The Summoning (30 page)

He looked up at me then. His face was as smooth and unlined as a boy’s. It was as beautiful as an angel’s in an old painting, but it bore no expression, as though it had never been used. But his eyes were old and haggard, and scared. The little scar beneath his eye was gone. My throat felt tight. I watched him swallow once, twice, and open his mouth. I reached out to touch his lips, to stop his effort, but my hand was jerked back by the chain. He said, “I…”

I felt tears in my eyes. I blinked hard. I
don’t
cry. I don’t. “He killed you. Didn’t he? He
killed
you.” I felt the blood roar in my head. That was the second time in as many days I came close to changing involuntarily. I was enraged. I held on, clutching Richard’s hand, until my anger collected itself, cold and hard above my heart. Richard was trying to smile, as though it was something that he had forgotten how to do.

He shrugged awkwardly in answer to my question. “Once or twice,” he said. “He killed me in front of you. Yesterday. I tried to make you understand. I tried.”

The fly. No wonder it had smelled like Richard when I got outside. It was Richard. “I’ll kill him,” I told him. “I’ll tear his head off, and you can watch him die. I promise you.”

He shook his head. “I just… I didn’t want him to hurt you. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” He was looking down again, clutching my hand in his. His pale white skin glowed in the candlelight that caught up highlights in his golden hair.

“It’s your fault?” I wondered why he would say that.

Richard nodded. “I sought you out… not you. Someone. Someone who could help me.”

“Because you knew he was after you.” I sat up a little more, which I couldn’t actually do because my head already touched the top of the cage, and my legs were extended as far as they could reach, chained to bars on the far side. I couldn’t lie down any further because my hands were cuffed behind me through the bars. I was really uncomfortable. But I shifted until I was uncomfortable in a whole different way, to ease the places that ached enough already. “You took that soul from him.” I’d concluded this already.

He didn’t raise his head. “I needed it. I thought it would help me to get away from him, find out what I needed…”

“All right, back up. When did you meet this guy? And how?”

Richard took a deep breath. When he spoke, his words were tentative, as though he tasted each one before he set it before me. “When my last master died—I told you, the earl—I found myself bound to his son, together with the rest of his property.” He smiled a little as though at a private joke. “Entailed… But then he died young, and without an heir, and left me to a friend who was abroad at the time, in Ceylon, and he died there, without leaving me to anyone.” His voice grew less hesitant, and he raised his head. “And so, for the first time, I found myself free. I had no master. But I was still here. And—I didn’t want to stay here. But I didn’t know what to do, how to get my release. I went looking for someone, a sorcerer, a mage, who could understand what I was, how I came here, and could counsel me on how to get free. I heard there was one adept in such matters in Cairo. So I went there. But he was there. In Cairo. He has demon traps, you see, and they found me out. He wanted a demon. He has always wanted a demon, but he is not one of those who can raise them himself. He captured me.”

“So you belong to him?” I asked.

He shook his head vehemently. “No. I never did. And I won’t, as long as…” He met my eyes. “As long as you don’t give me to him.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t.” He held my gaze as though he was going to say something else, but then he didn’t. I prompted him, “So, what did he do with you?”

Richard dropped his eyes again. “He spent a number of years trying to learn my name. He experimented with what he could do to me without killing me. He did kill me, once. The time I died of hunger? That was him. He went away once and forgot about me.”

“How long did he keep you?” I asked.

There was a short pause. Richard looked at me sideways. “One hundred and twenty-four years.”

I stared at him. “All that time?”

He nodded.

“That’s…” I didn’t know what to say. “A long time.”

“Yes,” he said. “It was. A long time. Then I heard he had been killed. There was—chaos. A riot. His house in Cairo was burned down. That’s when I escaped, and I took… the soul from him. The child it had come from was dead. I knew that because I saw… I took that one.… No one else needed it. And I did. When I have it, I am immune to demon traps. I can’t be caught that way. I can pass other wards as well. And I can disguise my nature from those who can otherwise sense… I believed, for a long time, if I could some how take in the soul, make it mine, I might find a way out of here. But I never could. Some time later I learned that he was still alive.” He clutched my hand hard. “I didn’t lie to you. I thought he was the Eater of Souls. I heard that name in Cairo, and I have seen him.… I’ve seen what he does. I thought he was…”

“All right,” I said. “Hey, calm down. I believe you.” His breathing softened at once, and he met my eyes steadily. “This has just been one big mess from the start.” I shifted again. This was getting on my nerves. I could get out of these chains, of course. My wolf feet are a lot smaller than my wrists. Well, not a lot. But enough. But Ibrahim al Hassan didn’t know I could change at will. He seemed to be under the impression that he’d have to wait till the next full moon before I became a wolf again. And he also seemed to be under the impression that I couldn’t change if I was in contact with silver. How I love those old myths! They’ve saved the asses of my kind a bunch of times.

So I was in for some discomfort. But that was better than having my soul ripped out, or being subjected to whatever methods of persuasion he and his big old dysfunctional family could come up with to get me to cough up Richard’s name and a transfer of ownership. I wasn’t going to give Richard to this guy. He was mine. Besides, even if I did, it didn’t mean for a second that he’d let me go, no questions asked, on with my happy life.

So I was stuck. But at least I had good company.

“Tell me,” I said, looking for distraction as much as anything, “what is it with this guy and souls? What does he do with them?” He didn’t answer me all at once. The information came out after question upon question. It was like getting meat off an animal with too many bones. I had to work for every piece. Richard held my hand all through my questioning, like a lifeline.

This is what he told me, piece by piece. “A long time ago he learned how to take people’s souls out of their bodies. It’s a crude piece of magic; it isn’t easy. It doesn’t take long. It’s like taking an oyster from its shell. There’s always some left behind. He doesn’t mind that. They mostly don’t die then, his victims. The younger he takes them, the more he gets. When they’re just born, when they’re babies, he can get a whole soul. And the child is left alive, but just… empty. They’ll die later. But not for a while.”

“Where does he get these children? Does he use his own? I hope?”

“Yes. Usually. Sometimes he can get an infant or a child through the local black market. He doesn’t care if they’re ill, you see. And he’ll give them back, still alive, without a mark on them, for disposal.”

“What he does, the extraction, doesn’t leave a mark?”

He shook his head. “It’s painful. I’ve seen him do it. I’ve heard the sounds they make. But the bodies are unmarked. You’ve seen his children—all of his servants are his children. He takes the souls from most of them when they’re young. He allows a few to keep theirs into adulthood, because he needs some servants who aren’t fools. They know what will happen to them if they disobey him. That’s how he keeps them from killing him, and getting free from him that way. The others, the empty ones, obey him implicitly. Your will goes with your soul. You’ve seen his collection?”

“I sure did. What a nice guy.” I scooted around again, trying to get comfortable. “How many children has he had?”

“He was old when I first knew him. He had hundreds then already. And he has hundreds now.”

“And grandchildren? And great-grandchildren? He could have peopled a whole country by now.”

“No,” Richard said. “He doesn’t allow that. They don’t leave him. Once he has you, he doesn’t let you go.”

“Well,” I rubbed his hand. “We’ll just see about that.”

Richard was different. It was almost as though he, too, had lost something precious in the sorcerer’s workshop. But then, I don’t know how smart I’d seem, or how cleverly I could hold up my side of a conversation after I’d been killed a couple of times. God knows what else that piece of work had done to him. I stroked Richard’s hand with my thumb as though I could will some of the spirit back into him that he’d had the week before. The more he talked, the more he seemed to come back to the way he had been before.

“What happened to you, Richard? What did he do to you?”

He avoided my eyes again, looking at the floor, but he answered me. “He remembers me. He’s angry with me for getting away from him, all those years ago. And when he’s angry, you have to pay. So, I have been paying. And he’s thought of a few more ways, in the time I’ve been gone, to make me do what he wants. And to make me tell him my name. And he’s been trying those, when he has time.”

“And have you? Told him your name?”

He frowned. “No. It isn’t allowed. I can’t—except to you. He doesn’t understand that.”

He kept reaching for information as though it were outside of him, separate from him, and he had to find his way there. It was as though my questions were leading him through a maze.

“Richard, did he take something from you? Part of your brain or something?”

He thought about that, and then shook his head.

“You’re different.”

He looked up at me then. “I don’t mean to be. Tell me how to be, and I’ll be the same.”

“You don’t remember? How you were?”

His eyes were open, blank with realization. “I can’t remember anything, until you ask me.”

Once again I had to fight back tears. I’d never felt—I’d never let myself—feel about someone the way I felt about him. Not since my dad had disappeared, and my brother didn’t come back. And my mom and other people in the family started acting so strange, and caring for people was suddenly pointless. I wanted to take Richard into my arms and kiss him until he changed again into the companion, the friend that had stood at my back through all our adventures together. That wild, marvelous creature I’d had in my bed. I felt a powerful sense of loss, that some important part of him had been battered into oblivion, that though he might not have a soul, his spirit, or whatever he was made of, had been damaged. But I couldn’t hold him unless I wanted to give up the pretence that I couldn’t get out of my chains, and I didn’t think that would be wise if I wanted to get close to al Hassan again. So I went on talking to him, asking him questions, because that had worked so far. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to know everything you can about your enemy. If there ever was a guy that needed killing, I thought, this was one. And his whole family, living and dead, and living dead, would probably thank me for it.

“Are the souls that he keeps in the jars just his children?”

“No. He stores others there too. He uses them when he needs power. He eats them. They’re what keep him alive and strong after all these years. When he’s doing a great working, he’ll consume a few more. He’s not a very strong sorcerer. He’s been searching all his life for an adept that he can make his slave, someone who has the talent for magic, who will obey his will. Anyone reasonably adept can usually avoid him, however.”

“Not always.” I told him about how I met Darius, and what had happened to him. I told him how I went to the dance studio where the Thunder Mountain Boys do their magic. I saw his face change as he remembered the place. I didn’t ask him about what exactly had happened there. I knew too much already. When I told him what had happened to Marlin, what he’d been like when I last saw him, Richard said, “Good.” And that was his only comment.

“Is Darius’s soul in one of those bottles? Is Marlin’s?”

“I don’t know.”

I stiffened suddenly as my arm and back cramped up. I clamped my teeth on what I was going to say and tried to move to ease the cramp. Richard sat up and eased himself closer. Tentatively, he reached out and touched my shoulder. I could hardly feel the weight of his hand, his touch was so light, but the cramp faded and vanished in moments. “Hey!” I said. “Thanks.”

He moved his hand to my neck, and an aching stiffness I’d hardly been aware of eased and disappeared there as well. His light hand on my forehead quieted my headache, his gentle fingers on my side seemed to draw out the pain in my stomach and from my bruises. Moments later, I felt almost comfortable. Richard looked better, too. At least, his eyes were not so frightened and his face was starting to hold some expression. More like the Richard I was used to.

“Why don’t you move that,” I pointed at the fat candle with my chin, “and come over here?”

After a moment he grasped my meaning, and I saw him smile a little. He lay down with his head on my lap, turned so he could hold my hand in his. Aside from being chained in the cellar of a mad sorcerer who wanted to steal my demon and rip out my soul, it wasn’t bad.

“I missed you,” I said. I couldn’t quite lean over to kiss his cheek, but I saw his smile.

“You came after me,” he said. “Thank you.”

I told him how I had tracked Honey and marooned him on top of the building, and felt him shake in silent laughter against me. So for good measure I told him how I almost made a wolf pancake of myself jumping off that same building, but he didn’t think that was funny at all. He sat up suddenly, his eyes darkening, and he leaned forward and kissed me. Well, that was nice. He scooted forward and put his arms around me and kissed me again. Let me tell you, if you have to pass the time while you’re caged in a dark cellar, this is the way to do it. So we did this for quite awhile, until I heard a noise.

“Someone’s coming.”

Richard sat up, tense and scared and suddenly he seemed very young. He stared at me as though he couldn’t hear the noise that I knew distinctly was coming from across the room and beyond. I nodded the direction and he looked that way with blank, frightened eyes. I remembered then how I couldn’t smell when I was in this house before. I could smell now just fine, thank you, so I assumed the token that Tamara’s mother had magicked for me was still around my neck.