It’s good to be scared, Lenora thought. That was what Angel had told her. The Mages had always been a formidable presence, but now . . . now they were something so much more. There was something so dreadfully wrong about the exiled Shantasi and his ex-lover that Lenora found it difficult to look directly at them. It was as though light was repelled from their skin. She thought of the shapes she had seen in the vision, those two twisting wraiths aboard the bone boat on a lake of Noreela’s blood, but she shook her head and looked again.

The ground had started to glow beneath the Mages’ hands. The surface was stripped, dust and smaller rocks flitting away as if forced by a strong wind. They stung Lenora’s lower legs but there was nowhere she could go to avoid the rush. She dared not move. This was something she had to see, and she realized now what the Mages were doing: displaying their power to the Krotes assembled here. They could have landed and talked to their warriors, but a discussion of the magic they again possessed was nothing compared to a demonstration.

Lenora stepped back several paces. Her eyes widened, her heart skipped a few beats, and the many wounds on her exposed skin tingled with something approaching excitement. This is when we see, she thought. This is when they really show us what they can do. Already they’ve touched the sky. Now it’s the turn of the ground.

The Mages began to rise from their knees to their feet, hands maintaining contact with the ground as though stuck there, and then slowly they straightened their backs, lifting their hands and seemingly bringing part of the ground with them.

Light burned into the dusk, and each of the Mages’ hands was lifting a column of fluid stone. The ground vibrated as the Mages’ actions upset the balance of the land. Rock growled and crumbled, and strange rainbows were cast in the dust clogging the atmosphere. Angel laughed, and S’Hivez’s muttering became louder, the words revealing themselves as something much less complex than a spell. It’s all coming back, he said, again and again. His voice ground stone together, and then the two Mages turned to face each other and began to work their hands.

Lenora could feel the heat from the molten rock from where she stood, and she saw other Krotes stepping back as their skin stretched and reddened. The Mages began to mold it, twisting their hands here and there, moving their arms through impossible angles, pushing and pulling, prodding with stiffened fingers and picking with long nails, smoothing with palms and nudging with the heels of their hands. And between them something began to take shape. Sharp edges appeared from nowhere; curves hardened; a globe of rock rose up on thin stony stilts. Angel laughed again, and Lenora shivered.