Demon of the Black Gate

Rovinkar snapped himself out of the seer’s trance, the bell still ringing faintly. He had barely made contact, caught a panorama of snow capped mountains before a human-like face loomed in his view. A statue in living granite, fires flickering in the lines of it grimace, stared back at him. He broke the link, shaking, sweating. The demon knew. It had to be aware of the link between them. He prayed the demon had not yet learned to follow the link itself. He could not try such a measure again. At least it was evident the demon was still in the Stands. He would have to make another attempt to imprison it. He did not want to return to Abbysin without the demon recovered and the gate destroyed. The demon had felt him. Seen him. He needed to contain it as quickly as possible. When he first endeavored to recapture the demon, he had not thought the power of water, the strongest of the elements, would be necessary. The rite was long and cumbersome and results was measured in days. He must return to the Gate. The water passing through the sharp gorge would be contained by the only exit from the Stands. The demon could not escape this time.

Rovinkar rang a pull rope in the anteroom of his chambers. A woman answered his call, clad in a filmy egg-blue gown, the airy fabric of its bodice barely containing her heavy breasts as it crisscrossed her torso.

“Return here with Racife. We have work to do. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

The woman bowed and departed. Rovinkar needed the distraction the night would bring. Once he was back at the Black Gate, there would be none of that. Rovinkar paced the room nervously, pulling at his robes. It was not the pending romp that created the restive mood. The demon had seen.

Melindra returned with the man, Racife. They had but thin scraps of cloth to shed and their eyes shone with anticipation. He dropped his robe and stepped into the pool that cornered into his chambers. Well tonight he would forget. Melindra and Racife would see to that as they followed him into the bath. If things went well, he thought as he lay back in the cooling waters and felt their hands begin their massage, he might even buy both of them when he returned on his way to Abbysin. Anything was for sale in the Vale. He closed his eyes. He cared not who it was when a new moisture enveloped him.

Rovinkar left d’Houri the next evening with two of his guard, traveling north to the Black Gate, the journey across the desert taken in the relative cool of the night. The route was becoming too familiar to him. He looked forward to his return to the imperial city and the comforts allowed there. His comforts were becoming important to him, and the ministrations of the pair last night reminded him how pleasurable they could be.

He reached the imperial encampment at midmorning. Upon crossing the Moon Bridge, he had fallen in with a supply train that came from Maabi and bound for the troops and mercenaries still stationed at the Gate. The wagons bore the marks and badges of the empire and the guild of armorers, Chenli’s heraldry. Rovinkar took a little pleasure in knowing that his own investments were growing as well as he accompanied the caravan the remaining leagues to the gate. He would not linger at the encampment. The men were bored, and like himself, thought mostly of returning to their homes.

“Let them dream”, he thought. “There is a realm to conquer first.”

Under cover of nightfall he would begin his task. Inside his tent, Rovinkar turned the four-sided bones, laying the proper alignment as keyed by the sigils in the Book. He had failed twice at restoring the demon to its prison. Fire and air were not strong enough lures. The most plentiful and pervasive element was water, the component of oceans, the element of blood. He shuddered to think what might happen if he failed in this attempt. The earth elements were too deep and of the ages. The spell would take longer than he would live.

With failure on this attempt he would have to lead the demon into the void himself. The Nilizanthra offered no other recourse and no other endgame seemed possible. The treatise within claimed that water was alive and the spirits would reject the demon and drive it to the void. Rovinkar generally scoffed at such antiquated notions. Water was water. It had no life of its own. But if that was the view, he would adopt it for this undertaking. Every drop of water that fell in the Stands would drain into the Emerald River. The Black Gate was the perfect harness.

When darkness fell, he gathered his book and the stone and approached the Black Gate as close as he dared. He would have to perform his magics under the watchful eyes of the Standish guard. The night would cloak him well enough.

The water ran fast through the Gates, as well the winds that sought their way east or west through the gap between the great mountain chains. Standing at the banks, he began waving his hand countercircle, transferring the thin vortex of air into the quiescent shallows. The water took on an eddy, slowly, then more apace, becoming tighter as a small maelstrom opened at its center.

Rovinkar withdrew vial containing a drop of water. The drop encapsulated a tiny dark mote, a grain of the obsidian. He let the drop fall into the confluence of the eddy. It would reach the center, and when it did, the calling would begin. Rovinkar disliked the notion that there was no allotted time for the spell to work, that he would have to wait. Water took its own time, but it was also bound by strict rules. The water would pass here. It would bring the demon with it.