It was a rainy, grey morning and I could feel the chill north wind slicing at my ethereal feathers as I winged my way through the treeline. Once I reached the open space I felt a little giddy, so I halted, and reduced the height at which I was flying so that I skirted the ground as I continued onwards.

Already I could feel it. The Door. The incessant hum of the thing.

You’re going to keep an eye on it all?

“Two eyes,” Zel replied. “Or more, if you’ve got a willing donor or two.”

You mean, wake up some of the others? I thought back, in a somewhat critical-sounding mind-voice.

“I was joking! Tee-hee.” My advisor tittered. “Don’t worry, I’m all over this. Today should be interesting.”

She did sound like she was in an amazing mood, and it was quite infectious.

The Winter Door stood alone in a wasteland of dead trees, many of which had been chopped down a foot off the ground, the stumps marked with runes of closing, runes of resistance. The wards stretched about the Door in a dozen concentric rings – the shield was nowhere near as powerful as the one enclosing the Maginox, but I could at least see its faint bluish radiance now I was approaching the portal, stretching up to form a dome that stretched three times the height of the huge Door. I guessed the relative weakness of the protections here had more to do with the nature of the thing they were protecting than any failure on the part of those who made the wards. Certainly these were more straightforward-looking – the barriers weren’t designed to operate with ill-will-wishers permitted within, like Magicrux Altra and its prisoners. All the same, my teeth were already grating from the incessant hum of the Door, and I got the feeling that the resonance I was suffering through was having the same effect on the sorcerous barriers I could detect, seeming to thin them, soften them.

This place had no shrine, no visitors. While the druids could talk-up the perils of the Autumn Door, people visited the Giltergrove because it offered a whole experience – the awesome trees, the innumerable types of flora and fauna, in addition to the Door itself. It was kid-friendly, and mysterious. The Winter Door, on the other hand, had a very real history of tragedy and violence. Everyone knew better than to come here, and the Magisterium knew better than to let them. The area of forest around the Winter Door had been designated a no-go zone to most members of the public, and apparently even the lords and ladies whose properties came closest to the Door were turned away if they crossed the boundary.

So in place of a shrine there was only a simple, stone-built fortification: twenty-foot-high walls, four of them, forming a square. The walls were thick enough to contain a few buildings between the inner and outer faces – dormitories, I supposed, for those magisters taking breaks from their shifts – and a pair of archways offered non-fliers a way in and out. Arches without gates. Gates would not be needed here – and if they were, they could do precisely nothing to help.

The Door rose from the centre of the structure, seeming like the Autumn Door in almost every way – the same huge ‘door-frame’ marked with vast glyphs, the same ever-changing, scintillating surface, like a curtain of water and fire mingled together – but its colour was the most easily-recognisable difference. Its waves flowed and its flames licked sapphire-blue within the white frame; the glyphs adorning the alabaster stone were very similar but that was a matter more of style than content. The portal emitted a crackling sound, soft, like dry sticks popping on the fire. Nothing like as bad as the hum beneath, not even in the same league. It was obvious to me that this was a mortal sound, something originating in Materium.

This portal wasn’t asleep.

It was a very different experience – the Autumn Door, surrounded by massive golden trees, made you feel small, like a gnome in a giant’s forest. But the Winter Door towered over everything, with no equally-colossal features in the environment. The Winter Door simply looked big.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I spotted Glimmermere, the unique condor’s blue feathers almost hiding her from even my eyes. She winged her way across the cloudy sky, approaching the Door from the south. And below us, gathered around the portal’s base, was a mighty company of champions and magisters.

Some of the mages down there were adepts from the affiliated colleges, by the looks of their robes, contractors simply going about their jobs. Most were circling the two vast surfaces of boiling blue fire at various distances, casting their bone-sand in expertly-laid circles to form more-powerful, constantly-replenished wards.

But some of the magisters stood apart, with the champions…

Arch-magisters.

Then I saw her – the head of Special Investigations. Mistress Keliko Henthae was here, talking to a couple of important-looking sorcerers – a big, imposing man with silver-blond hair poking out from beneath his hood and a younger, female sorcerer who looked vaguely familiar. I ignored them, studying the arch-enchantress. Her beringed fingers glinted despite the gloom, her rose-hued robe supplemented by a thick-furred white cloak – the cloak’s hood was up, hiding her darkish-grey hair, but there was no mistaking her.

Henthae. The reason Em – the reason Stormsword – wouldn’t be backing us up today.

‘The Magisterium’s orders.’ A paltry set of ‘examinations’ she’d set up for my girlfriend, to keep her away from me, away from this.

I deliberately avoided looking at the old woman as I landed. Zel was quick to reassure me that she was ready: Henthae wouldn’t even get my surface thoughts without her knowing. That was to say nothing of the anti-enchantment amulet I wore under my clothing, clinking softly against my healing-phial. Henthae was clearly powerful, but powerful-enough to contend with my current kit? I suspected not.

Instead of studying her, I waved at the champions.

Timesnatcher. Lightblind. Starsight. Dimdweller, the dwarf. Yeesh, that was a lot of diviners, but I was glad to see Starsight back on his feet.

No Killstop? I caught myself wondering.

Glancefall. Rosedawn. Spiritwhisper. I was surprised Lovebright hadn’t shown up.

Leafcloak. Fangmoon. And Glimmermere, soon to arrive. I was kind of glad Nighteye had been left behind this time, for his sake.

Mountainslide, the second of the two dwarves. Winterprince… Only two wizards?

Then Shallowlie. Direcrown.

Me.

Most of the others were talking in low voices amongst their companions. Henthae, Timesnatcher and Lightblind were discussing the fact we were still awaiting the arrival of Shadowcloud (three wizards!) and another arch-magister too. I walked over to Starsight, and he was already reaching out to shake my hand.

As I clasped the white-robed diviner’s palm in both of my own, I hailed him:

“Starsight – good to see you’re back on your feet. And not even stabbing your friends…!”

I said it with a big joyful grin on my face, but I realised from the way he replied in a rather flat monotone, “Feychilde,” that my jest had come too soon. Had he only just recovered from the mind-warping influence of the infernal obsidian he’d touched?

“Did I get chance to thank you?” I asked. “For saving my life, after I fell?”

“You did,” he said, “but you didn’t.”

It took me a second to realise what he meant by that.

I opened my mouth: “I’m sorry –”

“No need,” he cut me off. “You gave me Neverwish’s share, didn’t you? And you spoke to me of stabbing friends.”

There was no open hostility in his voice but I could sense it just beneath the surface. He might’ve been frowning, glowering behind the five-pointed mask he wore… but I couldn’t tell.

Neverwish. Was that what all this was about? But… Timesnatcher had insisted I be the one to call the dwarven enchanter out on his darkmage-ways… Had ‘T-Man’ foreseen this? Had I been wrong to put my trust in him? What if he was just trying to make me hated?

I couldn’t be too quick to jump to conclusions. Starsight was suffering, probably in several ways. He’d come around.

He turned aside to say something to Dimdweller, the dwarven diviner who’d also turned on Neverwish in those last moments of Neverwish’s freedom; I sensed myself being dismissed.

I stood on my own for a minute, padding from foot to foot, trying to keep myself distracted from the portal’s awful hum by eavesdropping on six or seven different conversations. Direcrown was talking to a lilac-clad magister – or arch-magister, given the way the stranger was standing, as if speaking with an equal. Shallowlie was off to one side with Rosedawn, their heads close together, murmuring… The thirty-ish enchantress was clad in her robe of night-blues and soft pinks. Rosedawn’s mask covered only the upper part of her face, two hills shaped in the silvery material shadowing her eyes, a coppery sun rising between them to hide her forehead.

How long were we going to have to wait?

It wasn’t just the portal’s headache-inducing buzz. It was the anticipation. The nervousness. Everything from the Bone Ring and Lord Obscure to the Cannibal Six, from the Firenight Square attack and the Incursion to the vampire-lord, it all started flitting through my mind, everything that had led me to this moment –

“Feychilde,” came Henthae’s sardonic salute from over my shoulder.

* * *