“I know, I know,” Venette Martain murmured, and patted his cheek. “Don’t mind me, Remmie. I’m weary, and full of dark fancies.”

Moved by the undeniable affection in the woman’s face, her voice, Barl scowled at the workbench. She didn’t want to be moved. She didn’t want to feel sorry for someone whose arrogant selfishness had helped push her towards disaster.

“When will you leave, Mage Lindin?”

Looking up, she saw that Venette Martain was holding fast to her husband’s ring, drawing strength from the memory of the man Morgan had destroyed. Another inconvenient rush of sympathy warmed her. For better or worse, Remmie had stepped into that void. And she didn’t have to like the woman to acknowledge the good she was doing, how hard she was working, and how much worse things would be if she’d not survived.

Or how big a part Remmie plays in giving her the strength she needs to face each day.

“At first light, my lady,” she said. “The sooner Dorana is warded, the sooner we can pour our hearts and souls into its healing.”

Venette Martain closed her eyes, briefly. “You still believe it can be healed?”

“I have to,” she said, after a heart-thudding moment of silence. “For if I didn’t… I couldn’t go on.”

After a night of poorly-snatched sleep, and a plain breakfast, she and Remmie left the College at first light. If he was afraid of travelling by incant, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps it helped that before she took him to their first point of warding, she took herself there, alone, then returned to the College unharmed. She felt ill, of course, afterwards… but whether that was simply her usual travel sickness, or a result of Dorana’s unravelling, she couldn’t tell. She said nothing, only chewed a handful of runip berries, made certain again of the map, the wardstones and her notes in the stout leather satchel slung over her shoulder, took one last look around the mage-misted College grounds—a home of nightmares now, not dreams—wrapped her fingers around his wrist… and recited the incant.

Stepping out of the air into a field on the outskirts of ruined Hoysten hamlet, which sat a stone’s throw from the border with Brantone, Remmie blinked to clear his travel-blurred vision, then gasped.

“I know,” said Barl, following his shocked gaze to the row upon row of tents lined along the Brantish side of the boundary, and the gathered warriors beyond them. “Despite Lady Brislyn’s vivid description, seeing it somehow makes the danger more real.”

The cool morning air rang with the chilling sounds of swords, clashing, and the steady drumming of horses’ hooves as their riders practised killing passes with their lowered spears. Underpinning that, the thock thock thock of arrows striking straw targets.

“If this warding doesn’t work…” said Remmie, sounding strained. “Barl, we have no hope of defending ourselves against them.”