Corinn arrived, crouched. ‘The old man?’ Temper nodded, eyeing the pulsing firestorm; past it, he thought he saw figures retreating into the fog.

‘Doesn’t matter anymore.’

He felt her hand at his shoulder. ‘We have to go. Now.’

‘Corinn – could you shield me from those energies?’

‘What?’

‘Could you cover me?’

Corinn stared, appalled. ‘You’re mad!’

‘Could you!’

Her gaze snapped from him towards the gate, then back again. Temper caught something in her eyes – a glimmer of fight, of spirit – until dread smothered it. She shook her head. ‘Forget it.’

He looked to her vest, to where the bridge and flame sigil would have been pinned.

Corinn caught his gaze and flushed instantly. ‘Damn you! How dare you!’ He watched her, waiting. She sighed, eyed the barrier once more. ‘Maybe – for a moment.’ He nodded, took a long breath, started for the gate. ‘Just one heart-beat!’

Temper continued on. ‘Good enough,’ he muttered, ‘that’s probably all I’ll have.’

He stopped just outside the wash of energies, shielded his eyes. The indistinct shape of the Jaghut flickered just beyond. The barrier appeared thinner, less opaque than before. Temper wished he knew how close it was to collapse, but he’d been asked to step into the gap once more, just as he had for Dassem, and couldn’t refuse.

Lubben came up alongside. He didn’t even turn his head to see what Temper thought of that – his blind side anyway. Temper glanced to Corinn who lifted her arms. She mouthed: a short time.

Temper nodded, adjusted his gauntlets, and eased his shoulders. He slowed his breathing and the pounding of his heart. He shouted to Lubben, ‘In quick. You low, I’ll go high.’

Lubben gave a curt jerk of his head, hefted his axe. Temper straightened his helm.

‘Now!’ Corinn shouted.

Leaping into the curtain of energies, Temper felt his hair singe and his armour heat as if tossed into a furnace. But he remained unscorched, though the barrier’s energy shrilled and churned all around him. The scoured path he walked smoked and hissed beneath his feet. He sensed Lubben by his side.

A bare three steps and he reached the Jaghut. The creature’s struggle to escape the House grounds appeared to have been almost as punishing for it as for Faro. The bronze armour smoked at its shoulders and chest. The fine gilding had run, blackening. But the swords shone even more brightly than before, glowing as if immersed in the fiercest fires.

Temper lunged and swung high. One blade caught a shoulder plate, twisted up and rebounded from the helm. Lubben feinted a low swipe then thrust with the killing-spike on the axe-head.

The Jaghut turned, slipped the thrust, cut Lubben down his shoulder and spine. Lubben jerked down and away from Temper’s side.

They’d failed their first and best chance. In the following fraction of a heartbeat Temper decided on new tactics. He screamed and lunged in what he hoped appeared to be outright berserk fury. After two exchanges the Jaghut believed it – it yielded ground, waiting for Temper’s blind rage to provide an opening. Temper now held the gate’s threshold. The barrier of channelled power snapped away like a door slammed shut.

Temper stopped attacking. He was rewarded by a fraction’s hesitation from his opponent that betrayed a stumble of rhythm. At that instant Temper felt the glow of a gambit’s success along with something more: renewed strength coursing up from the ground through his legs. The leaden weight of exhaustion and pain sloughed from him like a layer of dirt in a cold reviving stream. His fighting calm, the inner peace that had carried him through all the chaos of past battles, settled upon him like an affirmation. He allowed himself a fierce, taut grin.

The Jaghut clashed its blades together, advanced once more. Temper could not see its face, but he imagined its re-evaluation of the duel, and its determination to hack him to pieces for daring to oppose him. The attack rolled against Temper like the slamming waves of a storm. He held the gate, crouching low under the blows like a rock that could not be cracked as the swords rang out. He parried as carefully as he could to spare his own, much lighter, blades. The Jaghut gave him openings but he ignored them, refusing to yield his stance.

Soon Temper realized that here he faced no lethal artistry such as that offered by Surgen or Dassem, swordsmen you could never anticipate because you never lasted long enough to grasp their style. Instead, this was raw power incarnate, like the direct irresistible onslaught of a tidal wave. The Jaghut’s blades smashed the stones to either side, ploughed through the earth.

Temper thought it impossible that he could turn such blows. But something gave him the strength, pouring up from the earth to empower him, and he wondered – was this true Patronage? If so, with whom or what had he entered into service?

The style of the attack changed then, bearing on steadily; the creature had abandoned the quick decisive blow and would grind him down instead. That would take longer, it likely judged, but was more certain. And Temper had to agree with the estimate. He’d already used up the fresh reserve that had come to him like a blessing at the slamming of the gate. He was down to pure blind cussedness and was slowing, tiring. The blades hissed closer and closer. Then stopped.

Temper straightened, startled.

The Jaghut had withdrawn a step. Temper risked a glimpse away. He was alone. Everyone and everything had vanished. Bare, time-rounded hills stretched all around. And the House was no longer a house. A pile of megalithic blocks stood in its place, looking like a tumbled-down cairn. Even the trees and mounds in the yard were gone. The Jaghut stood to one side, helm raised as it gazed to the south-west.

Rainbow lights weaved and shimmered in a clear night sky. A darkened vault of constellations strangely distorted. At the horizon stretched a blue-green glow such as he had once seen at sea, when his ship passed close to the shores of the icebound Fenn Mountains. His breath, he noticed, steamed from his helm like smoke and a dire cold bit at his limbs. Where in Burn’s Wisdom was he?

The Jaghut turned its helm to him and pointed one sword south. ‘They’ve failed,’ it said in perfect Talian.

‘Who failed?’ Temper said, startled to find himself addressed.

The Jaghut spoke as if Temper hadn’t responded. ‘Never rely upon uncertain allies, human. They will always disappoint you.’

Temper reminded himself not to lower his guard. The game had changed to one perhaps even more perilous; he’d heard enough legends and tales of Jaghuts plying subtle arguments and poisoned gifts. Physically, he felt strong. Whatever power’s service he had entered into had found him a vessel sufficient to the task of standing before this being’s onslaught. Perhaps the Jaghut knew it too, and that was why he now found himself here. A change in strategy. He felt the power of its regard like a giant’s hand pushing him back. ‘Do you know who I am, human?’

Temper struggled to find his voice: ‘No.’

‘I am Jhenna. Do you know the name?’

Jhenna? He’d been facing a female all along? ’No.’

‘Truly not?’ It shook its helmed head. ‘How far into ignorance you humans have fallen. I was one of your kind’s teachers long ago. We raised you up out of the muck. Did you know that?’

Temper slapped his clenched hands to his sides to warm them. ‘No.’

‘We were puissant upon the world while your ancestors dressed in hides and squatted in their own filth. We gave you fire! We shielded you from the K’Chain!’

Temper shrugged. He was no scholar, just a soldier.

‘What I am saying, human, is name your price.’

‘What?’

‘What is it you wish? Name anything. Simply stand aside. Nothing in the world of your age lies beyond my reach. Is it rulership you crave? I will carve out a continent-wide kingdom for you. Power? I will instruct you in mysteries entirely forgotten by the practitioners of your age. Riches? The locations of hoards beyond your imagination are known to me. Immortality? I know arts that will inure your flesh against the passage of time. Stand aside and these or anything you desire can be yours. What do you say?’