Others? “Dead. All dead.”

“Then you are the last. Hurry, Jatik, for time grows short and my power to hold you weakens quickly. I must know. Did you get in? Did you see the meeting?”

Meeting… what meeting? He struggled. Oh, yes, the meeting. Oh, God! The meeting…

“I—I saw,” he managed. “The Four Lords at Diamond Rock. The Four Lords and the others. Oh, God! The others!”

“Those others—think, Jatik! Hold on a bit more! The others! What were they like?”

“Horrible… Monstrous. They wore the cloaks of men but could not hide from us. They are terrible, Koril, terrible to behold. Spawns of some hell beyond man’s imagination. Slobbering, horrible… Such as they were born in some hellish place far removed from man.”

“The Four Lords—there is an alliance?”

“Yes, yes! Oh, God! You must destroy them, Koril! You must not let them sell man out to such as these! Horrible! You cannot know! I pray to God you never know. Their very sight was enough to drive Latir and Mohar mad.”

“What do they look like, these spawns of hell? Think, Jatik! Hold on!”

“Look like! My mind holds what little it still has by putting that likeness from it. Monstrous… Pulp… Slime… They are evil, Koril! Evil in ways no human can comprehend. They will devour man and then they will devour the Four Lords and us. You must…”

“Jatik! Jatik! Hold on! Just a little more! Jatik! Come back! I need to know… Oh, hell, what’s the use? He’s gone.”

Koril sighed and shook his head, then got up from beside the dead man and looked around his desert domain. The bodies of the two naril still twitched nearby where he had slain them.

He spent the better part of an hour restaging the death scene. Sooner or later he knew that some party from Diamond Rock, even now covering the trail of chase and capture, would happen here, and he wanted to make it absolutely certain that any such party would draw the obvious conclusions. Essential to him was that party’s belief that the naril and Jatik had finally finished each other. They would believe it To get even this far required one of enormous power, and even so, only seeing the dead man’s rainstorm from afar and recognizing it for the signature it was had brought him here. Too late, alas, too late for poor Jatik…