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Demons and Gin
by Joanne Anderton
They had started life so beautifully. When Ralanous created the network of canals he had summoned their shape from the gods and crafted them of living, willing stone. He had lined them with shining rails, covered them with delicately arching bridges, and filled them with water from the purest underground stream. Sparkles of clear, lapping light, weaving their way through grey buildings.
Ralanous leaned over one such rail and vomited. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and slumped against the metal, breathing thick air. A tinge of sulfur from stagnant water, along with whatever waste the people of Castus saw fit to dump in the drains wafted up to greet him.
“Damn it.” Ralanous managed to turn around, still holding the rail for balance.
He should have walked another way.
The canals, his canals, had done their job well. Defended a city’s worth of people who did not know they needed it. To see what the ducts had been reduced to, what years of neglect had done to them...
Ralanous fumbled in the pockets of his coat and pulled out a small tin flask. He took a swig of gin and gasped at its bite, so sharp after a night of nice, foamy ale. Screwing up his face, he dropped the flask back into his pocket. He just did not have the stomach for more liquor. Not tonight.
Home. Yes, he should go home and sleep until the alcohol was gone from his head and stomach. Then he would be ready to try again, to live without the need for drink or smoke. To face the memories.
As Ralanous pushed off from the rail a new, sharp smell burned the back of his throat. Sudden and familiar. Far too familiar and...impossible!
Ralanous almost tripped on his own feet as he twisted to look back over the railing. The smells of rotting sewerage and vomit were gone, hidden beneath the burning in his nose. Pushing away insistent memories, wading through the ale in his brain, Ralanous listened. And heard nothing.
The waterway was dry. He had passed other canals on his staggering, blurry passage through the city, had heard their rushing water. So the system had not failed, not completely. Blinking, leaning precariously over the rail, Ralanous tried to think. A blockage then. Just a simple blockage. But that was all they needed.
Ralanous was not the man he used to be. He knew he should walk away, that he should leave the dangerous smell and its terrifying memories. But, despite his best efforts, the man he used to be was not entirely dead. He had not drowned in alcohol or dissolved to opiate haze.
Ralanous staggered across the street, hands tapping the air for something solid to keep him on his feet. Finally, he found a wall and leaning against it headed into the nearest alleyway.
As soon as his foot touched the slippery cobblestones, Ralanous new he had found the right place. But then, they would be as close to the blockage as possible, wouldn’t they? The driest place in the city. Ralanous staggered deeper into the alley and tried not to think about what he was stepping on. Experience told him it was not waste, not sewerage, not puddles of rainwater. Memories of blood, long fuddled by whatever substance he could get his hands on, were returning with stubborn clarity.
A red light flickered in the night. Voices whispered, crackling like flame but dark with malice. Laughter by his ear. Close and hot, breath without a body. Ralanous stumbled on, even as the ruddiness grew, as it inched toward him and bathed his face in stifling warmth.
“Oh, my. What have we here?” Another voice, this time from within the red. Also familiar. By the gods, familiar.
Ralanous closed his eyes as the radiance overtook him. It held him in heavy air, thick with that sharp smell. Burning candles, not normal candles, but ones with dark wax that spewed darker smoke. He could see them with his eyes closed, he knew them so well. With a shallow breath, Ralanous gathered the courage to look.
The light soaked the stones with crimson, and now it stained him too. His skin was pink as he held an indistinct hand to his face. Beyond that he saw a symbol, a circle full of snake-like swirls scribed on the cobblestones in something red and congealed. The candles were placed at random-looking points within it and had burned almost to the ground.
The candles...he had to stop them burning.
Ralanous took another step. There was a plane of hazy glass between him and the world, cutting him off from his searching hands, from the candles, and the figure that stood at the center of the symbol.
Stopping, Ralanous stared at the woman, wishing he was sober. Surely, he had thrown up all the alcohol by now.
She stared right back, a smile on her pale lips.
“I don’t believe it.” Her voice was still rich and deep, but he did not remember her scorn. She had never looked at him that way before. As though he was far below her, a filth-crawling insect, or something foul on the bottom of her shoe. “Is it...it couldn’t be? Ralanous?”
He wanted to keep his mouth shut. To answer her would make her real. But he had nowhere near the control he needed to stay silent. “Taasha.” Her name fell from his lips in a whisper.
Laughing, she stepped from her circle and approached him. He tried to step back, to get away from her white, reaching hand, but the red air thickened and held him in place.
All he could do was close his eyes as she touched his cheek with cold skin.
“Ralanous. You look terrible. It hasn’t been that many years, has it?” She sniffed, loud and deliberate. “Goodness, do you drink or do you just bathe in the stuff?”
Ralanous opened his eyes and she was looking right back at him. Her head tilted slightly to the side, the tips of her front teeth showing as she smiled her little smile. Strands of blonde hair, loose and long, curled at her cheeks. Just the same.
“You look alive.” He focused on the words. He would greet her with dignity.
Another laugh and she drew her hand away. She spun, twirling the skirts of her torn dress and splaying her hair in a gold curtain. Torn...with a frown, Ralanous tried to focus on her dress, the emerald velvet with its gold inlay, a dress fit for a woman of noble birth. It was just as he remembered it, right down to the tears, to the singes and gashes. He remembered running his hand over it, smoothing the fabric and covering her exposed, damaged skin. Right before he buried her.
She stepped back into the circle and grinned at him from there. “It’s hard to keep track of time down there. But still, I never imagined I’d see you bald. Or fat, for that matter. A far cry from the dashing wizard on my doorstep promising to save me.”
He looked down at the circle, at the candles almost eaten away, and tried to take another step. The air fought him...but he knew it would do that, he had seen this all before. There was a way to hold back the invisible hands.
“Don’t worry, old man. It’ll be over soon.”
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He closed his eyes to the impossible Taasha and struggled to remember. What was it that could fight the red light?
Silver! Yes, that was it. Summon the precious metal from the earth and fashion a shield. As his master had taught him. As he had done so many times before. Surely, magic as powerful as he had wielded would not dissolve in alcohol.
He had to try. Ralanous let go of the wall and attempted to crouch, to touch the earth below the cobblestones. But the crimson squeezed his knees, would not let him bend, and he lost his balance. The magic that had stopped him walking did not bother holding him upright, and he fell.
Ralanous groaned. His cheek hit the ground hard. He glanced up to see Taasha shaking her head.
“It’s sad.” She smirked down at him. “To see you reduced to this.”
Ralanous said nothing. He pressed his palms to the ground, focused his attention on the grit between the stones and tried to banish his uncertainty.
Talk to her, coax her, do not try to force it. The earth does not like being forced. He opened his mouth, remembered what it was like to feel power in his hands, and...
And...
He could not remember the words. For a moment the air pressed down on him in silence. He tried again. Opened his mouth, tried to remember the feeling, prayed to gods he had long abandoned to help him remember. Nothing. What was a spell without words? Just that. Nothing.
“A wizard too drunk to remember his own spells! Or is it just old age?”
All he needed was silver, if not a shield, then something.
He began to inch his hand toward his pocket. With jerking movements, too tiny to be stopped by the magic, but oh so slow. Taasha was speaking now, intoning words in some ungodly tongue. The candles must be flickering their last, dying breaths.
“Why are you doing this, Taasha?” If he could distract her, slow her down...Still, he inched his hand closer to his pocket. Slowly, too slowly.
At first he thought she would ignore him, but he had remembered her well. Her droning stopped and she chuckled.
“How can you ask that? You of all people?” He could hear steps, the soft crunching of dirt beneath small feet. Then slippers stopped before his face. He stared at the trimming of gold thread and the scorch marks that marred the soles. There was a hole in one; he could see the tip of a blackened toe.
His hand was fumbling in his coat, searching for a pocket. He hoped she would not notice.
“Well.” Now he had her attention he needed to keep it. “You know, you should know, why it’s bad.” Gods, he used to be good at this! There was a time when he could persuade the most stubborn of fools to turn away from the path of evil. Now, all he could manage was a stuttering, half-formed sentence.
“What, because I have seen them first hand? Is that what you’re trying to say? Yes, I spent a hundred lifetimes in their hell. I know what I’m bringing to this world.”
There. His hand found the pocket. And within, something small, round and cool.
“So, yes. Um, how could you do this, then?”
Taasha was silent for too long, and Ralanous risked a glance up. She was staring at him, her face ugly with disgust.
“How dare you!” She finally hissed. “You left me there to rot. I was the sacrifice, and you left me to die! Is it fair then, for me to suffer while the rest of the world is happy, safe and ignorant? They gave me an opportunity, and I took it.”
She spun and stalked back into the circle. Delicately, Ralanous pulled a coin from his pocket and out into the crimson. A silver florin.
It was not a shield, but it was better than forgotten spells. Ralanous gripped the coin in both hands and the heavy air lifted a little from his head and back. He pushed himself onto his knees, shaking. The red light was still oppressive; the silver countered its magic but was too small to be more effective. It was enough. If he could just keep his balance.
Taasha was back in the circle, frowning at him, but had not resumed her incantation. Her face was flushed, doubly red in the saturating glow. All but two of the candles had burned out.
“An opportunity?” Ralanous held his coin tightly. “And I did not leave you to rot, Taasha. You should know that. I tried.”
“Tried?” She screeched. “You? I know all about you now, Ralanous. The brilliant young wizard carrying on his master’s work? Ha! How many years had you been doing it, before me?”
He could not stop his mouth, it answered of its own volition. “Fifty four.”
She laughed. A strained, high noise. “Fifty four innocents, fifty four sacrifices then. Either hidden from the demonists and their knife, or rescued before the circle could be opened. Why was I the only one you couldn’t save? In all those years, all those sacrifices, I was the only one you couldn’t rescue. The only one the demons killed.”
“I know that.” Ralanous held his hands out before him and stepped into the space the silver opened. It was not much, the red light still pulled against his legs, but he could move.
“You said you would protect me. You said you would keep me safe. And I believed you.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I will never forget it. The day we found you, dead and bleeding, with the circle open and the hands of those below reaching up. I cannot forget that.” Despite years of trying.
“Yet you closed the circle, and forced them back from this world. Why weren’t you strong enough to save me?”
Ralanous was inches from the circle, his coin pressed to his chest as the pressure threatened to push the breath from his lungs.
“We were too late.” It was not a good enough answer for the emptiness in her eyes. The betrayal. “I don’t know, Taasha. I’m sorry, but I just don’t know.”
She blinked, and the pain was gone. Her arrogance returned. “Well, you did not help me, but they will. Those from the world below still desire ownership of this realm. But with the last sacrifice dead and the blood of their servants on your hands, they had no way of attaining it. So they offered me a bargain.”
“You bargained with the demons?”
“Of course. You cannot begin to imagine what it is like to have your soul in their hands, although you soon will. They gave me back my old form, gave me magic, and swore. If I open the circle, if I offer myself as sacrifice this final time, they will set me free. The world will be theirs, what difference will one soul make?”
Ralanous wanted to look away from her eyes, from the desperate hope so close to madness. But he did not let himself. “And you believe them? You made a deal with demons and you expect them to honor it?”
“You left me no choice.”
The final candle died, leaving a tiny black mark surrounded by wasted wax. On the ground, a mere inch away from Ralanous’ feet, the blood that drew the circle began to boil. Filthy steam rose to choke him, blinding him with tears. When he could see again the blood was gone, replaced by lines of black ink. But these were moving, coiling like worms, undulating on and above the cobblestones.
“I guess you’re too late again, little wizard.” There was a knife in Taasha’s hand, an ugly thing of dark metal, its blade engraved with contorting, reaching figures. Their eyes, malicious rubies, smirked at him. He had thrown that knife into the sea after it had taken its first and final sacrifice, believing the movement of the tides would be powerful enough to undo its demonic power. He had been wrong about that too, it seemed.
He could not let her do it. If she sacrificed herself, if that knife took her life and spilled her blood into the symbol, then the circle really would open again. And Ralanous no longer had the magic to close it. It had almost killed him last time, and now he was nothing but a stinking, useless drunk.
With his florin in hand Ralanous reached for Taasha. The red air could not hold him, but the ink on the ground, those terrible, sickening alive lines, leapt from the cobblestones. They wrapped around his hands, his arms, and twisted. He cried out as they forced him to his knees, pulled him down, then reached for his neck.
Taasha laughed. “I don’t know how you got through the barrier but you’re too weak to fight the circle. I just hope it doesn’t kill you before they come. Oh, how they’d like to get their hands on you!” She giggled, a sound too girlish to belong in the middle of such horror.
Ralanous ignored the twisting tendrils and battled to think. Water. Running water, moving water, to stop them opening the circle or, at worst, to push it back. But the canal was dry; they would not even be here if it was flowing. And his spells all gone.
The ink wrapped around his neck, and his hands spasmed. The coin fell from his grip, and without it the crimson beat him closer to the ground. He could hear more laughter, then quiet gasps of pain.
He had to stop her opening her flesh. He had to get past the circle.
A desperate idea caught him, and again he went searching in his coat. It was not water, but surely it was close. Ralanous drew the tin flask from his pocket. He pulled the stopper with his teeth while he scrounged around on the dirty stones. Finally, he found the coin. He held it tight in one hand, while the other lifted the flask.
It was nearly empty, how could he have drunk that much?
“Drinking to my health?” Taasha, her voice breathless and low, could still fill her words with scorn. Ralanous looked up and found her covered in blood. The ground was wet with it, the squirming ink drinking with tiny, snake-like heads.
A grin spread over his face and Ralanous pulled against the tendrils that held him. He could not breathe, could not answer her, but did not need to. He drew as close to the circle as he could, lifted the flask and flicked the gin.
It did not dissolve the circle as water would have done, but the symbol flinched. It was just enough, not even a second of weakness, but enough. The grip on his neck slackened and Ralanous reached out with the florin. He leapt to his feet.
Then staggered. Slipped on the wet stones. Steadied himself, lost his balance again and fell.
Straight into Taasha.
She screamed, lifted her hands to try and ward him off. For a moment she held him, palm to palm in a lurching parody of dance. But Ralanous could not keep his balance, the world just would not stop spinning! He tumbled out of the circle, their hands still entwined.
Together, they landed on the stones, Taasha pinned beneath Ralanous’ weight. He was not a small man; a penchant for ale had ensured that. No matter how much she struggled, Taasha could not shift him.
Ralanous pulled the knife from her hand while behind them, the circle screamed. Its ink writhed and fought toward their struggling bodies. But while Ralanous kept Taasha away, the circle died.
“How?” Taasha’s voice lost its scorn. “This isn’t possible.”
Ralanous brought the knife down against the ground, and it rang in the alley with a sharp clang. The circle’s screaming was growing quiet, its millions of tiny, black heads slumping back into lifelessness.
“What are you going?” Taasha had stopped struggling and was watching Ralanous’ hand with foggy, blank eyes.
The red light was lifting, a sure sign Taasha was weakening. It made it easier. Again and again Ralanous brought the knife down onto the stones. What he had not been able to destroy with magic he would do with sheer determination and cobblestones instead. Because he could not think of another way. He was a useless drunk, but he would not leave the knife in Taasha’s hands. So he did all he could do.
“No!” Taasha tried to fight him as a tiny chip of black metal flew from the side of the blade. “You can’t, that’s my only choice!”
Gritting his teeth, Ralanous brought the knife down harder.
“No!”
The blade broke. Half a dozen shattered pieces flew to the edges of the alley. In an instant, the dying circle was silenced, and the scarlet light vanished.
Breathing heavily, Ralanous rolled off Taasha’s bloody body and lay on his back. He stared up at the stars, veiled by a layer of smog. He was alive.
Beside him, Taasha started sobbing. Quiet cries, filled with sorrow.
“He broke the deal, can you hear me? It was his fault, not mine!” She whispered between sobs. “Ralanous, how could you? Don’t you care?”
Groaning, he sat up. The ground rocked, but this time from exhaustion, not drink. His arms hadn’t felt this tired, this sore, since he was an apprentice, a teenager practicing sword drills under the eye of a tough master. It was strangely pleasant.
“I did care. I always cared. And who knows,” he found the wall again and let it help him to his feet, “you might not die yet.” He looked down at Taasha’s cut dress, the bleeding gashes beneath it. “Although, if you die now and the demons take your soul, you will deserve it.”
She looked away from him, tears running to join her blood on the cobblestones, and said nothing.
His feet uncertain beneath him, Ralanous teetered to the centre of the alley. A black mark, a smudge like the remains of a fire, was all that was left of the circle. His flask lay within it. Gingerly, pressing his hand on his knee as his back protested, Ralanous bent to pick it up. It sloshed a little as he replaced the stopper; it was not as empty as he had thought.
“Demons can be fought, Taasha.” He looked down at the flask of gin in his hand, shook it for just a moment. The sound of it, the feel of it, made him thirsty. “Even if you believe they own your soul.” He dropped the flask back onto the cobblestones, wincing as it rang a piercing note through the alley. He could feel the beginnings of a bastard of a headache.
“But you’ll need to get up and be alive if you want to fight them.” His shaky feet carried him to Taasha and he tried to catch her eye. She continued to look away, stubborn to the last. “Or you could stay there and bleed. Your choice.”
Ralanous turned away from Taasha, from the remnants of the circle and her splattered blood, and left the alley. He would go home. Not tonight, he would sleep off the drink in the cramped attic he had been living in for the past three years first, and then he would leave the city.
He couldn’t quite remember the way, but it was sure to come to him. He would find his teacher’s tower, the orchard he had played in as a boy, the yard where he had wielded his first sword, and finally take the old man up on his offer. He would return home, and rest.