Venette looked past the fountain, across the expanse of the plaza, through more idly drifting mage-mist. Refused to dwell on the dead mages scattered over the cheerful mosaics. If she looked at their faces she had no doubt she’d know some of them. She had no intention of looking. Not now. Perhaps later. Instead, she stared up at the Hall of Knowledge and felt her heart shrivel in despair. Dozens of Morgan’s inhuman creatures perched on its lofty roof and many balconies like diseased, deformed ravens brooding in a tree.

“And so the mages of Dorana are become nothing but carrion-eaters,” Dreen said dully. “I think this is the end of all we have known and loved.”

Though she could easily weep enough tears to make a second fountain, Venette pushed away from the pillar and forced herself to stand straight.

“Enough, Lady Brislyn. Self-pity will not serve us. I am the last surviving member of Dorana’s Council of Mages. You are the head of its General Council. Which means, for better or worse, you and I must lead our people out of this morass.”

Dreen sneered. “Noble sentiments. But unless you stumble across a way to knit together our unravelled magework and destroy those monstrous things—” She pointed a shaking finger at the incanted creatures clinging to the Hall. “—then I fail to see how—”

In a leathery fluttering, in a parody of stooping flight, one by one Morgan’s creations plummeted from their perches to the plaza below. As they stared, bewildered, another creature landed with a soft thud almost at their feet.

“It’s not dead,” Breen said, kneeling beside it. “I think—it seems… entranced.”

Staring down at the thing, revolted, skin crawling, Did I know this mage before Morgan’s meddling? Was this once someone I called my friend? Venette felt instinct stir again.

“This is Barl’s doing. It must be.”

Grunting a little, Dreen pushed to her feet. “If you’re right, it means we’ve been granted a welcome respite.”

“But for how long?” Venette murmured. “Come. We should get back to the Shooting Star. This is no place for the making of difficult decisions.”

They returned to the inn, not stopping to speak with the dribs and drabs of mages who by some miracle had survived the dreadful night to emerge, dazed and shattered, from their hiding places. Their stories would have to be heard, of course… but that could wait.

It took them some time to reach the Shooting Star. The haphazard drifts of mage-mist were increasing, forcing them to detour time and time again. And everywhere they turned, every side-street and alley they hurried along, they saw Morgan’s slumbering beasts… thick as fleas on a cur dog.

Wan and exhausted, changed into fresh silk tunic and trousers, Barl Lindin looked up from the old book she was reading as they entered her brother’s unwarded room.