We have made good time on our journey so far. The weather has favoured us, cold but clear and sunny. If it holds thus, Elimar is only six days' travel from where I stand. Had I prepared a demonline I had been there and returned in moments, but I carry one with me on this journey—one end anchored in my hidden chambers in Verfaren, the other to be set in Elimar when I arrive, to allow a future visit to be swift and untraceable. It will be good to have an escape route to Elimar. I will also establish the return journey, in case I require it, and will fix the "destination" at Verfaren when I re- turn. Demonlines must be established physically at either end and they are not easily erected. Still, though they last for only one use they are worth the price—instant transporta- tion between two places, no matter how distant. Even dragons cannot move so swiftly; and once used the lines disappear and none but the maker knows where the traveller has gone. Well worth the price. One never knows when such a thing might be useful. I believe in being prepared for all eventualities.
I am no closer, as yet, to learning how the dragons might he defeated, but I have collected every reference book from the library at Verfaren and I am reading them through. Surely someone, somewhere, has learned a better way of defeating dragons than risking themselves in combat! The Ring of Seven Circles works, but the worker must be within range of the beast, and when Marik used the one I prepared for him the creatures broke into his mind. I do not wish to take that chance.
I had not known they could do that. I must be more wary in my dealings with them.
First, though, I must heal Marik and learn all that he knows. I cast this very recording spell upon him when he went on his journey to the Dragon Isle, so that every thought, every word, was written as he thought it in a book in my own chambers. That was well, as far as it went, but when his mind broke so did the link. The book finished long before I had intended it to.
Poor fool. He thought, to the very end, that I aided him in his search for his daughter that he might be rid of his pain. He promised her to demons before she was born, in exchange for the making of a Farseer. Marik's incompetence allowed that particular object to be stolen as soon as it was made by Lanen's mother, one Maran Vena, but since the price was never paid the demons put pain into Marik's leg to remind him. The pain would never cease until his firstborn child should be given to the Lords of Hell. Search though he might in the years between, he could never find Maran again, or her child. However, the Powers Below look after their own; he met the daughter by chance last autumn. He intends to give her to the Lords of Hell to pay his debt and so he freed of the pain that has haunted him since that day.
I let him believe that I would assist him in return for the body of his daughter after her soul was taken by the Lords Below. Marik has always been a credulous fool. Let him suffer agonies from now until the end of the world. I need his daughter, whole and unharmed, to fulfill the prophecy spoken by one of our number many long years ago.
The first two lines are yet unclear to me, though I have considered them. I have long wondered if the "breach" refers to the time the dragons left Kolmar, the day the De-monlord defeated so many of them. It has occurred to me that the breach—if it is the one between the Kantri and the Gedri—might already be healed, for I heard from those who accompanied Marik on his journey that his daughter Lanen and her companions were carried to the ship by the dragons themselves. I have no idea what the "two joined in one" might be. However, in the absence of other interpretations, I assume that the lost ones from the past are either the Trelli or the Rakshi, the demons who were banished from this world at the time of the Choice. The Trelli dwindled and died out many long ages since, and there is not one left that could ever live or move again. I therefore assume that the lost ones referred to are the Rakshi, who have no bodies as such and cannot live on their own in this world. It is therefore my task to find a way to provide a body or bodies for at least one of the Rakshasa, that the prophecy may be fulfilled.
However, I have learned much from my research. He who trusts in the power of prophecy without making adequate preparations is at best a fool and at worst a dead fool. I have therefore been quietly ensuring that the children of the Kings of Kolmar have been meeting with dreadful accidents. Many years apart, mind you, and with no trace of any evil-doing, and certainly with no way to trace the deaths of the poor creatures to me. It has been most useful to have Marik's Merchant House at my disposal. Each branch in each town has its own healer and many of them are my own carefully chosen men and women. After all, Healers are accustomed to working with power. It is only a small step from there to working with demons, and if the step is paved thickly enough with silver there are many willing to take it.
As for the healed breach, it is very much in my mind that the greatest threat to my ambition is the Great Dragons, now that they are again aware of us and have made a bond with the one person in the world I require for my purposes. I had thought them all safely out of the way on that island in the west and had left them out of my plans altogether, until Marik's ill-fated quest for the precious lansip leaves that grow there roused them like a stick in an anthill. By all accounts, three people had been carried to the ship by the dragons themselves; carried and protected, by those who before only killed! Until that journey, the heasts had done no more than allow the gathering of lansip—which will grow nowhere else—and kill any who crossed their boundary. Then of a sudden they were become the champions of a hunchbacked old woman, a silver-haired man who came from nowhere, and Marik's long-lost daughter, Lanen. So much the accounts of those who were there had taught me.
I lit my dark lantern and blew out the candles in my summoning chamber. With a swift gesture and a whispered word I locked the door and sealed it against prying eyes. Any could find the door or knock, but should he touch the handle he would forget why he was there and wander away. It was unlikely that anyone would do such a thing, but safe is best.
All perfectly harmless, all done with pure Power untainted by the Rakshasa.
The lantern lit my steps back up the narrow stair to my very sedate College chambers. Once through the hidden door beside the fireplace, I stirred up the fire and sat at my desk. There was much to consider.
The hunchback the dragons favoured was one Rella, a highly placed member of the Silent Service and long an en-emy of mine. When I learned she was on the ship I had arranged to have her killed if she should manage to return from the voyage. A swift knife in the ribs appeared to have, done the deed, but I have had a report in the last few days from the Corli branch of Marik's Merchant House—Rella lived. It appears that Marik's daughter Lanen and the silver-haired stranger had taken the woman to a Hospice and left! her there. The Healers were well-paid enough not to be will-ing to release her until she was fully fit, they would not al-low any of the "visitors" I sent in to see her, and by the time she was healed she was on her guard and gave my men the slip. They had been able to find no trace of her. Pity, really. They had never failed me before. Still, there are always others willing to take on such tasks.