Ace had followed Halogi-Kari down gloomy channels hollowed through the foundations of his citadel. She eyed each shadowed recess in the walls, her imagination peopling the darkness with monsters, poised to strike at her. Somehow, though, Ace knew it was the creature before her who was most dangerous, for all its calm conversation: the stumpy figure with curved horns rising from its misshapen head, and the thick, elephantine blister of its veiny hide. She knew that Halogi-Kari possessed a malevolence greater than any menace that might haunt those thick shadows. Ace felt it in her bones.

And just then she saw the bones of others, scattered around the tunnels. Some large and misshapen, monstrous, others like those of a human, or maybe a large rodent.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Ace whispered.

‘To the heart of my sanctum.’ Halogi-Kari peered back at her, black eyes flashing. ‘You think it primitive, no doubt, as if you tread some ancient castle labyrinth. Stone and bone and crystals for light – what a place, hmm?’ He tittered. ‘And yet, no technology could function down here. Not so close to the energies contained in this space.’

‘Energies?’ Ace frowned. ‘But I can’t feel anything, hear anything.’

‘That is good! It is because you understand those energies – unlike these poor creatures whose remains you see about us. You have felt these energies before and now they do not bother you.’

Ace wanted to shake him, but the incense she’d breathed still tripped up her thoughts before action could be reached. ‘What do you mean, I understand the energies?’

Halogi paused before a huge metal door in the tunnel ahead of them, big as a bank vault’s. ‘You have entered the realm of the Quantum Anvil, have you not?’ He looked back at her. ‘You stand on the precipice of doing so again.’

‘What?’ Ace frowned. ‘But … this isn’t the planet of the Anvil. The gravity’s different, there are too many suns …’

He shivered as if with pleasure, so smug. ‘I have created a quantum borehole into the realm of the Anvil that joins it to my citadel here on Peerie Canto.’

‘But … the Wraiths were trapped there for all time … for every time.’ Ace felt fear balling up deep inside her. ‘You can’t have set them free.’

‘No, indeed, I cannot. Were I to widen the 13 dimensional tunnel that bridges the Quantum Anvil’s realm and our physical universe, the Astingir, the Shadow Proclamation, all the civilised races of the galaxy would rain down hell upon us to shatter that link. But this way …’ Halogi-Kari smiled. ‘Just as a fly can buzz around a room for hours before chancing on the window ajar that leads to freedom, so it is with these poor damaged creatures. Slowly, one by one, a number of Wraiths have found the way through. Do you wish to see? I think that you do.’

‘I do,’ Ace heard herself saying through gritted teeth.