Oathbreaker ch 9.29 - Summons (Patreon)

Fourteen years later

The High Carillonneur summoned me to his tower in the late morning of a summer day. He was in the Hall of Communion, the largest of the Campanile’s upper chambers. The silent visages of massive gargoyles loomed about the walls as I manifested in the room, their jaws hung slack, the chamber lit in the azure shades of magefire.

Today, the gargoyles were speaking. Harmodian stood near one, his ear held close to its lowered head and his brow furrowed as he listened to the whispers ghosting from its open maw. The room was occupied by three others besides the wizard. Two were mortal, and the other a fiend like myself. They stood huddled together at the center of the chamber, at the edge of the innermost ring of binding circles worked in various precious metals across the floor.

I stepped free of my gate and approached the pair, carefully picking my way forward to avoid stepping on those circuits of gold and brass. They burned in my vision like molten metal, and whenever I passed over one, the unpleasant shiver of energy in the air made me wince.

“When did they start speaking?” I asked as I joined the group.

“Last night,” Gilligan said. “He hasn’t slept.”

He was Harmodian’s senior apprentice, a mage of notable skill despite not yet holding the rank of Magi. Dark skinned, tall and handsome, he wore a long coat of sable and dark blues edged in thread-of-gold rather than the traditional Campanile gown. His familiar perched on his shoulder like a parody of some pirate’s companion, its spindly tail twitching in cat-like agitation. The imp bared its needle fangs at me.

“I’ve heard four different voices,” the third of the trio in the chamber’s center said. Clad in robes of a burnt-red shade marking her as a tower alchemist, Domina Petra was in her sixties and bore it nobly, and like Gilligan knew my true nature. She displayed no alarm at seeing me rise out of a pool of crackling blood and shadow.

“That’s practically cataclysmic,” I noted dryly. “Has he said anything?”

When I nodded to the wizard, Gilligan shook his head and told me, “Just that he needed us at hand. Do you have to portal in, Ekasne? It makes my teeth itch.”

“The master summoned me telepathically,” I explained and batted my wings, shaking off the lingering fumes of transposition. “I assumed urgency was expected.”

The imp on the mage’s shoulder giggled. “Do not begrudge the thing a chance to flaunt its paltry wings, Gilligan. Its kind are vain and desperate for attention.”

I put on a pout. “You know, Schier, I think it would do you well to flash your wings on occasion. This form hardly suits you.”

Telepathically I told it, Gill will not notice if you don’t give him reason. Your masters aren’t here watching, what’s the harm in stretching the rules a bit?

The little Zosite glared at me, its ember-orange eyes bright with quiet resentment, but it did not deign to reply to my psychic commentary. Before we had the chance to spar further, Harmodian pulled himself from his whispering statues and approached our group. He looked haggard, and very old. I felt a pang of concern at his slumped posture and lined features. His time was not stopped, only stretched to its uppermost limits, and he was not as mindful of his health as I’d have liked.

“Some reckless idiot is repeating history’s mistakes,” he said in an uncharacteristically venomous voice as he drew to a stop. “We’re still trying to pinpoint the source, but there is a great amount of activity in the Hyperfabric. Practically a storm…” He hesitated and added, “Something tried to break through one of the gates.”

Petra put her hand to her mouth, her face gone ashen. Gilligan and I, more experienced with interplanar matters, did not react with immediate horror. It could mean a variety of things, precious few good, but not all disastrous.

“Has the general region been determined?” Gilligan asked in clipped tones. “Is it contained inside the Hyperfabric still?”

“The damage appears to be minimal. Some minor stress fractures in the Borderfabric, the kind that will heal.”

“Unless whatever it is tries again,” I noted.

Harmodian sighed wearily and leaned on his staff. “It seems localized to the Bradivaran Mark. We’re still gathering information from the country’s leaders, but what reports we do have are disturbing. It’s already beginning to cause temporal tremors.”

“Could it be a conjunction?” Gilligan asked.

Harmodian furrowed his brow. “My colleagues do not believe so. It is too localized. Best we can tell, someone is trying to punch a hole from our side.”

“They would need a Chthonian Nail,” Gilligan mused. “A strong one. A mass sacrifice or a divine artifact.”

“Both,” I suggested. “The last time this happened, it was the Lord of Orkael who made the breach Himself. I don’t suppose you’ve asked your companion if we’re repeating Faust’s Folly?”

All gazes went to Schier, save for Petra’s, who could not see the infernal cherub. The imp’s eyes narrowed in feline consideration. “We are not responsible. Besides, there is no point in creating a road between this world and mine. One already exists.”

That was true enough. When the goddess of the Aureate Church departed the world and slammed the door to the High Empyrean shut behind Her, the intent was to prevent passage between the Silver City and the earth. It had the consequence of closing the mortal coil to all the divine realms for a time, until a foolish scholar, seeking his gods, had managed to open a gate. Unfortunate for him that the angels he sought council with were the disciples of the Iron God, rather than the heavenly messengers he’d no doubt expected. Now his very name was a byword for the patsies of devils.

“The damage remains relatively small at this time,” the High Carillonneur said with cautious optimism. “But it can grow if left unattended. Ekasne, I’m afraid I will have to impose on you.”

I gave the old magus a level look. “You are certain, Harmodian? Asking me to educate novices under your own supervision is one thing, but employing me as an agent in the field is quite another. Your colleagues would not take it well if they knew.”

Employing beings from the subfabric was not strictly taboo amongst practitioners of the arcane, but that referred to lesser spirits like Schier or various species of elemental, and such assistants were always bound by strict contract. My ruse of being Zosite might not have lasted over the years with the real thing in regular attendance at these meetings, but neither had the Campanile’s master ever flaunted the fact that he held a demon in his employ. He did not want to draw crowfriar attention, and we only had Schier’s silence by merit of clever lawyering on Gilligan’s part.

The Magi were historically known to draw on the knowledge of demons under carefully controlled circumstances, but it had become at best an unspoken habit of the trade. Demonic agents were like catapult balls covered in toxic pitch that one launched at a problem, not something employed for subtlety. In the millennium following the Sack of Heaven, the greater collective of master arcanists across the world had officially banned the practice and sought to punish their own membership who transgressed, if only to forestall further incursion by the Iron Hell.

Harmodian, a member of that collective of the wise, used me in the field at his peril. Some of his peers might get the wrong idea if they knew. Or the right one, depending on one’s perspective.

“There is no one in the tower with greater knowledge of metaplanar physics than you,” Harmodian said. His grim bearing negated all flattery the statement might have carried. “The terms of your contract do not compel you to act as my agent, it’s true, but I hope that I can convince you to offer your services in this matter. If this escalates and the Wend comes undone…”

He did not need to explain further. I quite liked the world as it was, isolated from the war-wracked chaos of the cosmos. It was quiet. Despite that, I was not above clawing out extra considerations when opportunity arose.

“I want some addendums to our contract. I’ve fancied the idea of vacations… I also want a larger studio.”

Harmodian sighed. “We will discuss it. So will you help?”

I glanced to the room’s one window, presently shuttered to prevent the light of day from disrupting the room’s magics. “Bradivara, was it? I’ve not been.”

“That’s the old imperial name,” Gilligan offered. “The locals still use it, but some have taken to calling it Wyvernmurk.”

“I’m not asking for any heroics,” Harmodian said, in a tone that told me heroics weren’t his chief concern. “Find out more about what’s going on in that country and report back. Gilligan will keep a watch on the tower’s wards and allow you to transpose back into this room at need.”

The younger wizard dipped into a pose halfway between a nod of acquiescence and a gentlemanly bow. “I would not wish to slam the door behind our chief expert on metaplanar history. Besides, she still owes me dinner.”

I turned my nose up at him. “I’m not giving you an interview for your next book, Crath, no matter how much you flirt with me.”

He sighed, defeated. “You can remain anonymous, you know.”

I turned my back on the group and made for the door. “I enjoy your work because it has levity, Gil. Best not taint it with my dark musings.”

I did not depart immediately. Though the task was urgent, there were accounts to settle and preparations to make. The world was vast, and even in all my millennia there was much of it I’d not seen. One of my first tasks before departure was to stalk the Campanile’s library. It was a vast chamber, perhaps the greatest in the whole tower, not least of all because the arcane engineers who’d built it during the old empire’s golden age had used their Art to fold space and make the archives larger on the inside. The shelves stretched up like cliffs, a deep well whose walls were linked by a network of catwalks and stairwells, all of it lit by illusory flames that could not threaten the collection.

“Bradivara…” The narrow tip of my nail traced the yellowed page beneath me. “My oh my, you have had a rough go of it, haven’t you?”

The country was originally an Oroion province, one of the older ones and among the few of the empire’s dominions to remain above water during its ruin. That was a small mercy when taken in perspective. It had weathered numerous disasters even before the empire fell, from the fiercest of the Chimera Wars, to freak storms, to the Dowager’s Plague some three centuries past. Over a thousand years of bad luck and bad omens.

It was its present name that interested me most, however, the one Gilligan had tossed out so casually during the meeting in the Carillonneur’s tower.

“As I thought,” I murmured as I tapped a particular line of text. It was written in Low Oroionic, the proto-language that later evolved into the common speech of Urn and many of the eastern Edaean countries. My gaze fell on one word in particular. Dracae.

The Blight had fallen hard on that country in the century after Aureia’s Ruin, the capstone to a succession of calamities. The Bradivarans had believed it was the God-Queen Herself who sent the dragon to plague them, having failed to do them as She’d done Durranth, with storms and krakens.

“Perhaps She did,” I mused aloud. “Someone had to create the egg and hatch it, after all.”

“You know, the prisoners in Orkael talk to themselves. It’s one of the first signs of madness.”

I lifted my eyes to meet two burning orange ones. Schier perched on an upper shelf of the bookcase above me, watching intently in that catlike way of theirs.

“You won’t impress me with stories of Hell,” I said and returned my attention to my research. “I’ve seen it already, and there is no torment you cold-iron angels can devise that’s worse than rebirth in the Dross.”

Though I said the words, I wasn’t entirely sure. There were stories, and the Abgrûdai taken and broken in Zos’s iron wheels were…

I wasn’t entirely sure. Nor did I ever want to find out.

“We don’t invent torments, Schier said. “We only refine the meaning.”

“Was there something you wanted?” I asked and flipped the page.

The imp went quiet. After a moment, its claws scraped the bookshelf in a clear sign of agitation. “What did you mean before, when you said Gilligan will not notice me?”

I hid my smile by merit of my downturned gaze and a few stray locks of hair. “Oh, it was nothing. Just a small jest between us girls.”

“Gender is an indulgence my kind have no use for,” the Zosite hissed.

I shrugged. “As you say.”

“You play games with me at your peril. Explain yourself.”

I sighed and slapped the book closed, finally lifting my gaze to regard the creature with my full attention. I used that moment to appraise them. Schier’s incarnated form was diminutive, a scarlet body halfway between that of a little elven child and a cat, and there was something catlike in their large head and slanted eyes. The imp bared needle teeth of pale metal at me. Cold Iron, which would poison me and leave me weak.

It bore no signs of any gender, being sexless, and indeed even in its proper angelic form that was true. I’d heard that the Onsolain who’d followed the young goddess into the east had taken shapes of their preference, having long indulged in their vices in the guises of false deities before bending the knee, but the disciples of Iron Zos followed after the old fashion. They were genderless androgyns, bearing neither the means for mortal copulation nor the desire for it.

“I meant nothing by it,” I lied. “Only… I suppose it disheartens me, to see you forced to take on such a diminutive shape in this world. Gil would find your true form quite comely, I believe.”

The imp twitched its head to one side. “You lie. Besides, he only has eyes for you. I see it.”

I lifted the book to hide my mouth, peeking at the little angel over it. “He playacts the gentleman because he wants a demon’s perspective in his next thesis. You have no competition from me, Schier. The only one who’s getting in your way is you. You’re already lifelong partners thanks to your pact. There’s no harm in defining that relationship as you please.”

“I already know how it’s defined,” Schier hissed. “Defining our pact was the first thing I did in this world.”

I sighed and waved a dismissive hand, turning away from the familiar. “You miss my meaning. Your loss, dear, but I think you might find him more receptive to your interest than you believe.”

“There is no interest!” The devil insisted. “You are toying with me.”

I was, but that didn’t make anything I’d said untrue. I kept my back to the Zosite so they couldn’t see my smirk, but just in that moment a sudden flash of vertigo went through me. I had to press a hand to the bookshelf to keep steady.

Schier’s demands fell silent, and I sensed them watching me as I waited for balance to return. I lifted a hand to my brow as a fast and growing migraine began to beat through my skull. It wasn’t just my head, however. My true shape — my spirit, my soul, whatever you want to call it — was roiling inside the cage of my assumed form.

“Someone just tried to summon you,” Schier said at my back.

“Yes, I know the signs,” I snapped. I considered the feeling more as I regained my composure. It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced it, and I knew that little fit was just a foreshadow.

The second call came quickly after the first, yet slow enough to tell me that whoever it was knew what they were doing. A novice would just speak the words on repeat, a drumming rhythm that would compel through vexation more than might, needling my spirit until I gave up trying to ignore it. A deliberate, spaced calling was a different matter, a sign that the caller gathered power between each intonation. In the former case, it wasn’t unlike having someone repeatedly tap your shoulder and ask you to pay attention until you wheeled about to claw their face off. In the second case, it was more like having a hooked chain cast out, lodged into my ribs, then yanked.

This felt like some middle ground between the two. The calls were deliberate and delivered without haste, but they were merely calls rather than commands. The feeling wasn’t at all a pleasant one regardless, and my teeth were bared in a silent snarl as the pain of the second summons faded.

Instinct demanded I answer. Like any spirit called this way, I wanted to claw my way through the thin walls of reality right to the source and tear them to pieces. But this was a common trap, and no doubt there would be a cage on the other side ready to catch me. Had I been in the Abyss, I would have done it anyway. Peeking into the mortal coil through the narrow window of a summoning circle was always worth the inconvenience, especially if the summoner made a mistake and the demon got a meal out of it.

But I wasn’t in the Subfabric, and I didn’t know what waited for me at the other end of that proffered line. The Order of the Red Bloom still hadn’t forgiven me for two counts of desertion, and they had my name and cultists to feed it to.

“You should answer, Schier said. “They will just keep calling until you cannot see straight.”

The imp was right. Still, I hated being compelled.

A third call came. I groaned and pressed my head to the bookshelf, waited for it to pass, and did not take the bait.

If they call a fourth time, I will go. And unless they make a very compelling argument, I will undo their paltry runes and eat them.

And if it’s Eshirrie and her sisters, what then? I’d grown stronger over the centuries, but strong enough to challenge Berisembri’s favorite and a pack of Woesisters besides? No, perhaps not that strong. I hadn’t placed myself under the watchful eyes of a master wizard for most of a century just to keep steady employment.

I stood there some minutes, leaning against the bookshelf with Schier hovering over me, before I knew the summoner would not call again. My eyes opened, and my mind began to work. I wheeled on the imp. “What’s the time?”

“Midnight passed not long ago,” they told me.

The summoner wouldn’t try again that night, not unless they were particularly stubborn. They’d gone with the rule of three, and when I hadn’t replied to the last, they’d retreated. I didn’t believe Eshirrie would try to trick me with what passed in the arcane arts for a courteous summons. She would know I wouldn’t fall for it, and would go straight to brute compulsion. It was more likely to work, and would leave me enraged, disoriented, and more easily bound. It was also a strange coincidence, given the day and its other events.

A courteous summons. Could it be?

“Tell your mortal I will be departing the tower early,” I said to Schier. “I have other business to attend to before I attend to the Campanile’s.”