"I can't fight it, Aral!" I cried, shaking her off. "It's too big!"

"What does physical size have to do with anything in the realm of the soul?" she asked, far too reasonably for my liking. "Even if you can just distract it from Shikrar, that would be something!"

I grabbed her arm and drew her to me, so that our faces all but touched. "Damn it, woman, don't you understand?' I snarled, barely above a whisper. "It's all I can do not to fall to my knees. I'm shaking so badly I can barely stand. I'm afraid, Aral. I am by damn petrified and I can't do a sodding thing about it!"

She shook me off, her anger matching mine. "If you could direct just a fraction of that anger towards the right object, we'd be a damned sight better off." She turned towards the battle. I could see her aura glowing around her, bright and strong, but then she stopped. Swiftly she drew out of her tunic the pouch that hung around her neck. "Please, Lady," she said as she drew out the great ruby and held it to her heart with her left hand. "Hear me. Your kinsman has need of your aid."

Suddenly her aura was twice as bright, and within the blue there shone a corona of red light clear as the noonday sun through finest stained glass.

The demon had hold of Shikrar's tail and was drawing him nearer, despite Shikrars desperate effort to get away. Aral lifted her right hand in a fist and sent her power to surround the Raksha s hand. Her arm shook, then her whole body—and her fingers began to open.

So did the demon's.

The red light from the soulgem twined around Aral's sending, pulsing, and the Raksha shook to that pulse as it fought. It reached across, trying to grip Shikrars tail with its other hand, claws grasping—Aral stood shaking as she used every ounce of her strength to hold the thing still, just for a moment.

It worked. Just for a moment, but it was enough. The demon, furious, could not move. Shikrar turned back and, using his rear claws, slashed deeply at the wrist of the hand that held him. Aral's strength failed and her aura winked out. The Raksha, suddenly able to move again, watched the sharp scales on Shikrars tail slice through the remains of its ruined hand. It screamed and spat balefire at Shikrar as he climbed. The green fire landed on Shikrar's back, searing, and it was Shikrars turn to cry out.

The Raksha's cry had been music to my heart. Shikrar's pain, I swear, screamed along my own back.

Shikrar, moving awkwardly now but out of reach, flamed his fangs and claws clean as he climbed. His fire appeared diminished, and he was favouring his injured shoulder.

He spoke then, and I truly feared for hirn: he sounded desperately weary, in pain and out of breath. "Be warned, creature. I am the Eldest of the Kantrishakrim. Quit this place and return to the Fifth Hell, or by my soul I swear you will know the True Death." And still he climbed.

It laughed again, despite its mangled hand. "As if you could deal it to me! I have been loosed among men, I have feasted on souls and flesh and fear this night. I will have a taste of dragon to season all, as none of my kind have known this long age past!"

It is very difficult to judge distances at night, especially if you are looking straight up. Shikrar had been beating his wings less and less often. When the creature began its speech, he seemed to reach the end of his strength and seemed to be falling. The demon laughed and opened its arms to crush and rend him.

But this was Teacher-Shikrar, who had instructed every Kantri youngling for the last thousand years in the art of flight, who had often boasted even to me that he had not taught us everything he knew. It is true, he was falling. Directly at the demon. Very, very fast.

The Raksha reached out with both arms, its ruined hand hanging loose, ready to grapple with Shikrar at last. The rows and rows of teeth in that distorted mouth gleamed in the light of the dancing fire. Shikrar was dropping like a stone, arrowing directly at its face, claws and wings held close as if he did not dare to attack— as if he were protecting himself—but—he held his furled wings close by his sides, not tucked over his back.

What in the name of sense is this, my friend? I wondered, but did not dare to use truespeech lest I distract him.

—and at the last instant he swerved and pulled up at what seemed an impossible angle, using just the tiniest bit of wingtip, arcing backwards and up and rolling as he went, along the line of his descent. He seemed to miss the demon entirely, except for his tail—which he struck deeply and embedded in the thing's torso as he passed. His momentum threw him around it at in- credible speed, but at a bizarre angle that it didn't seem able to anticipate. Shikrar's long supple body quickly wrapped around the Raksha, but it managed to get one arm free and raised it to strike.

Its ruined hand dangled useless from the raised arm, mocking it, as Shikrar s full length was thrown around the creature s torso faster and faster. His razor-sharp foreclaws sliced around its throat as he whipped around, and he used the last of his wild momentum to slam his upper fangs against its armoured head.

By the time the Lord of the Fifth Hell realised what was happening it was already dead.

Shikrar had managed to lock his foreclaws about its spurting throat and—he closed his hands. The deadly claws sliced that hideous flesh like so many swords, and at the last the sound of bone snapping was sharp in the night air. The thing collapsed. Shikrar unwrapped himself from it, threw it off him, and drew in a deep breath. I drew my own with him, nearly choking as I tried to force my human throat to breathe Fire. He seared the head first, to ashes; then the body, scorching the surrounding stones clean of every drop of Raksha blood, every trace of balefire.

The wild winds had died about the same time as the Lord of the Fifth Hell, but the fire that had destroyed the College burned on. As Rikard began to organise the survivors to put out the blaze, I moved near to my old friend.

"Shikrar, my friend, I owe you everything," I said. "Life, love, and all. And to think I used to consider myself a decent flyer! Never will I say that again, my word to the Winds, while yet you live."

"If I'd flown a little better the damned thing would have missed me altogether," he said, his wings drooping in the Attitude of Pain and his voice strained.

"So you are not yet without flaw? Even after all this time?" I chided him gendy.

It raised a tiny hiss of amusement. "It seems not," he replied, and his voice quavered a little.

"Shock, I expect," said a deep voice behind me, and the Healer Vilkas strode forward, pale in the firelight that still flared in the ruins of the College. "Or reaction. Or loss of blood. Most likely all three. Do you permit, Lord Shikrar?" asked Vilkas, drawing his power to him.

"As swiftly as you may, Mage Vilkas," said Shikrar, his voice shaking plainly now with pain and exhaustion.

"Aral?" said Vilkas softly. That lovely young woman moved to join him, the soulgem still clutched in her left hand, but before she could summon her aura once again Shikrar swiftly moved his huge head very close to her. I was proud of her, for she hardly flinched at all.

"Lady Aral," he said softly, "I had lost that fight ere I had well begun, were it not for your aid. I am in your debt."

She did not speak, but reached out her right hand, tentatively, and touched his mask. He bowed to her touch. I turned my face away.

Vilkas was glowing brightly. He led Aral around to the wound I on Shikrar s back and right flank.

I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. Perhaps it was the strength of the soulgem, perhaps it was the response of Aral's soul to Shikrar's kindness, and perhaps it was simply that Vilkas, frustrated at being of no service in the struggle, was intent on proving his worth. They did not cover over the wound, as we would have done with khaadish. They healed it from the inside I out: Raksha-trace washed away with Healer's fire, bone-scorch soothed and burnt muscle renewed, blistered flesh eased, torn and melted scale made whole before my eyes. It took them the 1 better part of an hour, but they healed Shikrar as we watched. 1 When their task was done, the only indication that he had been wounded was the outline of new scale, lighter than the rest, where that terrible burn had been.