“It is really just an exercise in linking points in the real to points in the aethereal. Mortirmir entered Gabriel’s memory palace and showed him.

“That’s incredibly power intensive,” Gabriel said. The process took his breath away; it was, to a startling degree, beautiful.

“I could do a few a day, when I was safe and didn’t need the ops.” Mortirmir raised his eyebrows.

“A few a day?” Gabriel said. “It would take me all day to make one.”

“Do not,” Mortirmir said. “I feel in you that same transcendence we saw in Sister Amicia . . .”

“Yes, I know. Thanks so very much.”

“You are welcome, of course. You should restrict your casting to the bare essentials. Yes, I think I could manage three to five a day at first; more later.” Mortirmir’s velvet-clad avatar gestured grandly.

“Arm the casa?” Gabriel smiled.

“Yes. Although I will note that there is a direct relation between the mass of the matter and the difficulty of the transference. So that a long sword is a masterwork; an arrowhead is a mere bagatelle.” Mortirmir pursed his lips. “Do I mean bagatelle?” He frowned. “I have been circuitous, I find. Listen, then . . . I want to say that we will be fighting increasingly . . . hermetical opponents.”

“I certainly hope so,” Gabriel said.

“Well, a little interface between the hermetical and the real would spare us some effort.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Gabriel stretched.

“You are truly growing tired of war?” Morgon asked.

“Never mind,” Gabriel said. “It was years ago.” He paused, and a look of confusion passed over his face, and he grimaced. “Like, two years ago,” he admitted.

Adrian Goldsmith stood a few yards away, sketching them.

They marched before dawn, following Count Zac’s guides through the woods, heading north and west. The easterner had a new weapon, which he demonstrated for Gabriel and Bad Tom; a tube which fit to his bow, so that he could shoot very short, heavy darts from his powerful horn bow.

“So?” asked Tom.

“Watch,” Zakje said. He put the half-tube against the lacquered bow and used it to draw a slim arrow with a long steel head. He loosed it through the moonlight at a small ash, and the arrow went through the tree.

“It turns your bow into a crossbow,” Bad Tom said.

“It will help us kill the big monsters,” Zakje said. “And knights, too,” he added with a wicked grin at Tom Lachlan.

Forest of Northern Arles—Cully

The stars were bright and seemed very close, and the comet was so brilliant that its light created shadows that crossed the shadows cast by the equally brilliant moon. The trees seemed almost infinite, their branches silver in the starlight, rolling away to east and west in a mysterious majesty of leaf and branch.