But Aly had proven him wrong that day, laughing right along with the others as Arlen gripped his piss-soaked overalls and ran off in tears.

The mind demons held on to that moment, vibrations of pleasure resonating in the air. There is no sweeter taste than humiliation, one thought.

I enjoy rage, another thought, as they watched Arlen take his violent revenge a few weeks later. It is so … primitive.

Arlen felt derision from the demon that held him. Enraging a human is as easy as making a flame drone burn. It is their nature. A more refined taste is anguish.

Suddenly Arlen was eleven, watching again as his father stood frozen behind the porch wards while his mother and Marea were torn to pieces. He tried to scream, but he had neither mouth nor lungs in the between-state.

He felt the demons feeding on his pain, but there was nothing he could do to stop their invasion of his memories. Like children with a bag of honey nuts at the Jongleur’s show, they forced him to relive the night Mery broke with him, riding his shoulders as he wandered the streets of Fort Miln alone at night, raindrops mixing with the tears on his face.

Instead of kicks, the demons tormented him with every secret shame of his life, every failure, every mistake or loss of control. Some were memories that had haunted him all his life, others all but forgotten until the corelings lifted them out of his mind to examine like trinkets in the bazaar.

He was back in Abban’s guest pavilions, trying desperately to pull up his trousers after one of Abban’s unwed daughters ‘accidentally’ walked in on him masturbating. She offered coyly to help, and Arlen did not know what terrified him more, giving his Krasian friend – who had likely orchestrated the event – an excuse to claim offence and force him to take her to wife, or the thought of her laughing at his lack of experience. His erection had vanished in an instant, but in some ways that only made things worse.

He is given a chance to mate and fails, a demon thought, and Arlen’s shame doubled, feeding the demons further.

They continued to dissect his mind, reaching the point when he and Abban stole the map to the lost city of Anoch Sun from Sharik Hora. The mind demons drank deeply of his guilt over the theft, surprising even Arlen with its depth and intensity. He had rationalized the crime at the time, but it never sat well with him, especially because the crime had led to his finding the Spear of Kaji and starting the world down a road it might not be ready for.

Suddenly the coreling princes became deadly serious, delving deeper into his memories, sifting every sight and sound and smell as he examined the map and made his trek through the desert. When he opened the sarcophagus of Kaji, finding the spear, they hissed in his mind.

We must see the place razed, the local mind thought. There may be other secrets locked there.

Agreed, thought the others.

The more they chattered among themselves, seemingly oblivious – or uncaring – of the fact Arlen could hear them, the more the demons became three distinct entities in his mind. The one at the centre of the net who held him prone was older, stronger, having earned his place in the keyward. The others were not subordinates precisely, but they deferred like young men to a greybeard.

Demon manners, Arlen thought, forgetting the pain for an instant.

The local mind demon sensed his amusement and increased the pressure again, jarring Arlen out of lucidity and back to unembraceable agony as they clawed deeper into his mind, consuming Jardir’s betrayal in the Maze.

If this one’s memories are true, the unifier in the south may not yet understand the full power of the artefacts, the local mind thought.

There was assent. With the unifiers dead, the rest of the stock can be contained. We can leave the cursed surface and return to the mind court triumphant.

Only to have the consort claim the victory as his own, the eldest mind thought.

We should kill this one as soon as we are done Knowing him, the youngest ventured, before the consort can feed on his memories. Arlen could sense the treason in the thought, and for a moment all were silent.

With the Queen about to lay, we must offer the consort no advantage, the eldest agreed.

They resumed stripping his memories like tearing pages from a book. There was understanding when Arlen relived the night he tattooed himself, followed by shock and disbelief when, a few weeks later, he began to eat the flesh of demons.

He is unlike the other unifiers. He steals our power for his own.

By accident only, the eldest thought. The secret will die with him.

They continued to stride through his mind, and again there was a vibration of amusement as they witnessed Arlen’s time in the mud with Leesha. Again this one fails at mating!

There was less amusement as they watched the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow, but neither was there great concern. The coreling princes were taking the humans’ measure and finding them wanting.

But they hissed as they watched Arlen and Renna kill the mind that had come for them last new moon. He felt their rage, and – for just an instant – fear as they watched him scatter the defeated mind’s essence by casting it off a path to the Core.

But the feeling was short-lived. The demons resumed their cold search, watching the events of the last few weeks.

The female knows the secret to power, the local mind thought. She must be killed as well.

Arlen, who had thought his own will broken, suddenly felt the strength to resist again. He struggled against the overwhelming press, not seeming to shift it at all, but it was enough for the mind demons to take note.

He cares about her. There was surprise and amusement at the thought.

His anguish upon her death will be exquisite.

A fitting punishment for the trouble he has caused among the stock.

They probed.

His thoughts say she is out in the night even now …

For a moment the pressure eased as their thoughts turned out through the senses of their drones, searching for a sign of a woman with warded flesh, glowing bright with stolen magic.

Renna! Arlen focused all his strength in that instant, not trying to break free, but only to solidify the barest fingertip. The mind that held him kept him from re-forming enough to render his painted wards, but he managed just enough to draw one in the air. He had only a slight spark of power to give, but a spark was all that was required as the crate of thundersticks detonated.

The night sky lit up in a flash of intense heat. Roaring filled the air and the ground shook as trenches collapsed onto the demons digging them. The wave of pressure splintered trees and crumpled field demons like wads of paper.

Trapped by the will of his captors, Arlen was caught in the blast, though it could not harm him in his ethereal state. He tried to ignore the distraction, waiting for what seemed an eternity, but a moment later the link among the demons shattered along with their wardnet.

In that instant of shock, Arlen broke free of the mind that held him and fled down the nearest path. He felt the pull of the Hollow’s wardnet and in an eyeblink was there, Drawing magic like a drowning man breaking the surface would gasp air. Strength washed over him, driving away the pain and despair, but Arlen wasted no time enjoying it. Immediately he leapt skyward, seeking his former captor.

The mind demon, still reeling in shock from the loss of its greatward, was easily spotted by his power – a beacon in the night. His brothers had never left their own greatwards and remained safe, but deferential though they might have been to the elder mind when the odds were in their favour, Arlen knew the demons would not risk themselves to help him. Altruism was as alien a concept to them as love.