The severed hands fell into a savage fury, writhing on the nails and drumming on the table. The head’s charred lips moved. Instead of the words they were waiting for, a sudden blue flame burst from them; a tongue of flame, burning and at once turning the shred of grey scarf into a tiny pile of grey ash. The objects on the table froze into a macabre tableau.

“What do you say to that, son?”

“Counter-magic.”

“And very powerful,” confirmed Kundrie. “Somebody is interfering. Somebody doesn’t want us to be tracking Miss Apolda or whatever her name is. This magic isn’t typical; it has an astral, sidereal trace. Not everybody is capable of using the sidereal element… Why are you grinding your teeth, may I ask? Ah… I understand. It comes back to me. That comrade of Reynevan, the giant with the look of a halfwit. The one who made you flee at Trosky. The second stain on your honour. You claimed—”

“He was an astral being,” the Wallcreeper finished her sentence coldly. “Because he is. A visitor from the astral plane. The counter-magic that is hampering us could be his work. I saw his aura at Trosky. I’ve never seen the like.”

“No two auras are identical. And no two pairs of eyes will see the same aura identically. That is called optics. Haven’t you read Vitello?”

“I don’t mean the aura’s colour, size and intensity,” said the Wallcreeper, shrugging, “which indeed are variable and depend on the eye of the beholder. What matters is that everything, absolutely everything, in the world has three auras. Living or dead, natural or supernatural, whether from this world or the beyond, everything, absolutely everything, has three auras. Two of them—which are usually yellow and red—almost cleave to the object. The third pulsates with many colours and hovers at some remove from the object, creating a sphere around it.”

“As every schoolboy knows.”

“The creature I saw at Trosky had two auras. One, brilliantly golden, was clinging to him, making him look like a statue cast in metal. The other… for there were only two… wasn’t an aura in the strict sense. It was a light blue glow. Located behind him. Like a flowing cape, like a train… Or—”