‘Assault troops, as it were,’ supplied Kulgan.
‘It was years before we pieced together that the demons were not coming of their own volition. They were seeking either to escape and hide here, or to conquer at the bidding of false masters …’ He shrugged.
‘One thing,’ said Kulgan. He sighed. ‘I wish Tully were here. He was a wealth of knowledge on all things religious, not just his own order. He could answer this, perhaps?’
‘What?’
Kulgan looked thoughtfully at Pug. ‘Legend says that when a demon enters our realm, unconfined, one that is not summoned by a human and bound, or when a summoned demon escapes his bonds, then an opposing creature of a higher order, called an angel by some, appears somewhere on Midkemia and seeks out that demon. When they meet, they fight, and when one is triumphant,’ Kulgan clapped his hands together, ‘they cancel one another out, returning to their respective realms. But if so many demons have entered Midkemia without summons, where are the opposing angels?’
‘I come seeking answers, and you provide me with another question!’ Pug laughed.
‘Well, then, finish your narrative and I’ll see if there’s something you’ve missed.’
Pug spoke briefly of Nakor and Miranda, omitting their names; Kulgan had briefly met Nakor only days before his death, while Pug’s first wife, Katala, was still alive. He also skipped the complexity of human memories grafted onto demons, merely casting them in the role of improbable demon allies. Given that the demons were being exploited by the Dread, the notion of an intelligent demon allying with humans didn’t seem all that improbable to Kulgan. He finished the narrative with the Pantathian trap and Kulgan sat back.
At last he said, ‘Son?’ His eyes narrowed.
Pug saw that his attempt not to touch on that bit of his history had failed. ‘Years after Katala died, I met someone else. Her name was Miranda. We had two sons. She and my youngest, Caleb, were killed.’ He felt no need to touch upon the subject of the mad necromancer, Leso Varen, also called Sidi, and the demons he had summoned to serve him. ‘Magnus is my older son. He’s quite the prodigy.’
‘Prodigy?’ laughed Kulgan. ‘How old is the “lad”?’
Pug was forced to laugh in turn. ‘Very well. He’s old enough to be a grandfather, but he’s always a boy to me.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘As you were to me. Still,’ he said, ‘you’ve grown to remarkable powers and I judge it safe to assume that since my death you’ve continued to master the magic arts.’
‘I do my best. But I’m at a loss as to how to return home.’
‘I can’t be of any help there, I’m afraid,’ said Kulgan, settling back in his chair as he puffed on his pipe. ‘I’m really not sure why I’m here. Whatever agency snatched me from the brink of death and brought me here at this time must have its reason, but I am ignorant of what it is. Still, one can surmise, can’t one?’
Pug smiled. ‘You used to chide me for leaping to conclusions.’
‘True, but it seems to me there were many different choices as to who met you here to help you, so why me?’
Pug recognized that tone: after more than a few lifetimes, they were once more teacher and student. ‘There is a lesson to learn.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘Given how far you’ve come, I seriously doubt there’s anything I know that you don’t.’ He fixed Pug with the narrow gaze the magician had come to know so well when he was Kulgan’s student. ‘But I may help you to remember something you’ve forgotten.’
‘Such as?’
Kulgan blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘There’s the nub of it.’ He waved around the room. ‘We wouldn’t need all this if it was something easily recalled.’
They chatted for what seemed like an hour when Kulgan tapped out his pipe in a stone tray designed to cradle it and deposit ashes until he could dispose of them. He sat back with a heavy sigh. ‘I am enjoying this, Pug, but I have a feeling creeping up on me, a sort of foreboding. There’s no sense of terror, rather a sense of inevitability. Whatever agency took that tiny little sliver of my life and held it for this meeting ensured that I would be alert and have full command of my faculties, but it’s becoming apparent to me time is running out. We must continue our discussions with more alacrity, Pug.’
‘I’m at a loss to know what it is I’m supposed to remember.’
Kulgan glanced out the window at the failing light. ‘Let us walk, for it appears that a lovely evening is approaching and fresh air might give me that moment of brilliance we sorely require.’
They exited the cottage and began hiking up the gentle path that led to the meadow above. ‘I found myself up there,’ said Pug, pointing to the other side of the meadow.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Kulgan. ‘Let’s go take a look, just in case there is something there you missed on your arrival.’
They crossed the meadow and suddenly Kulgan stopped, tilting his head. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ asked Pug, having only noticed the sound of the breeze in the branches, and the occasional forest noise – a bird call, or an animal moving through the brush.
After a moment, Kulgan said, ‘Nothing.’ He looked sad. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘What?’ asked Pug. ‘You don’t look as if it’s nothing.’
‘It’s just an old man’s imagination, but I thought I heard my name called, from far away.’ He let his voice drop. ‘I thought it was Meecham. Of all those I’ve left behind …’ His voice fell to silence.
‘You were together a very long time,’ Pug said quietly.
‘More than forty years.’ He looked at Pug. ‘What became of him after I died?’
Pug tried to be matter-of-fact. ‘He left Stardock. We never had word of him again. I assumed the memories were just too painful.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘That was so like him. I always joked he’d have to die first, because I’d be reasonable about it, but he’d go off and crawl into a cave like a wounded bear and wait to die.’
‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ said Pug, suddenly feeling guilty for not having done more to locate Kulgan’s companion. He was a franklin, a free man in service, but over the years they had become so much more than master and servant, forging a deeper bond than most Pug had seen. Pug had thought at the time that if it was Meecham’s wish to leave, it wasn’t Pug’s place to stop him. Yet now, all these years later, he wondered if he hadn’t had a duty to Kulgan’s memory at least to keep a watch over the man.
He glanced over and saw Kulgan’s expression and felt, not for the first time, that his old teacher could read his mind. ‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ he repeated softly.
Kulgan nodded. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said in flat tones.
The silence between them highlighted the deep and oddly conflicted emotions Pug had felt since encountering Kulgan. Since his first confrontation with the demon Jakan, ending with Pug lingering at the point of death, he had been cursed with a prophecy, that he would die in futility, after having seen all he loved lost. During the Riftwar he had lost his boyhood friend, Squire Roland, killed by raiders as he tried to protect a herd of cattle. He hadn’t learned of his death until his return from Kelewan, after a dozen years of war were ended.
Since then he had lost the two women he had loved most in the world, and the appearance of the