“Then fetch the old swing,” Kit ordered, and Don raced off. Lydda turned and galloped the other way, toward the house. “Where are you going?” Kit demanded.
“Upstairs,” Lydda called over her shoulder. “I launch better from a window.”
“Hey-up, look at that! Too fat to get off the ground!” Kit said disgustedly. “We’re not waiting for you!” he bellowed after Lydda as Don raced back, towing the old swing seat by its attached ropes. Don dumped the swing on the edge of the terrace, and Shona hastily sat herself on it. Blade sat himself on her knee. It did cross his mind that he might translocate after Elda, but then he might get lost, too, and cause more trouble. He held one of the ropes up for Kit, and Kit wrapped it into his talons, both of them regardless of the fact that Derk had expressly forbidden this activity when Blade was ten and Kit eleven and Kit had dropped Blade into a tree. “Ready?” Kit asked Callette.
“Ready,” Callette said, scraping up the rope at the other side.
Blade and Shona each gripped the ropes hard. “Don’t just hang on to it, Kit. Wrap it around your wrists,” Shona commanded nervously.
“Teach your grandmother,” Kit retorted. “I’ll count three, Callette, to keep it even. One, two, three.”
Lydda appeared at the bedroom window just as the two big griffins took off, the wind of their wings blasting Blade’s fringe about and whipping Shona’s hair into her eyes. As the swing scraped, swayed and went upward, too, Lydda jumped. There was a mighty whooping of wing feathers.
“Glory! Hark at Lydda!” Don said, rising smoothly up beyond the swing. “Are you two all right?”
“Fine,” said Blade, although his hands were numb already.
Derk had the circle and the pentacle drawn on the taproom floor and was filling in the Signs and Sigils by the light of one of his lanterns. The other lantern was on the bar, pinning down his very necessary notes. The first note at the top of the first page was “TO DISMISS A DEMON IN CASE OF TROUBLE,” the next, “SAY THIS IN CASE OF OTHER TROUBLE,” and the third, “TO BIND A DEMON SECURELY.” Only after that did the notes get down to the Signs and Words he was going to need.
Moving faster and faster out of pure nervousness, Derk hurried between the notes and the floor. When he was finished with the Signs and Sigils and holding the lantern up to make sure they were all exactly correct, he realized he was racing around the circle like a frightened rabbit. He made himself slow down, with the result that he nearly lost his nerve completely and could not at first bring himself to light the candles.
But he forced himself to light them, five new flames, each with a Word Spoken, and four more guardian flames. He backed away to the bar and put his lantern down beside the other one. Then, with the paper he had written it out on growing sweaty in his hand, he began on the Invocation. That went very strangely. At first it was as though
each word got forgotten between his eyes and his mouth, and when he did remember and did say it, that word seemed to be dragging his brain up by the roots. Then, around halfway, as if he had passed some point of greatest resistance, it all went easy. Too easy. The words rolled themselves through his head and said themselves through his mouth as if they were something he said every day, rather than something he had not looked at for twenty years. Derk had a dim memory that the same thing had happened before, but it was too late to stop now. No one leaves a demon half conjured.
He came to the end, where he had to call out the name of the demon three times. Derk had settled on a medium-size demon called Maldropos, which the books said was moderately obliging as demons went. He opened his mouth to say the name. And he seemed unable to say it. While he gasped and glucked, all the candles flickered down to sparks. The pentacle began to shine, very strongly, blue.
Oh, no! Derk thought. It’s happening again! What do I do wrong?
Still unable to speak, he backed against the bar, wishing he could back right through it and crouch down among the barrels on the other side. His eyes felt peeled open like one of Umru’s oranges, unable to look away from the blueness slowly rising out from among the magic Signs. It was a beautiful blue in its way. It was dense and dark, yet it was luminous and pale, too, like a night sky overlaid by a perfect spring day. And it was absolutely terrifying. It rose and it rose, and as it climbed, it grew denser and thicker. Derk felt his teeth chattering. He tried to reach for his notes on the bar and found he could not move. The blueness was a star-shaped cloud, almost up to the beams in the ceiling. Derk knew he had to dismiss it now, before it broke loose from the pentacle. But he still could not move.
The blue cloud quivered and formed a long leglike piece, which pulled itself free from the Signs with a jerk and stepped carefully over the chalked marks. Another leglike piece formed, jerked, and stepped after it, followed by a third. Derk found himself waiting for a fourth one, but none came. Instead, a long blue-ringed tail, like a rat’s, tugged itself through the floor and swept jittering this way and that, contemptuously rubbing out the Signs.
What kept you? demanded the demon. Derk was not sure if its voice was inside or outside his ears. Why have you waited twenty years to call me again?
“Terror, I suppose,” Derk found himself saying. He looked up at the rest of the demon. It was all blue cloud, but he thought he could just pick out three sarcastic and pitiless eyes in a head up there. He could see the candles blazing away now, behind the demon and through it. The strength of it flattened him to the bar. Why me? he thought. Why me?
Because you are more easily set aside than other wizards, of course, the demon answered. It did not make Derk feel any better to find it could read his thoughts. I don’t want any of those irksome Bindings laid on me. You were going to try to set me some task, weren’t you?
“Not exactly, not you. I was hoping for a smaller demon to guard my house when I have to turn it into a Citadel,” Derk found himself replying. Well, it could read his mind. He might as well say what was in it. “To appear and menace Pilgrims. You know.”
Ridiculous! said the demon. And this is why you called me to this place? To appear and make faces? Do wizards have no serious purpose these days?
“Most of them are too busy running around after Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties,” Derk explained.
So the lesser demons tell me. The demon’s tail appendage rippled contemptuously. It took a step toward Derk on its three lissome leglike parts. The bar behind Derk creaked under the pressure. He felt as if he were being spread out against the wood like butter. He had never, ever met any being so strong. He braced himself to be eaten, probably by some horrible means—digested first, maybe. No, I don’t intend to eat you, the demon said. Yet. Derk could tell it was laughing. The laughter came through his whole body, in pulses, shaking every nerve. Demons loved to play with humans. Nor do I want your soul, said the demon. Yet. I have other flesh to boil. When I have done that, I shall come back and pay you for letting me through into this plane.
“H-how?” Derk asked.
How? By infesting your house, of course. Isn’t that what you wanted? asked the demon.
Was this a threat or a promise? Derk wondered. Did it matter? “When—when might I expect you then?”
Whenever is least convenient for you, the demon replied. Number your days until then.
Having said that, it began to grow again, bulging its way vastly upward, until all that Derk could see of it were its three wraithlike legs and its constantly twitching worm of a tail. Then there was an interminable time when the tail went still and the demon’s legs simply stood—forever, it felt like to Derk. He had to stand there, squashed against the bar by its presence, between his two flickering lanterns.
And then, quite suddenly, the demon was gone. The taproom seemed darker without the blue of it, despite the benign yellow light from the candles, and felt much more ordinary. The pressure no longer squashed Derk to the bar. The relief of that made him drop to his knees, where he hawked up great gulps of air and realized that he felt utterly belittled, smaller than he had ever felt in his life.