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running down the main trunk wouldn’t last many more winters, so it was perfect for their purposes.

    ‘And to guard it?’

    Zhia drew her long-handled sword and used the tip to cut a circle in the sodden ground around the tree. At her murmured command the circle glowed briefly, a pale blue light similar to the will o’ the wisp. That done, she sheathed the sword and drew another from her back, this one wrapped in cloth. She freed her gloved left hand from the folds of her cloak and raised her hood before unwrapping the cloth. Both turned side-on, hiding as much of their faces as possible, as a bright white light shone out and dissipated the surrounding curtain of mist.

    Without waiting Zhia pushed the shining crystal sword into the split part of the marsh alder and muttered a few more words. The trunk of the tree closed up over Aenaris and the light winked out. Zhia turned away, fingers touched to her face, hissing with discomfort. The Key of Life shone with light as pure as the sun’s; the vampire’s cheek now bore a blackened scorch-mark.

    Koezh gave a polite cough and drew a dagger from his belt. ‘The Key of Life will make the tree stand out if someone passes this way,’ he said as he cut a band of bark away from all around the tree’s base. A touch of his broadsword made the exposed wood blacken and decay. A little mud covered the damage and made it barely noticeable. ‘I doubt that will kill the tree, but it might slow it up a while.’

    ‘I’m rather more concerned some daemon will discover it,’ Zhia said pointedly. ‘The Devil Stair Lord Styrax created is only a few miles away and who knows how many places in these fens reach down to Ghenna? No human will find their way here, even if we were followed, not once I’m finished.’

    ‘All the same, caution is rarely without worth,’ he replied. ‘It will take any daemon time to work out how to handle the sword of the Queen of the Gods. Perhaps we should save our concern for finding a new resting place for Aenaris.’

    ‘A permanent one? That won’t be necessary.’

    Koezh looked askance at his sister. ‘My sister the convert? Once more you have faith in a cause?’

    ‘I have faith in my own senses,’ Zhia replied, not bothering to rise to his insinuation. ‘Players remain in this game who can give us what we want. One of them will win out.’

    ‘Which?’

    ‘Perhaps the shadow after all. Few of the power players consider it any real threat; it seems to be content to wait and let them exhaust themselves fighting each other.’

    ‘And this is the side you wish to support?’

    Zhia looked surprised. ‘What do you mean, “wish to support”? You’d prefer to do nothing? Prefer the Land to continue as it has for the last seven millennia?’

    ‘I am just one man. I cannot choose a fate for the entire Land.’

    She laughed. ‘Compassion? Just another part of our Gods-imposed curse - and yet another thing we might be freed of.’

    ‘At what price?’

    ‘Let consequences be someone else’s problem, we’ve had enough of them.’

    He regarded her as he used to when they were children and he the reticent elder brother. ‘So you are decided?’

    ‘Not at all, that time is yet to come.’ Zhia’s voice became more insistent. ‘Don’t you feel it though? Can’t you sense change on the horizon? That our time has finally come?’

    ‘I do.’ Koezh gave a sigh and looked to the western horizon. The sky was black, and the first stars of night had appeared. ‘Yet still I think of the price others might bear.’

     
    At last Mihn came to the ivory doors of Death’s chamber and there he stopped. Something inside told him he would be permitted a moment to wonder at the sight - to tremble at the judgment that lay beyond. The doors to the throne room appeared to be more than three hundred feet high, but Mihn guessed measurements meant little in the Herald’s Halls. The walk there had taken hours; the ghost of fatigue fluttered