destruction was too painful to watch directly, even with the shield demons' barrier in place. Between spread fingers, he watched the djinn begin to froth and gesticulate wildly, barely in control of himself as he sought to rip the cloud of scrap into even smaller rubble.
The onslaught continued unabated until only a hazy dust filled the cube. No recognizable part of the original sculpture remained intact or any of the metal of which it was composed. Only motes of transmuted matter bathed in the glow of the careening light.
With no more targets on which to focus his power, the djinn finally stopped, slumping exhausted in one corner of the box. Elezar motioned to the shield demons. The side of the confinement nearest to Astron dissolved away as quickly as it had formed. Amidst pulses of escaping light and heat, the djinn tumbled out to lie at Gaspar's feet, limbs scattered haphazardly and with a smile on his face beneath glazed eyes.
'Such is the amusement that you offer to those who would follow you,' Elezar said, 'and to any who has not tasted the pleasure of total destruction, the allure might be strong indeed.'
The prince looked down at the djinn slowly regaining his composure. 'But I wonder, Gaspar, now that the experience has been savored, what more can you promise that will not be repetition of the same. And after the second, the dozenth, perhaps the hundredth time, what then will be your hold over this mighty djinn?'
'You speak of events that are in epochs yet to run,' Gaspar said. 'None of my lieutenants, nor any of the legions that they command, have tastes so jaded that they do not look forward to repeat for all your lair the small sample we have witnessed here.'
'My point is not yet complete.' Elezar raised one robed arm to cut off the other prince. 'Let us see first the principle upon which the allegiance to my domain is founded.'
As Elezar finished, a small devil came forward, barely larger than Astron himself. He entered the box from the open side and immediately sank into a deep contemplation of the still swirling dust.
For a long moment nothing happened. Then a tiny spark of light blinked into existence before the devil's eyes and, following that in rapid succession, a series of others.
Gaspar rumbled with impatience but Elezar and the concentrating devil paid him no heed. For a long while more, there was no visible change in the haze, but then Astron saw a sparkling precipitate begin to fall to the bottom of the box.
'A significant fraction of the matter has been lost to light and other rays,' Elezar said. 'But it is of no concern. The weaver will work with what is at hand. He will first reassemble the basic particular components back into copper and tin, reversing the transmutations of your lieutenant. Then he will reconstitute the sculpture, coalescing the particles together one by one, if need be.'
The prince paused and looked at Gaspar. 'It took this one an era to make the first sculpture, staring from a hoard of bronze another of my minions had obtained from the realm of the skyskirr. It will take him eras more to reconstitute it and restore what he had before or perhaps craft something of greater beauty still. Eras, Gaspar, eras, not mere heart beats, and then it is done. He will be constructing, weaving, paying attention to painstaking detail to ensure that each little mote is in its proper place. It is a matter of rational control of the stembrain, not surrender to its lust.
'Eras and not heart beats, Gaspar-that is why princes such as I will endure long after djinns of lightning have long since surrendered to the great monotony.'
'The stronger shall endure the longer,' Gaspar said. He motioned his lieutenant to resume his position in line. 'And there is little doubt between the two of us as to which it will be.'
Gaspar unfolded his arms and stuck a bulbous thumb toward his chest. 'My will has forever been my own,' he said, 'but in cold reality, Elezar, you can make no such claim.' The djinn paused and looked around the assembled demons in the rotunda. 'It is no less than another riddle. How can any here choose to ally themselves with one who has been enslaved by a mortal?'
'It was no common man,' Elezar shot back. 'No less than the archimage did I contest in wills. And I am not ashamed of the result. No prince of the realm would have fared any better than I. Certainly not a coarse djinn who has not even dared to answer a single call when it has come through the flame.'
'So you assert,' Gaspar said. 'Such is your interpretation of the events. But if this mortal is so great that even princes bend to his will, why are there no others who also call him master somewhere in the realm?'
'I have spoken with accuracy,' Elezar said. 'The archmage knows quite well the folly of too much interaction with our domains. It is a mark of confidence in his power that he has no compulsion to exercise it wastefully.'
'Spoken like a true slave of a dominating master.' Gaspar laughed. 'A lowly imp could not have put it better. Come, Elezar, Prince Elezar, submit to me now before my followers discover that the victory does not represent that great an accomplishment.'
'I will not be distracted by your words.' Elezar beat his right arm against his chest. Astron saw the agitation billow in his prince's face. He stirred uncomfortably. Against Gaspar, Elezar's strength lay in his wits, not the plasma that glowed about his fingertips.
'If dominance by a man is of such little consequence,' Gaspar continued, 'then why does it upset you so much that I discuss it openly in front of those who blindly follow? Perhaps there is more to the story that you have not told.'
'Begone!' Elezar stood and shouted. 'Flutter back to your rough stone lairs and await the answer to your riddle. I will reveal it to you when the time is proper.'
'I have come for it now,' Gaspar growled, unfurling his wings.
'I said begone.' Elezar clapped his hands together. The air above his head hissed. Traces of blue sparked about his ears.
Gaspar flexed his fingers, letting small tendrils of light race up from the webbing near the palms to the fingertips. 'You warned of the consequences that would accrue from the rest of the realm if I struck outside the bounds of our agreement,' he said. 'Do you not think that the other domains would judge with equal disfavor one who professes to know what in fact he does not? Admit the truth, Elezar. You might once have been a prince, but now you are nothing more than the dim-witted doll of a man.'
Elezar snarled, baring fangs that he seldom showed to others. With a flick of his wrist, a bolt of ionizing blue arced between the two princes, striking Gaspar on the shoulder and spinning the djinn to the ground. Gaspar swooped into the air, a small rivulet of smoke wisping from where he had been touched. A glaze of pain clouded his eyes. Sparks showered off his knees and elbows into the air.
'The prince of lightning djinns does not submit to such insult,' he yelled. 'If you are so foolish as to test the strength of me and my lieutenants, then so shall you meet your doom.'
With an ear-shattering roar, the djinn unleashed a huge bolt in Elezar's direction that slammed past the weaving devil and into the midst of the shield demons. One was hit directly in the chest and exploded in a spray of bone, sinew, and gore. Those on either side were hurled from their feet, colliding with Elezar's guards, who scrambled airborne to get out of the way.
Astron saw Gaspar's lieutenant rise in reply; then almost instantly the upper expanses of the rotunda filled with brilliant bursts of light painful to see. All of Elezar's followers who had surrounded the hub arose in a mass confusion, some scrambling for exit tunnels and others surging forward to aid their prince.
For a moment, Astron hesitated, shouldering aside the imps and sprites lesser than he who raced past. His stembrain said to run but he knew that his duty was to help Elezar as best he could. He heard the air implode in a great clap of thunder and then the crash of falling matter from somewhere across the rotunda. Shrieks of pain blended with the crackle of ionization; one of Elezar's guards plummeted to the floor a wingspan away, the odor of charred flesh bubbling from a smoking hole in his side.
Near the apex of the dome, two more djinns converged on one of Elezar's lesser devils who had soared forward into the fray. One methodically countered strokes of crimson with larger bolts of his own, meeting the thrusts of energy head-on and dissipating them harmlessly into the air. The other unleashed his power unimpeded, each stroke blasting asunder a limb or wing.
The prince must withdraw, Astron decided. Elezar's guard demons were too few. Despite their battle lust, they would not prevail against massed lightning djinns in the confines of the rotunda. The prince must retreat to a position where he could direct all the demons at his command-draw Gaspar's minions into separate battles where superior numbers could harry each one singly.
But how to withdraw safely? Astron's thoughts raced. Even though his membranes were down, he had to squint his eyes against the fierce glare as he looked in the direction of the hub. He saw the arcs of energy, his
