According to Shand’s almanack, the eclipse of the blood moon would begin around half past eight tonight, and it would be over by a quarter to ten. The Eureka Graveolence had to be mixed at the full of the moon, though the almanack was silent on how long that would last. Aviel thought it might only be a few minutes. She would have to work fast, and accurately, for there would be no chance to try again.

She made everything ready, packed her bag with food, clothing and other necessities, plus a hammer to smash the summon stone as Malien’s letter had instructed, and a metal flask containing a pint of oil so she could burn the fragments to ash.

She put her entire wealth, four silver tars and five copper grints, in her wallet and asked Demoy to make Thistle ready – the horse had found his way back to the stables a week previously. She was not looking forward to riding him again, though at least his quirks were familiar.

What else? To deal with unknown dangers she might need to blend a scent potion on the way. Aviel had once made a belt with many small loops, each sized to hold a phial. She filled phials with all the common scents, plus several uncommon ones and a couple that were rare or dangerous, and made sure they were all stoppered tightly and secure in their loops.

Darkness had fallen hours ago and the moon was rising. Not long to go. She checked in case her horrible sisters were creeping up to throw stones at the workshop or fill her water barrel with manure, but all was clear. The moon was just beginning to turn ruddy. A snail seemed to glide down her spine.

She went back inside, slipped the bolt and extinguished all the lamps but one, which she turned down so there was just enough light to see what she was doing. The potion making must not be interrupted. She drew the curtains, save the one on the upper part of the eastern window. She needed to check the moon constantly as the time approached.

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.

The nightjar – not a good beginning. Aviel stood the nine phials on the bench in the order that she had to use them and checked the labels. She could do nothing about ill omens or her intrinsic bad luck, but she could eliminate simple mistakes.

She yawned, rubbed her eyes and laid her head on her arms. So tired. Her eyes closed for a second. She snapped them open and stood up.

She stared at the phials, her eyes unfocused, her mind on the coming journey. Assuming the Eureka Graveolence didn’t go terribly wrong and splatter her all over the workshop, it would point her to the source of the drumming – the summon stone. Then, unless a miracle happened and Shand turned up, it was up to her to go there and try to destroy it.

Aviel shuddered. She hated leaving her workshop, and her previous dash on Thistle had taught her how dangerous the open road was for someone who could not run away. This would be a far longer trip – how long she did not know – with great danger at the end of it and no one to help her.

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.

Why was the oil in the fourth phial a pale yellow? It should be colourless. She checked the label. It was correct but the oil wasn’t. She took a careful sniff – mustard oil. It had nothing to do with the Eureka Graveolence; it was one of the phials that should have been in her belt. Despite all the care she had taken, she had mislabelled it.

She went through her belt, found the scent that should have been the fourth of her nine – the foul gas from a rotten death adder’s egg – relabelled it and checked the nine again, twice, to be sure. Using mustard oil would have been a disastrous mistake.

Aviel glanced up through the window. The moon was full and ruddy all over. She’d already wasted a minute. Go!

She panicked, reached for the first phial and her trembling hand knocked it over. Aviel forced herself to stop and recite a list of herbs backwards to calm herself – yucca, wormwood, vervain, valerian… She picked the phial up and clamped an empty phial – the one in which the Eureka Graveolence would be blended – to a stand so she could not knock it over.

After selecting an eye dropper from a tray of them, she twisted out the bung of the first phial, drew some up in the eye dropper and dripped exactly seven drops into the tenth phial. She returned the rest to the first phial, capped it, then with a fresh eye dropper took one single drop of the second scent, the putrescent one she had extracted from the de-hairing sludge. All that effort and danger for one drop!

She focused on working to a careful rhythm and shaking the potion phial in the correct way and the correct number of times each time, and continued until only the ninth scent remained.

The nightjar called again. Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.

The moon was starting to eclipse; she could see the faintest shadow on the upper right. Aviel drew up the ninth oil in a clean eye dropper and caught an unpleasant whiff of the skull bone she had stolen and burned after violating an unknown person’s grave. Her first step on the path to darkness.

Her arm trembled. She steadied it and carefully released ten drops onto a dry part of the inside wall of the phial, then watched the thick oil ooze down.

Not ten, you fool! Nine drops!

Aviel squirted the rest of the oil back into the phial it came from, then put the tip of the eye dropper into the oozing oil on the wall of the Eureka Graveolence phial, and drew up a quantity. But how to make sure there were nine drops in the phial? She released all she had drawn up save for the last, hanging drop, removed the dropper and shook the phial.

The Eureka Graveolence was made. But would it work?

Never sniff a scent potion directly.

Scent potions could never be perfectly duplicated since the strength of each scent could vary according to its source ingredients. One time a scent potion might be ineffective, yet the next time it was made the same amount could be an overdose. With her free hand she wafted some of the potion towards her, then stoppered the phial and took a careful sniff.

Bang!

Her limbs convulsed so violently that she shot backwards off her stool, cracking her head on the bench behind her. Pain shrieked through her skull. Choking sounds were coming from her throat and her heels were drumming on the floorboards. The lamp went out. Through the window the moon grew huge, as if it were toppling out of the sky right at her. It burst into shards and everything went black.

Aviel could see again, though her field of vision was spinning like a compass needle: mountains with tips of snow; a ruined mill of black stone in a mountain forest; an undulating landscape, brown and withered; a neglected manor with a green slate roof and walls of pink granite; an orchard with hardly any fruit; an escarpment. Then a series of barren hills rising steeply to a rocky horn on which stood a bizarre half-ruined tower built of violet-coloured rock.

The drumming sounded so loudly that it deafened her, and the tower wobbled as if it were made of rubber. Something slid off the bench behind her and landed on her forehead. A glass stopper.

Aviel groaned. Lights flashed before her eyes and she saw the ruined tower again. Was that where the summon stone lay? She could not tell, though she was sure of the direction, north-north-east. But how far? Five miles or fifty? Or five hundred?

She got up, rubbing her bruised forehead and the back of her head, picked up the stool and relit the lantern. The moon was still red, though just a thin crescent now, almost completely eclipsed. She had been out for some time.

Aviel checked the scent potion, which was safely stoppered. She tied a piece of thread around it so she could identify it in the dark if she needed to, wrapped it in a scrap of cloth for extra protection and jammed it into the last belt loop.

She tidied up the workshop, carefully washed out the eye droppers and left them to drain. Everything was ready. Time for bed. She would leave at dawn.

Aviel woke to a disgusting smell in her nostrils, the same reek she had detected several nights ago when she had realised that someone evil had become aware of her existence. But this was different, worse.

He was after her.

Was he in the workshop? She hurled herself out of bed and lit a lamp. The door was still bolted; she was alone. She tried to tell herself that it was just a waking nightmare but knew it wasn’t. How had he discovered her? Was it because she had used the scent potion to locate the summon stone? Was it fighting back?

How close was he? She could not tell, and there was nowhere she could hide, no one to protect her. Her only hope was to get to the stone and destroy it before he caught her. Aviel dressed in the warmest clothes she had, checked her list three times, carried her gear to the stables and packed it into Thistle’s saddlebags.

She collected the grimoire, locked the workshop and let herself into Shand’s house. She thought the run-down manor with the green slate roof and the pink granite walls was probably Gothryme, where Llian lived. It made sense; she knew from the Histories, and bits she had read of his Great Tale recently, that strange and uncanny things had happened in the mountains behind Gothryme.

Aviel checked Shand’s wall map and made a sketch map of the back way from Casyme to Gothryme. Remembering how easily she had become lost last time, she marked the distances to important intersections and landmarks on her map.

She left Malien’s second letter in the middle of the kitchen table and scribbled, “Gone after it, Aviel,” on the letter. She also did a sketch of the broken tower she had seen in the night, though she could not imagine it would tell Shand anything.

She had planned to put the grimoire back where she had found it, but instead Aviel returned to the stables, wrapped it carefully and tucked it into her saddlebag. It might be the only defence she had. She mounted, waved to the silent stable boy and rode out.

She would head for Gothryme. Perhaps she could get food and shelter there, since she was a traveller and had news, old though it was, of Llian. Then she would use the Eureka Graveolence again. If the source was close it should be easier to locate.

It was good to have a plan. She turned Thistle onto the back road and nudged him into a steady pace.

Then the waking nightmare came back.