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Perl can tell this is enough magic to blow a hole through a normal mortal. But Jareleezi simply staggers backwards. Exeinil uses the moment to get to her feet, pushing her dishevelled hair out of her eyes as she shouts at Perl and Vane, “Both of you, stay there.”

Vane, enraged, tries to move forward again. Perl forces him back. “She’s too strong. Vane. Don’t.”

Perl can see Exeinil drawing her magic. She’s going to kill Jareleezi. Surely she must. She is strong enough.

Jareleezi is getting to her feet. She’s some distance from Kerik now, who is sitting up on the floor, dazed and weakened, but he’s too far away for Perl to get to him. Not without magic.

“Vane, I…” Perl begins but his voice is drowned out by Jareleezi.

She is standing right under the flaming cage. “Oh,” she says, “the power here.” She is wobbly from Exeinil’s attack, but she lifts Iceheart. She aims it right at the cage above her.

Perl holds his breath. “No,” he whispers to no one but himself.

Jareleezi sends a bolt of magic directly up into the cage, breaking it apart with a terrible shattering sound. The cage and the flames vanish and a mortal man falls. Perl stares. His father. The charred body falls down and down. It breaks apart in the air, turning into a strange glittering dust, raining down on Jareleezi.

Pure magic.

She seems to twist under it. She seems to glow. Her power stronger than ever. More of it rains down onto Kerik. He takes a gasping breath as he too absorbs the magical power.

Jareleezi laughs in triumph, but as she does Exeinil hits her with another blast of magic, this one so powerful it shakes the hall.

Jareleezi staggers forward and bends to take hold of Kerik, still slowly regaining consciousness on the floor. She lifts him like he is nothing more than a feather pillow.

“Please,” Perl shouts. “No, please, don’t kill him. He is the Magician.”

“Kill him?” Jareleezi says. “I’m not going to kill your false Magician. I’m going to drain him. You have created a marvellous new vessel for me, Perlash-zeren-ai.”

And Perl realises what she is going to do with all the power she has just wrought from his father’s body. She is going to take Kerik. A mortal vessel forged in Vylenor. A power source. She’s going to use him to make herself the Magician. And when she leaves Vylenor now, Perl will never get Kerik back.

Not least because he has no doubt the Ice Court will seal him in his own flaming cage as soon as she has gone.

“No,” he shouts, standing up. He wrenches at the cuff on his wrist, as if there is any chance of removing it without magic.

But it's too late. He can see a bridge that should take a hundred years, forming in moments with Jareleezi’s power amplified through Iceheart. She smiles at him as she steps back through it. And she and Kerik are gone.

Perl screams.

But otherwise the hall is shocked and silent.

Diamanda and Seridil are dead. Half the guards in the hall, who fell under Jareleezi’s magic, are getting to their feet, but the rest are not moving. Vane’s face is grey. Exeinil is walking shakily towards him. “I charge you, Perlash-zeren-ai, with causing the deaths of my daughter, Princess Diamanda and Prince Vane’s thrall, with bringing a fae-blooded mortal into Vylenor to teach him magic and with the unforgivable heresy of using that mortal to create a vessel from the magical power of Vylenor that opened a blood door for a witch to breach our wards.” Her voice is solemn, edged with ice.

Perl says nothing. He doesn’t know what he can say.

26

KERIK

Once again, Kerik finds himself a prisoner. He doesn’t know where he is now. In a cell that appears to be underground. A small area behind a barred wall. Through it he can see a darkened cave-like room. A fire burning in a small grate is the only light. The orange glow bounces off various strange items. A large bowl on a tall plinth. Something that looks like a high bed with leather straps at points that must be meant for restraint.

She’s not here. Jareleezi. He has few memories of how she brought him here, but he has enough. Coming back to consciousness in her arms as she carried him naked from Vylenor, a rushing like travel through a salt door. Being thrown into this cage and left.

He is still naked, lying on a bare stone floor. And he has no power. He is sure of that. Jareleezi has somehow drained all the magic from him. All the power he could snatch easily from the air in Vylenor is gone. He has tried to use his will to escape. And he has nothing. He can feel a strange emptiness inside him when he tries.

But there is someone in the room. Someone on the other side of the bars. Not Jareleezi. But someone. Someone who wasn’t there a moment ago.

Kerik blinks. The room is dim, but the glow from the fire is lighting a pale body covered in scraps of silk and chain, golden hair.

Roughly he says, “Vane?”