Jonis by Rowan Erlking (manga ereader TXT) 📕

“You shouldn’t have taken on all those hunters,” Lt. Gillway said. His voice was only mildly chastising. There was a tinge of satisfaction in his tone that troubled Jonis. He seemed to feel somewhat revenged for being retained in the city against his will.

Jonis scowled at him.

“What was I supposed to do? Let them chop me up? No, thanks.” Jonis sat up more.

“That’s the spirit!” the fop said with a mocking cheer.

There was silence.

“My cold might be infectious,” Jonis said. “You two had better leave.”

Lt. Gillway walked to the door.

The fop remained, still ginning. “What? You don’t feel comfortable with three demons conversing in one room?”

Lt. Gillway huffed, stomping out into the hall.

“Three demons in one room,” the fop murmured to himself, musing. “That sounds like a great title for a play.”

“Quit joking.” Jonis fell back to his pillow. “My head aches.”

“Your whole body will be aching dead soon if you don’t take care of that infection,” the fop said more gravely. “Are you magister or not? Use your head.”

Jonis sat up again. “You’re helping me?”

The fop nodded. “Of course. Coming here on the pretense of visiting a sick friend has gotten me into the capitol building. Tonight is my night to try for the ultimate avaricious blood.”

Knowing whom the Night Stalker meant, Jonis did not feel at all sorry. He leaned against the headboard. “I can’t help you there. No one knows where the Patriarch actually sleeps. Rumor has it, he bed-hops with his various mistresses.”

“I know.” The fop waved his hand casually. “But there is thrill in the hunt, as you full well know.”

That made Jonis laugh. Immediately he clenched his chest, wheezing.

“As for you,” the Night Stalker nodded slightly, “Use your know-how and cure yourself. That is no ordinary sickness. It was designed to kill you. But I believe you already know a cure. Draw the poison out and save yourself.”

Nodding, Jonis slid his throbbing legs out of bed. “Will do.”

“And another thing,” said the fop, now transforming before Jonis’s eyes to his Night Stalker form. “I wasn’t joking about the three demons in the room. That friend of yours never came back from the mountain resort.”

He walked to the door. Jonis watched him.

“And, I think if your head had been clear back then, you would know it too.” The Night Stalker opened his door and flew off. The fop’s fancy shirt shredded into ragged pieces on the carpet.

Jonis chased after him, halting in the doorway as he watched the demon fly off.

It was minutes before Jonis could make up his mind on what to do. The first thing, though, he gathered up the fop’s old shirt and stuffed them down a laundry chute. The next, he staggered down the stairs, through the halls, and entered into the kitchen. The cooks shrieked when they saw his inflamed face.

“What do you want?” one shouted.

“We’ll make you a sandwich right away!” another yelped.

“No,” Jonis said, panting. “I want to use the kitchen. All of you get me the following supplies: heather, dried mint leaves, garlic, and onions. And also, clean out the ash from the oven, I want it for the mixture.”

The cooking staff scrambled. They dug from their herb sachets and racks first, laying all the jars and bags out on the table. Jonis picked through them and set the ones he needed to the side. They had everything but the heather. For that Jonis sent a cook out to the apothecary to buy it on the threat of death. While she was gone, Jonis went through their cooking pots to find a suitable one to use. Most of the cooks stood back, watching him with their hands covering their mouths or their arms pulled to their sides, trembling. However, a couple started to follow him, asking him what he was actually up to.

“I’m making a poultice. There, hand me that mortar and pestle.” Jonis bent over the table, leaning on it, coughing into his arm when his lungs suddenly tightened, constricting his breathing.

The cook’s helper pushed both items over.

“Chop up that garlic bulb and set it in the pot. I want it minced,” Jonis said, measuring out the mint leaves into the mortar for grinding and set it aside. “You, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to chop that onion?”

He pointed to a scullery maid who had been leaning on the table, peering at the bowl Jonis where had dumped the ash. She stood up straight, blinking at him while pointing to herself. “Me?”

He nodded, then suddenly bent over himself, hacking hard.

The pain was getting worse. It was nearly impossible to breathe standing up now. He could feel the liquid gathering in his lungs. When he stopped, it seemed that everyone had crouched in.

“Onion,” he whispered. “Chop it.”

She jumped, reaching for the kitchen knife. Some thought she was going to try to kill him, but the girl grabbed the onion next and started chopping it up as if she were preparing a meal for the Patriarch himself.

Jonis turned from the table and heaved the cooking pot full of water over to the cook stove, setting it on the fire they had maintained in it. He opened the small door and stoked the coals with the cook iron. By then the cook had rushed back with the heather in her fist, panting and holding it out.

“Set it on the table,” Jonis said.

Gratefully, she did and backed away. Jonis peered over the plant, checking to make sure it really was heather she brought, then he shredded it into the mortar with the mint leaves. By this time the pot of water was boiling.

Dumping in the herbs, the minced garlic and the finely chopped onion with a nod to the scullery maid who wiped her eyes with a dishrag, Jonis stirred it together. Then he added the ash. He waited until the gray matter boiled once more. With his dulling eyes fixed on the mixture Jonis took his spoon and stirred it clockwise, though his hand now shook just trying to hold it up, muttering the spell over it. “Rivers flow south. Fish swim to the sea. Draw from the well. Come to me.”  He tapped the pot once. “Trap.”

Jonis lifted the pot off the stove with one of the kitchen rags, using al the energy he had left. He bowed to the staff, and said, “Thank you. I’ll come back for a sandwich later.”

They all watched him stumble out the kitchen door, leaning their heads through to look down the hall after him.

Staggering into the vestibule where the guards should have been standing at their posts, he saw not one. He rested a moment on the stairs banister and looked up. Jonis heard screams and shouts echo, but he could not tell from which floor it came from. With a heave, he continued up the stairs, resting when he needed, coughing up phlegm into the rag at intervals and sometimes leaning over the banister railing as if his body would collapse right then. But somehow he managed to inhale a breath and heave his aching legs up to the third floor. Just as he turned to the next set of stairs, a set of wide doors burst open just below him. He saw the Night Stalker fly out, cackling with a swoop into the air around the dangling chandeliers. The guards chased after it, pointing their guns. But Jonis knew they wouldn’t fire inside the building with those, not without incurring the wrath of the Patriarch afterward. One of them had bloody scratch across his face, wielding his sword with curses bursting out of his mouth.

“Lieutenant Macoy, do something!”

Jonis blinked down at the figure on the balcony. It was the Patriarch. He was wrapping his robes around himself to cover his bare skin. Behind him, Jonis heard shrieks from a woman inside the room, weeping in terror. It echoed in the hall in chorus with the unearthly laughter coming from the Night Stalker.

Blinking blearily, Jonis swayed on the spot. With a gasp for breath, Jonis grabbed the banister. “Sorry, Your Grace, but I can barely stand let alone chase down a Night Stalker. You are on your own.”

He turned, laboriously climbing the stairs up to the top floor. Shouts and screams behind him continued on like a choir of background music to a tragic evening. The Stalker’s laughs bounced off the walls and windows, ringing like the bells of justice in Jonis’s ears. He entered the long hallway, trudged to his door, opened it, set the pot on the nightstand, tore off his shirt, and climbed right into bed.

The sounds of fighting, yells, and screams continued through the night. Jonis, however, lay on his covers, smearing the poultice on his infected skin and then all over his bare chest. Lying still, he closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

*

“So, it is dead,” the Patriarch said, sitting on his silver throne among his advisors. “Good. That demon was nasty to get rid of.”

“How did it get into the capitol building anyway?” asked one of the fourteen advisors. “We had guards at every door.”

“Maybe he got in the window,” suggested one of the hunters standing in the hall.

Those wounded from the other day’s escapade had been removed from the capitol building. Of the twenty-some-odd hunters, only about seven remained with them.

“The windows were locked,” a capitol guard replied with bite.

“Did you check for broken windows?” That hunter persisted.

“Night Stalkers do not force entry,” Lt. Gillway said. He was standing among the guards. “They must either be invited in—though an open door is considered invitation—or they must have a normal human cause to enter the building. It is their nature.”

“So do you have an idea how it got in?” the Patriarch asked with a nod of strong regard for Lt. Gillway’s opinion.

“I have a hunch,” Lt. Gillway replied with a low nod and a shrewd look in his eye. “But only a hunch. It concerns our Cordril.”

“Ah,” the Patriarch grinned. “Yes, and how is our sick lieutenant?”

Nodding slowly, Lt. Gillway said, “He was looking pretty bad when I saw him. The kid could hardly breathe.”

“But I am much better now, Merkam. Thank you.” Jonis walked from the kitchen side of the main hall, strolling in with a nearly consumed sandwich in his hands.

He leisurely strolled to the center of the room, chewing with a placid expression on his face. His eyes sparkled.

Sisrik had to hide a grin, glancing once at Lt. Gillway.

“Glad to see me?” Jonis said to the Patriarch with a bow. He stopped next to his old friend, patting him on the back.

Lt. Gillway pulled away from him. “Insolent! Stop talking so informally! He is the Supreme ruler of Brein Amon! And I am your commanding officer.”

“Yes,” Jonis said, his cheer slipping somewhat. “My commanding officer—but Lieutenant Merkam Gillway was my best friend. He treated me like someone when everyone else thought he was crazy for talking to me. All I ever wanted was his happiness.”

Lt. Gillway looked at him, his eyes in an uncommonly hateful glare. “You ruined my life.”

Blinking, Jonis nodded with a returned look. “Yes. I did. And I ruined poor Merkam’s life too. I should never have dragged him up to that infested resort from his sweetheart. I should have left him in town and gone alone.”

The lieutenant jumped away from Jonis as if he were a spider. “I was never your friend! My job was to keep an eye on you, demon!”

“Oh, how true those words are.” Jonis soberly shook his head, drawing his father’s sword from the sheath at his side. “You have been keeping an eye on me. But Merkam thought the whole idea was a joke. And he told me so when the demon hunting groups were formed.”

“Stop using my first name! I am Lieutenant Gillway to you!” He placed his hand on his sword hilt.

“No, you’re not,” Jonis said.

He heaved up the sword with one arm. With one swipe, the blade