Thaumatology 10 - The Other Side of Hell Read online

  The big difference between this inn and one you might find at some medieval reconstruction fair was the people. The barmaid had blue skin and silver hair. The barman gripped his cleaning cloth in one of seven tentacles which sprouted from the underside of his jaw. There were horns, claws, skins the colour of blood, others jet black. The girls hanging over the railing were Lorril, succubi, or incubi if a female customer wanted to hire them. Mostly the people there were det, the Devotik word for common demons, but it would have taken a very broad mind to describe them as common.

  The most exotic figure in the room sat by herself at the back, her face hidden inside a cowl and the deeper shadows in that part of the room. She had been watching the other customers and slowly working through her tankard of what passed for ale for the past hour, but what she was really doing was waiting. The waiting ended when four thuggish demons with pig-like faces pushed through the swing doors of the inn, looked around the room as it grew quiet, and then marched toward her table.

  ‘You,’ the apparent leader of the quartet grunted, ‘on your feet. You’re coming with us.’

  The woman moved, shifting herself forward in her seat and lifting long legs clad in tight trousers and high-heeled boots onto the table. The rest of the outfit was moderately impressive for the area; a light leather bodice held up by heavier leather shoulder guards. The outfit was completed by leather bracers and the cowl. All of it dark and a little menacing. Reaching forward, she picked up her tankard and drank from it. She said nothing and, after a minute or so, her lack of reaction got to Pig Features.

  ‘You been asking about red-haired Lorril. You going to stop. We here to make sure you stop.’ His appearance of arrogant power was somewhat marred as her hand rose, fingers slightly spread, and he stepped back uncertainly. He took another step backward as blue light flared inside the cowl; two glowing irises looking out at him.

  ‘I have all I need from you.’ The voice was low, soft, almost gentle. ‘If you leave now I won’t hurt you.’ As she spoke a ball of blue-white light grew in her palm.

  Pig Features was apparently the leader because he was the most stupid. His hand swept down to the bulky-looking broadsword hanging from his hips. She allowed him to get it almost all the way out of its scabbard before she let the ball of light go. Pig Features became Featureless in an instant of searing energy and blazing light. A second ball of light grew in the woman’s palm as the other thugs watched their friend collapse into a heap on the floor, his sword making rattling noises as it hit the floorboards.

  ‘Would another of you like to try?’ They did not even stop to pick up their comrade, choosing to scurry for the door in a considerable hurry.

  Ceri waited for them to be out of the inn before pulling back her hood and moving forward to check the ex-thug’s money pouch. No one else made a move, it was her kill, and the conversation volume rose back to normal levels quickly. Pig Features had been holding the payment for the job, and now Ceri had another seven silver coins to add to her collection. Except that she would give an extra one to Hiffy, the barmaid, when she left because she was likely going to have to clean up the mess. Hiffy had a bit of a crush on “Ayasha,” which was what the locals had started calling Ceri after the first four or five days. It meant “blue eyes,” more or less; blue eyes were apparently almost unheard of among demons. Ceri had seen none, while Lily’s exotic-on-Earth black irises were as common as dirt here.

  Sitting back down and ignoring the grunt on the floor, Ceri propped her feet back on the table and considered what she had just dragged out of her victim’s mind before blasting it to cinders. Since arriving in the world the demons came from, she had been trying to do two main things. The first was staying alive, which she was doing pretty well at. The second was finding Lily, and she was doing a lot less well there. However, spreading the word that Ayasha was looking for a half-succubus with chestnut coloured hair who had come to Shilfaris recently had had some effect; it seemed that someone wanted to discourage her from making enquiries. Now she had a name, Offalip, and an image, that of a Devos she did not think she had met before.

  Her musing was disturbed by Hiffy wandering over from the bar. There was no table service at the Devim’s Horns, but Hiffy tended to make an exception for Ceri. The cute smile on her blue face and the way she sort of sidled up to the table were the main giveaways as to why. ‘Do you need another drink, Ayasha?’ she purred.

  ‘I’ve some business to attend to.’ Ceri crooked a finger and beckoned the girl forward, and Hiffy took another step or two and then bent at the hips, keeping her chin up to make sure Ceri had a good view of her impressive décolletage. ‘Do you know of a Devos by the name of Offalip, shekushka?’

  Hiffy gave a little shiver at the diminutive; Ceri’s ring had translated it as “sweet little morsel,” which sounded a little dodgy to her, but the demons seemed to think it was incredibly cute. ‘He’s a trader at the Low Gate Market,’ Hiffy said. ‘He send the piggies?’ Ceri gave a short nod. ‘He’s not got a reputation for violence, aside from the usual.’ Ceri nodded again. Low Gate was a slave market; she doubted he treated his slaves better than any of the other traders.

  Taking three silver coins from her belt, Ceri reached out and tucked them into the front of Hiffy’s bodice. She was not really keen on leading the girl on, but keeping the locals in East Ward sweet was helping to keep her alive, and getting her more information than she might otherwise get. ‘For the information, and the clean-up.’ Hiffy gave a beaming smile which showed her fangs, gave a little shake of her chest so that her breasts bounced against Ceri’s fingers, and then turned to go back to the bar. Her hips swung seductively as she walked, and her blue, pointed tail flicked from side to side under her skirt.

  Ceri shook her head and climbed to her feet, picking her staff up from where it leant against the wall behind her. If she were not so concerned about finding Lily she might just have taken Hiffy up on the very apparent offer. Lily would certainly have had no qualms about giving the girl an evening she would remember. But Lily was still missing, and that had to be her priority.

  Outside it was daylight. The days were about thirty hours long here and there was no sun, just light which filled the sky and then faded away to leave a vast, black sky. There were three objects in the night sky which looked like moons, and seemed to orbit the world. The stellar mechanics of the planet would have kept Ceri busy for years, if she had had the time to spend discovering how it all worked. She had a suspicion that they were flying through some sort of dense cloud of matter which diffused the light from the local star. On the other hand it could have just been some aspect of the magic of the place.

  The world’s magic field was, she estimated, stable at around eight thaums. It was just hotter than Stonehenge back home, but not as bad as some of the higher-level sites she could have visited. There were regions where the level was higher, but none within Shilfaris. The city was just one of many fairly typical demon cities dotted across the surface of the world, but it was the one she had arrived outside and she felt sure that Lily was somewhere within it. Her first solid lead was waiting in Low Gate, she started walking that way.

  Her first three days had been spent trying to figure out how she was going to survive. She had skulked around the city, trying to work out where she was and how the city functioned. Fairly quickly she discovered that the world ran on inequality. Most of the people knew some magic; in the strong magic field, just about everyone could work spells. However, it was the kind of demon who could cross worlds who had the real talent and they tended to horde the powerful spells to themselves and use their magic to keep the general populace down.

  In Shilfaris, the more powerful demons lived in North Ward, under the shadow of the Grey Castle, a huge structure which seemed to have been grown out of the bedrock. The wealthier lesser demons lived in West Ward, and everyone else was stuck in East Ward. West Ward’s buildings were stone, some even had gardens. They had servants, and could pay for the spells they needed. In
East Ward, demons got sick and died, unable to pay for a simple spell to cure the disease, or heal a wound which then got infected. So Ceri had found herself work to do, charging small amounts to perform spells the East Ward residents could not otherwise afford, and able to do far more than any typical demon could, she had rapidly found herself with enough cash to buy clothes and food. As a side effect, “Ayasha” had become something of a local hero.

  It had all been alarmingly easy. Certainly in East Ward no one suspected that she was human… mostly human. There were some comments made early on that she was clearly mad; she had power to spare and was using it to help det. After she had reduced one such commentator to ash for saying it to her face the gossip had turned to the idea that she was working under cover for one of the lords. Demons expected everyone to have ulterior motives, and Ceri did, of course; she was determined to find Lily. That was not a suitable ulterior motive though and would not have been believed if she had revealed it.

  Low Gate was so named because Shilfaris sat on the south-facing slope of a hill and Low Gate was the lowest gate in the city wall. The huge, fortified gatehouse opened on one side onto the Plains of Odriel and the Great Plains Road, and on the other a large plaza between the walls of the East and West Wards. This was where Low Gate Market operated. On the northern point of the roughly diamond-shaped plaza was the High Road Gate which, unsurprisingly, connected Low Gate with High Road, and so to the North and West Wards. East Ward also had a gate onto High Road, but there was no need to use it to get to Low Gate; several of the traders used warehouses in East Ward and there was a direct access point with next to no defences on it. The occupants of Grey Castle did not really care whether East Ward was overrun in the event of a war.

  Ceri strolled through what the locals lovingly referred to as the Arsehole Gate and looked around. Trading seemed a little slow compared to when she had first arrived in the city. There were around ten platforms around the circumference of the plaza, each with a tent set beside it. Only four were in use, with various demons being dragged up to be paraded in front of the crowd. The traders tended to be Devos, probably the most common of the higher demon species and the most prototypical. They had horns, wings, barbed tails, hooves, and their skin was an iridescent purple colour. Some of their smaller brethren, the Devims, rushed around acting as runners and guards. She grabbed one of the creatures by the horn as he ran past, yanking him to a stop.

  ‘Oi!’ the creature barked, twisting to glare at his captor. ‘I have important work to do for Mistress Eshimaba and if you don’t let me get on with it I’ll see to it that you spend the last days of your life on a spit!’ His eyes looked up as far as her face and he saw her eyes, and suddenly he was grinning like an idiot and hopping from hoof to hoof. ‘Ayasha… I didn’t, ah, realise, well, that it was… You need something?’

  ‘Offalip,’ Ceri replied, ‘where do I find him?’

  The imp-like demon pointed across the plaza toward a moderate crowd. ‘That’s his stand. He’s got fresh meat in today, but you’ll get better quality from Mistress Eshimaba.’

  She let go of his horn. ‘I’ll keep that in mind. Get about your business before I decide to take affront at your imprudence.’ Eyes widening, the creature almost fell over itself in its hurry to run away, spreading its wings to keep its balance. Ceri turned and started across the plaza, pulling up her hood as she went.

  Offalip was a smaller than average Devos; his horns would maybe give him six inches height advantage over Ceri’s five-ten. He was also running to fat. It just went to prove that even demons could let themselves go. He was stood on the display platform beside a dejected, naked, humanoid demon; decidedly humanoid, in fact, though lacking any positive definition of form. Androgynous beauty was the best description, and it seemed to have no genitalia. Ceri was just wondering what it was when Offalip gave the game away.

  ‘What am I bid for this fine specimen of a Lorril?’ Clearly the creature was not picking a form to attract any particular person’s attention. ‘Captured in the far north and treated with the usual submission spell. Completely house trained and able to assume any shape you wish. Shall we start at fifty silver?’

  They started at forty and then worked back up. As each new bidder pushed the price up, the Lorril shifted shape, presumably to what the bidder found most attractive. Ceri watched for a few seconds before raising her hand. ‘Eighty,’ she said and the Lorril’s eyes flicked toward her. There was no real moment of change, the shape-shifter simply became a different person in an instant; around five-foot-seven, full, pert breasts, a narrow waist, wide hips, and long legs, a pretty face with a cute, upturned nose and dark eyes. It was Lily down to the long, chestnut hair and the stylised, T-shaped rune tattooed above her pubic mound. Ceri watched as Offalip stiffened, and then someone bid ninety and the Lorril was suddenly a lush, female Devos. The damage was done, however; Offalip was looking distinctly uncomfortable and, when the Lorril was sold for a very respectable hundred and fifty silver, he passed the sales over to his second before leaving the podium and heading back into his tent.

  Ceri followed after a few seconds, giving him time to set up the attack. She wanted him feeling secure because when she then flattened his defences without breaking a sweat he would be that much more scared. So the Dakag’s fist swinging at her head as she ducked through the flap met her staff and stopped as though it had hit a wall. Her other hand touched the lizard-like demon on the head and he froze instantly. Then she was twisting and ducking as Offalip launched a bolt of flame at her; Devos liked fire a lot. It did him no good, but he got lucky; the fire hit the Dakag instead of the wall of the tent. Stepping through, Ceri swung her staff like a baseball bat, smacked the heavy end of it into Offalip’s guts, and he went down like a wet sack, frantically trying to draw breath.

  They were standing in an aisle amid two rows of cages. Only two were occupied now, two females, both some variety of det. They were grinning at their captor’s fate as Ceri planted her staff on the back of Offalip’s neck and pressed down. ‘You sent some thugs to persuade me to stop asking questions, Offalip,’ Ceri said. ‘That was insulting, and I had to leave a bigger tip for getting the blood off the floorboards.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ the slaver wheezed.

  ‘Not good enough. I assume you sent them because you know where the person I’m looking for is? I saw the way you looked at that Lorril when it shifted to my desires. Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know what…’

  Ceri lifted her staff and then slammed it down again. Offalip let out a chocked yelp, his body jerking. ‘Don’t fuck me about or I’ll drag the information out of your head with an axe.’

  ‘I was just paid to transport her from Doriardi.’ His voice was a stifled moan since his face was pressed into the cobbles. ‘I brought her here and she was picked up. I don’t know where…’ The staff’s foot smacked into the back of his skull. ‘Okay! Okay! The castle! They took her to the castle.’

  ‘Good boy.’ Bending down, Ceri unhooked his money pouch from the belt around his waist. As an afterthought she turned and waved her hand at the occupied cages and the padlocks unlatched with a clunk. She looked down at the Devim. ‘If I have any more visitors sent by you, I’ll come back and cast that slavery spell on you. I doubt you’ll fetch much, you ugly son-of-a-mud leech, but I’ll enjoy selling you.’

  The Dakag was starting to recover from the paralysis spell as she slipped past him. ‘I’m not going to have any trouble from you, am I?’ she asked. ‘He’s the one who burned your scales.’ The demon turned his head toward the still prone Offalip and growled. ‘Thought not,’ Ceri said, heading back out into the sunlight.

  ~~~

  Snooping around the castle during daylight hours had to be a fairly circumspect activity. It had high, grey walls, from which it got its name, around another set of walls, around a central building with two tall spires. There were two gates, one main one on the southern side and a sally port to the north east. Both were heavily gu
arded, and locked at night, and the walls were patrolled at ten minute intervals.

  Through her Sight, Ceri could see the building’s wards as well. Magic twisted around the stones, shoring up the structure against attack. Further spells watched for trouble at the main gate. Getting in without being discovered was going to be tough. The wards would spot disguise spells and transformations. She could not teleport in safely, even assuming there was not something in the wards which would detect that. Given time and the chance to study she could probably figure out how to sneak past the magic, but ten minutes standing outside the gate was drawing attention from the guards.

  Frustrated, Ceri walked back down High Road to the East Ward gate and made her way to the disused house she was using to live in. It had been vacated at some point, probably because the old owners were dead. There were holes in the roof, but then it had not rained since she had moved in. The door had no lock, but a spell took care of that when she needed it. The windows had once had glass, but now they were boarded up.

  There was also a queue of people outside patiently waiting for Ayasha to return from wherever she had been. Ceri looked at them for a second, gave a soft sigh, and then tapped the door with her staff to release the spell-lock. ‘One at a time, please,’ she said, and the elderly woman at the front of the queue climbed to her feet. ‘Hello, Mrs Ulafug. The hip again?’ Mrs Ulafug gave Ceri a grin full of no teeth at all; it was the hip again. Ceri was beginning to suspect the old woman just liked coming out for the company.