Touch of the Demon

Despite the entire situation, I had to smile. “Because you’re good at it,” I said. “You’re really damn good.”

He tried to run a hand through his hopelessly tangled curls, then gave up. “Yeah, well, I like doing the stuff, y’know? Feels natural. But this?” He gestured toward my arm as he sank back into the chair. “Watching for something that may or may not mean you’re about to get wasted by Gestamar? No. Nuh uh.”

I bit back a sigh and resisted the urge to rub my arm. I wasn’t about to defend the order to kill me, but a part of me ached that Idris was in such a situation. “Well, let’s hope that the mark stays nice and quiet.” And let’s hope that either Rhyzkahl makes a definitive move, or I find some other way to get the hell away from here. One thing was for sure—I wasn’t going to put up with being hurt anymore.

Mzatal entered. My eyes snapped to him, but he turned to Gestamar, rattling off something in demon. The reyza nodded and departed, and then Mzatal turned to Idris. “We are going to a remote location where we can work with less chance of interference. Prepare a standard research kit with additional stabilizers and go to my grove.”

Idris glanced to me and swallowed. “Yes, my lord,” he said. He turned and headed out, head bowed.

I scowled at the lord. “So what new delights have you dreamed up for me?”

He sank into the chair vacated by Idris, sat back and regarded me. “I have need to determine what will shield you from reflexively drawing upon the grove energy. Then, I will remove the mark. Rhyzkahl has not only sent a demand but now knows the mark has been touched. He will not delay long. We go to a place where he will not easily track you.”

I remained silent for a moment while I processed this, more than a little surprised that he’d bothered to explain this much to me. I finally took a steadying breath. “I know I won’t be able to talk you out of this,” I said, more calmly than I felt. “But can you please find a way to do it…so it doesn’t hurt so much?”

“I do not know that such is possible,” he replied evenly. “Not with the specialized nature of that mark.”

I could feel my mouth tighten. “Well then, why can’t you simply knock me out or something?”

“Were it possible to do it with you unconscious, I would,” he said in the same calm tone he’d used after I’d broken my leg. “The mark is deeply tied into your consciousness—moreso than a typical mark.”

I shoved a hand through my hair, frustrated. “Fine. Whatever.” I scowled. “Then let’s get this shit over with.”

“We wait upon Idris,” he replied, unruffled. “It will not be long.”

He fell silent, apparently deep in contemplation. My own thoughts drifted, and I leaned back in the chair. Shadow memories and dream fragments flickered at the edge of my mind.

Lord Mzatal approaches! I hurriedly close my journal to hide my folly, more pages filled with doodles than glyph patterning.

“Elinor, stand,” he says, holding his hand out. Heart sinking, I give him the journal, tremble as he pages through it.

He looks up, eyes narrowed in…anger? Disdain? I cannot tell.

“Why are you here?” he asks.

My breath catches. “To train, my lord.” I fight to keep my voice steady. “To learn to be a summoner.”

His mouth tightens as he holds the journal up. “This indicates otherwise. Gather your belongings and prepare to travel.”

I stare at him, stricken. “No, please, my lord.” I cannot breathe, but if I faint it will only make it worse. “Please…don’t send me away. I’ll study harder, I swear it!”

Lord Mzatal tucks the journal under his arm, turns and walks away, hands clasped behind his back. “Go do as you are told, child.”

I frowned as the memory faded. Big surprise. Mzatal was a dick to Elinor as well.

Lord Rhyzkahl’s arm is around my waist, and I think surely I must be in a dream. “I would have you train with me for a time,” he tells me. “And continue with Szerain as well, of course.”

“Yes,” I breathe. Train with him? Be with him? How could I possibly say no?

He strokes the back of his fingers over my cheek and smiles at me. “I will go speak to Szerain of the final arrangements.” Then his lips brush mine, and I think I will surely die of pleasure.

I blinked, somewhat off balance by the different feel of the two memories. But it was clear that Rhyzkahl definitely had some sort of interest in her.

“Rhyzkahl and Elinor,” I said. “Did they have a relationship?”

Mzatal returned his focus to me. “He favored her.”

I waited. “That’s all?”

“She held great affection for him,” he said. “And he favored her.” He shifted, crossed his legs. “She trained with me for a short time, then with Szerain, and finally with Rhyzkahl.”

“And she died when the gate collapsed?”

“She died during that ritual, yes,” he replied. “In the chamber of your arrival here.”

Memories flickered annoyingly, telling me that there had to be more to it. “How could it have gone wrong so badly?”

He shook his head. “I do not know the trigger event, though once it cascaded, it went quickly.” A shimmer of anger or frustration passed over his face. “If Szerain knows it, he has kept it well hidden.”

I kept my face as composed as possible. “And where is he now?”

He lowered his head and looked at me. “I cannot answer that question, as you likely already know.”

I chuckled despite myself. Okay, so now I knew for certain that he knew I knew about Ryan and Szerain. “Oathbound,” I drawled.

“Oathbound,” he echoed, with the faint hint of a nod. His mouth tightened. “Complicated and anachronistic. Bound in rhetoric and intrigue.”

“Well, I’m pretty good at figuring shit out,” I replied. “One pesky oath won’t stop me.” Assuming I lived long enough to dig into this particular mystery.

His face remained an expressionless mask, silver-grey eyes steady upon me.

“Do you have to leave if I talk about it?” I asked. Wouldn’t that be fun if I’d discovered lord repellent? Of course the alternative to leaving could be squash-the-human, but since he already had a loaded gun pointed at my head, I had nothing to lose.

He raised an eyebrow. I took that as gushing permission. “Szerain and Elinor had a hand in this big bad cataclysm thing a few hundred years ago,” I began. “But nearly destroying the world wasn’t enough to get him exiled. Oh, yeah. You guys needed him to fix what he’d broken. Restitution.”

Mzatal remained silent, but I thought perhaps a slight spark of interest lit his eyes.

Sitting back, I steepled my fingers as if deep in thought. “So it wasn’t until—what? A couple of decades ago or so?—that Szerain did another Bad Thing,” I continued. “He got himself into shit so deep there’s an Oath from Hell around it, and eventually he got kicked out of here.” I tilted my head. “And according to Turek, Szerain chose exile instead of handing over information about whatever it was.” I tapped my fingertips together. “My question is…why did he choose exile? What could possibly be worth it?” Narrowing my eyes, I regarded Mzatal. “Plus I wonder if this Bad Thing had anything to do with the Peter Cerise fiasco.” Peter Cerise, whose summoning several decades ago had accidentally called Rhyzkahl instead of Szerain, and resulted in the slaughter of the other five summoners involved. “Is there a connection? And if so, what?”

With the mention of Cerise, a muscle in Mzatal’s jaw rippled. I made a note of that sore spot on my mental clue board.

“All must be revealed in time,” he said as he rose from the chair.

“But for now you get to torture this mark off of me,” I said with a tight smile. “Won’t that be fun.”

“No, it will not be,” he said, face back to the inscrutable mask.

I stood, then gave him a wary look as the hair on my arms lifted. Potency swirled to him like water down a drain in gold and purple flickers on the edge of my othersight. He placed his hands on my shoulders and met my eyes. I found myself wishing I could understand this lord—terrifying and all too ready to kill me one minute, and then almost decent in the next. What the hell was his game?

His gaze bored into me, and I didn’t really want to move. The myth surfaced about snakes hypnotizing their prey, but before I could process that, his hands shifted to my face. Not even a heartbeat later his mouth was on mine, kissing me hard and deep, though not at all roughly. Potency crackled through me like a zing of static electricity between my cells and in the next instant he broke the kiss and stood back, hands clasped behind his back, while I struggled for some sort of response.

Un-fucking-readable, he nodded once as if satisfied, then turned toward the door. “Come,” he said, though this time it wasn’t accompanied by a lasso of power.

I didn’t move, could only stare. What. The. Fuck?

Mzatal glanced back and saw my awesome statue imitation, took my upper arm and nudged me forward. Blinking, I moved, and he dropped his hand. He led the way out of the room and to his grove, and I followed, keeping a wary eye on him the whole time. My thoughts whirled in uneven loops, but foremost among them was, I need to get the hell away from Mzatal.

Gestamar and Idris waited near the entrance to the tree tunnel. Gestamar bellowed a greeting while Idris simply looked nervous and unsettled. Mzatal took my arm as we entered the shadowed tunnel, no doubt to better sense if I should suddenly try and use the power again. I didn’t bother to tell him that I had no idea how I’d done it the first time. It didn’t matter. As soon as I stepped beneath the sheltering limbs a deep peace descended on me again, and I barely noticed his grip.

He stopped in the center of the grove and passed me over to Gestamar, who wrapped a clawed hand around my arm while the lord crouched and channeled power into the knob of wood in the center of the grove. I remained perfectly still, feeling as if the grove spoke to me in a language beyond words. My eyes slid to Mzatal as he completed the offering of potency and stood. He lifted a hand to initiate the transfer, and in that instant I knew—knew—the grove.