “In that time there have been many things that I have needed to know, from people, and other things. Long life brings patience, you see. And patience is all one needs to convince such as you to tell me all I wish to hear. Patience, and an understanding of persuasion.” He waved to his son, who came and hauled me to my feet just as I drew air into my lungs again. This time, when his fist hit my stomach just below the diaphragm I was a little more prepared. I tightened my stomach hard and flung myself backwards, riding the blow. The son stood aside and I fell once again, backwards this time, and conked my head against the floor before I was able to save myself. Having my hands manacled behind my back was not helping. That hurt.

He came and stood over me again, looking down into my face and said, “Then, too, you must understand that the means of extracting your soul need not be delicate. It may be crude, and difficult, and, yes, very painful indeed. Some people, in fact, even some of my own children, still cringe at the sight of me. Is that not so?” He reached out and lightly patted the cheek of his son.

The son hauled me to my feet again. I stood warily, a little hunched over. The fact was, I felt like shit right then. My head hurt, stomach hurt, my back hurt, and I was just hoping that if I threw up I could project far enough to spray his clean white robe.

He held out his hands. “You see? These cruder methods are so distressing. Distressing for everyone, myself most of all. You dislike these methods just as much as I do. That is how I know that you are going to tell me whatever I wish, without further ado.”

He lifted a finger. The door opened again and a procession entered. Six of his children came in two lines into the room, and between them, in the center, they escorted a boy of about sixteen, fair haired, smooth and new as though he had just been made. He wore nothing but a tiny chain around one wrist. He looked up at me as he came in, and his eyes widened but he spoke not a word. He turned like the other children to attend the father of the house.

Ibrahim al Hassan raised his hand with gentle beneficence. “Amyas,” he said. “Come here to me.”

Richard moved obediently. The chain on his wrist glinted in the soft light, and my anger rose up in me like bile. “Richard!” I said, hard and clear. “Take that fucking thing off!”

Without hesitation Richard flicked one finger under the chain and pulled it from his wrist. His face lit up suddenly with hope, with happiness, and with something like glee. He turned to me as though asking what to do next when Ibrahim al Hassan answered with a roar like an explosion. Something struck me hard, and I fell into darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
woke up in the dark, but that didn’t faze me. I was leaning against some pipes along the wall where my handcuffs had been chained. My back ached as though the pipes had made permanent indentations in it. My head was pounding, and my stomach hurt. My arms ached where they were being pulled behind my back. My feet were drawn tight across the floor by the chain around my ankles. This was not so good. I was sitting on some pipes running parallel under me. Someone had been doing some soldering recently. I shifted and tried to make myself more comfortable. Fat chance.

I was in the far corner of a large room, probably an underground room because the floor was damp cement, and smelled of dirt and mold from not being cleaned very often. And Richard had been here, not right here, but nearby. There were traces of him, new and old, in all directions. I lifted my head, turned it from one side to another, my mouth open, breathing in with short breaths. I couldn’t sense him now, but no one else was here. I thought perhaps he could hear me.

“Richard? Come over here, can you?”

In a moment I smelled him quite close to me. He reached out and touched me without speaking. I smelled his fear, like a layered coat, and sweat. I sniffed for blood, thinking they might have hurt him, but there was none of that. Strangely, in this filthy room he smelled clean.

“Richard?” I said, “Are you all right?” I reached for him but my hands didn’t move very far. He found my hand then and squeezed it. I pulled a little and he came closer. I could feel him shaking. I reached out as far as I could and touched his side. He crouched on the cement floor beside me, and his skin was bare and cold. “Did they take your clothes? What did they do with them? Didn’t they give you anything to wear?”

I reached out again and this time I felt a layer of cotton covering his side. “Well, thank goodness. Can’t have you freezing to death. Is there any way we can get a light in here? I wish I could see what they’ve done to you.”

I didn’t feel him go, but a moment later I saw a dim glow, and when he turned around he was carrying a thick candle, cupping the heat of the flame with one hand. He sat down beside me, and I saw that we were occupying a square cage in the large dark room, and that the pipes beneath me were bars, and my handcuffs had been looped around the bars behind me. I couldn’t see how he had gotten in to the cage. He hadn’t been there when I woke up. I looked for the opening, but didn’t see it. I had to smile when I saw that the bars were silver. That’s what they’d been soldering. A brand new cage, just for me. Well, that should take care of me! Sure.

I struggled to sit up further, and bumped my head on the top of the cage. Richard was wearing a pair of his jeans, and a black sweatshirt that almost looked like one of mine. Strangely, the jeans looked quite clean. Maybe they weren’t treating him as bad as I thought. But his feet were bare. They looked cold. I smiled at him, reaching out my hand as far as it would go. He didn’t look at me, but he took my hand, and bent and kissed it.

I shook his hand where I held it. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. Thanks for coming to find me? Thanks for trying to rescue me? How did you get here? How good to see you? He wouldn’t even meet my eyes. He was different enough from what I remembered, from what I expected, that I sniffed him over carefully before I spoke. It was him all right. His cleanness was strange. He hadn’t used any soap.

I pressed his hand. “So, Richard. You all right?”

He still didn’t look at me. He nodded at the floor, still holding my hand.

“A fine kettle of fish,” I quoted briefly, looking around. I couldn’t see very far into the dark beyond the candle flame. The small light glinted off the silver bars of my cage. I looked back at Richard. “You’ve met this guy before,” I said. “This is the guy you were so afraid of. The Eater of Souls. Did you know he’s not really the Eater of Souls, the real one? He’s something different, some perverted magician or something. Richard? What do you know about him?” I tightened my grip on his hand. What had they done to him? “Richard, talk to me.”