“What meat is this?” asked the King.
“The animals are called shadowpeople.”
“You eat them?”
Huld gestured at the raised hearth, the fire, the spits, around which were littered the woolly feet and wide ears discarded by the feasters. “Why should I not? There is no flesh forbidden to me, Prionde. Nothing is forbidden to me. Is it forbidden to you?”
“It seems near to human,” said the King doubtfully. “Very near to human, in appearance at least.”
“Why should that matter? When I hunger, I eat. Meat is meat, human or otherwise. It is all fuel to my fire, Prionde. I think it can be fuel to yours as well.”
The King stirred the delicate finger bones on his plate with a finger of his own. Indeed the ones on the plate did look very kin to the finger which stirred them. “Why do you roost here?” he asked at last. “Why in this place, Huld?”
“Because it chills you,” the Demon sneered. “You, and any who come here, and any who hear of it. It is the age old place of terror. It was terrible when I was a child and Blourbast brought me here. Mandor found it terrible, and fascinating, as I had in my time. It is the place of ultimate pain and horror, ultimate evil. From what better place may we strike terror into the minds of all? Our task will be easier when the world knows we move upon them from Hell’s Maw. This is the place of atrocity, and power!”
“And yet your Ghoul did not return.”
Huld shrugged, rubbed his greasy hands upon his velvets in complete indifference. “He was not expected to return. The Phantasm who flew in the trees and observed what happened, though, he did return,” and Huld made a gesture of command to one of the Gamesmen sprawled in half drunken abandon in the hall below, a summons which the Phantasm was quick to obey. He knelt at Huld’s feet, head bowed, the lantern light flashing from the faceted mask he wore.
“Tell the King what you have reported to me.”
The Phantasm began: “I waited as I had been ordered to do, in the forest near where the Ghoul made his foray against the women on the road. When the Ghoul brought them into the forest cover, I followed, staying ahead of him and hidden in the boughs. He had not come far before someone came through the trees behind him. I heard the person cry Game and Move upon him, a risk call. I could not stay hidden and see clearly, but I heard the Ghoul cry out in triumph, as though the pursuer had played Gamefool.
“Then there was a cry from the pursuer, as though to some other Gamesman, words I could not hear clearly. Then a fire came up, all at once, as though a Sentinel had been present. I came closer to see, but the smoke and fire drove me away. I heard someone blunder away through the trees, and it was not the Ghoul. I did not let myself be seen, but came away as instructed to do.” The Phantasm remained bowed down, awaiting the King’s pleasure. Huld gestured him away.
“The point is,” said Huld, “that the pursuer, Peter, arrived too quickly to have Flown. We must assume he Ported. Also, the fire came about because of him.”
“What is he? I thought he was Necromancer named?”
“He was named Necromancer inaccurately. It misled me for a time. I believe him to be a twinned Talent. We have seen their like in the past. Minery Mindcaster, for example, was a strong twinned Talent, Pursuivant and Afrit. In my youth I knew of another, Thaumaturge Mirtisap who was, I know, both Thaumaturge and Prophet, though he denied it. Some say they start as twins in the womb, but the stronger swallows the weaker and is born with both Talents. Perhaps Peter is twinned Afrit and Archangel. When I encountered him in the caverns, I thought he was merely Afrit, but Afrits do not have a skill with Fire.”
The King sneered beneath his beard, narrow lips curling in a mockery of humor. “You have forgotten that he seemed to have Beguiled Mandor’s people at Bannerwell. I never learned that an Archangel has a skill with Beguilement.”