Femgenficathon Story: Mind Killer, Part 2 (Charity Carpenter, The Dresden Files)
Title: Mind-Killer
Author: gehayi
Fandom: The Dresden Files (bookverse)
Characters: Charity Carpenter, Charity's parents, Gregor, Siriothrax, Michael Carpenter
Word Count: 11,543
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I most emphatically do not own The Dresden Files. They belong to Jim Butcher, ROC Books, New American Library, the Penguin Group, and-for the next three years--Lionsgate Productions. No profit is being made and no copyright or trademark infringed upon.
Prompt: Most people, after accomplishing something, use it over and over again like a gramophone record till it cracks, forgetting that the past is just the stuff with which to make more future. -- Freya Stark (1893-1993), British adventurer, explorer and author of numerous books about her journeys.
Summary: Seeing the future in dreams and visions. Sensing people's natures with a touch. Being viewed as addicted or insane by those who should trust her most. Life isn't easy for a young wizard named Charity. Pre-series. Written for femgenficathon.
Warnings: (if any) Darkfic. Potentially disturbing subject matter. Spoilers for Proven Guilty, especially pages 298-301.
Author's Notes: (if any) Not compliant with any author interviews or forum posts relating to this character. The only information I have about her is from the books and short stories, so that's what I'm using.
Some of you may note that Gregor's middle name is Pyotr, not Pyotrovich. The reason? He was born in America, not Eastern Europe, and middle names are not normally patronymics in America.
The Clavis Salomonis, or Key of Solomon, is a book on magic written during the Middle Ages. However, it contains no "Thegn Ritual" or "Niehorster-Staub variant."
Thanks to my betas, shiplizard, fenna_girl and beachkid.
***
Part 1 is here.
Three days later (by mortal time-there's no telling how long the trip through that otherworldly realm lasted), Charity ends up in New York. She's pleased. New York seems like a good place to drop out of sight. And since she's officially a fugitive mental patient with addiction problems, dropping out of sight seems like the sanest thing to do.
She spends a good portion of that winter stealing clothes and shoes-something she loathes and refuses to speak of, then or ever-so that she'll have something marginally warmer and more employment-friendly than a pair of faded grey shorts and a yellow and black T-shirt which reads "Strike first, strike hard and show no mercy". She works the sorts of jobs where you get paid in cash or food (or, preferably, both). And she attempts to regain her physical strength and to find someplace halfway warm to sleep.
And on the second of February-she never forgets the date-she first hears Gregor speak, and learns about his coven.
She'd read quite a few things about magic that winter, chiefly because libraries are warm and dry, and as long as she's marginally clean and not scaring anyone, the librarians leave her be. Most of what she'd read was rubbish, but there were occasional nuggets of truth here and there. She even tried a few spells, on the grounds that she needs to learn what to do with her magic. After all, it makes very little sense to have what amounts to a superpower and not use it.
But she still doesn't know much-not even what to call herself. And there's no one that she can ask. For all she knows, she's the only ... what? Witch? Sorceress? Warlock? Mage? ... in all of New York City.
The night that she meets Gregor is freezing cold, and a mixture of spitting snow and sleet is coming down. The sidewalks are growing slick with snow and what might be black ice in a few hours. Charity, shivering in a too-thin jacket, her tennis shoes providing little traction on the slippery sidewalk, looks about for a place close enough and warm enough to retreat to for a few hours. She glances about, and finds what looks like a run-down store. If it is a store, she can just wander around for an hour or two. If it's a storefront church and someone is preaching ... well, she'll approach the moralizing the way she used to approach geometry. As long as she can sit in the back and doze off with both eyes open-something every teenager learns at some point-she should be fine.
There's no dozing off that night, however. Gregor-a young man of twenty-four or so-stands in front of a motley collection of strays, runaways and throwaways, and speaks passionately about magic. The real thing.
Charity doesn't understand all of what Gregor's saying; for him and for most of the kids in the room, magic seems to be tangled up with religion and philosophy, and she's never bothered much with either. But she grasps some of Gregor's ideas-that magic is a gift, and that wizards have an obligation to strengthen that gift and to grow more powerful. That the rest of the world is blind, ignoring the reality of magic or explaining it away. That wizards must protect themselves, standing athwart those who unknowingly persecute them for being different, those who knowingly try to force them into the dreary mold of normalcy. She agrees in spite of herself, and notices a number of others nodding and muttering, "You said it."
And then it hits her ... most of the people here are taking Gregor seriously.
Which has to mean that at least some of them know that magic is real. They won't think she's insane. Or addicted. Or both. Some of them ... dear God, some of them must be like her.
As Gregor wraps up his speech, Charity discovers that she's right. He segues from lecture mode to teaching mode, guiding the others through attack spells using jets of flowing water and shield charms. It's almost like a game, and she wishes desperately that she knew how to play. And at the same time, she's almost afraid to try. She feels like an ordinary mutant who has accidentally stumbled into Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. They're her kind, yes...but they can do so much more.
As she hesitates, Gregor turns, spots her and speaks. "Do you want to try? Come here. I'll show you how to cast a shield charm." He gives her a sun-bright smile. "Don't worry. It's easy."
Charity takes a deep breath to quiet the butterflies in her stomach, and then slowly and deliberately walks forward.
She has no idea if this will be easy, or if she can cast spells consciously at all. After all, her magic so far has been limited to dreams, visions and ripping a hole into another dimension twice--both times out of sheer desperation.
But if she's going to be a magical mutant, she's going to be a well-trained one.
***
Living with Gregor's group-she shies away from the word "coven," and she's pretty sure that cults don't actually help people-is a definite step up from shelters and sleeping in abandoned cars and doorways. Gregor and the group live in a basement apartment. No electricity-they make do with candles and kerosene lamps-and the heat is supplied by a hearth and insulated sleeping bags. And there's very little privacy, which is one of the things that eats at Charity; she needs a place to retreat to, a place where she can get away from everyone, even her closest friends, and just be.
But it's better than the hospital. A billion times better.
Her days are full, with part-time jobs to pay her share of the rent and the food bill and magic lessons in her off-hours. Gregor is a good teacher-demanding, yes, but he's impressed all of them with the fact that there's no margin for error in magic, and that sloppiness will get them killed, so no one complains about that.
One of the first things she learned is that her magic isn't extraordinarily powerful. As sensitives go, she's average. This galled her when she found out--and still does on occasion. After all she went through, she's no more than a normal sensitive?
Then she thinks of how unbearable it was to be an average sensitive, pictures what it must be like to be a powerful one, and fights not to be sick.
She's also learned that she's not much good at creating things like fireballs or outpourings of water. Gregor reassures her that this doesn't matter.
"You have a rare talent," he tells her. "Not many wizards can see the future. But," and a shadow sweeps across his face, "you have to be careful."
She shivers; there's no need for him to say any more, for she knows what he's talking about. All of them have heard Gregor's lectures about avoiding the White Council, and the Wardens in particular.
Gregor's descriptions of the Wardens have been vivid: stern-faced men and sour women in ghostly grey cloaks, their zealous eyes seeking out anyone who dares to explore or discover power on their own and beheading them with enchanted swords designed to cut through any body--human or not--and any magic.
"But why?" Charity demands when she first hears this. "Why do they do it?"
"Because the White Council regards magic as its own personal property," Gregor replies. "If you're a member, they have a right to cut off your head if you do something the Council doesn't like. And if you're not a member-and you have to be strong and well-trained to be a member-the Council has a right to cut off your head if they think you're doing something evil. Like, oh, doing magic on your own and not making normal humans forget about it. Of course, forcing someone to forget would break one of their pointless Laws, and that would get you executed too.
"There's no way to win against them-they'll get you coming and going. So don't try. Just avoid the Council-and their murderous lapdogs. Don't attract their attention, and you'll be a lot happier."
And Gregor teaches them a good many ways to stay under the Wardens' radar. Potions and glamours to disguise themselves as other people. Veiling. Routes through the Nevernever to bring them safely home. Charity invents a method of her own that she calls the Jedi mind trick-a simple, direct message to the brain. You made a mistake. She didn't do anything evil. This isn't the wizard you're looking for. Move along.
She figures it's fair. She's not forcing them to listen, after all. She's just being, for a brief moment, extremely convincing.
She practices, as do the other kids. They protect themselves; they protect each other. Despite being terrified of the bastards on the Council, they begin to feel somewhat safe again.
And then Gregor insists that they cast a Summoning spell.
"Why can't you just do it yourself?" demands a Jamaican boy Charity barely recognizes. "You're the one who wants to Summon something, so why don't you cast it?"
Gregor gives him a homicidal glare. "It takes more strength than I've got. It will take all of us to Summon this entity."
"I-it's not a demon, is it?" whispers a redhead who calls herself Diana but who told Charity that her real name is Miriam. "I don't want to Summon anything like that."
"Yeah," says an androgynous kid who alternates between the names Celeste and Simon. "I've seen horror movies, Gregor. Summoning demons is never a good idea."
"It's not a demon! Do you think I'd put you at risk like that?" He doesn't wait for an answer, which Charity, observing the many nervous, sweaty faces in the room, thinks is just as well. "But there's a way of gaining magical power. It's not bad. All we have to do is call upon a servant of the Great Prince Siriothrax. And he's not a demon, either. But Siriothrax won't speak to us unless we perform a certain task for him, and the servant has to hear our plea, ask Siriothrax what the task will be, and then tell us." He studies them for a moment, then adds in a much gentler tone, "There's no danger. This will help us all."
Charity feels the first drop of suspicion toward Gregor; the explanation doesn't really explain. And he still hasn't told them what Siriothrax or his servant are. But she sees heads nodding around the room and hears murmurs of agreement, and she knows she's already been outvoted.
Sighing, she goes along with the others. She doesn't really want to Summon anything ... but Gregor's taken care of them so far. She knows he wouldn't do anything to hurt them.
He wouldn't. Really.
***
Charity never remembers much about the Summoning spell. Or, to be more precise, she strives not to remember much. Some things remain seared into her memory with soulgaze-clarity.
She recalls the light being sucked away from hundreds of candles and swallowed by darkness, a chilling (and, if she's going to be honest, exciting) presence of something wholly alien. She remembers seeing it materialize in the center of a circle of salt, a weird amalgamation of lizard and praying mantis with-bizarrely-the sensible girl-next-door voice of Molly Ringwald. She isn't able to shake the sense that the servant hadn't simply borrowed the voice to make itself more comprehensible to Gregor or the rest of them. It feels like a private joke, and not a nice one, either.
And she remembers its name. Ikothk. A bad sound, half guttural mutter and half insectile clicking. A sound she strives never to even think again.
She never hears what Gregor says to it, or what it replies to him. She only knows that one minute it's there in the circle, and the next it's vanished. Gregor, looking distracted and preoccupied, tells them that the servant said that Siriothrax would speak to him in exchange for a pledge, but that he refused to deal with underlings.
"Of course, I told her no," he adds in a tired and disappointed voice. "I wouldn't accept any power if I couldn't share it with the rest of you."
And that's it. It didn't work, that's all. Sometimes spells malfunction. It happens. No biggie. Certainly no one is inspired to try the spell again on their own. Everyone just goes back to the usual lessons and the normal run-throughs of magical spells.
That is, until the Warden shows up two weeks later.
***
No one knows at first that this man is a Warden. Certainly he doesn't look like the nightmarish creatures that most of the kids have imagined; he's almost resolutely ordinary. He's sleek, well-fed, and dresses like a Republican banker. Only the grey cloak and the sword at his hip seem at odds with his Businessman of the Year appearance, until Charity realizes that to the Warden, executing Dark wizards is just another form of business. Like filing taxes every year, it's unpleasant but necessary.
The Warden, who introduces himself as Murchison, speaks to each of them in turn behind a veil and a sonic shield which render those having the conversation invisible and inaudible to all but themselves. As if by unspoken agreement, no one, including Gregor, mentions what was said during those conversations...at least not while the Warden is still here.
When it's her turn to talk to the Warden, he begins, not with a lecture or a soulgaze, but with a long moment of scrutiny, followed by a puzzled murmur of "A tainted paladin? Here?" She doesn't truly hear the word "paladin"; she's too disturbed by the implications of the word "tainted," and whether or not she can escape the range of his spells and his sword.
He seems to know what she's thinking. "Calm yourself," he says-and she feels hatred bubbling up inside at the sight of his smug smile. "You're not in any real danger. Yet."
This is not precisely comforting.
He talks to her about the Summoning spell that Gregor had used, sighing when he hears which one they used and muttering that it's a blessing that Gregor didn't try the Niehorster-Staub variant of the Thegn Ritual in the Clavis Salomonis. Charity, figuring this is a test to see if she'll react to the clue that he just dropped like an anvil, ignores his words.
After a moment, he shakes his head and continues. "Do you know the Laws of Magic?"
Here Charity hesitates, for while Gregor has warned them all about breaking the Laws, he's never gone into detail about what they are. It's as if he expects them to just...know.
"Um. We're not supposed to kill." She's guessing, but she can't think of a single culture that doesn't forbid murder. So it's probably a safe bet. "And...uh...messing with time is a bad idea. Like trying to change the past. Or see the future." She can extrapolate that much from Gregor's warnings about her dreams and visions.
"And what else?" the Warden asks quietly.
Charity ransacks her brain for an answer, any answer. The problem is, there are so many possible ways to misuse magic that she doesn't know which to pick.
"He never told you, did he?" It's not really a question. "What's your name?"
"Cheryl Gordon," Charity lies. Charity is too odd and distinctive a name for a fugitive to use.
The Warden gives her a patient look. Of course your name is Cheryl, it says. And I am the King of Romania.
"Then attend me, Cheryl," he says firmly, and she can almost hear the quotation marks around her supposed name. "Thou shalt not kill with magic. Thou shalt not transform another. Thou shalt not invade the mind of another. Thou shalt not enthrall another's mind or will. Thou shalt not reach beyond the borders of life. Thou shalt not swim against the currents of time. Thou shalt not seek beyond the Outer Gates. Keep to those Laws, if you wish to live."
"But I don't even know what they mean!" Charity protests. "Reaching beyond the borders of life? And what are the Outer Gates, and why shouldn't I go past them? And what's the difference between invading a mind and enthralling it--"
And then she stops, for the Warden's face has grown grim. Somehow-and she's not sure how-she has offended him by asking what the Laws mean and how she might break them. It's as if he thinks she was asking for advice on how to turn evil.
"Keep. The. Laws," the Warden repeats, enunciating each word precisely.
It sounds disturbingly like a threat.
***
Things start to go wrong after the Warden's visit. Or maybe, Charity thinks, remembering the Summoning spell, they're continuing to go wrong.
Warden Murchison, it develops, didn't tell any of them what the Laws meant. Some of the kids think that he was just leaving a loophole for himself; they officially know the Laws now, which means that the Wardens can execute them. Others say that the Wardens don't care whether you know the Laws or not, and that the Warden could have beheaded the lot of them the minute he walked in the door.
Privately, Charity believes that the word "tainted" had a lot to do with it. He saw us as bad. Irredeemably bad. But maybe not quite bad enough for some of his bosses. So he dropped a few hints about evil rituals, told us the Laws...and then stepped back to see just how long it would take us to fall.
Of all of them, the one most disturbed by the Warden is Gregor. He's coldly outraged that a Warden dared to reprimand him, and even angrier at Murchison's indifference to his followers. Charity knows how he feels. Magic is the one place where they should all belong-and the Council thinks their whole group is a nuisance. An evil but, ultimately, unimportant nuisance that the Wardens can take their time killing. It's the lack of importance that seems to gall him the most.
Over the next few weeks, Gregor grows more and more distant, focusing all his concentration on spells that walk the razor's edge of risk. And he pushes all of them harder than he's ever pushed before, demanding that they do the same.
At this point, Charity doesn't care. She should, but she just doesn't. She has been straining for so long to be good, to control her power at whatever the cost, to be the virtuous girl everyone expects her to be ... and for what? To get thrown into hospital after hospital? For her own parents to think she's an insane junkie? To be beheaded by a man who essentially set things up so that he'd have an excuse to commit legal murder?
Being good seems like a horrific waste of time.
She really doesn't doubt that the Wardens will kill all of them. But she'd rather be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb, as the saying goes. At least if she learns how to use her power in dangerous and deadly ways, she'll have a chance of going down fighting, rather than being a helpless victim.
***
The first one to disappear is Miriam.
Charity doesn't notice at first; it's summer now, and lots of kids vanish in the summer, moving on to warmer climates before the winter comes with the illnesses and the bitter cold that kill so many. And Miriam has been talking about moving on to Florida; she's heard of a wizard there who might actually take her on as an apprentice. Charity is hurt when her friend vanishes without a single word of farewell, but hey, it happens.
Celeste/Simon is the next to go. He or she-Charity is never sure which pronoun is correct-had been talking about California, which seems like such a natural milieu for Celeste/Simon that no one questions it.
And so it goes. Older kids and those who have been with Gregor for months leave one by one, replaced by younger kids and teens who are just discovering their magic. Gregor has no problem with this; instead, he just continues his own studies...and teaching the rest of them magic that is blacker every day.
It seems normal-or what passes for normal in her life these days-but Charity knows it's not. And for the first time in months, her power has leapt free of all the controls she's learned to impose on it. One day, she walks into the apartment that they all share, only to be overwhelmed by the coppery stink of freshly-spilled blood, though there's no blood to be seen.
It only lasts a minute. But it's the first warning, and things quickly get worse. The next morning, she rolls over and opens her eyes-and a scream freezes in her throat when she sees a torn and clawed sleeping bag splattered with blood and gouts of flesh.
Then she blinks, and it's simply a boy curled up in a sleeping bag once more.
He vanishes barely an hour later.
And after that, the attacks-so she thinks of them-start coming thick and fast. Blood on the walls, on the floor, on Gregor's hands and face. Images of corpses that would make autopsy photos look pretty. Eardrum-shattering shrieks of pain and horror that come from nowhere. And, once or twice, her skin brushes against something owned by one of the dead kids, and she feels the gut-churning agony of iron teeth and steel claws ripping her to shreds.
She wants to run.
She doesn't dare run.
Because if she ran, Gregor would know that she knew something was wrong. And how hard would it be for him to snip off a hair while she slept? With that hair, he could cast a tracking spell and follow her all over the world.
And she can't go to the Council for help. What have they ever shown her and the rest of Gregor's followers except for dismissive contempt?
The only hope she has-and it's a slim one-is to stay and fight. And she knows how fragile that hope is. She's a sensitive, not a combat mage. But the alternatives offer no hope at all.
She spends much of her time veiled-a shield would be far too obvious-and struggles to stay out of Gregor's way.
After talking to the others, she learns a depressing fact: none of them know anything is wrong. None of them even suspect. And they don't seem to grasp her hints. Some of it, she knows, is because they haven't seen what she's seen. But that is not all of it. She suspects that Gregor has found a way of controlling the minds and wills of potential victims, and has used it.
Frantically, she studies magic on her own. If she can discover a way to break that grip he has over their minds ... well, they might have a chance. They would have the advantage of numbers, if nothing else.
And she prays, beseeching Heaven for help and rescue. It seems futile. She never has the sense anyone is listening. But she keeps on, if only because she needs to feel that someone, somewhere is on her side.
She doesn't realize how hard it is to hide both her fear and her magic from her teacher. Or, for that matter, how hard it is for him to hide his magic as well. One day, while she is coming back to the apartment (it has long since ceased to be "home"), Gregor meets her, taking her arm with seeming courtesy, guaranteeing that he will be inside any veil or shield that she casts.
She has known for a while that Gregor is part of what is happening-the blood on his hands and face in her visions gave that much away. But as he touches her arm, two things strike her like flung stones: her memory of the Summoning spell, and a sudden awareness that Gregor has grown geometrically stronger since February.
Siriothrax would speak to him in exchange for a pledge.
It hits her then, and she wonders how she could have missed it for so long. She can feel the blood draining from her face as the shock washes over her. And his own expression changes from genial to frustration and fury. He had met her today to take her to ... well, wherever the victims go. But she wasn't supposed to realize. She isn't following the script.
She reaches for her power-and then, as he smirks and reaches in his turn for more power than she will ever possess, she slams the base of her right fist up and into his nose.
It doesn't kill him. Unfortunately.
As he's staring at her, his nose smashed and bloody, she grabs for his balls with her left hand ... and runs into a powerful shield.
"You're going to suffer for that," he whispers.
She plunges her fingers toward his eyes.
Incredibly, he smiles, grips her arm all the tighter, and sends a bolt of lightning arcing through her body before her fingers even come close.
She sags in his grasp, trying to force her body to heal, to let her fight through the shock and the pain.
And fight on she does, tearing at his throat, his ears, his fingers. It does little good; she can't veil or shield herself, and Gregor has six years and seventy-five pounds on her. It's easy for him to counter her blows, both physically and magically, and even easier for him to transform a punch or a kick into something backed by the purest and strongest black magic. It's like being struck with a club made of iron and reeking of curdled milk and maggoty meat. It's hideous and repulsive-and at the same time, she can feel the same poison inside her, hungry to make him suffer.
Before she can cast black magic on him, though, he strikes her head, which instantly fills with fog. She can't concentrate. She can't even think.
She collapses at the feet of the man who attacked her, and no one on the entire street notices.
***
When she wakes, she's in an abandoned subway tunnel illuminated only by candlelight, arms and legs chained to a wooden post. Not ordinary chains, either. Thorn manacles, which bind a wizard's magic, biting and freezing him or her when he or she tries to use it. Gregor told her about such artifacts. She never dreamed he would use one of them against his own kind.
Gregor is watching her ... albeit from a distance. She can still see the bloody ruin of his broken nose, the gouges and claw marks decorating his neck, the bite mark on his cheek. I hurt you. Good. Not badly enough-but it still gives her a swell of dark satisfaction to know that he's suffering because of her.
"You've been sacrificing us to Siriothrax since the Summoning Ritual, haven't you?" she asks in a voice that sounds deceptively calm.
"Yes." Gregor's voice is indifferent; what does it matter what he says to a dead girl? "Your lives in exchange for more power than most mortals dream of possessing. Of course I agreed. There are always more young and stupid wizards."
"And what is Siriothrax?" She doesn't want to hear the answer, but she doesn't dare not ask.
The answer echoes down the tunnel. "His master."
And a few moments later, a tall, elegantly dressed man perhaps a decade older than Gregor strolls down the platform, puffing on a cigarette. He draws sufficiently close for Charity to see that his cigarette isn't lit ... but that smoke is issuing from his mouth, all the same.
This should be corny, a trick to impress the naïve and gullible. It isn't. It's disorienting, disturbing and deeply, deeply wrong, because it's obvious that this isn't being done for the benefit of an audience. The three of them are alone down here. And one of the three isn't going to be here much longer. So what would be the point?
Siriothrax peers at her-he has golden eyes, she notes-then glares at Gregor. "I told you to bring them to me corrupted, you fool! A tainted innocent is still an innocent."
"I did what you asked," and there's a whine in Gregor's voice that Charity's never heard before. "If you're worried, why don't you just eat her now?"
Eat me? Charity's gorge rises at the thought. And then an even more horrific thought occurs to her. What if Siriothrax starts eating me before I'm dead?
Siriothrax ignores Gregor's words. "Repeat your oath, Grigori Pyotr Konev of Elk Hill, California!"
Gregor moans, falling helplessly to the ground, as he howls out a series of twisted gutturals. It is the first time that Charity has seen what speaking a wizard's name can do to him. She wouldn't want that power aimed at her ... but at the same time, seeing her betrayer writhing in pain is a real pleasure.
Siriothrax nods as Gregor speaks; evidently the twisted sounds have meaning for him. "And you do pledge all your strength and all your power as mine, should I require it?" he asks, his voice as smooth and cold as plate glass.
A feverish nod, followed by more gutturals.
"And you do further pledge the lives and minds of your corrupted followers to me, and what remains of their souls to what mortals call Hell?"
The remains of our souls? Charity thinks as Gregor croaks out an answer. The remains?
Quickly, her mind bats that concept away. She cannot focus on the possibility of damnation now, or she will go mad.
Siriothrax smiles smugly as Gregor finishes repeating his oath. "That will be most satisfactory." He turns to her. "And now for you."
And with that, he transforms. Nothing gradual, nothing agonizing-he simply removes his human form as easily as a child would toss aside a sweater. His true shape-which has elements of reptiles, fish and insects, but isn't truly any of them-is massive, filling the tunnel and cracking walls and platform alike. Each of his chill golden eyes are three times the size of the full moon. And his mouth could swallow an ocean.
It's useless to scream for help. There's no one to hear her.
As the monster bends over her, its hot breath scalding her skin, Charity screams anyway.
"Let the girl go."
It's a young voice, strong, dignified, and filled with absolute authority. For a moment, Charity wonders if she really heard it. Then she sees the speaker advancing on Siriothrax: a tall, muscular, bearded young man in jeans and, incongruously, a hooded chain mail shirt, with dog tags and a crucifix hanging from the same chain about his neck and a broadsword gleaming ... no, glowing ... in his right hand.
Siriothrax doesn't even turn to face the young man. "Ah. The youngest and least of the Knights of the Cross, come to toss away his life and his sword to prevent me from devouring my lawful prey."
"She is not your lawful prey, Siriothrax," says the Knight in a steady, rock-sure tone. "The sorcerer who gave her to you exceeded his grasp."
So that's what Siriothrax meant when he complained I wasn't corrupt enough, Charity thinks. It's a loophole. She's fairly sure that she should be overwhelmed with gratitude, not furious about the loophole or indignant on behalf of those who didn't qualify.
Siriothrax gives a theatrical yawn. "Begone, Knight Carpenter-oh, yes, I know your name. You interest me not at all. Though I might use your wee piece of metalwork as a toothpick later."
Knight Carpenter steps forward, his bearded face stern and angry. "I ask you a second time, dragon-let the girl go."
"And a second time do I refuse, O Knight of the Mayflies. Go fight your futile battle against the Fallen, and cease wasting my time."
The Knight maneuvers over to the side of the platform away from Charity. "And a third and final time I ask-in the name of the Lord God-to let the girl go free."
"Never." And Siriothrax lashes at the Knight with his tail.
The fight isn't like in the movies, with both knight and the dragon battling each other physically with grace and style. Despite the tail-lashing, Siriothrax seems more interested in attacking the Knight with magic. He soars above the ground, lunging at the Knight one minute and transforming into a freezing waterfall inches above the Knight's head the next. He switches size with dizzying speed, shrinking to the tininess of a caterpillar to avoid the Knight's strongest blows and then, impossibly, expanding to the immensity of a universe when it's his own turn to strike. The Knight is strong and the sword unquestionably magical, but-against an old and powerful dragon-that seems little indeed.
Charity has seen so much of late that her mind is close to snapping; she cannot endure the surrealistic scene before her for one more moment. And, to be truthful, she doesn't want to watch as the dragon kills this brave young man, any more than she wishes to be aware of the moment when Siriothrax devours her.
Then the dragon lunges, and quite suddenly, that's enough. Her mind goes blank, as if a master switch in her mind has been flipped, shutting everything down.
***
How long she's lost in oblivion, she never knows. But she surfaces again when she hears Siriothrax cry out in ... pain?
Charity risks a glance at the monster. It is not hurt-not badly, anyway, though a number of its scales are cracked and damaged-but a white glow is seeping from it, as if it is bleeding energy.
"Surrender," says Knight Carpenter in a gentle, implacable tone. "I've damaged most of your scales that contain positive energy ... but you could still recover, given time. Surrender, let the girl go, and swear by your name to renounce your agreement with the sorcerer-and I will spare you. I swear this, in the name of the Lord God Almighty."
The dragon shrieks with rage at this, then turns its head toward Gregor. "Grigori Pyotr Konev! It is time for you to fulfill your promise!"
For a moment, there is silence, and then a wail of agony and horror. Charity glances at the dragon; the white glow still surrounds it, but the seeping seems to have ceased. Then she glances over at Gregor, and her heart nearly stops.
The young man in his twenties is gone. In his place is a mummy-shriveled, withered, obscenely old. There is no intelligence in his expression, no emotion, no mind. His gaze is filled with screams.
Siriothrax's words come back to her. And you do pledge all your strength and all your power as mine, should I require it?
Gregor must have thought he was promising to fight the dragon's enemies, physically and magically, she thinks, a chill creeping through her that has nothing to do with being underground. And instead he promised away all his strength and power-his health, his magic, even his sanity.
He should be an object lesson of the dangers of indulging in black magic, but Charity can't think about that. A vicious part of her mind has awakened at the sight of Gregor, agéd and helpless before her. If she could get free of the manacles, she would fling every dark spell that she knows at him, warping and rending his body into something not even nominally human, controlling the wreckage that is now his mind.
And it would feel good.
For a moment, she feels as if she is teetering on the edge of a cliff without a prayer of keeping her balance. Then, out of some instinct she doesn't understand, she turns back toward the battle ... and, as she does so, immediately feels steadier.
The battle is all but ended now; the vast majority of the scales are cracked and broken. Most are leaking white energy, but a handful are exuding a black glow. Siriothrax is barely standing, and he is gazing at Knight Carpenter with utter hatred. The Knight is gazing back at him in sorrow.
"Finish it, Knight," the dragon rasps, the man's title sounding like a curse.
Knight Carpenter nods. "Go in peace," he says quietly, "and may the Lord be merciful." And with that, he aims his glowing sword directly at the monster.
There's no trajectory. No movement. One moment, the Knight is holding the sword, and the next, it's buried in Siriothrax's left eye. Noonday sunlight flows from the sword, illuminating the abandoned station for a minute. Then the sunlight vanishes, leaving the station in candlelight once more.
Knight Carpenter steps past the dragon, which is even now melting into an odd combination of ancient lumps of flesh and ectoplasmic goo, walks up to her and lightly touches the manacles. "Release her," he says gently, and the manacles binding her wrists and ankles spring open. Charity, rubbing her wrists, totters away from the post, feeling the magic flowing through her once more.
The vicious part of her mind whispers that now, now is the time to strike at Gregor, before the Knight notices him ...
... and then the Knight smiles at her. It's like the light pouring from the sword, only a million times more intense. All the joy of the entire world is in that smile. "Are you all right?" he says gently.
Charity shoves the vicious portion of her mind aside so that she can answer. "Not yet," she says quietly, "but I will be. What...what are you going to do with him?" And she nods toward Gregor, who is now lying curled up in a corner, twitching, gibbering and-worst of all-laughing.
A sorrowful expression sweeps across the Knight's face. "Bring him back to the surface with us. I doubt if he will live long without his master-but no one should die alone in the dark."
It's a kind decision, but Gregor never sees the sun again. He dies several minutes later. The Knight prays for his soul. Charity focuses her attention on not cursing Gregor for all eternity.
The trip to the surface takes little time, but by the time they're back on the streets of New York , Charity has come to a decision-the magic has to die. Too much of her training has been toward dark magic. Worse, she likes dark magic. The things she's been trained to do ... the things she could imagine doing to what remained of Gregor ... only a monster could enjoy doing such things. And if she didn't turn away now, very soon she wouldn't be able to. Wouldn't even want to. And she'd be worse then than Gregor ever dreamed of being.
Better to put it aside, all the dreams and visions, the foresight, the psychometry and the soulgazes. What has magic brought her but misery?
And there is this man, with his wonderful, sunlit smile. She cannot imagine what he sees to make him smile like that, but she would like to be the person he sees rather than the tainted creature she is. She wants to deserve that smile.
So let the magic die. Let it wither. Let it turn to dust. She will ignore the signals she gets from her powers from now on. She will prevent herself from sensing anything when she touches a person. She will take anti-hallucinogenics, if she has to. She will be normal, and do no harm.
And she may as well start now.
She lays a hand on the Knight's arm. It's just a touch. She senses nothing else. "What's your name?" she asks him. "I heard-him-call you Knight Carpenter, but ..."
Again, he smiles at her. "Michael. And you?"
For the first time since fleeing the mental hospital the previous October, she speaks her true name. "Charity."
If possible, the smile gains a note of approval. "The greatest of the theological virtues."
"I'm not like that," she says softly. It hurts to admit that, but she couldn't bear this man to be disappointed in her.
His eyes hold a gleam of interest, but there is no doubt in his voice as he speaks. "You will be." A pause. "I don't suppose you're a princess, by any chance?"
"Does being the daughter of a prince of industry count?" And Charity flings caution aside-if you can't trust the man who rescued you from a dragon, who can you trust?-and tells Michael her father's name.
His reaction is not exactly what she expects. "But you've been missing for months. Your parents are frantic!"
"I didn't dare contact them," she says, bowing her head. "It was bad, Michael. I can't explain how bad--but it wasn't a question of running away because they wouldn't give me what I wanted. I was desperate."
He lifts her chin and gazes into her eyes. For a moment, she feels the first shivery touch of a soulgaze.
No! she mentally shouts at the magic. Go away!
The soulgaze retreats, and Michael is speaking. "If you call them tonight, everything will be all right. You will have to live at home for a few more months, but no more than that. And you will need time to patch things up with your parents and sister, anyway."
"Did I mention that I had a sister? And how do you know everything will be all right?"
"No, you didn't mention that," he says quietly. "But she's been in news stories about your disappearance. As for how I know everything will be all right if you contact them tonight...the Lord told me."
He sounds quite matter-of-fact. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and the Lord told me that you need to contact your parents tonight. Considering that he miraculously appeared to save her from a dragon, a sorcerer, and herself, she's not in a doubting mood.
"If you can get me to a phone, I'll call them," she says, throwing in the towel and hoping fervently that God isn't going to pull a double-cross and make her suffer to atone for her sins. She can't take one more betrayal, she really can't.
He strokes her cheek. "Nothing bad will happen to you, Charity. I promise."
It's impossible not to believe that promise. She nods.
As they approach a hotel that has a phone Michael says she can use, Michael turns to her with a troubled expression. "That sorcerer ... did you know him?"
She isn't sure how to answer that question-with the literal truth, or the actual truth. For of course she had known Gregor; after so many months of living with him and his other followers, as well as being his student, there's no way she could not. And yet, in another sense, she didn't. Even with all of the prophetic warnings she received, she didn't expect him to be embroiled in human sacrifice and dark pacts with ancient dragons.
If she admits to the literal truth, she'll probably have to demonstrate her magic. Nothing malevolent, of course...and yet she knows that if she lets it out of the dungeon in her mind even for a second, she'll never be able to force it back there again.
And somehow, she knows that the magic will react badly to Michael Carpenter. It will either try to destroy him...or it will show him just how far she's fallen. She doesn't think she could endure seeing the disappointment in his face when he sees the darkness in her.
She won't let herself become worse than she is. And she won't let herself hurt Michael. Michael is too important-not just to her, but to the world. The world needs brave and noble men like this, and there just aren't enough of them.
And so she chooses.
"No," she says as she mentally chains and padlocks the dungeon door shut forever. "I knew him enough to say hello to. But I never knew him. I never knew him at all."
THE END
***
Author: gehayi
Fandom: The Dresden Files (bookverse)
Characters: Charity Carpenter, Charity's parents, Gregor, Siriothrax, Michael Carpenter
Word Count: 11,543
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I most emphatically do not own The Dresden Files. They belong to Jim Butcher, ROC Books, New American Library, the Penguin Group, and-for the next three years--Lionsgate Productions. No profit is being made and no copyright or trademark infringed upon.
Prompt: Most people, after accomplishing something, use it over and over again like a gramophone record till it cracks, forgetting that the past is just the stuff with which to make more future. -- Freya Stark (1893-1993), British adventurer, explorer and author of numerous books about her journeys.
Summary: Seeing the future in dreams and visions. Sensing people's natures with a touch. Being viewed as addicted or insane by those who should trust her most. Life isn't easy for a young wizard named Charity. Pre-series. Written for femgenficathon.
Warnings: (if any) Darkfic. Potentially disturbing subject matter. Spoilers for Proven Guilty, especially pages 298-301.
Author's Notes: (if any) Not compliant with any author interviews or forum posts relating to this character. The only information I have about her is from the books and short stories, so that's what I'm using.
Some of you may note that Gregor's middle name is Pyotr, not Pyotrovich. The reason? He was born in America, not Eastern Europe, and middle names are not normally patronymics in America.
The Clavis Salomonis, or Key of Solomon, is a book on magic written during the Middle Ages. However, it contains no "Thegn Ritual" or "Niehorster-Staub variant."
Thanks to my betas, shiplizard, fenna_girl and beachkid.
***
Part 1 is here.
Three days later (by mortal time-there's no telling how long the trip through that otherworldly realm lasted), Charity ends up in New York. She's pleased. New York seems like a good place to drop out of sight. And since she's officially a fugitive mental patient with addiction problems, dropping out of sight seems like the sanest thing to do.
She spends a good portion of that winter stealing clothes and shoes-something she loathes and refuses to speak of, then or ever-so that she'll have something marginally warmer and more employment-friendly than a pair of faded grey shorts and a yellow and black T-shirt which reads "Strike first, strike hard and show no mercy". She works the sorts of jobs where you get paid in cash or food (or, preferably, both). And she attempts to regain her physical strength and to find someplace halfway warm to sleep.
And on the second of February-she never forgets the date-she first hears Gregor speak, and learns about his coven.
She'd read quite a few things about magic that winter, chiefly because libraries are warm and dry, and as long as she's marginally clean and not scaring anyone, the librarians leave her be. Most of what she'd read was rubbish, but there were occasional nuggets of truth here and there. She even tried a few spells, on the grounds that she needs to learn what to do with her magic. After all, it makes very little sense to have what amounts to a superpower and not use it.
But she still doesn't know much-not even what to call herself. And there's no one that she can ask. For all she knows, she's the only ... what? Witch? Sorceress? Warlock? Mage? ... in all of New York City.
The night that she meets Gregor is freezing cold, and a mixture of spitting snow and sleet is coming down. The sidewalks are growing slick with snow and what might be black ice in a few hours. Charity, shivering in a too-thin jacket, her tennis shoes providing little traction on the slippery sidewalk, looks about for a place close enough and warm enough to retreat to for a few hours. She glances about, and finds what looks like a run-down store. If it is a store, she can just wander around for an hour or two. If it's a storefront church and someone is preaching ... well, she'll approach the moralizing the way she used to approach geometry. As long as she can sit in the back and doze off with both eyes open-something every teenager learns at some point-she should be fine.
There's no dozing off that night, however. Gregor-a young man of twenty-four or so-stands in front of a motley collection of strays, runaways and throwaways, and speaks passionately about magic. The real thing.
Charity doesn't understand all of what Gregor's saying; for him and for most of the kids in the room, magic seems to be tangled up with religion and philosophy, and she's never bothered much with either. But she grasps some of Gregor's ideas-that magic is a gift, and that wizards have an obligation to strengthen that gift and to grow more powerful. That the rest of the world is blind, ignoring the reality of magic or explaining it away. That wizards must protect themselves, standing athwart those who unknowingly persecute them for being different, those who knowingly try to force them into the dreary mold of normalcy. She agrees in spite of herself, and notices a number of others nodding and muttering, "You said it."
And then it hits her ... most of the people here are taking Gregor seriously.
Which has to mean that at least some of them know that magic is real. They won't think she's insane. Or addicted. Or both. Some of them ... dear God, some of them must be like her.
As Gregor wraps up his speech, Charity discovers that she's right. He segues from lecture mode to teaching mode, guiding the others through attack spells using jets of flowing water and shield charms. It's almost like a game, and she wishes desperately that she knew how to play. And at the same time, she's almost afraid to try. She feels like an ordinary mutant who has accidentally stumbled into Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. They're her kind, yes...but they can do so much more.
As she hesitates, Gregor turns, spots her and speaks. "Do you want to try? Come here. I'll show you how to cast a shield charm." He gives her a sun-bright smile. "Don't worry. It's easy."
Charity takes a deep breath to quiet the butterflies in her stomach, and then slowly and deliberately walks forward.
She has no idea if this will be easy, or if she can cast spells consciously at all. After all, her magic so far has been limited to dreams, visions and ripping a hole into another dimension twice--both times out of sheer desperation.
But if she's going to be a magical mutant, she's going to be a well-trained one.
***
Living with Gregor's group-she shies away from the word "coven," and she's pretty sure that cults don't actually help people-is a definite step up from shelters and sleeping in abandoned cars and doorways. Gregor and the group live in a basement apartment. No electricity-they make do with candles and kerosene lamps-and the heat is supplied by a hearth and insulated sleeping bags. And there's very little privacy, which is one of the things that eats at Charity; she needs a place to retreat to, a place where she can get away from everyone, even her closest friends, and just be.
But it's better than the hospital. A billion times better.
Her days are full, with part-time jobs to pay her share of the rent and the food bill and magic lessons in her off-hours. Gregor is a good teacher-demanding, yes, but he's impressed all of them with the fact that there's no margin for error in magic, and that sloppiness will get them killed, so no one complains about that.
One of the first things she learned is that her magic isn't extraordinarily powerful. As sensitives go, she's average. This galled her when she found out--and still does on occasion. After all she went through, she's no more than a normal sensitive?
Then she thinks of how unbearable it was to be an average sensitive, pictures what it must be like to be a powerful one, and fights not to be sick.
She's also learned that she's not much good at creating things like fireballs or outpourings of water. Gregor reassures her that this doesn't matter.
"You have a rare talent," he tells her. "Not many wizards can see the future. But," and a shadow sweeps across his face, "you have to be careful."
She shivers; there's no need for him to say any more, for she knows what he's talking about. All of them have heard Gregor's lectures about avoiding the White Council, and the Wardens in particular.
Gregor's descriptions of the Wardens have been vivid: stern-faced men and sour women in ghostly grey cloaks, their zealous eyes seeking out anyone who dares to explore or discover power on their own and beheading them with enchanted swords designed to cut through any body--human or not--and any magic.
"But why?" Charity demands when she first hears this. "Why do they do it?"
"Because the White Council regards magic as its own personal property," Gregor replies. "If you're a member, they have a right to cut off your head if you do something the Council doesn't like. And if you're not a member-and you have to be strong and well-trained to be a member-the Council has a right to cut off your head if they think you're doing something evil. Like, oh, doing magic on your own and not making normal humans forget about it. Of course, forcing someone to forget would break one of their pointless Laws, and that would get you executed too.
"There's no way to win against them-they'll get you coming and going. So don't try. Just avoid the Council-and their murderous lapdogs. Don't attract their attention, and you'll be a lot happier."
And Gregor teaches them a good many ways to stay under the Wardens' radar. Potions and glamours to disguise themselves as other people. Veiling. Routes through the Nevernever to bring them safely home. Charity invents a method of her own that she calls the Jedi mind trick-a simple, direct message to the brain. You made a mistake. She didn't do anything evil. This isn't the wizard you're looking for. Move along.
She figures it's fair. She's not forcing them to listen, after all. She's just being, for a brief moment, extremely convincing.
She practices, as do the other kids. They protect themselves; they protect each other. Despite being terrified of the bastards on the Council, they begin to feel somewhat safe again.
And then Gregor insists that they cast a Summoning spell.
"Why can't you just do it yourself?" demands a Jamaican boy Charity barely recognizes. "You're the one who wants to Summon something, so why don't you cast it?"
Gregor gives him a homicidal glare. "It takes more strength than I've got. It will take all of us to Summon this entity."
"I-it's not a demon, is it?" whispers a redhead who calls herself Diana but who told Charity that her real name is Miriam. "I don't want to Summon anything like that."
"Yeah," says an androgynous kid who alternates between the names Celeste and Simon. "I've seen horror movies, Gregor. Summoning demons is never a good idea."
"It's not a demon! Do you think I'd put you at risk like that?" He doesn't wait for an answer, which Charity, observing the many nervous, sweaty faces in the room, thinks is just as well. "But there's a way of gaining magical power. It's not bad. All we have to do is call upon a servant of the Great Prince Siriothrax. And he's not a demon, either. But Siriothrax won't speak to us unless we perform a certain task for him, and the servant has to hear our plea, ask Siriothrax what the task will be, and then tell us." He studies them for a moment, then adds in a much gentler tone, "There's no danger. This will help us all."
Charity feels the first drop of suspicion toward Gregor; the explanation doesn't really explain. And he still hasn't told them what Siriothrax or his servant are. But she sees heads nodding around the room and hears murmurs of agreement, and she knows she's already been outvoted.
Sighing, she goes along with the others. She doesn't really want to Summon anything ... but Gregor's taken care of them so far. She knows he wouldn't do anything to hurt them.
He wouldn't. Really.
***
Charity never remembers much about the Summoning spell. Or, to be more precise, she strives not to remember much. Some things remain seared into her memory with soulgaze-clarity.
She recalls the light being sucked away from hundreds of candles and swallowed by darkness, a chilling (and, if she's going to be honest, exciting) presence of something wholly alien. She remembers seeing it materialize in the center of a circle of salt, a weird amalgamation of lizard and praying mantis with-bizarrely-the sensible girl-next-door voice of Molly Ringwald. She isn't able to shake the sense that the servant hadn't simply borrowed the voice to make itself more comprehensible to Gregor or the rest of them. It feels like a private joke, and not a nice one, either.
And she remembers its name. Ikothk. A bad sound, half guttural mutter and half insectile clicking. A sound she strives never to even think again.
She never hears what Gregor says to it, or what it replies to him. She only knows that one minute it's there in the circle, and the next it's vanished. Gregor, looking distracted and preoccupied, tells them that the servant said that Siriothrax would speak to him in exchange for a pledge, but that he refused to deal with underlings.
"Of course, I told her no," he adds in a tired and disappointed voice. "I wouldn't accept any power if I couldn't share it with the rest of you."
And that's it. It didn't work, that's all. Sometimes spells malfunction. It happens. No biggie. Certainly no one is inspired to try the spell again on their own. Everyone just goes back to the usual lessons and the normal run-throughs of magical spells.
That is, until the Warden shows up two weeks later.
***
No one knows at first that this man is a Warden. Certainly he doesn't look like the nightmarish creatures that most of the kids have imagined; he's almost resolutely ordinary. He's sleek, well-fed, and dresses like a Republican banker. Only the grey cloak and the sword at his hip seem at odds with his Businessman of the Year appearance, until Charity realizes that to the Warden, executing Dark wizards is just another form of business. Like filing taxes every year, it's unpleasant but necessary.
The Warden, who introduces himself as Murchison, speaks to each of them in turn behind a veil and a sonic shield which render those having the conversation invisible and inaudible to all but themselves. As if by unspoken agreement, no one, including Gregor, mentions what was said during those conversations...at least not while the Warden is still here.
When it's her turn to talk to the Warden, he begins, not with a lecture or a soulgaze, but with a long moment of scrutiny, followed by a puzzled murmur of "A tainted paladin? Here?" She doesn't truly hear the word "paladin"; she's too disturbed by the implications of the word "tainted," and whether or not she can escape the range of his spells and his sword.
He seems to know what she's thinking. "Calm yourself," he says-and she feels hatred bubbling up inside at the sight of his smug smile. "You're not in any real danger. Yet."
This is not precisely comforting.
He talks to her about the Summoning spell that Gregor had used, sighing when he hears which one they used and muttering that it's a blessing that Gregor didn't try the Niehorster-Staub variant of the Thegn Ritual in the Clavis Salomonis. Charity, figuring this is a test to see if she'll react to the clue that he just dropped like an anvil, ignores his words.
After a moment, he shakes his head and continues. "Do you know the Laws of Magic?"
Here Charity hesitates, for while Gregor has warned them all about breaking the Laws, he's never gone into detail about what they are. It's as if he expects them to just...know.
"Um. We're not supposed to kill." She's guessing, but she can't think of a single culture that doesn't forbid murder. So it's probably a safe bet. "And...uh...messing with time is a bad idea. Like trying to change the past. Or see the future." She can extrapolate that much from Gregor's warnings about her dreams and visions.
"And what else?" the Warden asks quietly.
Charity ransacks her brain for an answer, any answer. The problem is, there are so many possible ways to misuse magic that she doesn't know which to pick.
"He never told you, did he?" It's not really a question. "What's your name?"
"Cheryl Gordon," Charity lies. Charity is too odd and distinctive a name for a fugitive to use.
The Warden gives her a patient look. Of course your name is Cheryl, it says. And I am the King of Romania.
"Then attend me, Cheryl," he says firmly, and she can almost hear the quotation marks around her supposed name. "Thou shalt not kill with magic. Thou shalt not transform another. Thou shalt not invade the mind of another. Thou shalt not enthrall another's mind or will. Thou shalt not reach beyond the borders of life. Thou shalt not swim against the currents of time. Thou shalt not seek beyond the Outer Gates. Keep to those Laws, if you wish to live."
"But I don't even know what they mean!" Charity protests. "Reaching beyond the borders of life? And what are the Outer Gates, and why shouldn't I go past them? And what's the difference between invading a mind and enthralling it--"
And then she stops, for the Warden's face has grown grim. Somehow-and she's not sure how-she has offended him by asking what the Laws mean and how she might break them. It's as if he thinks she was asking for advice on how to turn evil.
"Keep. The. Laws," the Warden repeats, enunciating each word precisely.
It sounds disturbingly like a threat.
***
Things start to go wrong after the Warden's visit. Or maybe, Charity thinks, remembering the Summoning spell, they're continuing to go wrong.
Warden Murchison, it develops, didn't tell any of them what the Laws meant. Some of the kids think that he was just leaving a loophole for himself; they officially know the Laws now, which means that the Wardens can execute them. Others say that the Wardens don't care whether you know the Laws or not, and that the Warden could have beheaded the lot of them the minute he walked in the door.
Privately, Charity believes that the word "tainted" had a lot to do with it. He saw us as bad. Irredeemably bad. But maybe not quite bad enough for some of his bosses. So he dropped a few hints about evil rituals, told us the Laws...and then stepped back to see just how long it would take us to fall.
Of all of them, the one most disturbed by the Warden is Gregor. He's coldly outraged that a Warden dared to reprimand him, and even angrier at Murchison's indifference to his followers. Charity knows how he feels. Magic is the one place where they should all belong-and the Council thinks their whole group is a nuisance. An evil but, ultimately, unimportant nuisance that the Wardens can take their time killing. It's the lack of importance that seems to gall him the most.
Over the next few weeks, Gregor grows more and more distant, focusing all his concentration on spells that walk the razor's edge of risk. And he pushes all of them harder than he's ever pushed before, demanding that they do the same.
At this point, Charity doesn't care. She should, but she just doesn't. She has been straining for so long to be good, to control her power at whatever the cost, to be the virtuous girl everyone expects her to be ... and for what? To get thrown into hospital after hospital? For her own parents to think she's an insane junkie? To be beheaded by a man who essentially set things up so that he'd have an excuse to commit legal murder?
Being good seems like a horrific waste of time.
She really doesn't doubt that the Wardens will kill all of them. But she'd rather be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb, as the saying goes. At least if she learns how to use her power in dangerous and deadly ways, she'll have a chance of going down fighting, rather than being a helpless victim.
***
The first one to disappear is Miriam.
Charity doesn't notice at first; it's summer now, and lots of kids vanish in the summer, moving on to warmer climates before the winter comes with the illnesses and the bitter cold that kill so many. And Miriam has been talking about moving on to Florida; she's heard of a wizard there who might actually take her on as an apprentice. Charity is hurt when her friend vanishes without a single word of farewell, but hey, it happens.
Celeste/Simon is the next to go. He or she-Charity is never sure which pronoun is correct-had been talking about California, which seems like such a natural milieu for Celeste/Simon that no one questions it.
And so it goes. Older kids and those who have been with Gregor for months leave one by one, replaced by younger kids and teens who are just discovering their magic. Gregor has no problem with this; instead, he just continues his own studies...and teaching the rest of them magic that is blacker every day.
It seems normal-or what passes for normal in her life these days-but Charity knows it's not. And for the first time in months, her power has leapt free of all the controls she's learned to impose on it. One day, she walks into the apartment that they all share, only to be overwhelmed by the coppery stink of freshly-spilled blood, though there's no blood to be seen.
It only lasts a minute. But it's the first warning, and things quickly get worse. The next morning, she rolls over and opens her eyes-and a scream freezes in her throat when she sees a torn and clawed sleeping bag splattered with blood and gouts of flesh.
Then she blinks, and it's simply a boy curled up in a sleeping bag once more.
He vanishes barely an hour later.
And after that, the attacks-so she thinks of them-start coming thick and fast. Blood on the walls, on the floor, on Gregor's hands and face. Images of corpses that would make autopsy photos look pretty. Eardrum-shattering shrieks of pain and horror that come from nowhere. And, once or twice, her skin brushes against something owned by one of the dead kids, and she feels the gut-churning agony of iron teeth and steel claws ripping her to shreds.
She wants to run.
She doesn't dare run.
Because if she ran, Gregor would know that she knew something was wrong. And how hard would it be for him to snip off a hair while she slept? With that hair, he could cast a tracking spell and follow her all over the world.
And she can't go to the Council for help. What have they ever shown her and the rest of Gregor's followers except for dismissive contempt?
The only hope she has-and it's a slim one-is to stay and fight. And she knows how fragile that hope is. She's a sensitive, not a combat mage. But the alternatives offer no hope at all.
She spends much of her time veiled-a shield would be far too obvious-and struggles to stay out of Gregor's way.
After talking to the others, she learns a depressing fact: none of them know anything is wrong. None of them even suspect. And they don't seem to grasp her hints. Some of it, she knows, is because they haven't seen what she's seen. But that is not all of it. She suspects that Gregor has found a way of controlling the minds and wills of potential victims, and has used it.
Frantically, she studies magic on her own. If she can discover a way to break that grip he has over their minds ... well, they might have a chance. They would have the advantage of numbers, if nothing else.
And she prays, beseeching Heaven for help and rescue. It seems futile. She never has the sense anyone is listening. But she keeps on, if only because she needs to feel that someone, somewhere is on her side.
She doesn't realize how hard it is to hide both her fear and her magic from her teacher. Or, for that matter, how hard it is for him to hide his magic as well. One day, while she is coming back to the apartment (it has long since ceased to be "home"), Gregor meets her, taking her arm with seeming courtesy, guaranteeing that he will be inside any veil or shield that she casts.
She has known for a while that Gregor is part of what is happening-the blood on his hands and face in her visions gave that much away. But as he touches her arm, two things strike her like flung stones: her memory of the Summoning spell, and a sudden awareness that Gregor has grown geometrically stronger since February.
Siriothrax would speak to him in exchange for a pledge.
It hits her then, and she wonders how she could have missed it for so long. She can feel the blood draining from her face as the shock washes over her. And his own expression changes from genial to frustration and fury. He had met her today to take her to ... well, wherever the victims go. But she wasn't supposed to realize. She isn't following the script.
She reaches for her power-and then, as he smirks and reaches in his turn for more power than she will ever possess, she slams the base of her right fist up and into his nose.
It doesn't kill him. Unfortunately.
As he's staring at her, his nose smashed and bloody, she grabs for his balls with her left hand ... and runs into a powerful shield.
"You're going to suffer for that," he whispers.
She plunges her fingers toward his eyes.
Incredibly, he smiles, grips her arm all the tighter, and sends a bolt of lightning arcing through her body before her fingers even come close.
She sags in his grasp, trying to force her body to heal, to let her fight through the shock and the pain.
And fight on she does, tearing at his throat, his ears, his fingers. It does little good; she can't veil or shield herself, and Gregor has six years and seventy-five pounds on her. It's easy for him to counter her blows, both physically and magically, and even easier for him to transform a punch or a kick into something backed by the purest and strongest black magic. It's like being struck with a club made of iron and reeking of curdled milk and maggoty meat. It's hideous and repulsive-and at the same time, she can feel the same poison inside her, hungry to make him suffer.
Before she can cast black magic on him, though, he strikes her head, which instantly fills with fog. She can't concentrate. She can't even think.
She collapses at the feet of the man who attacked her, and no one on the entire street notices.
***
When she wakes, she's in an abandoned subway tunnel illuminated only by candlelight, arms and legs chained to a wooden post. Not ordinary chains, either. Thorn manacles, which bind a wizard's magic, biting and freezing him or her when he or she tries to use it. Gregor told her about such artifacts. She never dreamed he would use one of them against his own kind.
Gregor is watching her ... albeit from a distance. She can still see the bloody ruin of his broken nose, the gouges and claw marks decorating his neck, the bite mark on his cheek. I hurt you. Good. Not badly enough-but it still gives her a swell of dark satisfaction to know that he's suffering because of her.
"You've been sacrificing us to Siriothrax since the Summoning Ritual, haven't you?" she asks in a voice that sounds deceptively calm.
"Yes." Gregor's voice is indifferent; what does it matter what he says to a dead girl? "Your lives in exchange for more power than most mortals dream of possessing. Of course I agreed. There are always more young and stupid wizards."
"And what is Siriothrax?" She doesn't want to hear the answer, but she doesn't dare not ask.
The answer echoes down the tunnel. "His master."
And a few moments later, a tall, elegantly dressed man perhaps a decade older than Gregor strolls down the platform, puffing on a cigarette. He draws sufficiently close for Charity to see that his cigarette isn't lit ... but that smoke is issuing from his mouth, all the same.
This should be corny, a trick to impress the naïve and gullible. It isn't. It's disorienting, disturbing and deeply, deeply wrong, because it's obvious that this isn't being done for the benefit of an audience. The three of them are alone down here. And one of the three isn't going to be here much longer. So what would be the point?
Siriothrax peers at her-he has golden eyes, she notes-then glares at Gregor. "I told you to bring them to me corrupted, you fool! A tainted innocent is still an innocent."
"I did what you asked," and there's a whine in Gregor's voice that Charity's never heard before. "If you're worried, why don't you just eat her now?"
Eat me? Charity's gorge rises at the thought. And then an even more horrific thought occurs to her. What if Siriothrax starts eating me before I'm dead?
Siriothrax ignores Gregor's words. "Repeat your oath, Grigori Pyotr Konev of Elk Hill, California!"
Gregor moans, falling helplessly to the ground, as he howls out a series of twisted gutturals. It is the first time that Charity has seen what speaking a wizard's name can do to him. She wouldn't want that power aimed at her ... but at the same time, seeing her betrayer writhing in pain is a real pleasure.
Siriothrax nods as Gregor speaks; evidently the twisted sounds have meaning for him. "And you do pledge all your strength and all your power as mine, should I require it?" he asks, his voice as smooth and cold as plate glass.
A feverish nod, followed by more gutturals.
"And you do further pledge the lives and minds of your corrupted followers to me, and what remains of their souls to what mortals call Hell?"
The remains of our souls? Charity thinks as Gregor croaks out an answer. The remains?
Quickly, her mind bats that concept away. She cannot focus on the possibility of damnation now, or she will go mad.
Siriothrax smiles smugly as Gregor finishes repeating his oath. "That will be most satisfactory." He turns to her. "And now for you."
And with that, he transforms. Nothing gradual, nothing agonizing-he simply removes his human form as easily as a child would toss aside a sweater. His true shape-which has elements of reptiles, fish and insects, but isn't truly any of them-is massive, filling the tunnel and cracking walls and platform alike. Each of his chill golden eyes are three times the size of the full moon. And his mouth could swallow an ocean.
It's useless to scream for help. There's no one to hear her.
As the monster bends over her, its hot breath scalding her skin, Charity screams anyway.
"Let the girl go."
It's a young voice, strong, dignified, and filled with absolute authority. For a moment, Charity wonders if she really heard it. Then she sees the speaker advancing on Siriothrax: a tall, muscular, bearded young man in jeans and, incongruously, a hooded chain mail shirt, with dog tags and a crucifix hanging from the same chain about his neck and a broadsword gleaming ... no, glowing ... in his right hand.
Siriothrax doesn't even turn to face the young man. "Ah. The youngest and least of the Knights of the Cross, come to toss away his life and his sword to prevent me from devouring my lawful prey."
"She is not your lawful prey, Siriothrax," says the Knight in a steady, rock-sure tone. "The sorcerer who gave her to you exceeded his grasp."
So that's what Siriothrax meant when he complained I wasn't corrupt enough, Charity thinks. It's a loophole. She's fairly sure that she should be overwhelmed with gratitude, not furious about the loophole or indignant on behalf of those who didn't qualify.
Siriothrax gives a theatrical yawn. "Begone, Knight Carpenter-oh, yes, I know your name. You interest me not at all. Though I might use your wee piece of metalwork as a toothpick later."
Knight Carpenter steps forward, his bearded face stern and angry. "I ask you a second time, dragon-let the girl go."
"And a second time do I refuse, O Knight of the Mayflies. Go fight your futile battle against the Fallen, and cease wasting my time."
The Knight maneuvers over to the side of the platform away from Charity. "And a third and final time I ask-in the name of the Lord God-to let the girl go free."
"Never." And Siriothrax lashes at the Knight with his tail.
The fight isn't like in the movies, with both knight and the dragon battling each other physically with grace and style. Despite the tail-lashing, Siriothrax seems more interested in attacking the Knight with magic. He soars above the ground, lunging at the Knight one minute and transforming into a freezing waterfall inches above the Knight's head the next. He switches size with dizzying speed, shrinking to the tininess of a caterpillar to avoid the Knight's strongest blows and then, impossibly, expanding to the immensity of a universe when it's his own turn to strike. The Knight is strong and the sword unquestionably magical, but-against an old and powerful dragon-that seems little indeed.
Charity has seen so much of late that her mind is close to snapping; she cannot endure the surrealistic scene before her for one more moment. And, to be truthful, she doesn't want to watch as the dragon kills this brave young man, any more than she wishes to be aware of the moment when Siriothrax devours her.
Then the dragon lunges, and quite suddenly, that's enough. Her mind goes blank, as if a master switch in her mind has been flipped, shutting everything down.
***
How long she's lost in oblivion, she never knows. But she surfaces again when she hears Siriothrax cry out in ... pain?
Charity risks a glance at the monster. It is not hurt-not badly, anyway, though a number of its scales are cracked and damaged-but a white glow is seeping from it, as if it is bleeding energy.
"Surrender," says Knight Carpenter in a gentle, implacable tone. "I've damaged most of your scales that contain positive energy ... but you could still recover, given time. Surrender, let the girl go, and swear by your name to renounce your agreement with the sorcerer-and I will spare you. I swear this, in the name of the Lord God Almighty."
The dragon shrieks with rage at this, then turns its head toward Gregor. "Grigori Pyotr Konev! It is time for you to fulfill your promise!"
For a moment, there is silence, and then a wail of agony and horror. Charity glances at the dragon; the white glow still surrounds it, but the seeping seems to have ceased. Then she glances over at Gregor, and her heart nearly stops.
The young man in his twenties is gone. In his place is a mummy-shriveled, withered, obscenely old. There is no intelligence in his expression, no emotion, no mind. His gaze is filled with screams.
Siriothrax's words come back to her. And you do pledge all your strength and all your power as mine, should I require it?
Gregor must have thought he was promising to fight the dragon's enemies, physically and magically, she thinks, a chill creeping through her that has nothing to do with being underground. And instead he promised away all his strength and power-his health, his magic, even his sanity.
He should be an object lesson of the dangers of indulging in black magic, but Charity can't think about that. A vicious part of her mind has awakened at the sight of Gregor, agéd and helpless before her. If she could get free of the manacles, she would fling every dark spell that she knows at him, warping and rending his body into something not even nominally human, controlling the wreckage that is now his mind.
And it would feel good.
For a moment, she feels as if she is teetering on the edge of a cliff without a prayer of keeping her balance. Then, out of some instinct she doesn't understand, she turns back toward the battle ... and, as she does so, immediately feels steadier.
The battle is all but ended now; the vast majority of the scales are cracked and broken. Most are leaking white energy, but a handful are exuding a black glow. Siriothrax is barely standing, and he is gazing at Knight Carpenter with utter hatred. The Knight is gazing back at him in sorrow.
"Finish it, Knight," the dragon rasps, the man's title sounding like a curse.
Knight Carpenter nods. "Go in peace," he says quietly, "and may the Lord be merciful." And with that, he aims his glowing sword directly at the monster.
There's no trajectory. No movement. One moment, the Knight is holding the sword, and the next, it's buried in Siriothrax's left eye. Noonday sunlight flows from the sword, illuminating the abandoned station for a minute. Then the sunlight vanishes, leaving the station in candlelight once more.
Knight Carpenter steps past the dragon, which is even now melting into an odd combination of ancient lumps of flesh and ectoplasmic goo, walks up to her and lightly touches the manacles. "Release her," he says gently, and the manacles binding her wrists and ankles spring open. Charity, rubbing her wrists, totters away from the post, feeling the magic flowing through her once more.
The vicious part of her mind whispers that now, now is the time to strike at Gregor, before the Knight notices him ...
... and then the Knight smiles at her. It's like the light pouring from the sword, only a million times more intense. All the joy of the entire world is in that smile. "Are you all right?" he says gently.
Charity shoves the vicious portion of her mind aside so that she can answer. "Not yet," she says quietly, "but I will be. What...what are you going to do with him?" And she nods toward Gregor, who is now lying curled up in a corner, twitching, gibbering and-worst of all-laughing.
A sorrowful expression sweeps across the Knight's face. "Bring him back to the surface with us. I doubt if he will live long without his master-but no one should die alone in the dark."
It's a kind decision, but Gregor never sees the sun again. He dies several minutes later. The Knight prays for his soul. Charity focuses her attention on not cursing Gregor for all eternity.
The trip to the surface takes little time, but by the time they're back on the streets of New York , Charity has come to a decision-the magic has to die. Too much of her training has been toward dark magic. Worse, she likes dark magic. The things she's been trained to do ... the things she could imagine doing to what remained of Gregor ... only a monster could enjoy doing such things. And if she didn't turn away now, very soon she wouldn't be able to. Wouldn't even want to. And she'd be worse then than Gregor ever dreamed of being.
Better to put it aside, all the dreams and visions, the foresight, the psychometry and the soulgazes. What has magic brought her but misery?
And there is this man, with his wonderful, sunlit smile. She cannot imagine what he sees to make him smile like that, but she would like to be the person he sees rather than the tainted creature she is. She wants to deserve that smile.
So let the magic die. Let it wither. Let it turn to dust. She will ignore the signals she gets from her powers from now on. She will prevent herself from sensing anything when she touches a person. She will take anti-hallucinogenics, if she has to. She will be normal, and do no harm.
And she may as well start now.
She lays a hand on the Knight's arm. It's just a touch. She senses nothing else. "What's your name?" she asks him. "I heard-him-call you Knight Carpenter, but ..."
Again, he smiles at her. "Michael. And you?"
For the first time since fleeing the mental hospital the previous October, she speaks her true name. "Charity."
If possible, the smile gains a note of approval. "The greatest of the theological virtues."
"I'm not like that," she says softly. It hurts to admit that, but she couldn't bear this man to be disappointed in her.
His eyes hold a gleam of interest, but there is no doubt in his voice as he speaks. "You will be." A pause. "I don't suppose you're a princess, by any chance?"
"Does being the daughter of a prince of industry count?" And Charity flings caution aside-if you can't trust the man who rescued you from a dragon, who can you trust?-and tells Michael her father's name.
His reaction is not exactly what she expects. "But you've been missing for months. Your parents are frantic!"
"I didn't dare contact them," she says, bowing her head. "It was bad, Michael. I can't explain how bad--but it wasn't a question of running away because they wouldn't give me what I wanted. I was desperate."
He lifts her chin and gazes into her eyes. For a moment, she feels the first shivery touch of a soulgaze.
No! she mentally shouts at the magic. Go away!
The soulgaze retreats, and Michael is speaking. "If you call them tonight, everything will be all right. You will have to live at home for a few more months, but no more than that. And you will need time to patch things up with your parents and sister, anyway."
"Did I mention that I had a sister? And how do you know everything will be all right?"
"No, you didn't mention that," he says quietly. "But she's been in news stories about your disappearance. As for how I know everything will be all right if you contact them tonight...the Lord told me."
He sounds quite matter-of-fact. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and the Lord told me that you need to contact your parents tonight. Considering that he miraculously appeared to save her from a dragon, a sorcerer, and herself, she's not in a doubting mood.
"If you can get me to a phone, I'll call them," she says, throwing in the towel and hoping fervently that God isn't going to pull a double-cross and make her suffer to atone for her sins. She can't take one more betrayal, she really can't.
He strokes her cheek. "Nothing bad will happen to you, Charity. I promise."
It's impossible not to believe that promise. She nods.
As they approach a hotel that has a phone Michael says she can use, Michael turns to her with a troubled expression. "That sorcerer ... did you know him?"
She isn't sure how to answer that question-with the literal truth, or the actual truth. For of course she had known Gregor; after so many months of living with him and his other followers, as well as being his student, there's no way she could not. And yet, in another sense, she didn't. Even with all of the prophetic warnings she received, she didn't expect him to be embroiled in human sacrifice and dark pacts with ancient dragons.
If she admits to the literal truth, she'll probably have to demonstrate her magic. Nothing malevolent, of course...and yet she knows that if she lets it out of the dungeon in her mind even for a second, she'll never be able to force it back there again.
And somehow, she knows that the magic will react badly to Michael Carpenter. It will either try to destroy him...or it will show him just how far she's fallen. She doesn't think she could endure seeing the disappointment in his face when he sees the darkness in her.
She won't let herself become worse than she is. And she won't let herself hurt Michael. Michael is too important-not just to her, but to the world. The world needs brave and noble men like this, and there just aren't enough of them.
And so she chooses.
"No," she says as she mentally chains and padlocks the dungeon door shut forever. "I knew him enough to say hello to. But I never knew him. I never knew him at all."
THE END
***