In the Name of Love: Chance Gentry

by Stephen W. Cote

Atop a tower of old, encrusted with dying ivy over old man gray stone slabs, the Conjurer's archaic summoning circle shifted, rippled, and hummed. A youthful girl stood in the very center, dressed in the most immoral of clothes - a simple leather top that revealed everything a female her age was not ready to reveal. And that is to say nothing of the lace that was meant to cover her nethers! She waved and was dutifully ignored.

Chance Gentry was tired. Not physically or mentally exhausted, he simply wished he could find some miraculous potion to remove the eccentricities from the royal goldsmith. Drumming his fingers against the hard wood planks of the rude, square table - a candle flickered and shadows danced - he glanced at Lilithianrill without so much as a second thought.

If he had the sheer gall to even petition a second! on the matter, he might retrace his steps. Again. If Chance wanted to start, he would start at the beginning in his childhood. He had always been lucky and as luck would have its way, it reflected his name and occupation. Royal Conjurer. He had power. He could do almost anything he wanted to in the Kingdom. That is, any vice King Bentley allowed him. Four years now he had labored under the King's last outstanding order. Since this was the luxury of a second thought he wouldn't allow himself, it couldn't be described so simply. It would have to go back many seasons, more than he cared to count, second thoughts or otherwise.

Thirteen years old. Oh, life was all fun and games. The fun of mucking out the swine stalls and the games of wondering what his father would bring home and call dinner. Usually kale. Magic had never entered his mind as a vice, or even a study. He never had the intelligence for it and was always reminded of his utter stupidity. His brother, Vance, after all, was third squire to the Warrior Colin. And Colin was as much of a Warrior as, well, why as the local archmage was a magician.

Considering Lionell Gentle disappeared before Chance was born, Colin looked all the better considering the comparison. And then there was Freda. He heard her name the first time, before he ever met her and wondered if it was impossible for his teeth to fall out, just in case she looked like her name, just in case she liked him and wanted to kiss him. Now he was flooded with self pity, regardless of whether he was not having this second thought, because Freda was beautiful, the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen.

And it was all the more spectacular because she had the smallest, slightest scar over her lip. She was so self conscious of it and Chance could not help but fall in love. He remembered walking hand in hand with her near the mill damn, she had found it so romantic, even though it ruined the forest for twelve miles east of the Kingdom. He never saw the storm coming. One moment the sun shone and his life looked brilliant. He could live as a swine herder if he could only have Freda. How ironic that she saw the potential in him.

As second thoughts go, Chance never even bothered toying with the idea of having a second thought about how Freda witnessed the metamorphosis of Chance Gentry, heir to the Gentry swine fortune, into Chance Gentry, Archmage to King Bentley. It happened as fast as that storm. She believed in him. And because she wanted it for him, he wanted it even more, enough envy for both of them. And he learned. Not the hundreds of astrology books that most thought were the key to magic, or the religious texts.

At the peak of his bravery, he asked to study the ex-archmages diaries. He learned more than he was ready for. And Freda somehow wasn't important then. Not like magic was important.

And the rest is a bad memory, something Chance Gentry never, never pondered having a second thought about. Until the King was so impressed with his conjuring ability, no, not any conjuring, but the conjuring of personal demons, he forbade Chance from doing anything else. Last year, he came close to ordering Chance to conjure his own demon.

Chance knew he was no fool, even though he now catered to his second thoughts in a vain attempt to tune out the goldsmith's sickening story. Lilithianrill had come. She always appeared no matter how he altered the formula, not even when he tried to create the spell for someone else then take control of it at the very moment the summoning would take place - she always knew, and she was always the one to appear. A small child was not all that bad as conjurings go until one considers that it was conjured for pleasure. The pleasure demon was summoned to cater to latent thoughts of lust. And Chance Gentry did not! have thoughts of lust for children. Perhaps his pleasure demon did.

Chance rocked forward when Ward, the goldsmith, repeated something. "I'm sorry? I must be feeling ill," he lied.

Ward shook his head, "you keep working as you do, no wonder you haven't fallen ill yet."

The goldsmith folded the gold trimmed, royal indigo robes in his lap, glancing and giving Lilithianrill a soft smile. He frowned slightly and turned to Chance, "Still?

Chance nodded, "Anyway," enough about her!, "what were you saying?"

"Oh, so Laura is going to lead the first regiment against Hillsfar next season and wanted her sword and armor decorated." Ward beamed, "you can't possible imagine what a masterpiece I have created. No, wait, don't even guess, I will tell you. First, I added a layer of silver over the upper breast plate, two circlets of gold to cover the breasts and finally, now listen here, two sapphires where the nipples would be."

Chance put his head in his hands and shook it. "Let me guess, you are calling it Laura's Sex?"

Ward looked dismayed, "Did that festering puss rat of an assistant tell you?"

Chance raises his head, saw Lilithianrill had moved behind Ward and was dancing near the window, and buried it again. "It is no surprise, Ward. The whole kingdom has the same thing on their mind. If you ask me, the reason why our population is decreasing is because no more children are being made."

"I can be younger," Lilithianrill offered.

Both men ignored her.

Ward reached over the table and caught Chance's hand, "Chance, don't do this to me.

Remember me? Ward, your best friend? I know it must get old, especially if you are the one who has to deal with it on an individual level. Why do you think I haven't gotten around to doing anything with the demon you had to conjure for me? I just let it sweep the floor. Why not do that with Lilithianrill. The King isn't going to force you to do anything with her, especially since she is a child."

Chance risked a glance at Lilithianrill's back when she turned, then returned to Ward. "I see a lot of people every day, Ward. I can't have a half naked, or in Lilithianrill's case, a mostly naked child around, even if she is only doing menial labor."

Hearing her name, Lilithianrill crept closer to the table and propped her chin on the edge.

Ward smiled and patted her head, "Why not go play over on the other side of the room, Lili?"

Lilithianrill shook her head, "You know what I want to do, Ward." Her smile was twenty years her elder.

Ward withdrew his hand, "Now is that anyway for a young, maturing woman to talk?"

She laughed cynically, "spare me, Ward. We all know why I am here and what purpose I am supposed to serve. Come on, Chance, if you just get it over with," but Chance broke her off.

"Go away! Lilithianrill."

"I can't," and she was right. The magic he used was not his own and he knew very little about altering the spell's fundamentals without severe side effects. No demon, however great or small, could return on its own for at least twenty four hours. And it was very costly to banish it.

"Chance, if you don't want me, which we both know is a lie, ok, assuming you don't, why do you keep summoning me here? I have to admit it is an interesting challenge to try and win you over, but why are your inner demons so awfully silly? I mean, please, do you think I like looking this young?"

Ward stood up and dismissed himself quietly, performing his usual routing of leaving whenever Lilithianrill started to argue. Chance let him go, standing and locking the wooden bolt on the door after he left.

Lilithianrill was there beside him.

"Lili, I don't have you as a personal demon. I don't know where you come from." But that in itself was a lie, so weakly put together that it hungered to fall apart.

And then she smiled. The trouble with demons, they always knew the truth at the same moment you think you have hidden it from them.

"You do want me!" She leaned against him though was pushed away.

"Lilithianrill, I do not want you, not like that."

"But you want me for something, don't you."

She had him and he felt it. A year of putting up with her, more than twice a week he tried to summon something for himself, anything, and she was faithful his and his alone.

Lilithianrill became suddenly pensive and raised her fingertips to her lips. "The scar," she whispered, "I forgot the scar."

Chance now stood near the window, submissive, at least to her questions. "She is still out there, isn't she Lili? Could I still find her?"

And she was there, next to him, thank god she wasn't touching him. "Chance, you hurt her, you hurt her a lot." Her voice was soft, entirely too compassionate for a demon. "You were the only one she ever loved and was faithful to you, even after you never left the Kingdom. She would go there, to your house," she stopped, "your brother and family are still there, but she would go. I think," she stopped, looking with some greater or inner eye, " yes, she still goes there even now.

They love you," but then her voice was as cold as ice, empty, sharp as broken glass. "They also hate you, Chance. You've estranged them. You were supposed to go back and help them, give your brother and your parents the opportunities they never had."

"Do you really want to know why I am here, why all of the demons come so easily for you?"

Chance was silent, stricken with grief.

"Because you all make it so easy. In other places, other times, it was mostly money, or some assurance for the afterlife, once in a while a prayer for some strange form of strength. Sex is just one more part of the equation, one more primal instinct and lust. Everyone here thinks that anything else can be achieved through sex. They have sex for money, sex for power, sex sex sex. We aren't succubi, Chance, but we may as well be. You wouldn't know how happy I'd be if you summoned one of us for money, or something else, but it is always sex."

"You want to know something else?"

No, Chance thought, I don't, but you will tell me anyway.

"This disgusts me as much as I think it disgusts you. The idea of having sex with a child? How revolting! I think you just won't let her go, that's it, and because you won't, you are caught in the perpetual cycle of wanting her to marry you, of growing up with her, back when you left her, back when she was still young, as young as I am now."

Chance looked at her now, his face calm but worried. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because its too late for you. You are so damned to hell that they can't even burn you forever down there or use any their conventional vices of suffering. And me? I am not sure they are too happy with me for taking so long with you, and they sure as heaven aren't going to be happy that I am telling you all of this."

"So why are you, then?"

Lilithianrill looked down and twitched her lips, "Because I understand you. You still have some morals left in you and that is important, even if you are going to hell. But you can do something now, it won't change what happens when you die, call this my assurance of an afterlife," she smiled darkly, "you can make your choice now."

Chance was caught for words, they were all there, a lifetime of words, everything he wanted to say to Freda, but he couldn't speak them.

"It has to be one or the other, Chance. Go out there and do something for Freda, for your family. Or you can do what you summoned me for and we can finally get it over with. But please, no more waiting."

Chance grimaced. She was getting what she wanted, whether she was serious or this was one more of her games, she would get what she wanted in the end. Looking back out the window, he could just make out the general area where he grew up. Already he longed to smell the swine and to greet his family, even if they did hate him.

"It's in the name of sex, or in the name of love Chance." But Lilithianrill knew she didn't need to add that in. Chance was already unlocking the door and running down the stairs.