The butler and some of the footmen began to run around the circle, spraying white petroleum spirit out of four-gallon tins.

“Anyone with matches or a cigarette lighter, stand by the ring!” yelled Nick. He couldn’t see the creature, but his forehead was beginning to throb, and when he pulled his dagger out an inch, the Charter Marks were starting to glow.

Two people suddenly jumped the hay and ran across the meadow, heading for the drive and the front gate. A young man and woman, the woman throwing aside her shoes as she ran. She was the one who had come to his door, Nick saw. Tesrya, as she had called herself.

“Come back!” shouted Nick. “Come back—”

His voice fell away as a tall, strange shape emerged from the sunken ditch of the ha-ha, its shadow slinking ahead. Its arms looked impossibly long in the twilight, and its legs had three joints, not two. It began to lope slowly after the running couple, and for a brief instant Nick thought perhaps they might have a chance.

Then the creature lowered its head. Its legs stretched; the lope became a run and then a blurring sprint that caught it up with the man and woman in a matter of seconds. It knocked them down with its clubbed hands as it overshot them, turning to come back slowly as they flopped about on the ground like fresh-caught fish.

Tesrya was screaming, but the screams stopped abruptly as the creature bent over her.

Nick looked away and saw a patch of tall yellow flowers near his feet. Corn daisies, fooled into opening by the bright moonlight.

. . . wrapped in three chains. One of silver, one of lead, and one made from braided daisies . . .

“Ripton!”

“Yes, sir!”

Nick jumped as Ripton answered from slightly behind him and to his left.

“Get anyone who can make flower chains braiding these daisies, and those poppies over there too. The maids might know how.”

“What?”

“I know what it sounds like, but there’s a chance that thing can be restrained with chains made from flowers.”

“But . . .”

“The Old Kingdom. Magic. Just make the chains!”

“I knows the braiding of flowers,” Llew said, bending down to gently pick a daisy in his huge hand. “As does my kin here, my nieces Ellyn and Alys, who are chambermaids and will have needle and thread in their apron pockets.”

“Get to it then, please,” said Nick. He looked across at where the young couple had fallen. The creature had been there only seconds ago, but now it was gone. “Damn! Anyone see where it went?”

“No,” snapped Ripton. He spun around on the spot as he tried to scan the whole area outside the defensive circle.

“Light the hay! Light the hay! Quickly!”

Ripton struggled with his matches, striking them on his heel, but others were quicker. Guests with platinum and gold cigarette lighters flicked them open and on and held them to the hay; kitchen staff struck long, heavy-headed matches and threw them; and one old buffer wound and released a clockwork cigar fire starter, an affectation that had finally come into its own.