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."
I looked at him. "Insulted you? How? And why should that bother you?"
"By disparaging my Power. He called it a 'nimbus'." Vilkas stood behind Aral's chair and leaned over slightly, and I noticed he was surrounded even as we spoke with a subtle blue cloud. I guessed he was checking Aral to be certain she was uninjured. It took only a moment. "I don't give a damn what he says, Will, it only concerns me because I have been careful never to show him enough of my ability to draw attention to myself." He half grinned at me. "I believe he has noticed now."
"Noticed you? That's good. Who did all the work?" complained Aral, turning round in her chair to look up at him. "Nimbus, indeed! That's what they call the lowest level of Power, Will. Healers who haven't started their training or who don't have a gift beyond the first level have a 'nimbus' when they summon the Power." She snorted. "I expect Vil has one when he's fast asleep. His corona is every bit as bright as Berys's and a damn sight cleaner."
Vil nodded to me and walked over to the fire, warming his hands, leaning against the mantelpiece. Aral, on the other hand, leapt to her feet, her frustration not letting her sit still. "Have you any chelan, Vil? I'm dry as the great southern desert and I can't sit still when I want to kill someone."
"The leaves are in the cupboard and I suspect we need more water. Make enough for us all, would you?" said Vilkas. She got on with it, knowing her way around Vilkas's chambers as around her own. Vil went to stir the fire while I wandered over to the window and stared out at the bright morning, trying to take it all in. That Berys was on easy terms with demons I could well believe, but to summon one in broad daylight where both Vil and Aral could see him do it—it did not bode well at all. I had in my gut a cold certainty that great things were now moving and we had best deal with them by assuming the worst. I glanced over to where the two of them were making chelan, she growling at him, he speaking quietly to her.
Typical.
"What's caught your mind, Will?" asked Aral a moment later, still with a brow like thunder but a little calmer than she had been. "I asked you three times if you wanted honey in yours. You've got some now, want it or not."
"A cold day like this needs the sweetness, I thank you."
Vil had taken up his post, leaning that slim frame of his against the side of the fireplace while Aral and I sat before it. We had gathered thus many a time, ever since I had first come across them arguing in the gardens soon after Aral arrived. I had stood watching them full five minutes before either noticed me, and by then they had been standing on my seedlings for quite some while. They brought me others a few days later, by way of apology, and a friendship developed. I was just that bit older than either of them, perhaps a matter of eight years older than Vilkas, who was the younger by a year, and I had become a kind of mentor to them both. It pleased me greatly. They were good souls and I enjoyed their bickering. It was very much like my sister Lyra and me at their age—though what I felt about Aral was most certainly not the love of a brother.