“No,” said Laromendis, his breath beginning to come hard. “No one could. It would take a dozen as good as me, I think. And then it wouldn’t endure long. That’s a great deal of magic being used. To achieve it for a long period 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 he’s doing up there—or whatever they’re 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 particularly pleasant, 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 marshaling yard, in a massive black stone fortress. Walls thirty feet high rose up on all sides of an open area two hundred yards across, by a hundred deep. Above them rose a keep unlike anything they had seen. If the castle created by the Black Sorcerer had been designed to warn away passing ships, sight of this fortress would have scared the sailors to death.

The sky above was a canopy of black clouds, so thick it was impossible to tell the time of day, or night. They were lit from below by an 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 a shadow where a tower rose up to form a corner with the wall behind them. In the distance a large figure walked out of the entrance of the vast fortress that rose up across the yard, and even though it was three hundred feet distant, they could see it for what it was—a massive battle demon, perhaps a dozen feet tall. It moved with purpose, but rather than attacking them, it moved at an oblique angle to their position, seemingly intent upon some business. Like those they had seen on the world from which they had fled, this one wore armor 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?”