As we’d trained, we shrank the circle, each of us moving inexorably inwards, which only served to overlap the barriers. It was the best we’d ever achieved. A thousand whirling strands of blue light forming force-tesseracts, interlinking to weave fractals like I’d once seen in a tome at the Maginox library.

The battle raged on about us as we approached the remaining wight-lords. To my right one of the arch-wizards had created a great lava-filled depression in the ground with sheer sides, into which the undead were being hurled.

I ignored it all, facing down my enemies.

We could continue to squeeze, crush them – me and Shallowlie were only ten feet apart now and they were locked into the sphere between us –

“Stop, Shallowlie.” I fastened the latest force-line and halted, staring at the undead men and women who’d once been like us. “Will you speak with us?”

To my surprise, it was the youngest-looking who slid forward, a lad whose death must’ve occurred when he was no older than I was when my parents were killed. His incredibly-out-of-date suit was impeccably-tailored to his not yet full-grown frame, and his white hair was a curly mess combed to one side.

His expression was one I was used to.

The sneer of a highborn.

“How camest such as thou into divine inheritance?” He looked between the two of us with his ever-youthful amethyst eyes, hatred, anguish twinkling there. “Thou art of the lowest order. How hath he permitted thee, thine abomination, to perpetuate thus! To slay my mother, my father!”

The young-seeming wight stamped his suede-booted foot, and more stone paving shattered. Even the smallest shards of material that erupted couldn’t penetrate the weave.

So how did they ignore my barriers like that? I wondered.

“I haven’t a clue.”

I wasn’t expecting you to, don’t worry.

“Who’s this ‘he’?” I asked.

“Dread Vaahn, King of Kings, He –“

“From whom all nobility springs, right,” I cut him off. The kids’ rhyme I’d learned went Dread Undeath but I recognised the cadence of the expression immediately.

The wight closed his mouth, looking taken aback at my interruption.

I gazed about pointedly. “Looks real noble round here.”

“’Twas our sanctum of peace, until ye came,” one of the female wights said bitterly. She was old and lined before the shadowland took her soul; her dress was no less-fine than the lad’s, who might’ve been her grandson if I had to place a guess. “We exist, and hath in us no need for quarrel. Thy Mundic ways are unwelcome in the Diamond of the North. Offer unto us thy hearts, or begone back to thy stinking pits – we need ye not!”

This wasn’t going exactly the way I’d expected. From what I could tell, these wight-lords didn’t exactly look like they were going to be invading Mund any time soon.

“Your vampire-lord friend attacked us,” I noted. “He came through the Door, slew our people –“

“So thou camest seeking revenge,” the young wight-lord said, turning with shining eyes to regard the massacre currently happening all across the courtyard, “repaying revenge for revenge for revenge, as hath the cycle turned and burned for all eternity. Rhinath! He brought this slaughter down upon our heads, we who never raised hand to strike ye –“

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re undead,” I interjected. “If you’re undead and intelligent, you’re evil, and that means –“

“Nay, child,” he said in his ancient child’s voice. “We here are the cursed and lost.”

“You woship de Puince of Cheys!” Shallowlie hissed.

“What other power will cleave us to his or her breast? The Enduring One?” The old woman wight laughed scornfully. “Thou knowest less than thou knowest. We sought no part in the war; for years we hadst argued ‘gainst such dreadful actions, seeking only peace with thy people…“

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

War? I’ve never heard of a war that affected Zadhal. None of the Mage Wars…

After getting no internal response, I asked aloud, “What war?”

“The war that shattered the Diamond,” she said, looking around at the destruction of her home that had occurred three hundred years ago.

At the destruction of her population that was currently taking place.

I felt a cold lump enter my stomach. We were obliterating undead. There couldn’t be anything wrong with that, could there?

All around me, thousands of them were being returned to the shadowland, returned to the plane to which their souls had been cursed…

“Shallowlie!” a voice roared.

Winterprince descended, and winter ascended to meet him.

A garden of leafless trees, translucent like Ceryad-crystal, rose up out of the frosted, broken paving – blade-like icicle-branches that speared the wights through, bursting their heads, spattering bone and purple ichor across the inside of the weave –

The ice-clad wizard hovered above us. “What are you doing?” He looked across to me. “Yet again, you shirk your duties, Feychilde. I expected better.”

“We wotted iformation, Winnerpuince,” Shallowlie said in a pleading tone, rising up to the same height.

I copied her, then said coldly, “And yet again, you get between me and a talking witness, Winterprince. I’d like to say I expected better…“

The wizard snapped his head about violently, as if biting off a retort, and soared away, smashing his way through the crowd.

I looked around me. I saw the anxiety on the faces of children. Pale, frosted, long-dead children, yes – but still children, still making me feel suddenly like I was the heretic, I was the arch-druid in Firenight Square laying waste to a group of innocents…

My eldritches, my shields – everything was still in play. I was taking part in this massacre. I hadn’t refilled the ranks of my wights in some time and they were all gone by now, reduced to shreds of spirit whisked away on nethernal winds… but Shallowlie had soared back into the fray and seemingly hadn’t thought twice about enslaving a swathe of new ones to replace those she’d lost while we’d dealt with the nobles.

What’s this war, Zel?

“It… it’s not spoken of, anymore.”

Sure, but I know all the stories – and Orstrum never s-

“They took it out of the books, the histories. It’s… ugly.”

I felt chilled, and not by the weather.

How old are you really, Zel?

“Old enough. It was only three hundred years ago, but you can’t remember everything, you know… most of the past is like a dream, isn’t it? It’s easy-enough to make men forget the truth of things, even without magic, given enough time, distance from events… The Arrealbord weren’t stupid, you know.”

So Mund… Mund attacked Zadhal? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?

“It never came up? Look, the last thing I want is you getting side-tracked in a fight against the government…”

But why?

“Those wights are going to overpower Khikiriaz if you don’t help him…“

I didn’t budge an inch. She was lying anyway.

Speak to me, Zelurra, bondswoman!

It felt strange saying that, now. It felt different to before.

Zel sighed. “Zadhal retained an exclusively-archmage nobility. They were ‘stuck in the old ways’ – I’m pretty sure that was how the authorities put it, when they were rousing support for an assault.”

My mouth was dry. But I can’t have been the only one to find an eldritch here who was willing to talk about it – I mean, surely this should’ve gotten out?

“I’m sure it has, dozens of times. I heard rumours about it, once or twice, from sources that got it somewhere second-hand. Who would believe them, though? And why? The Magisterium is good to us, ‘trustworthy’…”

So this is why they’ve never done more than posture at bringing Zadhal back into the Realm’s fold? For fear we’d unearth some evidence they couldn’t easily brush aside?

“I suppose so?”

“Maaaster…” Gilaela said delicately, “I understand that you wish to continue this conversation, but, if you would rather stand back, would you be so kind as to unleash me? It would very much please me to ride down some of these shadowfolk before they are all gone.”

I sighed again, and shook her loose.

The unicorn looked back at me and nodded gratefully before lowering her horn and smashing into a line of wights, just before my swarm of giant golden squirrels surged by her, backing her up.

So they must’ve been dropping rocks about Timesnatcher.

“How so?”

He led this expedition. Even if he just wants to make Zadhal a safe place for us to return to, he’s probably going to uncover some of the hidden truths they want kept quiet. They… I coughed and struggled to breathe, sucking in the cold air, unable to quell the nausea that suddenly clutched me. They wanted enough of us to die that we’d abandon this.

That’s why she wouldn’t send Em!

I seized on the thought and it filled me with dreadful, righteous anger, pushing down the sickness, pushing down everything.

I couldn’t fret about the status of the wights’ souls, couldn’t weigh the morality of sending them back to Nethernum by destroying their physical forms. No amount of conversation was going to lead to us trusting them, leaving them behind us to live out their unlives, while we continued on.

They had to die… again. The onus was upon me to make it as swift and painless as possible, so that we could finish this mission. Return to Mund, where we really belonged.

And on the way, maybe I’d even find some proof the Magisterium waged war on the city, driving the populace to whatever desperate measures led to this everlasting undeath.

The moment I exerted my will upon the wizardry binding me to the air, intending to fly forwards into the thickest part of the battle where my eldritches were hard at work, the strangled sound of the horn split the sky once more.

He was back.

The death-lord.

* * *