“There was this toy there,” I explained. “A toy phone that you can record a few words on. Kesha was holding it in his hand after he uttered the prophecy. He doesn’t remember anything—but there was a recording on the phone. I haven’t listened to it, but I copied it onto a flash stick.”

“And where is that flash stick?” Arina asked.

“In my wallet,” I said.

“I hate to intrude, Anton,” said Fan, taking a step towards us, “but I’d like to point out that the spell Long Tongue has been cast on you.”

Before he even finished speaking I shoved away Arina, who had already lowered her hand into my jacket pocket. The witch was extremely light. She flew several paces through the air and flopped down onto the pillows.

And I desperately checked all the defenses that I had applied to myself.

The Barrier of Will . . . the Rainbow Sphere . . .

Everything was in order, the defenses were sound.

The irony of the situation was that it was an extremely complex and well-structured defensive system, which would easily have repulsed a Dominant or any other attacking spell. It would also have fended off the Long Tongue—a spell that novices play with during their first year of training—except that I myself had removed that element of defense! The Long Tongue was woven into the spell for admiring the landscape, which I had thought was a local Taiwanese spell applied to the pavilion by our courteous hosts. It really did look like an ordinary spell for entertainment . . . right up to the moment when it was allowed access. After that it started working, gradually increasing in power.

No, this wasn’t Fan’s work! The more closely I examined the spell, the more clearly I saw that although the enchantments linked to air, water, and earth seemed to have been crafted in the Chinese manner, they were actually slightly different.

More elegant, more feminine.

More witchlike.

This spell had been cast by Arina. She had cast it almost instantaneously, in the few moments it took us to walk to the pavilion, woven it neatly into our hosts’ sentry and defensive spells, without disturbing them in the slightest, and she had even disguised it as local work!

It probably wasn’t a trap that had been planned in advance just for me. More likely it was for both of us. And probably Arina had deliberately hinted at Fan’s homosexuality, so that if anything went wrong I would take her magic, which bore a clearly feminine imprint, for the magic of an effeminate man—which Fan, of course, was not: the shield he had just thrown up was crude, rough, and effective.

Arina didn’t just think two or three moves ahead, she was ten moves ahead of the game!

Instead of straightening out the old spells, I preferred to cast a new one, the Ice Crust, severing the threads twined around my mind.