The Red Knight

She smiled and nodded.

‘Kaleo se, CHARUN,’ the Magus said, and the light over the pentagram paled.

The Queen took a step to the right, and stood in the full beam of the sun from the high windows, and the old cat rubbed against her bare leg.

Shadow began to fill the pentagram. The Magus took up his staff, and held the hollow golden end like a spear point between himself and the inscribed sign on the floor.

‘Who calls me?’ came a whisper from the fissure in light that flickered like a butterfly above the pentagram.

‘KALEO,’ Harmodius insisted.

Charun manifested beneath the shadow. The Magus felt his ears pop, and the sun seemed dimmed.

‘Ahhh,’ he hissed.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said.

The shadows were drawn into a creature that was like a man, except he was taller than the highest bookcase, naked, a deep white veined in blue like old marble, with tough, leathery wings that swept majestically from well above his head to the floor in a perfect arc that any artist would have admired.

The smell he brought with him was alien – like the smell of lye soap being burned. Neither clean nor foul. And his eyes were a perfect, black blank. He carried a sword as tall as a man and wickedly barbed, and his head held both alien horror and angelic beauty in one – an ebony-black beak inlaid with gold; huge, almond shaped eyes, deep and endless blue like twin sapphires, and a bony crest filled with hair, like the decoration on an Archaic helmet.

‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said again.

The demon’s blank eyes regarded him. Who knew what they thought? They seldom spoke, and they didn’t often understand what a magus asked.

And then, as swiftly as an eagle seizes a rabbit, the sword shot out and cut the circle.

Harmodius’s eyes narrowed, but he had not lived as long as he had by giving in to panic. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus,’ he said.

The second strike of the sword licked out through the circle but rang off the shield that had formed over the demon. The creature looked at the shield, glowing a bubbly purple shot with white, and began to prod it with the sword. Sparks began to cascade down the sides of the shield, shaped like a bright bell of colour suspended over the daemon. Smoke began to rise from the floor.

Harmodius struck his staff against the edge of the circle where the sword had cut his pattern. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus!’ he roared.

The rift in the circle closed, and the creature reared back and hissed.

The Queen leaned in towards it, and Harmodius felt a pang of pure terror that she would unwittingly cross the circle. But he could not say anything to her. To do so would be to betray the energy of his summoning – his entire will was bent on the creature that had manifested, and the circle, the pentagram, and the shield.

He was, he realised, juggling too many balls.

He considered letting the shield go – right up until the demon breathed fire.

It blossomed like a flower, flowing to cover the entire surface of the shield, and the room was suddenly hot. The fire could not pass the shield – but the heat from it could, and the deamon’s heat changed the contest of wills utterly. Even as he began to consider the possibility that he might be defeated, Harmodius’ mind viewed this fact with fascination. Despite the shield, he could smell the creature, and he could feel the heat.

As suddenly as they had appeared, the flames retreated from the edges of the circle and fled back into the creature’s mouth. The heat dropped perceptibly.

Desiderata leaned in until her nose touched the unsolid surface of the shield. And she laughed.

The demon turned to her, head cocked, for all the world like a puppy. And then he laughed back.

She curtsied, and then began to dance.

The demon watched her, rapt, and so did the Magus.

She expressed herself in her hips, and in the rise of her hands above her head as she danced a mere dozen steps – a dance of spring, naive and unflawed by practice.

The creature inside the bubble of power shook his head. ‘Eyah!’

He took a step towards her, and his head touched the edge of the pentagram, and he howled with rage and swept his sword across the sigil, cutting a gouge in the slate floor that broke the circle.

She extended a foot and crossed her toes over the break, and it was healed.

Harmodius breathed again. Quick as a terrier after a rat, he struck his staff through the shield and poured the power he had collected from his phantasm into the demon.

It whirled from the Queen to face the Magus, sword poised – but took no action. Its mighty chest rose and fell. Its aspect changed, suddenly – it rose into the air, glowing white, an angel with wings of a swan, and then it fell to the slate floor and its writhing changed to the hideous controlled motion of a millipede larger than a horse, cramped in the confines of the shield. Harmodius raised his wand, joy surging though his heart – the pure joy of having truly tested a theory and found it to contain more gold than dross.

Harmodius’ took his staff from the circle and spat ‘Ithi!’

The pentagram was empty.

Harmodius was too proud to slump. But he went to the Queen’s side and threw his arms around her with a familiarity he never knew he dared.

She kissed him tenderly.

‘You are an old fool,’ she said. ‘But a brilliant, brave old fool, Harmodius.’ Her smile was warm and congratulatory. ‘I had no idea – I’ve never seen you do anything like it.’

‘Oh,’ he said, into the smell of her neck – and a galaxy of new learning occurred to him in that moment. But he backed away and bowed. ‘I owe you my life,’ he said. ‘What are you?’

She laughed, and her laugh threatened to mock all evil straight out of fashion. ‘What am I?’ she asked. She shook her head. ‘You dearest old fool.’

‘Still wise enough to worship at your feet, your Grace.’ He bowed very low.

‘You are like a boy who attacks a hornet’s nest to see what will come out. And yet I smell the triumph of the small boy on you, Harmodius. What have we learned today?’ She subsided suddenly into a chair, ignoring the scrolls that covered it. ‘And where did this sudden burst of daring come from? You are a byword for caution in this court.’ She smiled, and for a moment, she was not a naive young girl, but an ancient and very knowing queen. ‘Some say you have no power, and are a sort of Royal Mountebank.’ Her eyes flicked to the pentagram. ‘Apparently, they are wrong.’

He followed the wave of her hand and hurried to pour her wine. ‘I cannot say for certain sure what we learned today,’ he said carefully. Already his careful manner was reasserting itself. But he knew he was right.

‘Talk to me as if I was a student – a stupid squire bent on acquiring the rudiments of hermeticism,’ she said. She sipped his wine and her look of contentment and the flinging back of her head told him that she, too had known a moment of terror. She was mortal. He was not always sure of that. ‘Because I can use power, I think you assume that I know how it functions. That we have the same knowledge. But nothing can be further from the truth. The sun touches me, and I feel God’s touch, and sometimes, with his help, I can work a miracle.’ She smiled.

He thought that her self-assurance could, if unchecked, make her more terrifying than any monster.

‘Very well, your Grace. You know there are two schools of power – two sources for the working of any phantasm.’ He laid his staff carefully in a corner and then knelt to wipe the pentagram from the floor.

‘White and black,’ she said.

He glared at her.

She shrugged with a smile. ‘You are so easy, my Magus. There is the power of the sun, pure as light, unfettered, un-beholden – the very sign of the pleasure of God in all creation. And there is the power of the Wild – for which, every iota must be exchanged with one of the creatures that possess it, and each bargain sealed in blood.’

Harmodius rolled his eyes. ‘Sealed. Bargained for. Blood does not really enter into it.’ He nodded. ‘But the power is there – it rises from the very ground – from grass, from the trees, from the creatures that live among the