She crept out of her room and used her amazing memory to follow the winding corridors back to the library. It had certainly looked worthy of further investigation on the way past earlier, with its piles of dusty tomes!
It wasn't long before she had slipped in to the library. It was massive - a huge, circular room, lined with ancient papers and books and scrolls. Cases stood also in the middle of the room, and towards the end was a table with a black grimoir open on it.
"That must be what he's working on at the minute!" She thought. "I'll go and have a look!"
She stepped through the library towards the book. She was about halfway across the room when a high-pitched voice made her jump.
"Hey you! What are you doing!"
With a flutter of wings, an ugly little imp dropped down in front of her. It was fat and splotchy, with a pale red skin and little black horns.
"I... That is, Kohorn said I should come and check out the books," she said quickly.
The imp looked doubtful. "He said that, huh? But he told me that you shouldn't be allowed to read the books, not under any circumstances. Not that it would matter much after tonight."
"Er, when did he tell you this? Was it recently? Because I've just come from him, and he said I could do."
The imp pondered this for a minute, and then bightened up. "Well, if he said that, I guess it must be ok. It was the black grimoir that he most didn't want you to read, but I guess you figured that already."
Her heard pounding, Melancthe made her way across the room to the tome. The imp followed behind her.
The book's pages were made from a horrible leather and written in red ink. She tried not to think about that as she stared down at it. Waves of energy were coming from the book, and she found it hard to focus on it. The scrached letters made no sense to her at all.
"I can't read it!" She said in dismay. "The words make no sense!"
"Of course they don't!" The imp said in surprise. "Its written in ancient Zhidich. You can't read it unless you read ancient Zhiditch, which you don't because only three people in Farhone can read it and you're not one of them."
"Well, that's no good then!" Melancthe sank into one of the plush leather chairs with a defeated groan.
"Why don't you do what Kahorn does when he wants to read the magic books?"
She blinked. "You mean he can't read Zhiditch either?"
"No, silly! He's far too busy making magics to learn dead old languages. But the magic glasses on the table there let him read them."
Melancthe saw the wooden spectacles on the desk and picked them up with a trembling hand. When she wore them, they seemed to make no difference to her vision, but when she looked again at the pages of the grimoir the scratched letters began to merge and join and become understandable words and even pictures.
"There you are silly, much better!" Said the imp with a tone of great satisfaction.
Melancthe began reading and felt her face pale. "This... Its a summoning ritual! He intends to summon a demon, the one called Jhexxys, and bind him to do his bidding. He's crazy!"
"Uh uh," said the imp solemnly, shaking his head. "He's not crazy. Well, maybe he is, actually, but he can still do it. He's one powerful sorceror when he gets his gander up. I can't really imagine anything getting the better of him when he's prepared. And he's definitely ready for this one."
Melancthe continued reading and felt a wave of nausea pass over her. "It says there needs to be a sacrifice... A girl to be sacrificed! Its me, isn't it! He plans to kill me and offer me to this demon!"
"Ah, no," said the imp, in a slightly embarrased voice. "Sacrifice is a bit of a misnomer in this case. You see, Jhexxys is a bit of a randy demon, something to do with the air in his plane of existence, very salty apparently if you're into that sort of thing, and the idea is that..."
"He's going to, what? Mate with me?" Melancthe was horrified.
"Well, yes," said the imp, a bit put out about being interupted. "That's the idea. It will seal him to this plane for long enough for Kohorn to extract power from the demon and bind him to his bidding. Doesn't end well for you, though. Turn the page, there..."
Melancthe turned the page. On the other side was the image of a hairy lizard-like creature with piercing eyes and sharp claws. Swinging between its legs was a...
"Oh by the gods!" Melancthe jumped from her seat and pushed the book away. "Its enormous!"
"Ah, well, yes," said the imp. "Its not the size that matters of course, not always anyway. My uncle always used to say that the best demon lovers were the Foirge, and they're tiny, tiny little things. Mind you, they shrink you to their size before they have their way with you, so maybe there's a question of propotionality here. I guess if you're tiny too, then one of them must be massive. Then again....."
The imp really wasn't going to shut up any time soon. |