Summoner (Ash and Magic 1) (5 page)

"Brad?"

"You might want to shower when you're done."

"Cass was right, you are an ass."

Brad left and Ash turned back to the spell she'd begun in her manse.

Why was she so obsessed with this?  She wished she could say that it was because of her love of summoning, but there was something else there.  In the quiet moments, while she gathered her thoughts or stretched out sore muscles, a face dominated her thoughts: fierce and powerful, alien and too-human all at once.

Melketh.

When she closed her eyes she could see him: considering the class, watching her.

Melketh...

She didn't know why but she had to see him again.  She needed to just... talk to him.

Of course, it was only for the class.  If she could turn in an interview with Melketh, then she would definitely ace the assignment.  She could probably get away with something smaller and still ace it but that wouldn't be as impressive.  A large part of her wanted to see the look on Professor Montgomery's face when he saw the recording, when he realized who it was and what Ash had done.

"Identify!"  Ash touched a pin with a small magnifying glass design on it and suddenly there was a shimmering plate of light hanging in the air, pointed at the circles she'd drawn.  The spell read the magical currents and expanded them, showing their properties and powers and, in this case, their flaws.

Ash knelt down beside her circles and carefully went over them with the Identify, making sure that everything was perfect.  Even a small error, a tiny tremor of her hand, could have disturbed the spell with potentially disastrous results.

By morning, she'd completed the two major spells that made up the summoning and used Identify at least twelve times to ensure that every line was in place and every rune was correct.

She also hadn't slept.  Her bed was covered in discarded coffee cups and the room smelled like coffee grounds and rotting eggs.

Knock.  Knock knock knock... knock...

Ash was taking a break, stretching out her back, when she heard someone at the door.

"Brad?  I told you I wasn't coming!"

"Uhhh... y... yeah, it's me."  The voice on the other side of the door was bleary and a little slurred.  "And Cass."

"You brought in reinforcements?"

"Uhhh..."

"Ash?  D'you... do... you do you know what time it is?"  Cass also sounded a bit drunk.

"Were you two pre-drinking?  You know that's a terrible idea, right?  It leads to..."

"Ash!  Ash ash... Ash, let us in?"

"Yeah, sure.  Knock!"  Ash didn't feel like standing up so she pointed at the door and opened it magically instead.  It was the kind of thing they'd been warned against doing since High School but also the best part of being a Wizard.  Why have power if you couldn't make your life easier?

"Ash!"

"Ashley!"

Brad and Cass looked... worn out.  Their clothes were out of place, their hair was frizzed and they both had dark circles under their eyes.  Their gaze was unfocused and they both careened into Ash's bedroom when the door opened.  Laughing, they stumbled together onto Ash's bed.

"What's up, you two?"

"You... I mean... are you still... uhh..."  Brad was flailing around, trying to get out from under Cass.  They were both giggling and not making a lot of headway.  "Do you know... do you know time it is, Ash?"

"Listen, I don't have time for this.  You were just here, Brad... I'm not going."

"We're... ha ha, I guess you don't!"

"She doesn't!"  Cass grabbed the edge of the bed and tried to lever herself off but she couldn't get a good grip and was entirely too wobbly to make it happen.

"Okay.  What's going on?"

"It's morning!"

"Morning!"

"Morning?"

"M... yeah, that's what we said!"  Brad laughed and finally they managed to disentangle themselves from the pile on the bed.  Cass landed on the floor, giggling without knowing why, and Brad spread himself backward over Ash's bed.  "Have... did... you... did you sleep?"

Ash blinked her eyes and rubbed them for good measure.  Morning?  It felt like it had only been a few minutes ago that Brad came by.  She must really have been concentrating, focusing on the spell and not paying a single shred of attention to what was going on around her.

"No..."

"Good!"

"Great!"

"Waffles!"

Ash frowned in consternation and took a step back from the two drunken College students in her room.  She couldn't stop now!  She was so close.  The first two spells were the most critical, the most intricate.  All she had left now was the interior design and then she could... could what?

She couldn't do much of anything in her present state.  She was out of coffee and, now that her friends mentioned it, she was feeling a serious headache.  The light was starting to scratch at her eyes and a yawn was creeping around in the back of her throat.  If she had been the one to fall on the bed, she would have been out before her head hit the pillow.

"I... waffles?  You're going for waffles?"

"Listen!  Listen... okay... listen."  Brad wobbled to his feet.  He tried to steady himself by grabbing Cass' foot and she screamed, giggled, then kicked him away.  "Okay, listen, alright, we're going... we're going to go get Denny's.  Denny's.  That's... delicious.  Waffles at Denny's."

"I think that the two of you should really get to sleep."

"No!"

"No..."

"Listen.  Ash.  Ash, ash... Ashy Ash Ashley."  Brad bumped into the doorframe and managed to keep himself somewhat steady against it.  "Ash.  I... may have... probably did... might have.  Molly.  I met Molly."

"Molly?"  Ash scrunched her forehead and tried to think what Brad could possibly... "Oh!  Brad!  You took drugs!"

"Not drugs.  Just, just... uhh... just one drug.  Just one.  Just Molly.  And that's, you know, it's not really, it's kind of like, something that, you know, is... uhh... not... like... you know... it's not... it's a thing that, you know, when you take it then you... uhh... stuff... it's..."

"I get it, Brad.  You don't have to convince me, I'm not a narc."

"Shhhh!  Cass is... you know, she... uhh..."

"I'm right here!  Right here... Ash, did you know that you're really pretty?"  Cass giggled and rolled off onto the floor with a screech and a giggle.  "And naked!"

"I'm not naked.

"She's not... she's not naked!"  Brad gasped and stumbled a step toward Ashley.  "She's beautiful!  I mean clothed.  I mean beautiful... help, help me here Ash."

"I'm not naked.  I'm wearing underwear, and you two should really get to sleep!"

"We should... listen, okay, Molly.  We should keep Brad awake.  Awake.  We should keep him awake."

"Okay.  Sure, alright, let's do that.  Uhhh, can't you do something about it?  You know, I've seen you cure hangovers with a single Mend."  Ashley was searching now, trying to find a way to get them out of her room.

"Oh!  Oh, right, yeah... yes... yeah, that's... that's a good idea!"

"Mend!"  Cass giggled and fumbled her grip on her necklace.  There was a fizzling sizzle of magic in the air and the two of them ended up giggling more.  Neither looked any more sober.

"Seriously?  You too, Cass?"  Ash sank into her desk chair and sighed, pressing annoyed fingers against her temple.

Ecstasy was, for most people, just a party drug.  Many believed it didn't have any bad side effects, but even people who knew better still considered it to be one of the lighter drugs.  The problem was, for a wizard, something like that played havoc with their magic.  Usually you just ended up like Cass, unable to cast spells until it was out of your system, but sometimes it could do worse things.

Much worse things...

Ash couldn't let either of them sleep until the ecstasy was out of their systems, and that meant...

"Waffles!"

"Waffles!"

"Yeah, waffles I guess..."  Ashley took a deep breath and tried not to be bitter about the entire situation.  They were her friends, and if she hadn't blown them off last night then they might not be in this situation now.

Or, they would be having waffles already.

"Okay, great, look... this is great, Ash!"

"I know.  I know.  Okay, why don't you two just... hold onto each other."  Ashley sighed and looked over at her manse.  The spell would still be there when she got back.  "I need to get some clothes."

"So you are naked!"

"Brad!"  Cass wobbled over to Brad and grabbed onto him.  They giggled and collapsed against the wall.  "Brad... Brad Brad... Brad!  She's not... why would she be... this is Ash we're... this is Ash.  Ash.  Ashley doesn't... umm... she's not... she... you know, what I'm talking about.  You know.  She's..."

"Sexless?"  Brad giggled.

"Sexless!  Sex... Ash, have you ever had sex?"

"I can't hear you!"  Ashley started shouting 'la la la' as she found some clothes.  She didn't have a lot of time before they got bored and wandered off so she opted for a big, shapeless hoodie and some yoga pants.

"Look!  See... umm, see?  See.  See, what I'm talking about?"  Brad pointed at the hoodie when Ashley came out of her closet.  The closet was barely big enough to fit a person inside, but the other option was to get dressed while those two watched.

"Come on you two, let's get waffles."

"Waffles!"

"Waff... what?"

"Exactly."

*

"Ashley.  Listen, I'm sorry about earlier."  Brad was on his second plate of waffles and third coffee.  He looked a lot better than when he and Cassandra crashed into Ashley's dorm room an hour and a half ago.

"Don't worry about it."  Ash chased a syrup-drenched waffle around the plate and wondered if she should eat it.  She was going to burn a hell of a lot of calories when she finished that spell, but after eating the rest of the waffle she felt incredibly guilty about finishing it.  "You weren't yourself."

"My head hurts."  Cass had her forehead pressed against the metal tabletop and her sentence was punctuated with a pained groan.

"How much did you drink, Cass?"  Ash sipped her coffee, deliberately not thinking about how many coffees she'd had in the past twelve hours.  Coffee had very few calories so she didn't have to feel guilty about it, right?

"Too much."

"Got that right!"  Brad laughed.  "Damn right... oh, Ash, you really should have come.  It was epic!  Epic!"

"Sorry."  Ash shrugged.  "Really, I'm sorry."

"Is this what you people feel like before I heal you?"  Cass was not listening, she was wrapped up in her own little world of pain.

"I think I felt a lot worse yesterday afternoon."

"Oh.  God.  Oh, God, Ash... I'm sorry."

"Listen, you're the one who makes it better, Cass.  Why are you apologizing?"

"Because... god dammit... this hurts.  Like, bad.  I don't know if I could handle feeling like this as often as you do."

"Aaaaand, now I hate you a little.  Good job."

"I live to please."

Ashley laughed, glad that some of Cass' sense of humor was coming back.  They were both looking much better and could probably go to sleep safely now.  They wouldn't be casting spells until Monday at the earliest, though, which meant that Cass was going to have to struggle through her hangover the same way that everyone else did: begging for help from someone else with healing magic.

"So.  Ash... I was pretty hammered when we came into your room.  Did I see what I think I did?"  Brad had a serious look on his face, so he probably wasn't still talking about her underwear.

"Yeah, I was doing some homework so I wasn't wearing clothes."

"No.  No!  I mean, you did look pretty hot in..."

"Shut up now, Brad.  We're friends, that's it."

"Can't friends-?"

"No."

"Anyway, I wasn't talking about your underwear again!  Damn, Ash.  I was talking about the spell!  Was that... God, it feels strange to even say this.  Was that the same spell that Montgomery cast?"

"What!?"  Ash pretended to look offended while her mind spun, trying to find a lie.

"Listen, you were talking about it last night... it is, isn't it?"

"No, of course not."

"Ash!  I'm serious.  That thing was some serious mojo.  There's no way anyone besides 'ole Montgomery could control it with any degree of certainty, no matter how much you think you understand it.  I mean, like, that was some ninth sphere craziness!"

"Don't worry.  Come on, Brad... I don't even know why we're having this conversation."

He was right, though.  That spell was too powerful for her.  She understood the runes and the rituals but the chances that she could channel enough power to get it right was extremely low.

Still...

What if it worked?  Maybe she wouldn't have to pass her damn War class if she did this.  If she proved she could wield summoning magic of that caliber, maybe they would just go ahead and give her a degree now and let her pursue Graduate studies.  Probably not, but at least she'd be able to talk to Melketh...

Melketh.

Even here, eating waffles in Denny's, she saw his face in the back of her mind.  She saw that confident smile, those burning eyes, that... well, he was too perfect.  She couldn't not see him again.

"Listen, I'm really interested in the spell but I'm not stupid enough to try and summon something like Melketh.  Okay?  I'm going to try the same formulation, you know with the anti-magic inner circle, but I'll just summon something less powerful.  An imp or something, I haven't decided."

"Oh..."  Brad frowned, looking over his fresh stack of waffles and trying to read Ashley's expression.  "That's actually a good idea."

"What?"

"I mean, you're right, when you described how the summoning worked it sounded totally strange to me!  I mean, who would even think to set up a ring of spells like that?  Everyone thinks summoning is just about containment and control."

"Right."

"And... you know, now that I think about it, doesn't that mean that Melketh chose to show up?"  Brad ate while he talked, slurring half the words with mouthfuls of waffle.

"What?"

"You know, if the spell worked in the way you described, then that means that there was nothing compelling him to show up."

"I... you're right."  Ash's heart dropped out of her chest as he said it.  She was used to summoning spells which included some minor, or major, form of compulsion.  To think that the most powerful spell she'd ever seen didn't include anything...

That did mean that Melketh had shown up out of his own strange desire.  Maybe he had a contract with the University?

He certainly didn't have a contract with Ash.  Would he show up?

Well, she'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

She wasn't even sure she'd be able to summon him in the first place.

"Anyway, I'm starting small.  Don't worry!  Just imps for me, imps all the way down."

"Sure."

"Nnnnngh, kill me."

After Ashley escorted the two of them back to their dorms and tucked them in, she sat and stared at the tome with Melketh's summoning in it.

Would he show up?

What could she do to entice him?

How had Professor Montgomery done it?

There were too many questions and not enough answers.  She kept wondering how she could answer them, and the only answer that she could think of was that she would have to finish the spell.

Finish the spell... finish it and summon Melketh and see what happened.

For good or for ill, that was the only way.

When the spell had been written on the floor of her manse and everything was in place, Ashley looked at the clock.  It was six at night on Sunday.  She had to be waking up for class in just twelve hours, and she'd already missed an entire night of sleep.

She should go to bed.

She should wake up, go to class, and come back to this tomorrow night.  Then she would be fresh and ready, able to face the spell properly.

Then she would have to wait twenty four hours to see if it had worked.

"Decisions, decisions."  Ashley took a deep breath and looked down at the intricate pattern.  She'd been over it top to bottom with an Identify spell one last time and everything looked like it was in place.  Not even a single rune was incorrect or smudged.  She'd been training for a long time to be able to write things so accurately using an irregularly shaped piece of brimstone, and even still, she hadn't actually expected to be able to do it.

That was the thing she'd kept telling herself: there was no way she would get this right the first time around.  She would mess something up, screw up a rune somewhere, and then she'd be forced to abandon the whole thing.  A part of her had wanted to do it, to be able to curse in frustration, put down the brimstone and scream out her rage.  Then she'd be able to sleep.

Only, it hadn't happened. 

She'd done the spell correctly, putting all the runes in the right place and completing the difficult pattern in the center of the three circles with little trouble.

Now she was ready.  The only thing left was the spell completion word.

Melketh's name...

She just had to present the piece of coal she'd attuned to the circles, say his name and then...

And then...

And then he would appear, or not.  And then the spell would work, or not.

The manses in the student dorms were layered with a lot of protective magic.  Power embedded between sheets of stone, hidden away enough that it would not interfere with complicated spells and rituals but powerful enough that it could stop most bad things from getting worse.

Ashley had to lock herself in there with the spell, otherwise she'd be endangering the entire dorm.

All her friends...

If the spell went sideways, it could be very dangerous.  There were three layered magics involved, hence the three circles: the first was the one that created the passage to the infernal plane.  Hell.  Professor Montgomery refused to say it, but that's where it was.  Hell.  The second was the anti-magic field that would keep Melketh's magic from affecting anything outside the circles.  The third was the magical anchor that would keep it all in place as long as she needed it to be.  That one would actually be transported to Melketh's realm before it activated, which meant...

What did that mean?

Ashley had never summoned something from the infernal plane before.  She'd practiced with a huge number of other creatures: elementals, faerie, animated objects, Greeks, mythical monsters, even forgotten sages from other galaxies.  They were sometimes powerful in their own way, always strange, but this was something entirely different.

Her magic had never been exposed to the infernal plane, but once it was?

What would that mean?

Well, it would mean it was easier for her to contact it in the future for one.  It would also make it more likely for things from that plane to contact her unbidden.  It didn't happen often, but sometimes faeries tried to summon her instead of the other way around.

Why hadn't she thought of this before?

Well, Professor Montgomery didn't have that problem, right?  He was not constantly fighting off demons, which meant that there had to be some degree of safety to this process.

Right?

Right...

This was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done.

It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever done.

It was the most exciting thing!

To think...

What would happen if she succeeded?  What would happen if she failed?

There was only one way to know for sure.

With a deep breath, Ash grabbed two large magnifying glasses on rolling stands.  She wheeled them into the manse and closed the door behind her.  The heavy thud of the stone slamming felt altogether too final.  She'd done this a dozen times before, and never once had the noise of the door sounded so... loud.

Loud.

Ash drew in a deep, shaky breath, then fiddled with the calibration on the magnifying glasses.

"Analyze!"  She pointed one at each of the outer spells.  "Analyze!"  Immediately they brought up complex rectangles of light with graphs and charts that showed the magical flux of the spells she'd wrought.  They were mostly calm now, showing the way the latent magic of the world flowed in and around the circles, but they hadn't been activated yet.  Analyze was a more powerful version of Identify, fourth sphere, and in addition to better resolution on the information it provided it had recording capabilities.

No matter what happened, as long as she survived this, she would be able to figure out what went wrong.

"Analyze!"  She used her portable identification focus to monitor the third spell, but she wasn't confident that she'd get anything useful out of that data given that that spell wasn't going to activate until it was on a separate plane of existence.

"Alright... okay. Alright."  Ash paced around the exterior of the outer circle, looking at her handiwork one last time.  There was precious little room left in the manse with the circles and the Analyzes happening.  At the middle of each of the walls of the manse there was barely a foot of space available to walk between the circle and the wall, and three of the corners in the room were dominated by her recording spells.

She finally came to rest in the last corner.

"Here goes..."  Ash took a deep breath and looked at the piece of coal she was holding.

"Going to summon a demon."

"Yes.  Yes sirree, going to summon something that can make a fine paste out of the most powerful mages in the University without breaking a sweat."

"Right..."

"So..."

"No time like the present."  Ash flexed her fingers and looked at the black marks the coal was making on them.  She was going to have to wash off after this.  Of course, she still smelled like brimstone, so she'd have to wash for a very long time...

"Whooo... alright."

"Ummm... okay.  Okay okay okay."

"Okay!"

"M... wait!"  Ash formed the first syllable of the demon's name and felt the magic tugging at her, hoping to draw the rest of the sound out of her mouth.  She'd never felt that before, like the spell was asking her to cast it...

Ignoring that for a moment, she'd forgotten something very important.  The abyss, the wind... she'd been thirty feet or more away from it when Monty activated his spell, so it was nothing more than a powerful tug.  What would happen if she was so close?