Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.

The crippled girl trembled in her sleep and pulled the blankets up to her ears. Her herb pillow released the scent of lavender.

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.

Aviel roused slowly, opened one eye and closed it again; it was still dark in her little perfumery workshop. She was drifting back into sleep when she heard it a third time. Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo – the cry of a nightjar, a very bad omen. She felt a painful spasm below her heart, a sign that her luck was about to take a turn for the worse.

By which she meant worse than usual.

Aviel was a twist-foot, which signified bad luck, and a seventh sister, which was worse. But worst of all, she had been born a silver-hair, and the combination of all three meant prodigiously bad luck. It had dogged her from the moment she was born, except for the single lucky day that had landed her here.

There was an almighty thump on the door. She jumped.

“Aviel?”

It was Shand. “Yes?” she squeaked.

“Need your help. Quick!”

She rubbed her angled right foot and the twisted, lumpy ankle that never stopped hurting, dressed and limped up to Shand’s big old house, a monstrosity of a place with undulating walls of intricately laid polychrome brickwork. The interior design was equally strange – rooms whose proportions changed from one end to the other as if they belonged in a house of mirrors, walls stepped from bottom to top and top to bottom, rooms with five, seven and even eleven sides.

Tallia, whom Aviel had not seen for a year, lay on the couch by the fire in the main living room, a very long room with a fireplace on each wall, though only one was lit. Shand had exposed an inflamed wound below her right shoulder. She looked half dead.

“This is days old,” he said to himself. “Why isn’t it healing?” He looked up at Aviel. “You’ve got the best nose I know. Tell me what you think.”

As Aviel went to her knees beside Tallia, pain stabbed through her ankle. She sniffed, closed her eyes and sniffed again. “Blood, fresh and old. Infection. Ointment – comfrey and calendula, rosemary and other herbs.”

“Anything else?”

“Should there be?”

“You’re the scent master.”

“I’m not even an apprentice.” Aviel took another sniff. “There’s a faint acrid smell.”

“Some kind of balm?”

“No.” She put her nose just above the wound. “It’s griveline.”

“What’s that?”

“A herbal poison. Why is it there?”

“Poisoned blade, I’d say.”

“I meant, why can I smell it after all this time? It doesn’t last, save in a sealed bottle.” Aviel’s ankle throbbed. She rose painfully.

Shand dragged a chair across for her, and another for himself. They sat down, staring at Tallia. Her chest rose and fell fractionally. Her breathing was shallow and laboured.

“Is she dying?” Aviel whispered.

“Slowly. You’re definite it’s griveline?”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be something in the wound. Bring me some hot water.”

Aviel fetched a pot-full from the kitchen.

Shand probed the wound with a fine blade. “Nothing hard in there.”

“What about something soft?” said Aviel.

She sterilised a little mustard spoon in the fire and allowed it to cool. Shand eased it into the ragged wound and scooped out some bloody muck.

“Your eyes are better than mine, girl.”

Aviel stared at the spoon. The griveline smell was stronger. “I can see a tiny yellow dot… no, two.”

She washed the muck through a piece of gauze. Half a dozen little beads lay there, no bigger than frog eggs. She probed one with the point of the knife. It burst and the smell bit into the lining of her nose.

“They’re filled with griveline, slowly dissolving to release the poison.”

Shand cleaned the wound out and Aviel washed each scoop of blood and pus through her piece of gauze until they had all the beads. Shand bandaged Tallia’s shoulder. It was light outside now; the work had taken hours.

Aviel made tea and they sat by the fire. Tallia was sleeping peacefully now and her breathing was stronger.

“Who would attack the Magister?” said Aviel.

Shand did not answer.

“I keep hearing the cry of a nightjar,” she added. “And it’s a very bad omen.”

Shand snorted.

Tallia let her breath out in a rush and her eyes shot open. Her left hand went to her right shoulder. She looked up at Aviel, then her gaze slipped to Shand. “Whatever you did, I feel much better for it.”

“Thank Aviel. She identified the poison that was slowly killing you.”

Tallia sat up and offered her hand. “Thank you, Aviel.” She turned to Shand. “Why slowly?”

“Griveline.” Aviel showed her the tiny beads trapped on the piece of gauze. “On the blade.”

“He really wanted you dead,” said Shand. “As uncomfortably as possible.”

Tallia stood up, shakily. “I’m all hot and cold.”

Shand hauled an armchair across, helped her into it and draped a blanket around her shoulders. Aviel went to the kitchen and prepared a tray with cold meats, cheese, boiled eggs, bread and butter and pickles.

“I assume you know about the fall of the council and Snoat’s armies on the march?” Tallia was saying when Aviel returned.

“Nothing travels faster than bad news,” said Shand. “You got out just in time.”

“How do you mean?”

“His forces have taken Thurkad and all the land to the north as far as Elludore Forest. He’ll soon move on central Iagador and then the south. If he can control that, he’ll control everything west of Lauralin.”

“And we’ve got to fight him, because there’s a much bigger problem.”

“Karan wrote to me about the Merdrun.”

“There’s more now.”

She filled him in, including what Malien had said about the Charon being terrified of a remorseless enemy.

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo. The nightjar again. Spiders tap-danced across Aviel’s shoulders.

“Only three Charon ever came to Santhenar,” said Shand. “Rulke, Yalkara and Kandor. And look at the trouble they caused. I don’t dare imagine what a whole army of their enemies would do.”

“The summon stone must be found and destroyed,” said Tallia.

“And we’ve got less than eight weeks to do it.”

“Unfortunately, we have no clue as to what it is, or where.”

No one spoke for several minutes, then Tallia said, “I’m worried about Karan. She’s planning to go back to Cinnabar, but the Merdrun, and this mighty magiz, are way beyond her strength.”

Shand just shook his head.

“We need a new leader, Shand.”

“No!” he said explosively.

“I’ve seen you face down the greatest powers in the land.”

“A man who doesn’t want the job would make a poor leader.”

“On the contrary, a man who doesn’t want the job makes the best leader.”

“We have to do something,” Aviel said softly.

They looked up suddenly as if they had forgotten she was there, and she flushed to the roots of her silver hair. Who was she, a crippled girl who had never left the town she was born in, to tell the mighty what to do?

“The child is right,” said Tallia.

“I’m not a child,” Aviel muttered. “I’m sixteen – almost.”

“I’ll contact our allies, such as they are,” said Shand.

“Call them to a meet in Chanthed in two weeks.”

“Why Chanthed?”

“Wistan is dying, so we must go to him.” Tallia stared into the fire. “Though he may not last a fortnight.”

“What is it?” said Shand.

“He’s got the greatest spy network in the land. Hundreds of his former students tell him everything that happens, and he keeps a ‘dirt book’ on everyone important. But when he dies it’ll be unprotected, and if it falls into Snoat’s hands it’ll be ruinous.”

Aviel could not sit still any longer. She took the plates out to the kitchen and washed them, and was returning for the platter when Tallia spoke again, “What about Aviel?”

She stopped outside the doorway.

“What about her?” Shand growled.

“We both know she’s got a remarkable talent. And given that the old guard has utterly failed us, we must do everything we can to encourage the young.”

Shand was silent.

“Have you shown her that grimoire of scent potions?” Tallia persisted.

“Shut up about it!” he hissed.

His chair squeaked. Aviel ducked across to the sink, sweat forming on her palms. Shand’s footsteps approached the doorway, stopped, then went away. She heard him poking the fire, savagely, then the cork was wrenched out of a bottle and his chair creaked again. She crept back to the door.

“She can’t go on working by trial and error,” said Tallia.

“Nothing I can do about it.”

“War is falling on us like a meteorite, Shand.”

Aviel heard gulping, as if he was drinking from the bottle. Drinking half the bottle, by the sound of it.

“Grimoires are deadly,” he said. “She might be ready for an apprenticeship in six months, but she’d need a good master.”

“Then find her one! If we’re to survive, we’re going to need every talent we have.”

Aviel slipped out and back to her workshop. She ached to be taught about scent potions, but masters in mancery were notoriously cranky, often abusive and frequently lecherous. And, it was said, reluctant to teach apprentices their greatest secrets. In the hands of such a master, what would happen to her? She might endure all manner of drudgery, abuse and misery yet still not learn what she needed.

Could she learn the Secret Art from a book? A master’s grimoire? The very idea was absurd. Aviel stirred the ashy charcoal in her braziers, prepared her apparatus and began the day’s work, extracting the scent from a bag of lemon verbena leaves.

But the thought would not go away.