Cygan quietly flexed his arms; he could see where this was going. He could see the man with the torch fixing it to the wall bracket so that he was now unencumbered. He had to say it. ‘But
I have not tried to escape.’
‘Is that right, Marshie? Even with the door open and just me between you and freedom?’
As soon as he said the last word he swung a powerful fist straight at Cygan’s face. The Marsh Man was too quick for him, though, ducking under the blow and landing one of his own straight
into Cornock’s stomach, winding him. The two other men piled in and Cygan bloodied them both before numbers took their toll and he was overpowered. Cornock kicking him viciously to the
ground.
The three men stood over Cygan for a second, breathing heavily and feeling their bruises. Then, all together they started, kicking and punching the prone man again and again and again. When they
had finished, they stopped for breath, their knuckles bruised and bloody. And then they started all over again. And over them, through the grille, the moon rose, its pallid light the only witness
to the three men, who all laughed as they continued the work they relished.
Cheris had never felt so completely and utterly terrified. She was lying back in her chair, able to move nothing except her eyes. The drug she had been slipped was still having
a powerful effect on her; she should really be feeling woozy and tired but the presence of a madwoman just a few feet away, calmly preparing to commit an act of pure horror, meant that, if nothing
else about her was working, her mind was racing like one of the Grand Duke’s thoroughbred racehorses.
She saw Marcus sitting opposite her. Unlike Cheris, he had some limited movement of his hands and mouth. If anything, he looked even more frightened than she did.
‘Anaya,’ he croaked. ‘Do not do this. Only a handful of people have ever succeeded at doing what you are trying to do. Think hard and see; you have neither the strength nor the
ability.’
Anaya stopped what she was doing for a second and looked up, annoyed at the break in her concentration.
‘That remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I have to try.’
Marcus sounded desperate. ‘You are exhausted; you will never control the powers you want to unleash.’
‘I should have given you a stronger dose, kept you as quiet as the girl. I am not stupid. I will be summoning a minor demon only; it should be sufficient for my plans. As soon as it is
here, I chant the words of binding and he is mine. Now, let’s take some blood from you both.’
She went up to Marcus with a small but sharp knife and a metal bowl. Lifting up his sleeve she cut him across the arm, holding the bowl under the wound and catching his blood, almost black in
colour as it dripped freely. This done, she put her hand over the cut saying a few soft words. When she took her hand away the bleeding had stopped. She then turned towards Cheris who stared at her
imploringly.
‘Now, my dear, it is your turn; your blood is very important for the ritual.’
She lifted Cheris’ sleeve up and repeated the procedure. Cheris could hear her blood dripping into the bowl but felt no pain; the drug had numbed her too much.
Anaya returned to her table and stood behind the bowl at its centre. She poured the blood into it then ran the knife over her hand, adding her own blood to the mix.
‘The blood of three mages, Marcus; what demon could possibly resist that?’
She then turned the pages of her book until she found the required passage, somewhere near its end. After scanning its words briefly, she started to chant – not the formal arcane language
they learned at the college but something older. It had its similarities, though, and Cheris could recognise parts of it. She could certainly feel its power – the air around them started to
crackle like wood in a fireplace.
Marcus was getting more feeling back in his hands; he could almost move them freely now, though his arms still resisted him. Cheris saw that Anaya had not noticed this and started to hope that
Marcus would be able to use his magic again very shortly. She tried moving her toes but it was like trying to push back a mountain. The air at the room’s centre between Anaya and herself was
shimmering now and the temperature was rising. This and her own fear were making her sweat; she could feel it on her face and under her robes, trickling down her legs and between her breasts. A
droplet then fell off her nose. Elissa help her, but it was getting hot as a furnace.
Anaya continued to chant but Cheris noticed a high-pitched edge of excitement to her voice, obviously what she wanted to happen was not too far away. Marcus tried pleading with her one last
time.
‘Desist, Anaya! This is madness. Please, before it is too late!’
Anaya ignored him and continued chanting; she was speaking faster and faster now and from the bowl in front of her blue flame was now licking at its edges.
Cheris continued to watch her but then realised something else was happening. A shape, a very dark and as yet amorphous shape, was beginning to materialise at the centre of the room, between
Cheris and Anaya. As yet it had no form, a whirling mist of midnight black, but Cheris could feel its power, its malevolence, its anger.
And it was growing. As Marcus and Cheris watched, as helpless as children, the shadow grew taller; it was a darkness reaching past the beams to the very roof and they both knew it could get
taller still. Anaya stopped chanting for a second and laughed.
‘Do you see? Do you see? It is a demon of fire, and it is coming!’
Fire, thought Cheris dully. She then realised her body allowed her to do one thing. She felt the wetness on her face and realised she was crying.
The black shape continued to gather form. Cheris suddenly understood that it was not the demon itself; rather it was the void between the two planes that Anaya had created. The demon was still
being pulled from its home and when it arrived here it would inhabit the space she had prepared for it, a space not six feet away from her. Ten foot tall, she reckoned, maybe six broad – it
would be a pillar of living flame. Cheris had dreamt fancifully before of her final hours, in which she lay abed surrounded by friends praying for her. What would she be thinking? she had wondered.
Would she be ruminating on the nature of the Gods? Would she have any regretful feelings? And now here she was, never closer to her doom, and she saw that her terror had driven any real thought
processes away. She was frightened and helpless and right now didn’t give a fig for the Gods. And what was Marcus doing? He must have regained some feeling in his legs and feet for he
appeared to be trying to upset the chair on which he sat. Was he trying to escape? Was he going to leave her? The thought made her choke.
And then she saw what he was doing. Behind him, against the wall, leant their staffs. If he could just get his hands on one, maybe, just maybe, he could do something to save them. She started
willing him on desperately, but then she afforded a look to her left, at the void of blackness.
Except it was a void no longer. As she watched, she saw red and white flame start to appear inside it, barely a flicker at first but getting ever larger. Marcus saw it, too, and his scrabbling
with the chair became ever more frantic. It started getting warmer again, her robes feeling ever more uncomfortable against her skin. As Anaya had promised, the demon was coming.
Anaya herself had never seemed so animated. As the whirling column of flame grew before her she seemed impervious to its heat; rather her face shone with excitement, her skin flushed pink in the
glow of the creature before her, her eyes wild, like a child witnessing the sea for the first time.
And then it was here. To Cheris it appeared as little more than a roaring column of flame, but she knew it was so much more than that. It had intelligence, a powerful will, and, most of all, a
seething wrath against its summoner, the being that had sucked it into this dry plane, like a shark in a desert. It knew it was doomed here, in a world nearly devoid of the magical forces it needed
for its survival. All it could do was feed on the little energy available, and the mage that had called it forth would be its first victim.
Helpless and terrified, all Cheris could do was watch the events play out before her. She heard a crash and realised that Marcus had fallen off the chair and was slowly but frantically trying to
pull himself towards his staff. She looked at Anaya, a tiny figure before the burning demon. She was attempting the binding ritual Cheris realised, the attempt to subjugate the creature to her
will. However, Cheris could see that the presence of the writhing twisting pillar of fire just a few feet away from her was proving unsettling. After flicking desperately over a few pages of the
book, Anaya started to speak the ritual, but her voice was faltering, hesitant, unsteady. Then Cheris heard the voice. The demon was a magical creature and could enter the heads of those with a
similar sensitivity, and it was there she could hear the voice; it was all fury, all hatred.
‘What is this? Who has called me to my doom?’
Anaya did not answer but continued to read from the book; the heat was affecting her now all right, rivers of sweat poured down her nose, off her brow and into her eyes, making it ever more
difficult for her to read without making mistakes.
‘You are too late, flesh creature; your words cannot have any effect on me.’
Still she ignored the voice, she had nearly finished, she was nearly there, the demon would soon be hers to control.
‘And still you try. Tell me, creature, how can you read without your eyes?’
Cheris whimpered softly at this. Despite all she had done, Cheris felt desperately sorry for Anaya, but she couldn’t look away; she couldn’t avert her eyes as a gout of near-white
flame shot forth from the demon straight into the other woman’s face.
With a piercing scream Anaya collapsed behind the table. The demon slid forward towards her. The table ignited and Cheris saw the roof beams beginning to blister and smoke. Her lungs and throat
became dry and choking; she hoped the smoke would kill her before the flames could. She almost willingly inhaled their acrid poison. Let it be done with, there was no escape after all. She
commended her soul to the Gods.
There was more terrible shrill screaming. Cheris’s stinging eyes watched as the demon moved back to its original position. This time, though, at its burning heart, suspended several feet
above the ground by forces she didn’t comprehend, was Anaya.
Or rather the thing that had been Anaya. Cheris beheld it as its screams ceased. She watched as hair and flesh blackened and melted to nothing. She watched her face, bereft of eyes, liquefy and
evaporate away from the skull, the mouth open in noiseless agony; she saw her robes burn off her and the tallow under her skin ripple and slough off her bones. The smell of burnt flesh, like a
spitted pig, made Cheris gag, bringing bile to her throat. Finally, it was just the bones that remained crackling and popping in the flames, flames that turned whiter and burned hotter as then, in
one final dramatic flourish, the skeleton disintegrated, imploding in on itself, fragments of bone no larger than dust particles floating up to the roof where the thatch had started to burn.
Then Cheris realised the demon was slowly moving towards her.
She was beyond terror now, gibbering like a child, the Gods a distant memory. She felt the thing’s heat, her robe soaked with sweat, her hair glued to her face. She tried moving and for
the first time her toes and fingers responded, they moved slightly. But it was a pathetic, futile gesture, too little too late.
The vast tower of flame was almost upon her. She looked up at it, and in its fire she thought she could see the outlines of a face or, more accurately, a skull of death. It regarded her for a
second through two empty pits that could have been eyes. She looked back at it, unsure if terror was making her hallucinate – demons were not supposed to have eyes. Behind and above it the
roof blazed; she could even see a couple of night stars.
‘Your power is mine, surrender to me, be as fuel to my great majesty, let it be the purpose for your brief and futile existence.’
Cheris was weeping now, but the tears dried in the heat before they could run down her face. Anaya had visited Keth’s furnace upon them, a veritable vision of the underworld. She swore
softly to herself as the hem of her robe started to smoke, and then start to crisp at her feet, with the slightest flicker of a blue flame beginning to catch at it.
‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she quailed.
Just in front of her face she saw the wall of flame bulge slightly. From the body of the demon an appendage of pure fire emerged slowly, about the same dimensions as a human arm. It obviously
knew of her helplessness, for it seemed to be toying with her. It stopped about eight inches from her face and started to wave and twist in front of her. Then, at last, Cheris found her voice, dry
and raspy with the heat and her fear.
‘Just do it you bastard, just do it, you filthy ... abomination!’
The demon paused for a second as though surprised; the flame on Cheris’s robe crept a little higher as smoke rose from the rest of the garment and her hair.
Then there was another noise. Slowly and uncertainly, like a new-born deer, Marcus rose to stand unsteadily before the monster, one hand leaning on the table, the other clutching his staff,
which shone like a shard of ice in his hand.
‘Leave the girl be and face a man, why don’t you?’ His voice was strong, firm and commanding.
The demon stopped again. The arm of flame remained perilously close to Cheris’s face, but, for a few seconds, was completely still.
‘
Tenetrej pulo ataralius
,’ said Marcus, raising his staff.
There was no response from the demon. For one second, maybe less, all was still. Cheris heard her pounding heart and saw Marcus standing proud before the monster. Then, without warning, the arm
of flame shot forward to cover Cheris’s face, upper body, and finally her legs, clothing her in white immolating fire.