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touched me in this way!"
    "Mercy, my master!" Kraus cried, cowering upon the floor. "I am but a lowly servant. Please do not
    make me think of such things!"
    "I will tell you, Verchiel," said a voice from across the room.
    Verchiel slowly turned his attention to a dark corner of the classroom, where a large cage of iron washanging from the ceiling, its bars etched with arcane markings. It swayed in the turbulence caused by hisanger. The stranger taken from the monastery in theSerbianMountains peered out from between the ironbars, the expression on his gaunt face intense.
    "Do you care to hear what I have to say?" he asked, his voice a dry whisper.
    "Ah, our prisoner is awake," Verchiel said. "I thought the injuries inflicted by my soldiers would have
    kept you down for far longer than this."
    The prisoner clutched the bars of his cage with dirty hands. "I've endured worse," he said. "Sometimes itis the price one must pay."
    Verchiel's wings closed, retracting beneath the flesh of his bare back. "Indeed," the angel snarled.
    Kraus still cowered upon the floor, head bowed. "You will leave me now," Verchiel said, dismissing thehuman healer. "Take your things and go."
    "Yes, my lord," the blind man said, gathering up the satchel containing his tools of healing and carefully
    feeling his way to the exit.
    "Why do they do it?" the prisoner asked as he watched the healer depart. "What perverse need is satisfied by the degradation we heap upon them? It's a question I've gone round and round with for years."
    "Perhaps we give their mundane lives purpose," Verchiel responded, advancing toward the cage. "Providing them with something that was lacking when they lived among their own kind." Verchiel stopped before the hanging cage and gazed into the eyes of his prisoner. "Or maybe they are just not as intelligent as we think," he said with perverse amusement.
    "And that's reason enough to exploit and abuse them?" the prisoner asked.
    "So be it, if it serves a greater good. They are aiding us in carrying out God's will. They are serving their
    Creator—as well as ours. Can you not think of a more fulfilling purpose?"
    Still dressed in the tattered brown robes of the Serbian monastery, the prisoner sat down with a smile,leaning back against the bars of the cage. "And you seriously have to wonder what it was that struck youdown?" He chuckled, making reference to Verchiel's scars. "Wouldn't think you were that dense, but

    then again ..."
    Verchiel loomed closer, peering through black iron bars. "Please share with me yourthoughts," hewhispered. "I'm eager to hear the perceptions of one such as you—the most renowned of the fallen. Yes,please, what is the Lord God thinking these days?"
    The prisoner casually reached within his robes and withdrew the mouse. Gently, he touched the top of itspointed head with the tip of his finger as it crawled about on his open palm. "That I couldn't tell you,
    Verchiel," he said, looking up as the tiny creature scuttled up the front of his robe to his shoulder. "It'sbeen quite some time since the Creator and I last spoke. But looking at your current condition, I'd haveto guess that He's none too happy with you either."
    And then the prisoner smiled—a smile filled with warmth and love, and so stunningly beautiful. Howcould he not have once been the most favored of God's children?
    Verchiel felt his rage grow, and it took all the self-control he could muster to not reach into the cage andrend his captive limb from limb. "And I am to believe the likes of you"—the Powers' leader growledreaching out to clutch the bars of the cage—"the Prince of Lies?"
    "Touche," the prisoner said, as the mouse explored the top of his head. "But remember," he said with a
    grin, "I have had some experience in these matters."
    chapter three
    Trudging through the wood, in search of his prey, Mufgar, chieftain of the Deheboryn Orisha, knew thathis decision the previous night had been the right one.
    With his primitive