Danavod was silent for a time, emitting not a grumble nor a single puff of smoke.
“You know much of this world, Balan,” she finally said.
Balan climbed wearily to his feet and stood, though as Danavod had sliced his suspenders along with his body he now had to hold up his trousers with one hand. The Devil Lord attempted to do so with as much dignity as he could muster, though it was a losing cause.
“Adventurers have always brought a lot of baggage with them into Vod’Adia, including their knowledge,” Balan said. “There are those among my fellows who enjoy taking that from them, along with everything else.” Balan looked up at Danavod and sighed. “You can kill me or obliterate me, your Sizableness, and maybe you can root out most of the fiends within this entire city. But you will never get them all. There are just too many, and there are some of great cunning and strength. Some will escape, perhaps enough to make the Dead War that once raged here for thirty years look like a picnic.”
“Or?” Danavod said, and for the first time in a while, Balan grinned.
“Or we can renew our deal of cooperation, Mistress, now in these altered circumstances. I have full command of the devils here, and at least some sway with the rest of the wicked. Together, I imagine they would amount to an army unlike any that has ever walked this world.”
“And what would you seek to gain from such an arrangement, Balan?”
The devil nodded and pantomimed tipping a cap.
“Time, your Gargantuaness. This is a world replete with magic, and in such a place it is always possible to discover a shorter way from point A to point B. Plus, as long as me and mine are all stuck here, there is no reason for us not to have a bit of fun.”
The Dragon gazed down at the diabolic creature. Balan plainly knew much of her world, though he did not know nearly as much as did Danavod, who had dwelled here since before Men had even reckoned time, and before they had invented divisions between the present, the past, and the future. Balan had likely never heard of Danorian Prophecy, for there were few men yet alive who remembered its ways, and surely none of them had blundered into the devils’ clutches in Vod’Adia. Balan did not know that the return of the Sable City was but the first in a series of signs, signs that might presage something far worse yet to come. Danavod did know it, and she knew that depending on how things continued to unfold, she might well have need of an army far more formidable than the Shugak.
“I will require another contract, this time,” she said. “One that is exhaustive in its specific terms.”
“Goes without saying, Ma’am.”
Danavod puffed her toxic smoke.
“Speak on, then, Balan, for I am still listening.”
Epilogue
Kazandra gave Zebulon a firm shove, and he blundered backward through the snow, blinking his familiar eyes at hers. There was a sound like trumpeting from the tusks of the Node Gate as the man passed between them and disappeared, a sound audible even above the whipping arctic wind.
“Goodbye,” Kazandra yelled after him, and quietly added, “Say hello to Mom.”
“Zandra!” the old Wizard shouted. Kazandra turned and found him struggling toward her through the snow, wrestling with the staff from which light still shown, illuminating a wide circle in the blowing snow. She hurried over and the old man leaned heavily against her. She brought them both back across the snow to stand before the gate.
“What did you say to him?” the Wizard shouted. His long white beard was flapping wildly from beneath his scarf, and the deep hood of his parka shadowed his face.
“Nothing I shouldn’t have!” Zandra answered, screaming into the Wizard’s hood as the wind was fierce, and the old man was about half deaf.
They stood before the gate, two bulky figures squinting up at the sky full of spinning snow.
“Is that long enough!” Zandra shouted, and the Wizard’s hood bobbed.
“I think so. From what I remember.”
Zandra jerked off a heavy mitten, letting it hang from a cord around her wrist. Her hand started to ache from the cold immediately. The light from the staff winked out as the Wizard leaned it against his thin chest in heavy furs, and Zandra felt along his lone arm down to his hand, and pulled off his mitten. The two clasped bare hands in the noisy darkness, and Zandra took a hold of the staff.
“Are you ready, Uncle Phin?” Zandra yelled, and Phoarty said that he was.
Zandra tugged the old Wizard along, and followed her father through the gate to Danor.
