[gjarboni]

Turns out I confused things when I typed in the orders that I’d copied by hand. I hadn’t realized that Kindle had a copy/paste function. Here’s the full text of all of the orders:

You will go directly to the tower and demand to speak to Zilquar.
You will harm no one nor anything at this point.
When Zilquar identifies himself, you must give this canister to him, sealed, unopened, and undisturbed in any manner, and state that you were sent by me , Lenamare.
You will then depart his tower, leaving Zilquar and all that is his or his subjects’ intact and unharmed. This includes all people who work for or are slaves to Zilquar.
You will immediately return to me for further instructions.
You will not deviate from your course to or from the tower in any way. ***
You will do nothing that I have not commanded you.
You are to say nothing to Zilquar that might harm me or mine in any possible manner, indirectly or directly; however you are free to speak as otherwise necessary to carry out this mission

The one that’s interesting is the “You will not deviate from your course to or from the tower in any way”. Later in the book (from Tom’s point of view):

“Since he had three days to do his mission, and the trip was only about twenty-four hours, Tom decided to take a slightly different route back to Lenamare’s. This time he flew further west, since there seemed to be a forest over in that direction, and Tom thought that perhaps a stroll through the woods might be relaxing and calm his nerves.”

Although I am being really picky, but this seems like he’s deviating. I guess the original question I had was, does Tom’s ability to ignore or disobey orders allow us to infer anything about his power level? Does the fact that he is able to kill the guy (disobeying an order) mean he’s greater than a Greater Demon?

[gjarboni]

[quote=Tizzy;1569]He didn’t really fly much off course though, and taking the nap is generally something you could do within the time frame, as long he got back on time.
[/quote]

Not to be super picky, but the the nap is okay even though Lenamare commanded him to [i]immediately[/i] return?

[quote=Tizzy;1569]If he’d really wanted to be sure, Lenamare would have used an actual compulsion spell on top of the longer term bindings to force Tom’s more explicit obedience. Instead he relied on the basic binding between him and Tom to enforce the order. So, yes it was sloppy of Lenamare in dealing with a 4th order. But to be fair, he’d never had a fourth order demon to control before.
[/quote]

That’s very helpful, thanks!

[gjarboni]

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is Tom’s ability to disobey Lenamare’s orders when Lenamare sends him to Zilquar’s tower. The instructions were:

“You will go directly to the tower (false — Tom meanders around, looking at wildlife, etc.)
You will immediately return to me for further instructions (false — Tom takes a nap, kills a guy, flies about randomly)
You will not deviate from your course in any way (see above)
You will do nothing that I have not commanded of you (see above)”

Tom goes to the tower and drops off the cylinder, but other that that he doesn’t follow any of the orders. This makes me think he is something more than a Greater Demon. Or it means Lenamare doesn’t know how to issue instructions or doesn’t know how tightly Greater Demons can be bound.

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