“Gaelin, make sure everyone stays near, and don’t let anyone nod off. Erin, stay with me. I may need your help.”

“Of course.” The minstrel moved forward to confer quietly with the princess. Gaelin snorted impatiently and set about dividing the guards into two-man teams and posting them as watches nearby. It looked as if they would be there for a while.

Without sun or moon, Gaelin had no idea how long they’d been in the Shadow World. The bitter cold numbed his hands and feet and slowly chilled his torso, until he found himself shivering constantly and uncontrollably. To keep his mind from wandering, he continuously circled the hollow, keeping a close eye on the guardsmen who stood watch. The gloom was wearing on them all, deadening their senses and slowing their reactions.

In the hollow itself, Seriene had finished her initial survey of Bannier’s defenses. With a silver powder she kept in a pouch by her belt, she had laboriously scratched grooves and whorls in the dark earth, creating a diagram that surrounded Bannier’s standing stones. As he watched, she finished her first orbit of Bannier’s source and began to embellish her design with various complications. He thought about going over to ask her what she was doing but decided not to – en- chantments could be tricky, and he wouldn’t want to ruin the spell by interrupting her.

After aiding Seriene in her first examination of the site, Erin hovered near the Dieman, waiting for opportunities to be useful. Gaelin knew enough about magic to recognize that some portions of Seriene’s work were best performed with two people, especially the more complicated designs. After checking once again on the guardsmen, he walked over to stand beside Erin. “How is it going?” he asked quietly.

“Seriene’s about halfway done,” Erin replied. “It’s a tedious task, but one that has to be done just right.”

“What exactly is she doing?’

“I don’t understand the details of the enchantment,” said Erin. “Seriene tells me that it’s beyond my skills. If I’m not mistaken, she’s creating a barrier that will stop the flow of mebhaighl into Bannier’s source, sort of like damming a river.

Bannier’s most potent defenses are linked to the source itself, and if she succeeds, they will fall.” Erin watched Seriene for a short while, and added, “She’s a more powerful sorceress than I would have guessed.”

“As strong as Bannier?”

“We’ll soon see.” Erin reached over and grasped Gaelin’s hand. Her fingers felt cold on Gaelin’s, and he realized that with her lighter garb and smaller frame, she must be feeling the chill even more than he was. He undid his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, and she smiled gratefully at him. Suppressing a shiver, she spoke again, gazing off into the darkness. “Listen. About the last two nights… they’ve been wonderful. I can’t stop thinking about you. But I don’t know if it would be fair to you for things to continue as they are. Someday you’ll have to marry. The daughter of a highranking noble, I suppose, or you’ll risk losing everything you’ve been fighting for. Persuading the southern lords to return their loyalty to Mhoried will be difficult enough without the question of a commoner at the Mhor’s side.”

Even though he had been expecting this, Gaelin’s heart wrenched. Thickly, he said, “What do you want to do?”

She considered her words in silence. “I’ll leave, once we finish here. I’ve made a terrible mistake, coming between you and Seriene.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“How can I stay?” she said. “As your mistress? Or would I see you day after day, pretending that I don’t love you?”

“You deserve more than that.”

He struggled to find something else to say, but no words came to him. Erin’s face, pale and radiant in the gloom, made Gaelin’s heart ache. She looked down and held his hand tighter. “I’ll have to leave, then,” she said.

“That day’s not here yet.”

“No, it’s not. But if I wait a few weeks, a few months, maybe a year or two, how much harder will it be?” Erin looked up into his face, but Gaelin couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know if I could stay away from you, knowing that you’re somewhere nearby.” Her eyes softened for a moment, then she stood abruptly and stalked away, shrugging Gaelin’s cloak from her shoulders. He watched her leave, and bowed his head.

At that moment, Seriene struck Bannier’s trap. A brilliant flare of light seared Gaelin’s eyes, leaving colored spots in his sight for a long moment. He blinked his eyes clear, drawing his sword by instinct and whirling to face the black stones in the heart of the hollow. The great column of dark energy seethed and crackled, a leaping pillar of noxious flame that pierced the blank sky like a steel rapier. Not only was it visible again, it was blindingly bright, a beacon that cast weird, dancing shadows over the entire hilltop. Gaelin gaped in awe. The light would be visible for dozens of miles, a beacon that shouted their position to anyone – or anything – nearby.

The column flickered, as a dark band of matter rose along its length, then streaked outward along one of the faint ley lines, arrowing off to the west. A signal to Bannier, he realized.

Seriene lay huddled outside the circle, a frail white doll discarded on the ground. Black energy danced and snapped in cold, lightless arcs all around her. Swallowing his amazement, Gaelin cautiously stepped closer, even though the roaring of the energy hammered at him with tangible force.

“Seriene!” he called. “Seriene! What did you do? How do we stop it?” But his voice was drowned by the shrieking storm of darkness that spouted from the ancient stones. He took another cautious step closer, and then his feet froze to the earth as he saw the true nature of Bannier’s defense.

The unhealthy light of the raging magic was too bright to look at directly, bright enough to throw surging shadows from the dark outlines of the old standing stones. Each of the seven rune-carved pillars was joined to a pool of darkness, and, as Gaelin looked on in horror, the shadows opened. From impenetrable depths of darkness, nightmarish shapes were rising, mist-cloaked wraiths with baleful eyes that exhaled streamers of cold vapor as their hungry maws yawned wide.

The pervasive chill of the Shadow World suddenly became much more acute, as if the shadow things gathered and focused the twisted energies of the place. Gaelin’s heart labored in his chest, trying to pump blood that was growing sluggish.

The first of the shadow creatures stepped free of its prison beneath the earth and silently advanced on Seriene.

Whatever the shadow creatures were, Gaelin suspected that mere swords would not deter them. He prayed Seriene was only stunned and would know of a way to dismiss them.

With a gasp that seared his nose and throat with cold, he broke free of his paralysis and scrambled down the shallow slope to Seriene’s side. He arrived a step ahead of the shadow thing and launched a desperate assault of slashes and cuts, hoping to keep it at bay.

The creature roiled and flowed like living darkness, slithering away from the sword blows just as a patch of shadow might retreat from the advance of a man carrying a torch. As soon as the sword passed, its body returned to its former shape. With inhuman swiftness, it lunged forward and slashed its icy talons across Gaelin’s chest, scoring his breastplate with four long, frosted furrows and sending a tremor of aching cold through his body. He stumbled back, giving ground to the monster’s attack. Around him, he could make out the dim cries of his guards engaging the shadow thing’s companions.

Ducking beneath a wild slash, he leaned forward and ran his sword clean through the shadow’s center of mass, a strike it was unable to completely avoid. There was a curious tugging or resistance on the blade, as if he’d just stabbed a pool of water, and his hand was stung by a searing wave of cold that raced up the sword’s hilt. The creature recoiled as if wounded, and Gaelin followed with a second sword thrust that passed directly between its baleful red eyes. This time, there was a little more resistance, and with a soft, hateful hiss the thing discorporated, dissolving into an inky black vapor that dissipated to the ground. “Aim for their eyes!” he cried.