I glanced at Aral. "I'm surprised you're not trying to he'ar that," I said quietly. "I know you're working on learning more about how people think and feel. I'd have thought that would be a master class, one way and another."

She gazed at me across her shoulder. The firelight flashed in her eyes. "You forget, Vil. You're the one with the good shields." She dropped her face into her hands for a moment, mumbling, "I don't need to hear what they're saying. I can feel it from here, Shia save us all." She inched nearer the fire, pulled up her hood, and wrapped her cloak more closely about her.

"Aral?" I asked. "Are you alright?"

"Oh, Vil," she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. "Oh, Goddess. I can't bear it. Talk to me, please, now, about anything. Quick."

"You never could shield worth a tin ferthing," I sneered. "Honestly, all the time Magister Rikard spent with you, he might just as well have been teaching the desk."

"Ha, O Great Mage Vilkas," she shot back, rising to the challenge and desperately cheerful. "And you're just the same in the other direction." She did a decent imitation of Magister Rikard's slightly nasal voice. "No, Vilkas, you must feel the power, not just use it. Let it touch you as it passes through. That's what makes us hyooo-mn\"

We both managed a bit of a laugh, though it was fairly pathetic. "At least Rikard is still alive," she said.

'Thanks for reminding me," I said, feigning a snarl. "Have you any more gloom? I'll have it as well, as long as you're passing it around."

"Oh, Hells, Vil, I'm sorry," she said, instantly contrite. "I know. I can't bear to think about it, not in detail." To my astonishment she snorted. "But Stone Mik, of all people, to get out in one piece!"

I had to laugh. "Aye. Chalmik, indeed! Never heard his formal name. Poor bastard."

Aral grinned. "That and all. Can you believe it? And everybody who didn't call him Mik called him Stoneface. Some folk just can't enjoy themselves. I always thought he had a terrible time dealing with real people. I have to admit, I was amazed this morning. He handled that poor woman so well."

We fell silent again, just for a moment, then Aral piped up, "Did you see that town at the bend in the Kai? It was a long way down, but it looked huge! Was it Kaibar, do you think?"

"Must have been. It certainly looked like there was another river joining just there, and the Arlen meets the Kai at Kaibar, doesn't it?"

We spoke frantically about our trip, about flying—anything that would keep us from dwelling on the thought of our friends and colleagues, dead at the demons hands—but we could not sustain it for long. Silence fell again, and for a while neither of us could think of a way to lift it. Trust Aral, though, when she spoke she found a subject that would get me as rattled as she was.

"So, Great Mage Vilkas," she said, lightly mocking, "what are you going to do when the moment comes?"

'What moment?" I asked, because that was one of the chief things I didn't want to think about.

"Vil, I know they're following that bloody great black thing, but the truth is that these dragons are taking us as fast as they can fly towards Berys. He's a demon-master. Hells, he's probably the next best thing to the Demonlord himself, now. Whom he seems to have summoned, Goddess help us all, in the form of a Black Dragon, and don't you want to know how he did that."

"Not really, no," I replied sharply.

"Vil, you know what I mean," she said gently. "I know you fear demons . .."

"I don't damn well fear them," I snarled. Unfeigned this time.

"Eh?" she said, astounded. "But you can't fight them. I know you can't. I thought you said ..."

"I don't fear them, Aral. I hate them," I replied fervently, rising swiftly to my feet. "Being anywhere near any of them makes my skin crawl and my eyes itch." I was breathing hard, and my heart hammered in my chest as I spoke out the real truth at last. "I told you I feared them because the truth is so much worse. I hate them so hard it makes my gorge rise up and my throat close. I want to kill them all, Aral," I purred evilly, kneeling right beside her and dropping my voice to whisper the dark truth, finally, to her startled face. "Every one of them. Slowly. Squeezing, choking, crushing, making sure it suffers agonies before I grant it the mercy of death."

Aral used a word I didn't know she knew and stared up at me wide-eyed. "Damnation, Vilkas," she said at last, her voice shaking. "That's sick."

"I know," I snarled, rising and turning away. "Why do you think I hold back? If I kill one I'd feel the need to kill them all, and by Shia's toenails, I probably could."

Goddess. My own words were making my stomach chum.

"That doesn't change the fact that we're going to be facing them soon," she said flatly, getting to her feet and brushing off her clothes. "Day after tomorrow, if Shikrar is right."

"Damn it, Aral, don't you think I know that!" I shouted at the top of my voice.

"And what are you going to do when Berys summons a Lord of Hell, or we have to deal with the Demonlord?" she asked, her voice now harsh and unrelenting. "I don't care how loud you yell, Vilkas ta-Geryn. It's not going to go away. Tomorrow or the day after we're going to have to deal with Berys, and he's going to have emptied half the Hells to protect his precious skin. We need to think what to do. You need to think what to do."

I started to shake and swiftly crossed my arms to hide it.

She must have been weary, rattled, for she saw me tremble and against all sense she reached out to me as if to take me in her arms for comfort. I shrank from her proffered embrace as from hot iron. At that moment it would have been as welcome.

She closed arms and heart and mind and all, in the instant, for which I was profoundly grateful. "Just remember, Vil," she said, her voice calm and reassuringly normal. "Dreams are just dreams, no matter how powerful. They're not predictions."

I did not reply. I could not, I was still shaking, and it would have shown in my voice.

She reached up and laid a hand on my arm. That was bearable, though revealing. I could feel her shaking too. "I know you. I've watched you for two years, I've worked with you at a depth even you are hardly aware of." I looked at her then, and saw in the dim firelight that she was smiling, albeit rather crookedly. "Sweet Shia, I've opened my spirit-self to you more times than I can count. I know you can be trusted." In a moment of wild daring, in spite of the rejection I had thrown at her only moments before, she raised her fingertips swiftly to her lips, kissed them, and touched my cheek softly as a butterfly. "Maybe it's time you learned to trust yourself."

I could hear her voice shaking with emotion. I had told her long ago that I didn't like to be touched casually. Even putting her hand on my arm was greatly daring. Planting a once-removed kiss on my cheek was practically an invitation to share her bed.

I knew perfectly well that now would be a good time to take her in my arms for comfort's sake, to give her what she needed because I knew she needed it. We might both be dead soon, and dear Goddess, who was I to refuse her?

She didn't give me the chance. She felt me flinch from her hand on my face and turned away, to put a few more sticks on the fire and sit close to it, her arms about her knees. No matter what her heart was shouting at her, she was too good a friend to blame me for her own feelings. She had offered what I could not accept, and she knew it, and she closed in once again.

In the silence we could still hear the soft murmur of the voices by the river. Jamie and Maran.

"Damnation," sighed Aral from the heart, resting her head on her knees. "Idai, Lady, be quick, I beg you. I'm bloody starving and bloody exhausted and those two are breaking my heart."