‘But –’ Kalten started to object.

‘Take one step backwards – all of you!’

They grudgingly stepped back a pace, and the outrageously armoured cadavers menacing them returned to immobility. Once again at that unseen and unheard signal they gave vent to that emotionless howl.

‘What’s going on?’ Ulath demanded. ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’

‘Because they’re dead, Ulath,’ Sephrenia said.

Ulath pointed at a crumpled form with his axe. ‘Dead or not, this one still tried to stick his spear into me.’

‘That’s because you came to within reach of his weapon. Look at them. They’re standing all around us, and they aren’t making any move to assist their companions. Get me a torch, Talen.’

The boy wrested a torch from between two flagstones and handed it to her. She raised it and peered at the paving beneath their feet. ‘That’s frightening,’ she said with a shudder.

‘We will protect you, Lady Sephrenia,’ Bevier assured her. ‘You have nothing to fear.’

‘There’s nothing for any of us to fear, dear Bevier. What’s truly frightening is the fact that Otha probably has more power at his command than any living human, but he’s so stupid that he doesn’t even know how to use it. We’ve spent centuries fearing an absolute imbecile.’

‘Raising the dead is fairly impressive, Sephrenia,’ Sparhawk suggested.

‘Any Styric child can galvanize a corpse, but Otha doesn’t even know what to do with them once he raises them. Each one of his dead guardians is standing on a flagstone, and that flagstone is all it’s protecting.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Test it and see for yourself.’

Sparhawk raised his shield and advanced on one of the stinking guards. As soon as his foot touched the flagstone, the skull-faced thing swung jerkily at him with a jagged-bladed axe. He easily deflected the stroke and stepped back. The guard returned to its former position and stood motionless as a statue.

The vast circle of guards ringing the palace and the temple howled their empty howl again.

Then to Sparhawk’s horror, Sephrenia gathered her white robe about her and quite calmly began to thread her way through the ranks of the stinking dead. She stopped and glanced back at them. ‘Oh do come along now. Let’s get inside before the rain starts. Just don’t step on any of their flagstones, that’s all.’

It was eerie to step around those savagely threatening figures with their foul reek and their skull-like faces in the ghastly light of the dancing lightning, but no more dangerous in fact than avoiding nettles on a forest trail.

When they had passed the last of the dead sentries, Talen stopped and squinted along a diagonal rank of those guardians. ‘Revered teacher,’ he said quietly to Berit.

‘Yes, Talen?’

‘Why don’t you push this one over?’ Talen pointed at the back of one of the armoured figures, ‘– sort of off to the side?’