The wight cast. The range was too close; Aneas could not cover the blow, and white fire struck his shoulder, annihilated his amulet, and his skinning knife fell to the ground. He stepped right and cast, a weak, one-word working, and snapped a rising true edge cut that rolled into a thrust with Nita Qwan’s broad-bladed short sword in the same tempo.

The wight made a human mistake—the instant of decision as to which sword should cover the center, complicated by trying to shield itself against the hermetical attack. Aneas’s thrust went into the joint where the shoulder chiton met the elastic neck; the wight stumbled, both swords cutting reflexively—Aneas passed to the left, his countertempo exact, and he severed the wight’s right sword from the stalk of its armoured arm even as the second sword reached for him; the tip cut his leather coat and scored into his arm, but he was inside, his hand turning; the wight’s chitonous arm tried to turn, lost the race, and his thrust went home into its face even as Black Heron’s arrow went in under its second arm to the fletchings.

The bogglins broke. There were eight bodies on the ground, and the will of their lord was not on them; they turned almost as one and ran for the huts.

Nita Qwan ran past Aneas, an arrow on his painted bow. Irene got another wood-fletched bolt onto her latch and held it pinned with her thumb as she ran forward behind the Sossag.

Aneas made himself follow them. He was wounded; the wight had used up anything he had left.

The light inside the stone tent was odd: dark and light, red like fire, flickering. Aneas understood instantly that it was a vent; that this was a place where the aethereal and the real touched. It was terrifying, but he was already terrified.

Irene shot a bogglin at a range of perhaps five feet; the creature was trying to hide in the junction of two great stones and she was not feeling merciful. She latched her crossbow again, working the lever without thought. Her face was set; the network of black left by the moth’s blood made her look like a bain sidhe from legend.

Aneas reached out. The potentia was right there, and unfettered; he drew on it, and made a shield for himself and his two immediate companions.

Nothing came at them.

The ruddy light shone like a glimpse of another reality, which indeed it was; the roof of the cavern glinted like the eyes of an insect, the reflection of thousands of crystals growing in an endless profusion, the points of light stretching away into infinity, lit from below.

Looks-at-Clouds came through the gateway into the fire-shot dark.

“Ah,” s/he said. “Ah! Mine!”

There was a flash.

Master Smythe stood beside Looks-at-Clouds.