The Twilight herald

'My dear boy, I'm not a white-eye,' Cetarn said, ignoring the look he received from Coran. 'Mass slaughter isn't really my speciality; it requires too much raw magic and not enough subtlety. If you could use those bows to buy us a little time? Thank you.' The fat mage gave an extravagant flourish of the hands, like a street conjurer. 'Now, I've always said a good mage must adapt to his surroundings-'

'No you don't,' Endine coughed from near their feet, determined to find His voice if it meant an opportunity to a

always say, "What's the point of having all this power if I can't bend the very fabric of the Land to my will?'" He gave a very poor imitation of Cetarn's deep voice.

'Oh honestly, I say that once-'

'Gentlemen,' growled King Emin, 'not the time.'

'Of course, your Majesty,' Cetarn said with a quick bow, 'I have let myself be distracted.' He dropped to one knee, his head bowed as though in prayer and his right hand outstretched with his fingers splayed. 'This city has an overabundance of shadows. I'm sure it can spare some for us to employ.'

Doranei turned to see the king's reaction, but he could read nothing. Emin's face was as blank as a Harlequin's mask, lit with daemonic light as he held the wick of a bottle up to a torch and handed that to Goran to hurl at the approaching figures. Doranei followed the path of the bottle until it reached the ground and shattered to spread a pool of flame across the centre of the street. More guards arrived on the barricade, muttering to each other in grim, low tones, but the only sounds Doranei focused on were the hiss of fire and the hushed drone of Cetarn's voice.

Doranei was glad he could not understand Cetarn's spell when he saw the shadows all along the street twist and writhe. The mage's hand jerked in response to the movements, until he gained control over the dark shapes littering the floor and began to move and shape them, the deft strokes of a conductor leading his orchestra, coaxing them up, tugging them out of their hollows and cracks until they rose up through the air.

Doranei could see figures through the shadows, as if looking at them through a wall of smoky glass across the entire street. They moved backwards and forwards, peering at the dark curtain but clearly not seeing through it as Doranei could.

They paced with frustration as their prey was swallowed by the night, before giving up and turning back down the road the Narkang men had used, heading north towards the Farlan. The spell look less than a minute to complete, but by the end, Cetarn was sweating with the effort, and the soldiers were shivering at what he'd accomplished. Endine hammered his palms against Cetarn's fat bicep, a strange look of jubilation on his face.

How long will that bold.'' King Emin asked coolly.

'I wouldn't like to estimate,' Cetarn replied breathlessly.

The king nodded; he knew his mages well enough to recognise 'You should be impressed I managed it at alV

'Will you be able to continue with us?'

Cetarn summoned the strength to look offended at the suggestion. 'I am not the feeble one here, your Majesty. I shall continue as far as these hired thugs you keep as bodyguard.' He clapped Doranei on the shoulder and managed to look defiant once the younger warrior had stiffened his back to take some of Cetarn's weight.

'Ah, sweetness; not war nor famine can raise mountains between us,' purred a voice that sent a prickle down Doranei's spine. Beside him, Cetarn's cheerful expression collapsed. Doranei's nostrils flared automatically, craving the scent of Zhia's heady perfume as though it were a drug. He flinched at the sudden touch of soft fingers on his cheek, but his alarm melted under the force of her smile.

'This is hardly the time for quoting poetry at the boy,' said King Emin as he inclined his head respectfully to Zhia. He was wearing his favourite wide-brimmed hat, instead of the steel helm hanging from his belt. Strangely, he had pushed a tawny owl's feather into the band, rather than something grander, but the significance was lost on Doranei. 'And I've always rather thought Galasara was a self-impor¬tant bore, except for his last laments.'

Zhia raised an eyebrow. '"Poets and kings raise monuments to their own glory,'" she said.

Doranei recognised the quotation by Verliq, the most skilled human mage in history, whose only record was scores of treatises on magic and the nature of the Land.

The king conceded the point with a small smile. 'But for some reason I find myself footing the bill for both.'

Now they were behind the barricade and safe for the moment at least, Doranei took a moment to take in details. The barricade was longer than they had expected, encompassing a large area around the Greengate, including an entire street of houses, the contents doubtless stripped out to be used as building material. The reason for the size became obvious when he looked over towards the Greengate itself, where a great crowd of people huddled, thousands of terrified faces turning to watch the newcomers.

'Refugees?' the king asked, pointing towards the mass.

'Certainly, you didn't think the entire city had gone insane, did you?' Zhia said. 'These are what's left of Scree's population, the ones

untouched by madness. Many are not natives, which tells us some¬thing of the spell used, but not all of them, and I've not exactly had the time to work out the fine detail. Once my brother wipes out the remaining armies outside the gate, we can get these people away. They are i

She was dressed as Doranei had seen her last, that strange com¬bination of white patterned skirts and armour. Doubtless the White Circle had strict views on women fighting with the men, but he remembered Lord Isak saying that their queen had been a white-eye, and, as King Emin delighted in proving, folk imitated their monarch's habits as closely as they could. Strangely, Zhia still wore the shawl of the White Circle clasped about her neck and hanging down over her pearl-detailed cuirass.

Slung across her back was her oddly proportioned sword, a favourite weapon among the Vukotic, he finally recalled his swordmaster saying. Lessons felt like a lifetime ago. Like most of the Brotherhood, Doranei was a soldier's orphan. They were taught basic weapons-skills at the orphanage, and those who showed promise were handed over to the street-gang King Emin had adopted as a training ground for his young bodyguards. It was a strange double-life, mornings of petty theft and ru

Doranei smiled. How much has really changed? Consorting with thieves and murderers one day, kings and princesses the next. The trick is to be able to tell the difference.

'I assume you're chasing the Skull,' Zhia said suddenly, 'but why? You have no ability yourself; why risk so much for a trinket that can, at best, only act as an unpredictable shield for you.'

The king didn't bother to deny the reason he was going south; he knew every mage in the city would have felt the artefact being used in such a reckless ma

'You know which it is?' Zhia's expression grew sharp.

'Lord Isak suspects it is Ruling, and I'm inclined to agree; it is the greatest of them and i(the shadow desires any, it would be that one.'

'And it is worth the risk? Holding a barricade against the mobs is one thing. If they catch you out in the open they'll tear you apart.' Zhia pointed to the south, where an orange glow lit the sky. 'They're being driven by those fires, and however skilled your bodyguards are, they ca