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Chapter 11
Bad Bargains
I’d once heard it said by a historian of great renown that there was a time when the simple act of lighting a fire was considered a feat of wondrous spellcraft. The earliest humans saw in those flames the breath of the dragons they painted on their cave walls and the majesty of the gods to whom they prayed. Centuries later, the first medicines derived from the sap of a species of tall, graceful trees whose foliage spread wide like verdant wings were believed to be made of the tears of angels. How else to explain the sweet taste that enabled a person to survive the same disease that had killed their neighbours? Magic, this revered scholar had postulated, was merely natural law that experts like himself had not yet had time to decode.
Sensible. Logical. Utterly false.
As I pointed out to my friend the historian– I was, at the time, strapped to a chair while he and his fellow academics were draining blood from several of my limbs and lodging metal devices into parts of my body which, in my admittedly amateur opinion, were quite unsuited for such insertions– natural laws and systems of magic are separated by one incontrovertible fact: while anyone in possession of the necessary substances and following the correct process can replicate scientifictechniques, only those attuned to the planes from which one wished to deriveunnatural laws can actually cast spells. That’s why the world isn’t overrun with wonderists.
The historian, always one for a robust discussion, had countered my fact with his own hypothesis: that since there was no way to prove that such attunement exists at birth, it might perhaps be an ability innate to all human beings, waiting only to be activated through severe psychological or physical trauma. This might explain why most wonderists tend to be more than a little deranged.
I had to admit this did sound like a most intriguing and persuasive avenue of enquiry. Unfortunately, all my subsequent tests upon the historian and his colleagues after I freed myself proved inconclusive, possibly not helped by the excessive amounts of blunt force trauma I’d delivered to their skulls. The insertion of various metal devices into their livers probably hadn’t helped, either. Nonetheless, at the very end there, I could have sworn I saw the first traces of a spell manifesting from the historian’s still-twitching lips. So maybe he was right all along.
All of which is to say that regardless of where you fall on the born-versus-learned theory of magical ability, it’s never a good idea to leave two emotionally scarred children alone in your tent with all your wonderist’s tools after they’ve witnessed you performing a ritual for demoniac summoning.
‘He knew just what to do,’ Galass said, looking down upon the porcelain remains of the boy she had so desperately tried to protect from the ugliness of the world. ‘But how did he know? He just. . . after you left, it was like he was in a trance. He’d memorised every single one of your movements– the way you spread the sand in a circle, all those odd words, every precise step. . .’
‘That’s how it is with this kind of magic,’ I said, cursing myself for never having considered that someone so meek might be harbouring untapped magical potential. ‘Those of us attuned to the Infernal realm don’tlearnthe incantations. We hear them like whispers all around us. All we need is to find a source to power the spells. It’s less a talent than a. . .’
‘A calling,’ she said.
I’d never heard it called that, but she was absolutely right.
‘Galass, what happened? How did Fidick acquire the power to send the hellborn after Lucien? And how did you become—?’
Somehow, Galass had become attuned to the only form of magic derived from our own Mortal plane– the one kind of magic no wonderist ever seeks out, because you can’t just buy, borrow or steal the power from somewhere else. You can only strip it from human bodies. The effects– like that very particular, very unsettling shade of scarlet– are unmistakeable.
Remember that Hierarchy of Transgressions I mentioned? By her very existence, Galass had just moved herself to the very top of the justiciars’ list.
‘He resisted, at first,’ Galass said dreamily, her eyes so unfocused that I couldn’t be sure if she was even aware she was talking to anyone but herself.
‘Who resisted?’ I asked. ‘Fidick?’
‘The diabolic. The one from whom you’d sought to procure your dark spells.’
‘Tenebris.’ His name came out of my mouth like I was spitting venom. I was already thinking about how best to remove Fidick’s corpse so I could summon the demon again and incinerate him slowly, piece by piece, inside my spell circle. There were things even diabolics feared, and when I’d joined this profession, I’d made it my business to learn as many of them as I could.
Galass was watching my face now, tilting her head to examine me as if I were some strange feral animal who’d wandered in from the cold. ‘You don’t understand. The demon refused to make a deal with Fidick at first. He said. . . he said some evils were worse than others, and that he’d learned from you that all of us must draw the line somewhere.’
A diabolic with a conscience.Now I know for sure the world is ending.
Galass continued, the skin pinching at the corners of her eyes as if the memories were painful to her, ‘Fidick copied you when you were trying to bully the demon. He started flicking that pink sand into the circle. It was so cruel. The demon was screaming, trying to refuse him, but Fidick began making these’– her fingers started contorting into unnatural shapes– ‘these. . . well, they were just gestures, I guess, but they made me feel really sick. Your demon had it worse– he was in such agony, his cries—’ Her hands went up to cover her ears. ‘I couldn’t stop him. I kept shouting at Fidick,begginghim, but he wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t even really for the demon’s sake, but because his screams were driving me mad.’
The girl clamped her lips shut and shook her head so hard I worried she’d snap her slender neck. I doubted her psyche would ever be whole again after what she’d witnessed, let alone with what had been done to her. But repressing the experience would only drive the sickness deeper inside her, so ignoring her obvious wish for me to shut up now, I persisted with my enquiry.
‘Tell me what happened next.’
Her voice low, she said, ‘I grabbed Fidick’s legs and tried to pull him down– I hoped that might break his hold on the demon– but something weird was happening insideme. . . I don’t know how he knew that, but he kept telling me, “It’s going to be okay now. We won’t have to be scared any more.” He was still Fidick, still the boy I pretended was my brother, because I’d always wanted a brother, and he was sokind. But there was something happening tohim, too, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t turn away. Fidick wouldn’tletme turn away. The demoniac had finally stopped screaming, so he must have given in to Fidick’s demands, though I couldn’t hear the terms because the. . . the blood was rushing in my ears. It was so loud, it was deafening me.’ She dropped her head and whispered, ‘Then Fidick released the demon and it was all over.’
‘What was over?’ I asked urgently. I glanced back at the tent flaps, expecting at any moment to see a dozen Glorian Justiciars come striding inside, their hands in those damnably blessed golden gloves of theirs reaching for Galass.
‘Fidick threw up.’
I could barely hear her. ‘What?’
‘He threw up a shadow.’ She pointed to the carpet in front of my feet, but there was nothing there. ‘He retched, over and over, until a shadow spewed from his throat. Fidick fell to his knees and the shadow moved like it was flowing, right out of the tent.’ She walked to the circle, knelt and placed a hand on the boy’s pale neck as if searching for a pulse. ‘He wouldn’t let me move him. I didn’t understand why, but he wanted to stay right here. He kept repeating, “It’s going to be better now, Galass. I’m so very tired, but I’ve done what I needed to do. Everything will be all right.” But he was wrong. Nothing is ever going to be all right again.’
She began to cry, but the tears were blood, the colour of her hair. ‘I must have passed out for a while.’ She wiped her cheeks, then unconsciously smeared the blood on her hair when she reached up to touch the long tresses. ‘When I woke, my hair had changed.Ihad changed. And when the soldiers came for me. . .’
