“The Phoenix.” Malatriant chuckled. “I was there when Konor Belenzo first uttered that prophecy. He desired a legacy of light. But light flickers. It fades. Only the Dark is for ever. Only in darkness are we free. We are all one in the Dark. You feel it, don’t you? It’s part of you.”

The worst of it was, Calenne did. She longed to embrace the apparition, and to be held in return. But she clung to the memory of the Raven. His forlorn tone when she’d seen through his enchantment. And the legends. The scriptures. To embrace Malatriant was worse than death, to be severed for ever from Lumestra’s light and the promise of Third Dawn. Calenne had never truly believed, not until that moment.

Better to die, if it came to that.

“No!”

Dredging up the last of her fading will, Calenne jerked away. With Malatriant’s soft laughter on her heels, she fled into Skazit Maze. The darkness swallowed her up.

Josiri lost his footing as the tremor struck. He stumbled against the line of shields, only to discover it already breaking apart. Men and women staggered, designs of death thwarted by the bucking ground. The grunt and fury of battle fell away beneath cries of alarm.

A hand closed around his tattered collar and righted him. Anastacia, inevitably, stood solid as a rock amid the tremor.

A shadow fell across the sun, drowning the field in darkness.

With Anastacia’s help, Josiri regained firm footing. “Blessed Lumestra! What’s happening?”

His breath frosted as he spoke. His limbs trembled with cold as much as in sympathy with the shaking ground.

She stared skyward. [[Lumestra has no part of this.]]

Uneven shadows flickered across the ground. The drums fell silent. Hadari cried out in dismay. Others clutched their eyes and fell to their knees. A few fled, tearing madly at kin in their striving. Horses reared, hurling riders to the ground.

Josiri stared left and right along his own ranks, but saw none of that madness, only perplexion akin to his own.

The tremor faded. The shadow passed in a gust of wind. Sunlight beat down with renewed splendour, driving back the cold. The Hadari line, an unbreakable bulwark of shields only moments before, had cracked like weak-mortared brick in a gale. For the first time since Josiri had come to the field, the enemy were vulnerable.

“For the Southshires!”

Other voices took up his cry. The line came forward. Not as a shield wall drilled for battle, but a mob of vengeful men and women with the scent of victory.

Anastacia splintered a shield with a hammer-blow. Stepping into the gap, Josiri beat aside the Immortal’s flailing sword with his own. The man died in wide-eyed confusion, and Josiri pressed on. Two more perished to his blade before recognition dawned. The Hadari had been struck blind. Not all of them, but enough.