Yet somehow, Noreela won out. The Mages were driven north, out along The Spine, until there was nowhere left to flee. The remnants of their armies commandeered ships and sailed them burning into the unknown. And then magic left the land.

Those pagan priests that survived the fighting had seen firsthand what magic could accomplish in the hands of the Mages. They had had their own close bonds with the machines cruelly broken, and now they were adrift. Nature had betrayed their trust and faith, and their beliefs mutated into an abiding hatred. Slowly, over a few years, the survivors drew together, knowing what had to be done. Magic was gone and it must never return, not while there was even the slightest chance that the Mages could reacquire what they had once ruled, start again where they had left off.

The priests went mad. The Red Monks rose from their madness, feeding upon it and dressing themselves in its color. They became ghosts of the Cataclysmic War, wandering the land, searching for hints of magic’s return. Vowing, with every breath they took, to put it down.

The Monks became something of a myth, fading away into the past in the company of other truths. They hid away in their retreats, keeping watch, and if ever magic was hinted at in the land, they investigated.

These past days, the Red Monks had been sighted all across Noreela.

A FLASH FROM the opposite hillside told Lucien that the time had come.

He shifted his sword and signaled back, and then he saw movement as the other dozen Monks began their descent from the hills into Pavisse. They had encircled the mining town, remaining high up so they would not be spotted, keeping to old sheebok trails and finding concealed places to await the signal to move. This was a much more coordinated effort than their assault on the farming village over the hills. There, Carfallo had gone in on his own instead of awaiting the arrival of his brethren. He had obviously believed that he could take the village singly—and he had—but he had also allowed escapees. Lucien and the other Monks were not concerned at the number of people that had escaped Carfallo’s fury. What they were concerned about was that one of them was Rafe Baburn. They had met at Trengborne as arranged, entered the village quickly when they saw what had happened, stepping past and through the destruction that held little surprise for them. There in the trading square of the village, surrounded by his stiffening victims, they had found Carfallo. Lucien had sworn that he was dead, such were the profusion of arrows and bolts and swords in his body. The dust around and beneath him was blackened, as if a huge bruise were slowly spreading across the ground, and his face was pierced and parted where the shafts had done their damage.