They reached the building and Pug made a quick decision. “Amirantha, go down the stairs and find Jim Dasher. Be careful.” To Laromendis and Gulamendis he said, “We have to keep those creatures on the other side of the door.”

The Warlock hurried down the circular stairs while Pug’s right hand shot outward, palm forward, through the door. A ripping in the air, tainted an evil green glow by the light from the summoning device, showed a wall of force speeding outward, striking a dozen demons and knocking them backward. Several lay stunned and motionless, but the others seemed only to get madder.

Gulamendis took a talisman from his belt pouch and pointed it at one particularly nasty-looking demon, a thing of scales and crocodile teeth, bat wings, and blood-red armor. He spoke a quick phrase and suddenly the demon’s yellow eyes blinked and it reached out with clawed hands to rip out the throat of the demon next to it, another scaly horror, but this one looking more like a lizard.

Laromendis closed his eyes and muttered, “Something big.” A moment later the ground shook from the enraged bellow of a massive golden dragon as it sprang into being above the thirty or so demons ringing the hut.

Gulamendis said, “This will only buy us a few minutes, Pug. The bigger the illusion and the more violent, the faster Laro fatigues.”

The dragon was a thing of beauty, looking exactly like the one the brothers had ridden with Tomas. It opened its maw and a scorching blast of searing hot fire rolled over the demons, scattering them. Pug felt the heat wash over him until he noticed that while some demons ran screaming, batting at nonexistent flames on their arms, their flesh blistering, there were no flames and there was no smoke or char on the ground. The moment he realized it, the heat stopped. He could still see the dragon, but it was now insubstantial and clearly an illusion.

Knowing the demons would soon come to understand their minds were playing tricks on them and they were the authors of their own suffering, he sent out another blast of flame, exploding in a tower of orange and yellow that did inflict real burns on the demons. “That will keep them confused a little longer,” said Pug.

“Confusion will only work a while longer,” said Gulamendis. “Whatever reserves they had outside the walls are now joining in.”

Pug said, “They probably were given orders to return when the summoning started. I wonder what chance let these live while their companions lay at the bottom of that pit?”

“That battle we saw on Telesan was not an illusion, Pug,” said Gulamendis. “There’s a demon war taking place, and it’s our good fortune, all of us living here on this world, that the demons are now warring on one another—I’ve lived through losing two worlds to them. A third is one too many. Look out!”