Arnaud smiled. “No. I will heal you. I will give you this last gift. And as I cross the wall and go into the far country, I leave you this. Save them, save them all. In doing so, brother, you will save yourself.” He smiled, again with pure good humour, and Gabriel could see what a handsome young man he had been. “Please accept these gifts.”

Arnaud’s body gave a convulsion, and light flared, and for a moment—an eternal moment—the chapel was bathed in light. The figures of the rose window leapt into life, and a leper was cured, a blind man given his sight, a dead man raised, and a centurion’s servant saved.

“Arnaud!” Gabriel shouted.

But the miracle of light was declining, and in its wake the cold of absolute void, and the dark.

Gabriel wrenched himself clear of the dying man’s palace and

woke.

The pain was gone. Around the fire stood a dozen men and women and every head was turned to him, and they all looked stunned.

His leg was healed.

Gabriel burst into tears. “I don’t want this!” he shrieked.

And then rolled over and put his hands on either side of his chaplain’s helmeted head. But Father Arnaud was a corpse, and wherever he had gone, his face was calm and wore the gentle smile of absolute victory.

When the flare of power lit the aethereal worlds, Thorn was hovering, torn by indecision, balanced on the knife edge between aggression and caution. He’d followed some of the combat; he sensed the Dark Sun’s injury and depletion but he had a healthy fear of the Dark Sun’s reserves and talent. To project himself across the aethereal could be done but was, itself, fraught with peril. And it would expose him, like an army too far from its supplies, to envelopment. It was too new a talent to be trusted. And his dark master was not available for advice or encouragement.

Something passed across the divide between life and death—something mighty.

Is he dead? Thorn whispered into the darkness. Suddenly bold, he cast himself across the abyss.

Gavin was kneeling by his brother. He had not seen his brother cry—not openly—since the other man had been a boy, and it made him feel sick with old feelings of rage and weakness and bullying strength.

But Gabriel’s tears were quick. Almost like a mummer or a vagabond actor at a fair, he raised his head, eyes still full of tears that glittered in the firelight, but his voice was suddenly steady.

“Everyone run,” he said. “Now.”

“Incoming!” shouted Adrian Goldsmith. The squire didn’t sound terrified—he sounded relieved. “It’s Ser Michael!”

Ser Gavin froze.

Something began to form at the edge of the firelight.

“Run,” Gabriel said.