Inardle’s attack on himself and his companions had shocked Eleanon. Not just the attack, but her chilling murderousness with it.

That hadn’t been the Inardle Eleanon had known.

What had happened to her? Had the ice hex somehow changed her? Eleanon didn’t know how Axis had managed to get her out, or how he had managed to restore her life (for Axis would have needed to kill Inardle to escape Borneheld).

But most of all, Eleanon could not comprehend what Inardle had become and he feared that it was somehow his ice hex that had caused the transformation. If so, that hex had been a critical mistake.

The thought that he may have made a critical mistake unsettled and frightened Eleanon.

In order to distract himself, Eleanon concentrated on fine-tuning the training the Lealfast Nation needed for the final confrontation that would see Axis and Inardle and all others within Elcho Falling dead, and the citadel his.

The Lealfast Nation had settled on the gentle slopes and meadows just below the Sky Peaks, far to the north-west of Elcho Falling. Here Eleanon could train the Lealfast with no one watching . . . although had they seen, Eleanon did not think they could have made any sense of what happened.

Today, as in the many days before, Eleanon stood in the centre of a large meadow.

About him the Lealfast Nation had arrayed themselves in ten gigantic circles that rotated about Eleanon. Each alternate circle moved either sunwise or anti-sunwise, and they moved slowly and deliberately to the beat that Eleanon clapped out with his hands. Occasionally Eleanon shouted instruction to this circle or that, keeping them in step with all the other Lealfast.

When Eleanon was satisfied, he quickened the beat of his hands. The circles began to move faster, although still deliberately, a stunningly choreographed dance with every single one of the Lealfast keeping place and pace perfect. And they were perfectly in step. Every one put their right foot down with everyone else’s right foot, and thus with their left foot.

Eleanon himself, in the centre of the circles, began to move, looking this way and that, his body trembling with the vibrations caused by the hundreds of thousands of feet placed perfectly in time to the beat of the dance.

He staggered slightly, losing his footing as the earth shook beneath him, and then Eleanon lifted into the sky, still clapping. As he lifted, he shouted, and so all the Lealfast, a quarter million of them arranged in concentric circles, raised their faces to the sky and shouted and clapped their hands.

The earth in the centre of the circle shuddered violently, then lifted, dirt spraying everywhere within a radius of fifty paces.

Eleanon, hovering in the sky, gave a small smile of satisfaction.

It would be good.

“Maxel?” Ishbel said, half rising from where she’d been dozing in the belly of Abe Wayward’s boat. Abe was forward, checking the rigging, Doyle was still fast sleep in the prow and Serge was manning the tiller, apparently sent into a catatonic state by the gentle rhythmic lull of the waves.

But Maximilian . . . Maximilian was sitting bolt upright just down from the tiller.

“Maxel?”

Maximilian smiled. “Look, sweetheart, you have dozed away all this time and missed the view to the north.”

Ishbel frowned at him, then swivelled so she could look forward.

“Oh!” she gasped.

Elcho Falling rose on the horizon, the three rings of its crowns turning lazily in the brilliant sun, sending glints of gold scattering over the sea.