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methods of healing, magical and otherwise, there yet remain three possible remedies to be tried.”
           The Chief Physician, frowning slightly, looked across the table at the Prince. She said: “The first of those would be—as Jord has reminded us—the Sword Woundhealer. Second, the God of Healing, Draffut—if it is possible that he has survived what seems to have been the general destruction visited upon the gods.” The physician paused. “But I confess that I do not know what third possibility Your Highness has in mind.”
           Mark sighed wearily. “At the moment it seems to me not a very practical possibility. I was thinking of the Emperor.”
           “Ah,” said the physician. The syllable emerged from her lips in a way that only a wise old counselor could have uttered it, suggesting a profound play of wisdom without committing her to anything at all.
           Jord had frowned as soon as the name of the Emperor was mentioned. A moment later almost everyone around the table was frowning, but no one spoke. No one really wanted to talk about the Emperor. Most of these folk had accepted the Emperor’s reputed high status more or less on faith, as the basis for granting Mark high birth. That assumption in turn had allowed them to accept him as their Prince. But to most of the world at large, the Emperor, if he was admitted to exist at all, was accorded no status higher than a clown’s, that of a low comedian who figured in a hundred jokes and proverbs.
           Mark took in the reaction of his counselors without surprise. “I have spoken to him,” he told them quietly. “And you have not, any of you. But let that pass for now.”
           At this point Ben shuffled his feet under the table. He might have had something to say. But he went along with his old friend and let it pass.
           The Prince resumed. “Regardless of how helpful the Emperor might be to us in theory, in practice I know of no way to call upon him for his help. Some think that he perished too, eight years ago, with the passing of the gods from human sight and ken. For all I know it may be so.”
           Mark paused for a long look around the table before going on. “From him—who was my father—I have a power that few of you have ever seen in operation. I know not why I have it; there are others, doubtless worthier than I am, who do not. But for the sake of the majority of you, who do not know about this power, or who have heard about it only through some garbled tale, I want to tell you the plain truth now.
           “What I have is the ordering of demons, or rather the ability to raise a shield against their powers, and to cast them out, to a great distance. Yesterday I used this power to drive what I am sure was a demon away from the entrance to the cave.”
           There was a murmuring around the table.
           Mark went on. “Over the last seven years I have repeatedly tried to use the same power for my son’s benefit, but to no avail. Whatever ails him, I am convinced that it is not possession by a demon.”
           There might, Ben supposed in the silence of his own mind, there might exist a demon so terrible, and yet so subtle in its potency, that it could work without being recognized for what it was, and not even the Emperor’s son had power to cast it out. The huge man, who had seen demons at close range, shuddered slightly in the warm sunny room.
           Or, he thought, it might be that the Emperor, from whom Mark’s power derived, was now dead, and all his dependent powers beginning to lose their force. That same thought had probably occurred to others around the table now, but no one wanted to suggest it to the Emperor’s son. Mark was speaking again.
           “…the same objection holds to seeking the help of the Healing God. Draffut is of a different order of being than most of those we called gods—Hermes and Vulcan and so on.