Touch of the Demon (53 page)

I frowned. “Another month? Why?”

“The Earth full moon is four days hence,” he said. “The greatest chance of locating and binding Vsuhl is on that day, and the beacon must be completed and tended for at least two days prior in order to be optimally effective.”

I gave him my best utterly-baffled look. The high level of potency in the demon realm meant that rituals weren’t dependent on the moon cycle, and certainly not on the
Earth
moon cycle. “That makes no sense,” I said, perplexed. “What am I missing?”

He finished the custard and set the bowl aside. “Szerain is unrivaled in arcane innovation,” he said, tone shifting to one of casual conversation, as if he’d decided to discuss the weather. “Should he choose to hide something, it would not only be very cleverly hidden, but also linked to him. It would…resonate with him.” He reached for his mug of tunjen, took a long drink.

“Ohhh,” I said as comprehension dawned. Vsuhl was Sze rain’s blade. “So to track Vsuhl we’re purposefully coinciding with Earth’s highest potency time because Szerain is there.” Because of the stupid oath, Mzatal couldn’t come right out and say
Szerain is on Earth
, but I could. “Got it.”

“To correlate with the lunar full, I
must
complete this series today,” he said, a hint of the earlier frustration coloring his tone.

“That’s one hell of a time crunch,” I said with a grimace. “I wish I could help more.”

“You spent half the day yesterday working on it with me. This time it is
my
aspect that is not aligning,” he said with another deep sigh. But then he gave me a smile. “And today, you have fed me and eased the significant tension in my shoulders. That is much help, Kara.”

“Well I’m going to help even more by grabbing a bath now,” I said. “If Idris is free, I’ll make him run me through the first ring of the shikvihr until I get it. I’m ready to nail that thing.”

“Complete it,” he said with a warm smile, “and I will leave this accursed series to culminate the ring for you.”

I grinned. “Deal, Boss. That’s one way to get you to take a break.”

“Until then, though,” he said with a shake of his head, “I must refocus on
this
.” He traced a sigil and began adjusting strands on it. I didn’t remember it being in the series we’d worked on yesterday, but it wouldn’t be the first time I had less than a Full Clue.

I stood, picked up my cooling coffee, and took a long sip as I headed off toward the bedchamber. Something about the sigil nagged at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Yet I could feel, with increasing unease, every modification Mzatal made to it. Heart pounding unevenly, I turned and walked back to the table, set my mug down. Each adjustment of the sigil brought it closer and closer to—

I didn’t ask permission, simply reached out with a shaking hand to shift the axis of rotation of the sigil, then detached an outer strand and set the whole thing into a wobbling spin.

The sigil brightened and issued a low, throbbing tone that sent an itch through my bones. The air crackled palpably
and audibly as though with static.
Wrenching shoulder pain. The bite of the blade. The cold mask of his face.

Mzatal sucked in a sharp breath, stood and backed away so abruptly that he overturned his chair. I cried out as pain like fiery needles flared across my abdomen.

He swept the sigil away with a pass of his hand. The pain vanished but I still clutched at my belly, my breath coming in ragged bursts.

“It burned,” I managed to get out.

Mzatal moved swiftly behind me, dropped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me back against him. His other hand slid beneath mine to press against my abdomen where the scars of Jesral’s glyph still tingled.

I dropped my head back against his shoulder. “I saw that sigil, in Rhyzkahl’s ritual,” I said, my voice shaking. “It was directly in front of me, in the inner ring.”

“And it affected you now,” he said, pressing slightly with his hand. “Jesral’s glyph only?”

I closed my eyes and assessed myself just to be sure. “Yeah, that’s the only one that flared,” I said, slowly easing. “And it’s okay now, like it never happened.”

Mzatal remained silent and still, likely making his own assessment.

I swallowed. “I guess they aren’t just scars after all.” Helori had said as much, but denial had been a lot more comfortable.

“They are not what they were created to be,” he said quietly, “but they are not quiescent, and I do not know what they
are
.”

“Well ain’t that goddamn peachy,” I said, new apprehension settling in atop the old. I turned around so I could look up into his face, not wanting to dwell on any thoughts of the fucking scars. “I’m sorry I messed with the sigil.”

“Admittedly, such could be dangerous and ill-advised,” he said. “However, in this case, quite useful. The adjustments you made were an adaptation for
rakkuhr
that I did not know, but that resonates with what has been out of sync in the final ring.” He gave me a slight smile. “As impulsively reckless as your action was, I now have enough insight to complete the series.”

I snorted. “Go me!”

Mzatal laughed, placed his hands on my shoulders, then
leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. “Go you, indeed. Now bathe and prepare. We will begin the beacon midday at the nexus.”

Smiling despite myself at the unexpected sound of his laughter, I headed off to bathe and prepare. But my smile faded as I reached the bath chamber. The scars were clearly more than scars, yet no one seemed to know what the hell they were.

I scowled as I slipped into the tub. It’d been a big deal just to get my ears pierced, and now I had arcane scarification.
Fuck you, Rhyzkahl. Fuck. You.

The sun hung low over the sea in an increasingly glorious display of fiery orange and purple, casting the black sand of the beach in shifting hues that reminded me of the album cover for Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon
album. The mild sea breeze wound around me, cooling the sweat that plastered my shirt to my body as I lay sprawled on my side on the large flat boulder. I smiled wearily. That album would be a pretty nifty soundtrack for this particular scene.

Rippling waves of power pulsed from the active ritual diagram that was set within Mzatal’s nexus point. The low crash of surf against rock mingled with the sub-audible hum of the ritual in a strangely rhythmic discordance, both lulling me into a stupor and keeping me from actually drifting off.

Events moved swiftly once Mzatal knew how to tune the series of sigils. That afternoon, he’d brought us back out here to create the ritual to seek out the blade. This was like a message signal, a “Hey, wake up!” to the blade, combined with a way to lock onto it once it was found. And then, assuming that was successful, we would relocate to Szerain’s palace and create a new ritual—the final one, where, if all went well, I would actually call it into my hand.

For three days we worked on this diagram, first in the creation and then taking turns tending and maintaining it. In between periods of work on the beacon, we trained and studied and prepared for the next ritual. And, occasionally, Idris and I grabbed naps on blankets spread on the sand. Needless to say, I was damn tired and more than ready to
sleep in a real bed. I’d had my fill of camping out during my time with Helori. An outdoorsy chick I was not.

Adding to my fatigue was the fact that the creation of this beacon required a fair amount of bloodletting on my part, since I was the one who would make the final call to the blade. I had no problem with the actual shedding of blood; I’d been taught to summon with a diagram formed of chalk and blood, and I wasn’t squeamish about making the cut. However the amount needed in a summoning was never more than a few tablespoons. I figured I’d dumped about a pint for this one so far.

The diagram thrummed and flared on the pavilion, and I smiled in weary satisfaction. In some ways it was similar to the beacon I’d used to call Tessa’s essence back to her body, though on a vastly larger scale.
Rhyzkahl gave me that beacon.
I mused on that. I’d developed my storage diagram from it, which made it possible for me to summon whenever I wanted instead of being limited by the phase of the moon. No doubt there was some significance to the fact that Rhyzkahl had given me the parameters to a beacon similar to this one, but I was far too tired to explore it now. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t retrieving the blade for his punk ass anyway.

Idris staggered over to the big rock, stripped off his sweaty shirt and dropped it beside him. “Shit,” he breathed as he watched Mzatal continue to prowl the perimeter of the diagram. The lord wore only flowing silk pants of deep maroon. No shirt or shoes, though his hair remained braided perfectly, as always. I watched with tired detachment as Mzatal tweaked a sigil, tested strands, and added additional potency to the call. Back on Earth the moon was near full, ideal for a beacon to call Szerain’s blade while Szerain was on Earth. If this part failed or was performed improperly we would have to wait another month to try again.

My gaze went to where Gestamar crouched, halfway between my boulder and the nexus. Once again he had my letter to Tessa tucked into his pouch in case he was summoned tonight and had the opportunity to arrange for its delivery.

“Idris,” I said. “Do you know why the demons put up with it?”

He tugged his boots off and set them on the rock. “Put up with what?”

“Put up with being summoned,” I said, watching Gestamar. He had his wings pulled in close as he crouched, making himself as small as he could be, which was a lot smaller than I’d expected a reyza of his size to be capable of. “It hurts,” I continued. “A lot. Gestamar told me that it hurts demons, too. But he also implied there was a reason they tolerated it, and not simply for the offerings they received.” I flicked a quick glance at him. “Have you ever been summoned?”

He squinched his toes in the sand and shook his head. “No, I came through with Mzatal.”

“Yeah, well, trust me, it sucks.” I grimaced, remembering. “It’s like being stretched and dragged over sharp rocks, and, well, it sucks.” My mouth pursed. “But Gestamar told me he gets summoned a
lot
.” I really hoped that Gestamar would be summoned tonight, and that shamed me a bit since I knew how much it hurt. It helped that the reyza had freely offered to carry the letter for me.

Idris nodded. “Since I’ve been here, if Katashi didn’t summon him on a full moon, then someone else did. That Gestamar wasn’t summoned last month was an oddity, but maybe that was because Katashi is—” He scowled. “—here. And a couple of times he’s been summoned on consecutive nights. That’s hard on him.” His gaze went back to Mzatal, and he sighed. “Crap. He’s not stopping.”

I shifted my attention to see the lord continuing to tweak and refine. As I watched, he pulled his ritual knife, made a small slice in his left forearm and bled into the quadrant. I winced as the sigils flared blindingly.

“I thought he was done,” Idris said. He scrubbed at his eyes, grimaced. He looked damn near as tired as I felt. “I should go lay support.”

“I’ll be your moral support,” I said with a weary grin as I lifted one arm. “Go, Idris, go!”

He snorted, smiled. “Maybe I’ll tell Mzatal to chill. That’d totally work.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll watch how that goes from waaaaaay over here.” I let my arm flop back to the stone, winced as the cut broke open again. “Crapsticks,” I muttered. Mzatal hadn’t healed it yet, not only because it was
hardly life-threatening, but also because there was every chance I would need to bleed again.

“Hopefully, I’ll be back soon,” Idris said. “Maybe I can get away with only laying it and not working it.” He shrugged. “Normally, he’d have already told me to do it. I think he thought he was done, too.” He shrugged again, then headed toward the pavilion, leaving shirt and boots on the rock.

I took a few minutes to appreciate the view of the two shirtless men. Sure, Mzatal was my teacher and Idris was, well, not someone I wanted to get involved with, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the fact that both were fine specimens of the male physique.

Laughing at myself, I pressed up to sit, then took several deep breaths as my head briefly swam. Idris completed and ignited his support structure, and immediately it dimmed as Mzatal began to draw from it. Poor Idris.

Gestamar suddenly twitched. I snapped my gaze back to him. Mzatal rose from his crouch and turned to face the reyza fully.

In the blink of an eye Gestamar became a whirlwind of movement, snarling as he laid a series of wards around himself so quickly he’d obviously prepared them earlier and had been holding them ready. I watched, frowning. What the hell was he doing? Faruk hadn’t done anything like this. Maybe it was different for reyza?

I flicked a glance at Idris. He stared as well, brow creased in similar bafflement.
But he’s seen reyza summoned before
, I reminded myself. If this looked weird to him, then that probably meant it was.

Mzatal called something out in demon, and Gestamar answered, still snarling and laying wards. The lord watched, not moving except to clench his hands at his sides.

Mzatal gestured to Idris, eyes never leaving Gestamar. Idris hurried over, and the two exchanged quick words.

“Kara! C’mon!” Idris called as he turned and ran back to the support diagram.

Grimacing, I pushed off the rock, staggering a few steps before I got my equilibrium back. Idris had barely shed a few tablespoons of blood, the perky fucker.

“What’s going on?” I asked as soon as I reached him.

Idris swept an assessing gaze over the diagram, then began to rebuild part of it in swift, precise tracings. “Hostile
summoning,” he told me, quickly reworking sigils, in full-blown focused summoner mode. “Gestamar resists. Can’t assist directly since it’s locked straight onto his signature. We’re prepping in case his resistance fails.” He flicked a quick glance at me. “Lay a full perimeter around this diagram. Use the ascended model, quickly.”

Ascended model. I blinked.
Hey, I know that one!
I quickly moved into position and began.