Melyobar squinted as the image flicked, started to fade, and died. The spy tube’s magic expended, he tossed it aside with an irritable snort. The tube rolled a few feet and disappeared over the rampart’s edge. He snatched another from the table. There were a dozen or so there, each worth the equivalent of a militiaman’s wages for a month.

The catapult unit stood to attention while the Prince fiddled with his spy tube. When the farmhouse was parallel, he raised his sword.

‘Fire!’

The lever was pulled, the arm went up and over with tremendous force. Spinning, the leather ball climbed high, fast. Describing a great arc, it curved down towards the farm building. The people around it started to scatter. Ants running from a boot.

Looking tense, the sorcerer continued muttering, eyes half shut. Melyobar studied the target through the tube. A black dot descending, the missile seemed on a path to take it safely over the farmhouse. The scurrying ants realised this too, and most of them stopped to crane their necks.

When the ball reached a point directly above the roof, and the sorcerer’s chanting came to a pitch, it silently burst. A fraction of a second later a muffled boom reached the palace. A mass of purple vapour hung in the air where the ball had been. Then, like a rain cloud, it began discharging its load. A shower of blue liquid fell, pattering on the thatch, the farmhouse garden and the perplexed spectators. Unaffected by the wind, the cloud kept its position. The drizzle became a downpour. People were running again, hands over their heads, as a blue torrent drenched the entire area.

‘Better,’ Melyobar pronounced. ‘Much better.’

The sorcerer relaxed a little. By the catapult, and on the square, the militiamen allowed themselves a slight ease.

At the farmhouse, the deluge stopped. The cloud dispersed. A few remaining purple wisps quickly melted away.

The Prince beckoned the wizard. ‘That’s more like it! Practice makes perfect, eh? Eh?’

‘Er…yes, Highness. Thank you, Highness.’ He gave an awkward bow.

‘Soon iron out the kinks. Shoulders to the wheel and all that.’

‘We could carry out your wishes more efficiently, Royal

Highness, if we knew your intentions, the aim you have in mind.’ He immediately regretted saying it.

Melyobar’s expression darkened. But not, it turned out, with his infamous fury. He leaned closer, his manner that of a plotter. ‘Suffice it to say…’ He looked to left and right to satisfy himself they were not overheard. ‘Suffice it to say that my work here will lead to the ruination of-’ his voice dropped to a whisper ‘-

the great destroyer

.’

‘I’m sure we all yearn for that outcome, sire.’ He chose his words carefully, aware that conversing with the Prince was like entering a house of glamoured mirrors.

‘The plan is sound,’ Melyobar confided. ‘My father, the King, devised it himself.’

‘Indeed, sire?’ The wizard swallowed. ‘How fortunate for us all that His Majesty’s great wisdom should be brought to bear on the problem.’

‘Quite so. That’s something I often tell him when we talk.’

The sorcerer, aware as anyone that the old King was dead, or as good as, nodded gravely. He strove to think of a suitable platitude to respond with. ‘I trust His Majesty is in good health,’ he returned, desperately.

‘In robust health and excellent spirits. And anxious to assist in destroying the foe.’

‘Capital, sire. The reaper’s days must surely be numbered.’

‘No doubt about it, and today I’ve taken a step towards arming myself against him.’

The wizard stole an oblique glance at the saturated farmhouse. ‘Begging your forgiveness, Highness, but with…

coloured water

?’

Melyobar gave him a knowing wink and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Oh, look. A barn.

Sergeant!

New target!’

‘It’s no good,’ Kutch pleaded. ‘I can’t do this.’

‘You can,’ the mage insisted. ‘Trust me. Concentrate on the exercise and-’

‘I

can’t

! I thought it was a good idea, but now I see you…’

‘Seeing me this way was the whole point, remember? Now forget everything else and focus on the task at hand.’

‘It’s not easy.’

‘Since when was anything to do with the potent art easy? Just try. Will you do that for me?’

‘I…I’ll try.’

‘Good. I suggest we be still for a moment and centre ourselves. Breathe as you’ve been taught.’

Kutch wriggled into a meditative position. Back straight, hands on thighs. He was stiff and fidgety.

‘Relax.’

‘Relaxing’s hard work sometimes,’ the boy grumbled.

A smile crimped the old man’s face, exposing remarkably well-preserved, even teeth. His face was wrinkled and a little weather beaten, and he had a knack of adopting an expression that was simultaneously severe and benevolent. He was Kutch’s late master, Grentor Domex, to a T.

Kutch’s eyes were closed, but his lashes trembled, betraying his tension. The mage let him be.

The room was quiet and softly lit. It was unmistakably a wizard’s den, filled with stone pots and glass jars of herbs and elixirs; ceremonial paraphernalia; ancient books. Everything was in haphazard piles and disordered heaps. There was a temporary air about it that declared its occupant was an itinerant.

When a few minutes had passed, the mage said, ‘Open your eyes.’

The boy did so.

‘Let’s get rid of these, shall we?’ The mage leaned over, took the blinkers dangling from Kutch’s wrist and dropped them on an adjacent table. ‘They’re not needed.’

Kutch nodded, but kept a wary eye on them.

‘We’ll try something different,’ the mage decided. ‘Look over there.’ He pointed to a tall wooden cabinet standing in the middle of the room’s clutter. Its doors were half wire mesh. There were sounds of movement inside, but the mesh was too dense to see what made them. The mage performed a swift hand gesture. The cabinet’s doors swung open. ‘Which is real?’ he challenged.

Three pigeons fluttered out, one black, one white, one grey. They spread their wings and took off. The room was small, and the frenzied birds seemed to fill it. They flew in circles, collided with furniture, pecked at the closed window. The noise they made was deafening.

‘Centre yourself, Kutch!’ the mage called out, oblivious to the racket. ‘Focus, focus!’

Kutch struggled to apply his spotting talent. The constant movement, the shrill cooing, the beating wings, all made his head spin. Loose sheets of parchment swirled in the chaos. An earthenware pot fell from its shelf and burst open, splattering the floor with something gelatinous and bright green.

A vial of sparkly, salmon-coloured powder dropped and shattered next to it. Neither had a particularly pleasant odour.

The mage was unconcerned. ‘You can do it!’ he urged. ‘Have confidence in your master!’

‘You’re not him,’ Kutch announced deliberately, barely making himself heard above the din. ‘He’s dead.’

The mage saw that the boy’s eyes were moist, and sighed. He snapped his fingers. Instantly, silence returned. The pigeons hung motionless in the air, frozen in mid-flight. Two of them, the white and the black, lost their definition. Feathers and flesh dissolved into masses of golden motes. The birds’ shimmering outlines remained for a second, then faded into nonexistence. Another snap of his fingers freed the real pigeon, the grey. It beat its wings and compliantly swooped back into the cabinet. The doors slammed shut behind it.

‘I’m sorry, Kutch,’ the mage began. ‘I…Just a minute.’

He lowered his head. Immediately his features were somehow less certain. They churned, altered, mutated. His flesh took on a pappy, malleable appearance, and flowed like hot candle wax. The image of Kutch’s late master departed. In an instant, a new form emerged.