The Crooked Key, Chapter 14: How to Conjure Demons
The Crooked Key by Kyle Marquis
Chapter 14: How to Conjure Demons
People watched the strange woman go. Aklurian’s eyes narrowed. Fearing what might happen if the hexguards followed Skaithness, the banisher lurched back into the room, feigning drunkenness, and offered a toast to Lord Halday and his magnificent, pig-slaying saber.
That gave the merchant king an opportunity to boast about his exploits, and also encouraged the hexguards to focus their attention on him and the banisher. After all, Eilo and Halday had killed the carver-pig brood mother and poisoned the remaining creatures, embarrassing the hexguards, whose failure to stop the pigs had cost Lady Ryphonia an entire warship. As Lord Halday told his story, lavishly embellishing his own heroism against the brood pig, Skaithness’s disappearance was soon forgotten.
As the banquet started to wind down, the banisher was able to leave without insulting anyone. He stepped out into the cold, smoky air and checked the weight of his court sword. Useless against almost any spirit tougher than a plookin, it might still keep the hexguards from starting trouble. But it wouldn’t stop dedicated assassins loyal to the Trusted Seven, and rumors of assassins and saboteurs had flown back and forth during the banquet all evening.
Having slain the carver-pigs, Eilo decided to exploit his notoriety to speak with the guards and marines stationed around the castle. The common soldiers were nervous, and they were right to be. The banisher had no gift for oratory, but he could share his knowledge, as he had crossed blades with the Mollusk Knight once before and had survived the Battle of Old Rock. He didn’t give orders, but he told the artillery officers about the floating venom-squids that had attacked the castle. Eilo feared the squids more than the bombards of an enemy fleet: their trailing tentacles could sweep across even the zig-zagging walls of the copper castle, killing a score of men in seconds.
Skaithness returned as Eilo watched bombardiers and ballista crews arguing about how best to engage the squids. Her mask was closed, so the banisher could not gauge her mood.
“I got as far as I could,” she said. “But I kept getting lost in the maze of corridors. It was strange—like my senses were being tricked. I think I need a banisher.”
“Unless I miss my guess,” Eilo said, “your senses weren’t being tricked. An architecton was maneuvering you away from what it was set to guard. Part of their job is confusing intruders. You think the crooked key is down there?”
“I’m sure of it,” Skaithness said. “And I’m sure that if we can’t get it, Nowan de Valc is going to blast his way in. Could we blast our way in?”
“I have a better idea,” the banisher said. Eilo explained how he planned to use his enemies against each other.
“Dangerous and difficult,” Skaithness said. “Let’s go!”
It was hard to resist the armored woman’s enthusiasm, but the banisher said, “This will take finesse, you understand. We can’t just plow ahead. First, I need to tell Lady Ryphonia, so she knows what we’re doing.”
“What if she says no?” Skaithness said.
“Skaithness, she’s one of my oldest friends, and she’s fighting for her life,” Eilo said. “I’m not going to conduct some kind of demonic heist, in her territory, without her permission.”
“You care about her, don’t you?” Skaithness said.
“Even if I didn’t,” the banisher said, heading back across the castle walls to the banquet hall, “I’m not going to act without permission. She’s going to be the future Duchess of Baristoc, and I don’t need more enemies.”
Skaithness lingered at the edge of the now half-empty banquet hall, watched suspiciously by hexguards, as Eilo secured a brief audience with Lady Ryphonia.
“You have to be kidding,” Lady Ryphonia said after Eilo explained his plan for getting Skaithness past the architecton.
“Consider it a sort of scientific experiment,” the banisher said, “like the ones our mentor taught us to do.”
The noblewoman was silent for a long time, and the banisher feared she would refuse him permission to head into the caves below the castle. Finally she whispered, “You really need Aklurian for this?”
“He’s part of the plan, yes,” the banisher said.
“When...when he’s done with his part of your plan…” She turned her crystal goblet back and forth in her long fingers, then raised it to her lips. “Kill him.”
“Banishers aren’t assassins,” Eilo said.
“That’s why I’m not giving you an order,” the young woman said. “I can’t tell you what to do. But you know what sort of man he is. He’s the same sort of man as Nowan de Valc, I think. Aklurian is a murderer and a thief. He’ll betray me eventually. But if he’s dead, by the time his agents reveal what my parents did, I’ll either be dead too, or the Duchess of Baristoc and able to brush off those kinds of rumors. Do what you think is right, Eilo. You always have.”
With that slightly troubling vote of confidence, the banisher bowed and departed. He returned to his chamber for his glaive and some equipment, checking carefully to make sure the hexguards were following him.
“It’s just two regular hexguards,” Eilo said. “Obvious ones, too: I can see them when they try to hide because they won’t take their hats off. We’ll need to shake them so Aklurian himself follows us.”
So they led the two hexguards all over the castle until they eluded them by sneaking through the infirmary and climbing out through a window. Then—the trickier part—they followed the two lost hunters as they returned to Aklurian, who waited outside the banquet hall.
Furious at their failure, Aklurian drained his wine, retrieved his knives, and headed out himself with two new hexguards. This crew was smart enough to remove their tall hats. The banisher let Aklurian find them again around midnight, just as the hexguards were getting frustrated. Then he followed Skaithness outside the castle walls and down into a ravine not far from the western beach and their little copper boat. The banisher could hear her labored breathing. Her suit was winding down like a pocket watch, and she had to use her own muscles to keep moving. Eilo thought it must feel like trying to walk underwater.
The cave entrance was a rusted, crooked slash in the coppery stone. Inside, the gray-blue floor and walls resembled the lighthouse. Eilo handed Skaithness a lantern so she would not expend her energy creating light. He could hear Aklurian and the hexguards on the hill above them. They would follow.
Skaithness and the banisher hurried down the corridor. It branched and twisted, but Skaithness moved with purpose. They passed pillars of copper, then of wrought iron, then of the same decorated metal as Skaithness’s armor. Skaithness had to double back once, and they barely missed the three hexguards hunting them. Then she came to a large circular room of blue-gray stone with eight equally spaced braziers of wrought iron. The path dead-ended in a wall of pale, verdigris-streaked copper.
“This dead end again,” Skaithness said as Eilo set the lantern down on a step. “Blast!”
“There you are,” Captain Aklurian said. He stepped into the room with his knives drawn. The two hexguards behind him had only small wooden stakes at their waists. Instead of spirit-hunting weapons, they both carried huge steel mauls.
“What are you doing with those knives, Captain?” Eilo said, backing toward the discolored wall.
“I don’t actually need to do anything to you,” Aklurian said. “But I know the metal girl is getting weak. It’s time to get rid of her. You should leave, banisher. It’s going to take a long time to do this, and I’m afraid she’ll make a lot of noise.”
The two hexguards hefted their mauls and stomped forward. Then they hesitated as the walls and ceiling rippled. They weren’t just leg breakers: well-trained veterans, they knew when a spirit moved nearby. They hesitated, knowing that a spirit wouldn’t fear their steel hammers.
Aklurian’s eyes narrowed as he started to realize the truth: Eilo had led them into a trap. Before he could simply flee, the banisher took a final step back, let banisher’s wine flow down the length of his glaive, and slammed the blade into the discolored wall.
The reaction was instantaneous: the architecton flew out of the secret corridor it had been blocking with a roar of pain and surprise, its cube-shaped body lengthening and distorting as limbs burst out of its sides. A howling, distorted face appeared on one square.
“By the Egg!” one of the big hexguards shouted, abandoning his maul for a wooden stake as the architecton rose up into the middle of the room. “What is it?”
The banisher knew exactly what an architecton was: they were spirits created by magic to baffle thieves and intruders and to help the allies of long-dead magicians navigate their labyrinthine mansions. Architectons could move through solid stone or metal, even more easily than a guardian worm could. They could make themselves look like walls to block off an area, and, with a modest expenditure of spiritual power, they could even reshape halls and tunnels. Skaithness could have wandered for a hundred years without ever finding what the architecton had been placed to guard.
Eilo knew the cube-shaped thing was an architecton, and Aklurian probably did too—or he would, if he could just calm down enough to think clearly. But as Aklurian stumbled backward, tooth-knife raised, Eilo shouted, “It’s a demon of despair!”
And, momentarily overwhelmed with fear and rage, Aklurian stared up at the thing that hexguards hated more than anything else: a demon of the ancient world. And as his hatred grew, the architecton—sensitive to thought and will, as all such creations were—responded. It blackened and boiled, its mouth grew fangs that drooled poison, and its many hands became lashing tentacles that could sap even a strong man’s will to live.
Only the most stalwart and ferocious of souls could survive a demon of despair. And Aklurian was welcome to test his will against the newborn demon, since Eilo and Skaithness had business elsewhere.
“Come on!” the banisher said, hurrying down the newly exposed corridor. Skaithness followed, almost as quickly as Eilo could run, leaving the three hexguards to face the demon Aklurian had made.
The corridor ended in a domed chamber of intricately patterned bronze walls with stone steps that led up to a circular balcony. The far wall contained another metal desk, a bit like the one in the observation room of the lighthouse. But instead of a simple lock, dozens of metallic protrusions covered the desk. They reminded Eilo of the pedals and knobs of a pipe organ. Smashed wooden furniture lay scattered about, as if the chamber had been abandoned in great haste.
Skaithness waded through the broken furniture, kicking aside table legs and sweeping her lantern over the detritus. Then she reached down and shoved a broken escritoire aside to reveal a skeleton in antique armor much like her own. Huge rents like the claws of an animal marred the breastplate. One arm was missing at the elbow; the other ended in a heavy gauntlet. Skaithness prised the gauntlet open. A crystal key on a golden chain fell onto the gray stone floor.
Skaithness picked it up and let it slide over the fingers of her delicate gauntlets.
“The crooked key,” she said. She held it up to the lantern light. The key was neither shell nor metal; it flashed like ice or diamonds.
The armored woman cautiously approached the desk and studied its many knobs and flanges. After only a moment’s hesitation, she plunged the crooked key into a gap between two pieces of metal, and turned it.
Everything turned: the levers on the desk, the designs on the walls, even some cast iron rods in the balcony overhead. Blue lights like those on Skaithness’s armor flickered on. Eilo wondered for a moment if he was about to be sliced in half like the slug, but the lights only glowed faintly as the machinery turned. Then the stone floor trembled and cracked, and brassy pillars pushed up past the balcony and into the ceiling. The banisher remembered the horrible rise of the green stone tower into the Old Rock, but that eruption had been a sickly, crooked thing; this was like watching a giant shake dust and earth off its strong, clean limbs and rise up from its long slumber to tower over the mountains.
Then a feeling of dread and despair washed over Eilo like a noxious wave, and even the implacable Skaithness gasped as she held the key in place. Eilo turned just as a dead hexguard flew into the room, torn and savaged by teeth and claws. He skidded through broken furniture to land against the stairs. A moment later the architecton—the demon of despair—flew into the room, spinning end over end, teeth and clawed limbs a blur as it fought Aklurian.
The demon flew right toward Skaithness, tumbling end over end through the air with Aklurian clinging to it. The armored woman hesitated, then yanked the key out of its socket and dropped to the ground. A second later, the demon careened off the metal desk, struck one of the new brass pillars with a resounding clang, then descended again toward them, mouths chewing, clawed hands lashing at the air. Three stakes protruded from its body, but they barely slowed it down.
Aklurian wielded one of the dead guard’s mauls. Blood and coiled viscera covered the head of the maul. The hexguard must have dipped it in one of his companion’s guts. When the hexguard struck the demon, the blood-soaked hammer tore into spirit-flesh, splattering the ground with filth, and the demon of despair howled piteously.
“I need to finish it!” Skaithness said. She fought her way back toward the desk with the key in her hand, ducking the demon’s lashing claws.
“No!” the banisher said, grabbing her shoulder. She was so weak now that he could stop her. “Look out!”
The demon plunged down on them again. Eilo swung his glaive and sheared off a tentacle; the demon flinched away and climbed back into the air. It shook back and forth, trying to dislodge Aklurian. The hexguard clung to one corner of the demon, hammering on it one-handed with the handle of his maul. More tentacles burst from the wounded demon flesh, wrapping around the brass columns and smashing into the desk. They couldn’t damage it, but Eilo knew what effect those tentacles would have on Skaithness, even through her armor, and kept pulling on her.
The armored woman finally relented, and they fell back toward the exit. Another mouth appeared in the demon and bit deep into Aklurian, breaking through his scale armor. The hexguard gasped, his ribs crushed, then spat in one of the demon’s eyes and kept hammering. With the demon’s teeth around him, he could hold the hammer in both hands again, and each two handed blow ripped away huge chunks of demon flesh. They were killing each other.
The spinning demon crashed into the ceiling again, cracking the stone balcony. Rocks fell. The banisher hurled himself through the doorway as a cloud of dust and grit washed over them. Everything went black. Eilo forced himself to his feet.
“Skaithness! Skaithness!” he shouted.
A faint blue light illuminated the hallway. Skaithness dragged herself out of the wreckage, dragging twisted pieces of iron with her, and fell to her knees, clutching the crooked key. The lights on her armor flickered as she rose. Then she immediately turned around and tried to get back inside.
“No!” the banisher shouted. Another impact, and another shower of debris, forced them farther back down the corridor. The banisher coughed as dust swirled around them and more stones fell.
“I can’t get in,” Skaithness said.
The banisher had to drag her away when she started to dig. He was almost certain that Skaithness was just a regular human, raised either by spirits or magicians, but sometimes she displayed the implacable compulsions of a bound spirit funneled through a hex sign or a pet cat trying to steal a piece of chicken. Finally, through some combination of sternness, rational argument, and main force, he got her back out into the tunnel, then back up onto the surface. Cavalry and artillery officers greeted them. The artillery officer Eilo had spoken to on the walls told him that Lady Ryphonia had arrested the remaining hexguards.
“But they can probably see the new tower from their cell,” one of the cavalry officers said. The officers laughed, then fell silent when Eilo glared at them: they had imprisoned him, after all.
“New tower?” Skaithness asked.
The artillerist gestured up at the half-formed tower. It rose seventy feet into the air, perfectly straight, thirty feet wide at its base and capped with a spiked metal sphere. It looked for all the world like a metal flower about to bloom, except the banisher knew that it wouldn’t bloom naturally: it needed Skaithness to finish turning the crooked key. Then it would expand into a full tower. Maybe a full palace, or a full city?
The banisher wanted to ask questions, but two sappers climbed out of the cave mouth and the artillery officer turned to them.
“Three days, I’d guess,” one said.
“Hear that, girl? Stop looking so down!” The artillery officer clapped Skaithness on the shoulder, then winced. “We have good people here, and we can dig through that rubble in three days. Once the battle is won, of course.”
“Three days of work?” Eilo asked.
“It’s not like the tunnel can collapse,” the artillerist said. “Solid metal and pieces of rock. So we don’t need to worry about bracing, just a bucket brigade to carry the junk out. That’s assuming the, uh, the demon in there is dead. I heard something about a demon.”
“It’s dead,” the banisher said. “So is Captain Aklurian.”
“Now obviously we can’t start now,” the artillerist said. “We need to get ready for the attack. Sails have been sighted, you know. But once it’s done—assuming we win, which of course we will—yeah, three days and we’ll dig out the room of yours. And you can finish, um, this.”
Everyone stared up at the tower. Skaithness fiddled with the crooked key.
But excavation would have to wait. As they headed back inside, they learned that Commodore Jancel’s carrack had gone out at night to scout. It reported the Trusted Seven’s fleet heading for the island: eleven ships, plus the monstrous shell thing pulled by sea dragons, Nowan de Valc’s flagship.
They would arrive the next day.
“But you did it,” the banisher told Skaithness. “You found the crooked key before the Mollusk Knight did. We’ll destroy him, and then we’ll create...whatever you’re supposed to create.”
Skaithness beamed. Eilo hoped she would make it that long—she had lost all of her fluid grace of movement, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.
The banisher got her back to their room and stuck her in her now-familiar position at the foot of his bed. Her mask snapped shut and she instantly fell asleep, the crooked key tucked into her skirt. Eilo washed himself off and checked himself for injuries. He was fine, so he crawled into bed and slept for a few hours. When he awoke, Skaithness was still asleep; she usually slept through the night watch. He headed outside to look at the docks.
“I gave you permission to explore a cave,” Lady Ryphonia said. She held a cut-glass lantern on a gilded chain. “Not to conjure up a giant metal dandelion.”
Rynne had changed into a white nightgown and a long fur coat to fend off the chill. Her cheeks were red from the cold wind.
“Skaithness has a destiny,” the banisher said, “and I’m not sure anyone can escape it.”
“I hope her destiny eats Nowan de Valc alive,” Rynne said. Then she sighed and started to walk. “I heard what happened to Aklurian. Now I regret giving you that order.”
“You said you didn’t give—”
“But I did,” Rynne said. “Now Aklurian is dead, along with two of his hexguards. I had to lock up the rest of them. I’ll put them on the walls to die quickly tomorrow. I don’t like killing, Eilo. Mostly because I don’t ever actually do it. I just give an order and...this spy is hanged, that traitor is killed. What right do I have? Because Duke Uleino couldn’t follow some rules, and because a dozen people in the line of succession ahead of me died or joined the clergy?”
The banisher nodded.
“I’ve never had to execute anyone,” he said. “I mean, like, a witch or a deomord, or anyone like that. I’ve killed people in fights, but I’ve never passed a death sentence, even though I know I have the right in certain cases. I’m not sure I could do it.”
“Then you’re better than I am,” Rynne said. She sat her lantern down on a polished marble table top. They had reached her apartment. “Why don’t you help me finish this bottle of wine,” she said. “I don’t want my head entirely clouded in what might be my last night of sleep.”
The apartment was modest, especially for a future duchess: a small meeting room lined with books, where she had set the lamp, a bath off to one side, and a bedroom that appeared to contain nothing except cushions, fur blankets, and tossed-aside gowns.
The banisher studied the books. They were an eclectic mix of history and geography, abstract mathematics and poetry, with a few crudely-printed bundles of plays. It was strange how strongly the collection reminded Eilo of the girl he had known at Castle Nysse, omnivorous and eager to learn anything, respectable or artless, important or frivolous.
“I still have those books I grabbed from Castle Nysse, somewhere,” Rynne said. “I tried to return them, but there was no one there. I’ve done a lot of things I regret. Mostly, things I’ve tried and failed to do. I wish I had become a banisher. Not just...I wish I had saved my parents. I don’t want to be an Emmer Duchess. I’m a scholar.” She laughed. “Listen to me, “a scholar.’ I’m a student. Six months ago, I was writing a thesis on economic incentives for Old Clan mercantile growth. I can’t do this, Eilo.”
A table along one wall held several musical instruments, including Rynne’s old harp and a new lute, as well as a mariner’s cutlass, several daggers, and a viciously spiked ax with a knuckle guard and a familiar mechanism near the thumb grip.
“I had it specially built from one of those books,” Rynne said. “I had to concoct my own banisher’s wine, but it works. I doubt my little ax will change anything in the battle tomorrow, but it’ll feel good to wear it.”
“Speaking of wine…” the banisher said.
Rynne found the bottle on another table, then picked it up. Only half a swig remained.
“Damn handmaidens,” she said. “I’d yell at them, but I already sent them to bed.” She poured the last drops into a glass and handed them to Eilo. He was thirsty, so he drank.
“We’ll have to find something else to do,” Rynne said.
“Rynne, I—”
She kissed him.
The banisher pulled away, then looked into Rynne’s hazel eyes and counted the freckles on her nose. Some foolish notion of propriety encouraged him to devise a reason to leave. He couldn’t find one. He dropped the glass next to the bottle and kissed her, then moved her toward the bedroom. She dragged him along, scrambling at his jacket and then wrenching his shirt over his head. She had already lost her fur coat, which she flung onto the bed along with the other furs and gowns. He tore her nightdress open, kissed her throat, her breasts, then shoved her down onto the pile of gowns. He took a moment to wrap them both in a fur.
There was no light in the bedroom, which was a shame, as he wanted to see her. Instead he had only the taste of her lips, which was enough. Her taste, and the soft sighs of her voice, which soon turned to gasps, and then to delighted screams.
*