The demons tore Shikrar's flesh with their teeth and with their claws and he could not fight back. He could not even cry out in pain. When they broke his wings, laughing, I heard his mind's scream, a sound that shook my bones to the marrow and drew an answering scream from my own throat. I swear that sound will haunt me every day of my life.

At the last instant, just before Idai and Keclra arrived, they broke his neck I heard it go. My knees would no longer hold me up, and I landed hard on broken stone, gasping for air, as if I could breathe for Shikrar. My throat ached as if some great hand choked me.

Shikrar collapsed. Berys and the demons cackled, and then Berys said, "Enough of pleasure. Bring me the girl."

It was harder than I thought.

I reached out in all my pride and power to destroy the Prince of the Sixth Hell and found myself somewhere else entirely. I was thirteen years old and it was summer. My friend Jon and I were wrestling, as was our wont. I had him in a lock and had started to squeeze.

"Ow, Vil, too tight!" he cried. "Let go!"

"You're such a baby, Jon." I laughed, squeezing tighter. He started to choke. Suddenly I realised that I was grown furious with his weakness and had let go of my self-control. To my horror, I was on the very point of killing him before I forced myself to release him. "Jon, no, I'm sorry," I began, and the world shifted again. The demon prince laughed.

"Sssuch a fool you are," it hissed.

I threw my power at it again and found my hands clasped around Aral's throat. She was beating at my arms and kicking my legs. I squeezed tighter, and suddenly found myself unable to move. My hands were forced apart and Aral dropped back, her hands protecting her neck. She released me.

"Damn it, Vil!" she cried. "What's wrong with you!"

"Where are you from, Aral?" I shouted, convinced that she was some phantom of the demon's. "Where were you born?"

"Berun, you idiot," she snapped. "What in all the Hells is up with you? You let it go and went for me!" She pointed up to the demon prince, who was laughing again. Or still.

Once more I sent fire to envelop it, and this time there was a great fight. I closed my eyes and turned away that I might not be blinded, but when next I opened my eyes, I lay in bed. Clean, crisp linen sheets, gentle sunlight at the window filtering through the young spring leaves of a rowan tree.

"Welcome back, Vilkas. You had us worried," said Magistra Erthik. She smiled, the crooked smile she saved for those moments when she was feeling most maternal. "I am glad you have come back to us. I'd rather not lose my best pupil just yet."

I sat up in the bed. I was in the infirmary at Verfaren. Magistra Erthik was alive.

"Magistra?" I asked, quietly. My throat began to close but I fought it. "What happened? Where is the demon prince?"

"Gone with your waking, young man, and not before time. You've been feverish for nearly a month." She reached out and touched my forehead. "It has truly broken at last. Thank the Goddess."

"A dream, was it?" I asked suspiciously. "What of Aral?"

"Was that someone else in your dream?" Magistra Erthik asked, politely curious.

"Stupid," I said. I called on the Goddess and sent my corona to cover Magistra Erthik, who screamed and vanished. I was back on the hillside above Lake Gand, with the demon prince almost near enough to touch. I backed away.

"Vil, what's wrong?" asked Aral frantically. "I thought—l felt you change, I know you aren't restricted any longer. What are you waiting for?"

"It's playing with my mind, Aral," I said quietly. "Changing time, changing appearances. Its illusions are horribly real. How shall I know truth when I see it?"

"As you ever have, Vilkas," she said, and her voice had taken on the strange cadence it sometimes did when she was speaking not entirely for herself. 'Trust those who love you. Here. She wants to help. We both do."

And with that, Aral put the soulgem of Loriakeris into my right hand.

It was astounding. No wonder the Kantri are so good against the demons. I could see the demon prince twisting reality, changing shape, trying to govern my mind and make me drop my guard or injure myself or Aral. The touch of that ancient mind, Loriakeris of the Kantri, granted me for that brief time the vision of the Kantri and acted as a talisman of truth.

Or perhaps it was the touch of Aral's hand and soul.

I bowed my head briefly, committing myself to the Lady, and lifted my hand. Blue flame mixed with red surrounded the demon prince and swiftly constricted about it. Its screams, I am ashamed to say, were music to me. I squeezed harder. I kept expecting it to dissipate, but Berys must have performed quite a spell. It died the True Death.

In my defence, once I realised that it was not going to disappear back to its Hell I killed it swiftly. Even demons require some mercy, after all. It is their nature to bargain and they are forced to obey their master's commands.

It is people who deserve no mercy. They can choose, after all.

I turned to find Berys advancing swiftly on Lanen, a company of Rakshasa with bloody claws before him. A sight that would have moved me to frustrated terror such a short time ago. I raised my hand and Lanen was shielded from their attack.

"Take him first!" cried Berys, gesturing, and a score of demons flew at me, roaring, fanged mouths agape, talons raised to rake and rend.

I blessed them in the Lady's name and destroyed them all with Her power, flowing from me as light from the sun. It was—trivial. Berys looked on impassively, as if he were judging me.

"Berys," I said quietly, saluting one about to die.

"You're that pup Vilkas," he said calmly, drawing his power around him. The blue of the Healer's aura was gone entirely; that which surrounded him now was a black cloud, through which he could barely be seen. "You should have taken the horses. You could have been imprisoned and died with all your friends back in Verfaren."

"I have sworn myself your enemy," I said. In the full flow of my power, looking at him was like looking at a patch of red-shot darkness distorting the world. "For all the evil you have loosed upon the world, for all the murders, for all the corruption of that which was worthy, death is too small a price."

"Then you can pay it," he said, and sent the full brunt of his malice against me, to sear my soul and rend my body.

I was surprised at his strength, but not nearly as surprised as he was at mine.

For that first moment it was a battle of raw power against raw power. The battle of a bully grown proud, believing that he possesses the greatest strength, striking at one he knows cannot fight back. The battle of a coward. He expected me to fall before him, helpless. He expected me to die.

'Tour pride has ever been your weakness," I said quietly, as I deflected his strike. It was harder to do than I had thought. Perhaps my own power was not infinite.

As long as it was greater than his, I was not concerned.

I joined my mind to Shikrar's from the moment his true name was used against him. There were no words left to say between us, but I was there with him for every breath. He was never alone.

I fought beside Maran, Rella, and Jamie to keep Berys away from Lanen as Idai arrived, flaming Rakshasa as she came, to land beside the broken body of Shikrar. Kedra was behind her by only a wingtip. Their arrival worried Berys enough that, for the moment, he backed off. He left his Rakshasa to continue the fight; Idai swiftly despatched a score or more of them while Kedra moved carefully to stand beside his father.

Jamie and Rella were having trouble with the demons. Maran was much better at fighting them, but Lanen had smeared her dagger with her half-Kantri blood and was doing best of all, especially as Aral was now at her side. Vilkas seemed to be well in command of the Lord of the Sixth Hell. I trusted them all to the Winds and the Lady and turned back to my dying soulfriend.