All is now set. If they run and do not take the horses, I shall send Rikti to deal with them, enough to ensure their death and defeat. If they submit, Vilkas will live—briefly— despised, disgraced and powerless. Let him face that for a day or so until I have him safe, when he will have just enough time to despair before he becomes demon fodder. It is too good a fate for him, to be the means of rebirthing the Demonlord, but better him than me.
Ah, the Demonlord, the Nameless One! The first to follow my calling, and the best of us. His natural gifts left him discontent, for he was a mere first-level Healer without the ability to go further. He had studied healing all his life. When the Magistri of his day tested his power and found it so paltry, he knew he must do something to change it. He knew the Tale of Beginnings, that the Gedri had the power of choice, but it is said mat he was the first for many centuries to have the courage to call upon the Rakshasa for assistance.
His greatness lies in die fact that when he called upon them he knew that he had nothing to lose. He had thought long upon the pact and told them in detail what he required—more power than any alive possessed, the ability to destroy the Kantri, and a way to survive should they live long enough to try to kill him. When the Rakshasa demanded his true name for payment he agreed without hesitation. His name was stripped from the world, from the memories of all who had known him—so much is known to all men. What most do not know is that the spell of the Distant Heart was performed at the same time. Like the great wizards of legend, his heart was taken from his living body and laid in a distant place for safekeeping. It was a great work that he wrought. In essence he became a demon himself at that moment, with all he had demanded, beginning with more power than any human had ever before possessed.
When the Kantri attacked him, he managed to destroy fully half the great beasts before he was killed. He died valiantly, laughing at his murderers in the knowledge that he would live on as a Raksha and in the certain knowledge that it would be possible for him to live again under the sun when a demon master of sufficient strength and resolve should arise to summon him.
I am that man.
I must go and meet with Erthik and Caillin in a moment, but first I need to renew the players' paint and powder mat conceal my youth. This will be the last time. Sometimes I can barely stand still for the power that is in me now, when I emerge from my hidden chambers trembling with excitement.
I can feel in my bones that all the world is rising to join in battle. I do not intend to be alone.
However, one thing eludes me still. It is simply not possible for two of the Kantri, or even the shadows of them, to remain hidden in Kolmar so long. Perhaps the large number of common dragons in the hills might smell like one of the Kantri to a Rikti, but what is this Akor that lurks in Ilsa? I sent word by demon messenger, at great expense to myself, to the Healer under my control in Marik's branch House in Illara, the capital city of Ilsa. She is skilled in the dark arts, but even though her powers extend a hundred miles in any direction she could find no trace of the Kantri, nor has she heard any rumour of a dragon. There is something very wrong, something I am missing.
I begin to feel a sense of urgency. All is carefully timed from this moment forward, that my coronation might take place on Midsummer's Day. I must have Marik's daughter by then—by preference, long before that day. I am concerned at the words Marik heard—"the Kantri on Kolmar," it said. All of them, perhaps? Even in the fullness of my power I do not wish to battle all of that nation at once.
Though I could do it, for the Demonlord, brought back into life, will surely be the final death of that people. Indeed, as I think of it, my problems would thus be resolved at a single stroke. For behold, I know now how to summon him, how to raise up a body to enshroud him, and my power over Marik will provide the required sacrifice of a living soul when the body presents itself to me.
I have been searching much of my adult life, reading all, daring all to ask very particular questions of very particular demons, and now I have found it. He was clever, the Demonlord, but he could not have expected that one such as I would arise. He was the greatest power of his time, thanks to the Rakshasa, but even without their help I am a hundred times stronger than he.
He could not have known that Healers as a class would grow more powerful as time went on, and that the use of the Power would expand as it has. Where only the very best of his time could smooth a broken bone and hasten its healing, that is now routinely performed by Healers of the third rank and above. Now we can cure illnesses of the mind, which difficult and delicate accomplishment they never even dreamed of.
I know where he is and how to bring him back, and I have that which alone will summon him. My final accomplishment will come tonight, when I discover how to be rid of him when I am finished with him, for he who cannot banish the demon he summons is the greatest fool of all.
Oh, yes, he was clever and daring, the Demonlord, but I am more clever than he, for I can bring him here and make him do my will, and tonight I will learn how to kill or banish him when I require him no longer. That is true power.
Two days later I will be prepared to complete the summoning that was begun at the change of the year, on the darkest day of midwinter. Somewhere—I neither know nor care where—earth shakes and fire spews skyward as the demon creature grows to maturity. I would not care to be there when it is birthed.
However, enough of such pleasant speculation. I must go and have a last word with Erthik.
Rumour flies as fast as thought in this college. I was passed in the corridor midmorning by four of the Magistri: Erthik was muttering something about Berys, and then I heard Vilkas's name.
I was approaching Vil's chamber when I heard someone leaving, and the voice made me shiver. I ducked around the nearest corner, heard footsteps going, thank Shia, in the opposite direction and fade to silence. I went up to his door and was dragged inside almost before I had finished knocking.
"The bloody bastard!" said Vilkas, with a heat I had never seen in him. 'To threaten us so for experimenting! Every time I see him he reeks worse of the Rakshasa." Vil looked directly at Aral, which was unusual enough to catch my attention. He seldom looked directly at anyone. "Are you hurt?" he asked.
"No, I managed to turn most of it," she said, rubbing her arm and not seeing his glance. Just as well for her, for the care and concern he allowed himself to show might have undone her. "But I swear he meant to wound me badly. If I hadn't been on my guard, I'd have been thrown across the room at least. Lady curse him to death and darkness—"
"Stop right there, you," I said quietly. "No curses."
"Will, you weren't there. Damn it! .If I'd had a knife I'd have gone for him."
I put a hand on her shoulder, briefly. I didn't dare leave it there very long. "I know, lass. But that would make it worse, not better. Knives are not the way for that one."
"Will, he's insane!" she cried, whirling away from me. "He tried to injure me, then stood there lecturing us about how misuse of the Power is forbidden, and then he called up a pair of demons! With no altar, no incantation that I could see, he called two demons into the room and pretended to be helpless. He made us get rid of them. As it was I could barely breathe for the stink of demons all around him. And we're called up before the Assembly in only two hours, and the Lady only knows what they're going to do."
"Hells' teeth, Vil. Was it really that bad?" I said to Vilkas as I steered Aral into a chair before the fire. She subsided into muttering to herself. I tried not to listen to the words.
"In fact it went a little better than I had hoped, though there are two very different aspects of this to consider," he replied coolly. He had regained his composure and was watching Aral with a cheerfully bemused expression. "To be honest, we have long suspected that what we were doing was not widely acceptable. Magistra Erthik doesn't seem all that worried, but men she knows both of us." He paused for a moment. "Interesting that Berys felt threatened enough to want to defend himself, even if it was quite amazingly feeble. Claiming research to explain the Raksha-stink, indeed! And he took the trouble to insult me, which I find unsettling."