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I heard him gasp on an intake of breath. Very little had the ability to rattle Charl, and I was grateful to see that this had taken him by surprise, but it wasn’t just a line I was spinning, I had every intention of killing the Demon. He was the perfect offering to Water herself - an apology for breaking a deal that I had made so many moons ago.
“That would be….” he paused as if searching for the word he sought, “...unadvisable.”
“No, Charl, what was unadvisable was the way the Demon bargained with the River over me.”
“You still having trouble with your element?” An image flickered into my mind’s eye of Charl rubbing the back of his neck in concern. If this village had been my family - the womb in which I was raised, then Charl was my brother. He was more like a sibling than any boy was in this village, and it only made his concern for me hit harder.
The problem was real, and short of killing the Demon and offering him as a sacrifice - as payment for the debt I owed, I didn’t have any real solution.
“That’s not the point, Charl, why is a Demon involving himself in Witch business?”
It was a demand. Enough skirting around the edges, time was running out and Charl needed to answer.
He sighed, and that was admission enough, but I still waited for his admission - his confession.
“Not everything is as it seems - you of all people should know that.”
His half-confession hung between us, and it took me only a moment to realize that he wasn’t going to offer me more than that.
“Are you kidding?” My voice was a serpent’s hiss - the raging rapids of a stream before it plummeted into the spectacular fury of a waterfall.
A strained sound seemed to come from the back of his throat, as if it physically pained him not to say more. Had he been cursed? Bound?
“This is a yes or no question, Charl. Do you need me to cast a reflection spell on you? Unbind you in any way?”
He grunted once, and I understood that somehow our Magician had become a puppet.
“Who bound you, Charl?”
“It’s not that simple, Marie.” I was expecting him to sound relieved - grateful that I had figured out what was going on with him, but instead, he sounded annoyed.
“It’s pretty simple, Charl. You’re bound, and we need to unbind you. There’s not much else to it.”
“I bound myself.” His voice was strained, and I knew that his confession had cost him.
“You bound yourself,” I repeated the words, my tongue heavy as I spoke his nonsense. He remained silent, and so I repeated them again, adding another piece of information to it, testing the truth of the statement.
“You bound yourself to a Demon.”
He remained silent once more, and his silence was a confession on its own.
“Salaud.” I swore unkindly. Charl should know better. Scrap that. Charl did know better, which only meant that something more was going on.
“There’s more going on, and now that you know this part of it, you know that I cannot tell you.”
“This only strengthens my resolve to kill him.”
“Don’t kill Cort.” Charl sounded exasperated
And there was yet more proof that Charl was keeping secrets because the Demon wasn’t Cortland to him, he was Cort. How well did the two of them know one another?
A sound in the background interrupted our conversation, but I knew that we were done - there was nothing more to say. Charl had bound himself to a Demon, and I was determined to free him from his idiocy in the only way I knew how - by spilling Cortland's blood.
