Gabriel turned them back over the ruins of the embankment, which shone like a ribbon of white in the multiple moonlights. His heart was racing and he felt a mindless fear creeping over him.

He passed over the vanguard, and Sauce. They were racing along the shingle, and he thought maybe Sauce waved, and then she was gone, falling away behind, and he looked forward past Ariosto’s head and now he could see the next gate; a horned head, or a minaret, in bone white, stained with seawater the colour of a rotting tooth.

They banked, and then turned back as Ariosto sought the easiest air currents. Gabriel, taught by wyverns, looked up and back, right into the moons, but if there was an air creature, he wasn’t seeing or sensing it.

Hooooooom hoooooooooooooooooooom.

Gabriel sat back. The sound, if it was really a sound, had come through the aethereal.

Gabriel dropped into his palace despite his racing heart. But he hesitated with one hand on his first shield.

Prudentia was dead and cold. He’d drained her when he was fighting the salamanders and never recharged her. Now he took the shield hanging on her outstretched arm and considered. . . .

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.

“It is looking for us,” Morgon said. He was sitting in an armchair with a harpoon in his hand.

“With ops,” Gabriel said.

“Yes,” said Morgon. “It is casting huge gobs of ops into the aethereal to see if any comes back.”

Gabriel snapped into the real to find the rotten tooth of the gate filling his vision, and Ariosto braking, his great wings fluttering and then cupping the moist air, and they were descending.

Another cave, the griffon said. And not a sheep in sight.

Can we get through the opening? Gabriel asked.

Ooooh, Ariosto said.

Gabriel’s guts squirmed, he rammed himself back in his saddle and gave a strangled scream, and then they were in near complete darkness and he dared a working, throwing light. There was a red glow far off, like a forge fire burning.

They were under an ivory dome four hundred feet high and big enough to cover the central square of Liviapolis. Ariosto banked; the walls sped past, and . . .

Did you cast? It’s coming. Morgon was insistent.

Call Sauce and tell her to turn back. Gabriel realized that Morgon had no more control of Sauce than he did himself.

He could see the plaque, glowing gold in the light, shining like a star, and he could see the gate at the far base of the dome, a low arch, this one lit bright red. The light was like the angry sunlight of a red sunset.

Out. We have to help Sauce.

Got it, boss.