Letting Remmie distract him with a rambling reply, Barl summoned to mind a broad travel incant that would take them to the Shooting Star… if her magework was reliable. If she didn’t kill them instead.

Oh justice, please, don’t let me kill us.

She drew the sigil behind her back, breath held hard, terrified Morgan would feel it. But he seemed drunk on power, on the success of his dreadful incant. The creatures he’d created hissed and shuffled and clicked their talons. Waiting to be commanded. His gaze kept sliding to them and he smiled, as though he were proud. With the sigil drawn and burning she whispered the travel incant in her mind. A shiver. Some resistance. And then the magic caught.

Morgan’s head whipped round. “Barl? Don’t you do it—don’t you leave me—Barl—”

With a despairing cry she leapt for Remmie, who’d not let go of Venette Martain or Lady Brislyn. Venette Martain flung out her hand, fingers desperately reaching. Morgan shouted again. The nearest hideous creature threw its head back and howled, then flapped toward them.

Her hand caught Venette Martain’s… and the antechamber vanished.

Safely hidden in Remmie’s room at the Shooting Star inn, they waited in the darkness, not daring to light a single candle, and listened to the distant screams and the beasting of Elvado. Flinched at the sound of glass breaking, walls buckling, roof tiles falling and smashing to shards. Winced as they felt the burning echoes of mage-mist, encroaching.

“This can’t be happening,” Venette Martain said, yet again, her voice dull and cracked with disbelief. She was slumped on the bed, shivering. She’d not stopped shivering since they stepped out of the Hall. “It simply can’t.”

Remmie leaned against the wall beside his pokey room’s little window, curtain tugged aside far enough for him to see into the narrow side-street that ran behind the inn.

“It’ll be dawn soon,” he said tiredly. “He’ll stop then.”

Seated beside Venette Martain, Lady Brislyn looked up. “How do you know?”

“He’ll be vulnerable in daylight. I think he’ll return to his estate, barricade himself behind the strongest wardings he can contrive… and plan what he means to do next.”

“Well, then.” Her head viciously aching, desperately hoping that the warding they hid behind would hold, Barl dropped into the room’s spindly chair. “I’ll wander out there and pay him a visit.”

Remmie let the curtain drop, then lit his candle so she could see his face. “No. You won’t.”

“Be quiet,” said Lady Brislyn. “If you can’t be a Doranen before you’re her brother, best you not say anything at all.”

Barl looked at him, pretending they were alone, in the cottage. “He won’t hurt me, Remmie. And I’m the only person he’ll listen to.”