'Blackthorne,' said Hirad.

'I've heard that beards rub the skin of the face,' said The Unknown. 'Pucker up.'

Hirad laughed. It was brief, the pain flared across his chest. The elves and Blackthorne were walking the horses towards them. The barbarian stopped and looked behind him. He felt like sagging to the ground but knew he'd never get up again. Relief was stamped across Thraun's face and Denser's had softened just a little.

'You boys need a ride?' asked Blackthorne as he reached them.

'Now you mention it,' said Hirad.

Blackthorne's dark eyes sparkled but his expression was grim when he took them all in.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's not waste time. You need help, all of you.'

Hirad nodded. 'I'll kiss you later.'

'Pardon?'

'Never mind,' said The Unknown. He clasped Blackthorne's arm. 'We won't forget this.'

It was a long time before Erienne even recognised that the world she knew was gone. It was a long time before she recognised anything at all. Awareness was not something she could take for granted, she thought. Or did she? This could be a dream, in which case, she was not necessarily aware. She had no sensation of breathing, movement or life. None of her external senses revealed anything to her. She might well even be dead.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more likely that outcome became. Her memories were fragmented. Not those of her past; they were as clear as they had always been. But there had been a transition. And somewhere between Myriell's shattering cry and the restart of her thought processes, the memories had been broken, scattered.

Parts of it were still there. Dimly-heard shouts. A pain like she had never experienced before, splintering through her mind. Voices in the darkness. A curious odour like paint burning. An enveloping of her consciousness in a strangling mesh. Contracting, contracting.

It was this she had woken to, with the thought that she must fight. With no idea of the passage of time, she was unaware how long her mind had been under attack. And it was an attack, she was sure. Like it had been waiting for a slip, the One entity inside her had reacted instantly to Myriell's death and the removal of the suppression of its potential.

Now she could recall it burgeoning within her with a power far too strong to control or even deflect. It had used her mind as a focus and gorged itself on the elements around it. But it had not been allowed to give unfettered vent to itself. Something had blocked it from the outside. Denser. It had to be. Qnly he understood. Only he among those she had been standing with was capable.

For the first time in what felt like an age, she experienced warmth in her mind. She reached out and probed gently for Cleress but the Al-Drechar was not there. She might be dead too. Probably was. That meant that she, Erienne, was alone to fight the One. Not to defeat it, but to bend it to her will. She imagined it like a spider, the great mound of its body resting on her conscious mind, its eight legs gripping her and squeezing. She couldn't hope to push the body away, not with her limited experience. But she had to stop the constriction. So, in her mind's eye, she had to keep on prising away one of the legs, or maybe two. Keep it occupied, keep it off balance.

The question, of course, was how.

What had Myriell and Cleress told her? She struggled to remember. Her mind was clouded, the One all around her, trying to feed off her, drag her mind's energy, leach it away and use it. It came to her. The One was not sentient and it was dangerous to think of it as such. That was what they had said. In fact, it was little, more than a channeller for elemental forces as much as her mind was a focus for those same forces.

This was where she had had difficulty understanding them. It was not sentient but in one sense it had to be an entity or how had they managed to transfer it from her dying daughter to her? The point was, she had been told, that it was an unguarded channeller. Her mind had to be both guardian and focus. And it was the guardianship that was hardest learned, the suppression of the ability of the One to suck in energy and use it destructively.

That was what the Al-Drechar had been doing. Closing off its access to the elements. And this was what made it different from any magical power. Mana was naturally chaotic and unfocused, harmless in its natural state. So were earth, air, fire and water harmless. The

One entity, though, gave them direction. And the mind of the mage in which it rested gave them focus, gave them outlet.

In order to prise one of the legs away, then, she had to force her mind to focus in the way she wanted it to. Wrest back control. Imagination was the key as it was to most magic. The ability to see the shapes the power formed and imbue them with the necessary motive force.

Actually, she thought as she swam towards some form of active conscious thought, that was a very simplistic view. Her Dordovan masters would have chastised her for it. The Al-Drechar would have praised her.

She kept the idea of the spider and its legs uppermost in her mind. The first thing she had to do was stop the dragging in of elemental chaos. That was like a gale inside her head. Once she had done that, perhaps she could begin to bend the One her way. Perhaps not. She looked deep inside herself and saw the yawning chasm the One had opened up to the flow of the elements. It was terrifying, like standing at the mouth of a volcano as the lava boiled up and knowing she had to close the crater.

She quailed from the task, immediately feeling the legs begin to tighten.

No, she said to herself and for the benefit of her unwelcome parasite. I will not yield to you. You will not have me.

And it will not, said a voice. Not with your strength. And not while I have mine.

Cleress? Delight flooded her. Another voice. A hand in the dark.

I am weak but I am here. Come on child, let us get you back to those who love you. The One blocks you. It is a case of knowing where to push and then how to hold open the door.

Can I do it?

Only you can ever know that.

Tessaya, Lord of the Paleon tribes, and leader by consent of the Wesmen nation, had been pleasantly surprised by the response of the lords and tribal heads gathered before him as dawn broke over the encampment.

His palatial tent was full of leather and fuf-clad senior tribesmen, all of whom he knew by name. The air was thick with pipe smoke, sweat and opportunity. The eyes that stared back at him from beneath hard brows were concentrated with energy and desire.

Representatives of forty tribes had answered his call, spurred to action by the mode of communication, passed by the tribal Shamen through the Spirits rather than by bird or rider. War council was invoked, his message had said. Muster your men. Be ready for victory over our oldest enemy. Come and hear my words.

And they had come and Tessaya was pleased. Now they waited for those words.

'The storms have passed and we have emerged strong and united. That you are all here and in such obvious health is proof enough. Through the harsh times, we did not fight. We shared, we survived. We are fit, our crops grow once more and our children laugh while they play, their bellies full.

'It is not so in the east.'

Murmurs ran around the tent. He saw Riasu nod and smile. He knew more than most but less than Tessaya. It would forever be the way while he lived. Information was the key to power, not strength of arms.

'My Lords,' said Tessaya, holding up his hands. 'The warring colleges are tearing the east apart. The colleges blame each other and a single small child for the forces that raged against them. I prefer to think the Spirits have exacted their vengeance. Now it is our turn.

'It has set college against college, mage against mage. It has set man against his brother. But more, it has weakened them and the fabric of the society of which they are so proud. They sneer at us across the Blackthorne Mountains, terming us savages. Yet who is it whose children die in the streets in front of their fine-built houses? Who is it who determines to war until the last man lies dying in his own blood?