The sound of Korak's snoring was like the rumbling of a stirring volcano, and the arcanist accompanied him, as if there were miniature woodsmen up his nose, sawing away. He muttered in his sleep, a senseless mis-mash of a dozen languages, some that had not been heard upon the Arc for centuries.

A lone wolf padded up to the stream, where the deer had died so dramatically and senselessly. His ears perked warily at the sound of the slumbering pair, and he snuffled at the charred bodies, then showed his teeth. He would not eat this meat.

The wolf stood still with his legs tense and his tail low, ready to flee at a moment's notice. He could smell the enemy scent of the great bear and the queer smell of the old man, there were a great many strange things within his traveling cloak, and the wolf could smell a bit of all of them.

The wolf was nearly full grown. He was strong enough to take down a stag or an old man, but a hundred of him could not trouble a silverpaw. Yet, he was swift and brave. Perhaps the bear had left bits of the man he could eat without waking the giant. The wolf was hungry, always hungry.

The wolf stepped along the banks of the pool, alert for the slightest out-of-place sound. Always, this pool had felt dangerous, and he seldom came here to drink. There was a smell to the waterfall, an unfamiliar scent always lingering just at the tip of his snout. Nowhere else had that scent, and it was not a good one. It didn't belong.

Silent, careful steps carried the young wolf up the trail along the stream that had been beaten down by himself and countless others of the forest, and he made his way toward the light of the fire, a smell he associated with men.

He'd burned his right forepaw once snuffling in a dead campfire, and two days of limping had convinced him this was a bad smell, too. He could smell the roasted venison as well, the sizzling fat, the charring meat. He looked at the strange contraption and could not make much sense of it, how to get the meat off it and steal it away without waking the bear? He could smell the man, but not the man's blood. Had he gotten away? Was he hiding in a tree?

The wolf looked at the turning spit, uncertain, and at last, he shook his head from side to side. Better to find something that could not burn him to eat. This was too dangerous. Yet, as he resolved to slink away, his nose twitched in recognition.

The bad smell from the waterfall. It was strong now, too strong, and he wheeled, hackles rising. He looked all around but saw nothing, and the fear stabbed at him. Where was the pack, where were his friends? Gone, all gone. Then, he saw it, striding through the river without a sound.

A shadow.

It stood on two legs, like a man, but there the similarity ended. Its legs were long and spindly, its torso elongated, and its fingers were pointed, the hands twice the size of a man's. It stood nearly ten feet tall.

The wolf hunkered into a low crouch, ready to spring at the intruder or turn and flee. The shadow’s eyes met the wolf’s, and the wolf was frozen in its stare. The eyes were the most wrong of all. They glowed in the night like flame. There were too many irises, rings within rings, and they twisted against each other as the shadow beheld the wolf.

The shade took a step toward the frozen wolf, and the water did not ripple as his foot left it, nor did it make a sound when he set it on the ground. The shadow’s toes were long and pointed, just as the fingers were. It reached out one of its long arms, and the wolf knew this was death. He had to fight!

Shaking from tail to snout, the wolf broke the hypnotizing gaze and gave a loud bark of alarm. He backed away and growled, displaying his teeth. He would not go down like a lamb. If this shade wanted him, his fangs would take a finger or a hand.

Behind him, the bear stirred, and the shade turned its head, aware of the larger threat. That was the opening! In the instant of distraction, the young wolf charged and sank his teeth into the shadow's leg.

Suddenly, his mouth was full of the awful taste of its black blood, and the shade screamed! The shadow’s scream was an awful whistling sound, empty like the wind. The shadow kicked its leg, trying to shuck the wolf off, but his jaws were strong. He could hear the hammering footsteps as the bear charged toward them, and he clamped down with all his might. If he was to die, he would take this shadow with him.

"Korak! Hold!" the man shouted, and the bear came to an abrupt halt.

"Who goes there?!" the old voice cried, and the wolf felt those awful fingers closing around him. He was torn off the shadow's leg, and then all he could feel was the wind rushing past as he flew through the night air.

* * *

Charlot was a fool!

He'd let himself fall asleep and never set up the black diamond ward! Now, he was caught in the darkness. The fire had died down to embers, and he was blind! Korak rose abruptly, and Charlot slipped to the ground, still sleep-weak and disoriented. He heard an inhuman scream and shouted for the bear to hold.

"Who goes there?" the arcanist demanded into the dark. A moment later, he heard a yelp, and then something large flew by him. Then, there was a spray of sparks, and he heard a terrible yelp of pain and the sound of scrambling feet.

A dog? Who else was there?

"FLACCARO! DAYLIGHT!" Charlot cried, and then then night was as day. Flaccaro's thirty-three rubies blazed as glorious as the dawn, and the whole clearing was alight with brilliant red-gold light.

Charlot squinted. In an instant, he'd gone from blinded by the absence of light to blinded by an overabundance, and Korak roared. The sound never failed to send a cold shiver through his guts.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Who dares sneak up upon me?" Charlot demanded, rising to his feet, peering into the dark. He edged along, he cast a huge shadow as he crossed the path of Flaccaro. In the shadow he threw against a great elm tree, two crimson eyes blinked open, the huge pupils surrounded by ring after ring of irises.

The eyes of a demon!

The irises rotated, some left and some right, and the devil fixed Charlot with its hypnotic stare, trying to break his will. Charlot glared back, furious!

"Try your tricks with me, moonchild! Here's one right back at you!"

"KNEEL!" Charlot demanded in the black tongue of the devils.

The devil dropped to one knee on its uninjured leg at once. The shadow’s maw flew wide in surprise, displaying needle-sharp teeth as black as a porcupine's quills. Charlot stepped aside to let Flaccaro’s light fall upon the shade. He carefully observed the too-long limbs, the clawed hands. He’d never seen a devil quite like this one before.

"How?” the demon protested, caught unaware by the power of command.

"I don't need your name to command the likes of you. No more words in your twisted tongue! Do you speak Aranic?"

"Long, it has been long," the demon rumbled, and indeed, its accent was ancient. No one had written Aranic in that mode for five hundred years, and Charlot was glad for it. It was a stupid convention of poets to say the object twice. Exactly what you would expect from a kingdom sewn together by a bunch of drunken minstrels. Furthermore, it was clear to Charlot the demon had never spoken Aranic, it only knew how to read it. The shadow’s pronunciation was atrocious.

"Let's try Yarlee,” Charlot swapped to the language of Yarlsbeth, a slightly more dangerous tongue for talking to a demon, but he didn't want to spend all night conversing with a devil's approximation of an ancient jongleur.

"As you wish. Let us deal. Set me free, and I will spare your life," the demon offered, and now its accent was acceptable, if antiquated. Charlot could not complain. His own Yarlee was likely fifty years out of date.

"Ha! It's so rare to find wit among your ilk, shade. Beware my ire. Just as I do not need your name to make you kneel, I do not need it to destroy you. Now! Tell me how you came to be here, and none of your crooked words or I will take a finger for every lie you speak."

The demon's face twisted in a sudden fury. The brilliant light of the staff painted the black face with hard shadows.

"We are made of lies as you are of flesh. Should I threaten you with the loss of a digit for every flap of your tongue?"

"That," Charlot said, making swift gesture, "is a lie," he finished, and one of the long spindly fingers dropped from its hand, neatly as a ripe apple dropping off the branch.

Again, the demon hissed like a screaming kettle and cradled the hand with its missing finger. Black blood flowed freely. Korak made a sound of alarm, flinching backward. On the ground, the severed finger burst into purple flame and burned away to nothing.

"I'm not some rube, filled with false notions about the children of the moon! I know what you are made of, and I know how to unmake it! You kneel before an archmage! Look at my hands, my power is my own!" Charlot held up his hands before the devil, the fingers all intact. He'd taken no devil's aid to gain his art.

"No more…" the demon begged, acting cowed. This, too, was false. The devil only waited for an opening.

"Don't act as if you can't grow it back."

"There is a cost," the demon complained, again the look of surprise was on its face, and it dropped the act at once.

"Then, you shall pay that cost. Now! Answer me! How does a child of the moon come upon my campsite in the dead of night? I note that you are diminishing as we speak. Surely you are shackled to something nearby."

For a moment, the demon hesitated, but with a shake of his head, it surrendered, settling to sit flat on the ground. Charlot thought to reprove it for breaking the kneel, but now was not the time to twist the knife.

"I am bound beneath the waterfall, in the cavern there. Set me free, and I shall give you great power."

There was a whimpering sound from the direction of the scattered fire, and Korak turned his head toward it. "Hold, Korak. We will look later. What did you throw into my fire shade?"

"An insolent wolf. The bastard bit me.” The demon drummed fingers against its long calf. Already, the wound had sealed, but there was a sizable chunk of it missing. "It will be the end of him, the idiot cur. He will bloat and erupt in agony, and the wood shall fill with shadewulf." The demon’s eyes glimmered with malice.

"Speak swiftly now, for you are diminishing, and soon you will be gone. Are there any traps within the waterfall?"

"Yes…a sigil of death, but it has lost its power. One entered the chamber last night, and he was unharmed. I had not the power to reach him, and he did not touch my prison."

"Who was the interloper?"

"I will tell you all when you set me free."

"You will tell me this instant or I shall take an arm," Charlot said.

The devil twitched. Clearly it wished to attack, but fear held it back.

"The interloper was a youngling, a human."

"How old?"

"I cannot tell, perhaps fifteen. He was smaller than you."

"Did he have different colored eyes? A blaze of white in his hair?"

"Perhaps…"

"Charlot pointed to the demon's maimed hand, and the shade snatched it back.

"That is no lie! I have no eyes without my form. I see only outlines."

Charlot nodded. He knew well the limitations of sight without eyes.

"Why did you not make a deal with him?"

"I hadn't the power to appear. He only slept, and then left. He had no source of light. All night I wished for him to find me, but he only left when the sun rose."

"Yet, here you stand. You have power now. How is that?"

The demon was careful in its answer, weighing the words.

"I cannot be certain, and the power is fleeing, I am nearly gone…" it trailed. Indeed the demon had shrunk down to the size of a man. Flaccaro's light shone through the shade like thin cloth. "Something passed through Yala near my prison, and the power flowed into me. Enough to try and make a deal. Set me free, magus! I can give you…"

The demon's words faded so that they were no more than the sound of sand sliding down a mound, and then he vanished, leaving only a dark stain of tainted blood and burnt earth where he'd stood. Korak tilted his head from one side to the other, then he shook it.

"It must be the boy. We've blundered onto his trail. Fortune is ours, Korak!"

The bear snuffled in the direction of the extinguished fire, and Charlot turned back, squinting his eyes against Flaccaro's glow. The staff was too proud to do anything halfway, it was either daylight or midnight.

Charlot remembered the venison, and he hoped somehow it wasn't ruined. He followed the bear, headed for the sound of whimpering.