But sorcery spoke with a different voice.

The spiralling pillars of dust towered into the sky, each one keening, the wind shrieking so loud that Edur and Letherii alike began to cower.

The Letherii white fire surged upward, forming its own standing wall of bridled mayhem.

Trull was finding it difficult to breathe. He saw a hapless raven that had made the mistake of flying over the killing field tumble and flutter to the ground, the first casualty of the day. It seemed a pathetic harbinger to his mind. Rather a thousand. Ten thousand ravens, caterwauling through the sky.

The pillars leaned, staggered, lurched forward.

And began toppling.

A rush of wind from behind battered Trull and his fellow warriors, blessedly rich and humid, in the wake of the advancing columns of dust. Faint shouts on all sides, as weapons were readied.

The spiralling pillars were a long time in coming down.

Shadow wraiths were suddenly flowing across the ground, a dark, low flood. Udinaas could feel their terror, and the dread compulsion that drove them forward. Fodder. It was too early to launch an attack. They would be beneath the clash of sorcery.

As the columns toppled, the wave of Letherii fire rose to meet them.

Feather Witch hissed. ‘The Empty Hold. The purest sorcery of the Letherii. Errant, I can feel it from here!’

‘Not enough,’ Udinaas muttered.

Positioned with the King’s Battalion, Preda Unnutal Hebaz saw the day’s light fade as the shadows of the falling pillars swept over the soldiers. She saw her men and women screaming, but could not hear them, as the roar of the dust thundered ever closer.

The Letherii ritual was suddenly released, the spitting, hissing fire sweeping over the heads of the cowering ranks, the tumbling froth surging upwards to meet the descending pillars.

Rapid concussions, shaking the earth beneath them, tearing fissures up the hillsides, and from Brans Keep a dull groaning. Unnutal spun round even as she was pushed to the ground. She saw, impossibly, the lake beside the keep lift in a mass of muddy water and foam. Saw, as the front wall of the keep bowed inward, pulling away from the flanking towers, dust shooting outward like geysers, and vanishing back into a billowing cloud.

Then the east tower swayed, enough to pitch from the edge the mangonel atop it, taking most of the crew with it. And the mage, Jirrid Attaract. All, plunging earthward.

The west tower leaned back. Its enormous foundation stones pushed outward, and suddenly it vanished into a cloud of its own rubble. The mage Nasson Methuda disappeared with it.

Twisting, Unnutal glared skyward.

To see the white fire shattering, dispersing. To see the pillars plunge through, sweeping the Letherii sorcery aside.

One struck the centre of the Merchants’ Battalion, the dark dust billowing out to the sides and rolling up against the hill.

For a moment, she could see nothing, then the pillar began to reform. Yet not as it had been. Now it was not dust that began spiralling upward, but living soldiers.

Whose flesh blackened like rot even as she watched.

They were screaming as they were lifted skyward, screaming as their flesh peeled away. Screaming-

The shadow above Unnutal Hebaz deepened. She looked up.

And closed her eyes.

Whirling in a frenzy, a huge fragment of Letherii sorcery slanted off the side of a collapsing pillar, plunged down and tore a bloody swath through the core of the Merude warriors a thousand paces to Trull’s left.

The warriors died where they stood, in red mist.

The white fire, now stained pink, rolled through the press towards the K’risnan on that side. The young sorceror raised his hands at the last moment, then the magic devoured him.

When it dwindled, wavered, then vanished, the K’risnan was gone, as were those Edur who had been standing too close. The ground was blackened and split.

On the other side of the killing field, columns were rising once more filled with spinning bodies. Higher, the mass of writhing flesh dimming into a muddy hue, then giving way to white bone and polished iron. The pillars rose still higher, devouring more and more soldiers, entire companies torn from the entrenchments and dragged into the twisting maw.

Ahlrada Ahn reached out and pulled Trull close. ‘He must stop this!’

Trull pulled savagely away, shaking his head. ‘This is not Rhulad! This is the Warlock King!’ Hannan Mosag, do you now vie for insanity’s throne?

Around them, the world was transformed into madness. Seething spheres of Letherii magic were thundering down here and there, tearing through ranks of Tiste Edur, devouring shadow wraiths by the hundreds. One landed in the midst of a company of demons and incinerated every one of them, including the Kenryll’ah commanding them.

Another raced across the ground towards the rise to the west of the emperor’s forces. There was nothing to oppose it as it swept up the slope, and struck the encampment of the Edur women, elders and children.

Trull staggered in that direction, but Ahlrada Ahn dragged him back.

Letherii soldiers, nothing now but bones, spun in the sky above the hills. The Merchants’ Battalion. The Riven Brigade. The Snakebelt Battalion. The King’s Battalion. All those lives. Gone.

And the columns had begun moving, each one on an independent path, eastward and westward, plunging into the panicked ranks of more soldiers. Devouring, the hunger unending, the appetite insatiable.

War? This is not war-

‘We’re moving forward!’

Trull stared at Ahlrada Ahn.

The warrior shook him. ‘Forward, Trull Sengar!’

Udinaas watched the deadly sorcery cut through the shadow wraiths, then roll towards the rise where he stood with Feather Witch. There was nowhere to run. No time. It was perfect-

A cold wind swept over him from behind, an exhalation of shadows. Rushing forward, colliding with the Letherii magic twenty paces downslope. Entwining, the shadows closing like a net, trapping the wild fire. Then shadow and flame vanished.

Udinaas turned.

Uruth and four other Edur women were standing in a line fifteen paces back. As he stared, two of the women toppled, and Udinaas could see that they were dead, the blood boiled in their veins. Uruth staggered, then slowly sank to her knees.

All right, not so perfect.

He faced the battlefield once more. The emperor was leading his warriors across the blistered, lifeless basin. The enemy positions on the hillsides opposite looked virtually empty. To either side, however, the slave could see fighting. Or, rather, slaughter. Where the pillars had yet to stalk, Letherii lines had broken of their own accord, and soldiers were fleeing, even as Soletaken Jheck dragged them to the ground, as demons ran them down, and squads of Edur pursued with frenzied determination. To the east, the dry river gully had been overrun. To the west, the Crimson Rampant Brigade was routed.

Hannan Mosag’s terrible sorcery continued to rage, and Udinaas began to suspect that it was, like the Letherii magic, out of control. Pillars were spawning smaller kin. For lack of flesh, they began tearing up the ground, earth and stones spinning ever higher. Two bone-shot columns clashed near what was left of Brans Lake, and seemed to lock in mutual obliteration that sent thunderous concussions that visibly battered the hills beyond. Then they tore each other apart.

The bases of many of the pillars broke contact with the ground, and this triggered an upward plunge that ended in their dissolution into white and grey clouds.

All at once, even as ragged companies of Tiste Edur crossed the killing field, bones and armour began raining down. Limbs, polished weapons, helms, skulls, plummeting in murderous sweeps across the basin. Warriors died beneath the ghastly hail. There was panic, figures running.