"Who are you?"
"Tiern!" cried one, voice thin against the wind. "Let me live!"
But: "Let me live!" cried the other as well.
"I am Tiern!" the first screamed. "That is no one, that is demon!"
The wind roared, drowning out the other's words. "True?" I asked, shouting over the roar. "Demon?"
"Yes!" That was the one who claimed to be Tiern.
"Yes," said the other.
I couldn't let a demon live; even if Tiern's life hadn't been at stake, I'd seen demons' work in the War. And yet—
"If I choose you," I shouted over the wind, "what will you do?"
"What do you think?" That was surely the one who named himself Tiern. "Continue my studies, of course. Hurry, the spell's tearing itself apart! Let me live!"
"And you?" I asked the demon. "What will you do?''
"Learn," it—he?—said, so softly I almost failed to hear.
"Learn what?"
A long pause, while I fought with the wind and the spell and wondered if they were going to tear me apart between them. "Learn what?" I repeated, gasping.
"Peace," the demon said.
"Nonsense!" Tiern shrilled. "It will destroy us!"
The smallest warning rang in my mind. "You can't know that."
"I know!" It was a frantic shout. "I summoned the thing!"
"Live," I said, and closed the spell. The wind whirled me off my feet, and slammed me against the ground, and that was it for me for a time.
My mind slowly cleared. I was lying face down at the edge of the road, chilled to the bone, and a blade of grass was tickling my nose. Muscles complaining, I pushed myself up to my knees, shivering. I'd been unconscious for quite some time, it seemed, for the storm and the night both had passed, and the sky held that dull gray glow that presages morning.
Wait, now! Where—
Ah. A man, clad in clothing such as they wear in Woodedge but blatantly never from that place, was sitting quietly, watching me. His face was olive-skinned, his hair dark as my own; I must have unconsciously shaped him like one of my own race. His eyes were dark, too, and deep with shadows. "Why save me?"
"Of the two, you mean?" I sat back on the grass with a grunt. "Good question, demon. You are the demon, aren't you?"
"I... was."
It was the sort of statement I had been hoping to hear. "But aren't any longer?" I prodded; gods, if I'd made a mistake...