“Is pick our ground. An’ choose our opponents,” Cody finished, and grinned at her.

“The most dangerous of them seems to be this Johann,” Fox observed. “He may be a cripple and unable to move, but that has made him all the stronger in magic. No one will be able to approach him.”

“Yes . . .” Giselle said, slowly. “But I don’t have to.”

It was already colder by the time Fox sent his owl out. And through the owl’s eyes they saw there was a mound of snow in the meadow near the abbey that had not been there before. “That’s the frost giant,” Rosa said. “Or it will be. It will take them days to grow the thing, but they have already started the Breath of the Ice Wurm, you can tell by how much colder it is.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, that can work in our favor. There will be a crust of ice on top of the snow by morning that will be thick enough to hold us.”

“Yes, but how’ll we move an’ fight on ice?” Cody asked “I could make snowshoes iffen the snow was still soft—”

“I have just the thing,” Giselle said, instantly, and ran for the rooms that had once been Mother’s, where her things were still stored. She came back with two sets of ice spikes that you could strap onto your boots or shoes. “Here,” she said, giving one set to Cody and one to Rosa. “You’re the two that will need them.”

Cody examined them with interest. “That’ll do’er,” he agreed. “But it’d be best iffen I kin get this bastard under the trees, where th’snow ain’t so deep.”

They had already picked their opponents; Cody wanted the old man, pointing out that the one advantage he had was that he had the same power, but opposite—fire against cold. “An’ he’ll have ’bout used his up, doin’ that there frosty giant an’ the ice breath. So I reckon when it comes t’fightin’, ’lessen he drops them spells, he ain’t gonna hev no more’n me.”

And that was another point of getting their enemies separated. If none of them knew that the others were fighting, they’d have no reason to drop an ongoing work of Great Magic. Such a thing needed too much concentration to put into motion, and there were consequences to breaking a work of Great Magic before it had completed. The power could snap back on you. You could lose control of your Elementals.

“So, I druther hev that there Dieter, but . . .” He looked askance at Rosa. “I ain’t gonna fight you fer ’im. You’ll likely black my eye.”