Free Dragon's Tongue (The Demon Bound) by Laura J Underwood Page A

started to wonder if it were true. There was something overly pompous about the Lord Magister of Dun Gealach.
    “And anyway,” Fenelon continued, “since I perfected my skills at using cloaking spells, the incidents have dropped to nothing. Turlough merely thinks his threats are holding weight…”
    “They don’t?” Alaric asked, feigning surprise.
    “No…except for one,” Fenelon said. “I may be more powerful, but Turlough could still easily banish me from Dun Gealach, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.”
    “Banish you? How? If you’re more powerful…”
    “Even a powerful mageborn can be warded against in much the same way we keep demons out…” Fenelon said and frowned in thought. “Which reminds me. Can you think of how the demon could have gotten into your psaltery?”
    “I’m afraid I know very little about demons and their ways,” Alaric said. “We don’t get many of them in Tamnagh. Your guess is as good as mine.”
    “Did the psaltery ever leave your company?”
    “No.”
    “Do you recall anything strange about last night?”
    Alaric sighed and glanced at his hands. “Well, there was that wench with the white scarf. She talked awfully well for a common tavern wench. She kissed me.”
    Fenelon smirked. “Nothing strange about that. You are an attractive enough fellow to get unwanted attention from the ladies.”
    “Well, actually, there was something strange about it,” Alaric said, his mind filtering through the muddle of his tavern adventures. “She had a scarf on…a fine white scarf of silk that seemed very expensive compared to the rest of her clothes. And when she kissed me, I recall that it fell into my lap and covered the psaltery…only…”
    “Only what?” Fenelon looked keenly interested with this bit of information.
    “She didn’t have it on when she walked away. And I looked down to see where it might have fallen to, but it wasn’t there. And later, when we were leaving, I remember thinking I felt something slide around inside the psaltery, and that it felt heavier.”
    “That’s it, then,” Fenelon said and thumped Alaric’s shoulder. “And you have just learned one important aspect of demonkind, Alaric. They can shape-shift into almost anything, no matter what size.”
    “They can?”
    “Come on,” Fenelon said. “We should have enough time to go to the library and learn exactly what was taken before the Council meeting.
    “And what will that tell us?”
    “Well, it should give us a reason as to why someone would send a demon to steal a map,” Fenelon said and began the motions of a gate spell.
    “Someone sent the demon?” Alaric said as he watched the magical rift appear and tried to memorize the words Fenelon was whispering to make it happen.
    “Demons are always sent, Alaric,” Fenelon said and seized the younger mageborn’s arm. “They rarely have enough wherewithal to come into this world otherwise.”
    Before Alaric could ask anything else, he was whisked through the whorl, back into the gloomy Keltoran weather. He found himself standing on the very cobbles he had come across when he first entered the outer gates of Dun Gealach, looking at a pair of mageborn guards who were looking back. Fenelon spread his hands in a gesture of submission, and Alaric realized he was being scried by one of the two. They said nothing, merely stepped aside and allowed Fenelon and Alaric to move on towards the keep.
    He was just about to enter the inner gate when a bit of black flitted past the corner of his eye. Alaric sensed the bitter tang that had burned his tongue last night. He gasped and turned, but it flitted away, and all he saw was what looked like a raven as it disappeared behind one of the towers.
    “Something wrong?” Fenelon asked.
    Alaric frowned. “Nothing…just a raven,” he said.
    “The city is full of them,” Fenelon said. “You’ll get used to seeing them. Let’s get inside. We’ve little time as it is…”
    He