Thaumatology 12: Vengeance (24 page)

‘She’ll surpass me,’ Gwyn said. ‘She has my mate’s genes in her as well.’

Ceri kept working and said nothing. She knew she was powerful, but the thought that she might surpass the most powerful dragon sorceress ever…

She felt Lily shifting somewhere behind her, sensing her disquiet. Happy thoughts. They were getting somewhere with the maths, and the demons, especially Aktik, were grasping the mathematics the thaumatologists were putting before them. Now it was just a matter of explaining how to do it better.

Herne Hill, London.

Kate was weeding. It was spring and the unwanted plants were starting to rear their heads, and she got little enough time to tend her garden so it was a pleasure to have a little time to work on it now.

It was more or less mindless work. Being a witch’s garden some of the plants in it might have been considered weeds by a more mundane gardener, but she knew what she was doing and the physical work was done almost automatically. It left her mind to drift and she had found that ideas would come to her while gardening which might have remained submerged otherwise.

Now her mind brought up the image of the man who had hit her while Lo Chan was escaping their first attack. She had not got a good look at him, but she knew there was something about him which had been distinctive. It was just that her memory was not providing the detail when she
tried
to see it.

He had been tall, thin… Oriental, maybe Chinese. Well that sort of fitted with Lo Chan. He had struck at Kate… struck at her backhanded with his left hand. That was something. It had been an unnatural move, clumsy, even if effective. Why his left hand? Of course he could have been left-handed, but there was something else…

Her hands paused as the image of his retreating back came to her mind. It was uneven. She closed her eyes, seeing the image there in front of her and she knew what it was she was
not
seeing.

The man who had attacked her, who had been working with Chan, had had no right hand.

Castle of Bones, Demon Realm.

Ceri was unsure of exactly how long they had been working on the problem, but when Gwyn had suggested they take a break she had suddenly realised how tired she was and agreed.

Hiffy and a team of servants had brought food and drink to the reception room of the Overlord’s suite. It was not the slightly more intimate room Ceri generally entertained in when in the castle, but it could seat more people and she thought it likely that her mystique would survive better if they sat there.

Right now she was sitting watching Gwyn and Carter trying to teach Cheryl how to cast a spell while the demons sat around watching her with some consternation. Demons, the full ones, were all magically talented. Even det, who were not, could work magic in the strong field of their world, if they could learn the processes necessary to do so.

‘Your friend clearly
knows
a great deal about magic, has she never worked a simple spell before?’ The speaker was Maganola, the one female in the party of Guandosh. She was fairly obviously female; all five of them were dressed in what amounted to expensive loincloths, which left Maganola’s firm, quite full, breasts on display.

‘Earth has a very weak magical field compared to here,’ Ceri replied. ‘The det here find it far harder to work magic than demons do, yes?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, Cheryl is to Carter what a det is to you. She understands the mechanisms of magic better than Carter does, but she has no innate talent for it. It means she can’t normally generate the power necessary on Earth, or she would have huge difficulty anyway.’ It was a proven fact that
every
living thing could catalyse T-Null decay to create magical energy. That was what differentiated living things from inanimate objects. Sorcerers simply did it more easily, and mages and demons were able to use it to direct existing magic to their purpose. A normal, like Cheryl, needed more magic around them to be effective, but Cheryl was trying to do something even more complex.

‘She seems to be having more trouble than a typical det,’ Maganola observed.

‘Ah well, what Cheryl is doing is applying her magical theory to create the spell. She’s actually trying to do what Gwyn and I do rather than what Carter or you might. Well… You know some ritual magic?’

‘I do.’

‘So you use that to improvise magic you haven’t specifically learned, or work spells which would normally be too difficult. I improvise almost all my magic, using my knowledge of how it works to produce the effect.’

‘You can do that?’ Aktik put in. ‘
I
could do that?’

‘Theoretically, yes.’

Gwyn was wearing her patient smile, the one she reserved for trying to teach someone who was not getting it. ‘Relax,’ she said, in English. ‘You have the form you wish to create in your mind? The equations necessary to focus and direct the energy?’

‘Yes,’ Cheryl replied, her eyes focussed on the palm of her right hand.

‘Now, imagine the energy growing at the base of your spine. Feel it rise. Feel it flow upward until it fills your mind. See the equation, in your mind, fill it with that energy…’

There was a slight flicker in the air above Cheryl’s palm. Her eyes widened and her hand trembled, and the flicker steadied, becoming a globe of soft, bluish light about as bright as a candle. The thaumatologist gasped, lowering her hand, and the light remained hanging in the air.

‘Oh…’ Cheryl breathed.

‘Well done,’ Carter said, beaming like a teacher whose student had just cracked some difficult problem. ‘And from scratch too. That is really quite remarkable.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Cheryl whispered, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

Ceri remembered how Cheryl had reacted when she had given her boss a glimpse of what it was like to have the Sight at Stonehenge. The look of wonder which had come over the thaumatologist’s face had been almost childlike. This was more or less the same.

‘It’s just a light spell,’ Maganola commented.

‘When you cast your first ever spell,’ Ceri asked her, ‘were you not elated?’

‘I… I suppose I was excited when it finally worked,’ the demon admitted.

‘Now imagine that you never thought you would
ever
be able to do that. Not ever.’

Demons were not empathic creatures as a rule; asking her to imagine such a circumstance was probably a little mean, but she was either a good actress or the thought was horrific enough to hit home. ‘Ah,’ Maganola said. ‘Then perhaps her reaction is… understandable. What of your first spell, Lady Ayasha? Did you react this way?’

‘Not exactly,’ Ceri replied, ‘but the circumstances were different. The first time I cast a spell I blew a hole the size of your head in someone.’

The demons fell silent. Ceri gave them a quick glance: they were looking slightly shocked. No, they were looking awed. Well, that was not entirely a bad thing. She had a feeling that that story was going to get spread around fairly quickly. Demons were attracted to power and if they could not have it, they wanted the people above them in the hierarchy to have it in spades.

Beside her, Lily stirred, leaning toward Ceri, but smiling at the Guandosh. ‘It was her great power, even before she took up Gorefguhadget’s crown, which attracted me to my Mistress. Is she not the most desirable Mistress any demons could have?’

Ceri winced inside, but kept the expression off her face. She knew Lily was hamming it up a bit for the benefit of their guests, but it was not entirely untrue.

Then Ceri saw Carter. The wizard was watching the interplay with a thoughtful expression on his face. Did
he
know Lily was playing to the crowd?

April 22
^nd
.

‘You’ve been watching me,’ Ceri said.

Another session in the magic room had finally ended as night fell. They were making good progress and Ceri was sure they could spare the time to give the children a tour of the castle in the morning. The Guandosh had retired to their rooms for a few hours, leaving the Earth party to their own recreation, and it had been the first chance Ceri had had to get Carter alone all day.

‘I have been… Very well, I’ve been watching you,’ the wizard replied. ‘I was concerned that the power you have here might… influence your state of mind.’

‘And?’

‘I think you’re handling it well. Lily is not the slave I feared she might be. You treat the demons well, even though you could order them to do as you wished. My concern was unwarranted.’

Ceri smiled. ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence.’ Carter bowed his head. ‘You’re wrong, but thank you. You’ve set my mind at ease a bit.’

Carter frowned. ‘I’m wrong?’

‘Every second I’m here, the temptation is… It’s just there. I’ve got the power of this whole
world
at my fingertips. Every demon here, from the lowest det to the highest Lord, is subject to my will. I can do just about anything. Every time I come through that portal I worry I’ll succumb to it…’

‘But you haven’t,’ Carter stated flatly. ‘
You
are controlling
it
, not the other way around.’ He put out a hand, resting it on her shoulder. ‘Lily told me that even when the dragons had you in their grip and you were opening the bridge for them, you were fighting it. That part of you wanted her to stop you. You came alone to this world to get her back, knowing the danger. When you first put that crown on you came home because you hated how Lily was reacting to it. You’ve the strongest will of anyone I know, Ceridwyn. I can’t think of a better person to be in this position.’ His serious expression shifted to a proud smile. ‘You’re a credit to all your lineages. Don’t forget it.’

Westminster, London.

‘One hand?’ Barry said, frowning.

Kate nodded. ‘He was missing his right hand. I’m sure of it.’

‘So we’re looking for someone with one hand. That doesn’t narrow things down too much.’

‘It might,’ John said. His boss raised an eyebrow. ‘Lily told us that she cut Huanglong’s hand off when he confronted her in the power station. He was human-shaped at the time. If he managed to survive the detonation of the bridge…’

‘But the man’s a sorcerer. If he survived, surely he could regrow a lost hand.’

‘Maybe not,’ Kate replied. ‘That sword Lily used was enchanted somehow to make it hurt dragons. Maybe that enchantment is stopping him from repairing the damage. Whatever, it’s something to work with and I
think
it looked a bit like him. His face is still hazy so I’m not positive.’

‘All right,’ Barry said, sighing. ‘As you say, it’s something to work with. Get a description distributed. If he’s spotted he is
not
to be approached. If he’s even half as good as Ceri then he’s basically a magical disaster waiting to happen.’

Castle of Bones, Demon Realm.

Ceri opened her eyes and found herself looking at a mass of silver hair instead of the usual auburn or black. She grinned. Hiffy had just about flaked out where she lay when they had finished with her, and det were used to rather more violent sexual activities than humans were. Then again, for the special occasion, Ceri had allowed Lily to feed on both Hiffy and Michael while the latter was in wolf form and that tended to make for an incredible ride.

Shifting a little so that she could look over her shoulder, Ceri confirmed that her other two bedmates were still there. The bed was huge, designed to comfortably accommodate two fifteen-foot-tall reptilian humanoids, and possibly a Lorril at the same time. Four more normally sized people had plenty of room. Having giants in your ancestry was not always that great, the chairs were too big for starters, but in this case it had worked out quite well.

Grinning, Ceri reached out and trailed a finger down the blue skin over Hiffy’s spine. There was no immediate reaction, so she tried again and Hiffy’s tail twitched between her spread legs. Another stroke and the tail lifted, tensing and then trembling a little. This time Ceri slid her hand under the det’s hair, found the patch of smooth skin at the base of her skull, and began to circle her index finger over it. Hiffy’s tail began to twitch, first randomly and then with an obvious rhythm, and tiny whimpering noises came from under the mass of hair. Ceri had never discovered why some demons had the sensitive little patch on their neck. She had a theory that it was something to do with parenting, like the way young animals would go limp when picked up by the scruff of the neck. Whatever the truth, as they got older it turned into a direct path to their hindbrain, it seemed.

‘Fa, Ika,’ Hiffy mumbled. ‘Lebat dak.’ There was a little more groaning and then, ‘Neka! Neka! Dak… kotach dak… neka… neka…’

Suddenly Hiffy rolled sideways with a gasp, her eyes wide as she looked up into Ceri’s face. Ceri giggled. ‘Come back here and let me finish,’ she said softly.

‘But Mistress, what time is it? I shouldn’t have fallen sleep! I need to be working… Oh, this is terrible. It’s not my place. You
have
to punish me.’