Nightmares had been chasing me, one into the next, and my heart still pounded from the exercise, but I couldn’t recall any details. Nothing came to me save the memory of something dreadful stalking me through dark places, so close I felt its breath on my neck, felt it clutching, snagging my shirt . . .

“Castle, Jal; you’re in a castle.” My voice rang thin as if I were in some vast and empty space.

The candle I’d left burning must have blown out—not even a scent of it remained. I had tinder and flint, but they were in a saddlebag wherever Ron had been stabled.

“You’re too big a boy to be scared of the dark.” The fear in my voice convinced me I was better off keeping silent. I listened for any sound other than my own breathing, but none reached me.

I threw myself down into the pillow, pulled the sheets about me, and to distract myself from night terrors I concentrated on my last exchange with Sageous.

“The difficult way?” he had asked, as if surprised I would consider it. “The difficult way would be to complete the spell’s work for it. Each enchantment is an act of will that strives towards completion. The desires of the most powerful, when spoken, when enunciated along the paths that their art has graven within the fabric of what is, become like living things. The spell will twist and turn; it will change, consider, conspire until it achieves the aim that formed it.

“The spell is incomplete because the target remains. Destroy that target, and the enchantment, this curse that bends you to its own ends, will fade away.”

I had thought of the eyes behind that mask.

“Kill Snorri, you say?” The easy way did sound easier.

The eyes that had glittered behind the slits in that porcelain work of masquerade, those same eyes had watched me through my nightmares. My skin crawled with the possibility of that scrutiny even now. The linen sheets I held were a child’s protection, and even steel armour would offer no salvation against this horror. Kill Snorri?

“A simple matter that I can arrange for you, my prince.” Everything the heathen said sounded reasonable.

“No, truly, I can’t. He’s become something of a f—” I bit that off. “Something of a trusted retainer.”

Sageous had shaken his head, lines of text blurring before my eyes. “This is a madness you have fallen into, my prince. The barbarian has taken you prisoner—a hostage to his own fortunes—and drags you into terrible danger. A wise man, Lord Stoccolm, wrote of this many centuries ago. By degrees the prisoner comes to see his captor as a friend. You have fallen into his dream, Prince Jalan. Time to wake up.”

And lying there in the silent dark of that room, with nothing but two handfuls of sheets for protection from the conviction that the nameless horror from Vermillion stood watching at the foot of my bed, I did try to wake. I ground my teeth and tried either to sleep or to wake—but only the memory of Sageous’s voice offered any escape.