‘And so, what will you do? Aye, we can march, but it will take months to reach the Aren Plain, and by then Korbolo will have given Tavore all the justification she needs to deliver a ruthless punishment. The rebellion was bloody, but your sister will make what’s already happened seem like a scratch on the backside.’

‘You assume she is my superior, Heboric, don’t you? In tactics—’

‘There’s precedent for how far your sister will go in cruelty, lass,’ he growled. ‘Witness you standing here ...’

‘And there lies my greatest advantage, old man. Tavore believes she will face a desert witch whom she has never met. Ignorance will not sway her contempt for such a creature. Yet I am not ignorant of my enemy ...’

A subtle change had come to the distant roar of the Whirlwind towering behind them. Sha’ik smiled. Heboric’s sense of that change came moments later. He turned. ‘What is happening?’

‘It will not take us months to reach Aren, Heboric. Have you not wondered what the Whirlwind is?’

The ex-priest’s blind eyes widened as he faced that pillar of dust and wind. Sha’ik wondered how the man’s preternatural senses perceived the phenomenon, but his next words made it clear that whatever he saw was true. ‘By the gods, it’s toppling!’

‘Dryjhna’s Warren, Heboric, our whirling road to the south.’

‘Will it take us there in time, Fel— Sha’ik? In time to stop Korbolo Dom’s madness?’

She did not answer, for it was already too late.

As Duiker rode in through the gates, gauntleted hands reached out to grasp the halter and reins, dragging his mare to a stuttering halt. A smaller hand closed on the historian’s wrist, tugging with something like desperation. He looked down, and saw in Nether’s face a sickly dread that poured ice into his veins.

‘To the tower,’ she pleaded. ‘Quickly!’

A strange murmuring was building from Aren’s walls, a sound of darkness that filled the dusty air. Sliding down from the saddle, Duiker felt his heart begin to thunder. Nether’s hand pulled him through the crowd of Garrison Guards and refugees. He felt other hands reach out, touch lightly as if seeking a blessing or conferring one, then slip past.

An arched doorway suddenly yawned before him, leading to a gloomy landing with stone steps rising along the inside of the tower wall. The sound from the city walls was building to a roar, a wordless cry of outrage, horror and anguish. It echoed with mad intent within the tower, and rose in timbre with each step that the warlock and the historian climbed.

On the middle landing she swept him past the T-shaped arrow slits, edging them both behind the pair of bowmen pressed against the narrow windows, then on, up the worn stairs. Neither archer even so much as noticed them.