A Fall of Ashes: Chapter IV, Demon Ring
A demon cursed ring changes Ashes' fate.
Chapter 1, 2, 3
Ashes’ bare feet hit the cold paving stones of the path, sending shivers through her.
Her mistress’s magic might keep the morning snow off the path and the firewood, but her own cantrip didn’t keep her warm as she dashed to the woodpile. Besides her two dozen cantrips, she only had four spells. Not one of those would keep her warm running bare for the firewood in this weather.
After grabbing her five pieces of firewood, she dashed back inside and stacked it in the wood bin next to her mistress’s oven.
She longed to put on the cloak next to the door. She still had two more trips before she could start making the bread. But her mistress had made it plain when she took back her robe; her slave collar was all she could wear unless it got so cold that the spell no longer kept the wood pile ice-free. She didn’t understand the point of the rule, but knew better than to break it.
Her mistress didn’t want her here, and she would need little excuse to sell her. All pretense that Ashes was anything other than a slave being taught a few spells was gone. As much as the old witch disliked her, she found it a wonder the witch hadn’t sold her already.
She placed the second load on top of the first and dashed back out. She needed that bread started before her mistress came down. If it wasn’t for being kept naked, this was not a bad life. Even eating mostly her mistress’s leftovers, she ate better than she ever had in her life. She made fresh bread every other day, unlike her mother, who made it once a week. Even sleeping on the stone floor next to the oven was far warmer than the drafty loft she shared with her sisters. And it was leagues ahead of what she would have had at the Lazy Stallion.
Ashes would do nothing that might tilt her mistress toward selling her.
The third load topped the wood bin, and she began stacking the tender and kindling inside. Setting that up, she noted the tender bin being down to less than half full. If she had extra time later, she would fill it.
She pointed at the stack. “Canda Tomb.”
She grinned as the tender caught. It had been a long time since she failed to light the oven tender correctly with that spell and burned herself as she had been prone to do in her first weeks. Nor did it exhaust her using her own magic to do so anymore. She took a moment to observe the fire as it spread from the tender to kindling. Satisfied, she added the wood to heat the oven properly, then started grinding wheat for the bread.
***
Ashes stood there, her stomach sour, watching her mistress climbing the stairs to the rooms she forbade Ashes to enter above the second-floor library, the highest room her mistress allowed her to go.
She shifted her eyes in horror to the book her mistress had handed her, telling her to copy. It was a training manual for mage talented slaves. Her heart thudded in her chest as she fought back a tear. She had not come to terms with being a slave for the rest of her life as much as she thought. Ashes knew four of the nine spells and no spell not on the book’s list.
She shuddered. Once she learned five more, her mistress would lock her into being a slave, never able to learn the spells to be anything else. She was to start copying it right after making dinner. With a shaky hand, she put the book back on the shelf.
A tiny box fell from that shelf, and she grabbed for it.
The book still in that hand hit it and knocked it further into the room, popping the box open.
Ring went one way and box, another, forcing Ashes to scramble after the bouncing ring, grabbing it before it dropped into one of the many cracks in the floorboards of this second-floor room.
She sighed at catching it, then held it up in wonder. It was tiny, far smaller than any wooden ring she had ever owned.
And it was absolutely beautiful.
Were those tiny sparkling specs diamonds? She counted nine of them.
It was heavy for its size. Was it gold?
Her heart raced. Never had she touched, much less worn gold. She slipped it on her index finger, and it seemed to expand to get past her knuckle.
She lost track of time as she stood admiring the beautiful ring on her finger.
***
Her mistress’s sharp voice snapped her out of her trance. “Well, you’ve done it now. There is a demon, an Imp trapped in that ring. Those aren’t diamonds but souls he captured. I told you there were deadly things on these shelves.”
On the edge of panic, Ashes tried pulling the ring off.
“Won’t work. It’s cursed. Can’t even get rid of it cutting off your finger now. It would be possible to get rid of it cutting off your whole arm, if done before dawn, and the beginning of a new day, provided we used the right ritual. We have decisions we need to make.”
Panic flooded her. Unable to prevent her voice from rising, Ashes cried, “Cut off my arm!?”
“Halfway between your shoulder and elbow,” her mistress said in a cold voice.
Terror rose. Ashes triggered her cantrip of mind calming.
The old woman nodded and gave her a deep look. “I have been making all decisions on what is going to happen to you since I bought you. But this decision I will not make. In six months, I might have decided and not given you a choice, but not this time. You decide, slave with magic, or apprentice. I was strongly leaning toward making you a slave permanently, as outlined in that book, and had you continued the way you were going, it is what would have happened to you. With the right training, you will be a superb and valuable slave, but it is doubtful you will ever be much of a sorceress. You rely far too much on others to make your decisions for you. Well, this is one you have to make, and you have to make it now. Continue your training as a slave; or start as an apprentice.”
The calming cantrip was having an effect. She took a deep breath and said, “Please let me be your apprentice. I don’t want to lose my arm.”
“Not a good enough reason. You only know four spells. That is because not once have you read more than the chapters I’ve assigned you. Nor have you opened a single book I have not told you to. So far, you have not shown the drive needed to survive your apprenticeship. Becoming an apprentice doesn’t mean you get to keep the arm. It just means there is a chance you will keep it. Assume you are going to lose the arm no matter what. Now decide.”
Ashes bit her lip, then said with determination, “Apprentice.”
“Are you positive? It is far harder than being a slave and you will spend much of the time miserable. One third of all my apprentices died from mistakes they make. Most teachers lose over half.”
Ashes swallowed hard. Gossip said most apprentices died. Nor did she doubt that her mistress had fewer than half to die. “Please allow me to be your apprentice.”
The old woman nodded. “Fine. Now, the next choice. I am a Master of the Gray. This means I not only can teach Grey, but Black or White Path magic as well. Indeed, I have taught all three many times. All paths are equally hard. You wear a demon on your finger. It is already one step down the dark path. Teaching you to control and how to use an Imp is an excellent start in Black Path magic.”
“But it would get my soul.”
“The imp in the ring? Possibly. Certainly, some devil or demon would. But they get most souls. But following the Black Path gets you some power for it and you get to keep your arm.”
Ashes shuddered. How could she possibly be so calm talking about serving evil? “No, not the dark path.”
“The White then? You are not so tainted that The White is impossible for you. More than one whore had become quite pure and adept. The ritual for removing your demon tainted arm is a perfect start on that purification route and obtaining the right levels of dedication and sacrifice to serve the light.”
Ashes shuddered. “Crusading against Evil is nearly as bad as serving it. Can I not be Gray?”
“Gray it is.”
Her mistress pointed at her. “La Nida.”
The rivets in the collar popped out, and the thick leather strap that had been around her neck for so long fell to the floor. The next words she spoke, Ashes could not hear clearly, but felt her arm tingle. She looked at it and watched the brand fade.
“Do we remove your arm, apprentice?”
That question ended her euphoria of losing her brand and collar. “Is it necessary to follow the Gray?”
“No. I was still an apprentice when that ring came to me. I wore it for years before I became strong and removed it. But I had advantages you don’t. I didn’t put it on by mistake. I knew what I was doing and had prepared for it. Every time you call the imp from the ring, it is a step down the dark path and every evil that the imp does weighs against your soul. You must make up for doing that evil each time. In all honesty, the imp will manipulate you easier than that boy that sold you to the tavern did. It would be better if we cut off your arm, as I was going to do if I kept you as a slave.”
“Can I just not call it from the ring?”
“If you have that ring, sooner or later you will use the power in it.”
“But you prepared yourself to use it, can I?”
“That might take you a decade or two. That is a long time to have such a power at hand and not use it.”
Ashes stood straighter and with stronger convictions than she had since becoming a slave months ago said, “If I must lose my arm to follow the gray path, then I will. But if I can keep it, then I want to do that.”
Her mistress turned and removed three small books from the shelves and handed them to Ashes. “These you will copy and return the originals to me. You will also bring me your copies that I can make sure they are correct.”
Before coming here, Ashes could barely puzzle out the signs along the road and on village shops. She had difficulty writing her own spell-book plus cantrips back then. She made progress over the past few months, and could copy entire chapters now, but copying three books was a daunting task. “What are they?”
“One a book in your language about learning the letters and language of writing Kunatain. The other is in Kunatain and is about learning to write Signod. The third is a Signod book about imps that has information you need to understand in its entirety if you ever hope to survive your first encounter with that imp. Now follow me.”
Ashes’ eyes widened. Two new languages? To be fair, her mistress mentioned Signod was the language most mages wrote their spell books in and she had learned a few words of that one.
At the chest by the front door, she pulled out the robe Ashes had worn and a pair of slippers.
“Lakando.”
The robe changed from the tiny thing it had been.
“Put these on.”
It came down to her ankles and fully wrapped around her without exposing half her breast. She looked in the mirror and saw it for the dignified mage robe it should be.
Next came the slippers.
After being nude for so long, the robe felt strange. She wiggled her toes. So did the slippers. She’d never had slippers. Ashes wiggled her toes again, then smiled. The slippers were far different from grass sandals.
“Now follow me,” the witch said.
The old woman grabbed her cloak, then led the way outside and down a path that was not clear of snow. Her mistress wearing boots had no problem, but the snow soon soaked Ashes slippers. “You will maintain this path from now on.”
The path led through the thicket to an overgrown small stone building missing its door and window’s shutters.
“This is my pottery shed. I haven’t needed it in years and doubt I will need it before you are gone. My slave may sleep in my kitchen, but my apprentice has to be somewhere else. Once the oven is stoked, it will be warm enough. Fix it up how you please. As you did as my slave, you will have my breakfast ready an hour after dawn. You have until then to work on this place. Also, until dawn, the tower will not let you in as you don’t live there anymore. The magic only allows you inside if you have tasks that require you there.”
Turning about, her mistress walked back through the snow to the clear path to her tower.
Not used in years was right. From the looks and the thick layer of frozen debris, the door and shutter had been gone on the small stone building longer than Ashes had been alive.
She only got a place cleared to the oven when she realized she had already used her candle lighting spell for the day this morning and could not light the oven. She began a search for flint.
Fear and the cold sapped her strength. Her hands and feet hurt with the cold before she found a piece of flint, but the kindling in the bin was too wet. Everything in there was too damp to use to start a fire.
Fear grew, gnawing her stomach. She knew her mistress would leave her to freeze if she didn’t solve this herself.
Or would she? Could she strip down again and beg to be allowed to return to being her slave? Her mistress had been right. Being a slave with someone else telling her what to do had been safer. She might not accept her back, but the Lazy Stallion would. Even in the snow, she could make it that far if she started before it got any later.
Dam it wasn’t fair. She only got her freedom back, and she was about to give it away again.
There was the Imp ring. Could she make the imp start a fire for her?
No. In her condition, she would end up the imp’s slave, not the other way around. Better to beg her mistress or run to the Lazy Stallion while she could.
No, it would be better to lie down and just die than any of those choices. Going to her mistress’s would be saying she could not function as anything but a slave and deserved to be property.
Then she went cold inside. She could not run to the Lazy Stallion in any case. It was no secret that her mistress didn’t like her. She would not permit some whore with an Imp ring to live. Her mistress either took her back as a slave and cut off her arm, or she died out here. Was this all to put her in a position she died? After all, a third of her apprentices did die. She fought not to tear up.
“Moa Lea.”
The spell of clear sight came easily. One of many things she had used it for was seeing in dim light.
There, under that cabinet protected from the elements, were lint and small shavings of wood. A mouse nest maybe.
She sighed and pulled the small dry bundle out. Then, with great care, she began setting up her fire, placing lint, wood chips and tiny twigs with more forethought than usual.
She struck the flint against an iron bar.
The first spark caught.
She blew on it and had a small fire in minutes. Relief flooded her. She would survive the night as a free woman and not have to beg to be a slave again.
Shivering and in pain, Ashes woke, the dim light of dawn just lighting the shed. With the pain stabbing her, she took off the ice incrusted slippers and looked at her feet. The two smallest toes of her right foot were black and frozen. Wet slippers were more damaging than bare feet in the cold, she now understood.
With great agony, she made her limping way to start her mistress’s breakfast; for the first time in weeks, no spells memorized. Her spell book had been in the kitchen last night.
The tower door opened to her touch. Grateful, she stepped into the comforting warmth of the empty kitchen.
The more she moved around in her mistress’s kitchen preparing breakfast, the more she became convinced she would need to remove her two toes as the pain in that foot got worse while other pains faded
Her mistress came in and sat at the tiny table. “Last night was your last chance to be someone’s serving slave. You should’ve taken it. That ring is now so bound to you, you cannot remove it by removing your arm. I cannot work around the power in that ring to bind your magic to being a maid and from this point forward, you have powers no whore may have and live, as you realized last night. You can still end up a slave, but a mage slave. Those are treated far worse than normal slaves, forced to do things no sane or free mage would, constantly risking sanity and soul. Mages of all schools, Black, White and Grey, do this to enslaved mages, though the White reserve it for Black path mages they capture.
Ashes handed her, her tea, then limped back to the stove.
“Many powerful mages would love having you as their slave. They can force you to perform dangerous spells that risk your mind, sanity, health, or even soul, and you would be unable to refuse them. End up a slave again, and that is all too likely going to be your fate, girl.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Quailkan Sol Lesa.”
The pain disappeared from Ashes’ feet. Looking down, not having put on her slippers yet, she saw the color back to normal.
“Thank You mistress.”
“It will be far from the last time you are going to have injuries and you are going to get much closer to death than last night.”
“Mistress, do you regret becoming a mage?”
A cackling laugh burst out of her. “For more than two thousand years now. I have never met a mage over two hundred that doesn’t, though some will not admit it even to themselves.”
“Then why do you teach magic?”
“One day you’ll understand that sometimes you don’t have much choice, and I never teach magic to people I like, though sometimes I come to like people I am teaching magic to.”