And then, to his embodied senses, chaos came. The roof of the abbey’s central church did and did not open; and the simultaneity of the two realities, invisible to mere mortal observers, terrified Ash. And from the paradox arose Amicia crowned in golden glory, and against her will of shining adamant gold Ash did not try his own, but turned, too late to stop what he could see, and he fled into the near aethereal. He could only see her as a new and potent adversary, but perhaps not yet a contestant. Not yet. Not this epoch, not this aeon.

Nonetheless, in her moment of apotheosis, he fled before her.

Pass me by, he said quietly. Another day I will eat you.

Light gathered in the shadowed remnant of Kerak’s palace.

Tamsin knew it was time to leave, but the sudden accession of light gave her hope.

And then, above her, an immortal appeared, holding Kerak as if the great Saurian were a toy. Tamsin raised her eyes to see that it was no angel, but Amicia, like a living statue of solid, glowing gold, and her eyes were too bright for even Tamsin to meet.

“Now, Faery Queen, fear no evil,” she said. “This one goeth to my house, which indeed has more rooms than any mortal could imagine. But listen! I speak with the last breath of my living. The undead dragon Rhun is falling to his last death; Gabriel is victorious in the Antica Terra. All the world is balanced on the razor’s edge.”

“Counsel me!” Tamsin begged.

“Save Lissen Carak,” Amicia said. Then she blinked. “Or not.”

Then she smiled the warm, rich smile that Tamsin remembered from the Inn of Dorling.

And she and the glowing form of Kerak vanished into the darkness.

Tamsin tore herself from her friend’s silent palace, taking with her a web of workings she didn’t understand, and—

Found herself standing amid the great stones of the Whale’s Jaw. Kerak’s body was gone.

Tamsin fell to her knees.

A mile to the east, in a sheltering stand of ancient beeches, Tapio and Ser Gavin were gathering the army. Mogon knew of Kerak’s death and of Flint’s; the loss of two powers of the Wild was a heavy blow, and for Gavin, the loss of the Lord of Bain and his retinue was as bad. A terrible wind gusted from the west with a smell of burning and corruption, brimstone and heavy treacle. The sky was dark, the sun aglow like a distant fire on a dark night.

“We can’t make another stand,” Gavin said. His archers looked haunted in the queer brown light; they flinched every time something fell through the treetops. The N’gara Jacks looked as if they had been beaten with sticks; the royal foresters were slumped with their packs on, as if they had been struck by lightning.