“Please don’t do this,” Hingis said hoarsely from outside the pavilion.

Llian could hear each breath rasping as Hingis fought to draw air into his withered lung. What was the matter with Esea? Had the drumming driven her over the edge? Was it affecting both of them?

“Her – or me?” Esea repeated.

“Don’t say it, Hingis,” Ussarine said softly. “You mustn’t choose.”

“You forced me, Esea,” Hingis choked. “And I choose… Ussarine!”

Esea let out a cry of anguish, then shrieked, “Then join her – forever!”

An almighty blast tore the copper roof off the pavilion and sent it whirling down the slope, scattering blazing paper lanterns everywhere. The rest of the columns fell. Outside, Ussarine screamed in agony, then fell silent. Some distance away a man groaned. A woman stumbled off, howling in grief and despair. Esea, surely. Had she killed them?

“Esea?” Llian called. “Hingis? Ussarine?”

No reply. He was on his own.

He realised that he had dropped the manuscript. Snoat rose, holding it in his left hand, the stubby Command device in his right. He was trembling all over, presumably from the effects of the deadly device. He pointed it at Llian, who hurled himself back over the desk. He landed on a burning paper lantern, extinguishing it, and pain seared up his back. The black blast peeled curling layers of bright blue lacquer off the desk and tossed them in all directions like wood shavings in the wind.

“No, Cumulus!” Ifoli cried. “You’ll let the Merdrun through.”

Snoat was shuddering now and his teeth were chattering. “What’s the matter with you?” he snarled. “Let… me… go!”

Thump. Llian peered over the desk. Ifoli was staggering backwards, a fist mark on her cheek. The drumming became a thumping crescendo that rattled his ribs. He could feel it calling him again – take the Command device and cut the bastard down.

“Get the Great Tales!” said Snoat.

Ifoli swept them into a large bag and slung it over her shoulder. Snoat jammed the manuscript into a leather bag.

Outside, fighting broke out in many places. Had the drumming made Snoat’s men turn on one another? It was too much to hope for. Llian scrambled out of the ruined pavilion. Something was burning down near the water. The sky ship should have been lit up by the flames but there was no sign of it.

Snoat was lurching down the slope towards the eastern bridge, waving the Command device wildly, and Ifoli was running after him, bent under the weight of her bag. Llian wanted to bolt back to the clearing and Karan, but the job had not been done. He followed Snoat and Ifoli down, across the bridge and onto a broad expanse of polished paving stones.

“Cumulus, you must not use it again,” cried Ifoli. She grabbed Snoat’s arm.

“How dare you question me!”

He struck her on the side of the head with the Command device, knocking it from his trembling hand and dropping the manuscript as well. The drumming roared in Llian’s ears. Was this his chance? He had to take it. He shouldered Snoat out of the way, snatched up the device and pointed it at his enemy’s half-masked face.

“Die, you bastard!”

“You imbecile!” said Ifoli. “You can’t use it.” She dropped the book bag and tried to snatch the device from Llian’s hand.

In a moment of drumming-fuelled madness, he turned to blast her down.

“Stop!” said Ifoli.

“How dare you tell me what to do?” Llian raged, and was about to end her when he remembered Sulien saying, “No, Daddy.” He lowered the device. Fool, what are you doing?

Ifoli hooked his legs from under him. He fell to the ground and the device skidded away across the stones. “Stay down!” she hissed.

“Guards,” Snoat bellowed, “to me!” He turned to Ifoli. “Kill him.”

Ifoli looked from Snoat to Llian, then back to Snoat. She shook her head.

“So,” he said. “It’s as I suspected. All this time there’s been a scorpion in my own house.”

What was he talking about?

“Who are you spying for?” said Snoat. “It’s pointless to deny it.”

“Nadiril,” Ifoli said softly.

“That doddering old fool!”

“He sent me to you in the first place. He’s fooled you all these years.”

No guards had answered Snoat’s call, but now a one-armed mancer ran up, carrying a snake-shaped staff. Scorbic Vyl, Llian assumed.

“Kill them,” said Snoat.

Vyl pointed his staff at Llian and Ifoli. Llian tried to get up.

“Stay down!” Ifoli mouthed.

“No, do it with that!” said Snoat, pointing at the Command device.

Vyl picked it up and was about to blast Llian and Ifoli when Esea staggered out of the darkness, her beautiful face twisted in despair. She extended an arm towards Vyl.

Snoat let out a derisive snort. “You don’t even have the power to tickle him.”

“Reshape it!” said Esea.

White fire roared from her fingertips and struck the Command device, reshaping it into a brass sphere with the dark crystal embedded in it like an evil eye. But the reshaping had perverted the intention of its design and the strain was too much: it shook, shuddered, shrieked and the crystal began to throb.

“Now reshape them!” said Esea, swinging her arm in a circle.

Ifoli dropped beside Llian, covering her face with her hands. As he did the same, the Command device exploded in a blast that reshaped Vyl grotesquely, hurled him backwards for fifty feet and set fire to the very stones he had been standing on. It reshaped Snoat too but left him where he stood.

“Can’t… be happening,” he gurgled, lurching around in a circle. His face was inside out, his belly outside in. “Not… to me! Can’t… go like this. Ifoli, my Great Tales… bring.”

She did not move. Esea, whose throat and chest were peppered with shards of brass, let out a little sigh, crumbled to the stones and lay still. Her face relaxed, and all the grief and anguish was gone.

“Damn you!” Llian snarled. He forced himself to his feet, picked up his precious manuscript, hesitated then tore the pages out and tossed them on the burning flagstones. Snoat screamed as though the very point of his life had been denied him, then staggered to the fire and threw himself onto it, as if to extinguish the flames with his own body. The fire roared higher, then, just as suddenly went out.

A shimmering red bubble formed around Llian and Ifoli. In a series of flashes he saw the Merdrun army, an icy plateau with the Crimson Gate at its centre, then Wilm in a luridly glowing cavern with a small silver-haired girl. Aviel.

Then the red bubble shrank to nothing and they were gone.