Usara has this theory that belief is the key to aetheric magic. I resolutely thrust all doubts away, summoning instead vivid recollection of Guinalle breaking down that enchanter’s wards when the Elietimm had attacked before. She had sung and I had echoed and we’d confined the bastard’s malevolence with her own, so Ryshad and Temar could cut him in pieces.

“Tur amal es ryal andal zer, fes amal tur ryal suramer.”

The archaic words were all but meaningless but the lilts and rhythms were as familiar as breathing. Was it bred into my bones by Forest blood or simply a memory from distant childhood when my wandering minstrel father had sung me to sleep in a garret room?

I heard Allin, muffled as if she were surrounded by fog and a good way off at that. “Parrail says the pirates have Artifice. We have to stop our spells.”

As she spoke, I felt something brush past me but there nothing to be seen. Guinalle strengthened her grip until my fingers started numbing. She was staring straight through me as she repeated her incantation with biting emphasis. I found myself shuddering with that irresistible shiver old folk call the draught from Poldrion’s cloak. I held Guinalle’s hands as tight as she held mine. I had to believe she could do this or we were both lost. If this was all that stood between the wizards and aetheric magic scouring the wits out of their heads, I’d chant until my tongue dried up.

Allin was shouting orders and I could hear urgent activity all around but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Guinalle’s face. Then the young noblewoman dissolved before me to hang in the air like a shadow. I blinked and Guinalle was there again but the cabin doors behind her, the sterncastle of the ship, Allin, everything else was as insubstantial as smoke. Everything faded to a mist of featureless grey, the Eryngo and everyone aboard a mere trick of my vision like the memory of a candle flame snuffed in a darkened room.

I bit my lip and tasted the metallic tang of blood. I could still hear Allin shouting. I could still smell the rank sweat of my own fear and the charring of the burning Spurdog. I could still feel the deck beneath my feet and Guinalle’s vice-like grip on my hands. I pictured her face, every detail of her dress. She’d got me into this and, Drianon save me, she’d get me out of it or I’d know the reason why.

Colours gathered around the edges of the grey mist, fleeting if I tried to look at them but soon gathering strength and depth. Shapes emerged, hard to make out at first, as my true surroundings overlaid everything I saw like a shadow from Poldrion’s realm.

We were inside the prisoners’ stockade. I would have ripped my hands free of Guinalle but she held me fast. “We’re no more than shades here.” Her words echoed unspoken inside my head and I remembered I’d once vowed I’d rather be raped than feel that unholy intrusion of someone else’s will into my own again.

A gang of pirates slammed open the gates, swords and clubs swinging. Two prisoners too close to the entrance were dragged to their feet, arms twisted cruelly behind their backs. The rest retreated, too scared to run the gauntlet of the pirates, broken in spirit as well as body, their rags of clothes beyond repair. I tried to pick out Parrail or Naldeth among the bruised and filthy huddle.

Three newcomers ran full tilt into the stockade, two men and a woman, none overtall and all within a year or so Temar’s age or Guinalle’s. The woman wore a mossy skirt, the men dun breeches and all were fair enough to pass for Sorgrad’s kinsmen. All wore shirts laced high to the neck but I still caught the unmistakable glint of silver beneath. The only aetheric enchanters who wore gorgets were—

“Elietimm.” Guinalle’s hatred rang inside my head.

The first man clapped rough hands around a prisoner’s head and the captive writhed in the unforgiving grasp. I couldn’t hear his screams but his pain echoed through Guinalle’s enchantment and I felt it like a blow to the back of the head. The enchanter abandoned the man, gripping the next with the same savagery. The man jerked with one convulsive spasm and, again, the agony battered me but the Elietimm tossed him aside in baffled fury.

The woman barked some order and the pirates advanced.

The prisoners scattered in futile terror like penned sheep who’ve just found a wolf in their fold. One lad ran for the gate but two pirates wrestled him to the ground. Seeing him pinned in the suffocating mud, the second Elietimm man laid a hand on the boy’s rancid hair. After an angry shake of his head, the enchanter caught a cudgel from a pirate and smashed the lad’s skull in brutal frustration.

I could see Naldeth and Parrail. Both were trying to keep as many people between themselves and the hunting Elietimm as possible but so was everyone else. It was like watching a flock of geese harried by a pack of dogs. As the prisoners struggled with each other, the weaker stumbled away, easy prey for the waiting pirates. His innate gentleness betraying him, Parrail soon fell victim.

A pirate, his nose rotting from some pox, dragged the lad to the waiting Elietimm woman. The scholar was filthy; shirtless, ribs showing and bruises charting the daily round of brutality. Parrail tripped but the bullying raider wouldn’t let him find his feet, hauling him bodily over the foul ground. He threw Parrail face down before the woman, kneeling on the back of the lad’s legs, pinning his hands behind his back. Parrail twisted his head from side to side, trying in vain to escape the woman’s questing touch.

To my inexpressible delight pain racked her face as soon as she laid a hand on him but her cry only brought her fellow enchanters running.

“Who are you? Where do you come from? Who do you speak to?”

I don’t speak the Elietimm tongue but I heard their harsh demands echoing all around my thoughts, their voices mingled.

“I will not say.” Parrail wrapped himself in defiance.

“Who has taught you?” Fear and hatred tainted the Elietimm’s questions but his skill with Artifice cut Parrail like a knife.

Like the glimpse of a page in a book opened and shut, I saw Mentor Tonin, Parrail’s tutor in distant Vanam.

“You cannot defy us.” Vicious gratification coloured the Elietimm’s chorused thoughts. That instant of unity passed and all three attacked the scholar with ruthless interrogation.

“Who are you?”

“Where are your friends?”

“Who has betrayed Muredarch?”

Was there nothing we could do? I wanted to shake Guinalle by the shoulders, insist she get the lad out of there, do something, anything, but what if I alerted these bastards to our eavesdropping? Fear for myself as well as fear for Parrail soured my throat like bile.

Colourless fire lit the shadows with reality for an instant, the distant stockade fading as I saw the Eryngo more clearly. The sick agony of a broken bone ached in my wrist even thought I knew it wasn’t my injury.

“Curse them!” Guinalle’s bitter words tied me tight to her will again. Vivid once more, I saw the stockade, saw the brutal pirate twisting Parrail’s discoloured forearm this way and that. The lad sobbed, banging his head on the ground, tears streaming from his screwed-up eyes.

All three Elietimm crowded round the boy like buzzards not even waiting for their prey to die. The pirate man scrambled away, plainly terrified of these slightly built strangers. Parrail curled into a helpless ball, cradling his injured arm, knees drawn up, head tucked down, his defiance as futile as a tiggyhog’s.

The Elietimm joined hands and, as plainly as they did, Guinalle and I saw Parrail’s life laid bare. Cherished memories fluttered past me like so many coloured pages torn from a child’s precious chapbook and scattered on the uncaring ground. He’d been a beloved child, all the more when childhood frailties had carried too many of his brothers and sisters to Poldrion’s tender care. His father, humble clerk to a merchant house, had scrimped and saved to send his promising son to Vanam, mother wiping away her tears and consoling herself that such sacrifice was for her darling’s good. No idle student, nor yet a rich one, Parrail had run errands for wealthier scholars to pay his way but even then, going hungry when some tempting scroll or parchment emptied his purse. Mentor Tonin’s pride had warmed the young scholar, bolstering his confidence in his abilities, spurring him on to tease threads of meaning out of the tangle of superstition and garbled litany that was all that the Chaos had left of aetheric lore.