‘The Act of . . . ? No, that text is not known to me.’

‘Ah.’ Styliann felt a surge of pleasure and triumph. ‘And nor, apparently, to your ill-chosen advisers. But let me assure you that you will all feel its effects.’ Styliann terminated the Communion abruptly, shaking off the momentary disorientation.

Not rescinding the Act of Giving was an unsurprising error. Normally, there was no living former Lord from whom to remove the Act and the discovery of its power could be discovered at leisure. Normally.

Styliann smiled and tuned his mind to summon the entire Protector army as was, unfortunately for Dystran, still his right.

Kessarin was a proud man. Selected by his Captain and trusted by his Lord with a task of importance and secrecy. One that would end with a report direct to Tessaya himself.

He ran into the pass with enough oil in the small lantern for a good four hours. The wick was trimmed low and the shutter was clipped across to hide all but the merest chink of light and allow sufficient ventilation. Using the failing light of the sun which shone directly along his path, he moved quickly into the first section of the pass which angled very slightly downwards.

His padded leather shoes made little sound, his small axe was strapped hard to his back and his hands were free to trace the outline of the pass, areas of which he could navigate by touch alone - as any good Paleon scout could. Silence was paramount. Lord Tessaya wanted the guard found without their knowing it, and that was exactly what he would do.

Kessarin smirked as he imagined the march, if it could be termed such, of the guard dispatched into the pass five hours previously. Obviously, there had been some delay in the Xeteskian reaching them but they should have been closing in on the western end of the pass by now, if not actually sitting with Riasu.

Kessarin somehow doubted they had travelled that far. Under the leadership of the disagreeable Pelassar, he expected to find them no further than half an hour in, at their stated meeting point. This was despite very specific instructions to move into the centre of the pass if it proved necessary. In choosing Pelassar to lead the relief guard, Tessaya had made, in Kessarin’s estimation, his only mistake so far. Hardly a grave error and Kessarin would be only too pleased to report back on Pelassar’s slovenly conduct and see him whipped or strung. Either would do fine.

Pelassar was nowhere in evidence at the point where Kessarin had expected him and his thirty men to be. The scout had anticipated hearing the sounds of bone dice clacking off the stone floor, of rough laughter echoing down the pass, and the glow of lanterns and torches illuminating the way unnecessarily for a hundred yards or more.

But there had been no need to slow his pace or cloak his lantern. Surprisingly, Pelassar had moved on. The scout raised his eyebrows and did the same.

Kessarin was a fit man and his pace ate up the pass. At a roughly estimated hour in, his caution slowed him to a fast walk. His lantern, hooded all the way, was pared to a thin strip of light which he shone either at the ground directly in front of him or the wall either side, never directly ahead.

His breathing was controlled and his ears tuned to hear the merest sound but all he picked up was the dripping of water somewhere far away. On it went for perhaps another half an hour, the silence supreme, the light nowhere and no sign at all of Pelassar and his men. It was then that he smelt the blood. Not a strong scent but there all the same, drifting on the breath of a breeze that meandered along the pass.

Kessarin stopped immediately, lantern slide pushed all the way across, darkness complete. He pressed himself against the left-hand wall, thinking. This was an area he knew little of, particularly with no light. He had a vague memory of an opening out to both sides and above but, in truth, couldn’t be sure. He was skilled in the feel of the rock at either end but, in the middle, his knowledge was slight. There hadn’t been time.

He listened closely. Still no sound of Pelassar and his men. No echo of footsteps along the rock walls, no change in the air told of imminent meeting and, straining his eyes along with his ears, no light pushed at the blackness. Just that faint taste of blood. There one breath, gone the next.

Kessarin was, by nature, a calm individual but the silence and the dark were moving in on him. Sounds he knew could not be there whispered in his ear. The cry of a child, the lowing of cattle. All distant, the tricks the mountains above played. He shook his head and forced himself to focus. He had two choices.

He could either report back the silence and the hint of blood in the air or he could move on, knowing Tessaya would be growing impatient, and find out whether his fears were justified.

Actually, it was quite simple. To find favour, he had to go on and hope that Tessaya’s anger would subside as he heard Kessarin’s report. He looked again into the darkness. Here, deep in the pass, no natural light would ever penetrate. He couldn’t even see the wall with his nose touching it. Here, even the slightest chink of light would push back the blackness like a beacon fire. Up ahead then, he could be sure, there was no one.

He moved back the slot of the hooded lantern, aware that the limited air within the glass would soon be gone if he didn’t expose an airhole. The sound was loud in the silence, like pushing open a rusted iron door. Kessarin allowed himself a smile.

With his left hand brushing the wall, he moved forward again, carefully, the light down and to his right, illuminating a slight incline in the passageway. A couple of paces further on, he stepped in a patch of stickiness that slicked across the floor.

He stopped to look, knowing it was blood, and then they simply melted out of the darkness ahead, a pale light gently illuminating their nightmare masks. One grabbed his neck with astonishing swiftness. He dropped the lantern, which shattered on the hard stone floor. He tried to speak but no sound came, his arms thrashing uselessly, his eyes staring wildly, taking in the sea of blank faces which parted to let through a tall man with black hair. Behind him floated a glowing sphere. The face came close.

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You almost had us believing you weren’t there. Almost. Now, you are alone, I take it?’

Kessarin, terrified, managed to nod his head, jaw against the gauntlet of the silent masked man.

‘As I thought.’ His head turned away. ‘Is it full dark outside?’

Another nod.

‘Good. Cil, we have work.’

The hand around Kessarin’s throat tightened and all his dreams of glory fled into the darkness from which he would never return.

The only question that remained was the reception at Understone but the captured scout removed some of the uncertainty. Styliann considered that Tessaya would want to wait for the scout’s report before deciding how heavily to arm his defence. At this stage, Tessaya still had no genuine cause to believe that the Lord of the Mount’s non-appearance was anything other than irritating delay.

Styliann and his Protectors moved quickly, the LightGlobe faint but significant, providing light enough to see a few paces all round. That, combined with the innate sense of the enthralled warriors, was quite enough. In less than two hours, they were approaching the eastern end of the pass. Stopping perhaps four hundred yards from the entrance and hidden by a series of outcrops and shallow bends, Styliann assigned his LightGlobe to Cil, dismounted and cast a CloakedWalk on himself. He could have selected a Protector as the spell’s target but the nuances of the Cloak made its retention far more difficult than a LightGlobe or ShadowWings.