And could find no reason to explain the sigil’s collapse.

Which means what, exactly? That my father is right and there can be no compatible clockwise construction of the energies?

No. He refused to accept that. Reversal of the primary energy conduits was key to his new transmutation incant. An incant that would make Sorvold’s triumph seem paltry child’s play. Only by reversing the natural inclination of the matrix’s coherence could he hope to expand the effect of the transmutation itself. He was seeking to undo nature, after all. No timid tinkering would answer his need.

Perhaps the fault lies in my choice of catalyst. Perhaps azafris does not best serve my purpose.

And that would be unfortunate. Not only had he risked his standing on the Council to procure, by illicitly roundabout means, more than the sanctioned amount of the mineral, he’d been forced to sell his second-best horse to cover the cost. Besides, he was certain that azafris was the key ingredient in his new sigil’s creation. Which could only mean that his error was in combining it with oil of atlar.

Very well. A mistake easily unmade. But if not atlar, then what—

A spit of water on his face. Startled, he looked up to see that the frown of clouds had become a black scowl. Thunder rumbled, shivering the chill, lightless air. Moments later a predatory wind roared through the dense woodland belting the family mansion’s cultivated grounds. Branches whipped, leaves tore, and a few moments after that the neatly tended flowerbeds thrashed beneath the onslaught. Morgan laughed at the elemental savagery, the sudden raw, crackling power surrounding him.

And then the skies opened, pouring water, and he ran. Still laughing.

A simple incant took care of his rain-soaked attire. Returned to his attic workroom, with freshly conjured glimfire banishing the gloom, he again brooded over the question of his elusive new sigil as he took a soft cloth and wiped the three used crucibles clean of failure’s blue smears. With that done, he cleansed them further with a neutralising incant.

Balance. The catalyst and its counter-catalyst must balance. They must clear a path for the energies to combine. To overturn nature, first I must master it.

At length he sighed, and nodded. So. He was ready.

A pinch of precious, dwindling azafris. No oil of atlar this time, but two meagre drops of tilatantin. The stink of it had him recoiling. He paused, then, to make certain his decision wasn’t about to catch fire in his face. When there was no untoward reaction he continued, adding a pinch of powdered bone and finally a shaving of urvil root.

Nothing. Nothing. Then a shiver in each crucible as the catalytic ingredients began to interact.

Morgan closed his eyes, feeling the ecstatic tremble in his blood, that caress of power more seductive than a woman’s touch. Trembling on his tongue, the harmonic syllables he’d devised to bridge the gap between dream and reality. To ignite creation.

“Ravak tokai,” he whispered, slowly dragging his fingertips through the quivering air above the crucibles. “Ravak hinmish. Ravak vant—”