“That’s only right. Fear is good, Lenora. You remember the first time I touched you, casting out your pain and driving away death on that burning ship? You were filled with fear then also, but it was fear of the Black. I saved you from death to serve me, and you’ve done so well ever since. But you’ve become casual about your fear, as S’Hivez and I have become blasé about our desires. We’ve always wanted magic back with us, but maybe discomfort and pain grew to suit us better. Perhaps we became too used to life as outcasts.” The Mage looked off past Lenora, back the way they had come. “Do you think that’s true, Lenora?”

“No, Mistress. You’ve always been the Mages, with or without magic.”

Angel smiled, and Lenora felt an instant stab of jealousy—she was aware of how she looked with her bald head, scarred body and black teeth—but she cast that aside, shaking her head and silently vowing to serve, for as long as she was alive. And even beyond.

“Lenora,” Angel said, “you never have to lie to me. You’re almost one of us. You came with us out of Noreela three hundred years ago. You think the same way about this bastard place, and you want the same thing. So we’re almost the same . . . except that you don’t have this.” She reached out and touched Lenora’s forehead.

At first, the point of contact burned. And then the sensation changed from heat to one of intense cold, a chill that would freeze air and crack rock, and Lenora’s eyes closed to usher in whatever Angel was giving her.

There was one single image: the death of Noreela. Lenora viewed it at the speed of thought—north to south, east to west, passing over mountains and valleys and plains and finding the same stain on the landscape everywhere: destruction. A city lay in ruins, buildings burnt down and blackened, streets strewn with smoking corpses, waterways polluted with rancid flesh. Farms and villages were equally devastated, their inhabitants laid out in lines and fixed to the land by wooden spikes driven through their chests and stomachs. Some still moved, flapping useless limbs at Lenora as she flitted by above them. An army lay dead on a hillside, muddied armour already rusting beneath the blood that had been blasted and crushed from the thousands of corpses. Carrion creatures ate their fill. Horses wandered aimlessly, their riders taken down and killed, the creatures too tame to fend for themselves. A great river was home to a hundred boats, all of them sunk, all of them filled to their watery brims with naked corpses.