But Kargrin was just a second too late. As Clariel let go, Aziminil jumped high, wrenching the spear from Kargrin’s hands. The creature stumbled against the wall of the hut but then leaped again, a great leap that took her to the next rocky hillock some thirty paces away. There she tore the spear from her body, threw it towards the sea and vanished into the stone like water soaking into sun-parched soil.

‘Blast it!’ roared Kargrin. ‘Gully! Gully! I got it with the spear but I was too slow with the binding! It’s gone into the stone.’

‘I know!’ came an answering shout from Gullaine. ‘I’m following!’

Clariel looked at her bloodied hands, staring at her slashed palms. She was on her knees, but even that felt too hard to maintain, so she let herself slump sideways, landing heavily next to Bel. Her eyes felt weighted with iron, so weary that she could barely keep them open. She looked out at the sun-drenched world sideways, and saw Kargrin’s boots approach and then his face as he crouched by her side.

‘No,’ she muttered. ‘See to Bel. Badly wounded. I’m all right … just my hands …’

But Clariel knew it wasn’t just her hands and she wasn’t all right. Something had changed inside her during the struggle with Aziminil, and in the moment she had let the creature go free. She had let a monster escape, and not only because she could not bear to think of anything sentient imprisoned in such a way.

Kargrin ignored her, quickly rolling her wrists to look at her wounded hands. Seeing they were deep, but not immediately life-threatening, he did turn to Bel.

Clariel watched dully through half-closed eyes, still lying on her side, as bright Charter marks swirled around Kargrin’s fingers. He called them into the air, where they hung like tiny stars. He arranged the suspended marks into a pattern and sent this shining constellation into Bel’s wounded flesh, the marks sinking through the gethre plates of his hauberk, leaving a golden afterglow behind. Nothing happened for a minute, then the broken quarrel started to move, the barbs of the head becoming visible before the point popped out with a quickly stifled gush of bright red blood.

‘Where … where were you?’ croaked Clariel, as Kargrin turned back to her and carefully lifted her hands.

‘We were caught in a spell ourselves,’ Kargrin said, as he began to cast a healing spell upon Clariel. ‘The hunters trapped. It took me a few minutes to even realise we had been diverted to the other side of the Islet, and then longer to break free of the illusion. We are not dealing with any lesser creature, not a Margrue or Hish. This is one of the more powerful entities, though I do not yet know which one. And there was someone helping it, a mortal, probably under its dominion.’