Axis bounded up several flights of stairs, moving through the massive gathering of fighting men.

Ishbel followed close behind, her movements sure and certain.

“We go in a few minutes,” Axis shouted, the shout being taken up and passed further and further up the stairwell. “Prepare! Prepare!”

He ran up two more flights of stairs. “Egalion?”

Egalion shouldered his way through the packed soldiers. “The Emerald Guard stand ready, StarMan.” He gave Ishbel, standing a few paces behind Axis, a curious glance but Axis ignored it.

“Ishbel will transfer a thousand Lealfast into the Common Room. Are you —”

“Ready? Yes, StarMan.”

Axis gripped Egalion’s shoulder. “Good.”

“What are the Lealfast doing now?” It was Ishbel, coming to stand at Axis’ shoulder.

Axis closed his eyes a moment, communing with the eagle. “They are still around the lake, still somewhat scattered and confused, but Eleanon is organising them. We have to go soon, Maxel.”

“I need to see, too,” said Ishbel. “I need to know where we need to go.”

Egalion gave Ishbel a startled look at the “we”.

“Then watch,” Axis said, and Ishbel’s mind was filled with a vision of the outside.

She saw with the eagle’s eyes, high above Elcho Falling. There was the citadel, great gaping holes in its walls, and she saw the lake, its surface still churning somewhat with the activity of the River Angels deep below; she saw the Lealfast, now clearly gathering into their twelve groups.

I have no idea what Eleanon hopes to do from this point, Axis said into Ishbel’s mind. But I do not wish to give him the chance to execute it, I need to strike now.

Where do you wish to go? Ishbel asked Axis.

Then, and then, and there, and there, Axis said, showing Ishbel four points that would give his troops best advantage. You need the lealfast in the air, Ishbel said.

Once they know we’re then, they’ll take to the wing instinctively, Axis said. Any winged race would do so.

The vision faded.

“You are ready now?” Ishbel said.

“A moment,” Axis said. “Egalion —”

But Egalion had already gone to join his men in the common room.

“Let me just share this vision with the men,” Axis said. “They need to know where we go and how I wish to deploy them.”

Ishbel waited, watching the faces of the men glaze slightly as vision filled their minds, then watched them nod, just slightly, as they responded to something that Axis said. Ishbel felt the first real frisson of hope that she’d felt in many, many months.

Maybe, maybe, if Ravenna could be trusted, then this would be the final act.

Axis reopened his eyes.

“Now,” he said, and Ishbel drew on all her power as Lady of Elcho Falling, and did as Axis asked.

Axis felt as though a giant had squeezed his midriff and forcibly expelled all the air from his lungs. He had no sensation of moving, or of being transported. He just suddenly found himself face down in the dirt by the lakeside of Elcho Falling, heaving breath into his lungs.

He rolled over, forcing himself to move, desperate to get his men positioned before the Lealfast could do much more than rise into the air in panic. He rose to his knees and was relieved beyond measure to see all the men rising and forming themselves into their practised, shield-protected squads.

Ishbel was there as well, crouched low to the ground, and she gave a small wave at Axis’ concerned look. I am all right. Do what you must without thought of me.

Axis risked a quick glance upward — already the air was filled with startled Lealfast — then he was down on the ground, rolling as fast as he could under the shield wall of the nearest squad of bowmen. Once inside he rose to his feet, bending over slightly at the shoulders, and grabbed the shoulder of the nearest bowman.

“See what I see,” he whispered. He communed with the eagle, sharing the view from a height far above Elcho Falling, then, using all of his skill as an Icarii Enchanter, he twisted the vision, translating it to what a man on the ground would see, then shared this vision with the bowmen.

See, he whispered among all their minds. See . . . and act.

In the four different locations, bowmen slotted their arrows through the tiny openings between the shields, took a breath, and, using Axis’ vision as their only guide, let loose their arrows.

Immediately each bowman’s arrow keeper slapped a fresh arrow into the bowman’s hand, and a moment later a second wave of many thousands of arrows skewered the air.

And again.

And again.

And again.

The tip of the Dark Spire, now leaning precariously to one side as the structure beneath it continued to crumble, had turned completely black. It was also covered in cracks which were opening wider and wider with every breath Ravenna took.

Behind them she could sense, if not actually see, a terrible darkness awaiting.

The One, crouched directly beneath the cracking skin of the pinnacle of the spire, took a deep breath and then his form began to change. His green glassy flesh melted away and the One transformed himself into pure power.

In essence, it was not the One who now lay waiting beneath the top of the spire, but the pure power of Infinity. Beneath the roiling power the spire collapsed, but the top of the spire continued to hover in the empty space at the top of the destroyed chambers.

The One, now unadulterated Infinity, withdrew all power from the destroyed spire, concentrating it entirely inward and to his own purpose.

He could no longer “see” as such, as his physical form was destroyed, but he could sense the Lord of Elcho Falling, waiting just beyond.

High in the air, Eleanon reached for the power of Infinity.

And found it gone. Whatever had once allowed him to touch the power of Infinity was now destroyed.

The Dark Spire, he thought, eaten by the water creatures.

Infinity was lost to Eleanon and his kind.

The gateway had vanished.

Already variously frustrated, enraged, disorientated and panicked, Eleanon lost his nerve and composure completely. All about him Lealfast were falling from the sky, pierced by arrows from the archers below. Eleanon knew he should call out an order, knew it, knew the Lealfast were waiting for something from him, then he cried out in pain and shock as an arrow thudded into his right thigh.

“Flee!” he cried. “Flee!”

Then another arrow, two, three, thudded into his right wing, and Eleanon began to fall from the sky.

“You know,” Isaiah said, almost conversationally, on the balcony where he stood with Georgdi, “I’d heard stories of how good Axis was, how he could command men and how he could manage a battlefield, but this . . . this is extraordinary. I’d not want to meet him across a divide of hatred.”

Georgdi only grunted in reply. He wished quite desperately that he was down there with Axis, helping to bring down the Lealfast Nation.

Maximilian had left Isaiah and Georgdi on the balcony. He’d crept down to a spot where he could observe the space above the spire where it had broken through into the ground chamber of the citadel.

Ravenna stood motionless at the handrail, just before the section where the staircase had broken free and tumbled down in pieces.

Maximilian halted, partly hidden by a corner of a wall. He watched with desperation — not that Ravenna would fail him, but with the need to go to her.

How could he let her do this alone?

“Don’t,” a soft voice said behind him, and Maximilian partly turned his head.

Garth Baxtor.

“This has been a long and terrible journey,” Garth said, his voice very soft, “from the moment you were snatched on your fourteenth birthday, through your seventeen years of darkness in the Veins and the troubles Ravenna and I needed to endure to rescue you, to this now. A long and terrible journey. The least we can do, Maxel, is to bear witness for Ravenna.”

Ravenna and my son, Maximilian thought and then he suddenly thought of Ishbel, and he realised why she had needed to transfer out of Elcho Falling with Axis.

Pray gods keep her safe!

“Look,” Garth whispered, and Maximilian turned his eyes back to Ravenna and what lay beyond her.

The Emerald Guard were ready. The instant the Lealfast materialised inside the Common Room the Guardsmen moved smoothly into action. It only took five minutes. Five minutes of smooth, coordinated, almost dance-like movement on the part of the Guardsmen. Five minutes of screaming incomprehension and fear on the part of the thousand Lealfast, who were the balance of transfer, as they all died.

Not a single Guardsman had so much as a scratch.

It was time. The One exploded through the remnants of the pinnacle of the Dark Spire — not in physical form but as pure, bleak power.

Infinity, come to visit the Lord of Elcho Falling.

The One could feel him, standing not too far distant, and he hurled his power in that direction, ready to not waste a moment in winking the Lord of Elcho Falling out of existence.

This time he would leave nothing to chance.

But the Lord of Elcho Falling was moving, faster than the One could have thought possible, twisting along a path that confused the One.

But — the Lord of Elcho Falling was just ahead, only a step or two, and the One seethed forward . . . to find himself blinking in surprise.

“They’re escaping,” Georgdi said, pointing to the north, and Isaiah nodded.

Five, six minutes, and virtually every arrow fired by Axis’ bowmen had found a mark. There were a few thousand Lealfast not dead and they were escaping.

Let them go, Axis, Isaiah said and, finally, the barrage of arrows from the squads of bowmen positioned about the lake ceased.

For long minutes the only sound that broke the silence was of the River Angels, heaving out onto the lake’s shore the bodies of Lealfast who had fallen into the water.

The siege of Elcho Falling was over.

Maximilian and Garth stood watching as Ravenna turned and ran directly toward them. They both gasped, taking a step back, but in the moment before Ravenna reached them her form wavered, then vanished.

Directly behind her came a bolt of pure black power that Maximilian recognised from the time the One had thrown it at him down the path from the Twisted Tower. Maximilian grabbed Garth and pushed him to the floor, tumbling after him, but the instant before that black power consumed them it vanished. Maximilian and Garth were left gasping for breath on the floor.

Garth moved immediately to rise, but Maximilian lay still, remembering Ravenna running toward them and the moment their eyes had met.

And the instant after, when that long terrible journey which had brought the three of them together, and which had precipitated so much adventure and pain, was suddenly, horribly, over.