“Not devils, then. Minor demons or Hordlings of Hades.”
Zeb only looked puzzled.
“Are you stopping, or going on?”
“Oh, we’re still going up. Just thought we'd keep you apprised.”
“Don’t bother. If your head comes rolling back down the stairs I will know that something is amiss.”
Zebulon did not look very pleased with that image. He swallowed hard before turning and banging back up the stairs, ring mail jingling and axe knocking against the wall.
Nesha-tari waited another five minutes during which she further considered just what she intended to do. She still felt tremendously strong for Horayachus, now little more than three days dead, had been a man of great power. No trace of the Hunger had yet returned to Nesha-tari. Her head was clear and she could access her magic with little effort. Not the magic of what she was, but that which she had been taught in Blue Akroya’s service.
She left the tower briefly to check the street, looking both directions with her sharp blue eyes for the vision that was the mark of Akroya’s favor was the one sense that did not need the Hunger to make it exceptionally keen. There was no sign of movement in either direction. Back inside, Nesha-tari moved to the dustiest part of the floor far back from the front door, her boots leaving tracks across it. She stopped and took a jump forward, catching her balance and standing on an undisturbed section of floor. She knelt, closed her eyes, and pressed bare fingers into the dust.
Nesha-tari had not learned her magic in the manner of an Imperial Wizard. No Circle had neutered her mind, forcing false obstructions between her will and her power. To release an invocation like the lightning that was the attack form favored by her Master, she did not have to memorize spells and bind their release to meaningless words, gestures, and material components. If Nesha-tari wanted to throw lightning, she would bring it into being in her hands. If she wanted a shield against scrying magic, it formed unseen in the air around her. She could cast spells so long as she had the strength to do so, or focused just enough attention to maintain them. The sorts of incantations and rituals that the training of the Circle Wizards forced them to use for everything were only used by Nesha-tari for the purpose to which they had been originally developed centuries, if not eons, ago. The rituals were for casting spells too powerful for any single mage to manage. They bridged the extra-planar spaces to siphon strength from realms of energy, rather than from the physical world of matter.
Nesha-tari began to speak, quietly and rhythmically. The words were in the tongue called Low Drak, the first language that the Great Dragons had taught to men. When she felt the rising warmth in her chest and limbs, Nesha-tari’s boots left the floor. She began to turn in the air, trailing the fingers of one hand in the dust. Rather than leaving only runnels, the dust shifted and shook as though something crawled through it behind her hand, leaving as a trail two solid bands forming a circle. Between the bands, mystical runes and characters, symbols and signs formed, seemingly of their own accord.
Nesha-tari completed one revolution and lifted her hand. The head of the circle met the tail with an audible snap, and the whole glyph flared blue for a moment. Nesha-tari stood up in the middle of the circle and wiped the dust off her fingers. Her heart was beating fast but she took several long, deep breaths until it slowed. Then she faced back into the room toward the front door, and spoke a name three times, loudly and clearly.
“Balan. Balan. Balan.”
The torches flickered as an acrid breeze wafted across the chamber, moving the dust except for that immediately around Nesha-tari’s feet. The Devil Lord Balan stepped into being from behind a column and grinned at her, his teeth shining white against his gray countenance.
Nesha-tari could see the devil much better now as he approached, stopping only a stride short of the glyph on the floor. His single hoof was shod in silver and it struck up a spark each time it touched the stone floor. His other foot was in a soft boot. Balan’s creased trousers, vest, and waistcoat were all of dark gray trimmed with black, and a lavender boutonniere poked through a buttonhole. The flower’s aroma was obscured by a stony tang in the air, a smell like a coke furnace. His face was handsome in a decidedly diabolical way, with sharp, angular features and a chin beard meticulously trimmed to a perfect triangle. His jet black hair was swept back from his temples, and the devil’s smoldering red eyes had no pupils. The tip of the snaky tail swishing behind him was shaped like an obsidian spearhead.
“I was so hoping you would call,” Balan said, his smile very much like a leer.
“That is why you said your name, was it not?” Nesha-tari said calmly. The sharp smell in her nostrils made her want to flinch, though she did not let herself.
“Not my True Name, of course,” Balan said. “Don’t get any ideas.”
He walked slowly around the glyph looking only at Nesha-tari rather than at the writing on the floor, with his hoof chuffing up its spark at every step. The devil’s tail seemed to move independently of his gait, rearing up serpent-like and prodding its bladed head forward, jerking back before the glyph every time.
“That’s cute,” Balan said as he passed behind Nesha-tari. “Not bad workmanship, if a little hurried.”
Nesha-tari stood still until Balan had circumnavigated her and halted in front, still grinning. His mouth seemed to be full of many more teeth than would a human’s.
“You don’t really think that would stop me, do you?” he asked, playfully moving his hoof through the dust just shy of the glyph. “Not if I tried very, very hard to step across?”
“It would slow you down,” Nesha-tari said. “And prevent you from raising any defense.”
Balan’s eyes flared. “Hmm. Violence.”
“If that was what you wanted,” Nesha-tari said. “You would have come without being called.”
“Quite right. At any time I liked.”
“Then what is it that you do want?”
Balan shrugged and held the lapels of his coat in jeweled fingers with black nails.
“Why, just to get a better look at you, my dear,” he said, his voice as silky as his clothes. “Perhaps exchange some pleasantries. Chew the fat, as it were. I must tell you, I have not seen your like before. You are positively scrumptious.”
Nesha-tari turned her head the slightest bit, moving her hair on her shoulders and jutting out her chin.
“Oh, not that,” Balan said. “The package is delightful, in its way, but I am looking a good deal deeper.” The devil gave a broad and knowing smile. “I am looking at all those things you are trying to keep hidden from the world. Do you have any idea how beautiful you truly are, Soul Eater?”
Nesha-tari felt more profoundly naked before the devil than she ever had in her life, and yet it was not an entirely unpleasant sensation.
“May I ask an impertinent question?” Balan politely requested.
“Only if you answer a question of mine in return,” Nesha-tari said. She had never dealt directly with a devil before, but she knew that one never gave a creature such as Balan anything without receiving something in return.
“Very well,” Balan nodded. He narrowed his crimson eyes at Nesha-tari, and she understood that it would not do to lie.
“Just what manner of creature are you?”
“My father was human,” Nesha-tari said. “My mother is a Lamia.”
Balan looked thoughtful. He blinked once, eyes flashing for the moment like red lanterns.
“Lamia,” he said slowly. “A beautiful name for a beautiful beast. I don’t believe we have had one of those in here before.”
“It is my turn, Lord Balan.”
The devil spread his hands and bowed.
“Two nights ago, a Dragon flew over this city. Who was it?”
Balan sighed but kept grinning. “Ah, yes. She does seem to feel the need to announce her presence rather loudly, doesn’t she? That was the one I believe you call Danavod, the Great Black Wyrm.”
That came to Nesha-tari not as a surprise, but as confirmation. “Why is she here?”
“Shall we trade another question for a question?”
“Fine.”
“Then it is my turn to ask.”
Balan folded his arms and looked at Nesha-tari closely. His gray hands were long fingered, and besides the rings he had some sort of small round device on his left wrist, on a jointed metal strap.
“When you kill a man, and consume it,” Balan asked. “Does it bring you joy?”
