Thirty minutes later, the meeting ended. Furcas stepped back and spread his hands.

"There you have it; The Plan." His intonation gave it a capital letter. "You recorded all of the ingredients?"

Ess nodded, running the pencil down the notes on her notepad.

"And the invocations?"

She nodded again, irritated.

"Then we are set."

"That's it?" said Oz. "That's the great plan?"

"That is it," said Furcas. "Play your parts well, and you will be free."

"Whoa! Just a minute, Sunshine. There are one or two tiny little points need clearing up."

Furcas waved his hand dismissively. "Details."

"Well, pardon me, but they seem to be bloody great details to me."

"You doubt your own competence?"

"Well, just humour me. Let me run over the plan, and see if I've got it right. We can't summon Roath, like we summoned you, because that will give him too much power. Instead, we have to get him to corporealise himself. Then, while he is unfettered by a magic circle, we anoint him with your eau de demon, hoping he doesn't notice, and read out this invocation, while he waits patiently for us to finish, and finally we get him to jump in a bottle."

"Essentially, yes, except for the last. Uttered by such a powerful wizard as you, the last invocation should compel him to enter the bottle." The sarcasm dripped from his voice like algae from a sewer pipe. "Did I say it would be easy? But there are precedents. Other mortals have managed it. Are you not up to the task? Does the wimp have to look for another champion, one with more courage?"

"It's not courage you need, it's a bloody suicide compulsion. As soon as he smells the potion, what do you think he's going to do?"

Furcas shrugged. "Kill you, and your little witch too. The wimp should be relatively safe. After all. Roath will not want the abomination back in the Pit."

"What?" cried Paul. "No! What sort of plan is that? Forget it."

"Consider it forgotten," said Furcas. "I can wait another fifty years, when these two are long dead and you cannot live with the guilt anymore. But when you beg me for help, I will exact a heavy price from you."

"There's got to be another way. One that doesn't involve everyone dying."

"It really all depends on how good your companions are. Roath will not be all-powerful if he corporealises himself. You will not be able to harm him, but his capabilities will be severely restricted. He will not be able to summon his legions. He will not be able to rain fire upon you. He will not even be able to change his form."

"I can hear a 'but' coming," said Oz.

"He will possess super-human strength, and he will be able to invoke spells, if you allow him."

"What sort of spells?" asked Ess.

"Death, disease, madness, paralysis, that sort of thing," said Furcas airily. "But he will have to cast the spells the old way, with word and gesture. Prevent him from doing that, and you will be safe. Relatively safe."

"Fantastic," said Oz. "In the history of plans, this has to rank right up there with General Custer's, 'We'll form a circle and squeeze off a few shots.'"

"I have given you my expertise in the matter. The invocations and potion will work, if you say them correctly and brew the correct formula. The physical sides of things are not in my core skills. I have told you how to rid yourselves of Roath. How you implement that is your area of expertise."

"Spoken like a true consultant," said Paul.

Furcas smiled, and for the first time there appeared to be genuine amusement behind it. "Have you read the sort of contracts consultants negotiate? Where do you think they got the wording from? We own most of them. How else would we grant them their wish of riches? A pot of gold?"

He turned to Oz.

"Now, wizard, you may dismiss me. You will not need to contact me again. I will monitor your progress."

"Piss off, then," said Oz. "Abracadabra, and all that."

Furcas gave Oz a pained look, shrugged and disappeared without warning.

"Do we have a plan B?" asked Paul, to fill the sudden silence.

Oz shook his head. "I'm not sure we have a plan A, to be honest, but Furcas is the only game in town at the moment."

"You're surely not considering going along with that arsehole?" asked Ess. "He is the most obnoxious, offensive person I've ever met. I wouldn't trust him an inch."

"I thought I was the most offensive person you knew," said Oz, affecting a pout. "I shall have to try harder."

Ess dismissed the comment with a wave. "You don't mean it. He did. Seriously, Oz, we need to find another way."

"I'm sorry, my Venus, but I don't have another way. What he said made sense. This Roath does seem to be the root of the problem, and you can't kill a demon. All the time Roath is the boss, Paul is going to be the patsy, or at least, someone like Paul. Short of sending Paul down to the Pit, I can't see a solution beyond Furcas's plan, for want of a better word."

"But you said it yourself. It's suicide," said Paul. He squared his shoulders. "I guess ... I guess I'll just have to do the circle thing with Scarth again, and step inside."

"Don't you dare!" cried Ess. "Don't you even think about it! None of us are going to die, and that's final."

Oz laid a hand on Paul's shoulder. "I'd do what she says, if I were you, chum. There are some fates worse than eternal damnation, and being the luckless victim when Ess throws a wobbler is one of them."

"But this plan of Furcas's is terrible," said Paul.

"Yep. So we will have to see what we can do to tip the scales in our favour. But in the meantime, see that cupboard over there? There's a broom in it. I promised Alf you'd clean the chalk off the floor."

He bent down to retrieve the equipment in the circle.

"Bastard! He finished off the whisky. Okay, chop-chop, my minions. Get this stuff cleared up while I go and change, then I shall introduce you to one of the wonders of the modern world; the Student Union bar, where we shall formulate a plan of attack."