"It is almost time," whispered Nysander.

Seregil gripped Alec's arm. "Shoot true, tali."

Alec pressed a white-fletched arrow to his lips. "I will, tali," he whispered back, blue eyes glinting fiercely under the black paint.

Holding that image in his heart, Seregil hurried away after the others.

Alec gripped the arrow in his fist, feeling the power in it. The sound of the sea now was the sound from his nightmares, but this time the arrow had a head.

Looking down, he saw the dyrmagnos scatter the handful of wooden disks into the water. As the last one sank from sight the face of the pool went still and glassy. The tide still surged and thundered to its edge, but the power of the dyrmagnos kept any more water from flowing into the pool, which was now full. Like a dark mirror, it reflected the black eye of the sun.

The dyrmagnos raised her hands above it and began a new chant. A man was brought forward and thrown down on his back at her feet. Soldiers held him by the hands and feet and Harid Yordun came forward with the black ax.

Alec wanted desperately not to watch as he hacked the man's chest open, but he knew he must not look away for an instant.

Harid cut out the heart and threw it into the water.

Quick, skirling ripples appeared and faded on its glassy surface as if a flock of swallows had darted past. Another heart was thrown in, and the ripples reappeared, more numerous this time.

Alec felt a silent tremor roll through the stone he was lying on. It came again as the ax rose and fell, growing to a steady rhythm like the pounding of a labored heart.

The pool went black; and dull as tar. Tendrils of mist rose from it, and with them came disembodied moans that echoed softly on all sides.

Seregil recognized those ghostly voices, remembered standing over the crown as his blood fell into ice and crystal while they whispered around him.

Crouched with the others now behind a fallen tree near the waterline, he saw shifting, half-formed shapes gathering out of the gloom beyond the torches, mingling restlessly with the vaporous exhalations of the pool. The black water began to swirl as if stirred with a dyer's paddle. The spirit voices grew louder, sighing and shrieking. Wraiths buffeted them, plucking at their clothing and weapons, twitching strands of hair. The air thickened perceptibly, muting what little light remained. Nysander sketched a quick sigil on the air and the wraiths retreated.

Working their way into the woods without being seen by the sentries, they followed the road to the head of the cove.

"Be ready," the wizard whispered. "It is nearly time."

Something slipped coldly across Alec's back beneath his tunic. The weird disturbances in the air were worse now, tenuous but too insistent to be denied.

Spectral forms, half-seen from the corner of the eye, brushed light as cobweb against his face, only to flit out of sight when he tried to look at them directly.

The soldiers' torches flared green and spit off fragments of flame that skittered like rats around the edge of the pool before being sucked up into the column of ghostly mist that was forming over the roiling pool. Up and up it rose, thrusting a twisting grey pillar flecked with tongues of fire into the burnt sky. It stood over the pool for a long moment, spirit forms darting around and through it, then a single blue-white bolt of lightning forked down through its center with an apocalyptic roar, blasting the pool into an explosion, of steam and rock fragments.

Soldiers fell to their knees, covering their faces in terror. The ravens rose in a screaming cloud, adding their raw voices to the din. From the direction of the road came the frenzied screams of the horses tethered there, and the clatter of carts being dragged off as the panicked beasts bolted. The mist slowly rolled back, revealing a shattered, steaming hole where the pool had been.

With a shout of triumph, Irtuk Beshar climbed down into it and retrieved something from the water and rubble.

Straightening again, she raised a helmet in both hands with a screech of sheer triumph.

The bulging, peaked top and nasal of the helm were fashioned of dull iron but it was circled at the brow with a wide circlet of ruddy gold. This band was set around with eight dull blue stones and surmounted by a bristling crown formed from eight twisted black horns. A curtain of black mail hung down from the back of the Helm and skeletal, long-taloned hands served as the cheek guards.

Climbing out, she held it up before Mardus and launched into an invocation of some kind. Although Alec did not understand her language, he recognized two words: «Seriamaius» and "Vatharna."

Alec drew the bowstring to his ear.

Before he could loose the shaft, however, shouting broke out in the forest to the south. All eyes turned to see the bright glow of fire above the tops of the trees in the direction of the camp.

Mardus drew his sword and shouted an order, sending half the guards off in the direction of the disturbance.

Still clutching the helm, Irtuk Beshar gabbled urgently at him.

Time slowed to dreamlike unreality as Alec rose to his feet and took aim again at the dyrmagnos.

Ghostly forms imposed themselves between him and his target, swirling around him to buffet and natter but he ignored them, concentrating on his shot.

Shoot true, tali.

"Aura Elustri malreil, his he whispered.

The black bow quivered like a live thing under his hand as he drew it, calling on every ounce of power the Radly possessed. When the nock was level with his ear he released it. The fletching nicked his cheek as it flew, carrying a drop of his blood away with it.

The arrow sped straight and true as any shaft he'd ever loosed, and made a sound like a sudden crack of summer thunder when it struck Irtuk Beshar in the chest just below her throat. The impact spun her like a broken doll. The Helm fell from her hands, tumbling back into the blasted pool.

"And now you, you bastard!" Alec yelled, taking aim at the startled Mardus.

But an arrow buzzed by his head, spoiling the shot.

Another whined past and he dropped for cover as pandemonium broke out below. Still clutching his bow, he scrambled to the edge of the outcropping to see what was going on.

Arrows flew from all directions, but most found targets among the Plenimarans. By the wavering light of the fallen torches Alec could just make out a small group of archers on the high ground opposite where he lay. They were shooting down at the exposed men below. In the melee, he saw Seregil and Micum dashing down over the rocks with their swords drawn, closing in on the wounded dyrmagnos.

Mardus was nowhere to be seen, so Alec turned his attention to the soldiers, shooting two in rapid succession before he was momentarily blinded by a brilliant flash of light that flared among the prisoners.

As his vision cleared, he saw Thero standing over the smoking bodies of several dead soldiers, but apparently unaware of the armed man coming at his back.

The wounding of the dyrmagnos must have weakened her hold on the wizard, Alec thought. "Look out," he whispered, sending a red-fletched shaft at the guard. The man fell and Thero was lost from sight as the other prisoners surged forward in rebellion or panic.

"Got her on the first try!" Seregil exclaimed under his breath, watching from the ledges above as Irtuk Beshar whirled suddenly, clutching at the shaft protruding from her chest. The Helm fell from her hands, tumbling back into the hole it came from.

Mardus dove after it.

Ignoring the sudden arrow storm that erupted around them, he and Micum left Nysander in the shelter of the rocks and charged down. Irtuk Beshar's spells on the pool were already unraveling. Water surged back into the basin, washing corpses and entrails down into the hole, and sweeping the Helm out of reach as Mardus bent to grab it.