All Shackled Up

            Whispering Jim elongated himself as far as he could, which came to about eight feet, stretching toward the Vault door while the tiny metal ball anchored him to the spot where Richard had dropped it. Jim tugged and yanked. For a moment, he lamented that he could not amputate the arm held by the shackle. The form he had chosen so long ago was not one that could be divided and broken like the giant bundles of cells these humans were made of. In the past, it had not been a problem. Physical restraints meant little to someone who could drift through the air like a cloud of mist, yet the enslaving devices Richard Airbright had created were impossible to break – at least not while he was still bound by them.

            Yet Jim could not hate him, at least, not any more than he hated the rest of the arrogant apes who had been his unfortunate company these past few eons. The man was slick and deceptive and certainly cunning, and Jim could respect that. Still, given the opportunity, he would see his “master” driven to madness. It was a matter of principle. No one crossed Whispering Jim.

            He was aware that he was in no good position. Even among his own kind, Whispering Jim was not known for making friends, or even temporary allies. He had always been a bit of a free agent, which afforded him great liberty of course, but also gave him nothing in the way of a support network. He imagined this was the main reason Richard had chosen him to serve as a familiar.

            He heard something. It sounded like the door was opening, but he was sure it was not yet time for Richard to return. He knew there was this new – or perhaps, old – rival of Richard’s named Henry that everyone seemed to be up in arms about. Could that be who this was? It seemed unlikely. When the door opened, Jim was not terribly surprised to find that it was Isabelle.

            “Hi, Jim,” she said.

            “You’re not supposed to be down here, little girl.”

            “Little girl? I’m seventeen, you know.”

            “Still a girl, and still quite little, if you ask me.”

            Isabelle shrugged and started looking around. Jim relaxed his form, returning to his very roughly human shape and length. “Does your father know you’re down here?” It occurred to him that if he truly wanted to stir up some trouble, he might start working on the girl. She was pleasant enough that turning her against her father would be somewhat satisfying. Perhaps not fulfilling in the long-term – these things tended to happen without his assistance – but it would be something to do with his time.

            “No.”

            “He doesn’t let you come here. Why is that?”

            Isabelle picked up a strange metal device that produced a spiral of lighting around a long metal pole when she switched it on. She did so a few times. “He’s worried I’ll do something stupid and get myself hurt.”

            “He doesn’t trust you, doesn’t think you’re capable.”

            She shook her head. “Nah, he’s just told me about some friends of his when he was young who got in a little deep without the right training. It’s just…”

            She trailed off. Jim floated up to her as best as he could with his arm anchored to the ground. “It’s just what?”

            “So you’re really a demon, Jim?”

            Jim smiled. “If there are demons, I’m one of them.”

            “I always thought they were supposed to be big muscular brutes with horns and a tail.”

            “That’s one of the forms we can take. I’m not that sort.”

            “You know, you’re far more pleasant than I’d expect a demon to be.”

            Jim laughed. “I assure you I am not.”

            Isabelle wandered into another room, but shouted back at him. “Well, you’re all shackled up. You’re no threat to us, so you might as well be nice, eh?”

            Jim strained to see around the corner. It was awful, being confined this way even when the door was open. “Do you know much about these shackles?”

            “They’re made of iron, right?”

            “Cold Iron, actually. It’s a sort of alloy mixed with magic.”

            “Oh, like the door,” she said. Jim was a little surprised she had not known what the shackles would be made of. Anyone with a layman’s understanding of the arcane would know that Cold Iron worked on magic in a way somewhat analogous to the way that lead could protect one from radiation. And considering her father, Jim would have assumed Isabelle would know far more than the average layman.

            All of this would, of course, be much easier if he could simply read her the way that he read others. It was something about the binding ritual, or perhaps the shackles, or maybe it was a directive Richard had given him that he had forgotten about, but Jim found it impossible to read Isabelle’s thoughts. Richard was no slouch in protecting minds – his con would have never worked otherwise – so perhaps he had merely prepared Isabelle just in case she found her way down here.

            Then it occurred to him: How the hell had she gotten down here? The Vault was sealed off with a gigantic Cold Iron door with all manner of complex locking mechanisms and a whole secondary layer of guarding enchantments. To a mortal eye, it might appear as just a metal door, but in Jim’s senses – those that did not have an exact analogue to human sense - there were also a thousand spider-webs, shimmering with brilliant colors, each elegantly unfolding as Richard passed through, and then re-establishing themselves afterward.

            If Isabelle were not allowed down here, Jim thought, she ought not to be able to get through.

            “Jim, did you really ever take a person’s soul?” Isabelle had wandered back into his room, now idly playing with something that looked vaguely like a sextant, and even Jim could not rightly identify.

            “That depends on your definition.”

            Isabelle spun one of the dials on the device, and a couple beams of light of different colors momentarily shone out of the lens. “Oh, cool.”

            “I would be careful with that if I were you,” said Jim. He was a little surprised by his reaction. Really, it would be sort of funny if Richard’s daughter got herself killed in his own basement.

            Wait, he didn’t give you an order to protect her did he?

            The problem with the sort of enchantment Richard had placed on him was that technically, he could give Jim orders wherever he was and Jim would be forced to do them without even knowing what the orders were. Jim could appreciate how nuanced the binding was, applying principles from several schools of magic. He would have been more happily impressed if he were not the enchantment’s subject.

            “Jim, can I ask you… about something?” said Isabelle.

            “What is it?”

            “Do you know if it’s possible to do magic accidentally?”

            “I think you might do something akin to magic accidentally if you keep fiddling with everything down here.”

            Isabelle looked down at the sextant-device in her hands and quickly put it down on a table. “Oh. Yes. Well, no, I meant… like, on your own. Could you cast a spell if you hadn’t learned it – just, you know, you figured out how to do it on your own?”

            The answer was fairly complicated, but Jim summed it up with a simple “No, it would be pretty much impossible.”

            “I see…” said Isabelle. “Well, thank you. I didn’t want to ask dad about it, you know.”

            “My pleasure,” said Jim.

            Isabelle walked back to the Vault door and opened it. Jim could see the dozens of woven warding spells stretched across the doorway. As Isabelle walked through, he could see them ripple and tear, as if blown by an intense burst of wind. She passed through the gap as if there had been nothing there.

            Jim sat in awe and terror. He had not seen anything like that in a very long time indeed.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2013)