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The power awoke in her, digging its roots into the stonework of this place, then feeding, cannibalistic, on the ages of magic laid down here when the world was younger. She felt her blood stir and sing with all the borrowed life and youth she had taken into herself. In my dream she gained an audience with the lords of this place, and so shall I.

For a moment the monolithic grip of the place seemed immovable, and she was worried that she might not have enough reserves of strength within herself, for then her only option would be to seek the blood of another. And to lose Gjegevey would be a true tragedy, for he had been one of her very first supporters – since before she had even come to her throne.

But then she had hold of it and she twisted, with little finesse, but drawing upon that strength that she had been given, to make up for all that she had lost.

She felt the Masters of Khanaphes, sensed their slow minds come to a decision, and then they struck—

Che opened her eyes, expecting to find the fight still ongoing, but there was no sound of it. She was not even on the barge.

‘Ah . . .’ She hurt, but it was all inside. She bore no wounds.

At her faint sound, Thalric was kneeling again beside her. ‘Che!’

‘What’s happening?’

‘You tell me! You were . . . it was as though you were sleeping, but I couldn’t wake you.’

She sat up painfully, seeing that they were camped beside the canal: Thalric, Varmen, Skelling and his crew. The crew was two men short, she noticed. ‘We’re . . .’

‘Right up near the border, in so far as there’s a definite “border” at all,’ Thalric confirmed. ‘Che, what in the wastes happened to you?’

‘Thalric, she’s there.’

He opened his mouth to question her, but the pieces fell into place before he had to.

‘She’s seeking the Masters,’ Che told him urgently, as though there was something he could do about it. The world around her now seemed different, but then she realized that it was her senses that had changed. She had become charged with magic, connected to the world’s weave like a spider at the heart of its web, feeling the strands tug and twitch. Not only was she still aware of Seda as a dull and distant ache in her mind, but she felt that, if she could turn her mind just so, then she would be able to sense each and every magician, each ancient site of power across the hills of the Commonweal and beyond, even to the furthest horizon. Her mind remained locked inside her skull, but only just.

‘Thalric, I can . . .’

But an old, familiar taint had just touched the edge of her consciousness, snapping her back to the business at hand.

Is it . . .. is it him . . .?

Pressing on Thalric’s shoulder for purchase, she stood up abruptly, staring wildly about. For a moment there she thought she had caught a glimpse of . . .

Tisamon . . .

Why is it so hard for me to remember what I came here for? Her quest to control her dreams, to know more about the magic that seemed to be engulfing her, that was secondary. She had come to save Tynisa from the spectre of her father. Only now did her roving mind fix on that task again – and only because she sensed the Mantis-kinden’s ghost ahead of them, for the very first time since inside the tombs of Khanaphes.

There was no mistaking the touch. She had carried that twisted presence in her mind for a long time, believing it to be the bitter shade of her lover, Achaeos. Only through the power of the Masters of Khanaphes had the truth come out – and by that time the creature was freed from her. Immediately, Tisamon had set off to find his daughter. In life he had been an intimidating man, a fierce killer whose life was hedged about by an untenably harsh code of conduct that had, in the end, left him no other goal but to seek his own death. Oh, he had been an honourable man, and loyal to a fault, but the spectre that Che had faced seemed to have been pared down, cut away until only that self-destructive slayer remained.

Che reached out, trying to ascertain how far ahead the spectre was, though in truth she was unsure whether such a