His power spread like a faint, subtle ripple, sweeping over Duiker and the others to encompass the entire clearing. Daylight faded abruptly, replaced by a soft dusk, the dry air suddenly damp and smelling of marshlands.

Ringing the glade like sentinels were cypresses. Mosses hung from branches in curtains, hiding what lay beyond in impenetrable shadow.

Duiker could feel Sormo E’nath’s sorcery like a warm cloak; he had never before felt a power such as this one. Calm and protective, strong yet yielding. He wondered at the Empire’s loss in exterminating these warlocks. An error she’s clearly corrected, though it might well be too late. How many warlocks were lost in truth?

Sormo loosed an ululating cry that echoed as if they stood within a vast cavern.

The next moment the air was alive with icy winds, arriving in warring gusts. Sormo staggered, his eyes now open and widening with alarm. He drew a breath, then visibly recoiled at the taste and Duiker could not blame him. Bestial stench rode the winds, growing fouler by the moment.

Taut violence filled the glade, a sure promise announced in the sudden thrashing of the moss-laden branches. The historian saw a swarming cloud approach Bult from behind and shouted a warning. The Wickan whirled, long-knives in his hands. He screamed as the first of the wasps stung.

‘D’ivers!’ Kulp bellowed, one hand grasping Duiker’s telaba and pulling the historian back to where Sormo stood as if dazed.

Rats scampered over the soft ground, shrilly screaming as they attacked a writhing bundle of snakes.

The historian felt heat on his legs, looked down. Fire ants swarmed him up to his thighs. The heat rose to agony. He screamed.

Swearing, Kulp unleashed his warren in a pulse of power. Shrivelled ants fell from the historian’s legs like dust. The attacking swarm flinched back, the D’ivers retreating.

The rats had overrun the snakes and now closed in on Sormo. The Wickan frowned at them.

Off where Bult crouched slapping futilely at the stinging wasps, liquid fire erupted in a swath, the flames tumbling over the veteran.

Tracking back to the fire’s source, Duiker saw that an enormous demon had entered the clearing. Midnight-skinned and twice the height of a man, the creature voiced a roar of fury and launched a savage attack on a white-furred bear – the glade was alive with D’ivers and Soletaken, the air filled with shrieks and snarls. The demon landed on the bear, driving it to the ground with a snap and crunch of bones. Leaving the animal twitching, the black demon leapt to one side and roared a second time, and this time Duiker heard meaning within it.

‘It’s warning us!’ he shouted at Kulp.

Like a lodestone the demon’s arrival drew the D’ivers and Soletaken. They fought each other in a frenzied rush to attack the creature.

‘We have to get out of here!’ Duiker said. ‘Pull us out, Kulp –now!’

The mage hissed in rage. ‘How? This is Sormo’s ritual, you damned book-grub!’