K’azz had them spread out to serve as a rear guard. She could not stop peering over to Cal – just to make certain he really was still with them. What a shock it had been, finding him. The man hadn’t appeared much different, only more careworn than before. Yet she must have changed; she saw the distress of it in his eyes when they embraced. And his shock upon seeing K’azz’s condition couldn’t be hidden from any of them.

‘The others?’ K’azz had asked, and he had replied: ‘Waiting below,’ and that had been the extent of the conversation. Then they fell in together and it was as if nothing had intervened and no time had passed at all – though in truth, nearly two decades had come and gone.

She climbed. Rocks clattered and shifted beneath her ratty broken boots, and she wondered how it could be that so much time could have disappeared without her noticing it. Perhaps, she reflected, that was how lives went by. Long or short, they ran out like sand through your fingers before you could even think of closing your fist; and by then it was too late, and the sands were gone.

A shout snapped her head up. A warning from Blues. She turned, drawing her whipsword all in one motion.

They faced a closing skirmish line of T’lan Imass. Some forty in all. Cal-Brinn had his longsword out, Blues his sticks. K’azz stood with arms crossed.

Two Imass approached from the line. One wore the rotted hide of a northern white bear. Necklaces of bear claws rattled about his withered neck. The other was squat and bore a trim of white hair about its skull, tied with what looked like stones or shells.

‘Stand aside,’ the white bear one whispered, his voice carrying as if he yelled.

‘Remember your manners!’ K’azz answered, startling Shimmer with the sudden new anger in his voice. ‘I would know who speaks!’

The lead one’s features, dried and withered, almost conveyed surprise. He inclined his head in assent. ‘I am Ut’el, of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass. Who is it that knows the old formulas?’

‘Well met, Ut’el. I am K’azz, of the Crimson Guard. Know that we will not allow you to pass.’

‘You will be brushed aside,’ stated the Imass next to Ut’el.

‘You may try,’ K’azz invited.

One of the line advanced, whispering, ‘Enough talk.’ It swung its long chalcedony blade at K’azz, who stepped inside to block the arm, twisting. Bones snapped like dry branches and K’azz took the weapon while kicking down the Imass.

The entire gathering of T’lan Imass became utterly motionless, as did Shimmer, watching but not believing. How could that have happened? How did K’azz do such a thing?

After remaining frozen for a time, Ut’el tilted his ravaged head and whispered in a voice like the wind scouring the rocks: ‘Who are you?’