Prologue

The sun was just out of bed and still red-eyed, stretching his rays to right and left between the hills, when Mama Simone stepped out of her barnyard onto the path by the hedgerow. Two dozy chickens got in her way and squawked out of it again. Mama Simone walked fast because she had long legs. She stepped hard because she had big feet and wooden shoes, the kind people kick off beside the back door.

Mama Simone walked through the wet grass faster than the sun rose. By and by she reached the shadow side of the hills, and when the sun couldn't see her any longer she felt as if she'd beaten something. She sat down on a log and shook a pebble out of one of her wooden shoes, as if she'd won back the last hour of the night and had it to spare.

On the shady side of the hill it was still spring. The trees on the other side were leafed out, but these still had catkins and flowers. Held back like country girls, thought Mama Simone, whose parents had dressed her like a little girl through her teens. "And not in anything as nice as these," she said to the nearest tree. It quivered its pleated leaves at her and shook a tassel of catkins like spiky green caterpillars. "Sex, sex, sex," was all it would say.

Mama Simone walked toward the hill's edge, where sunrays made a haze up in the trees. The closer she got to the next valley, the further into summer she went. Trees pushed out their leaves, shoved their caterpillar catkins off to curl up on the forest floor, and then stretched their branches out and sighed. "Sun, sun, summer" was what they said then. Down the valley she went, into a glade that the sun was just peeping into. She made a dark trail across dew-covered grasses to where a big old oak tree stood at the edge of the glade, looking back at the sun. "Hello there, old tree," said Mama Simone.

The tree didn't pay any attention to her, because it was looking at the sun. It sang to itself, long and slow. While she waited for the old tree Mama Simone sat down on one of its roots and pulled her feet up under her skirt. She looked around the glade, then behind the tree into the open space its shade made. She leaned from side to side to look around spindly young trees until a feeling of opening her eyes came over her and she saw four baby oaks with shade-pale leaves standing in what she had thought open space. Here their parent had dropped them, under its sheltering arms; here they had sprouted, and here they would die in its shade.

Mama Simone had the eyes-opening feeling again, as if a question had been answered without being asked. Her nose and the back of her throat hurt as she looked at the little trees that would never grow tall unless the big tree fell. She pressed her face against the old tree, hearing it sing to itself from far up in the sunlight, to far down in the earth, and tears filled her up until she shook with weeping, holding onto the tree as if it might turn and put warm arms around her.

There were six cars and a hearse in Mama Simone's farmyard when she got back to it. People everywhere and none of them feeding the chickens or digging the garden; useless, all of them. People did like that, after a death. They made it an excuse to dress up and do nothing. Her daughter Gretyl was worst of the lot, poking across chicken-mud in her high heels. She was stout, shrill, and important, like a hen with a big worm.

"Mama, where were you? You can't run off in the woods and leave the stove lighted, you could have burned the house down. You knew we were coming! I told you not to do anything till I got here. How do you think I felt, coming here and Daddy dead and you off God knows where -"

Of course I knew, thought Mama Simone. Why else would I run away into the woods? But she thought about the little oak trees. "I knew you'd see to things," she said then. Gretyl got more important and less chickeny.

"I was worried about you," she said. She had a heavy upper lip like her da's, with beads of sweat already standing out on it. The sun dried up grass and made people come out in dew, thought Mama Simone. "People do queer things after a death," said Gretyl.

"Well, why shouldn't they? I couldn't do queer things when your father was alive," said Mama Simone. She washed her face at the pump and kicked her wooden shoes off at the back door, but she didn't want to go inside. She sat down on the bench under the kitchen window and heard the kettle and frypan twittering inside. "Did you make breakfast? I'd like to eat out here. Bread and jam would do."

"You never ate out here before."

"That's because your father wanted meat at every meal. You can only cut meat at a table. When you were a little girl, we used to eat apples in the orchard."

"Well, you need more than apples," said Gretyl. She went inside and Mama Simone could smell eggs, coffee, bread. "Who's going to take care of you?" Gretyl said when she brought them out.

"I'll take care of myself," said Mama Simone. "I was taking care of your father until an hour ago, why would myself be any more trouble?"

"Somebody has to be here with you. We've all talked it over."

"Not now," said Mama Simone. "After the funeral."

"Oh my land, I have to go talk to the funeral director," said Gretyl. "Eat up now. I ironed your black dress."

Chapter 1 -- The Departmental Year in Review

Warren Oldham shut his eyes, the better to pound his head against his desk. It didn't help. When he opened them, the Departmental Year in Review form was still lying there, still blank; no edifying faculty activities had appeared on it, and Warren was no closer to coming up with any. A filtered, rainy light came in from the window behind him and gave the offending document a colder and even more hopeless glow. Warren had walked into work on a dripping Friday morning, for this. A perfect end to the last week of the semester.

He shivered, rubbed his bald head, and glared at the form, growing crosser by the minute - not with the paper, which merely existed, but with the demand it implied that he somehow reframe the Demonology Department's activities into public relations fodder for the Royal Academy of the Arcane Arts and Sciences at Osyth. Warren had many skills, but this was not one of them. Even though someone looking at his round pink face and walrus mustache might have thought him a cheerful fellow, he was more prone to depression than to boosterism, even after a good year; the one just passed had been ambiguous, at best, and required more spin than Warren could muster. He chewed the edge of his mustache in frustration and ran his fingers through the fringe of white hair over his ears. "To hell with it!" he exclaimed, snatched up the fountain pen he had been given by the International Demonological Association when his term as president ended, and began filling in the form very quickly, as if to get it done before his bad mood ran out. This made it almost illegible, but Warren reckoned that as a plus.

'1. Magisters Oldham and Cinea lost our souls when local demons took over the pentarium and began casting their own invocations,' he wrote in the 'Activities' column. In the 'Implications' column, he wrote: 'We have discovered a new way for demons to steal people's souls and that soulless faculty are as effective on interdisciplinary committees as normal faculty. They are not, however, able to carry out those duties requiring magic.' He stopped and re-read this. It made him feel much better and, the pump being primed, he went on to fill in the rest of the two columns.

'2. Magister Rho was trapped in Magister Oldham's grimoire with a demon, and emerged without his magic when the grimoire was destroyed. Implication: a second way to destroy employees' talents.' (And family heirlooms, Warren thought, but did not write.) 'Temporary (possibly permanent) replacement needed.

'3. The pentarium was shut down using the emergency switch, after a demon within it escaped from the pentacle. Implications: the emergency switch works. See above, regarding the limitations of soulless faculty. Magister Torecki deserves commendation for throwing the emergency switch.

'4. The department invoked the possessing demon Antimora, which then spoke privately with each member at the same time. Implication: the repaired pentarium is not as impervious to demons' magic as was hoped.' Or to an exorcist's magic, since the demon Antimora had once been chief of the exorcists - Wilfrid Rosemont, Lord Stimms (that was) - but the Dean knew all about Rosemont's becoming the demon Antimora; it was the only thing the Dean did know about demons, and therefore came up in every conversation Warren had with him.

'5. Magister Torecki resigned in mid-spring semester. Implication: delay in ongoing research programs including dissertation research. New faculty needed.

'6. Magisters Whin and Ligalla pursued the demon Antimora into the Mystic Guild of Alchemists' prison in the netherworld, trapping it therein, but releasing all the imprisoned alchemists. Implication: possible overthrow of existing governmental structures worldwide and disruption of the fabric of reality. Potential lawsuit. MGA will no longer repair our pentarium.

'7. Magister Ukadnian loaned Magister Harding's research camera arcana to a priest, who took it to Selanto and used it to record the second coming of the Bright Lady. The camera has been confiscated by the church as a holy relic. Implication: ' "Damned if I know," Warren said, and after a moment's fruitless thought wrote that down. It was one more thing for Linus Ukadnian and Will Harding to fight about, but the Dean wouldn't care about that.

'8. Magister Kalin counseled local demons on labor law. Implication: demon unionization, including demands for library and sports center privileges. Potential delay in or disruption of ongoing research.'

He turned to the second page and listed the faculty, with their status. Magisters Cinea, Ukadnian, Graham, Whin, Kalin, and Regan, full-time. Magisters Ligalla, Hoth, Harding, and Teale - half time, joint appointments with Department of Public Health. Magister Torecki, resigned. Magister Rho, indefinite leave. Magister Oldham, fed up.

His pen skipped on the last word, which made that part even more illegible than the rest; Warren felt a sneaking relief at this, but shoved it away. He folded the form and put it into an envelope before he could lose his nerve. His computer chimed, a reminder that in twenty minutes he must be in the pentarium, calling up one of the demons that were agitating for use of the Academy's squash courts and swimming pool. "This is not what I went into magic for," Warren said venomously, addressing the envelope. He took it with him and dropped it into the campus mail slot beside the stairwell, and that was that. He was officially fed up.