WIZARDS
DEMONIC

A Story of the Dresden Files

By Cameron Smith.

This one’s for all those who inspired me to write in the first place:

Mrs. Foley; the original crotchety English Teacher.

(I never did finish that original story in time. I hope you’ll be satisfied with a dedication.)

And my Mum, who lied shamelessly when I asked her how well I did.

(As if my beginning stuff was actually readable!)

And my favorite authors:

Steven Brust.

David Eddings.

Jim Butcher.

Terry Pratchett.

Diane Duane.

Neil Gaiman.

Alan Dean Foster.

Mercedes Lackey.

Christopher Stascheff.

o0o

As I walked along off the ship, the sound of my boots clanking against the gangplank (and squishing, once, when I stepped on a rotten orange) provided a rhythmic accompaniment to my bleak thoughts.

I was singing, inside.

And, no, I don’t mean happy, cheerful singing. That sort of thing should be strictly proscribed, with violators subject to the full penalties of the Law. I was singing that catchy theme from the old Broadway show about the London barber who cut people’s throats with a straight razor and then fed them pies that his girlfriend made.

Something like that, anyway.

There’s a hole in the world like a great, black pit,

And the scum of the Earth inhabit it,

And it’s morals aren’t worth what a pig could spit,

‘tis a place called London!

Ah, London. The smell of garbage, the honking of horns, and the passing cabbie who flipped me two obscene fingers for no discernable reason.

I liked the city already. Much more interesting than the tea and crumpets nonsense I usually associated with the Limeys.

I might have inherited some of my Irish ancestor’s prejudices. Not likely, but just maybe.

Anyway, no one had tried to kill me, and I’d been there three minutes.

Better than New York, eh?

Normally, I approve of your taste in music, sweetling, Liriel murmured, but Sweeney Todd is a little bit much. It’s worse than… well, it’s worse than that CD of medieval Christmas carols you used to listen to.

You mean the one that melted in the CD player the first time I listened to it with you in there? I replied blandly.

I, my sweet, am as innocent as the day that I was brought into being… in this matter. You know well the effects of mortal magic on technology.

Meh. You did it on purpose. I don’t mind the CD so much, but a CD player tough enough to withstand three accidental dunkings in a bathtub and two months in a wizard’s possession is to be prized. Besides, Ideo Gloria in Excelcis Deo has a catchy tune, I thought.

Please. You know the reasons I have for hating suchlike things; you more than anyone. It may have a catchy tune; but, remember, those who sing it are your foes.

Liriel sounded troubled. Well, even to someone who thinks in eighteen or so dimensions, being forced to reconcile your differences with your Creator was a little hard. (Family troubles plague everyone, even angels.) Having Him try to draft you back into his service after he threw you down into Darkness and pain, even if it came with many apologies and a nice benefits package, would be a little hard to swallow. At least we had been able to give him the metaphorical finger.

Some Christians are nice people, and could even marry my siblings (in fact, I once had a Christian I had almost asked out, but chickened out at the last minute. I really didn’t want to meet her parents), but their religion as a whole kinda sucks. Suffer not a witch, and all. The Bible Belt, in my opinion, is one of the few places on Earth that should be seriously considered as a candidate for nuclear redecoration.

Remember when you wanted me to redecorate the Sistine Chapel with Hellfire? And I almost did it.

Well, that was then. We’ve both grown up a little. But, then, I’m long past my adolescence, so I should have been a bit more mature.

The thought of an adolescent Liriel painting her room in Heaven black and listening to Black Sabbath and Kiss crossed my mind. I snickered. The Fall from Heaven as teenage rebellion. Now, there was a theological concept that boggled the mind.

Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Even as a rebellious adolescent, metaphorically speaking, I had better taste in music.

I smiled, but kept my peace. Besides, there was no real reason to be in a bad mood. Just because my meeting had been delayed by about a gajillion years due to technical problems at every leg of the journey, that was no reason to be ticked. If I had wanted fast travel, I would have walked the Paths through the Nevernever. But I had wanted a nautical experience, and I had got it. Seaman Foy had had a bloody wonderful time crewing the good ship Lady Washington, thank you very much. She was the ship that they had used in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, you see, and I loved pirate flicks. Even Cutthroat Island, which had numbered as one of the top ten biggest flops of the Twentieth Century; right up there with the Edsel and the nasally-inserted fire (never mind; I guess you never read those Hitchhiker’s Guide books, did you?).

Anyway, I got to crew the real Interceptor. And you know what? It was every bit as fast in real life as it was in the movies.

And we even got to see how well the crew could sail the thing across the ocean when the motor blew up. Unfortunate, but that’s magic for you. It would have been flagrantly immoral (not to mention incredibly stupid) for a wizard to travel on a modern ship or airplane, which depended on unfortunately frangible technology; but I figured that a sailing ship would do fine. How the hell was I supposed to know that the bloody ship preferred to use a diesel engine?

Ah, well. The captain said that, with the price of diesel these days (something like six dollars a gallon) they just might go with the sail as a primary, with the engine just in case they were becalmed.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, the White Council of Wizardry wanted to whack off my head with the Sword of Justice for breaking a few of the Seven Laws.

The Laws of Magic are not like the laws of physics. Magic is governed by those kind of laws, too, don’t get me wrong, although they’re a bit more flexible, and more liable to change suddenly; but the Seven Laws aren’t it. They were a list of seven ‘Thou Shalt Not’s,’ and it was worth your life to break them.

They ran thusly:

Thou shalt not kill by use of magic.

Thou shalt not transform the shape of another.

That shalt not enthrall the will of another.

Thou shalt not invade the mind of another.

Thou shalt not reach beyond the borders of Life.

Thou shalt not swim against the currents of Time.

Thou shalt not open the Outer Gates.

I was hardly the most evil person, but I had broken the Laws on several occasions. I had killed two sorcerers who had wanted to take Liriel’s coin from me (power-hungry buggers, would almost have been worth it just to see Liriel crush their minds and torture their souls out of revenge) altered the memories of a particularly nosy Baptist minister (who thought I was a demon; more correct than he knew) and practiced necromancy several times. Armies of zombies and spirits are just plain cool, you know?

My musings on the vicissitudes of fate were interrupted by a friendly arm draped around my shoulder. “Ah, love, you need to cheer up,” Liriel said, her voice full of cheer. “Thinking about fate is counterproductive. If it is fated, you can’t do anything about it. If it is, then there’s no fate to be worrying about.”

By your command, oh Imperious Leader, I drawled. Ever since Liriel and I had watched Battlestar Galactica with Harry, Sanya and the grasshopper (Molly and I loved it, and Harry and Sanya did too) Liriel had been taking on the form of one of the Cylons, a blond named Model Number Three. The robot’s appearance was sufficiently different in form from how Liriel normally appeared and acted (she preferred a red-haired form in who wore those long seventeenth century nightgowns with the lacy cuffs that you see in pirate movies) to lead me to believe that Liriel was having some form of identity crisis.

A demon with an identity crisis. Danu’s light!

“Excuse me, sweetling,” Liriel murmured. “An fallen angel with an identity crisis, thank you very much.”

Utterly deceptive twaddle-speak, says I, I replied grandly. There’s no difference.

“Of course there is. But, you being a stubborn little boy, I’m sure it will take a long time for it to get through your head.”

That is either blatant sarcasm, or hypocrisy on a scale heretofore unheard of by mortal man.

“Go with hypocrisy, dear; you’ll rarely be wrong in this life if you assume that everyone you meet is a horrible hypocrite. “

Even you?

“Of course not. I’m not including myself in that, obviously.”

Hypocrite.

“Obviously. I just got through telling you that, didn’t I?” she replied blandly.