They stood then, close to the centre, studying the strange scars beneath their feet.

A faint wind brushed her face, smelling of dust. She lifted her gaze and gasped.

The Grand Hall was gone. Instead, they occupied a flagstoned clearing, surrounded by tall trees, beneath a sky dull as stained pewter. ‘Warlock…’

Resh was now studying the forest encircling them. His sigh was uneven. ‘I did not think we would be invited.’

‘What makes you so certain that we were?’

He shot her a glance, and then frowned.

‘Is it not more probable,’ she persisted, ‘that we have slipped through? Had we been blessed by Light, we would have been blunted, perhaps even destroyed. But, in turn, we are not her children. Not any more. Evading commitment, even the realm finds itself undecided about us.’

‘An interesting possibility,’ he admitted after a moment.

‘Something in our nature has placed us between worlds,’ she continued. ‘I wonder… is this even Dark?’

‘It must be. The Terondai is aspected.’

‘Aspected?’

‘Magic comes in many flavours,’ he replied. ‘The Terondai is a gate, a portal. It can take us nowhere but into the heart of its power, and that power is Dark.’

‘Then… where is she?’

‘Imagine a realm virtually without limit, captain.’

‘I see little value in a gate that leaves people lost, unable to take their bearings.’ She gestured. ‘Where is her precious Chamber of Night?’

‘Upon our own world,’ Resh said, ‘there may be but one gate, one egress. But what if there are infinite worlds? What if the Terondai leads to countless other gates, each affixed to its own world?’

‘Then we are truly lost, warlock.’

‘But is Mother Dark?’

She scowled. ‘Is this the source of her power? Is this how Draconus made her into a goddess?’

‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

‘Have you learned what you needed to, Resh? Can we now attempt to return to our world? Assuming that is even possible. I am sorely unbalanced by this.’

He studied her in the gloom. ‘Is each aspect of sorcery truly closed from all the others? Does that even make sense? What if those aspects of magic are themselves realms of a sort? Should there not be more gates? Gates that pass between them? From Dark to Light, perhaps, or into Denul, even? If so, then who fashioned these portals? And what of Draconus, who had the power to create such a gate in the Citadel itself? Whence came such knowledge?’

She shook her head, knowing that he expected no answers from her.

‘Captain,’ Resh continued, ‘where is the gate for the Shake?’

‘What?’

‘Or perhaps it does not yet exist. Perhaps it will fall to me to conjure it into being. Or indeed, to both of us.’

‘Me? Better you had brought Caplo! I am a stranger to such magicks!’

‘We are far from done here,’ Resh said. ‘We have taken but the first step on this journey. It falls to us, Finarra Stone, to find the gate of our aspect.’