Harmodius did not await it. He removed himself, leaving his simulacrum of Desiderata alone.

Ash rushed on, scattering massive emanations the way a child might throw a tantrum, screaming, as it rushed down the stairs. Trees burned, or withered and died, and waters boiled.

Harmodius flitted to a new position, a mile or more north of the falls, and launched a new battery of hermetical devices.

Ash stopped them all. He turned, and breathed, laying utter waste to a section of riverbank.

Harmodius was already gone, passing through the aethereal to yet another place, this one carefully chosen with Master Pye’s help.

The dragon turned, eager to close with his elusive foe, and passed over Harmodius, his great wings cupping air so that for a moment he hovered . . .

Harmodius loosed nothing, but withdrew his entire array behind the wall of gold that Desiderata had taught him, and Ash’s arsenal, even his breath of unmaking, crashed on Harmodius.

The old magister was weakened. But he was still there,

Two hundred paces distant, Master Pye touched fire to his magnificent bronze tube. The powder ignited, and burned; instant, to the mind of a man, and a long, slow burn to the mind of the dragon, except that Ash was absorbed elsewhere with layer upon layer of other considerations; hatred and fear of Desiderata, perhaps lust for Tamsin, fear for the Odine, and within them layers of demands, of orders and commands and an edifice of control, and over all, the need to defend himself and kill Harmodius. His wings fluttered and he hovered . . .

The vast gonne fired.

A fifty-pound stone ball, touched with magicks, the surface of the iron covered in runes, sliced through Ash’s shields.

For a beast the size of a great ship, the ball was less than the prick of a pin.

But the pain was immense.

Again.

It was late morning before the will came again, and this time, the attack was swift and vast, and in the first moments, a novice panicked and died, her nose spewing blood, frightening another, and she, too, fell.

But the other sisters of the left choir sang on. Miriam had not left her place; now she raised her baton and pointed at Sister Katheryn, and the right choir stood in a rustle of long gowns and habits and a gentle clatter of beads.

“Sanctus,” said the Abbess.

The music built immediately; the women’s voices building, one, two, three sections, and then the sopranos rising over all, and the web was established, to the Dominus Deus and the refrain.

More and more voices.

Dominus Deus!

More, and more voices. Miriam added her own voice for the first time; in the real, an unimpressive alto; in the aethereal a mighty stroke of power.

Hosanna in excelsis!