By his calculations, Styliann should have been with him by now. Indeed, should have been so an hour before. And the men he had sent in to meet and replace Riasu’s guard had not returned as they had been instructed to if the meet was missed.

Admittedly, there were a number of good reasons for any delay. A horse throwing a shoe, lack of organisation at the western end, a longer than expected rest break, his guards deciding to press on through the pass rather than report, Styliann causing difficulties with regard to march conditions, Styliann ensuring the deal he thought he had with Tessaya was watertight, Styliann making extra demands late in the day. Styliann.

Tessaya stopped walking and sat on a flat rock looking south over Understone. The setting sun washed a beautiful pale red light over the town, firing the light cloud cover with anger and shooting its beams to the earth. From his right, the softened sound of hammer and saw drifted on the light breeze. Below and to his left, the door to one of the prison barracks opened and a line of bowed and defeated easterners trudged away for evening exercise, flanked by axe-carrying guards.

Listening to the breeze, he could pick out the sound of voices from all corners of the town, talking, ordering, arguing. In three days the stockade, which already controlled the main east-west trail, would encircle Understone. Then he could begin work on the pass defences, so far neglected.

The small town had sprawled like oil over water in the wake of the Wesmen’s occupation. Gazing across the shallow dip in which Understone’s original buildings lay, Tessaya was greeted by the grey canvas that covered every inch of the gentle southward slope and the plateau to which it led. Standards from a dozen tribes and a hundred minor noble families stood proud above the massed semicircles of tents, each standing around a firepit.

For himself, he had chosen lodging in the inn with his advisors, including Arnoan whom he wished to keep a close eye on. Few of his family were in Understone. His sons fought with Senedai in the north. His brothers were long since dead at the hands of Xetesk’s mages.

He scowled and stood up, straightening his jacket. Styliann. He strode briskly to the western end of the town.

‘I need a scout,’ he demanded of the duty watch Captain.

‘My Lord.’ The brown-bearded Captain hollered a name, the sound booming from the nearby buildings. A man came running from a working party digging a channel for a set of stakes outside the stockade. ‘Kessarin, my Lord.’

Tessaya nodded and turned to the athletically built Wesman who wore pale brown leggings, a shirt and lightweight boots and carried a small single-bladed axe in his belt. He was young and clean-cut, a product of a lesser noble village, no doubt.

‘Can you run?’ asked Tessaya.

‘Yes, my Lord.’ Kessarin nodded vigorously, fear of Tessaya overcome by his eagerness to please.

‘Then go into the pass. Take a hooded lantern but use it sparingly. I need you to find the fools I sent in this afternoon. Do not make contact with anyone. Report directly back to me on your return.’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘Go now.’ Tessaya looked towards the black maw of the pass blending into the deepening shadows. He was loath to stand against Styliann and his dread force but dawn’s first light would force his hand. Kessarin needed to return quickly and the thought that he might not scared Tessaya more than it should.

Styliann, with his close guard around him, relaxed and formed the mana shape for a Communion he would either enjoy immensely or curse forever. The shape, narrow and twisted like a plaited deep blue rope, spiralled away through the rock of the Blackthorne Mountains, seeking one particular mind in Xetesk, a mind which, while suddenly powerful, would be unable to resist Styliann’s casting pressure.

The Communion bridged the divide to Xetesk in an instant, a little smile playing around Styliann’s lips as the spell drifted over the resting minds of hundreds of mages inside the College. They appeared like small ripples in an otherwise still pond, a map of minds that, with care, the skilled and knowledgeable could read.

Styliann searched the random thoughts of sleep for one who would be active, spiking the ripples like splashes from falling rain. He was not hard to find. A man whose rise to power had been respectably swift, his opportunity grasped with both hands on the back of a spectacular spell success and, critically, the absence of the incumbent Lord of the Mount.

Styliann admired the courage of the man but he hated the humiliation and was enraged by the weakness of his own circle. When his rightful position was regained, he would need answers to a great many questions.

The Communion arrowed in, jerking the slumbering mage to a sudden and intensely uncomfortable wakefulness. A token resistance was broken almost immediately.

‘My apologies for the lateness of the hour. My Lord.’ Styliann’s mind-voice was laden with bile.

‘St-Styliann?’ gasped the befuddled mage.

‘Yes, Dystran, Styliann. And close enough to sweep away your poorly formed shield. You should train harder in self-preservation. It might come in useful.’ Styliann had never been forced to take a Communion against his will.

‘Where are you?’ Dystran was fully awake now.

Styliann could feel the anxiety and imagined him fighting to sit upright to look about him, though the Communion held him prone.

‘No need to WardLock your doors,’ said Styliann, voice mocking. ‘Not yet.’

‘What do you want?’ asked the new Lord of the Mount.

‘Apart from the obvious? A little assistance to ensure our inevitable meeting is more amicable than it is likely to be at present.’

‘You’re coming back?’

‘Xetesk is my home,’ Styliann said sharply, comforted by the knowledge that Dystran and his team had given little thought to the possible consequences of their usurpation.

There was a pause. Styliann could feel Dystran’s thoughts roiling in his uneasy mind. How he must wish his advisers could help him now.

‘What is it you want?’ he asked again.

‘Muscle,’ said Styliann. ‘A lot of muscle. To leave Xetesk immediately and head south towards Understone. I will meet them en route.’

‘You’re talking about Protectors?’ Dystran’s thought was disbelieving.

‘Naturally,’ replied Styliann. ‘Calling the Protector army is a right of the Lord of the Mount.’

‘But you are not the Lord of the Mount,’ Dystran’s mind-voice sneered. ‘I am.’

Styliann chuckled. At least the man had some backbone if no conception of what he had done. Following his success with the DimensionConnect, he had been correctly made a Master. But his ill-advised leap to ultimate power would suit no one but his advisers who were no doubt using him as a stalking-horse to gauge College mood and opinion. It was a shame that he couldn’t see it but then they never did. Styliann’s stalking-horse hadn’t.

‘But you will grant me the Protector army nonetheless,’ said Styliann, his tone full of certainty. ‘Perhaps then we can sort out the Mount sensibly when I return.’

‘And if I don’t grant them, perhaps you will not return. Then the situation will have sorted itself out.’

‘Fool.’ Styliann spiked the thought, feeling Dystran’s mind recoil. ‘Do you really think that I have remained Lord for so long just to let an upstart mage like you take my Tower?’ He breathed deep to calm himself. There was something he needed to know. ‘You have been studying the texts of the Stewardship, no doubt?’

‘When there has been time,’ said Dystran.

‘Yes. The pressures are great, are they not?’

Dystran relaxed, Styliann could feel it. ‘Yes. I hope we can discuss them in a civilised manner.’

‘Hmm.’ Styliann paused. ‘You have rescinded the Act of Giving and appropriated it yourself, I trust?’ he asked.