Chapter 92: The Pact and the Price
Though the witch’s drawings were crude, I could still recognize some of the more common ingredients. And with the Old Latin dictionary, I could now begin to decipher her annotations. Ginger, rosemary, turnip… and alcohol, as a solvent. These were common things, things I could find in any marketplace. But the more esoteric ingredients remained a mystery. Jared, ever faithful, promised he would search the market for them tomorrow. Though I suspected his main goal was to steal more food. It was no easy task to satisfy my monstrous appetite; in the past few days, I had consumed enough to feed a normal person for months.
Another strange thing I had noticed: I no longer needed to… defecate. On my first trip to the latrine, I had thought it was strange that I only needed to urinate. Now, after several days of wolfing down enormous quantities of food, I was certain. My body was a bottomless pit. It was impossible, unnatural. But after everything else I had seen, I found I was becoming numb to the impossible. I simply accepted it as another strange, horrifying fact of my new existence. There was a saying in my old world, a silly joke, that beautiful girls don't poop. I was hardly a beauty, but it seemed the principle, in some twisted, literal way, still applied.
That evening, I returned to the tedious, maddening work of translation. I was making progress, even with the witch’s own handwritten notes in Old Latin. And what I found was… illuminating. The grimoire began with the basics, a simple, chilling definition: a witch, it said, was a woman who made a pact with a demon, a devil, or some other foul, extra-dimensional entity, exchanging something of herself for the right to use magic. The entities were categorized by their station: Demon Kings, Demon Gods, Great Devils, Fiends, Fairy Kings, and even… the Old Ones. The witch noted that this was a classification based on her own experience, and was likely incomplete.
A special warning was included: These great beings are fickle, and most are, by human standards, evil. They are also, it is believed, hostile to one another. Therefore, witches who serve different masters are, by extension, enemies. If you attempt to summon a demon, do not delve into its secrets. Do not ask for more than you are worth. Do not speak of things that are forbidden. And when your business is concluded, send it away with all due respect. So, there it was. The witch herself admitted it. They made pacts with demons. The witch hunters, the Inquisitors… they weren't wrong, after all.
The book went on to differentiate between witches and sorcerers. A sorcerer, it explained, was a natural spell-caster, one born with non-human blood. A witch, on the other hand, was more akin to a warlock or a cultist, one who had to bargain for power from a patron entity. Which brought me to my first, most pressing problem. Even if I wanted to become a witch, where was I supposed to find a demon to make a pact with? Thankfully, the grimoire provided instructions. It showed a diagram of a hexagram, a summoning circle, its points and intersections marked with complex characters. I recognized them. They were names, mostly, of people and places I did not know.
To summon a great being, the notes read, draw the circle, and place an offering at its center. If you have no specific offering, a part of the human body—a heart or a brain, for instance—is generally acceptable. If you wish to summon a specific entity, you must present a specific offering, and inscribe the entity’s true name in the appropriate places in the circle.
The book then provided the true names and preferred offerings for three such demons, the names written in a demonic script that I, conveniently, could also read. When I considered it alongside the Infernal Tongue I’d understood in my dream last night, a cold certainty settled over me. This was knowledge that neither I, nor Parula, should possess. That damned Great Fly… what, in God's name, had it implanted in my mind?
The first was named Furcas. He appeared as an old man with a long beard and horns, riding a pale horse. His preferred offering was an ancient book, with the skull of a goat placed upon it. A pact with him would grant a witch power over astrology and the divinatory arts.
The second was Gremory. She appeared as a beautiful lady wearing a duchess's coronet. Her offering was expensive cosmetics and the blood of a virgin. A pact with her would grant the witch the power to find hidden treasures.
The third was Andrealphus. He could appear as a peacock, or as a man. His offering was a bundle of elder branches, arranged in the shape of a human figure. A pact with him granted mastery of numerology and the art of shapeshifting.
A further note warned that these great beings were protean, their true forms unknowable to the human mind. Even if the being that appeared did not match the description, even if it was a thing of utter, mind-breaking horror, one must not show fear. And, the note added, one must never look directly at them. The mental shock alone could drive a person mad.
Finally, the price. The great beings would always demand a price for their services, a price that was not negotiable. But, the witch had written, with a strange, flippant tone, any girl desperate enough to summon a demon is likely past caring about the cost.
I cared. I cared very much alright. Especially when I read the next line, a special addendum, underlined twice. Some demons, it said, will demand a sexual price. My blood ran cold. Oh my God! I was a man! A man! What in God's name was a "sexual price"? Were these demons all lecherous old fiends? The thought of being… intimate… with one of them, especially a being of unknowable, monstrous form, was a horror beyond any I had yet imagined.
And yet, the witch, in her own spidery handwriting, had added a chilling, personal note: This is one of the easiest prices to pay. To be chosen for such a role is a great honor. She even recommended choosing Andrealphus, and suggested that one should dress beautifully, perhaps even provocatively, and wear a perfume of mint, his favorite scent, before the summoning.
Below this, the witch had scrawled a long, bitter complaint. The great cults and witch covens, she wrote, jealously guarded the true names of the great demon gods, their secret taboos, and their strange, terrible appetites. This knowledge was their most precious secret, shared only with the inner circle. This was how those organizations could consistently create powerful witches, their contracts with the darkness all but guaranteed. Meanwhile, unaffiliated girls, the "wild" ones, had to take the terrible gamble of summoning some unknown entity from the void, risking instant, agonizing death if they unknowingly offended their summoned patron.
She mentioned one organization by name: the Witches' Scythe. They had, she wrote, completely mastered the desires of a single demon god, and they maintained their favorable relationship with it through a constant tribute of virgins. It was a stable, reliable method for producing new witches. The first step for these girls to join the sisterhood was to offer themselves, body and soul, to the demon. And to conceive and bear the demon's offspring? That, she wrote with a palpable sneer, was considered the greatest honor of all.
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