Ascended model. I blinked. Hey, I know that one! I quickly moved into position and began.

Wind whirled around Gestamar, lifting sand as though he stood in the midst of a mini-tornado. He unhooked and dropped his belt with the pouches, then snorted heavily as blood burst from his nose in a spray. He bellowed and went completely still, features locked in intense focus. My pulse slammed as I finished the perimeter and ignited it with grove power. I’d never seen a demon arrive with any sort of nosebleed or demon equivalent. Then again, I’d never performed any sort of hostile summoning. I couldn’t even imagine how much effort it had to take to summon a demon so unwilling. Surely whoever it was had to be using multiple summoners, not only for the power, but also to be able to counteract the resistance quickly and effectively.

Mzatal lifted both hands to trace, wind whipping his silk pants around his legs. Gestamar gave a bellow full of pain and released the hold on his wards, as if unable to maintain anymore. The portal formed as soon as he did so, and I watched in numb horror as the arcane tendrils whipped out and around the demon. Gestamar bellowed again, looked to Mzatal and said three words, then let out a horrible reyza scream as the portal enveloped him.

And then he was gone.

The wind died to nothing, and silence fell, broken only by the whisper of falling sand and the sounds of our harsh breathing.

Idris spat a curse and turned back to his diagram, swiftly reworking sigils to ground the power that rebounded through it. Mzatal moved to where Gestamar had been and began laying sigils.

I turned on Idris. “What the hell is a hostile summoning?” I demanded. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“Depends on whether they manage to bind him or not. Fucking insane. Dunno what’ll happen.” He completed the grounding but then moved on to do something else I didn’t recognize at all. “Key now is to lock down any traces here so they don’t get a toehold. Can’t do shit with the summoning itself, but we can make sure the door is closed and locked.”

“Toehold? For what?”

He continued to trace rapidly. The scar on his hand sure as hell didn’t slow him down much. “Sucking info from here while Gestamar is there,” he said. “I know as much about it as you do. Speed lesson from Mzatal in about four sentences.” He jerked his chin toward the lord. “Go over and find anything open and close it down. I’ll finish here.”

I jogged to Mzatal and began closing everything I could. This was shit I knew how to do. My gut clenched at the sight of the belt and pouches—with my letter—on the sand. Gestamar had dropped them when he realized it was a hostile summoning. Jaw tight, I continued to work.

As I completed the final closing, Mzatal sank to one knee, breathing heavily. I staggered a step back, then sat in the sand.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked Mzatal, worried. “Who summoned him?”

A muscle worked in Mzatal’s jaw, and his voice had a slight waver and hesitancy to it. “Tsuneo, Slavin, and Anton. All Katashi’s.”

Those were the three words Gestamar had said before succumbing. He’d told Mzatal who was summoning him. And Tsuneo was the one with the Jesral-mark tattoo.

“With good fortune, Gestamar will shred them,” Mzatal said. “Without it…” He shook his head, hissed softly.

“Without it, what?” I asked, anxious. “What could happen to him?”

“It has been centuries since there has been a hostile summoning. There are many possibilities.” Anger and what sure as hell appeared to be distress flared in Mzatal’s eyes. “Most likely Tsuneo will bind him as long as possible.”

Dismay curled through me. Under normal circumstances, a summoner would dismiss a demon after a few hours, but if a demon was needed for longer, the summoner could adjust the bindings so that the demon could remain a while longer without discomfort. That’s what I’d done for Kehlirik when I summoned him to remove the warding on my aunt’s house. It had taken him over a day to complete it, and even with the readjustment, he’d still seemed debilitated when I finally dismissed him. If there was no summoner to dismiss a demon, they’d return on their own within about a day, but it was highly uncomfortable for the demon, as they “snapped back” to their own world. At least that’s what a nyssor had once patiently explained to me when I was still a fledgling summoner-in-training. Considering how miserable a normal summoning was, the “snap back” had to be truly excruciating.

But to bind an unwilling demon until he could be held no longer? Gooseflesh rippled over me. Not only agonizing for the demon to be held for so long, but the return would be devastating and no doubt put Gestamar out of commission for quite some time.

And that’s what Tsuneo wants. Anger flared at the realization.

Mzatal sank fully to sit, fatigue and stress deeply etched into his features. Faruk approached and handed him a mug of juice which he immediately passed to me, his hand visibly shaking. “Drink,” he murmured.

I took it and drank, but kept my eyes on him. I couldn’t think of any other time that I’d seen him so affected, even when exhausted after retrieving me from Rhyzkahl. “You okay, Boss?” I asked after I downed half the mug.

“My connection to Gestamar is in flux.” He passed a hand over his face. “We are essence-bound, and this is disruptive.”

Turek had told me that he was essence-bound to Szerain. “Is that like the ptarl? The Elder syraza?” I asked.

He frowned slightly, took another mug from Faruk and drank as he considered. “Similar perhaps, though the ptarl have…have always been. An essence bond is a choice.”

My worry deepened. These assholes had to have known how much this would fuck with Mzatal. I had no idea if the Earth faction knew about our plans to retrieve Szerain’s blade, or if the Four Mraztur and Katashi had managed to get word back to Tsuneo and company about all that was going on, but surely this was done with a mind toward putting Mzatal at a disadvantage.

An idea took hold, and I staggered back to my feet. “We’ll summon him back!”

For a variety of reasons, that rescue option hadn’t been a possibility for me when I arrived here, but we had no such limitations on this end. “I may not know much else, but I know how to summon a demon.”

When I moved, Mzatal actually startled with a very un-Mzatal-like reaction, which only deepened my conviction that we had to do something.

“Idris…” He glanced back at the blond young man. “Idris yet holds the strand.” Mzatal gave a nod as if adjusting to the idea of a rescue, yet there remained a bleak cast to him, as if he didn’t dare pin hopes on it. “Yes. Work with Idris.”

“Yeah, Boss. I’ll let you know when we’re set up and ready for you.” I gave Mzatal one last worried look before hurrying over to Idris. Demon realm summonings required partnership between the lord and the summoner, so Mzatal would have to get his act together for that. The world swam briefly, and I scowled, wishing I hadn’t given that pint to the other ritual.

“Idris,” I began, then grinned. He’d heard me and was already rapidly tracing sigils, his mouth set in a hard line. I moved to the other side of the new diagram, then hesitated. I knew damn well how to create the pattern for a summoning—in two-dimensional chalk sigils. And I knew how to create floaters, but not the specific ones for a summoning diagram. Even if we hadn’t been on sand—rendering my usual chalk-and-blood method utterly impossible—the past several weeks of training had shown me with stunning clarity how superior the arcane-only method was. And I had no doubt that we were going to need every possible edge if we were to have any hope of snatching Gestamar back.

Only problem was that converting a two-dimensional chalk sigil to a three-dimensional floater was a brain-melting exercise.

No, don’t try and convert, I decided. Think of what each sigil is supposed to do and then craft the damn thing. Beginning slowly, I went back to the purest basics of how to structure a summoning circle and began tracing. Idris worked rapidly on the other side, but I did my best to ignore him and not let his speed and skill affect my own efforts. I knew what I was doing. I simply had to adjust to expressing it in a different format. Like sculpting instead of drawing.

By the fifth sigil I had a better feel for how each tracing had to be formed. On the tenth the proverbial light bulb went on, and I saw how to do the conversion from two to three dimensions. Breathing a sigh of relief, I picked up speed and managed to finish the perimeter as Idris started in on the conduit parameters.

“Idris,” I said, starting the outer veils. “Do a linear pull in that section and link it to the main conduit vertices. Easier flow that way.” I’d figured that trick out almost by accident, during the summoning of a zrila, when the polarity shifted and threatened to turn me into a bloody lump. “Trust me,” I added, with a glance at Idris. He was a fucking genius when it came to this stuff, but at the same time, I’d been doing Earth-side summonings for over a decade. Sometimes real world experience made all the difference.

To my relief he simply nodded and complied, raising my estimation of him another zillion degrees. Not a cocky bone in his body. After all this shit was over, I was damn well going to find him a girlfriend, because he sure as shit deserved, and needed, one.

I flicked a quick glance at Mzatal. He still sat in the sand near where Gestamar had disappeared. Worry deepening, I returned my attention to the diagram and put the finishing touches on the foundation. All told it had probably taken Idris and me about fifteen minutes to trace it out and set it up. I could so get used to doing all my Earth work in the arcane tracings. Watch out, shikvihr, I’m coming for your ass as soon as I get that stupid knife.

“Okay, Idris,” I said after a quick assessment of the diagram. “You ready?” This would work. It had to work. Surely those fucktards hadn’t even remotely suspected that two summoners and a lord were right beside Gestamar when he was summoned, ready to snatch him back.