‘It must be this time. We can hold no longer.’

If they reached the borders of the rip, the remaining defensive net would catch the enemy Brood but Hirad could see they weren’t going to outpace the Naik. He looked left and right, taking in his friends. The mages’ arms held in front of them, palms cupped, their eyes closed, heads thrust back as they built the shape that would close the rip and end the war in the sky. And the warriors, both big men and terrified, holding on to their charges as Hirad did, as much for comfort as to keep them upright.

Closer they came to the rip and closer came the Naik. He could hear their barks, confident and bold, and watched their formation spread slightly to give them maximum breathing arc. In seconds, they would be as much flame as flesh. Sha-Kaan had misjudged fatally. No help was coming.

To Hirad’s top left, the clouds parted, three dozen dragons scorching through, blowing the puff aside. His heart leapt but fell harder. They were Veret, not Kaan. Hirad closed his eyes, waiting for the end knowing he would feel the heat for an instant but not wishing to see it coming.

The Veret raced past the Kaan and drove straight into the unsuspecting Naik, scattering them in a fury of wing and fire. The quick, slim Veret wheeled with incredible agility, each Naik the prey of an overwhelming number of the aquatic dragons.

Sha-Kaan exulted, his wings beat a little quicker and the trio shot the last distance to the rip. He barked the defence net away, banked and circled, Nos and Hyn in close attendance. In front of Hirad, Ilkar spoke words he couldn’t understand, aimed his palms up into the rip and, with a shout that quivered through his whole body, released the spell. Three streaks of visible mana leapt the gap and attached themselves to the edges of the rip, one deep blue, one orange, one yellow. Like grappling ropes, they flailed and arced as the dragons circled, crossing strand over strand, plaiting into a rope of mana that fizzed and bucked, its ends still held by the Raven mages.

Sha-Kaan roared, his cry answered by Nos and Hyn. Around them, the air filled with calls, barks and cries.

‘Ready Hirad!’ called Ilkar.

‘What for?’

‘The ride of your life!’ yelled the Julatsan mage.

The three dragons and their charges stall-turned and plunged into the rip.

Hirad screamed as the rip dragged at them, forcing them inwards. Behind them, the lines of mana lashed at the corridor, attaching everywhere they touched. A noise like thunder in the mountains grew in intensity and, abruptly, Ilkar dismissed his mana line. It whipped up and burrowed into the corridor, sending multicoloured lights fizzing through its grey-flecked brown sides, tearing great rents through to a black void filled with a vicious howling wind.

Ilkar turned and shouted something but it was lost in the tumult. Everywhere, the brown corridor was dissolving and behind them the edges of the rip were collapsing in on themselves, sending down gouts of pressure that washed over the dragons. Sha-Kaan’s body was swatted from side to side, tossed like a bird in a gale.

Hirad leaned in as far as he could, gripping the rope so hard he felt sure he would tear it from its moorings. He would have screamed again but the air was being beaten from his lungs as fast as he could drag it in to feed his quaking body.

Sha-Kaan steadied and beat his wings again. Hirad risked a look behind and saw blackness rushing at them faster than they were flying.

‘Sha-Kaan, faster!’ he pulsed, feeling nothing but a crazed mass of thought in return. The light was fading, the corridor disintegrating all around them. In a few heartbeats they would be swallowed into the nothing of interdimensional space. But a few heartbeats was more than they needed.

They burst into Balaian space, Sha-Kaan banking hard away from the rip and flying even faster perpendicular to the great stain in the sky. Hirad punched the air and whooped in sheer joy.

The Raven were back.

Jayash saw the edges of the rip ripple and the lightning stop flashing in its depths. Out from the darkness came three dragons who angled away as they dropped into view. But he hardly noticed them. Because the rip was tearing all across its surface, black replacing the brown he had come to see almost as normality. The edges fell back on themselves with a speed faster than the eye could follow and then the centre punched out, a huge fist of void washing towards the ground.

He could feel the force as the wind picked at his cloak, sent spirals of dust whipping across the square and pushed his hair into his face.

‘Oh dear Gods,’ he said.

The blackness enveloped the ground.

Hirad looked down at Parve. The centre of the rip punched outwards, deluging the ground beneath with the unimaginable power of interdimensional space. It roared among the buildings and howled across the open spaces, a great blackness tearing at Balaia. And, almost as quickly as it had come, the blackness was gone, sucking back in and disappearing with a detonation that would ring in all their ears for days.

Parve had been swept clean. Barely a stone remained to tell of its ever having been built there, just a patch of blasted rock, strewn with dust and the echo of ages.

‘Dear Gods,’ he whispered.

‘Justice,’ said Ilkar.

‘Not for the noon shade monitors,’ said Hirad.

Ilkar, silent now, looked forward along Sha-Kaan’s neck.

Not pausing, Sha-Kaan himself turned and flew hard for the Blackthorne Mountains.

‘We are heading for the Manse of Septern,’ said Sha-Kaan in answer to Hirad’s unasked question. ‘Your forces fight there. Your enemy must not be allowed to destroy the site; it is precious to the Kaan.’

Darrick felled a Wesman warrior with a savage cut to the chest, feeling the strength surge through him. He bounded on, his warriors and mages at his heels. Spells fell less frequently but with no loss of intensity on the defenceless Wesmen and now he had the Manse attackers in his sights.

‘Army to me!’ he shouted and drove across the open land.

A shudder in the ground flung him to his knees. It was followed by another. He looked up to see most of the battle lines ahead sprawling. The Protectors were up quickly but the Wesmen facing them scrabbled to their feet and backed away.

The walls of the Manse were falling.

A third shudder rocked the ground and the Manse wavered, ruined bricks collapsing backwards, tumbling into a gash in the earth where light flashed and darkness grew. A plume of dust shot high into the sky, followed by a column of darkness that snatched it back, licking at the air and driving back into the ground, the sides of the gash closing with a grating thump.

The Manse was gone.

From the Wesmen, a ragged cheer grew, picked up by voice after voice. Axes flew in the air, warriors embraced and songs of victory ripped from a thousand mouths.

Darrick held up a hand and his men stopped moving. He watched silently as the Protectors, weapons now sheathed, stooped to collect the masks of their dead, picked their way among the fallen and moved away. The Wesmen saw them and backed off, letting them go, as if sensing the passing of something. Or perhaps they were just happy not to be fighting the masked killers any more.

Slowly, the singing died away as more and more of the Wesmen gathered to one side of the now empty battlefield by Septern Manse. It wasn’t over. Victory was not yet theirs. Darrick and his army still faced them, and they weren’t moving.

The two sides watched each other closely, the Wesmen ranks parting to allow a man through to stand at their head. Tessaya.

‘General Darrick!’ he called.

‘Lord Tessaya,’ returned Darrick across the gap of some one hundred yards that now separated the two armies. Any survivors from the Wesmen second line had run to join their kin; at least Darrick wasn’t surrounded but he was outnumbered.