Page 39 of Crucible of Chaos

Years ago, when Estevar was given his coat of office and sent out on his first judicial circuit, he’d wondered what power a magistrate had over those who refused to accept his authority. No decree– not even one issued by a king– is worth more than the parchment on which it’s written to people who cannot read it and do not fear the consequences of disobedience. But Estevar had soon discovered something unusual about the peculiar role of the magistrate. There was a strange sort of. . . compulsion to allow a trial to be held. In their own way, trials were rituals, as potent as a prayer service or wedding, or even the coronation of a king. A verdict might be ignored, the sentence evaded, and yet a judge’s ruling could make the air itself inside a courtroom thrum with condemnation.

Let us see, then, if there is yet something in this paltry world of weak humanity that you fear.

He took another step towards the demons, invading the ground of their ritual, but before they could begin to show their disdain for him, he started pacing around them in a circle, as he often did when sorting through the tangled details of a case. All the while, his tongue sought out weaknesses in their defences that his rapier had been unable to pierce.

‘You have violated a holy place,’ he began. ‘For that crime you must now await the punishment of this court.’

Their arms were still raised up high, poised to strike the near-unconscious Strigan with their claws. Yet they hadn’t moved, which gave Estevar the beginnings of a theory.

They may be unnatural in form, yet by their rituals they reveal themselves to be creatures governed by traditions, rules, perhaps even laws. I need only discern what those laws might be and convince them they’ve violated them.

A new sound emerged from their mouths: a kind of hush mixed with a buzzing that was like fingernails scraping the inside of his skull.

‘The defendants will speak in the language of this court!’ Estevar shouted. This time, he did bring his fist down as if to strike a bell. He was both surprised and pleased when the demons flinched.

One of the creatures’ obscenely wide mouths contorted painfully. ‘We. . .’ he began, only to clamp his jaws shut as if even uttering that single word had been agony.

A second assailed the apparently arduous task. ‘We were. . .’ but he, too, failed to say more.

‘Summoned,’ offered the next, gurgling the two syllables as if he were choking on a handful of slithering worms.

‘We were summoned,’ Estevar repeated silently to himself.Magic then– real magic, conjured here in this abbey. So what Strigan attempted so clumsily has been achieved by another.

‘By whom?’ he asked.

A third demon stretched out a distended milky-white limb. The movement was at once awkward and yet almost formal, as if the jerky contortions were the opening of a ceremonial curtsey. A long, stiletto-like fingernail traced the air a fraction of an inch above Strigan’s chest, following the line of one of the now-bloody sigils carved there.

‘We were summoned,’ the creature repeated.

Estevar’s curiosity flared inside him–an almost overpowering urge to question these apparitions, to uncover who had brought them here and by what means, but this gambit could carry him only so far. Brother Agneta was staring at him, and in her dubious expression he saw that she both understood what he was attempting and had little confidence in its success.

Turning his attention back to the demons who could– at any moment and with barely any effort–disprove all his blustering by tearing him to pieces and devouring him at their leisure, Estevar Borros laughed. He laughed long and hard, then stepped even closer to clap a hand down on one of the creatures’ shoulders. The skin felt slick and scaly, like that of a fish, yet there was some far more discomfiting sensation in that touch: a kind of. . .itchsettled on his palm, like the first sting of acid before it burns the flesh away for ever. With his fingertips, he felt something else as well: subtle variations in the texture of the creature’s skin forming patterns of curved lines. He’d missed them before because the markings were as pale as the skin underneath, but these were, unmistakeably, the same sigils as those Strigan had tattooed on his own body.

Another clue, he thought,insufficient to determine the esoteric workings of this ritual and little use in determining the culprit behind it all. Still, the discovery might be turned to good use.

‘The one who summoned you has tricked you,’ he told the creatures with the assuredness of a verdict. ‘Nothing awaits you in this place but your own doom. You were deceived into believing the gods who ruled this place are no more, but look!’ He pointed to the storm clouds drifting closer.

‘Are your ears so dulled that you do not hear the rumblings of their displeasure? The gods of Tristia, birthed by a magic deeper and more potent than your own, arm themselves with lightning and thunder. Tarry here and they will strike you down.’

The creatures tilted their heads this way and that, as if trying to hear something far, far away, then repeated in their glottal murmurs, ‘We. . . were. . . summoned.’

Good, he thought.They are not mocking my assertion, which suggests they know no more about gods than I do, save that they fear them.

‘You were deceived,’ he repeated. ‘You allowed yourselves to be ensnared by one who had no right to command your service, and in so doing, have set yourselves in greater peril than you can fathom.’

‘We. . .’

‘We were. . .’

‘Sum—’

‘Enough!’ Estevar roared. ‘The evidence has been heard and it weighs against you. As magistrate of this trial, I am prepared to render my judgment.’ He raised his fist high once more. ‘Are the accused ready to hear the verdict?’

It was a risk, of course– what if these demonic beings politely declined to allow him to pass sentence? And yet all his instincts, those of a magistrateandthose of a duellist,told him that something he was saying, something he’d chanced upon, was the key to their banishment.

The five creatures abandoned Strigan’s unconscious form to surround Estevar. As one, they brought their claws to his neck, a ring of daggers barely a hair’s breadth from his throat.

If there were any saints inclined to beg the gods to grant miracles to magistrates, one surely spoke up then, because a rumble of thunder emerged from the clouds overhead. The distended fingers of the demons twitched, and Estevar felt the faintest of scratches against his neck.

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