The devil recalls the deal

Neshrael had lived so long in silent places that he had learned to hear through slight sounds to slighter others. He heard far out, past the dull rumble on the slatted roof to the wide loch hissing beneath the rain. He heard the wind as it came and the wind as it went, wuthering through windows, rushing through thatch, whistling through rushes. In silent places he made meditation out of all soft and sibilant sounds.

He meditated on two voices arguing outside in the cloister, here where not a word should have been pronounced until the morning. They were hushed, only harsh whispers, like spitting rain on sheets of water, but he heard them over the steady drizzle that fell on the stones.

Neshrael was prior here, and he would have to go out and give the monks their punishment, but he had lived long enough in strict and silent places to know that it was wiser to let them have out their argument first, that their minds be ready to turn to their penance when it came.

Nothing had prepared him for one of the men—no monk—opening the door and striding boldly in.

The man twiddled his fingers through the flames of the three stuttering candles as he passed them and then stopped to turn the glare of his right eye on the prior.

“Three candles, Father?” he asked dryly. “What self-​indulgence! What luxury!”

Nurim thalatha, abba? The words trickled only slowly into Neshrael’s dry mind like rain through thatch. He had grown so unaccustomed to the sound of harsh speech…

Then the man turned his face aside, and the three candles illuminated the mark that forked like lightning across his cheek: Temanyeh, written as their name of Dantalion.

Neshrael had lived so long in silent places that he was slow to cry out, even now.

Dantalion lifted his scornful brows and leaned to the side, attempting to peek beneath Neshrael’s robe.

“What is it this time?” he asked in Gaelic, not unkindly.

Neshrael croaked, “Club foot…”

“Hmm.” Dantalion nodded. “At least that mustn’t hurt.” He stepped gracefully around to Neshrael’s side and purred, “At least you have both legs this time. You were quite fortunate to get such a body, dear cousin. It would be a pity if anything were to… happen to it?”

He wormed his finger into the stiff folds of Neshrael’s robe and tickled his side. Neshrael sobbed and stumbled away.

“What—no hair shirt, Father?” Dantalion laughed. “But a woolen robe and bare skin? How decadent! How erotic,” he added in a whisper.

Neshrael spun back to him on his good heel. “What do you want?”

“I believe you owe me a favor!” Dantalion beamed. “Had you forgotten?”

Neshrael had not forgotten, but he had lived so long in peaceful places that he no longer thought of that tumultuous time. The woman’s body had returned to her clay; even the stones piled over her tomb had surely scattered and sunk in the slowly-​flowing way of stones.

He loved her no more. He had lived so long in solitary places that he could scarcely remember love. He could scarcely remember why.

“I will not do anything for you,” he said. But he had lived so long in a monastery that his most authoritative voice was scarcely more than a sigh.

Dantalion clucked at him. “You don’t even know what I mean to ask of you. A letter,” he whispered. “That is all. Your hands still work, do they not?”

“A letter?”

“Simply a tidy little letter of introduction, old friend. Give me an alibi. Tell them how I’ve spent the last few years here with you, and am godly and well-​educated and so forth…”

“You?”

“And if anyone asks, you shall say: ‘Yes, yes, Brother Fergus—splendid fellow—’”

“Fergus?”

Dantalion smiled. “Brother Dantalion simply doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way, now, does it?” His pink tongue slithered out between his teeth for a moment as though it longed to try.

“You don’t… seem like a Fergus…” Neshrael said limply.

Dantalion skeptically studied the graceful turn of his white wrist and hand. “I assure you,” he said dryly, “I could be nothing else.” He patted the mark on his cheek with the backs of his fingers and added, “Simply do not mention this, eh?”

The letter—the favor. Neshrael gasped, “No!”

“What would it take to convince you?” Dantalion cooed. “These Culdee compounds prepare a man for Hell better than Heaven, do you not find? What,” he breathed, “are you lacking, cousin?”

One side of Neshrael’s neck and then the other was chilled as the jinni sauntered around his shivering body.

“How can I make your night sweeter?” Dantalion whispered. “A jug of wine and a pigeon pie? A feather pillow for your bed? A little friendly sodomy?”

Neshrael wailed and stumbled over to the table. He had lived so long in places inhabited by men alone that he had learned to see two sexes among them: those who, like he, were frail as maidens from years of chronic deprivation, and those who still had appetites, and were maddened into mistaking any of them for the easiest one to satisfy.

And Neshrael had been long enough their prior to know that it was safest to let them have their appetites out, for the good of all, though he would have to meditate half the night on the sibilant sounds of wind and rain so that he would not be himself a victim to other men’s squeals and moans and miserable sobs.

Dantalion laughed.

Neshrael grit his teeth. “I will not aid you in your evil!”

“What evil?” Dantalion gasped in feigned outrage. “A letter, cousin! Not an unkind word within it!”

“To what use will you put it?” Neshrael demanded. “An introduction to whom?”

“That is no matter to you,” Dantalion said. “I do not need it, after all. It is merely… a means to ease my way into certain circles. A social lubricant, if you will.” He added in a grave whisper, “But I can certainly force my way in without it.”

Neshrael had been so long prior that he had forgotten how it felt to be pinned against a wall, to be helpless and trapped, to be groped and fondled by a hungry hand. Dantalion had touched him with no more than his cold breath, and nevertheless his frail body remembered and relived it all.

He remembered far out, past this body’s own dull torments, and on to those of the whimpering monks around him, to those of bodies long dead, and on out to the wide terror of the woman for whom he had so hungered that he could pin her down and rape her—and so hungered afterwards that he had made a deal with a devil to possess her love, too.

He could no longer remember why, but Dantalion’s cold breath on his bare skin could remind him how it had been—for her.

Neshrael moaned in resurrected horror. Dantalion laughed cruelly.

“I will not help you!” Neshrael sobbed and shoved him away. “Devil! What can you do to me?”

Dantalion’s smirk soured into a venomous scowl. “Do you truly want to know?”

“No!” Neshrael gasped, panicked and panting. “I only mean—tell Baraqiel if you like! Tell Shemyaza if you like! I don’t care who knows! I will do you no favors! I will not aid you in your evil now!”

“Won’t you?” Dantalion growled.

“Kill me if you like!” he bleated. “I will not!”

“Kill you!” Dantalion laughed savagely, all his velvety glibness burned away to reveal his bedrock of sadism. “Look not for so much mercy from me!”

He grabbed Neshrael by the sleeve and slammed his frail body against the wall.

“What will it take, cousin?” he snarled. “What are you lacking? A brick to your teeth? An amputation? A little unfriendly sodomy?”

In a last defense, Neshrael threw himself against Dantalion’s body, flinging all his weight away from the corner and his low cot. He braced himself with his good leg and tried to shove Dantalion against the table, but even the stuttering candle flames barely flickered for all the breeze they made.

Dantalion swept his frail body up like a woman’s, and Neshrael could only twist in his arms like a worm.

Desperately he flung all his consciousness out to meet the sweet, high whistling of the wind, out to the soothing shushing of the loch and beyond. It almost took flight—for an instant the drizzling and splattering of the rain on the stones outside was louder than his own panicked squeals—he could almost feel a gust of cold evening air on his face—but his concentration shattered beneath him as Dantalion tossed him onto the bed.

He still squirmed and struggled, but Dantalion’s body was above him and bearing down onto his. In the shadow of three candles the jinni was as black as the night, and the black shadow of arms unfurled behind his shadow like wings.