White sheets covered the furniture in the room, protecting the valuable embroidery on the chairs from the dust that accumulated with disuse no matter how good the housekeeping was. She could tell from the shapes of the shrouds that the muslin-covered furniture was arranged in fashion similar to the last room she’d seen.
Her nose wrinkled as a whiff of air came through the little hole and she frowned at the stench.
“By the tides . . .” she swore softly, forcing herself to take a deep breath near the spy hole.
The Castle had been occupied for a long time, and all the rooms had their own smell. The Reeve’s room had the musty-salt smell of leather, horses, and metal; her room smelled faintly of roses and smoke—this room smelled like a charnel house.
Increasing the power of the magelight, she sent it up near the chandelier so she could get a better look. There was a large table surrounded by fifteen high-backed chairs, all draped in white fabric. With better lighting, Sham could tell that the chair just opposite the oaken door had been pulled out of place. The dust covers made it difficult to tell, but it looked as if the chair faced the door rather than the table.
From the position of the spy hole, she couldn’t see anything else. She walked to the passage door. The levers worked smoothly and the panel slipped back onto a track and slid easily out of the way, just as the door to the Reeve’s room did. The full effect of the stench hit her when she opened the door, and she had to swallow hard before she entered.
She increased the intensity of her light again, as much for reassurance as for the increased visibility. The oddness in the placement of the chair seemed suggestive, and she remembered that the demon’s pattern should have led it to kill again several days ago—though no body had been found.
She took a step into the room and noticed for the first time that the polished granite floor near the oaken door was stained with dried blood. Breathing shallowly, Sham rounded the chair until she stood in front of it. From there she could see more blood stains on the floor, washing up in splatters against other furnishings and disappearing under the chair’s covering. Between the door and the chair was a larger stain where there had been so much blood that it had formed a puddle. The rank smell of the rotting blood made her cough.
Oddly enough, the sheet covering the chair was virginally white, as if it had been kept clean purposefully. A shroud, she thought, not to hide the body it clearly outlined, but to frighten the poor maid who found it the next time the room was cleaned.
She forced herself to step forward onto the dark-stained floor near the chair. Not wanting to disturb the body any more than she could help, she was careful as she tugged the sheet off and tossed it on top of the table.
Sham had lived in Purgatory for a long time. The sight of a body, no matter how gruesome, did not bother her . . . much. It didn’t require an intimate examination of the dead man before she deduced that whatever had killed her old master had also killed this man. Thin cuts covered his skin, just as they had Maur’s.
His head had fallen forward, obscuring his features. The chances were slim that she would know who this man was; from the condition of the body, he had been killed near the time when she had moved into the Castle, but she had to look. Rather than moving the body, Sham crouched low so that she could look up into his face.
When she saw the bruised and battered death-greyed features, she swallowed hard against the terror that chilled her blood. This man had been dead at least three days, perhaps longer. Dead, Lord Ven wasn’t nearly as handsome as he had been when she last spoke with him—less than an hour ago.
THEREEVE SATin his chair in front of the fire where she had left him; Dickon was nowhere to be seen. At Sham’s abrupt entrance he looked up. He appeared so tired and worn that she wondered if she shouldn’t find Talbot instead.
“What’s wrong?” he said, turning his chair slightly and pushing it closer to her.
She bit her lip. “I found a body in the room next to mine.”
The tiredness disappeared from his face to be replaced with animation, and Sham realized that it was depression as much as fatigue and pain that was bothering him. She wasn’t sure that the discovery of his half-brother’s body was going to help his melancholy much. Without a word he passed her on the way to the opening that led to the passageway.
“Kerim?” Her voice cracked with strain.
He stopped and looked at her inquiringly. Shamera bowed her head a brief moment before meeting his eyes. “It’s Lord Ven.”
She caught a flash of something in his eyes, before his expression flattened unreadably into that of a battle-hardened warrior. He nodded and continued through the passage door. Sham took a lighted candle from a nearby table, since she’d doused the magelight before entering Kerim’s chambers, and followed the Reeve.
She’d left the door to the room ajar and the stench had traveled into the passage. She brought the scented candle closer to her nose; it didn’t help. Kerim’s chair didn’t fit easily through the narrow doorway; the hubs left deep mars in the wood as he forced it through. He stopped just inside the opening.
“Hold your candle higher,” he said, the tone of his voice making it a request rather than an order.
Sham raised her hand and let the flickering light illuminate the room. She noticed the eerie shadows that jumped as the flame moved on the wick and was exceedingly grateful that she hadn’t found the body by candlelight. Kerim looked over the scene carefully before he moved forward, stopping again to look at the places where Sham’s feet had cracked the dried blood.
“Me,” she replied in answer to his unvoiced question. “There was no sign that anyone had been here before I came in.”
He nodded and circled the chair with its macabre occupant. She watched his face and knew that he noticed the pattern of the blood on the floor—the pool had been evenly distributed. Lord Ven had been killed standing and brought to the chair after he was dead, as evidenced by the trail of blood his heels had made. It was the large pool of blood that the Reeve would find most troubling. There was no disturbed area where a killer would have stood, absorbing blood that would otherwise have fallen on the floor, no bloody footprints where the killer had run away.
Sham pulled the white cloth off the table and held it so Kerim could see its pristine condition. “This was covering him when I came in.”
Kerim frowned and touched the cloth without taking it, rubbing it lightly between his fingers. He looked again at the stains on the floor and frowned.
“Someone went to a lot of work to make this murder look odd,” he commented; Shamera didn’t reply.
Finally he pushed himself over the stained floor and touched his half-brother’s face, tipping it up. Shamera’s candle revealed the high-carved cheekbones and the wide, straight nose that both men shared before he gently let the head fall back down.
Silently, Kerim wiped his hands on his thighs, not to clean them but as an outlet for his excess energy. Without looking at her, he spoke. “My brother has been dead for three or possibly four days. This room is cool, so it is hard to be certain.”
“Yes,” agreed Sham without inflection.
“I talked with him this morning.”
“He spoke to me an hour ago,” she replied evenly. “He said that he had something to tell me in private, but Dickon came to fetch me before I went with him.”
“The demon.” Kerim stared at the body without seeing it. There was belief in his tone.
“I think so,” she agreed.
“I thought that it could only take the form that was given to it by its summoner.” His voice was neutral once more: she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Sham shrugged. “So I was told—apparently wrongly.”
“It could be anyone, then. Taking one person’s shape then another as it chooses.”
She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Come.” He spoke curtly as he wheeled out of the room, ignoring the grating sound of metal on wood as his cha
ir caught the frame a second time. “Shut the panel behind you.”
Back in his room, she waited for him to speak. She had the feeling that he would be pacing if he could. Instead, chained to the chair, he shifted restlessly and stared into the fire.
Abruptly he wheeled back and around, so that he faced her directly. “Magic . . . Could you do this? Take the form of someone else?”
Sham swallowed, not finding the Reeve’s impassive face reassuring. “No. Wizards, with very few exceptions, are not capable of doing that. Illusion, yes, but to maintain an illusion of a specific person well enough to fool people who know him, no. My master was once the greatest wizard in Southwood, fourth or fifth most powerful in the world; he could not have done this. Perhaps the Archmage could, but I doubt that he could do it for so long.”
“You think the demon can alter its form?”
“There may be another possibility,” said Sham slowly.
“Tell me.” It was not a request, and she shot him a nasty look.
“Please remember that, despite appearances to the contrary, I amnot your mistress,” she snapped.
There was a touch of a smile warming Kerim’s eyes as he restated his order. “I beg you, Lady, please touch these unworthy ears with the alternative explanation.”
Sham rubbed her chin and sighed, murmuring as if to herself, “I suppose that’s good enough.” She cleared her throat and then resumed speaking. “I have never heard that the demons could change their appearance at will. Granted that demonology hasn’t a great part in a wizard’s education, but I would think that such an ability would have made it into the folktales.”
Kerim broke in softly, “Whatever it is that has worn my brother’s appearance sounds like him, moves like him, and uses the same idioms of speech. This morning I spoke to him concerning an incident in our childhood, and he added details I had forgotten.”
“There is always the possibility that the demon is capable of such a thing,” she said, “—but I hope not. The second possibility is not much better. The killer, be he demon or human, might have access to a rare golem—called a simulacrum.” Sham had been speaking Cybellian, but used the Southern words for golem and simulacrum as there was no Cybellian translation.
“What is a golem?” Kerim switched to Southern so smoothly, Sham wondered if he noticed.
“A golem is any nonliving thing animated by magic,” replied Sham in the same language. “Puppets are often used for such purposes as they are well suited to it, but anything will do.”
She glanced around the room and pointed at a hauberk that was carefully laid out on a table. For effect she said dramatically, “Ivek meharr votra, evahncey callenahardren!”
The chainmail rustled, and the hauberk filled out as if there were a person inside the mail. With a discreet brush of Sham’s magic, it rose to stand on the end links. This hauberk wasn’t the one Kerim had worn the night of the Spirit Tide; its links were heavier, less likely to part under the force of a blow. Over the right shoulder the metal was a slightly different color where it had been repaired.
“Golems are largely useless for anything other than amusement now,” said Sham, making the mail shirt bow once, before it resettled itself on the table with a sound that might have been a sigh of relief. “It is too difficult to create one big or complex enough to do anything useful. For one thing, they don’t have a brain so the wizard has to direct every move.”
Kerim was still looking at the hauberk. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wear that again.”
She grinned. “That’s what it’s made for. If you don’t use it, you’ll hurt its feelings.”
He gave her a black look, spoiling the effect with the twinkle of laughter in his eyes. “Back to the golem.”
“I told you about the forbidden black arts that have to be used to summon a demon,” continued Sham soberly. “Golems weren’t always so useless. There are several kinds that may be created, if the wizard is willing to resort to black magic.”
“Black magic requires the use of sacrifices,” said Kerim.
“Or human body parts,” she agreed. “When creating golems though, human sacrifice is generally required—sometimes more than one, which is the case of the simulacrum. It can take on the aspect of anyone it slays for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that when not under the direct control of its master the golem functions like the person it has slain would.”
She folded her arms and tapped her biceps with a finger, thinking for a moment. “I seem to remember reading that some wizards created golems for their demons to use when they carried out their master’s pleasures. I believe the purpose was to save the host body—which was much more difficult to create than the golem.”
“I would have sworn that the man I talked to this morning was my brother,” said Kerim softly, some minutes after she finished speaking. “Is it possible that it is the body we found that is not my brother’s, but a careful copy?”
“To what purpose?” responded Sham. “I can think of many reasons for a demon to assume your brother’s shape; but none for anyone to kill someone and make it look like Lord Ven. If you would like, though, I could examine the body more closely.”
Kerim shook his head and turned back to the fire. The light playing across his face revealed the sorrow that lived there. Briefly he closed his eyes.
“You don’t have any idea how to stop it?” He spoke in Cybellian, as if it were easier to hide his emotions in his own tongue.
Sham shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have a word in with the Whisper, but that is the best I can do. Even if I could find a mage who knows anything about demonology, he won’t be anxious to admit to it—it is forbidden magic. Any mage caught using it would be put to death by the wizard’s guild if a mob didn’t find him first. The Shark has a few wizards who work for him upon occasion who might know something, but no one keeps secrets better than a mage.”
“Can you kill the demon once you find it?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“So,” he said heavily. “We have a creature that we can’t detect, killing people for an unknown reason, and, if by some chance we stumble onto this thing, we don’t know what to do with it.”
“There is this—” she offered hesitantly, “—the demon doesn’t know we are aware Lord Ven is dead.”
“If we hide my brother’s body for a while longer, we might be able to trap it,” agreed the Reeve so readily that Shamera knew he’d already had the same thought. “But what good does that do us if we have no way to kill the demon?”
“I don’t know,” replied Shamera. “I don’t know.”
EIGHT
Sham sat up abruptly as a low sound echoed through her darkened room. The bed was too soft and hampered her movements; she rolled off and crouched on the floor with her knife in hand. She didn’t feel the presence of the demon, but lit the candles with a breath of magic anyway. The light revealed nothing out of place.
Once again the moan traveled through the room. The soft illumination of the candles dispelled the darkness and allowed her to put aside her initial fears. The sound was coming from the Reeve’s chambers.
The frame had been badly damaged when the Reeve destroyed the door. His carpenters were having a difficult time replacing it, so the tapestry was still the only barrier to the Reeve’s rooms. If the door had still been there, she would never have heard anything.
She lay down on the floor by the tapestried opening and remembered to extinguish the candles in her room before she rolled under the bottom of the heavy wool.
Flames crackled merrily in the Reeve’s fireplace. It was Kerim’s custom to keep the fire well fueled throughout the night to keep the room warm; poor circulation left him easily chilled. The fire provided enough light to allow Sham to see inside the large chamber. When she discovered nothing out of place, she came to her feet and saw what her lowly position near the floor had hidden from her.
Kerim lay stiffly on his bed. As she watche
d, his back arched and he gasped soundlessly, his face grimaced in pain. Apparently the miracle-worker his mother had found had done more damage than they had realized.
She thought briefly of allowing Kerim his privacy. When she was hurt, she always sought some dark corner to wait it out. She’d even taken a step or two back toward her room when another soft moan came from the bed. Enough, she thought, was enough.
The surface of the Reeve’s bed was waist high, and she couldn’t reach him from the floor. She put her knife on the corner of the bed and levered herself up—gently so she wouldn’t jostle him more than she had to. Leaving the knife where it was, she crawled up on the bed until she sat near him.
Magic was incapable of doing much more than concentrating the effects of herbal medication, speeding healing and setting bones—and even in that, Sham had little experience. Armed with nothing more than a rune that promoted health, a vague recollection of rubbing down her father’s warhorse, and a bottle left on the dresser that smelled suspiciously like horse liniment, Sham set to work.
Kerim helped as Sham rolled him over until he lay face down on the bed. With three quick slices of her knife she rid him of the soft robe he wore. She was tossing the scraps to one side when another spasm twisted the still-impressive muscles of his lower back. The flesh strained and knotted beneath his skin, forcing his spine to twist unnaturally to the side.
She put a few drops of the liquid in the bottle on her hands and rubbed it into her skin. When she felt the familiar warmth begin to seep into her hand, indicating that it was indeed a liniment of some sort, she splattered it liberally on Kerim’s back and set to work.