Sichilde had no answer for that.

  “Well,” said Mauriana at last, “since neither pain nor humiliation mean anything to you, I am sending you to Magister Vasily.” She smiled. “I suspect he will know how to reach you.”

  “Oh,” sighed Sichilde.

  ~o0o~

  Magister Vasily never raised his voice when he got angry, which alarmed Sichilde to no end.

  Her father had been much the same way. Maerwulf had been prone to spectacular rages. Yet when he had grown quiet, when his voice had become cold and deadly, that had frightened Sichilde.

  That meant someone was about to die.

  And Vasily always talked like that.

  “You disappoint me, Sichilde,” said Vasily. He was a Callian man in his middle forties, trim and lean, his black hair and goatee going gray. Unlike most Adepts or Magisters, he always went armed, a sword and dagger at his waist. Some demons were strong enough to suppress even a Magister’s magic, and Vasily believed a man had to be prepared.

  He had brought her to the Conclave years ago. By now Sichilde realized that the Conclave had many secrets it did not want known in the Nine Kingdoms, and one of them was that the Magisters squabbled constantly. They presented a unified face in public, but amongst themselves they formed into different Colleges to pursue different goals. The College Novitia devoted itself to finding new Initiates to enroll. The College Dominia focused upon influencing the decisions of the nobles and kings for the greater good, while the College Excorisia hunted down demons.

  Vasily was one of the chief Magisters of the College Excorisia.

  That was how he had found Sichilde. His companions had urged him to kill her, believing her a danger. But Vasily had said...

  “Do you know why I brought you here?” said Vasily.

  They stood atop one of the towers of the inner Ring, the wind tugging at their robes as they gazed down at the city.

  “Because I have magical talent,” said Sichilde, “and because I am demonborn. Which means I can sense the presence of demons, even without using a spell. That will make me useful to your work.”

  “Yes,” said Vasily. “The demons that possess corpses and turn them into ghouls are usual easy to find. But some are clever enough to hide themselves in living bodies. Or they have the active cooperation of their hosts, as many of the Jurgurs did, and conceal themselves. Your ability would be invaluable...if you can learn to control yourself.”

  “I can,” said Sichilde. She wanted to become an Adept, join the College Excorisia, and use her magic to help hunt the demons that had brought so much woe to the Jurgur nation.

  To hunt the demons that had slain her mother.

  “Truly?” said Vasily. “Your actions today do not seem to reflect that. An Adept must have iron control over himself. More immediately, surviving the Testing requires iron control. If you pass the Testing, you become an Adept...and if you fail, you die. Right now, I fear that you would die.”

  “Then tell me what I will face during the Testing,” said Sichilde.

  “No,” said Vasily. “By the law of the Conclave, those who survive the Testing never speak of it.” He stared at her for a long time. Few people could meet her gaze, but Vasily could, and it made her uneasy. No doubt he had seen more frightening things than a gaunt eighteen-year-old girl with red eyes.

  “Why do you wish to fight demons?” he said.

  “Because I hate them,” said Sichilde. “Because my father bound one within my mother, and it killed her.”

  “Is that all?” said Vasily. “Revenge?”

  Sichilde gave a shrug. “Is there anything else?”

  Vasily nodded, as if she had confirmed something. “Your penance shall be a week of work with Magister Taldez.”

  Sichilde winced. “He will want me to organize his library.”

  “Most likely,” said Vasily. “I understand he has recently acquired three hundred new tomes of Orlanish poetry.”

  “And he will talk,” said Sichilde. “And talk, and talk, and talk.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Vasily. He smiled. “Still, he is so old that you need not worry he will make inappropriate advances.”

  Sichilde glared at him, but his smile only widened.

  “That was a joke,” said Vasily.

  “It was not funny,” said Sichilde.

  Vasily shrugged. “Well, humor was never my strength.”

  “Is that the point of this?” said Sichilde. “To teach me patience? To learn compassion from taking care of a feeble old man?”

  “No,” said Vasily, “the point is to punish you. Off you go. Do watch out for mice—they tend to burrow into poor old Taldez’s books.”

  Sichilde sighed and walked away.

  ~o0o~

  The next day Sichilde presented herself at Taldez’s apartment in the Inner Ring and looked in dismay at his library.

  Every Magister received a spacious apartment in the inner Ring, but Taldez had ripped out the walls between his sitting room, his dining room, and his study to create one massive library. Perhaps it had once been organized, but that had been decades before Sichilde had been born. Shelves lined all four walls, and every last one of them had been stuffed to capacity with books, scrolls, loose papers, random oddities, and ancient tablets of baked clay. Three long tables ran the length of the room, curving beneath the weight of more books and scrolls. More volumes had been stacked against the shelves, some of the piles rising so high than they almost reached the ceiling. The air smelled of dust and ancient paper.

  Or maybe that was just Magister Taldez.

  The old man tottered at Sichilde’s side, leaning upon his cane. He was scarecrow-thin, his crimson robe and Magister’s stole hanging around him like a tent. The Jurgurs honored their elders, given that the constant internecine warfare between the clans made it rare for a Jurgur man to live past fifty. Yet the Conclave had been founded fifteen centuries past, after the Old Empire had released the demons and destroyed itself, and Sichilde half-suspected that Magister Taldez had already been ancient then.

  “Capital, capital,” said Taldez, beaming at her. “The Jurgur princess. Capital.”

  “I am not a princess,” said Sichilde.

  Taldez blinked his watery eyes. “Was not your father the king of the Jurgurs?”

  “He was not,” said Sichilde. “He was a blood shaman and a war chieftain, the greatest my nation has seen. But the Jurgurs have no king.” Though it was an amusing thought. Maerwulf had taken dozens of wives and the Divine only knew how many concubines, siring hundreds of children in the process. Sichilde had only met about a quarter of her half-siblings before Maerwulf’s defeat, and the thought of hundreds of demonborn bastards struggling to claim a nonexistent crown was darkly amusing.

  “Eh?” said Taldez. “Well, no matter. No matter. Whatever you were, you are not now.”

  “Profound,” said Sichilde. Fortunately the Magister was oblivious to her sarcasm.

  “You are now an Initiate, which is a far superior calling,” said Taldez. “Now, where shall you begin? Alphabetically, I think. By both author and title. And then we must cross-index. By topic and language. That seems logical, does not it?”

  Sichilde gazed at the books in dismay. Since coming to the Ring, she had learned the High Imperial tongue, and had become proficient in Callian and Saranian, the chief languages of the Nine Kingdoms. But she didn’t speak most of the languages she saw upon the shelves. She didn’t even recognize some of them.

  “As you wish,” said Sichilde, but the old man didn’t hear. He wandered into his bedchamber and closed the door behind him, humming to himself.

  Sichilde sighed and looked over the books. She did not know if Vasily had intended this to teach her a lesson or as some sort of joke, but it was certainly a vexing punishment. Perhaps she could bribe some of the Initiates working in the Conclave’s Great Library to help her catalog the books. Or perhaps Taldez would even forget that Sichilde had been here.

  The door to the bedchamber swung open, and a sweet smell filled Sichilde’s nostrils.

  “Spiced cider,” said Taldez, tottering into the library. He set the wooden cup upon a stack of books and smiled. “Keeps the joints warm, yes? Good for this sort of work.”

  Sichilde smiled back, almost against her will. The expression felt peculiar upon her face. “Thank you.”

  Taldez hummed again and stepped back into his bedchamber, the door clicking shut behind him.

  For a moment Sichilde was so moved that tears almost sprang to her eyes. No one ever brought her hot drinks. Well, her mother had, long ago, before the demon had started eating her mind. Sichilde picked up the cup and raised it to her lips. She would do her best with the library. She might not be able to organize the books, but perhaps she could convince the Ring’s seneschal to install extra shelves. At the very least the old man would not be breathing dust and...

  She froze.

  A familiar smell came from the cup.

  It was not cider.

  Sichilde stuck her thumb into the cup and rubbed it against her forefinger. She felt the faint trace of grit, of powder floating in the liquid, disguised by the spices.

  A drug. She did not know its name, but she knew what it did. Her father had used it to induce trances, to send his mind into the astral world to speak with his high demon. She suspected a Magister of the Conclave would not know of that use...but would almost certainly know that in sufficient quantities the drug caused unconsciousness.

  “The old lecher,” muttered Sichilde. No inappropriate advances, indeed! Her first impulse was to storm into his bedchamber and confront him. No, that was a mistake. If he knew he was exposed, he would become desperate, and her magic was no match for the spells of a Magister.

  But still...

  She summoned magic and worked the spell to sense the presence of arcane forces. At once she felt the mighty, ancient wards surrounding the Ring, guarding it from arcane and demonic attack. And she also felt a spell from behind the door of Taldez’s bedchamber.

  A spell she recognized at once.

  Her father had employed it.

  Something caught her eye. A gray scrap of fabric, snagged upon the sharp leather corner of a heavy book.

  The fabric of an Initiate’s robe.

  She thought a trapdoor spider lurking in the ground, waiting for a victim to blunder into its trap.

  Just how many Initiates had been invited to organize Taldez’s library over the years?

  Sichilde whispered a curse and pushed open the bedchamber door as quietly as she could. The bedchamber was just as cluttered and dusty as the library. Books leaned against the walls, and the only free space was a path to the unkempt bed, the sour reek of sweat heavy in the air.

  The room was deserted.

  Sichilde frowned. There was a window on the far wall. It was a hundred and fifty feet to the grounds below, but she supposed Taldez could have levitated himself down with a spell of psychokinesis. Or he could have used a spell of illusion to conceal himself, or an astraljump spell to travel a short distance away. Again Sichilde worked the spell to detect magic. She sensed no illusion spells, nor any of the telltale eddies that lingered for a few moments after an astraljump.

  But she felt the familiar spell upon the wall next to the bed, powerful and complex.

  And a clear path led through the clutter to it.

  Sichilde strode towards the wall, her heart hammering against her ribs.

  She knew that spell. It was a powerful spell of blood sorcery, an art forbidden by the laws of the Conclave, but one that Taldez apparently had employed nonetheless. It created a sanctum within the astral world, one only accessible to the caster.

  But Sichilde thought she could open this one.

  She cast the sensing spell again, probing the structure of the magic upon the wall. Then she nodded to herself, concentrated, and gathered power. She worked another spell, and short bursts of silver astralfire stabbed from her fingers. Silver astralfire could harm neither demons nor mortal men, but it attacked the fabric of spells.

  The spell shuddered...and then the wall itself seemed to ripple. A gateway of silver light appeared over the stonework, and a cold wind brushed at Sichilde, tugging at her hair and robes.

  The entrance to the sanctum.

  Sichilde took a deep breath and stepped into the wall.

  The gateway took hold of her.

  It felt like an astraljump. A moment of disorientation and blackness. A squeezing sensation, like she was trying to force her body into a garment too small. Then the darkness cleared, and Sichilde found herself standing in a hall of crimson marble, the stone seeming to writhe ever so slightly beneath her boots.

  A half-dozen stone tables lined the hall, and unconscious Initiates rested upon them, boys and girls both. Sichilde spotted Adelaide, her eyes closed, her breath rising and falling in shallow gasps. But that was impossible. Sichilde had seen the haughty Initiate just yesterday in Magister Mauriana’s study. How had she gotten here?

  Then an alien presence brushed against Sichilde’s thoughts, cold and malevolent, and alarm flooded through her.

  Demons. She sensed demons.

  “Well, well. I wondered if you might find your way here.”

  She turned her head as the wall flowed apart, a doorway appearing, and Taldez stepped into sight. Gone was the affable dreaminess, the lassitude. His face was hard and focused.

  And in his bloodshot eyes Sichilde saw a glimmer of crimson fire.

  Her mother’s eyes had looked much the same way, before the end.

  “You,” said Sichilde.

  “Yes, how eloquent,” said Taldez. “But the Jurgurs were not known for their oratory, were they?”

  “You’re possessed,” said Sichilde.

  “That,” said Taldez, standing on the far side of the table holding Adelaide, “is an oversimplification. I prefer to think of it as a...partnership. A symbiosis.” An eerie reverberation entered his words as he spoke, almost like an echo.

  Like two voices were speaking through his mouth at the same time.

  “There’s a demon in your head,” said Sichilde, flexing her fingers as she summoned power for a spell, “and I think you summoned it there deliberately.”

  “Oh, very good,” said Taldez. He smiled, the crimson glare in his eyes brightening. “I thought Vasily might send you. He’s been suspicious of me for some time, but Magisters do not accuse other Magisters. It goes against tradition, and the Conclave is nothing if not an ossified mass of obsolete traditions.” His smile widened. “Vasily thinks you are clever. Are you clever enough to realize what is happening here?”

  “Vasily is part of the College Excorisia,” said Sichilde.

  “You know about the Colleges?” said Taldez. “Most Initiates do not learn about them until after the Testing. If they survive the ordeal.”

  “The College Excorisia is devoted to hunting down demons,” said Sichilde. “Which means Vasily and the College Excorisia suspect you of consorting with demons.” Rather accurately, as it turned out. “But since it is improper for Magisters to accuse each other...he sent me here to investigate. No. To see if I sensed any demons, as I sense a demon within you.”

  Taldez nodded. “Yes. Very good. Very good, indeed.”

  “What is all this, then?” said Sichilde, gesturing at the unconscious Initiates.

  “Oh, I lured them here, of course,” said Taldez. “I could have commanded them as a Magister, but that would have been no fun. And it might have put them on their guard.” He laughed. “But they’re glad to help old Magister Taldez, so confused and helpless.”

  “And then you drug them and bring them here,” said Sichilde.

  Taldez nodded.

  “Why?” said Sichilde.

  “All in good time, child,” said Taldez. “You see, first you have to decide if you are strong enough.”

  “Strong enough for what?” said Sichilde.

  “To see the path of wisdom,” said Taldez. He made a dismissive gesture at the unconscious Initiates. “These other fools, they have no vision. They believe the lies the Temple and the Conclave have pumped into their heads for all their lives. That demons are evil, that demons are the eternal foes of mankind. But you, my dear, are Jurgur. More, you are even the daughter of Maerwulf himself, the most powerful blood shaman the Jurgur nation produced.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” said Sichilde.

  “Because,” said Taldez, “you worshipped demons. You revered them as the gods of your elders.”

  Sichilde opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it.

  He thought she revered the demons of the astral world as gods, as the Jurgur nation had done.

  Her father had been a cruel and brutal man, but he had been fond of saying that only a fool interrupted his enemies’ mistakes, and Sichilde saw no reason to disagree with that.

  “Go on,” said Sichilde.

  “Revering the demons as gods is mere superstition,” said Taldez, “but closer to the truth than the Conclave’s hidebound ignorance. We call them ‘demons’, but in truth they are a different form of life. A resource to be used. The mages of the Old Empire summoned and bound demons, and using their power built a civilization that spanned a continent, an empire of glittering cities and limitless prosperity.”

  “As I recall,” said Sichilde, “the Old Empire burned in the flames of its own hubris. The demons preyed upon us.”

  Taldez scoffed. “We shall learn from the mistakes of the past. You know of the Colleges, Initiate? There is another College, a secret one. We who are members of the Secret College have sworn to use demons for the greater good, to use their powers to elevate mankind to a new stage of evolution. Alone, a man is weak and mortal. A demon has no physical form. But bound in our flesh...they become something new and powerful.”

  “Like you,” said Sichilde.

  Taldez nodded.

  “And that is why you have kidnapped these Initiates,” said Sichilde. “You are going to use them in your experiments, to bind demons into their flesh.”

  “Yes,” said Taldez. “They are useless fools, and suitable subjects for experimentation. A demon fused to the raw power of an Adept can become quite powerful.”