A searing wind sent the greedy birds tumbling through the air. They fled, screeching madly. Stray feathers floating after them were consumed in scarlet flashes. Then all of the dead bodies caught fire, each one burning with the fierce crimson of magic, painfully bright. The village spearmen still lying prone on the ground hastily scrambled away from the scorching heat.

Naldeth clapped his hands, silencing the murmurs of consternation. All eyes turned to the young mage.

'What are you going to do now?' Velindre asked, curious.

'I haven't used earth in an illusion before.' Naldeth rubbed his hands together. 'But if that mage in the beaded cloak can, I'm sure I can do just as well if not better.'

Kheda saw the muscles tighten along Naldeth's jaw as the wizard gritted his teeth.

The mage spread his hands wide and drew a cloud of dust up from the scuffed and soiled ground. The village spearmen gasped as a figure formed in the empty air. It was the skull-masked mage, about as tall as a man's upheld forearm and complete in every detail, from his blue-feathered cloak to the hanks of hair hanging from the cord around his waist. Naldeth gave them a moment to recognise their erstwhile master before stepping forward to scatter the image with a violent blow, his face stern with anger. Stepping back, he smoothed the rage from his face as the dust formed itself into a miniature dragon. It wasn't the lithe sky dragon that the skull-faced mage had courted, nor yet the solid black earth dragon from across the river. A more sinuous creature, it was akin to the dragon Kheda had seen in the sea, albeit red-scaled rather than green.

The spearmen were kneeling in the dust now, all eyes fixed on the floating illusion. Still impassive, Naldeth wove another skein of dust into a pile of diminutive brown corpses. The dragon walked through the air with slow menace, sunlight glinting off its scarlet scales and golden claws.

Now scowling furiously, Naldeth stepped between the stalking dragon and the meat awaiting its pleasure. He smashed the little beast into sparkling shards with a clenched fist. As the glittering fragments dissolved into dust, the wizard sent illusory flames to wipe the image of the slain into oblivion, his face sorrowful.

'What exactly do you think you are telling them?' Kheda asked quietly.

'Hopefully that I'm no servant to any dragon.' Naldeth watched the dust blow away on the wind. 'That I won't see the dead dishonoured by filling some beast's belly.' He raised his hand and the flames of the woodless, scentless pyre sprang still higher, turning from wizardly scarlet to all-consuming white heat.

'I just hope that what he means is what they're understanding by all this,' Risala murmured as she and Kheda retreated. The wild men were getting slowly to their feet, talking quietly among themselves, eyeing all four of them with speculation and, here and there, suspicion.

'What are you doing?' Kheda saw Velindre holding her hands cupped before her, faint blue magelight wound between her fingers.

She didn't answer as Naldeth snapped his fingers and the incandescent white fire vanished. There was nothing left of the dead now but pale, gritty ash. Velindre spread her hands wide and released the magic she had been cherishing. It swept the feathery ashes up into a dancing spiral. Threaded with sapphire, the vortex rose high into the cloudless sky and dissolved into the radiant blue.

'So now they're utterly lost as well as dead.' Risala stared upwards, tears standing in her eyes.

'Perhaps not,' Velindre said quietly. 'Aldabreshi bury the humble dead to return their virtues to their domain but the bravest and best lie on the towers of silence so their merits may be spread wider.' She brushed lingering remnants of azure light from her hands. 'These ashes will be carried across this whole island.'

'My mother said the dead are burned so nothing is left to hold them here and stop them crossing to the Otherworld,' Naldeth said with a catch in his voice.

Risala favoured him with a quizzical glance. 'And you call us superstitious.'

'I wish I knew what these people thought about such things.' Kheda saw the wild men looking at each other with growing confusion and some unease. He took a deep breath. 'Let's get back to the village and discuss what we're going to do next. There's still a wizard and potentially a dragon between us and the Zaise.''

Just do the task that's laid before you and don't be distracted till it's done. That's what a warlord must always remember.

His uncompromising tone had silenced the other three and they followed him meekly back around to the open face of the bluff. With the spearmen trailing behind, they all struggled back up the steep slope in silence. No one spoke until the village came into sight. The open space within the thorny enclosure was wholly deserted.

'Where's everyone gone?' Naldeth wondered.

The spearmen started calling and whistling, clapping their hands. Slowly women and children began to emerge from thickets of spiny plants and thistles. Mothers had their babes strapped to their backs with lengths of stretched hide and all were carrying bundles. Even the youngest children clutched some burden.

'They were ready to run,' Kheda realised, 'in case we lost the fight.'

'Where were they going to go?' Risala wondered.

As the men spread out, arms wide to offer comforting embraces, the women did their best to smile through their lingering fears. Little children clung to their mothers' hands or hugged their fathers' legs. Kheda caught sight of the scarred spearman, the bloodied hacking blade still in his hand as he approached a woman, his expression sorrowful. She sank to her knees, pressing her hands to her face to stifle heart-rending sobs as she realised someone dear to her wasn't among the returning men. A young girl simply stood, her shocked face as immobile as carved wood. An infant wriggled in his mother's embrace as she tried to offer comfort to the bereaved girl. Other families clustered around a weeping mother and her bevy of distraught children.

These people are not animals to be prey for some beast. Or playthings to be tossed around by some wizard's whim. They could be so much more than savages.

'Is there anything we can do for them?' Risala's voice was tight with distress.

'Let's get out of this sun.' Kheda took her hand and began walking stiffly towards the skull-faced mage's hut.

'We won, didn't we?' Naldeth sounded less than convinced.

'We won that particular skirmish.' Kheda did his best but his words were still harsh and angry. 'That's all.'

They reached the dead mage's hut. The shade beneath the sturdy roof was welcome and the inadequate walls offered at least some diminution of the sounds of sorrow outside.

'So what do we do now?' Risala asked wearily.

'We think through exactly what we're doing here.' Kheda swatted at a couple of persistent flies that had pursued him into the gloom. 'We've barely taken time to

draw breath since we set foot in this place.' He looked at Velindre. 'May I have some water for washing my hands?'

'Of course, my lord.' She mocked him with a low bow before picking up a gourd tucked in one of the bed spaces. She held a hand over its open neck and turquoise light dripped from her fingers. The sound of the drops hitting the empty bottom was loud in the silence.

'You were wondering why tyrants and brutes rule some domains within the Archipelago.' Kheda turned on Naldeth. 'It's because once you start a fight, it's nigh on impossible to stop it going further. We've started a war here today. I know we didn't mean to but we have. We've beaten back the tree dwellers but they'll attack again, doubtless with their mage in his beaded cloak coming looking to test himself against you.'

'Then we'll drive him off, or kill him if he won't take the hint,' Velindre said with distaste.