Ishbel was eight, trapped in her parents’ house in Margalit.

The bodies of her parents and aunts and cousins and all their servants lay strewn about the house, decomposing into noxious heaps of whispering blackened flesh.

She stood at the top of the staircase, both hands clutching white-knuckled at the newel posts, listening to the crowds at the front doors.

There is plague inside!

All are dead!

Burn the house! Burn the house, so that we might live!

“No!” Ishbel cried, her hands now shaking, her voice quavering in fear. “No! I am alive! I am alive!”

She raced down the stairs, tripping once and rolling four or five steps to a landing, before picking herself up, bruised and scraped, and racing downward again.

Watch out, Ishbel. They are lighting the faggots right now.

Ishbel fell again in her terror, cringing against a wall.

The whisper had come from the body of a servant girl who lay in a doorway. Her name was Marla and she had always been kind to Ishbel. But now she was dead, her face half rotted away, her teeth poking out all green-stained and oddly angled. What was left of her face rippled, and Ishbel saw that the movement had been caused by maggots feeding deep within the girl’s cheeks.

Watch out, Ishbel, the faggots are burning well, now.

It was not the corpse that whispered, but the silvered hoops in Marla’s ears.

Watch out, Ishbel. It is getting awfully hot.

“No,” Ishbel whispered, backing away on her hands and knees, then turning so she could continue down the stairs on her bottom, too shaken to try to get to her feet, her breath jerking from her throat in terrified, tiny sobbing hiccups.

She slid down the stairs, her skirts tangling with her thighs and hips, one shoe half falling off.

Someone pounded on the front door, and Ishbel tried to call out, to let the crowd know that she was alive, that they must not set fire to the house, but as she opened her mouth she slid another turn of the staircase, and instead of words, nothing came from her mouth but a terrified squeal.

A man of glass stood four or five steps down. His flesh was formed of a pliable, and utterly beautiful, blue-green glass. Deep within the creature’s chest a golden pyramid slowly rotated and pulsed.

His head was glass-like as well, his features beautifully formed, and his eyes large round wells of darkness.

They were staring at Ishbel with dark, malicious humour.

“I am the Lord of Elcho Falling,” the glass man said, “and I am come to save you.”

He took a step upward, and Ishbel screamed, turning to scramble away as fast as she might.

“I am come to save you,” the glass man whispered, and Ishbel felt his hand close about her ankle.

She almost blacked out in her terrified panic, but just as the darkness was closing about the edge of her vision, a new voice spoke in her mind.

Courage, Ishbel. Remember who you are, and where you have been, and what your purpose is this day.

The glass man firmed his grip about Ishbel’s ankle, and she knew that at any moment he would haul her down the stairs . . . but she tried to concentrate .

The glass man was not the Lord of Elcho Falling. He was the One.

Maximilian was the Lord of Elcho Falling.

Suddenly Ishbel was not eight, but thirty, and she rolled over onto her back and thrust her foot as hard as she could into the face of the One.

She did not manage to touch him, but he reeled back in surprise, and his grip on her ankle loosened.

Twist it, Ishbel! the rat said, scrambling for purchase on her shoulder.

“Oh, be quiet,” Ishbel muttered, and jerked her ankle free of the One’s grip.

The One regained his balance and reached once more for Ishbel, still scrambling to get to her feet, but as he did so the stairs under his feet warped and curled, and he was no longer there.

What happened? said the rat.

“I unwound the staircase from beneath his feet,” Ishbel said. “Now he’s above us.”

Then she was on her feet and hurrying down the stairs, trying to get to the front door before the crowd outside set fire to the house.

Her terror had abated somewhat, but it was still there. The month she had spent among the rotting corpses of her family when she was eight had left an indelible scar on Ishbel’s psyche. To merely recall the memory was unbearably painful.

To find herself back in the house, even knowing it was a construct of the One’s power, was almost too much for her, even as an adult.

She wished Maximilian were here.

The crowd outside had quietened and that caused Ishbel more concern than had they been vociferous.

What were they doing?

She could hear the One pounding down the stairs, but she was almost at the front door, and if she could open that and escape the house, then Ishbel knew she’d be back in DarkGlass Mountain, at the place within its structure where that single key foundation stone lay .

Ishbel reached the foot of the stairs and dashed across the foyer toward the door.

But just as she reached it, the door exploded in flames, and Ishbel reeled back, crying out in horror as the heat scorched her face and hair and clothing.

She realised her dress was afire in several spots and she beat at the flames, terrified, unable to reason her way out of it, sure that, this time, she was going to burn to death within the charnel house of her father’s abode.

Then, before she could successfully beat out her flaming skirts, the walls burst into fire.