When Demons Walk (24 page)

If only
, she thought, stepping silently back to her door;
if only Sky weren't so beautiful, weren't her friend
. It made it harder because Sham understood what Kerim saw in Sky.

She turned to leave them alone, when a short phrase made her catch her breath. “Physical intimacy,” the book had read. She hesitated, wondering if her jealousy had affected her thoughts. Lady Sky the demon?

Quickly she found objections to her speculation. Demon hosts were bound with a death rune that could not be removed—killing any offspring of the host body before they
develop, and Sky had been pregnant twice in the past two years.

How would a demon counteract a death rune?

—by shielding the child with life-magic. It would require a tremendous amount of power, though the spell itself was not complex. Sky had miscarried after Sham freed Kerim from the demon's rune, a rune that had drawn life from Kerim.

The ease with which she found the answer shocked Sham into looking for reasons why Sky could be the demon rather than why she couldn't.

Sky had been near Kerim when Fahill died. From the expressions she'd caught on Kerim's face, Sham thought that it was possible that there had been some sort of intimacy between them. She was everything a male wizard would want in a demon host, who would be used as a sex partner to raise magic; beautiful, likable and . . . in Kerim's bed. Sham could work out the details later.

She turned to the connecting door, opened it soundlessly, and then slammed it so hard the shiny new hinges protested—the gods knew what Elsic and Dickon would think of that—as if she were entering the room for the first time.

Sham drew in a loud breath, as if in outrage, then shrieked wildly as she ran toward the bed. She was wryly amused that she didn't have to feign her fury. As the noise echoed through the stone walls of the room with almost musical effect, Sky jerked around, revealing the loosened ties of her bodice.

From Lady Sky's relatively decent state, Sham hoped that they had not had time to complete their union. She thanked the powers that they hadn't been alone long, although the dazed look in Kerim's eyes filled her with foreboding. He hadn't even looked away from Sky. All her doubts vanished—he was not a lover, startled by an unwanted interruption, but a man held in thrall by enchantment.

“Slut!” Sham screamed, full into her Lady Shamera role.

She grabbed the ewer of fresh, cold water from where it
sat in lone splendor on a small table conveniently near the Reeve's bed. Gripping the top with one hand and the bottom by the other, she upended the ewer over the bed, mostly on Kerim's face, before launching herself to the waist-high surface.

She balanced on the edge of the bed with the empty porcelain vessel in her hand. To her relief Kerim sat up slowly and shook the water from his hair, the dullness of ensorcellment fading from his eyes. Lady Sky's lips twisted with rage.

Sham knew she looked like a madwoman, but that was the effect she wanted. She needed to act like a scorned woman who had found another in her man's bed—not like a terrified wizard who had found a demon there instead. Since she was both, she set terror aside with the hope that the demon wouldn't want to expose itself.

She hadn't had time for a real plan, but the ewer made a convenient weapon and she smashed it into one of the upright posts of the bed. The broken porcelain wasn't sharp enough to be very effective, but the jagged edge would certainly tear into soft white skin and leave scars. To a demon who depended on her beauty to attract her victims, that might be as effective as a dagger.

Sham launched herself at Lady Sky—who avoided her by rolling off the bed with a speed that the thief envied. Sham gathered her feet underneath her and jumped for Sky again, only to be brought up short by a firm grip on her free arm.

“Shamera . . .” Kerim's voice was slightly slurred, and he sounded puzzled.

“Whore!” shrieked Sham, tugging against Kerim's grip and waving the broken ewer wildly in the air. Lady Sky took a step back. Sham felt the first touch of relief when the intent expression on Lady Sky's face was replaced with a look of fear that Sham was certain the demon did not feel. What demon would fear a lunatic waving bits of pottery?

“Witch,” accused Lady Sky, looking appealingly at Kerim. “She's cast a spell over you Kerim, everyone
knows it. They're saying that she's controlling you, and you can't see it.”

“Shameless bitch,” replied Sham venomously. “I'll see your bones if I catch you in his bed again! Can't you find your own man?” In contrast to the other woman's ladylike tones, Shamera could have won a shrilling contest with the Purgatory flesh-mongers.

“Go, Sky,” said Kerim unexpectedly. “I'll deal with this, but you had better leave for now.”

Lady Sky raised her chin, turned on her heel, and left, shutting the door behind her. Quietly. Sham held her pose for an instant more, before dropping the remains of the ewer to the floor and running a shaking hand over her face.

“You can let go now,” she informed Kerim.

He hesitated, but when she didn't make any sudden moves when he loosened his grip, he released her completely.

“What was that all about?” he asked, his voice still groggy.

Sham spoke without looking at him, “I think I've found the demon.” She hadn't planned to tell him until she had more facts behind her—or at least had her reasoning straightened well enough that someone else could follow it.

He didn't react at all for a moment, just gathered the bedclothes and used them to wipe the water from his face. “I feel as if I was at the long end of a night of drinking myself under the table. Wait a moment and let me collect my thoughts.”

After a bit, he looked up at Sham, who was still standing on the corner of the bed. “Urgent news or not, I have to thank you for stopping me from doing a very stupid thing. Sky isn't over Fahill's death yet—let alone Ven's. What she doesn't need is to get involved with someone else.”

He shook his head dazedly. “Blessed if I know how I ended up here—last thing I remember clearly is eating in Mother's rooms with her and Lady Sky. Must have had too much to drink, though I haven't done anything like that in years.”

Sham pursed her lips, “It wasn't alcohol, Kerim, it was magic.”

He frowned at her. “Like that philter you threatened to feed to my guard?”

“Maybe. Kerim, I don't remember if you ever told me—how did Lady Sky's husband die?”

“The wasting sickness.”

Sham held on to one of the tall bedposts as Kerim's shifting weight made the mattress sway beneath her. Her thoughts raced ahead, putting the pieces together. “Tell me, Kerim, could the child that she just miscarried have been yours?”

His face froze, but, after a moment, he nodded. “The night Fahill died, his lady and I sat up far into the night drinking and talking. She was additionally distraught as she'd miscarried only two months earlier. When I awoke, I was in her bed. I don't remember much about that night—but when she came here pregnant, I wondered.”

“It was on the way back from Fahill's funeral that your horse stumbled, wrenching your back?”

“Yes,” answered Kerim.

“Lady Sky miscarried shortly after I broke the demon's hold on you,” said Sham.

“Wait,” he said holding up a hand. “You're telling me that Lady Sky is the demon.”

She nodded.

He closed his eyes and considered the matter, which was a better reaction that she had thought she'd receive. When he finally opened them, he looked at her perched warily on the corner of his bed and waved impatiently.

“Sit down, you're making me dizzy.”

Sham complied, sitting cross-legged—leaving a little distance between the two of them. After she was seated, Kerim said, “I hate to admit it, but she's as likely a candidate as any. Part of me wants to claim that a woman is not capable of such things, but I fought against women in the mercenary troops at Sianim as well as the women warriors at Jetaine—we never managed more than a stand-off with either one.”

Sham grinned briefly. “I must admit, if Sky had been a
man, I would have looked at her a lot more closely.”

“What makes you so certain now?” he asked.

Sham finger-combed her hair. “It wasn't until I walked in on you that I even considered the possibility. I had come in to talk to you about something I'd just been reading in a . . .” She lost track of what she was saying as a few more pieces fell into place, allowing her to recognize just what the demon was trying to accomplish.

“Book?” suggested Kerim after a moment.

“Books, actually. I've been reading the two that Lord Halvok gave me. I came in here looking for you because I discovered something that indicated that the demon was someone you trusted,” she said. “When I saw Sky here, all the pieces fit.”

She rubbed her hand across a damp spot on the bedding. “You know that demons are summoned here from someplace else—called by a mage and forced into bondage. They are made slaves to their master's whims. If the master dies, so too does the demon—unless it manages to kill the wizard itself, which is what our demon managed to do. If you were the demon, what would you want?”

“Vengeance?”

Sham shook her head and looked at the bedding. She was tired: too many emotions, too much thinking. “I was once torn from my home, thrown into a strange and dangerous place. I
know
how she feels. I wanted vengeance, yes, but what I desired more than anything was to go home.”

He covered her hand with his.

She looked at him then, and gave him a small smile. “I could be wrong, but listen and decide for yourself. I thought at first that the only way for the demon to return to its own world would be to find a black mage who could send it back—but the demon would have to make itself vulnerable to the wizard. It would be easier for the wizard to enslave the demon than send it back. Black wizards, by their very nature, are not honorable; if I were the demon I would be hesitant to trust one with my freedom.”

“Wait,” Kerim broke in. “This demon is working
magic. Is there a reason that it can't send itself back?”

Sham nodded. “Black magic is not as easy to control as normal magic because it is stolen by the mage who is using it. To get home, the demon has to open the gate to its world and enter through it. It cannot hold the gate while inside, not with black magic.”

“But you think it has found a way?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But it can't use black magic to do it.”

“Not black magic alone,” agreed Sham. “But there is another magic the demon could use. There is magic involved in death and life.”

“This has something to do with Sky's pregnancies?” asked Kerim, following what she said far more closely than she'd expected.

“The magic released at a birthing is close to death magic in power, but it is bound to the woman giving birth—a situation encountered by mageborn women only a certain number of times. So it is not really considered a counter to death magic, which is much easier to effect.” She had known about that magic before, but the old text from Maur's book had reminded her of it. Not pregnancy but birth generated power.

“If the demon uses childbirth to return home, what would happen to the child?”

Sham met his eyes squarely. “Not being the demon, I don't know. But if she kills it and the man who fathered it, she would have much more power than by killing people who are not tied to her.”

Kerim took a deep breath. “I seem to remember you saying that demons could not become pregnant.”

She nodded. “A particularly nasty warding spell was used to prevent the host body from conceiving. Like most warding spells, it conserved energy by remaining passive until its activation conditions are met—in this case the onset of pregnancy. When triggered, the spell begins to extinguish the life-force of the unborn child: death magic.”

“But didn't you say that most spells can only be active for a few weeks without power? Has the power of this spell
faded over the hundreds of years the demon has lived?”

“No, that's why this so nasty. It's usually reinforced and maintained by life-energies of the demon. However, to avoid draining the host body, when triggered the spell drains life energy from the unborn child.”

“So Sky can't be the demon?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Not so,” Sham replied. “The demon could form a barrier between the child and the rune to protect it from harm.”

“Then why bind the demon at all?”

“Because the barrier requires enough strength that it would kill the demon's host body before the child could be born. I think that our demon discovered another way to power the spell. The rune it used was one that allowed it to drain your strength—killing you slowly as it allowed your child to live.”

“Kerim,” she said, leaning toward him. “The rune had to have been set by someone who was close to you, intimate with you. It was set near the time of Fahill's death. I believe that it was set by Lady Sky, to protect her baby. When I broke the binding, it killed the child.”

Kerim swallowed and she could tell by his face that he believed her. He clenched his hands in the bedclothes. “Poor little waif.”

“The child was doomed anyway,” said Sham softly. “If I'm right then it was intended to be the sacrifice she used to get home.”

She let him absorb it for a while before she continued. “That would explain why she frequents the Castle. Here she has the most choice among men who are well-nourished and healthy. But she can't stay here long or she risks detection. My master, Maur, ran into a demon hunting in a village once. The Shark believes it might have been Chen Laut, that it . . .
she
killed Maur because he knew what she looked like.”

Kerim didn't say anything, so Sham continued speaking. “Elsic said that she was closer to her goal than she had ever been. Southwood has always been a refuge for wizards and sorcerers, and the Castle has usually had the King's
Wizard. Nine months is a long time to hide from a powerful mage. She must have been excited when chance filled the Castle with Easterners who didn't believe in magic.”