“Mimara?” He coughs at the ground.

She swallows a sob of relief. “Goddess be praised!” she hisses. “Oh, sweet, sweet Yatwer!”

“Wh-where are we?” He chokes on his own throat. “What’s happening?”

She finds herself almost whispering in his ear. “Akka. Listen to me carefully. You remember what you said? About this place … blurring … into the Outside?”

“Yes. The treachery … The betrayal that led to its fall …”

“No. That’s not it. It’s this place. This very room! It’s what they did—the Nonmen of Cil-Aujas … It’s what they did to their human slaves!”

Generations bred for the sunless mines. Used up. Cast away like moaning rubbish. Ten thousand years of sightless torment.

She knows this … But how?

“What? What do you mean?” He grimaces in pain and irritation.

Rather than speak, she turns aside so that he can see Cleric still kneeling, listening to the soundless lips of the Nonman King … “No!” Cleric calls. “Cousin, please!”

The milk in the Wizard’s eyes clears. “What?” He fairly uses her body as a ladder, stumbles swaying to his feet. For several heartbeats he simply gapes at the underworld apparition.

“Run!” he cries to the others. “Follow the wind! Courage will be your death here!”

“Stand your ground!” the Captain roars.

The Surillic Point hangs immune to the wind, bathing the chapped walls and uneven floor in pale white. Despite their dread Captain’s cry, the scalpers back away from the two Nonmen. Black has begun bleeding from the bolt of fabric wrapped about the spectre’s back and shoulders, rolling up and out like dark wine in water, as impervious to the blowing as the light above.

Lord Kosoter stands rigid, the point of his sword held to the ground beside him, his hair flailing in steel-grey ribbons. “He has this,” he grates, his eyes fixed on Cleric where he kneels beneath the mad apparition.

“Captain,” Achamian says, fingers locked so that he hangs from Mimara’s shoulder. He’s already pressing her backward with staggering steps. “Listen …”

The Holy Veteran turns his bearded profile to them, nothing more. “He has this!”

But Cleric has lowered his head. Lines of reflected white hook across the contours of his skull. Trailing tendrils of smoke-darkness, the Nonman King steps around him, strides with sandals that do not quite touch ground, then turns so that he stands above Cleric’s armoured back.

“Captain,” the Wizard cries. Now it is Mimara who is drawing him backward, toward the hymn of the dragon bones. Soma grabs the ailing Wizard’s other arm.

Where Cleric holds his head bowed, the spectre raises his dead face to the ceiling, as though seeing sky rather the crushing miles of earth. The mouth works in unheard benediction. The rigid arms lift and rotate forward. The elbows fold. The hands, with fingers and thumbs held tight as though in some ritual pose, close about Cleric’s shoulders. The scalpers watch their companion raised, a silvery figure framed by a corona of black …