They reached the rise from which Sandreena had been able to watch the ritual the last time she had been here. She motioned for them to follow and when they neared the top of the ridge, they understood why she had abandoned silence.
Voice chanted in unison, and when they cleared the rise, they saw that there must have been a hundred of them. A huge fire was burning, flames leaping thirty feet into the air, and around it stood a dozen robed men and women. The others were gathered in a semi-circle around them; men and a few women, dressed in a variety of fashions, from all parts of the world, Keshian, Kingdom, Novindus, and the Eastern Kingdoms. But all wearing a black head cover. Tied scarves, flop hats, leather caps, it didn’t matter; everyone had covered their head in black.
Miranda said, ‘Well, there are your Black Caps and it looks like they’ve shown up for something important.’
‘It’s a summoning, but it’s different;’ said Amirantha.
‘How’s it different?’ asked Miranda.
‘I don’t know. It’s just . . . different,’ He whispered, yet there was an urgency in his voice. ‘Something very wrong is about to happen.’ He looked at Miranda. ‘Be ready.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure, but whatever is it, it will be very bad.’ His skin crawled, and he felt dark powers gathering, more terrible than anything he had ever encountered in his long life of dealing with infernal beings.
Three men appeared from the other end of the canyon, one wearing bright red robes trimmed in black and silver piping. The other two stood on either side of him; they wore black like the others. The two black-clad figures were hooded, their features obscured by the deep shadows. The red-robed man had his head uncovered, and he smiled broadly as he came to face the semi-circle of gathered adherents. He stepped up on to a large rock and held up his hand for silence. Instantly the chanting ceased.
‘Servants of Dahun . . .’ he began. ‘Damn,’ swore Amirantha. ‘What?’ asked Miranda.
It was Sandreena who answered, ‘Dahun is a demon prince.’
‘One of Maarg’s captains,’ said Amirantha, ‘if I understand everything told to me in the last few days, correctly.’ He pointed. ‘But even if I don’t, I know that man and I know that anything he’s involved with is going to be very bad.’
‘Who is he?’
‘That,’ said Amirantha, ‘is my brother, Belasco.’
‘Evil-looking bastard,’ said Sandreena. ‘I can see the resemblance.’
Miranda shot her a dark look, then realized it was only the young Knight’s manner of dealing with fear. Miranda had neither Sandreena’s, nor Amirantha’s experience with demons, but she had faced enough dark magic in her life to sense this situation was verging on becoming something terrible.
‘In four nights,’ shouted Belasco, ‘we shall greet our master and begin the transformation of this world into his domain, and we, his blessed servants, will be his first chosen, ruling at his side.’
‘First to be eaten, most likely,’ said Brandos.
‘Well, I’m hardly one to condemn lying to the gullible, but I only took their gold, not their lives,’ said Amirantha.
With a grudging tone, Sandreena said, ‘For that small difference, you might find Lims-Kragma lets you return to life as something a little higher than a cockroach.’
Miranda said, ‘We have four nights to decide what to do.’
Amirantha said, ‘No, we have until that guard wakes up.’
Sandreena said, ‘Will he know he was struck by a spell?’
Miranda said, ‘Normally he’d wake up feeling like he’d been on a three-day drinking binge, but the way he hit his head . . .’
‘Well,’ whispered Brandos, ‘we could finish the job on the way out and make it look as if he simply fell off his perch and broke his skull on the rocks.’
‘Someone in that bunch will be a tracker and will see we were here,’ said Sandreena.
‘If there was some way we could convince that fellow he had just fallen asleep,’ said Miranda.
‘I have an idea,’ said Amirantha. ‘Come on, we must hurry.’
He led them back down the trail to where the recumbent guard was still sprawled across the rocks. Amirantha motioned for them to follow him a good thirty yards down the narrow trail. ‘Just be silent,’ he whispered. ‘Can you wake the guard when I tell you?’
Miranda said, ‘I believe so, though why would I want to?’
‘Just wait and do it when I tell you, then all of you get down out of sight.’
He closed his eyes, reached inside his belt pouch and pulled out a crystal. Holding it tightly he muttered an incantation and suddenly a puff of dark, fetid smoke erupted from the ground.
Stepping out of the smoke was a tall woman, stunning in appearance and completely nude.