“My lord,” Uram said. “Since you didn’t seem to care for any of the demonesses who came for your consideration, I thought you might like to have a consultation with Lady Knucklebones. You may have heard of her.”
I gave the woman a brief second glance. She was certainly old, wearing sandals and a shawl that probably used to be colorful but was now just a fringed rag. “I don’t trust anyone who wanders around in sandals,” I muttered, putting glue on a patch of the maze model so I could add a hedge.
I started to realize maybe I didn’t look like the impressive Lord Variel the Devourer when I was holding a brush of glue, and I abandoned the project and stood up to my full height so I could glare down at Lady Knucklebones.
“He’s really quite a handsome demon,” she said to Uram. “Lord Variel, sir, I can show you the woman you will marry. I am a seer and the realm that I see is the realm of Eros and Cupid.” She made a little bow. “The realm of true love.”
I gave Uram a look of disdain. “The realm of true love? Do you think, after nine hundred years walking this earth and consuming the souls of countless men, that I would ‘fall’ in love? There is nowhere to fall. I am already the devil at the bottom and I have no love for anyone.”
“You aren’t curious, sir?” Gillian piped up behind me. “I’d be ever so curious if it were me, sir. If you can’t fall in love then I suppose Lady Knucklebones won’t show you anyone at all.”
“That is true,” Lady Knucklebones said. “Perhaps you have no true love. It has happened before. I whisper my spells and all I see is a void of darkness.”
For some reason, I didn’t like this idea either. Uram got a tiny smile of triumph.
“This is a stupid idea,” I barked at Uram. “If nothing comes of this, you will be punished for it, as you know.”
“It was actually Jameson’s idea,” Uram said. “I guess I’m too stupid to have an idea like this…as you know.”
My servants were really becoming a problem. They were getting downright cheeky. My father would have killed every last one of them by now. “Well, let’s just have at it then,” I said. “Cast your spells, woman, and we’ll see what beauty is fated to bear my whelps.”
Lady Knucklebones smiled at me as I walked down the several steps from the large dais where I had a work table and some shelves of supplies. “We shall see. Do you have a large basin or cauldron, my lord, with a bit of water in it, enough for a reflection?”
I snapped my fingers at Gillian. She nodded and left.
I stopped on the last step so I stood eight feet to the hag’s five feet or so, and crossed my arms, swishing my tail with a little impatience. I didn’t want to look especially interested in any of this silliness.
Gillian and Maron from the kitchens lugged in a large copper basin with a couple inches of water at the bottom and set it on the broad stone floor. Gillian wiped her brow. “There you are, my lord. Does it please you?”
I shrugged. “Leave us now, all of you.”
The hag stood over the basin and tossed three small bones into the water. Then she lifted her arms straight toward me, her fingers open. “Take my hands.”
“Take your hands? You look unwashed.”
“I must establish a connection to see your true love,” she said, but what she didn’t say was any argument about being unwashed.
“I am of half a mind to strike you across the room and get back to my business,” I said.
“Then you will never know,” she said.
“Be quick about it,” I said, touching her fingertips with my claws. Her bony hands immediately seized my fingers.
She lowered her head and began to chant her spell, and her hands grew warm with magic. The water in the basin began to ripple as if stirred by a wind, and I couldn’t help but look at it, squinting at the reflection of the castle’s ceiling, straining to see an image as she kept chanting in her low, crackly voice.
The ripples grew deeper, just like a lake on a breezy day, and the image of the ceiling was scrambled. As her words died down, so did the movement, and as the water grew still again, an image appeared clearly.
It was a garden toad huddling under a wide leaf.
We both saw it. “Oh my,” she said, sounding amused. “It would appear that your true love is a toad.”
“I would advise you, at the least, to look afraid while you dare to toy with me,” I said in a deadly whisper. “Show me the woman who is my true love.”
“The image doesn’t come from me,” she said. “I have no control over it whatsoever. She is probably either a shape shifter or she is cursed.”
“I am a high demon,” I said. “I am a beast that grandmothers warn their children never to whisper my name. There is no way in hell that my true love is a toad, whether cursed or shifted. A warty little creature that I could smash under my heel and it would not even have time to think before its life was over. There is no way that this toad woman could be worthy of me. I just rejected some of the most alluring demonesses in Sinistral.”
“As I said,” Lady Knucklebones said calmly, “I am only the seer. Men ask for visions, and I connect them with their fate. You can strike me down if you like. It won’t change what the bones have whispered. You will cross paths with this toad, and you will fall in love with her.”
“Get out of my house,” I growled, baring my fangs at her. I really was tempted to strike her down, but one did not live to my age by killing old witches. That was certainly a demographic no sensible man should provoke.
She snapped her fingers, and the bones flew up out of the water and back into her palm. She bowed to me again and left the room.
A moment later, predictably, three eyes appeared in the crack between the heavy entrance door and the wall. Uram, Gillian and Jameson were trying to spy on my reaction.
I flicked a claw at them and whipped a blast of dark energy at the door crack, and they all screamed.
“If you don’t like having your eyes burned, you probably shouldn’t spy on a demon,” I said.
“Permission requested to visit the healer, sir!” Uram cried, stumbling in the door with tears flowing down his cheeks.
“Permission granted. Luckily for you I am a benevolent man in my old age.”
“How did it go, sir? Did you see your true love?” he leered, like he knew perfectly well what I’d seen.
“I saw nothing,” I said. “I don’t think I have a true love at all. But nosy servants might lose their noses altogether. I would really rather not as I don’t want to look at hideous, noseless servants but you might drive me to it.”
“No true love?” Gillian said with concern. “Are you sure? That’s so sad!”
“So you say, my lord” Jameson said. He was too sharp, that one.
“Get—out. I gave you permission to go to the healer, so go already.”
Uram slammed into Gillian trying to leave. I stared at the empty doorway. I was starting to get the feeling I was losing my touch. I would bet the Withered Lord or the Master of Webs never had to deal with such unruly servants.
But high demons weren’t very chummy with each other. Maybe this was actually the secret downside of imprisoning people’s souls. You ended up spending your life alone in a castle with a bunch of fools.