StarDrifter stood with Georgdi, Insharah and Egalion on the balcony where earlier in the day Georgdi had conversed with Josia. It was almost full night and across the lake the Lealfast were settled in front of fires, drinking what was left of the Isembaardian wine. There were a hundred or so in the air, barely visible, but the majority were in the former Isembaardian military camp.

“I don’t understand,” StarDrifter said, “why you don’t use this trick to mount a full-scale military assault on the Lealfast?”

“Because I am not completely sure how this will affect the Lealfast,” Georgdi said, “or how long any effect will last, or even if I have enough of the falamax pods to affect all of the Lealfast. I am not going to commit every man in this citadel to action, without knowing if I may lose every last one of them.”

He pointed down to the causeway. “The only viable way we can exit and re-enter is via that causeway.” Georgdi had heard of another possibility from Elcho Falling’s servant, but it was even more unfeasible than the causeway. “It is narrow. To start with, I can’t get many men out without everything becoming congested or taking six weeks to accomplish, nor can we retreat without the same problem. I take sixty men with me and sixty only. I just want to make a point, StarDrifter, but it is going to be a damned good point.”

“And you’re going to have some fun,” Insharah said. He was a little out of sorts because he was to be left behind, but Georgdi hadn’t wanted to risk every commander they had in the citadel. Georgdi and Ezekiel would be going with the sixty men — comprising twenty Isembaardians, twenty Outlanders and twenty Emerald Guard — but Insharah and Egalion would remain within Elcho Falling.

“And I am going to have some fun,” Georgdi said. “StarDrifter? Can you do this?”

StarDrifter glanced at Georgdi disbelievingly. “Of course I can do this. But won’t the spores affect you as well, when you go into the Lealfast camp?”

Georgdi shook his head. “We’ll give it two hours . . . the spores do not last long in the open air and will disintegrate. By the time we sally forth it will be safe.”

StarDrifter picked up a large wickerwork basket full of crushed and crumbled squares of falamax pods. Georgdi had earlier collected the squares from his men . . . now it was up to StarDrifter.

“Just be careful you don’t inhale any of it,” Georgdi said, taking a precautionary step back.

StarDrifter closed his eyes and counted to ten, finding within himself the means to ignore that unnecessary remark.

Then he fixed his eyes on the basket and began to weave magic out of the air.

It took a moment or two, but soon a ribbon of spores rose slowly from the basket, higher and higher into the air. Gradully, the ribbon of falamax spores broadened and moved over the lake toward the Lealfast encampment.

There the ribbon widened and thinned until it covered the entire camp, then, infinitely gently, the spores drifted downward.

Eleanon lay slouched about the fire, as he had the previous night. He felt warm and content, and slightly inebriated once again.

He wondered if Ravenna was anywhere close, and was vaguely thinking he might go look for her when, close by, Bingaleal looked into the air in terror.

“We’re under attack by gryphons!” Bingaleal shrieked, pointing upward.

Eleanon took a moment to ponder the fact that he didn’t feel like reacting very energetically to this pronouncement despite the terror and urgency in his brother’s voice, before, equally unsurprised, he saw one of the Lealfast who had been patrolling the skies about Elcho Falling fall directly into the fire.

Bingaleal was on his feet, shrieking over and over that it was a gryphon.

The Lealfast in the fire was writhing and shrieking, too (not particularly surprising, Eleanon thought, again somewhat amazed at the tranquillity of his thoughts), and shouting something about misshapen giants attacking the outer permitter of the camp.

Misshapen giants, Eleanon thought. How ridiculous. He has been drinking too heavily of the wine.

Still, he supposed he should do something about the situation. He yawned and stretched, rising to his feet to watch, puzzled, as something bulbous and warty (the ghastly result of a mating between a warthog and a bull?) stepped up behind Bingaleal, then gutted him with its horns.

Bingaleal staggered a few paces away, clutching at his belly. He dropped to the ground with a nauseating wet thump.

“Oh,” said Eleanon.

The creature then turned to Kalanute and Sonorai, standing to one side observing Bingaleal’s misfortune with wide, glazed eyes, and gutted them as well.

Then it turned to Eleanon, and for the first time Eleanon felt terror.

The creature waved its bloodied and gore-streaked horns at Eleanon, and spoke. “I might come back, Eleanon. One day, when you are asleep. Do you dare sleep ever again, do you think?”

Georgdi looked at Eleanon who had, finally, begun to shriek in horror. Then Georgdi laughed as Eleanon pissed himself.

“I hope you remember that in the morning,” Georgdi said, waving his bloodied sword at the dark stain running down Eleanon’s breeches, then he turned and shouted the order for his men to retreat into Elcho Falling.

As he jogged toward the causeway, Georgdi began to laugh. The entire encampment of Lealfast was in turmoil. The spores had tumbled those Lealfast in the air straight down onto the encampment as they forgot to fly amid their hallucinations — at least thirty had burned to death on camp fires. Meanwhile, Georgdi, Ezekiel and his men had run amok through that area of the camp closest to the causeway. Georgdi had personally killed a score of Lealfast, and thought most of the others had managed a similar feat.

Georgdi reached the start of the causeway then stood, counting the men who now headed back into Elcho Falling.

Fifty-eight . . . fifty-nine . . . sixty . . . and now Ezekiel, bringing up the rear.

Not a single loss.

Ezekiel was laughing as well, and Georgdi thought the man looked thirty years younger. Georgdi clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder, and together they jogged back to Elcho Falling.

At dawn, Eleanon stood on the shore of the lake, staring at Elcho Falling and nursing a raging headache. He had used his power to wrap the Lealfast camp in an invisible, thin barrier — not enough to repel an arrow or even a bird, but enough to keep out whatever airborne hallucinogen had been directed at them last night.

They would not be caught out again.

Eleanon’s headache was currently being made worse by the fact that the One had decided to make contact and was screaming into his mind.

Fool! Fool! Did you not for a single moment think they might try something like this?

“Shut up,” Eleanon said, very quietly. He wanted silence, so he could concentrate his hate.

They had killed Bingaleal.

Fool, I say it again, and again! Fool! How could you not have anticipated —

And you did not anticipate, did you? Eleanon shot back at the One. You did not know what was happening. Do you not have Georgdi’s ear, then? You were as fooled as I.

I wanted to see if you had the skills at hand to manage even this. I wanted to see if you could pass this one single test. I wanted to see if —

Eleanon shut the One out. He’d had enough of the One and he’d had enough of doing the One’s bidding. Fuck him.

He was going to take revenge for last night, and he was going to damn well do it on his own terms.

“You think to humiliate me?” Eleanon whispered to Elcho Falling and all its inhabitants.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not even next week.

But not too far away, either.

They would all die now, and Elcho Falling would be torn down and trampled into the dust.

Meanwhile, there were Inardle and Axis.

Eleanon had to vent his fury somewhere, and his curiosity about what they might do with Isaiah was now at an utter end.