He leaned forward and smirked. “Darzin’s dead.”

Janel stared at him. “So were you.”

Kihrin felt the smirk fade. Could Darzin—no. The Death Goddess had loathed Darzin. She’d never let him Return.

“What about those prophecies Tamin mentioned? They sound—” Kihrin hesitated. “They sound like Devoran prophecies. I once met a Voice of the Council who was a Devoran priest—he was convinced that every time a bird chirped, it related to one of those damn quatrains.”

“Oh, they are Devoran prophecies,” Brother Qown interjected. “I checked in case either Tamin or Relos Var had invented them whole cloth as an excuse for their atrocities. But no—the stanzas Tamin quoted are genuine. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re any truer than any of the other thousands of quatrains the Devorans have collected over the centuries.”

“How reassuring,” Kihrin said. “Tamin got it wrong, you know. At least with that first prophecy. That has to be referring to Vol Karoth.” He inhaled as he glanced at Qown. “Let’s just hope that particular quatrain never comes true.”

“You said that name before.” Janel’s eyebrows drew together. “Who?”

Qown’s mouth dropped open. “What? Janel! You don’t know who Vol Karoth is? No one’s explained who Vol Karoth is to you?”

Janel turned up her hands in a helpless gesture. “No? I assume from your scandalized tone that they must be someone important.”

Kihrin cleared his throat. “Yeah, you might say that.”

Janel narrowed her eyes at him.

“He’s the King of Demons—” Qown started to explain.

“No, he’s not,” Kihrin snapped. “He’s what happened to that god you do and don’t worship, Qown, the eighth of the Eight Immortals.”

Qown just stared at Kihrin, mouth open, expression full of horror.

Kihrin sighed. “A long time ago, a wizard tricked one of the Eight Immortals into participating in a ritual,” Kihrin finally said. “I say tricked, because the ritual apparently culminated with the Immortal in question being sacrificed. One assumes he didn’t volunteer for that. Anyway, something went wrong.

“The rest of the people who were involved in the ritual all became dragons, but that Immortal—I realize you call him Selanol, but that’s not his real name—became something even worse. He actually died, but what was born out of his corpse was an avatar of annihilation and evil so dangerous that the monster had to be imprisoned or he’d have destroyed the entire world. Maybe the whole universe. And so, they renamed him: Vol Karoth. I really don’t think he’s the King of Demons. He’s just as eager to destroy demons as he is to destroy everything else.”

“Oh.” Janel swallowed. “Then I apologize; I know exactly who that is. The morgage call him something else. And the Devoran Prophecies I’ve read never referred to him as Vol Karoth. The King of Demons, though? That name I’ve heard.”