The demon king, p.24
The Demon King, page 24
“We need to get everyone out of here,” I say. “And we can’t go anywhere Apatos knew about.”
“How will the elders find us again if we do that?” Elina’s voice is a squeak.
“She’s right.” Damon’s voice is flat, but his aura is lucid. He wants to fall apart, but he’s got a job to do first, keeping his tribe safe.
I know exactly how he feels. Ent a pain I’d wish on anyone.
“Apatos knew of dozens of villages,” Damon says. “More than a single spire, or even all of Hive’s forces, could attack at once, especially without notice. We have no reason to think they are coming here tonight. We should prepare to flee but wait for the elders to return.”
I want to support him. I want to help him. Damon doesn’t deserve this pain, this burden. But he ent thinking things through, and that means I gotta be the one to tell him.
“I met the Judges,” I say. “Ent a dim one on that court. They know who they got, and they know your elders will come for her. Reckon there’s a good chance they’re walking into a bushwhack.”
“If even one of them is caught…” Cirene leads.
“They may lead the Watch right back here,” Damon finishes, gritting his teeth.
“The other villages need to be warned, too,” I say.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Damon’s second, Nik, asks. He’s got a couple years on me, tall and muscly in the way girls like, baring his arms even in the winter chill. He’s also got one of the brightest auras in the tribe.
“You ever dissipate?” I ask.
Suddenly this big fellow’s aura goes self-conscious, and I see his face heat. “Once…I think.”
Some kid blows a raspberry, and there’s laughter in the crowd. I worry Nik will steam, but he laughs along with the others.
I look to Damon. “Anyone else?”
“I can do it, a little,” Damon says. “And Kasha. But even if we all figured out how to fly, finding the other villages will be difficult and slow. Most of us have only been to a few of them.”
“Flyin’s kid stuff,” I say. “Going to teach you to skate.”
Chapter 18
Music Lessons
“Watch close,” I say, holding up my hand. It’s just me, Cirene, Damon, Nik, and Kasha in the field, but I know the rest of the tribe is watching. That’s all right. Funny how these folk are so advanced in some ways and so behind in others.
I point at the dirt, willing my particles apart, like blowing out a deep breath. My hand explodes silently into mist, and I send an infinitely small tendril of it down along the ground, drifting until it finds a vent.
“Magic radiates up to the surface from the Core through a web of naturally occurring vents that reach around the world and back,” I say as I probe the pathway. “They branch and branch in infinite directions, going just about everywhere a body could want to go. In the between-state, we can ride them instantly, going almost anywhere in less time than it takes to blink an eye.”
No one looks convinced.
“Vents flow up, not down.” Damon’s sucking in, keeping his scent and aura to himself, at least as long as he concentrates. Sucking in’s like tensing a muscle or holding a breath. Can’t do it forever.
Don’t need scent or aura to read him, though. Still got little patterns in his voice, little tells in how he moves and stands at rest. Damon ent in a good place, but he ent looking to pick a fight, either. Just being careful and not getting his hopes up. He needs proof, and I aim to give it to him.
“Ent like swimming upstream,” I say. “Magic only drifts up when there’s no will to control it. When you’re in the stream, the stream goes where you want it to go.”
“How do you know where you want it to go, if there are infinite choices?” Kasha ent got more than thirteen summers. Just a slip of a thing, but Cirene says her parents were slipping Kasha ichor when she was in nappies and took her on raids when she was knee-high. Reckon she’s more than strong enough to dissipate, but her aura is…feral. Dangerous.
“Ent an exact science,” I admit. “Takes a few tries, first time you go someplace too far to see. Can end up a couple miles short or a hundred miles long. Once you get used to a path, it gets easier. Best to start with short hops.”
I explore the vent by my feet, tracing its path along a stretch of solid rock just under the surface soil that runs to the other end of the field.
I let the rest of my body slide apart and slip down into the vent, re-forming across the field so quickly that for a moment, it appears I am standing in two places at once.
Damon blinks. “Impossible.”
Quick as lightning I skate back. “How do you think I crossed the sea?” I ask in Damon’s ear, even as he’s looking at me across the field. “Didn’t have a boat.”
Damon jumps, fists up, and I realize that was mean. I step back, palms up to him. “Sorry. Sometimes I don’t think about how people feel when I do things to make a point.”
Damon’s aura flickers into my vision, but he’s quick to suck it back in. He’s got a strong will. He waves my apology away. “I know what that’s like, Prince Darin. The cure would help you.”
“Ay?” I say, hoping they don’t have a bottle of ichor lying around. “I’ll give that some thought.”
“You think we can do…that?” Kasha pulls us back to the original subject. She ent looking fierce anymore.
“Ent sayin’ it’s going to be easy,” I say.
“It’s a trick,” Nik says.
“Oh, ay?” I ask. “Go stand on the other side.”
His brows narrow, but he does, crossing the field while Kasha stays with us.
“Cirene.” I hold out a finger, and she knows what I mean, touching her fingertip to mine and opening herself to a link.
“Now you see us,” I call to Nik as I skate Cirene with me across the field to materialize right behind him. “Now you don’t.”
Nik ent as surprised as Damon, but he still jumps.
“Do you still think it is a trick?” Cirene asks.
“You can dissipate?” Damon cries, seeing his sister across the field. “You have not Eaten.”
Quick as hummingbird flap, we’re back next to him, this time with a little personal space. “She can’t do it without help…yet.”
“But you can.” Damon is still skeptical. “Though you have not Eaten to regulate your body, mind, and aura.”
“Dissipation ent about all that,” I say. “It’s about power. Maybe I ent an Eater myself, but I reckon my parents Ate more than your whole village combined, and I was born in the center of a demon hive.”
That starts folk talkin’. Even Cirene sucks in a breath. She could have seen it in my memories if she’d looked, but she respects my privacy like I do hers. She might learn things without meaning to, but she ent prying.
Now I feel support pouring through her connection. When folk ask about being born in Nie’s abyss, I can pretend it don’t hurt to talk about, but she’s keyed into the heart of me now and sees through all that.
Ent used to this kind of intimacy, but I also don’t want it to end. Neither does she. But we got work to do. I pull my hand back, our demonstration made.
“It isn’t just power, or we would be able to do it.” I can hear the frustration in Damon’s voice, even if he hides his scent.
“Your elders ent taught you?” I ask.
“Few of them can become fully immaterial as you,” Damon says. “And they guard the secret closely. There have been…accidents.”
I shudder, but I know what he’s talking about. Magic ent some sandbox you can play in without risk. It’s a forest fire you need to survive.
“The art is new in any event,” Damon goes on. “Hive killed most of the original Eaters when the mind court took over the republic a century ago. Eaters were a part of society until then, and the wardnet prevents dissipation.”
For the first time I think on that. “Because a demon that dissipates can slip its tether. Fact that it affects Eaters is just a coincidence.”
Damon nods. “Just so. There was no reason to learn until we were driven out of Hive’s protective net.”
“All right, then,” I say. “We’ll start small.”
* * *
—
Damon’s probably right that no one’s coming for the village tonight, but he ent careless. Got kids in the treetops scanning the horizon with eyes every bit as sharp as mine. If a flight of wind demons heads our way, we’ll have warning.
I try not to think of it, keeping my attention on my three students. Cirene’s collected a bag of acorns to help with practice.
“Dissipating’s just like going slippery,” I say. “It’s all about relaxation.”
“It’s difficult to relax when it feels like you’re tearing your own body apart,” Kasha growls, rubbing at the spot where an acorn bounced off her forehead. “It would be easier to saw off my own arm.”
“Ay, it hurts,” I say. “And letting go when something hurts don’t feel natural, but you can do it. Pain’s just a sense like any other. You can teach yourself to ignore it.”
Kasha sucks in a breath, but she nods. I lead the group through the breathing exercises Mam taught me when I was knee-high and scared as a rabbit. “With each breath, let go a little more. When the pain comes, don’t tense up and suck in. Do the opposite.”
“Explode?” Even I can pick up on Kasha’s sarcasm.
I smile. “Exactly.”
I watch their auras as they breathe, seeing how easily they go slippery but then strain to take it further. Pain flares in their misty glows, but they hold on, stretching more and more. Damon seems to flicker as his body comes close to dissipation, then pulls back suddenly.
Nik is barely slippery. Reckon a big one like him doesn’t need to run and hide as much as some of us. He’s trying his best, but it’s not working, and the more frustrated he gets, the harder it is.
But Kasha is close. All of us know it. Her body becomes translucent, and I can hear whispers of wonder all around us. She slips further, and it looks like she’s got it. I raise a finger, and Cirene throws an acorn.
Again it skips off her slippery forehead without passing through, breaking her concentration. She bares her teeth with a growl, crossing the distance to Cirene so fast she might as well have skated.
Fast as she is, Damon is faster, interposing himself between them and staring Kasha down.
Kasha ignores him, bending around Damon to stare Cirene in the eye. “Hit me with another acorn and I will put one through your skull the natural way.”
“That’s enough, Kasha!” Damon draws a ward to amplify his shout, and she recoils, covering her ears. All over the village there are moans of pain, one of them my own.
But Damon knew what he was doing. Broke whatever spell the magic worked to amplify her natural irritation. Magic and emotion are inextricably tied, and that gives me an idea.
“Sit and watch for a while.” Damon nods to the grass where a few others have taken a place to watch the training. It isn’t a question, and Kasha doesn’t argue, even though her aura is still hot and crackling.
“You have a seat, too, Nik,” I say. “Let’s try something different with just Damon.”
Damon doesn’t look thrilled to be singled out, but he knows it will bring the temperature down. I take up my pipes and give Damon what I hope is a comforting nod. “Close your eyes, listen, and relax.”
Damon complies as I flick my tongue over my lips and touch them to the reeds. Been too long since I last played my pipes, and as they come to life in my hands, all feels right in the world for the first time since I don’t know when.
Folk wouldn’t guess it to look at me, but I’m a big bundle of emotions just about all the time. The only time I’m at peace is when I’m letting them all out in my music, translating them into sound the same way I translate the Hivers’ funny dialect of Krasian in my head.
I can hear the others in the village creeping in to better hear and see. Some of it’s curiosity, but I hear gentle humming in time with my playing as folk pick up the patterns. Just about everyone was an Eater’s child once, born with the same senses and the constant activation that came with trying to keep up with them.
Music was the way I found to calm myself, and it seems like I’m not the only one. More voices join the humming chorus. Drumming fingers against the branches of trees around us add gentle percussion. Rather than insisting on silence, I weave all those other sounds into my spell.
And it is a spell. My hero, Rojer Halfgrip, all but invented fiddle magic. Folk called him the fiddle wizard, but they didn’t mean it literally. Just thought it was a trick—that corelings liked some sounds and hated others and Halfgrip had a sense of it. Even he thought that when he first started charming demons.
It was true in part, but it wasn’t the whole. Magic is formless without will, and will is driven by emotion. Magic and emotion are inextricably mixed.
When you manipulate emotions with music, those emotions affect the ambient magic around them, which in turn enhances those desires, which affects more ambient magic. Trick doesn’t work in Hive proper, where the wardnet sucks up all the ambient power, but out here in the wild, the effect builds in power as it cycles.
All around, the Eater tribe falls into a kind of trance, led by my pipes. Heartbeats and breathing slow, driven by rhythms I create. Fiery Kasha’s aura becomes nearly identical to Nik beside her and the others surrounding them. Everyone’s stepping out of their head and into the music.
Damon’s calming with the rest, but he ent forgotten the assignment. His aura flickers in view as he goes slippery. I can see how much he’s hurting still, but so was I the first time I learned this trick. Sometimes pain’s just a path like any other. More often than I’d like, it’s the one I’ve had to walk.
I meet Cirene’s gaze, but she’s under the spell, too, starin’ at me with eyes fit to hypnotize right back. I give my head a little shake to snap myself out of it and get her attention. I nod toward Damon.
She’s quick to come out of the trance and throw. Reckon it don’t take much motivation to get a sister to bean her older brother with an acorn. Still caught in the music, the whole tribe watches the nut fly with the same calm detachment.
Then it passes through Damon, dissolving him like fanning a hand through a smoke ring.
I keep playing, adding elation to the music before folk erupt into a chaos of cheers that might break the spell. Damon holds himself in the between-state, drifting over the snow like morning fog. Slowly, he pulls himself back together, mist forming into smoky limbs and body, then solidifying fully.
Everyone’s attention is fixed on Damon. I can smell it. Feel it in the air. But I have them, too, and keep the hold, playing pride and praise and hope and joy into my song as easily as if I were singing words.
The impromptu chorus follows my lead, and suddenly the whole village is in on it, cheering in music as we shower pride on our brother.
Cirene’s brother, I remind myself. Don’t know these people. Not really.
But deep down, I feel like I do. My friends love me and try hard to understand me. Eaters understand without trying. That’s somethin’ I ent felt since Mam and the Warded Children disappeared. Din’t think I’d ever feel it again.
* * *
—
Kasha’s chompin’ at the bit to try again after Damon gets it. She pours a handful of acorns into Cirene’s palm, smiling.
“Hit me if you can.” Challenge radiates off her, but not the threatening kind like before. She smells of hope and confidence. “Anything Damon can do, I can do.”
She ent wrong. Village backs my music from the start this time, but before I have time to build it like I did with Damon, Kasha’s already puffing away like our breath in the chill air.
Nik follows soon after, and once they get the hang of it, ent long before they can do it even without the music. Then it becomes a game, with kids gathering acorns, trying to distract my three students with hoots and hollers long enough to bean them with an acorn.
I show them the little path under the snow, and suddenly skating back and forth across the field becomes a game, too. Skate, solidify long enough to chalk a slate, then skate back to the other side to do the same. Folk are laughin’ and bettin’ on who will have the most points before dawn.
Damon’s eyes have a new light by then. Ent a metaphor to say hope is in the air as the Eaters feel their strength and that confidence affects the ambient magic.
Cirene’s another story. Like Olive, she’s got enough magic in her blood for me to drag her, but not enough to dissipate on her own steam. She tries and tries but doesn’t come close to getting there. None of the others do, not even the ones who Ate.
“That’s enough for tonight,” I tell them when the sky starts to lighten. “Don’t want to dissipate and come up in a sunbeam.” I don’t say what that will do to them, and I don’t have to. Eaters can stand the sun when they’re solid, but in the between-state they’re made of nothing but magic, and the sun burns magic away.
“Come nightfall we can practice skatin’ someplace new,” I go on. “Short hops are easy. You can probe the path to anyplace you can see before you go into the vent. Soon you’ll be able to go to places you can’t see.”
“We’ll be able to skate to the other villages and warn them,” Nik says.
“More than that,” Damon says. “This is only the beginning.”
* * *
—
“There’s another reason why we cannot abandon the village yet,” Damon announces when we are back in his sound-warded hut away from prying ears. “Something the elders entrusted to me and me alone.”
