‘We are safe here,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t all understand what we have created but, as you have seen, it keeps the demons at bay and those who try to breach it are easy targets. Remember that because it is as good as our position gets.’

A murmur went round the crowd in front of him.

‘There are things you have to know. And because I need you all if we are to survive, I will not hide anything from you. Outside this spell, we cannot fight them for any length of time. Though they are vulnerable to spells, they will barely be harmed by swords because of the mana in the air and over everything.’

A hand went up. It was a young girl that Heryst recognised. She was attached to the staff of the tower kitchens. In her early twenties, dark-haired and slim-built.

‘Please my Lord, I don’t understand. What are these things?’

Heryst smiled. ‘I’m sorry, yes, let’s start at the beginning. I’ll be brief though so anything you don’t quite get, ask a mage later. Mages, you will answer all these questions. This is no time to feel you are somehow above helping ordinary Lysternans.

‘These demons are from a dimension other than our own. We have had contact with them for many hundreds of years. Enough to know that they covet our land because of its richness and the vitality of life here. Demons need mana in the atmosphere in order to breathe and maintain their natural armour and that is why we are cocooned in the ColdRoom spell. But they live on the life force of other creatures. You’d call that their souls, I guess, and it is as good a word as any. They can drain your soul in an instant or feed off it over the course of years. They can choose to keep you alive while they drain you. It would be a drawn-out death. And we understand that the souls of those they take can be kept in existence in their own dimension, stimulated by pain to pulse out life for years.’

He paused and looked around the room. Tears were running down the cheeks of men and women alike. He saw others shivering. And yet more looking to the edges of the casting, into the corridors beyond the council chamber where demons hovered. A hand was raised. Heryst nodded for the soldier to speak.

‘Can we beat them back?’

Heryst shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I have to say I have my doubts. We can only guess at the numbers they have in the city and beyond. Fighting them one to one is probably not worth it. What we have to do ultimately is find out where they are coming from and literally close the door.’

‘How are we going to do that stuck in here?’ shouted someone.

Heryst held up his hands. ‘Calm, please. That is why we are talking now. Here is what I want us to consider. First, the practical. We have no food, water or latrine facilities and we have to work out ways to get them.’

‘My Lord Heryst,’ said Kayvel. ‘I can partially solve the latter.’

Kayvel’s voice was like a cool breeze over hot skin. Heryst smiled. ‘Then let us hear you. I have managed only to depress people so far.’

A fractional easing of the tension was evidenced by the odd chuckle.

‘The spell’s coverage is a little wider than we thought. It does cover the latrines beyond the north doors. Only just, but it does nonetheless.’

‘Thank you,’ said Heryst. ‘But it isn’t enough for a long-term siege in here. They will fill and we have no way of clearing them. But for now, it is a piece of genuinely good news. As soon as I’ve finished speaking, Kayvel, who I am putting in charge of soldiers and non-mages, will organise a rota. No one is to visit the latrines without an armed guard. Remember, the demons will watch our every move and try to counter it.

‘Right, food and water. We all know where our stores and wells are. The question is, how do we reach them without being taken by the demons? Mages, I need you to work out if it is possible to effect a moving ColdRoom. Kitchen and cleaning staff, identify every place where there is a bucket, a basin, a barrel . . . anything we can use to carry food, water, clothes, bedding up here. Assume we are going to be here for some time while we decide how to strike back. When Kayvel is ready, he will hear what you know.

‘Any questions?’

‘My Lord?’

‘Yes, Oded, speak up,’ said Heryst to the young council mage.

‘Thank you, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Do you think we can expect any help from the outside?’

Heryst noted the concentrated gaze of all present on him. It was a hope to which all had been clinging.

‘No, I don’t think we can,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll come back to why in a moment but before I forget, Oded, I want you to take a team of three and think hard about how we can communicate. I know there is no Communion from within the ColdRoom but consider this. There are strands of mana feeding the ColdRoom construct. Is there any way you can piggyback those to reach the mana spectrum? And if so, what can you do when you get there?

‘Now, back to your question. We don’t yet know where the demons are getting into the Balaian dimension but we were attacked from the north. I suspect Xetesk was the focus. But we have to assume that the demons have attacked all colleges, and other centres of population will no doubt follow in due course. If we’re lucky, mages in all the colleges have gathered together like we have. Elsewhere on Balaia, I fear for our people, I really do.

‘I expect that at some stage the demons will make their plans known. Whoever is leading them in Lystern will come here and want to talk to me. That is when we will perhaps know the extent of what we face. But we have to face facts.

‘The demons control Balaia.’

With a growing sense of incomprehension, Tessaya and the Wesmen had watched the events taking place in the air above Xetesk. They had watched the line being drawn in the sky and had seen the extraordinary creatures spill out of it like entrails from a slit gut. With a collective furrowed brow they witnessed them group up and fly off to all parts of Balaia. None, he noticed, directly towards the Blackthorne Mountains. Tessaya had gathered his men as it became obvious that the threat from Xetesk’s defence had gone in the face of whatever it was that attacked them. He didn’t want any of his people anywhere near it.

Initially, the Wesmen had cheered and sung as the creatures in every possible hue, and on a tide of purest blue light and cold, attacked within the walls. Spells had flashed and flared into the pre-dawn sky. But so quickly, it had quietened. The songs had died in their throats and all they could hear were the occasional shouts of men, the swish of a thousand bodies swooping in the air, and the shuddering sound of Xeteskians screaming and wailing. It was a sound that would live with him for ever. He had heard frightened men before but this was something so much worse. Like the opening of a gulf into unending despair.

He was at a loss. To all intents and purposes, Xetesk’s new enemy had done their work for them. That should have made them an ally. But Tessaya was not about to offer his hand to any of those that he saw and that still emerged from the slit in the sky, scattering through the city and the lands beyond.

Not one of them had shown the slightest bit of interest in the Wesmen gathered outside Xetesk’s college gates. And for that he was glad. Because something was badly astray with what he was seeing. This wasn’t the work of mages. The cold in the air was unnatural and it smelled bad. And there was an evil in the way the creatures moved and attacked, in the way they sounded and in the cries of the Xeteskians as they died, if die they did.

Part of him wanted to remove his men from the area, return to the Heartlands. But in all truth he could not. He refused to turn and run from the new invaders; and indeed felt that would be futile, so fast did they travel. Far more than that though, he was in sight of realising the dream of the Wesmen. To throw down the Towers of Xetesk. Their defiance had been comprehensively broken but what had replaced it was clearly a power of considerable strength.