Berys is chanting. Why isn't he healing me, the bastard? The thing seems to nod in reply to Berys, while I lie here in agony, dying again as they go through some stupid ritual. And at last, here again is Berys. He is speaking to me.

"You are chosen, Marik of Gundar. Your soul will blend with the Demonlord, you will fly with him, you can kill every dragon ever spawned. Do you consent?" he asks, as unconcerned as if he asked about the weather.

"Let me die, you bastard!" I scream.

"No, no, we must have consent," says Berys evenly, as if he corrected an errant child. "That is the way to end the pain, Marik."

Pain pulses through me, endless, agonizing. I half open one eye—he's keeping me alive, bastard, I can see the thin stream of healing—not enough to do any more than keep me on this rack. "Bastard," I croak. "Let me go!"

"Consent, Marik," he says, "or you will live forever."

I can barely hear him. What is he saving? Consent. Forever. The prospect of living another instant is torture upon torture.

He wants me to say I consent to something. What was it?

I don't know. I don't care. I will say anything that will end this torment.

"I consent, I consent, damn you forever let me die\" I scream, my voice thin—but it is enough.

A voice unimaginably deep rumbles through the courtyard, shaking through me. 'Your wish, brother, is my command," says the great black beast.

Not

It reaches for me, I am lifted from the ground, I can smell the burning and hear the sizzle of my flesh where its skin touches mine.

I turn my face away, towards the cool blue sky, and close my eyes on my last glimpse of the world of life, as I am pulled through that thin shell and into the body of the beast. AAhhhh, it burns, it burns—but what...?

And behold, we are one. I-Demonlord I-Marik, we are in one body, powerful, free of pain. As we are joined, I-Demonlord find a mind not unlike my own—weaker, unstable, but not so very different in kind, and rather than send that half screaming down into madness I listen to it and we both learn. We are one, and we have a soul again.

I-Demonlord realise immediately that this poses a problem. The Distant Heart spell requires that the heart cannot inhabit a body that has a soul. If that should come to pass, the heart would become mortal once more.

Swifdy I-Demonlord reach into my chest and remove the Distant Heart from the molten rock of my being. It shines in my claws, an unlovely thing the shape and size of a human heart turned to silver-black stone. It remains unchanged: I have acted in time. Berys's eyes glitter. Ah, yes, he would see this as a desirable object.

I leap into the sky. The mountains here are high and perilous and the range extends over a huge area. I can drop the heart somewhere in the trackless heights for now. I will find it a safer resting place later.

For the second time in this hour, I feel the force of Berys's binding spell like spikes driven deep into my soul. This body cannot feel pain, but he is not working in the realm of the physical.

He's a clever bastard.

"Back you come," I declare, pulling the binding tether. It rages, it spits fire at me that slides off the shield I have raised against it, it screams defiance.

"For one reputed to be so wise, you are an arrant fool," I say.

"Whatever your pride may make of things, you are bound to me." I feel a triumphant grin stealing on to my face. "And by the power of that binding, I tell you that I will not release you to the pleasure of destroying the Kantri unless you leave that ugly silver-black lump of stone with me."

It hisses like ten thousand serpents. "You cannot force me to this!" it cries.

"Fool, I tell you I can," I respond. I jerk on the binding, driving the spikes of the spell ever deeper into the tender flesh of the bound soul. "You required my living hand for the binding spell, Demonlord. Blood and bone binds deep." I dropped my calm mask and growled, "Give to me your Distant Heart, Demonlord, or I will tie the binding at its sharpest and leave it there forever."

It screams. It curses me a thousand times, it writhes, it flails about—but it knows that I have spoken truth. At last, the agony wins over its defiance. It flings the Distant Heart at my feet.

"Thank you," I say to it, secreting the thing in a deep inner pocket of my garments. "I was certain that you would see reason. Fear not," I add. "I will put it somewhere very safe indeed when time allows."

It tries to tear me with its teeth. I shrug it off.

Ah, life is sweet.

I will kill him. I will find a way, for he must sleep sometime.

For now, I-Demonlord must admit defeat. However, I-Marik know that Berys did indeed have beneath his hand the only creature in all of time who can control me, that she is our daughter, and that Berys has no idea where she is. I-Marik have realised that for all our new strength we are yet bound to Berys and for the most part controlled by him. I-Demonlord learn from my brother that we do not know where the Lanen is, but she will not be far from the Kantri, and once they are dead she is defenceless. I-Marik remember that I could hear two of the Kantri, but when we listen, there is nothing. I-Marik am truly changed.

The best we can do in the present moment is to turn to Berys and say, "You are dead, demon-spit."

"You are bound to me, beast. You serve me," he replies.

"Fool! I keep telling you that I am not a demon," I-Demonlord reply. 'Your lies are made plain. She is gone out of your hands! And when she is dead, I owe you only enough allegiance not to destroy you." We laugh. "Perhaps I will leave enough of the Kantri alive to do that for me, for once she is dead I will have all the time in the world in which to destroy the few I will leave alive."

The Kantri. There, in the sky above us. If they are here, she must be as well—but for now, they stand between us and our prey. We will have to fight them. It is good. We are strong, we share thought and will, we share hatred.

We rise with a thunderclap, beating vast wings that do not grow weary, and fly straight toward the largest assembly we can see. We breathe fire upon them, and three are stricken at once. Our fire is thick and viscous, it clings to them and sears them to the bone. The three fall from the sky screaming and burn to powder before they strike the ground.

We dance on the wind with delight, just for a moment, then we scan the ground for humans—but there are too many dragons forcing us into batde. They are many, and the spell we once used works no longer to tear them from the sky. We will have to fight them—but ah, Berys never knew. We have a soul again, we are the Demonlord once more. A price once paid to demons is paid until death, and I-Demonlord have never truly died.

I can call upon six of the Seven Princes of the Hells to aid me.

I heard every word, every thought, felt everything that Marik went through. I fell to my knees, retching, when Berys stabbed him to the heart, when Berys would not let him die and fed him to the Demonlord.

As deeply as I hated my cursed father, surely no one deserved such a fate.

Blessedly, when he merged with the Demonlord, his voice in my mind was silenced. My mother Maran was at my side, full of concern, Aral right behind her.

"Can I help?" asked Aral quickly.

"I'm alright," I said shakily. The others had gathered round. Varien gave me his hand and I pulled myself to my feet. "It's Marik. He's dead, but he's not—oh, Hells!" I cried. My gut was wracked with spasms. "There is part of him that's still alive, and it's in that great black beast. His mind has merged with the Demon-lord's, it knows everything he knows or ever knew—Goddess!" I shuddered from head to toe. "There are two of them in there!"