Jason only shrugged, and Jim felt his frustration return in full. He knew his crew would wait until he either sent word or returned, so he felt little need to move away from the warming fire. Thinking of nothing better to do, he sat back against the cold stones and wondered just where the two magicians might be.

CHAPTER 2

FOREBODING

Lightning flashed across the sky.

Amirantha silently counted, and then came the distant boom of thunder. Looking at his old companion, Brandos, the Warlock of the Satumbria said, “The storm is moving away from us.”

The fighter nodded, remaining silent as he sat on a low stool, attentively cleaning his armor. He hunched over near the fire burning in the ancient keep’s fireplace, barely able to fend off the chill in this tiny room, perched near the top of the occupied tower.

Amirantha had been amused the first time he had come here, to visit the legendary castle of the Black Sorcerer. Now he found it old, drafty, almost stifling in its familiarity and a place locked in the grip of sorrow. After a year of living with these people, the usually solitary Demon Master felt a sense of understanding their pain and anger. Whatever had passed for normalcy before the attack on Villa Beata and the death of Miranda, her younger son Caleb, and his wife Marie, along with a score of students, that normalcy would never return.

Among the very few bright moments over that year was the return a month previous of Brandos, who had traveled down to their home near the city of Maharta in Novindus, with his wife Samantha. But even the unrelentingly cheerful woman had been unable to do more than momentarily lift the pall of gloom that constantly hung over this place.

Pug and his surviving son, Magnus, would come and go, and at times there were interesting discussions on matters common to their interest. Amirantha was forced to concede he had broadened his understanding of demons and the demon realm more in the last year than he had in the previous fifty years of solitary study. Often it was a case of having similar information, but interpreting its significance in a faulty way, and he had helped Pug identify misapprehensions in his knowledge.

But those times were growing more infrequent, and Pug and Magnus were absent for longer stretches, as they saw to the matters pressing upon their secret organization, the Conclave of Shadows. Amirantha and Brandos had not been invited formally into that organization, but there was a tacit understanding that they were now part of this effort, willing or not. Amirantha had no doubt they had the means to ensure he didn’t leave with the vital knowledge he possessed, so he considered having a choice in the matter moot.