Gabriel took a deep breath. “Finish this and march for the gate. We have another battle to fight.”

Michael nodded.

Gabriel walked toward Mortirmir.

Michael began to issue orders. The imperial messenger joined him, and the whole command staff moved away, headed for where a great square of salamanders had formed on the far ridge.

Gabriel walked up to the younger man, put a hand on his shoulder, and went to the gate of his palace.

It was shut, a lofty barrier of spiky iron.

Gabriel had no ops with which to play. So he knocked.

“Morgon Mortirmir,” he called.

He called three times.

“Damn it,” he called. “I’m your emperor, and perhaps your only friend.”

The gate opened. It didn’t creak. It didn’t make any noise.

Gabriel walked in, and found himself instantly in a paneled room with a fire in the grate. Mortirmir sat in spotless black velvet. He held a skull on his lap, and in it was the imprisoned soul of Harald Derkensun.

“He was my friend,” Mortirmir said. “And now he’s dead. But I will bring him back.” He looked at Gabriel. “I know you’ll try to stop me. But you can’t. I can do this. I have the power.”

Gabriel sighed, and noted that his right hand burned a bright gold. An almost unbearably bright gold, and he lit Mortirmir’s palace like a lamp. As he did, a number of realizations struck him, all together.

“I have the power to stop you,” Gabriel said. “Let him go, Morgon.”

“It’s my fault!” Mortirmir said. “You all think it’s my fault, and it is! But I told you there wasn’t enough potentia! And you fought anyway!”

Gabriel sighed. “It’s really all my fault,” he said. “I brought you all here. On a short timeline, with no choices but to conquer or die. Morgon, I need you. Let Harald go. He’s in a limbo of undeath. We are not the Odine. We are not the dragons.”

“We could be,” Mortirmir said. His voice was at the hermetical edge of sounding . . . sly. “We could be anything. I think you cannot face the reality of war, Gabriel. War kills. We will kill to win. The means do not matter. Do they?”

Gabriel was looking at the burning, hermetical gold of his hand in the darkness of Mortirmir’s mind.

“I think the colours are a distraction,” Morgon insisted. “Power is power.”

“I think you are being turned,” Gabriel said. “I think that you have been tempted to evil. So have I. And I have fallen, many times. So I know all about climbing back out, Morgon. Evil is a choice. So is good. I think the powers have colours to teach us something; the way poison berries are bright red.”

Morgon’s avatar set its jaw.

“Be a knight,” Gabriel said. “Think of all the times you failed; at the pell, at the quintain . . .”