“Two thousand and six, precisely,” she said loftily.

I scowled. “And how many of those would help us get out of here?”

“Exactly zero,” she replied. “The first spell Mahishasura got me to cast for him was one to prevent me from casting any others inside Lalith Mahal without his permission.”

So we would have to get out of here the old-fashioned way.

We crept away from the dark, damp cells and found ourselves at the top of a long flight of stone spiral stairs. We had to be in the enormous dome at the top of the palace. Cautiously, we took the stairs down to the bottom and then into a hallway. I kept expecting a hulking Asura guard to pounce from the dark, but there was no sign of any of them. The hallway led into a room, which led in turn to another hallway, but still, there was nobody.

Why wasn’t anyone here?

Soon, we got to an arch that opened up onto the courtyard with the banyan tree that I’d seen earlier. It was dark and quiet this time, the shadows unnaturally long. Beyond the shelter of the banyan tree, between the branches, I could see the stars and the moon. That was all the light we had.

We hadn’t seen a single Asura. There wasn’t even any sign of the stag demon who had given us our stew and dropped the keys. Where had they all gone? They couldn’t all be asleep, surely? Why was it so quiet?

The anxiousness was back, but it couldn’t be helped. I was horribly troubled. And from the way her purple eyes searched the alcoves and shadows all around us, I could tell the Good Witch wasn’t happy, either.

“That’s the way out,” she murmured, pointing across the courtyard at the archway I had used to enter the palace.

Each step we took across the courtyard was agony. With each rustle of the banyan tree’s leaves, with each shadow that flickered, I was sure we were done for. We had been so lucky. It couldn’t possibly last.

But there was nothing. Just the wind, the dust, and the moon.

Until the end.

We were just a few feet away from the archway when a shadow moved. This time, it wasn’t a flicker. This time, it slithered out of the dark and became the enormous horned creature in front of us.

The Good Witch froze. Pip reeled back, his eyes moving up, up, up.

Mahishasura laughed. “Did you really think it would be so easy to escape me?”

“Did you know we were here the whole time?” Pip asked. His voice was a little squeaky, but it was a thousand times braver than I felt. “Why didn’t you stop us sooner?”

“Stop you? But that would have deprived me of the entertainment I’ve had watching you scurry around my fortress like frightened mice, jumping at every shadow.”

“That’s unkind,” said Pip.

Mahishasura seemed to find this amusing, but he didn’t spare Pip any more of his attention. His amber eyes glowed in the dark as they settled on me. “Why do you still try?” he asked. “You know now that to defeat me, you must also defeat yourself. You cannot win. I took this world from you and you could not stop me. I ruined your precious city and you could not stop me. I captured you and you could not stop me. So why, then, do you still try? You are just a weak little girl. What can you hope to do to me?”