He wanted her to rest after the forty-ninth sigil was confirmed, but she couldn’t. How could she? The spreading mage-mist had beaten Dorana to its knees, and all along their borders the warriors of Ranoush and Trindek and Brantone and Manemli and Feen waited with their sharp spears and swords. She could feel Dorana’s time running out, running down like a clock whose central incant was failing.

Besides, she was so weary now that if she stopped, she might never start again.

The warding incant she’d devised contained one hundred and sixty-eight syllables. Three layers of harmonics. Fourteen bridges. Eight reversals. It took the principles of eleven different warding incants she’d found in Morgan’s library and knitted them together with seven the College mages had shown her, and five from the Hall of Knowledge’s archives. With forty-nine sigils to ignite and then bind the incant, the inherent power contained within her creation was more devastating than that of any incant ever before devised. She was mad even to attempt it. Mad to think she could ward an entire country. Mad and arrogant… which, according to Remmie and Arndel and the rest, were her two defining features.

So how could she fail?

Weaving sigil and syllable into an indivisible whole took her another two days and many, many false starts. When at long last she felt the warding incant coalesce, she burst into tears then fainted. But only for a few moments. She woke to find herself on the workroom floor, with Remmie shaking her and shouting.

“Oh, hush,” she croaked, shakily sitting up. “I’m fine. Go and fetch Lady Martain. She’ll want to see this for herself.”

“Rest first,” he said, smoothing the tangled hair from her face. “We’ve waited this long, we can wait a while longer.”

Heart thudding unsteadily against her ribs, she covered his hand with hers. “No, Remmie. We can’t.”

His eyes darkened. “I suppose not,” he said, and pulled back. Levered himself to standing, the strain of the past days making his movements stiff and ungainly, turning him into an old man. “Well… bathe yourself, at least. Find clean clothes, and brush your hair. The state you’re in, Barl, you hardly inspire confidence.”

It was a callous sort of kindness, but she was feeling too bruised, and too grateful, to object. When he returned not quite an hour later, their dire predicament slowing everything down, she’d managed a hasty sponge bath and dragged on a peach-coloured silk tunic that wasn’t too badly the worse for wear.

“Mage Lindin,” said Venette Martain, entering the workroom. “Remmie tells me you’ve succeeded in creating your incant.”