“All Rulke’s papers are gone,” said Llian, “so there’s no point staying here.”

“And the summon stone is five hundred miles north,” said Karan. “We can’t get back to it before the invasion. What do you want to do?”

“Go after Sulien.” Karan had told him about her trip to Cinnabar, the magiz’s attack on Sulien and how she had saved Karan’s life.

Tears formed in her eyes. “The magiz will attack again. Sulien is in danger right now and we’ll never find her in time.” She looked around her, everywhere but at Llian, and her jaw tightened. “I’ve got to act now. Today!”

“No!” Llian said flatly.

“The magiz is the key to everything: saving Sulien, blocking the summon stone and keeping the Merdrun out. And I’m the only person who can get to her.”

“She’ll be expecting you.”

“I don’t have any choice, and if our positions were reversed, you’d do the same.”

His shoulders slumped. He knew she would not give in. “How are you going to do it?”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

Thup-thup, thup-thup.

“What’s that?” said Karan.

“Sounds like it’s up in the air.”

They ran up to the globarium, a tall spiralling tower topped with a half-globe a hundred feet across partly filled with water, with a small pointed island in the middle.

It was breezy here. Karan shook out her hair and it streamed out behind her for two feet. They climbed onto the circular wall. A low range of mountains lay behind them. Ahead, to the east, was the Sea of Thurkad, here twenty-fives leagues across.

“It’s a flying balloon…” said Llian.

As it came closer Karan saw that it was shaped like a fat lozenge with a smaller lozenge attached to its underside. A pair of rotors whirred at the rear and the vessel had a slight asymmetry that gave its makers away. The Aachim never made two objects exactly the same – for them, that would take away the whole point of designing.

“It’s Malien!” Karan cried, taking Llian by the waist and dancing him round in a spiral that took them perilously close to the rim.

She waved furiously, and with her pale face upturned and her streaming red hair she would have been identifiable from a quarter of a mile away. The vessel turned and in a couple of minutes it was hovering over the wall.

“Malien!” Karan yelled.

A door swung open, and framed in it was her kinswoman. Malien tossed down the end of a rope ladder. Karan went up it like a sailor, sprang in and embraced her, then pulled away, watching Llian and biting her lip. He climbed awkwardly, swaying and sweating and missing his footing a couple of times, then froze at the top, not knowing how to get off the ladder.

Malien reached down, wrapped her enormously long fingers around his upper arms and heaved him in.

“Well met, chronicler,” she said. “It’s good to see, in a world in such flux, that you retain all the flaws you had when we first met.”

She was laughing at him, though in a kindly way. They’d had their moments over the years, though Karan knew that Malien, deep down, did like Llian.

Karan pulled the door closed. The cabin was only twenty feet long and eight wide, but the builders had fitted dozens of cupboards into it, all beautifully finished, and every surface was decorated with intricate geometric engravings or carvings of the strange plants and beasts of Aachan.

At the other end, hammocks criss-crossed one another. A dozen Aachim were staring out the oval windows at the city built for their mortal enemy. Karan sighed. She had lived with them for years as she was growing up, and being among them again was like coming home.

But Llian was shifting his weight from foot to foot, and his jaw was knotted. Most of his encounters with the Aachim had been unhappy ones.

“Enough of this terrible city,” said Malien.

She gestured to the helmsman, a bony balding fellow with sagging ears. He worked various levers and the sky ship slipped away.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d come within ten leagues of Alcifer,” said Karan.

“Nor would I, willingly. I was looking for you.”

“How did you know to look here?”

“Three days ago I detected a gate, and Xarah, who has made a science of her art, pinpointed where it originated and where it ended. You remember Xarah?”

A small Aachim, not much taller than Karan, with a pale freckled face and short mustard-yellow hair, and an air of long-felt sadness.

Karan shook hands. “I didn’t know gates could be pinpointed.”

“They couldn’t until now,” said Malien. “And only by an adept with the right training.”

“How did you know we were in the gate?”

“No one has made one on Santhenar in ten years, then suddenly there are two in three days. Who else could be behind them but the two biggest troublemakers I know.”

“Two gates?”

“Another went from Carcharon to Vilikshathûr half a day later.”

“I suppose that was Shand,” said Karan.

“Clearly we have much to talk about,” said Malien.

The helmsman took them up the coast to an uninhabited island a few miles offshore. They set down in a sunny glade where the ground was calf-deep in fallen leaves, and the Aachim prepared a hasty meal of smoked meats and pickled vegetables.

“I can’t believe that the fate of the world rests on the whim of so shallow and narcissistic an old human as Cumulus Snoat,” said Malien after Karan and Llian had brought her up to date. “Truly, your kind is in irretrievable decline.”

Karan scowled. The Aachim took every opportunity to point out their own superiority.

“Seven weeks must have passed since the magiz said eight weeks,” said Llian. “We haven’t got long.”

“Ah!” said Karan.

“What?”

“She lied. Syzygy is almost on us.”

Llian’s breath hissed out through his teeth. “Then we haven’t got a hope of stopping the invasion.”

“Ship coming!” called their lookout, Nimil, a young Aachim with a metal slit in his throat.

“We’ll talk about what to do later,” said Malien quietly. “In private.”

They scrambled up to the watch post, a flat rock topping a pyramid-shaped hill. Nimil was peering north through a brass and green-enamel telescope. Karan made out a dark speck on the sea.

“Ally or enemy?” said Malien.

“Can’t tell.” Nimil’s voice was a squeaky whistle. “It’s racing down the coast, close inshore, keeping out of sight. Could be a smuggler.”

Malien looked through the telescope, and so did Karan, but there was nothing more to be discovered. They returned to the fire.

Shortly Nimil reported a second vessel, several miles north of the first and also heading south. “Biggest ship I’ve ever seen. Flying a purple flag.”

“Purple with a yellow book in the middle?” said Llian.

“Yes.”

“It’s Snoat.”

“What does he want?”

“The manuscript of my Great Tale, of course,” said Llian. “Can you attack him?” he asked Malien.

“What with?”

“Fire arrows? Or barrels of blasting powder?”

“This sky ship is the first of its kind,” she said carefully, “and it was built in great haste. It’s not entirely reliable, which is why we’ve taken so long to arrive. We’ve had no time to design aerial weapons. And fire is strictly forbidden, or the only blast you’ll see will be our disintegration.”

“The small ship is heading for Alcifer Cove under full sail,” called Nimil.

“It’s racing Snoat,” guessed Karan. “I’ll bet it’s some of our allies.”

They reboarded and the sky ship slipped away to the south, keeping behind the island until Snoat’s flagship was no longer in sight, then the bald helmsman took them low over the racing vessel inshore. People ran out on deck, staring up at the sky ship. The Aachim design would have been unmistakeable. Someone waved signal flags, spelling Shand.

“Tell them we’ll set down in the clearing half a mile north of the eastern gate of Alcifer,” said Malien to Nimil, who signalled back.

An hour later the party of eight arrived: first Shand, wincing and holding his injured buttock, then Tallia and Nadiril, Lilis and Yggur, Hingis and Ussarine, and finally Esea, who was far behind and looked ghastly. Had Hingis and Ussarine’s reunion gone too well?

Shand shook everyone’s hands. “We’ve got a chance now, but we’ve got to act fast. Let’s get to work.”