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his jaw crack into pieces. He could feel a howl building in his throat. Prying his teeth apart he let it out and heard it bounce back and forth between the walls of the corridor, a skin-crawling cry of pain and near-insanity.

    Lost within Lional’s merciless attack he flailed and thrashed, dimly aware of his battered
potentia
as it grappled with the onslaught of dark magic. He didn’t know how to help his strange powers, or control them, had no idea how to harness their strength to his need.If there was an elegant, subtle way to dismantle Lional’s incant, well, he had no idea what that was. And he didn’t have the time to work it out, either. Because time was precious and it was fast running out.

    Oh, Saint Snodgrass. I could use some help about now…

    Howling again, Gerald pulled his
potentia
back inside himself. Poured every last skerrick of his strength into crushing it small, then smaller, compressing it until it too was howling. He felt like he’d plucked the sun from the sky and was trying to stuff it into an egg cup—and the sun, his
potentia
, was fighting back. Rivers of sweat poured down his face, down his back. He could feel his spine bowing, his knees bending, could feel his heart tryng „ing to batter its way right through his ribs. His unremarkable body couldn’t take much more of this. Punished by Lional and by himself it was threatening to fly apart, to escape this unending torment in death.

    No—no—just a little more—a little longer—

    And on the screaming brink of self-destruction he let himself fly free.

    Like molten fire his power poured out of him, angry and indiscriminate, to smash the bindings of Lional’s warding hex and obliterate its fabric. The keep-your-distance incant went up in flames and greasy smoke, stinking, unwholesome. Reeking of every foul enchantment Lional had so eagerly embraced.

    Sobbing, Gerald fell forward onto his face, unable to save himself. The corridor’s plush carpeting saved him from a broken nose or worse. Gasping he lay there, excoriated, waiting for the flames and agony to subside. When he thought he could feel hisbones whole within him, when he thought he could trust himself to sit up in one piece, he pushed himself off the carpet and looked around at the scorch marks on the gilded walls and the expensive carpet. Stared, astonished, at the smoking doors to Lional’s private apartments, drunkenly hanging from their half-melted hinges.

    “Gosh,” he said, his voice a thin, surprised croak. “How about that, Reg? I did it.”

    And surely Lional would know he’d done it, too. So what little time he had left, he’d be a fool to waste it. Wincing, he staggered back onto his feet, made his way along the unimpeded corridor—and crossed the threshold into Lional’s private domain.

    It stank of dark magic.

    Standing just inside the open doorway, one hand braced against its almost too hot to touch frame, Gerald fought to keep his stomach from turning itself inside out. Every breath sucked the stench of corrupted power into his lungs, sent it flooding through his veins. Was it his overworked imagination or did even his sweaty skin feel sticky and fouled with it?

    I don’t understand. This entire palace reeks of Lional. How did none of the other court wizards not notice what was going on right under their noses? And what about Shugat and his gods? Am I supposed to think Lional just—what? Slipped their minds?

    Possibly that was the most terrifying thing of all—that Lional possessed such strength, such mastery, that he could hide himself and his workings from the keen senses of a holy man like Shugat. That he could hide from the world-class First Grade metaphysical experts he’d hired to serve him. To die for him.

    But then… who am I to talk? I didn’t notice, did I? If I’m so special, if I can do things that make a man like Monk panic, how come I didn’t realize the truth the moment I stepped out of the portal?

    The unpalatable answer