Name Magic

2. Clean-2

Dayo rose from his examination of the demon and let the truth spell fade. “Then we better free her from the possession immediately. Now that she's touched the Heart Stone, the demon will feed on her magic and only grow stronger if we don't remove it quickly. That’s the easy part. Caging the demon will be the trick. Tanzaa, will you get her cleaned up while we work on a trap for the demon?”

While the two men were speaking, Tanzaa knelt beside the pallet and gently touched the ash-smeared face. Then she rose again and said one word “Pa∂a.”

Dayo translated without being asked. “It's a name for her…probably Patha in our language. It means ‘drudge’ in Demian. She's suggesting a name for her since you shouldn't use her real one.”

“Patha?” Lar considered. “Well, it's something, until we know more about her.”

With that Tanzaa lifted her hand in a graceful move and Patha's body magically floated away from the pallet and began to drift out into the garden. Hot springs a little beyond the garden verge fit the need. Hopefully, the dirty creature would come back cleaner and recognizable as human.

Meanwhile, Dayo led Lar deeper into the house, to the library where Tanzaa kept her charts and worktables for tracing the weather she managed and manipulated. As he followed, Lar didn't want to admit how tired he was, for he would not delay Patha's cure. Yet it felt like days since he'd had a decent night's rest. As they entered the library, he looked at the books and charts with dread.

“Have you done any work with demon capture?” Dayo asked Lar.

Lar shook his head. Up to this time as a Seeking King, trying to find his gift, master it, and Seeking the Talismans of his power had prevented him from taking the time to actively study magic for magic's sake. In the twelve years since Tanzaa had found him, giving him his Heart Stone to activate his magic, Lar had wandered half the Land with few comforts, let alone the luxury of time to study. Unlike most of the Wise Ones, when first discovered, he at least could read. His grandfather's collections of books were still accessible, but that modest library contained nothing about magic, let alone the rare specifics of demon mastery.

Dayo nodded his understanding. Being a Seeking Wise One meant constant transitions.

“Fortunately, I've been working on just this subject, though I've never seen this particular breed of demon.”

With that Dayo closed his eyes and reached out to his home in the far north where he kept his notes and books. Within a single breath, a stack of scrolls and several large books landed with a thud on the table that stood in the middle of the book-lined walls. Dayo began perusing the stacks when he caught Lar trying to cover up a yawn.

“It will take me a while to locate what I'm looking for. There's a couch over there. Why don't you get some sleep and I'll wake you when I've found something?”

Lar gazed longingly at the proffered couch and then back at the reading. He decided on the former. It had taken him twelve years to find Ingri; she could wait a few more hours.

Meanwhile, Tanzaa let her visitor soak in the hot springs, still asleep under Lar's spell. She kept an eye on Patha, so she didn't sink in the water, and let the warm water work into the grime of years. Once the outer layers had soaked long enough, Tanzaa magically made the rags the poor woman wore disappear. Then Tanzaa climbed into the hot springs herself to wash the soot, tangled knots, and oils from Patha's hair. The color of her hair, a fiery brilliant red surprised Tanzaa. She never encountered someone with that shade in her homeland and it was rare enough here in the Land, though not unheard of. Next Tanzaa conjured herself a scrub brush and began attacking Patha’s limbs, hands, and feet with abandon. While she could have simply magically made this woman clean, someday this stranger would need to learn to bathe without magic. Of course, Patha was asleep and probably had no idea this was all happening to her, but some sliver of her unconscious mind would recall the luxury of a true bath.

And this woman probably had not bathed in years, Tanzaa thought. Her long limbs, pale and unmarked, bespoke her past. When was the last time Patha had enjoyed the sun? Such paleness was rarely seen in the Land. Also, Patha had not been whipped, for there were no such scars. She bore only bruises on her arms and shins like she often had jostled around unforgiving furniture. Perhaps food must have been a battle, for there was not much to her though she was very tall.

Tanzaa was not only the Queen of Storms, but also Dance and had an eye for body style. Patha would have made a fine dancer, but her muscle tone was pathetic. She should have been strong and graceful, almost elegant. What had she been doing to be covered in dirt, underfed and sunless, and yet had grown so tall?

Curiously, Tanzaa tried to tap into Patha's past. She tried carefully to move beneath the shield of drones that protected Path’s mind from observation, but Tanzaa only got lost in the burning haze of the buzzing demon. The Queen of Storms battled that swarm only briefly. Now was not the correct time to try breaking through. Tanzaa gave up and instead attacked Patha's hands with the brush once again, struggling to get the inset grime out of cracked, calloused fingers.

Finally, when she was satisfied, Tanzaa magically lifted Patha free from the hot springs and dried her with conjured towels. Now Tanzaa got to dress Patha and even without knowing the woman, she knew that her preferences would not suffice for Patha. Their coloring was vastly different, not to mention their past, so Tanzaa elected to go with something more typical to the Land rather than the draped tunics and gauze she preferred.

Experimentally she lifted one closed eyelid to see Patha’s eye color and was startled as much as Lar had been. Golden, as gold as Tanzaa's eyes were silver. So maybe they did have something in common after all. Tanzaa put Patha in a conjured satin robe the brilliant color of her eyes. Then she floated her charge back to the room where they had first set her.

With that duty completed, Tanzaa traced Dayo's thoughts to the library and went to see how the demon cage was progressing. When she arrived at the library, Tanzaa saw that Lar was sound asleep on the couch nearby. Without thinking, Tanzaa conjured a blanket that she draped over Lar’s figure. Then she gave went to Dayo and gave him a grateful kiss as he studied his books on Demons.

“Lar dives deep,” Tanzaa commented.

When she had first found Lar as the final part of her own Seeking, she had been concerned for the young man. Being King of Death could not be a comfortable talent. Music, Mountains, Plants, Plains, Weather, Dance, those things brought majesty and worked well within the Wise One ethos. The magic they mastered was meant to benefit all the citizens of the Land. But Death? How did you make that seem kindly or helpful for the people they protected?

“Yes,” Dayo agreed. “He seems to have made a great deal of progress. Death can’t be easy, and he never seems comfortable with people, but he is, as you say, ‘diving deep’ to try to make Death an advantage.”

Tanzaa nodded, appreciating that Dayo understood what she had meant with her observation. She had always been sparing with her words. Dayo knew she thought of Lar as her son after a fashion even though both of them had ceased aging. Lar probably was technically frozen at an older age than her. However, in the world of the Wise Ones, Lar had less experience and so she worried about him like a son.

Tanzza began to study the diagram and notes Dayo had prepared for dealing with Path’s demon. He had envisioned a kind of ball of metal netting, which would enlarge or collapse based on the relative size of the demon inside. There would be a flexible film of magic like a diaphragm between each diamond-shaped opening. Tanzaa made a few brief changes to the drawing he had crafted to his cage idea.

Dayo looked at what she added and then asked, “What are you thinking with putting the jewels at the joints?”

Tanzaa would never explain in so many words. Instead, she added a justification with a visual demonstration. She pressed a vivid image into Dayo’s mind. The rubies sparkled at the joints of the expanding ball trap, reflecting back the light and fire the demon seemed to enjoy. It would not only attract the greedy demon but make it comfortable with the fire of its brightness.

“With them on the inside of the net as well, the creature might be more at home, and it may make the net stronger. I like it,” Dayo complimented his wife. “Will you conjure what you see? I think we need a separate surrounding net for all those little sparks. I’m calling this a spark demon. The queen bee must not be allowed access to her drones. A ball inside for her and an outer one to trap the sparks.”

And with that, the two of them began the magic of crafting a cage to catch a demon. They would not wake Lar until it was ready at dawn. Dayo woke Lar with a gentle shake and then showed him the crystal-encrusted cage they had crafted.

As Lar hastily ate breakfast, Dayo explained what he had planned to do about Patha’s demon. “You cannot destroy or kill demons, just trap them in something other than a human. We only hope to eventually banish them to wherever they came from.”

“They cannot die?” Lar gulped. “I’m the King of the Dead. What good will that do if we cannot kill them? That little cage won’t hold what I saw in the Truth Spell.”

Tanzaa took up the two-layered cage that glittered in the morning sun streaming through her palace. She then tossed it into the air where it floated and then began to expand, growing so wide that Lar had to step back or be pushed back.

“One orb for the queen, another for the swarm,” Tanzaa said.

Before he could ask more, Dayo passed Lar the notes he had made last night. “I can put a music spell on the queen only once she has her attention on me. I doubt that I can get in to do that. Instead, I think you should go into Patha’s mind, speak with the demon, and convince it to come out. You must use your connection with your lady. Then we can trap it.”

“Me?” Lar shuffled through the papers, reading rapidly. “I’ve barely discovered her…and I’ve never done this before.”

“Pull your arms in,” declared Tanzaa.

Dayo smiled as he translated his wife’s cryptic comment. “She means you can pull in on the connection you have with your lady. In dance, that means it will be a stronger, faster spin. You have a powerful tie to her. It will be strong enough to pull her out, stronger even than our Wise One gifts. It will be enough to lure the demon out if you believing you are interacting with Patha, not the demon.”

Lar nodded his gratefulness for their help and then studied the papers as the three of them walked back through the tapestries and columns of Tanzaa’s home. He studied again the cage and wasn't exactly paying attention when they walked into the room where Patha lay still asleep. Then he looked up and caught the first sight of her. He wasn't prepared. He dropped the diagram and distractedly had to grope to pick it up. Lar couldn't pull his eyes from the dramatic change in the woman he had rescued.