'Those people we fought today—who do you think they were?' he asked.
Jermayan frowned. 'I'm not certain. Perhaps simple brigands, for all that they managed to take us so completely by surprise. This far from human and Elven lands there are all manner of unchancy things prowling. It is a hard land, one that cannot be farmed or husbanded. Though there are a few who are sturdy enough to eke out a precarious living as shepherds, even they are surly, unfriendly, and half-beast themselves. Those who fell upon us today might be no more than the lawless wolfsheads whose meat is hapless travelers—but the fact that they were able to hide so nearly in plain sight and approach us so closely argues that they may have had magical help to do so.'
'So they might have been related to these people who set the Barrier? Shadow Mountain?' Kellen said.
Jermayan reluctantly nodded.
Aha! 'So who—what—is Shadow Mountain, and why are they—it— doing this?' Kellen demanded urgently.
There it was, the question he'd been wanting to ask ever since the name had been mentioned back in Sentarshadeen and the Elves had practically turned themselves inside-out. What was Shadow Mountain? If the enemy was going to be hunting them directly—and now that Kellen had used the Wild Magic outright, he'd been thinking more about that possibility—it was time to stop avoiding the question and find out exactly who and what he might be facing.
Though—now that he came to think about it—everyone, including Jermayan, had been doing a very good job of distracting him from that very question from the moment of the Council meeting back in Sentarshadeen.
There was a long pause. Kellen could tell that Jermayan really wished Kellen hadn't asked the question, and for a moment Kellen almost withdrew it. But he wanted to know. More than that, he thought he needed to know. If he was going to be fighting Shadow Mountain—if they were going to be sending enemies after him and Jermayan— he needed to know what he was up against.
'Shadow Mountain is what the Children of Leaf and Star call the stronghold of our oldest enemy—indeed, the oldest enemy of every race in this world, if only the rest of you knew it. Shadow Mountain is the home of the Endarkened,' Jermayan answered at last, very reluctantly.
Kellen looked puzzled. The Endarkened. The name meant nothing to him.
'Demons,' Jermayan elaborated. 'The Endarkened are what you humans call Demons.'
'Demons?'
All Kellen's old fears—fears he'd thought long-settled and put to rest—returned in a sudden rush. Idalia had said the Demons were real. The old faun back in the Wildwood had been terrified of them. But even though he'd been hearing about them since he'd left the City—and even before—Demons still seemed so unlikely, a concept Kellen recoiled from believing in even while it terrified him. They belonged to nightmares, not to conversations like this.
Jermayan seemed to sense his hesitation, and misunderstood its source.
' 'Demon' is the name that Men gave to them in the War, and it is a truly fitting one—or so we Elves decided, once we understood the human concept of Demons. The Endarkened are evil, without exception. They are at least as long-lived as Elves, if not truly immortal.'
'They are?' Kellen asked in a whisper. The creatures of his nightmares had certainly seemed unstoppable…
'What—what do they look like?' He didn't want to know. Except that he did. He had to know if his nightmares reflected the truth, or only his own twisted imagination.
'Unless they are disguising themselves by magic,' Jermayan replied, 'they are easy to recognize: they have the horns of goats, the slitted eyes of snakes, scarlet or ebony skin, barbed tails, talons, and often wings or cloven hooves as well.'
Kellen shuddered, suppressing a chill of horror. Jermayan's description exactly matched the images in his nightmares. But how had he known?
But despite his reluctance to begin, Jermayan was by no means finished with the subject of Shadow Mountain and Demons.
'And unlike other races, all the Endarkened are powerful Mages, able to wield a kind of magic that is neither the High Magick of the City, nor the Wild Magic you have learned, Kellen, but magic of a third kind, wholly abominable, and wholly inimical to Life. The least of the Endarkened is an inherent Mage far more powerful than most human Mages, and the most powerful of the Endarkened Mages can cast spells of incalculable power and devastation. Their power comes from the pain and feat of their victims and from the anguish and despair of their vjctims' deaths. The price of Endarkened magic is paid in the blood and suffering of others, as we learned to our cost in the War.
