‘Demons can’t be fooled that long,’ said his brother. ‘I thought you’d have discovered that when they started ignoring your conjurations and started attacking us.’
‘I thought perhaps in a melee, with blood and screaming demons on all sides, they might not have the facility to judge if there was enough demon stench in the air,’ said the Conjurer as they quickly descended the trail, almost running.
‘Point taken,’ conceded his brother. ‘Still, you’re the conjurer. Could you create the illusion of an army on that scale?’
‘No,’ said Laromendis, his breath beginning to come hard. ‘No one could. It would take a dozen as good as me. And then they couldn’t sustain it for long. That’s a great deal of magic being used. To achieve it to endure this long, at this level, it would take a hundred better than me.’
‘Well, let’s hope whoever’s behind this monstrous betrayal is too occupied with whatever they are doing up there to notice the two of us slipping away.’
Suddenly the hair on their arms stood up and both slid to a halt, dust rising from their sliding feet.
‘What’s that?’ asked Gulamendis.
‘A barrier…’ Laromendis reached out and drew his hand back. ‘It doesn’t hurt, but it’s not a particularly pleasant feeling, either.’
‘What is it?’
Pushing with his fingers, Laromendis said, ‘I think it’s—’ He stepped forward and vanished from his brother’s sight.
‘Laro!’ shouted the Demon Master.
Abruptly, a hand reached out of the air and grabbed him by the arm, yanking him forward.
‘Where are we?’ asked Gulamendis.
Wherever it was, it wasn’t the desert world upon which they had stood only a moment before.
They stood in an empty marshalling yard of a massive black stone fortress. Walls thirty feet high rose up on all sides of an open area two hundred yards across and a hundred deep. Above them rose a keep unlike anything they had seen before. If the castle created by the Black Sorcerer had been designed to impose a warning on passing ships, the sight of this fortress would have simply scared the sailors to death.
In the sky above them hung a canopy of black clouds so thick it was impossible to tell the time of day, or if it was night. They were lit from below by the angry red light from a series of volcanoes that surrounded this place. Lightning exploded across the sky in the distance, and moments later was followed by peals of thunder that could be felt.
‘Where are we?’ repeated Gulamendis.
His brother grabbed his arm and pulled him into the relative shelter of the shadow of a corner tower. In the distance a large figure had walked out of the entrance of the vast fortress, across the yard; and even though it was three hundred feet away, they could see it was a massive battle demon, perhaps a dozen feet tall. It moved with purpose, but rather than attacking them, it travelled at an oblique angle to their position, intent upon some other business. Like those they had seen on the other world, it wore armour and carried a massive two-handed sword strapped across its back.
‘Is this the demon realm?’ asked Laromendis.
‘It can’t be,’ answered his brother.
‘Why not?’
‘Because if it was the Fifth Circle, we would be almost certainly dead by now. Everything we know about the Fifth Circle says we would die within minutes if we weren’t protected by strong magic.’
‘Kosridi,’ said Laromendis, referring to the tales they had learned about the human magician, Pug, and his allies travelling to the Second Circle.
‘Yes,’ said his brother.
‘On the other hand,’ said Laromendis, ‘who is to say the laws within the Fifth Circle are the same as the Second?’
‘I’ll argue the theory later,’ said Gulamendis. ‘Despite that, I can’t sense any demons.’
‘Another illusion?’
Gulamendis slapped the wall of stone behind him and felt the palm of his hand sting. ‘What do you think?’
Laromendis closed his eyes for a moment, touched the wall, then said, ‘If it’s a conjured fortress, whoever’s responsible for it has the powers of a god.’
‘Let’s see if we can find a better place to hide, while we decide what to do next,’ said Gulamendis.
Setting off along the base of the wall, staying as deep in the shadows as they could, the two seven foot elves who stood tried to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as possible.
‘This may not be the demon realm,’ said Laromendis, ‘but the air is choking me.’
‘It’s the smoke and ash from the volcanoes,’ whispered his brother.
‘Who builds anything like this in a place like this?’
‘I have no idea,’ replied Gulamendis. ‘Over there.’ He pointed to a small building that appeared to have been constructed after the wall. It was a simple wooden structure, a shed or storage room.