Mage Heart. Jane Routley
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The pacts demons offer are never honorable. They seek always to enslave, to trick. They are inhuman, without conscience or compassion. They are pure evil, insatiable appetite incarnate, a sink which sucks in all life. Obscenely. Their greatest desire is to find a mage powerful enough to bring them through into our world and one whom, at the same time, they can trick into setting them free, so that they can satisfy their dreadful appetites at will. Thank God, that has only happened twice in our world. A demon let loose could lay waste to whole countries within days."
We both knew the truth of what he said. Almost a century before, our homeland of Moria had been the victim of one of these disasters. The demon Smazor had consumed the life out of thousands of miles of Moria and killed half its population in the few hours it took the United White College of Mages to cooperate in a dispelling ritual. Smazor was the reason Moria was now a poor, backward, sparsely populated country on the lunatic fringes of peninsula politics. Even though some of the land he laid waste had slowly recovered, there was still a great flattened wasteland called the Plain of Despair, a hundred miles deep in places, cutting off most of Moria from the sea to the east. Michael once showed it to me in a Bowl of Seeing. It was a terrible place, populated only by the white skeletons of trees and storms of grit and bone dust. Even caravans of merchants would not cross it. They said the air was thick with the spirits of the agonized dead, and that their cries would send a man mad.
"Smazor's Run" had been caused by the United White Colleges in the first place. Unaware of his existence, they had killed his master, the brutal necromancer Jubilato, leaving Smazor free to ravage at will.
I once asked Michael how on earth the United Colleges could have made such a mistake. It was the only question I ever dared ask him about demons.
"Such an oversight is easily made, child. We detect demon magic because of the human magic that must be used to get it. If a demon slave is on this plane, his master has no need to use further magic to force the demon to do his bidding. And the actions of demons themselves are completely undetectable to our magic. Aristo postulates that this is because demons are supernatural rather than magical. I hope," he continued sternly, "that you are not allowing yourself to become unwisely interested in this subject."
Like so many things Michael said, his lecture on demons had the opposite effect to what was intended. Necromancy held no appeal for me. I had no taste for violence. But demons ... that was different! That night I lay awake in the darkness, seduced by a longing to comprehend them. Their soaring power and guiltless freedom of action was intoxicating to one who had so little of either.
From then on I sought out every scrap of information I could about demons. I did not take Michael's warnings very seriously. You can't get into trouble just by reading books, and that was all I was doing. I wasn't stupid enough to try to communicate with demons; I was quite content to study them from afar. There was not much to know. Necromantic magics like demon summoning could no longer be performed on the Oesteradd Peninsula since the white mages formed the Anti-Necromantic Pact shortly after Smazor's attack.
But I had not just read books. I had also thought about demons a great deal. I had pondered at length over their nature, trying to imagine their lives on their own plane. Did they all live on different planes or on the same plane? And if on the same plane, how did they live with each other? As humans did? Or as predators and prey? What was the nature of the barrier between our worlds? How had it come into being? If demons could send their powers through it, why was it so hard for them to cross it? And so on and so forth. It had crossed my mind at the time that I might be being unwise, but I comforted myself with the thought that I was hardly important enough for them to bother with.
Now back in my little room at the college I wasn't so sure. As I stripped off and destroyed my slimy nightdress, scoured myself all over with icy water, and swore off hazia for life, I wondered if all those thoughts and researches back then had been as harmless as I'd thought. A sense of horror and a sheepish feeling of shame filled me. I had not thought much about demons since we'd left Moria, yet the fascination must have been lurking in my mind all the time, waiting to be set free... Had it taken me to the demon? Or had I got there by the demon's will? Had it been waiting all this time? God and Angels! I peered over my shoulder quickly, and the shadows behind the desk and under the bed seemed to take substance. A demon had seen me now. There was a link, and who could tell where that might lead.
If I wasn't careful. I pushed anxiety off resolutely. No matter how it had seemed in the hazia dream, it was in its world and I was safe in mine. Logically, what could it do to me? Necromancy held no attraction for me. I would put up the runes of distraction and protection and it would lose interest in me. It was not as if I were strong enough to bring it into this world. I was just finishing dressing when another knock came.
Just my luck, I thought as I went to the door. Usually no one visited me and now, just when I really didn't want it ...
It was the college healer, a neat, quiet woman dressed in brown.
"Hello," I said. I could not remember her name.
"The Dean sent me," she said, firmly pushing open the door and coming into the room. "I believe you are sick."
"I'm fine," I said. Now I was in trouble. The minute she examined me she'd recognize the symptoms of hazia use. "I had a headache, but it's gone. I was sleeping when the messenger came."
She stiffened. I followed her gaze. The rest of my lump of hazia sat, small but as obvious as a beacon, on the worktable. She stared hard at me. I could not meet her eyes. Then she reached out, picked up the hazia, and put it in her pocket.
I made a sound of protest.
"I think," she said deliberately, "I will tell the Dean that you have a headache and need to lie down for a few hours. I imagine you will be feeling more yourself by, shall we say, three o'clock. I will tell the Dean you will see him then."
She walked to the door.
"That's mine!" I said, forgetting I'd just sworn off.
"I'm surprised you admit to it. You might like to spend the time till three meditating on the unwisdom of indulging in forbidden substances, especially during the school day."
She closed the door with a snap.
Pompous bitch, I thought. Michael said it was typical of such women to take the opportunity to lord it over those of us with greater powers. He was usually right about such things.
Still, she had a point. I did need to lie down till the effects of the drug wore off. Though I'd come out of the vision, the world was still showing a distressing tendency to change color and whirl about. I seemed to have lost all concentration, too, for after I'd placed the runes of protection and distraction around the room, instead of continuing to worry about the demon, I did indeed spend the intervening time meditating on my unwisdom. If the Dean found out, I was in serious trouble. The use of hazia was banned in the college, and several students, including Mylon, the fellow who'd sold it to me, had recently been expelled for using it. They, at least, had somewhere else to go. If I was expelled, where could I go?
That morning, a few hours before dawn, unable to sleep, I had committed the indiscretion of taking some hazia, knowing full well I would have to spend the day hiding out in my room till the visions stopped. Boredom, however, is the worst part of insomnia. I'd assumed nobody would notice my absence. Looking back now, I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been.
I would never have dreamed of using hazia while Michael was alive. It was popular among students of magic, and even some communities of mages used its visions as an occult enhancer, but Michael had always said that if you had sufficient powers, you shouldn't need to use other things to enhance them.
Then he died. And I was alone, a Morian refugee in a strange land, the only woman in a college full of men. I quickly lost all interest in the studies and disciplines that had previously filled my day. If the truth be told, magic is basically a dull business-the endless grinding rote learning of true names and spells, the endless repetition of small rituals. I tried to continue Michael's research into the secret names of stones, but that failed to absorb me. I tried to keep up with my studies, but it was no use. I was so far ahead of the other students that there was no need for me to