A beam of green passed over his head, splitting the great torso of the second troll so that its very mammalian guts slithered into the river.

Duchess Mogon stood on the bank, ten paces away, and the haft of her axe was smoking.

Gavin looked back, but Mogon’s people were pouring into the ford and more cave trolls were lumbering out of it.

“Sweet Christ,” Gavin managed. He sank to one knee in the cold water.

Ash turned again. The Loomsack was his; he could see his adverserae on the crest and a veritable tide of bogglins flowing around the base of the mountain, but somehow he’d lost the ford again.

He could see Mogon in the aethereal. Her power was innate; and she had two artifacts of legend, items so old that they were old even to Ash. She had just used one.

She was clearing the ford, allowing thousands of men and bears and wardens to escape his trap.

Ash weighed the odds. His timetable was wrecked, and he had yet to face the will, the most dangerous opponent of all. And then the gates would open . . .

It was time to take some risks.

He tested his powers; sighed inwardly in a sort of conservationist disgust at the sheer waste of power required to control his distant oceanic subjects and the expenditure to keep his bogglins loyal and moving forward. He sensed a countercurrent of mutiny among 53Exrech’s bogglins.

He was arranging to spend analytical energy on the root cause of the bogglin mutiny when he felt the distant tug of an alarm. He had dozens of them; he set them to remind him when things needed to be awakened, put to sleep, reenforced, destroyed, created . . .

This one was shrill, a high, keening wail.

The bogglins were passing out of his control.

A bolt of white fire struck his innermost shield, taxing his energies yet again to the moment of immediate defence. And then, as he continued his turn, Tamsin struck, a web of deceit, a tissue of lies, and for an instant, he feared nothing more than that his infected wound was mortal; he focused his analytical powers on a diagnosis before he understood that his will was under attack; rage consumed him, and he raised a mighty foreclaw and red fire fell on Tamsin.

He reached into the vortex of his empowerment and pulled, drawing realized ops from the vast reservoir in the north.

Then he completed his turn, and Loomsack Mountain passed under his left wing, and he stooped on the ford. The scream of his challenge blasted across the real and the aethereal alike.

The Inner Sea—Aneas Muriens

In the same predawn light that Gavin had examined the onset of Ash’s horde, eight long canoes raced out of the morning mist, paddles flashing.

Aneas stood in the bow of the lead canoe, his shields prepared. At his shoulder, Looks-at-Clouds wore no expression at all. Looks-at-Clouds had given control back to the dragon.