Spurred into action, Morgan assembled the components of the incant he was trying to create. Into each waiting crucible he dropped the azafris, the powdered bone, a smidgin more this time of shaved urvil. It was a neutral ingredient, a bonding agent. Using susquinel he needed more of it, but not too much more. The balance was delicate. Crucial.

Last of all, he unstoppered the vial of susquinel. The distilled tincture was acrid, viciously stinging his eyes. A glass dropper-rod dipped into it, one miserly drop for each crucible…

The catalytic reaction was almost immediate. Stoppering the vial again, hastily shoving it out of the way, he took a precious moment to calm himself, banish the lingering remnants of his anger, and recall the words of the incant.

“Ravak tokai.”

The glimlit air above the crucibles shivered awake.

“Ravak hinmish.”

He felt a tremor pass through him, waking echoes in his bones.

“Ravak vanteri.”

A change in the atmosphere, like the looming promise of a storm. He held his breath. This moment had been his undoing last time.

But not now. I cannot fail again.

Avidly he stared into the crucibles, feeling the laboured drub of his heart. Watched the azafris and susquinel melt and meld and transmute. Bright blue turned dark green then grew brighter, and brighter again. Astonished, he felt an answering glow beneath his skin, power calling to power. The green substance in the crucibles began to bubble and seethe.

And now he was come to the knife-edge instant of creation, to the calling forth of the recrafted sigil at the heart of his new incant. Once, he’d done this… but the sigils hadn’t held.

They’ll hold this time. They will. They must.

His eyes were burning. Sweat, not susquinel. He dragged his embroidered sleeve across them, heedless of stains. A small part of him wanted to shout down the stairs, shout for Rumm to rouse Lord Danfey and haul the sick old man out of his bed and up to the attic so he could see the kind of mage his son was. Because he knew, he knew, that this time was different. He could feel it, he could taste it.

Slowly, so very slowly, he traced the shape of the sigil onto the shimmering air above the first crucible. Antithetical. Clockwise. The very opposite of what was known. And then he watched, teeth sunk into his lower lip, as the green substance within the crucible spun itself into a thin thread, idly at first and then picking up speed. It spun and spun itself into the air, spun itself into an echo of that slowly traced sigil. Became the sigil, green and glowing, crucible-cradled and strong.

If he smiled any wider his face would tear in two.