The two women mounted up. Ella felt her heart race as she looked back over her shoulder towards the cleft in the crater's rim. A great dust storm rose out of the red earth, rushing forward in a way Ella knew wasn't natural, a cloud of sand and wind where the flashes of steel and horses could be seen between swirls of air given form.

In an instant, the two women, one in green and one in red, were swept away with the horde of riders.

Tens of thousands of Hazarans leapt from the lakeshore onto the ice. Ella held her breath but it held, and Afiri also ran onto the blue ice. The first wave of horses slipped and scrabbled, but the going was made easier as the ice was chewed up, the hooves finally digging into the slippery surface.

The riders raced across the surface of the frozen lake. The dust storm covered the great army, yet from inside the illusion Ella could perfectly see the tiered city grow in size as the horde of riders approached.

Ella reached down to the hilt she'd attached to her saddle. Her fingers closed around the curved dagger Jehral had given her. She had since enchanted it, and as she withdrew the blade and activated it, the heavy knife suddenly felt as light as one of Ella's scrills.

Ella looked behind her, back at the shore of the lake where the sunken pillar stood bright and tall, surprised at how far they'd already come.

Was that a figure in green, a man, running down the slope towards the lakeshore? Before Ella could look more closely, her attention again returned to her horse as Afiri slipped on the ice, before regaining his footing.

She held the knife in one hand, and with her other hand Ella held her reins against the pommel of the saddle. She gave Afiri his head; she couldn't have stopped him if she'd wanted to, and then suddenly there were balls of fire flying through the air around her.

They were mostly untargeted, wild shots thrown at them from the terraces and walls of Tlaxor. Ella was thankful for the illusionary storm that surrounded them — the Hazarans had no method of striking from a distance. Yet the illusion gave them no actual protection, and many of the Hazarans were caught by the blasts, screaming and falling off their horses as red energy smashed into their faces and torsos in clouds of sparks. Ella cried out when a flaming ball caught the horse of a warrior riding next to her. She smelled burning hair and heard the sound of sizzling flesh as both horse and rider erupted in a gush of fire.