“They’re most vulnerable there!”

He glanced about, trying to get a sense of what was going on. All around him, men cursed and screamed as they fought the shadow monsters. Bull held one at bay with wild, twohanded sweeps of his sword, keeping the creature on the defensive as it deftly avoided the singing blade. Afew feet away, Erin cast a dazzling spell of light that blew a creature into nothingness.

But more were rising from the shadows beneath the standing stones, and already several of Gaelin’s men were down. He growled a curse, not knowing what to do.

“Gaelin, help me.” He looked down in surprise and saw Seriene struggling to stand. He reached down and hauled her to her feet. The princess looked weak and frail, and Gaelin could feel her entire body shaking in cold or exhaustion, but there was fire and fight in her eyes. “You’ll never defeat them all,” she coughed. “They’ll keep coming until they overwhelm you.”

“What do we do?” he shouted.

“Help me finish the spell,” she replied. “When I seal the source, they will vanish.” She pointed at the monoliths across the clearing. “I’ve prepared barriers for all the stones save one.”

He nodded, and half-carried her over to the place she indicated.

Even as he set her down, another of the shadow creatures flowed forward and launched itself at him. Gaelin slashed at it desperately, hoping to keep it away from Seriene.

The entity took advantage of his distraction and sank its freezing talons into his left forearm. With a great cry, he wrenched free and brought his sword down on its head, striking it down, but his arm now hung limp and useless by his side, numbed by the creature’s touch. He tried to shrug it off, but now two more of the monsters were sidling forward, preparing to attack. “Seriene! You’d better hurry!” he called.

Behind him, Seriene chanted the end of her spell, kneeling to scribe a pattern in the ground with her fingertip. She risked a glance up from her work, and found a free moment to snap, “Gaelin, hold them off! I’m almost done.”

Gaelin gave a couple of steps to the shadow things, menacing them with his sword. One flowed smoothly to his right, drawing his point away, while the other quickly slithered around him to the left, trying to get at Seriene. He had only a moment to make up his mind. With a yell, he turned his back on the creature menacing him and struck across his body at the monster that rushed at the princess. His blade caught the creature in the center of its torso, and it disintegrated into the mists and darkness from which it had come. But, before he could return his attention to the other foe, talons of searing cold raked at his face and throat as the creature leapt on his back.

Screaming, Gaelin staggered to his knees, flailing wildly with his sword. The monster’s shadowy claws seemed to pass right through his armor, leaving white patches of frost where the weird substance of its body pierced the plates and mail. Shadow stuff clawed at Gaelin’s heart within his chest.

The cold seized him in a relentless grip, and he sank to the ground.

As his sight reeled and darkened, he caught one last glimpse of Seriene, her face twisted in distress. “Gaelin!” she cried. For a moment, she stood paralyzed, unsure of whether to rush to his aid or finish her spell; then she whirled away and shouted a long invocation in an ancient language. The enchantment rolled melodiously from her tongue, filling the air with its liquid syllables. The diagram that Seriene had scribed around the clearing blazed with silvery light, as the runes and patterns came to life. Instantly, the roaring chaos of energy that raged in the clearing’s center fell silent, fading from view. As the wicked light disappeared, the shadows thrown by the stones died as well, and with them the shadow creatures vanished, hissing in anguish. The thing that clung to Gaelin seemed to dig in its claws one last time, trying to anchor itself to him, but then it faded into nothingness.

His ears rang from the noise, and he blinked to regain his sight. Agony racked his body, but with a herculean effort, he raised himself to his hands and knees. He hoped that his powers of healing were capable of stemming the damage; he felt torn and cold inside, as if he’d been stabbed with an icicle.

“Gaelin! Are you hurt?” Seriene was kneeling beside him, her arms around his shoulders.

“I’ll live,” he coughed. He tried to stand, but his strength failed him and he sagged back to the ground, a trickle of cold blood starting from his mouth.

“ You saved my life,” Seriene whispered. “Gaelin, you could have been killed.” Her face was open with astonishment.

He nodded, and gasped, “I had to, or none of us would have survived. How are the others?” Of the ten guards they’d brought with them, five lay on the ground, unmoving. In the clearing, all was as it had been before – but the brooding menace of the stones was gone, somehow screened or blocked by Seriene’s enchantment. He looked up at Seriene.

“That’s it?” he asked.

Seriene sat back on her heels. “The barrier holds. Bannier has been cut off from the land’s mebhaighl.”

“So he’s helpless?”

“No. He possesses whatever skills and spells he had before and may still be a formidable enemy. But he’s lost access to the most devastating spells he could wield, and as long as my shield holds, he’s no more or less dangerous than any common mage or wizard might be.” She gestured at the stone ring. “It should be safe to enter now.”

Gaelin followed her glance. On the altar at the center of the ring, Ilwyn lay pale and still. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet and advanced toward her, pausing to look back at Seriene before actually setting foot within the ring. She nodded, and he stepped inside, wincing in anticipation. Nothing happened.

In a moment, he was by Ilwyn’s side. The girl was barely breathing, and her skin was so cold that at first Gaelin feared she was dead. With his sword, he cut the ancient iron shackles free and used main strength to bend the manacles enough to slip her ankles and wrists free. The effort made his vision swim, and icy air seared his lungs as he panted for breath. Ilwyn stirred and murmured in her sleep. Gaelin picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the stone ring to his waiting companions. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Forty miles away and across the threshold of eternal night, Bannier rode through a dark vale in the highlands, a dozen of Tuorel’s Iron Guards following him. Tuorel’s camp was two hours behind them, and this high in the hills of Winoene there was little to see except for gray, rock-crowned hillsides and a dense overcast that promised more of Mhoried’s endless rainfalls.

As they rode forward, Bannier carefully scanned the hillsides for signs of the place he remembered, an old goblin barrow where a door to the Shadow World could be easily opened. He was accustomed to shifting himself across the boundary at any point he liked, but the task was much more difficult with a dozen soldiers following him, and he needed to find a weakness in the Shadow’s barriers in order to bring the swordsmen along.

“Where are we going?” A keen-eyed, fierce young knight led the detail that accompanied Bannier. Bannier had already developed a distinct dislike for the man, but there was a chance the Ghoeran soldiers might prove useful. From the scowl on the fellow’s face, Bannier suspected that the Ghoeran reciprocated his sentiments. “We’ve been riding in circles for an hour now.”

“It’s a shortcut,” Bannier replied. “We’d have to ride a day and a half to get to Caer Duirga, but I mean to be there in an hour.”

The Ghoeran barked laughter. “In these hills? Impossible!”

Bannier shook his head, smiling. “You’ll see soon enough, Sir Knight.” More than ever, he regretted the loss of his tower in Shieldhaven. In razing his conjuring chamber, Tuorel’s men had also destroyed his scrying pool. Without his divinations and auguries, Bannier had no idea whether or not Gaelin had started for Caer Duirga, or even if he was coming at all. He felt blinded and helpless, at the mercy of events.