For aeons the River Lhyl had wended its way down from the FarReach Mountains, through the lands now called Isembaard, to Lake Juit, the stretch of water in the far south of Isembaard.

Now, of course, the river was nothing but glass, having succumbed to the One’s malevolent sorceries, but the lake itself was alive and vibrant.

Not even the One could touch Lake Juit, if he even knew of its existence.

Few people had ever lived near the lake. Ever since man had first come to this land, the lake had been reserved for the pleasure of, first, the Chads of Ashdod, then the Tyrants of Isembaard. A few servants lived at the beautiful royal house on its eastern shore and a few watermen trawled its surface and reed banks, but they did so only at the pleasure of the current ruler of the land, to serve his purpose.

Mostly the lake was left to its own devices.

It was a massive body of water, almost a world within itself. For all any Ashdodian or Isembaardian had ever known, it continued south into eternity. Chads and Tyrants too numerous to number had sent expeditions south to map the lake and to discover the lands beyond it, but somehow none of these expeditions ever returned and the curiosities of Chad and Tyrant alike had to remain unsatisfied.

Legend had it that the far southern waters of Lake Juit tipped over a cliff at the edge of the world.

The central portions of the lake were deep, but its shores were bordered with reed beds that stretched for hundreds if not thousands of paces into the lake. These shallows were full of mystery, and known by some to touch the borderlands of other worlds from time to time.

The reed beds were not a place for any to travel unless they were very, very sure of what they were doing. Isaiah had used the reed beds and the lake when he hauled Axis back from the Otherworld, but Isaiah had been a powerful god then, and there were few others who could ever hope to manage such a feat.

Mostly, the reed beds were left to the current inhabitants, millions upon millions of pink-feathered juit birds.

They were ungainly creatures, plump of body with long, spindly necks and legs, and oversized beaks. They fed on the grasses and waterweed that tangled about the reeds and squabbled among themselves for entertainment.

These past months they had been unusually quiet.

One day the River Lhyl had died. Very suddenly, within the space of a single breath. The river entered at the lake’s northern border in a great marshy swathe ninety paces wide. Normally the river flowed into the lake strongly, rippling the reeds about its mouth and lifting juit birds’ nests up and down in a soothing rocking motion day and night.

On this day, however, everything had stopped. The river had turned in a moment to glass and a clearly defined edge was created: a small cliff of glass, standing half the height of a man, stretching ninety paces east to west. Occasionally, glass beads that once had been water droplets strained out of the glass, held back by a tiny sliver of hopelessness. A single moment more and they would have dropped to freedom and life within the lake, but they had been a splinter in time too late.

The water of the lake lapped disconsolately at this edge of glass, caressing it, murmuring to it, but there was no response. The river was dead.

The juit birds stayed well away from the glass river. Those who’d had their nests close to the mouth of the river moved them away, cradling either chicks or eggs in their oversized beaks as they stalked awkward-limbed through the shallows to safer abodes. No juit bird would come to within two hundred paces of the dead river and, in their daily meandering through the reed beds, constantly kept their backs to the north and the glass.

The juit birds knew what had caused this calamity and they cursed, not the One, but the Magi who had, so many thousands of years ago, raised the glass pyramid from the desert floor.

If it had not been for Threshold . . .

On this night the reed banks were quiet, as usual. There was occasional movement as birds resettled themselves in their roosts among the reed beds, or snapped sleepily at a neighbour, but mostly there was calm and stillness throughout the millions of juit birds who populated the lake.

Then, suddenly, every bird jerked its head upward, bright black eyes fully awake and aware.

Someone called.

“Ah!” Maximilian felt the breath pushed from his chest as he staggered against a stone wall, and he scraped several fingertips as his hand scrabbled for purchase.

He heard movement about him, felt other bodies stumble momentarily against his, heard others gasping for breath.

“We’re here,” Avaldamon said.

“Where?” Maximilian managed to get out, momentarily disorientated and forgetting what it was he did, stumbling about in the unknown.

“Aqhat, I hope,” Avaldamon said. “Are we all here? Ishbel? Serge? Doyle?”

Voices murmured assent, and Maximilian reached out for Ishbel’s hand. She gripped it tightly, moving against him for reassurance.

Maximilian looked around, his eyes becoming more used to the dark. “We’re in a courtyard.”

“In the great courtyard, to be precise,” said Ishbel. “There is a gate over there . . . see it? It leads down to the river. DarkGlass Mountain is in that direction,” she nodded to the west, “over the river. It cannot see us here if we stay close to the wall.”

Serge and Doyle had their swords drawn and had positioned themselves on the outside of the small group, looking for any danger.

“There is no one else,” Ishbel said. “Not even an owl. Nothing.”

“Everything would have been eaten by the Skraelings,” Doyle said. “At least there don’t seem to be any of the loathsome wraiths here.”

“They’re likely all headed for Elcho Falling,” Maximilian said dryly.

“We need to find some shelter,” said Avaldamon. “Then we need to talk while we wait for the dawn.”

The One lay flat on his back in the middle of the desert, halfway between Sakkuth and Aqhat. His limbs were spreadeagled, and his obsidian eyes were wide, staring unblinking at the starry night sky.

The starlight twinkled deep within his glass flesh.

The One was not happy. He could feel movement and power and understood that the Lord of Elcho Falling and his bride from hell had somehow transported themselves far south.

South to DarkGlass Mountain.

“No!” the One whispered.

He knew what they wanted.

They wanted to destroy the pyramid.

And him.

They had their pretty tricky magics at their fingertips and they were going to walk into the Infinity Chamber and —

Suddenly the One remembered what he’d left in the Infinity Chamber.

The Book of the Soulenai.

He hissed, and all the sand surrounding his body began to roll and jump, as if it were being heated on a giant griddle.

Leaving that book had been an enormous tactical error.

“But not one that can’t be fixed,” the One said, leaping to his feet. He stretched out his arms to either side, straining them until the tendons and muscles bulged.

Then, with a slightly worrying creak, the One began to grow.

On Lake Juit, the birds stared into the night.

Then, in the same instant, the entire population of juit birds lifted screaming into the air.