“The man you saved is fine, safely ensconced within his tavern. The demons planned to use him as bait, to capture you.”
“What? Bait!” No, Martin couldn’t put Peter in danger.
“Martin. He is well. Stay with me a while.”
Instinct pulled at Martin to go see Peter for himself.
“Please,” Dmitri pleaded.
Martin deflated. Dmitri had never asked him for much before. Martin stared down at the remains of two demons, then raised his gaze to the vicinity of the cloaked priest’s face. “Two tonight, warriors. Why?”
“I do not know.” While Dmitri’s voice held his normal controlled tones, time as hunting partners clued Martin into traces of concern. “Warriors.” Dmitri inched closer to the remains of Martin’s opponent. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that. Not on living demon flesh.”
“What did I do? I just shot a fireball.” Fire, like Martin once used to kill the villagers. But Dmitri said mage fire didn’t harm living demon flesh. “Has it always been this way, demons in the city?” How long ago had some unknown priests created the runes to ward off evil?
A wash of flame blazed up from the bodies, momentarily turning night to day, gone in an instant. Still, the bright flash hadn’t penetrated Dmitri’s hood.
After the first sevenday or so, spending the eve with a faceless man and the other hunter priests grew more comfortable. Martin had not yet given in to the temptation of card reading with Dmitri in mind, too afraid of what he might discover.
And like the demons, Martin sensed no thoughts or emotions when he fixed on the priests.
Prepared to receive no answer, Martin strained to hear the next words. “Not always. In seasons past, when we numbered in the thousands, guardians patrolled the city and countryside, seeking out night wanderers. What you call demons, though they have their own name for their kind.” Dmitri shrugged one shoulder. “When necessary, evil men and women.”
He turned his face away, staring out into the blackness. No stars, no moon to light their night, and in this oldest part of town, few street lanterns chased back the shadows. What could he possibly be looking for? “The danger seems to have passed for a moment. We can talk.”
“What do you mean, guardians?”
Dmitri let out a wistful sigh, lapsing into teaching mode. “As you may have guessed, my fellow priests and I are not from here.”
“Not from E’Skaara.”
Dmitri let out another sigh, this one longsuffering. “The time has come to tell you everything.” They stood in the firelight, the darkness of Dmitri’s clothes nearly dispelling the light. “I come from Eallarial, a world far older than yours, where we freely practiced magic. Imagine ships riding the waves from magic, never needing sails. Even ships that rode the winds.” Was that a trace of wistfulness?
But ships that rode the winds? Was Dmitri toying with him? “That’s ridiculous!” Though, if memory served, Martin had heard tales…
“No, it’s not. Remember the many realms you witnessed the night I taught you about runes? I came from one of those other realms. Magic on my world was plentiful, as it was here, until… it… came.”
“What is it?”
“The entity you call the Lady. It came here and took advantage of local religious custom, fashioning itself on the aspect of the Mother but calling itself the Lady. It arrived on my world and consumed the source of a mage’s power. It lives on magic. Like here, mages were collected, with the creature draining their vitality. They were its competition for what you call magic. Great carnage ensued.”
“Thomoth! My mother told me stories of Thomoth.”
Dmitri’s hood dipped. “That is one name the creature has used. As on your world, it posed as a deity on mine. How else to secure the goodwill of the people?”
Two silent priests slipped out of the darkness, taking up stations near the burning corpses. “Come, Martin,” Dmitri said, “I need to return to the temple, and you won’t rest until you see for yourself that their latest victim returned home safely.” Hand on Martin’s back, Dmitri led Martin away, continuing his tale. “Soon, the monster consumed nearly all of the magic on my world. The mages remaining, myself included, worked tirelessly to defeat our foe, to no avail. Even nonmages, you see, needed magic. It kept us alive until all the magic was gone and our lands lay in ruins.”
The stories Mum told of Thomoth didn’t even compare to what Martin learned now. “It started by killing the mages.”
Dmitri’s hood lifted and lowered. “The remaining mages and their families from my own realm combined resources, created a portal, and fled, except one, who had grown as evil as the creature in his own way. The creature followed. We created shields, wore amulets to conceal our nature, and hid among the people of your world. We watch for magic, other mages, protect and nurture them if we can. The strongest of us stayed here in E’Skaara, where the greatest concentration of magic is, continuing our fight to keep this creature from destroying yet another world.”
“And the demons?”
Dmitri sighed. “They weren’t from my realm but another drained by the Lady. They were nonmagic users who still needed magic to survive, though unaware of the fact. They are weaker, and many slip past our wards.”
“Why do they kill?”
“Their victims all have a percentage of magic blood. Though demons cannot feed directly on the magic supply and alert the creature hiding beneath the Lady’s temple to their presence, they consume the magic they can, generated out of fear, and return home to their master, who allows them a portion and saves the rest for himself. We call them evil. From their standpoint, they’re merely doing what they must to survive.”
