She would never have chosen this path: not the spiders, not the deal with their matriarch, that shameful accommodation with Darkness. Others before her had tried and failed to bring down Darvezian, though. It pained her to admit it, even to herself, but the Light of Armes did not seem to be enough.

The old stones that Penthos had mentioned were almost all fallen, just mounds of mossy earth atop a hill, save for two that leant drunkenly together as though for mutual support. The hill was a lone hunched heap of higher ground, some barrow raised by ancients to wicked powers long before the coming of Armes and the message of the Light. Those ancients had known power, though. Their time-lost feet had tracked the lines of the world’s magic, and they had raised hills and forts and monuments wherever they had crossed one another.

Beyond the hill, the country was uneven and broken moor, boggy in the low places, rocky where the earth’s weathered bones had torn through the matting of grass and scrub. The forest of the spiders was a shadow at their back.

“This is grand magic,” Penthos announced. “This is high magic.” He was doing his pompous face, Dion noted, as he usually did when he had wrestled for the center of attention. She worried about Penthos. Mostly it was the unleashed power and the setting things on fire, but at the moment it was more that his desire to show off could compromise their quest. There was no denying that he was a notably powerful magus, and given that breed’s notorious disinterest in the affairs of men she was lucky to get him, but he had the attention span of a five-year-old. Worse, she had a strong suspicion that he wasn’t particularly committed to their task, which raised the question of why he was here at all. The possibility that he was a pawn of Darvezian plagued her thoughts, and though she sought relief in prayer the worries always returned.

“If someone would prod our experimental subject into the middle?” Penthos asked, adjusting the sleeves of his shimmering robe with great ceremony. Lief directed his spear at the spider, which had followed them from the forest with a sullen, forced obedience. Looking on the loathsome thing, Dion was struck again by doubts about the whole enterprise.

“Penthos… ,” she murmured.

“My dear?” His troublemaking grin was out in force.

“This plan… I am not convinced that it is the proper course. This is a thing of Darkness. I fear we will taint ourselves, our venture, in making use of it.”