The images before me kept changing, flashing by faster and faster. All of them potential, possible futures. All equally real, equally likely or unlikely. I commanded the Glass to stop, thought for a while, and then told it to show me an image of the Hall, in a future where the family failed to stop the Invaders.

This time, the Hall stood alone and abandoned on an endless blasted plain. No signs of life anywhere, from horizon to horizon, and the cloud-covered sky was empty. Dust fell slowly, endlessly, undisturbed by even the slightest breath of a breeze. No sign of any living thing. Nothing moved. The sky was a dark and sullen purple, like a bruise.

A dead world.

I felt cold. Chilled right down to the bone; to the soul. This was what would happen if the family failed. If I failed.

I told the Glass to show me how this had happened. What the Invaders would do, when they came. Images came and went before me, but I couldn’t understand any of them. It was just too strange, too different, too other. There were great shapes, living things big as mountains, radiating through more than three physical dimensions. Just looking at them made my head hurt, made me feel sick. Time seemed to slow down and speed up, landscapes rose and fell like tides, cities burned and the moon fell out of the sky. People and other living things ran screaming through distorted streets, transforming and mutating into things that shouldn’t have been able to survive, in a rational world. But still they persisted, still horribly alive and aware and suffering. A black sun, huge and awful, dominated a sky set on fire, until suddenly it shattered, blown apart, spitting out the dreadful things that had been gestating inside it.

The strangeness accelerated, until I couldn’t look anymore. I turned away, and suddenly fell sick and shaking to the cold stone floor. Behind me, there were terrible sounds. I yelled for the Glass to stop, my eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking past screwed-up lids. And immediately a blessed silence filled the chapel. When I finally dared to look again, there was nothing in the mirror hovering before me but my own reflection, looking back at me. I looked like hell. I looked like I’d already been through a war, and lost.

I rose slowly to my feet, a cold determination forcing the weakness out of me. I wasn’t going to lose. I couldn’t afford to. I was going to get my help from the future, whatever the cost. Because the alternative was so much worse.

I instructed the Merlin Glass to go as far into the potential futures as necessary, to find me the one descendant best suited to helping me win the war against the Invaders. A warrior, to lead the family into battle. A leader of men, to inspire them. A man who would be everything . . . I was not.