his masterpiece. Chasianna placed it carefully on the floor of the platform and shooed Valmaxian back a couple steps.
She looked up at him and asked, 'Magic missiles?'
He nodded, and she looked down at the staff, holding her left hand half an armslength above its smooth, polished surface. He watched her enchantment with enormous interest and unconcealed respect. An artist in her own right-certainly not as adept as he, but a capable mage-still, he doubted she'd be able to overcome whatever flaw it was in the staff that caused the enchantment to limit itself to the ability of the user. It should have been able to do what Valmaxian himself was capable of.
It took her a while, but Valmaxian watched her the whole time. When she was almost done she touched the staff and there was a flash of light that, even though he was expecting it, made Valmaxian flinch. The color drained from Chasianna's fine-boned face and her arm twitched.
Valmaxian stepped forward and fell to one knee. He touched her on the shoulder, and Chasianna twitched back. She looked up at him, and the dullness in her eyes made Valmaxian's flesh go cold. She was sweating, and she had a streak of gray in her hair where no such flaw existed before. Her hands shook, and when she spoke her voice was quiet and forced.
'It'll… work now.'
'Chasianna…'
She smiled, leaning back and sliding into a prone position on the round platform. He helped her down, and made sure her head didn't strike the stone.
'How many times did he tell you?' she asked.
Valmaxian blew a breath out through his nose and glanced up at the overcast sky. 'Nine hundred and forty- three times,' he said. 'I counted.'
'I'm sure you did,' she said, then coughed.
He shook his head and told her, 'It's not the only way.'
'Try it. Try the staff.'
Valmaxian lifted the staff from the platform floor. It felt warm to his reverent touch.
'Merellien,' he called, then tossed the staff at the apprentice. Valmaxian mumbled an odd-sounding word, and the staff drifted to slip easily into Merellien's hands.
The apprentice turned to the clay golems, lifted the staff, and glanced up at Valmaxian, who looked down at Chasianna. Though still weak, she smiled at him. Valmaxian turned back to the apprentice and nodded.
Merellien faced the golems, held up the staff, and repeated the command word. Five bolts of blue-white light shot from the tip of the staff, and one struck each of the golems dead center. Two of the automatons staggered back.
Valmaxian's heart leaped. One more functionality of the staff successfully enchanted and-he hadn't done it. It was Chasianna and her grandfather's ridiculous notions of self-sacrifice and transference of personal energies.
He turned back to Chasianna and saw that she had lost consciousness. Her breathing was shallow. He kneeled next to her and scooped her up in his arms. She smiled but didn't open her eyes.
Three nights later Valmaxian sat on the cool marble floor of his open-air casting circle, gently rocking the staff in his arms and staring up into the star-spattered sky. Chasianna had begun to regain her strength and he was able to get back to work, but the last day had been spent facing more dissatisfying results.
He knew he could have gone down the path that Kelaerede and Chasianna would have had him take, the one that seemed to work for them, though in a way that held them back as well. Every time they put some parcel of themselves into the enchantment of an item, that was a part they lost. So they had to lose something to gain something. A zero-sum game never interested Valmaxian. It hadn't interested him six hundred years before when Kelaerede insisted on it and it didn't interest him when Chasianna, in her own sincere way, did the same thing.
To add to the staff, he needed something more. To that end he had had two of his most trusted apprentices make certain preparations. Circles were drawn on the marble with fine chalk. Candles sat cold, but ready. Ready for a summoning.
It was something he hadn't done in what for even an elf was considered a very long time. The results of the first summoning had satisfied Valmaxian's needs for that long, but there was the staff, and that needed more.
Valmaxian set the staff on the marble floor next to him and drew in a breath to start the spell. Before he could utter even the first syllable, the gate opened. It was the same as the first time-the same colors, the same intensity of light and motion-but it happened faster, and it happened before he'd made it happen. He was not in control of any of it. The demon was just there.
'Valmaxian, my old friend,' the creature said, his voice somehow still echoing though they were outside. 'How can I be of assistance to you this time?'
Valmaxian put a hand on the staff and tried to make it stop shaking-his hand, not the staff. The staff just sat there, cold and indifferent.
En'SeI'Dinen's freakish eyes drifted down to the staff and widened. One corner of the beast's twisted mouth pulled up.
'Ah,' it growled, 'the staff. The Staff of Valmaxian.'
Valmaxian's heart skipped, and he shook his head.
'The Staff of Valmaxian…' the elf repeated. Yes, it would bear his name, Valmaxian decided then, and it would roar his legacy to the ages.
'What is your pleasure, sir?' the demon hissed.
'The retributive strike,' Valmaxian said, taking up the staff and rising to his knees in front of the enormous creature. 'The retributive strike, the Fire of All, the Will, the Ego, the Presence. It must live. It must be aware. It must know itself and its creator and it must revel in its own power and mine. It must live, and it must live forever, and it must be fit for the hand of a god.'
The demon grinned, showing a horror of jagged fangs, and said, 'A tall order.'
'Worth anything,' Valmaxian almost gasped. All restraint and even common sense fled him, replaced by pure ambition. 'The staff will be worth a king's ransom-a god's.'
The demon took a step closer, but Valmaxian didn't flinch.
'Those years past I asked for a price from you for what I gave,' En'Sel'Dinen said. 'Axe you prepared to balance our ledgers tonight?'
Valmaxian scoffed, smiled, and said, 'You have no-'
'I gave,' the demon barked.
Valmaxian stood, drawing himself straight, and lifted one eyebrow. 'You served my master before me, then you served me. You'll serve me again.'
'I claim my price, elf,' was the demon's only reply.
Having no intention of giving the miserable, bound creature anything, Valmaxian shrugged and said, 'Name your price, and let us be on with it.'
The demon snorted a puff of noxious yellow fumes and said, 'Chasianna.'
Despite his confidence that the demon could hold nothing over his head, was bound by the spell to do his bidding, Valmaxian's blood ran cold.
'What did you say?' he asked.
'The girl,' the demon growled. 'Chasianna. You know of whom I speak.'
'Why?' Valmaxian thought to ask. The fact that En'Sel'Dinen even knew her name started to shake his confidence.
'Her skin,' the demon almost whispered. 'Is it soft? Soft to the touch? Warm and pleasing?'
Valmaxian tipped his head, and the demon laughed at him. The sound made Valmaxian's stomach turn.
'You'll pay me,' the demon said. 'I am bound no more-was never bound to you. Your teacher, that bastard Kelaerede, he tried to warn you, didn't he? Tried to tell you that you could never control me. He tried to tell you that anything gained from me would have a cost.'
'Go back,' Valmaxian said, a slight lilt in his voice betraying his lack of confidence. 'Return to the Abyss, and come no more to this-'
'Fool,' En'Sel'Dinen interrupted. 'I will have her soft skin and her yielding lips and her heaving-'
Valmaxian coughed out the command word and the shimmering darts of magic leaped from the tip of the
