as to what might occur should Crydee be ordered to reinforce Krondor. It’s a small enough army – the smallest in the West – and there’s a lot of territory to protect.’
‘Protect?’ Tal’s gaze narrowed. ‘If the attack is on Krondor, you don’t expect a simultaneous assault on the Far Coast, surely?’
‘Not from Kesh.’
‘Then from whom?’
Jim shook his head. ‘Just suffice it to say the Prince is not sanguine about Crydee’s neighbours.’
For a moment, Tal was confused. ‘The Free Cities …?’ Then comprehension dawned. ‘The elves?’
‘The Star Elves, in particular. We’ve had a long and peaceful relationship with those in Elvandar, but these newcomers …’ Jim fell silent. After a long moment he went on, ‘I don’t know what to tell you. They’ve made no hostile act, yet they are aloof and we get reports now and again of people wandering near their borders disappearing, never to be seen again. They’ve come to some sort of understanding with the dwarves to their south, but as I understand it, friendship is hardly the word. They are an unknown quantity, and unknowns make me very nervous.’
‘What do you hear from Pug?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jim. ‘If the Conclave has heard rumours of war, they are not sharing them with me. Besides, Pug has always said he will not become involved in matters of national conflict again.’
Talwin was silent as he thought about this, then said, ‘He might if such a war would weaken us enough to be unable to withstand another assault … like the Dasati.’
Both men fell silent. An entire world, Kelewan, had been destroyed in a barely repulsed attack by powerful forces from another plane of reality. And for more than ten years all members of the Conclave, active or not, had been asked to keep their ears open for any news of demon activity.
Jim said, ‘Perhaps I should presume to remind him of that?’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed Tal, ‘you should. I wonder what Pug is up to these days?’
Pug looked around the cave. Magnus held his hand aloft, using magic to create a bright light on the palm of his hand, which he moved around the room like a lantern. ‘We’re too late,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Amirantha. ‘What happened here happened more than a year ago.’
Amirantha’s companion, the old warrior Brandos, knelt, complaining, ‘Ah. My knees aren’t what they once were.’ He peered at the stones around the broken remnants of a wooden table. ‘Fair tore this place apart, it did.’
Looking at the Demon Master, Pug asked, ‘What do you think happened?’
Amirantha, Warlock of the Satumbria, considered the question. He was garbed in plainer fashion than he had affected when Pug had first met him. He was still vain enough to trim his beard daily and make sure his flowing dark hair was combed, but his florid robes with their golden and silver threading lay in a clothes chest at the old castle on Sorcerer’s Isle that served as the headquarters for the Conclave of Shadows. Unlike the mummery he had employed to flummox local nobles and convince them to pay him gold to chase away the very demons he summoned, his work with the Conclave had involved real danger and travelling under harsh conditions. Now he wore simple tunics and trousers and rugged leather boots.
After thinking about the question for a moment, Amirantha said, ‘I think the object of our search conducted his last summoning here.’ He pointed to a distant corner and Magnus turned his hand in that direction, throwing light upon it.
The tall, white-haired magician, Pug’s sole surviving child, moved closer until they could see clearly what Amirantha had noticed. Outlined more darkly than the rock against which it lay was the form of a man, crouching. Brandos ran his hand over the surface of the cave wall. ‘It’s as if he was turned to ash and pounded into the rock itself.’
The old fighter had been with Amirantha for most of his life, having been a boy when the Warlock had taken him under his care. Now looking older than his mentor, he turned to face Pug and the others. ‘I’ve seen this before, but I can’t remember where.’
‘I do,’ said Amirantha. ‘Years ago, when you were a child, it happened at one of the very first summonings you were party to, remember?’ When it became clear that Brandos didn’t, he prompted, ‘The cat?’
‘Oh!’ responded Brandos as comprehension dawned. ‘Yes, the cat!’
Amirantha said, ‘When Brandos was a child and came to live with me, I thought having a boy along would make me look even more credible as I came to rid a town or village of a demon. After all, what sort of mountebank would lovingly care for a child?’
‘Your kind,’ said Brandos with a rueful smile.
‘The cat?’ prompted Pug.
‘Yes, the cat. It’s a long tale, but the part that applies here is that my friend, when he was a boy, managed to interrupt one of my summonings at the worst possible moment. He was annoying a cat we had around the house and it fled into my chamber … well, instead of the tractable creature I expected, one showed up I’d never seen before or since. A massive winged monster that spewed fire of an incredible heat.’
‘Nearly burnt the entire house down,’ added Brandos. Pug and Magnus could tell the story had been told enough times that it had become one of those family lore events that was treasured as much for the entertainment value as it had caused outrage and consternation at the time it had happened.
‘Unfortunately for the cat, but fortunately for me, the creature’s attention seem drawn to movement. I was motionless, in the midst of my summoning, while the cat was scampering, stopping only long enough to hiss at the demon.
‘The demon made short work of it, and I was able to banish it back to the demon realm, but not before, as Brandos said, a rather large fire had broken out in my chambers.
‘When we went back the next day to see what might be salvaged, the outline of the cat could clearly be seen against the wall, much as you see here.’
‘Another accident?’ asked Pug, his brow furrowing. ‘Or another attempt by those behind the Demon War to destroy anyone who might eventually oppose them?’
Looking around the cave, Amirantha said, ‘We can only speculate.’
Pug’s frustration was surfacing. Since the advent of demon incursions into Midkemia, and especially after the events several years earlier at the abandoned Keshian fortress above the Valley of Lost Men, he was balked at every turn as he attempted to understand what was threatening his world. Something unprecedented was occurring in the demon realm, which Pug and his companions referred to as the Fifth Circle, and while evidence of that upheaval and its potential danger to Midkemia was scant and infrequent, Pug knew that even though the Demon King Dahun had been destroyed attempting to enter this realm, they were still far from safe.
In fact, one topic of conversation revisited on a regular basis with the Warlock was what could cause a powerful demon lord to flee from that realm into this one; not coming at the head of an army as had happened in the past, to conquer and destroy, but sneaking in disguised as a human, seeking to find a safe place to hide.
To hide from what?
That was always the question they were left with.
With a last look around the cave, Pug said, ‘Magnus?’
Understanding his father’s wishes, the younger magician motioned for the others to stand close to him and a moment later they were all back in the large entrance hall on Sorcerer’s Island.
It was early spring and the weather was still cold and damp. ‘Have you ever considered rebuilding that lovely villa?’ Brandos asked lightly.
Pug shot him a sharp glance. The remnants of the sprawling estate that had housed his school of magic had been the scene of his worst defeat at the hands