The Archimage’s Fourth Daughter – Chapter 1
After far too long a time, I have started work on a fourth novel in my Magic by the Numbers series. Here’s the first chapter.
I really would like to receive constructive comments on this. My goal is to post a new chapter roughly once a week.
The Caged Demon
“If I don’t do something soon, my life is as good as over,” Briana growled aloud with the effort as she pushed down against the tree branch she was using as a lever. The sun would soon set over the desolate plain, and there would not be sufficient light to continue unless she used one of her remaining glowsticks.
She was a sylph of a girl barely twenty, slender like a reed and with flaming red hair like her mother. In the fashion of all proper young ladies, she wore brown leggings, tunic, and cloak. Her eyes danced with alertness, and her smile was like that of lion cub about to pounce on its first prey.
She had not thought her father would go through with it. It had to have been a bluff. But she had been wrong. One hundred days to pick her betrothed or he would do it for her. And when she demurred, the choice was the loutish lording, Slammert, on the western border.
Briana shook her head. Slammert. How could anyone be so coarse? Everyone could talk about nothing else when it was finally disclosed what he had done to his first wife. At the harvest festival, sitting with his bride up on the dais in the feasting hall, he had ripped her bodice away and fondled her bare breasts while his minions watched and roared with laughter. The next morning, they discovered the unfortunate girl had hanged herself, one of her belts tight around her neck and her body stiff like that of a slaughtered lamb.
Briana broke away from the direction her thoughts were taking. Dwelling upon impending shame and possibly even death served no useful purpose. She leaned harder against the tree branch. The end on the other side of the small boulder that served as a fulcrum pushed against the flat slab on the ground, and with a low grating sound, it slid a palm’s width to the side. She had spotted the small hint granite peeking out of the limestone rubble the first thing in the morning, but it had taken her all day to clear away the entire surface and a place to the side for the stone to slide.
Her hunch had been right. There along the edge, was an absence of rubble — a darkness that hinted at an opening below. She moved the fulcrum closer, repositioned the tree branch and pushed it earthward with all of her strength. Again, the slab moved revealing more of the opening.
After a hundred heartbeats, Briana peered into the inky blackness. The sun was too low to help. She would have to use a glow stick after all. She ran to her backpack laying nearby, extracted one of the six remaining, and snapped it in two. A feeble yellow glow sprang from each of the halves as she clasped them together and held them over the opening.
Steps! There were steps leading downward!
For a moment, a wave of discomfort billowed up from her gut, but she quickly pushed the feeling aside. She fumbled in a small pocket in her cape and popped a small sweetmeat in her mouth. That seemed to help.
This place upon which once soared an ancient palace of magicians had another secret to reveal she marveled. This was an exciting discovery. Her father would be pleased! It was the argument that she needed. It was her first adventure! And if she set out now, she could return in time before the gates shut for the night and not have another lecture about the danger of unsupervised absences after sundown.
But not pleased enough, she concluded an instant later. The excitement vanished. Her father, Alodar, Alodar, the Master of the Five Magics, Alodar, the Archimage of all of the Erthe, would dismiss the entire discovery as random chance rather than the result of careful deduction from months of study of fragile scrolls in the great library. The potential of what she was capable of doing would not be proven. Her value as a trusted aide would not be enhanced. It was not reason enough to reverse his decision and call off the wedding. She would remain an item on a checklist of things to do. She needed more information — what was hidden here for so many years; what exactly was it for?
Putting aside a strengthening hesitation, Briana squeezed into the opening she had made and descended the steps. The flight was straight and long like a cascade of shallow water over steep rapids, easily three times the height of a full-grown man. They ended in a small chamber, the air thick and fetid and the cobbled floor deeply covered with the dust of ages.
Briana held her glowsticks aloft while her eyes adjusted to their dimness. In the very center of the room stood a cage of glass, its edges defined by shining struts of metal, totally untarnished by the passage of time. She approached the structure slowly and stuck out her hand to feel the surface. When she did, she gasped in surprise as a subtle tingle coursed up her arm.
Magic! The cage was magic. There could be no doubt about it.
Peering inside, she gasped again. There, huddled in the far corner like a sleeping child was a demon of uncommon size. It was larger than an imp but much smaller than a djinn of power. Coarse skin covered with boils and weeping ulcers wrapped the torso and thin limbs. Small bat-like wings drooped from the back like a short cloak that served no purpose. The eyes were closed, one encrusted with dried pus and the other sprouting coarse lashes like pikes along a battlement. The hands curled into a ball and clasped together as if protecting something too precious to be seen.
Yes, a magic cage, Briana realized. Far larger than an imp bottle, but serving the same purpose nevertheless. The demon was a captive, unable to roam in this world of men or to return to his own realm. He must be holding the treasure hinted at in the ancient scrolls she had studied in the great library.
From another pocket in her cape she withdrew the paper-thin piece of stone that had been tucked away with the scroll. It was thin as mica and yet somehow inscribed with arcane text that had taken her a month to decipher. Perhaps this close to the cage, the words will have changed, she thought. In the dim light, she read again the script, but the characters were the same as they had always been — only warnings and cautions. There was no hint as to the importance of the cage and imprisoned demon.
She had taken the stone to a trusted thaumaturge when she had found it, and despite its thinness, he could neither fold nor break it with any of his machines. An alchemist had agreed that it was the product of his craft, but he did not know the formula used to create it. Some universal solvent might be able to affect it, the alchemist had said, but he doubted than a simple acid or base would react at all.
With the stone in one hand and the glowsticks in the other, Briana cautiously began to circumnavigate the enclosure to see if she could tell what was in the devil’s hands. When half way around, she stumbled slightly on a loose cobble and thrust out her forearm against the cage. The structure rocked ever so slightly, and when it did, the demon opened his eyes. He looked out at Briana, and his lips curved in a grotesque smile.
‘The handle. Pull on the handle.’ The words suddenly took shape somehow in Briana’s head. She looked to the right and saw on the upright metal strut a long thin appendage with a handgrip at the bottom. She dropped the glow sticks to the floor, reached out the beckoning lever and pulled.
The glass plate in front of where she stood hinged slowly open. Without understanding why she was doing it, she began to insert the stone into the interior towards the demon.
“No,” she shouted aloud suddenly before completing the action. “’Dominance or submission’. It is the law.” She took a deep breath and focused on the demon as her father had taught her.
She was no wizard to be sure, but the basic elements of all five of the crafts had been a natural part of her upbringing. “It is I who is the stronger. I am the one who will dominate. You are the one who will submit.”
Concentrating on the demon’s words in her head, she tried to make them softer, less strident, less able to command her limbs. For a dozen heartbeats nothing happened, the strength of the command neither grew nor shrank. “You are the one will submit,” she repeated. “Back to sleep, until I tell you otherwise.”
Summoning the will that she knew she must have inherited from her father, her resolved hardened. The demon’s words quivered and began to lose focus in her mind.
With a savage heave, she slammed the door to shut it and staggered back to fall on the dusty floor. Pushing her cape aside, she found the glowsticks and thrust them before her.
The door was again shut and the demon eyes had returned to being closed. Everything was again the way it was. Now so long as she proceeded with more care…
Briana blinked. The thin stone was caught in the jamb of the glass door; it hung suspended directly in front of her eyes. She pulled on the edge protruding on the outside, but it did not budge. Like an ironsmith’s armor plate set in a vice, it remained firmly in place.
But the seal was not completely tight. Briana heard a gentle hiss and then noticed dust flung airborne by her stumble drifted towards the small sit between door and wall and then with increasing speed coursed inside and plunged towards the demon’s cupped hands.
Briana placed her palm along the slit and felt a gentle pull. The pressure of the air must be lower inside, she reasoned. Perhaps the awakened demon had sucked some of it into his lungs. Before doing anything more, she decided to wait a moment for it to equilibrate with the outside chamber. But after a hundred heartbeats, the inrush of air and dust did not abate. She counted another hundred beats more, but the inrush continued.
Briana did not understand what was happening. The air rushing in seemed harmless enough, but the cage had been buried so long ago for a reason. How were the heroes of the sagas all able to so quickly deduce hidden meanings and then act with decision? Like her father did. She probably should ask for his help to get the door firmly…
No, she decided. Asking for help was the worst possible thing she could do. It would be the keystone in the arch, the capstone on the tower. Revealing a bumbling misstep would only make the case to marry her off all the more compelling. Somehow, she would have to figure out a way to reseal the door properly without letting the demon escape, figure out the significance of his presence and only then report to her father her discovery and accomplishment.
How she was to do this was not immediately apparent. Today was finished. Tomorrow, she would have to return and cover up the cavern and remove all trace of what she had found. And the day after that, she was to be part of a state retinue in the council chamber. She had pleaded with her father to let her serve as a substitute when needed, and if she did not appear, that would be the last of that. Today, tomorrow, and the day after; three days closer to when she would have to wed.
