Through the confusion and disorientation, the majesty of Harran Pass was not lost on Idris. From the covered walkway, sixty feet up, the delicate balance of the homes and buildings pushed into the harsh grey rock of the Harransee was beautiful in its determination – nature be damned, people were going to live there. The cobbled streets mimicked the thick boulders crumbling on the declines. Cliff hawks nestled in the crags like the guards on their viewing balconies, with seeing glasses aimed towards whatever was happening at the gate. The bell was still clanging loud and true. Nothing had breached the wall, yet.

Breathless, Idris fixed his eyes on the wood and iron, on the green tendrils creeping through the cracks.

“What is this?” he whispered.

He wished, desperately, that he had some crystals, a set of bells – anything to help him identify what was coming through Harran Pass. It was necromantic in nature, so clearly. The music in his bones, begging him to join the dance, told him that. One book, an afternoon studying, and he could figure this out, but he had mere moments to try and identify the danger before him.

“The gate is not going to hold this,” he said under his breath. “It is already coming through. Which means the necromancer is… is outside, still, and…”

He hopped, trying to stabilise. From the corner of his eye, he saw the guard with the water and wine.

“A bucket,” he said, directing the wine to the ground. “Please.”

He grabbed the water jug, chugged as much as he could without choking himself and turned his attention back to the wall. Standing before it now was a contingent of town guards, swords and shields held high. The archers on the balconies were ready to draw. Kurellan was there, organising the remaining guards from the barracks, calling out orders.

“Fifty soldiers are not going to help,” Idris said. “But…”

But the green glow was not how the Queen’s men died.

He knew that. The evidence was there. If they were going to fall, it was going to be to trained blades, not to the magic in the air.

“Bucket, sir.”

“Under my leg. Not the one I’m standing on,” he added, seeing the guard falter. “Beneath my knee. There. Thank you.”

The exhaustion in his body was superseded by the energy in the aria. It filled him utterly, so familiar and yet so foreign with another conductor. The tune was the same, but the rhythm was someone else’s.

“Why does this feel so different?” he said, eyes wide on the gate. “Why is this… why is this hard?”

In theory, he should have been able to pick up the melody, follow it, and draw out of it. He had seen Magus Arundale work side by side with another earth aria magician to pull ore out of mountains, using the same notes, the same motions. In the depth of the war, he had witnessed weavers constructing energy fields in teams of twenty. But this was not his death aria. This did not belong to him.

Blood magic?

Perhaps.

But even branches of necromantic blood magic could not conjure spirits from thin air, surely?

Idris tugged at his chained hands, cursed.

Focus. You do not need your hands.

Hardly daring to, he closed his eyes.

He breathed deep.

The aria was deep, dark, and true, as complex and mournful as any other he had felt on battlefields and in dungeons. He understood the instruments. There was the command for movement; there, in the crest, the purpose, the motivation. And yet beneath it, in every undertone and harmony, there was… something else, something he was not attuned to, something different. Even that, though, was baffling. Nothing else should have been woven into this song but death arias.

Is he using two attunements? Two arias?

It should have been impossible, and yet…

Through the blasting melody in every pore, Idris heard, “They’re breaching the gate!” from below, and he opened his eyes.

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A plank burst inward, sending shards and splinters shattering across the cobblestones. The soldiers flinched, but no person came through the hole.

A plume of bright green ballooned in.

And from the balloon came a huge, stretched, screaming face.

Idris’s blood ran cold. It was monstrous, worse than anything he could have dreamed, horror-struck and trapped. It made no sound but its mouth gaped and its eyes were closed in scrunched-up agony.

The guard line hesitated. Kurellan stood ahead, broadsword raised, calling for calm and order.

“Open the gate,” Idris whispered. “They are coming through regardless, open –“

“Open the gate!” Kurellan roared.

“Good man.” Idris held the wooden wall tight, staring, ready. “Let them through.”

As soon as the gate was even half-a-foot open, the green mass pushed in.

It whooshed through the soldiers without pushing them, without any force, but the guards stepped back. Some were already backing up further into the town, shields raised, gazing around with white faces. Idris understood it. He wanted to bolt, too. The green faces, as they passed the soldiers, were coming towards him.

Through the gate, there was the black figure.

It stood perfectly still and silent, outside the city, its shoulders broad and covered in a huge cloak. It made no move towards Harran Pass. It just… stood.

“There you are,” said Idris. “Do you see me, too? I see you.”

He had no doubt, somehow, that the other necromancer had his eyes cast right at the guard post, waiting to see what Idris would do.

“Approach!” shouted Kurellan.

“Do not approach!” Idris shouted, but there was no way the old judge would hear him from that distance. “Please, Kurellan –“

A handful of soldiers hurried forward, toward the black figure. Immediately, one of them spooked, and froze in place. The remaining four went slowly.

And it happened so quickly.

On the right, a man went down, without a sound, blood spurting from his neck.

The group turned, surprised. The black figure did not move, but then –

Another. In the back group. To his knees.

And a face roared up at Idris.

He jumped, shoved himself backwards, caught his knee on the bucket and tumbled to his backside, blinking and stunned. His skin tingled, strangely, where the green light had touched him; he had never felt anything like it, before, like cold fine rain slamming against him. He scrambled back to the wall, pulled himself up.

Through the erratic, continuous movement and frightening faces, it was almost impossible to see what was killing the soldiers, but they were going down in fits and starts, everywhere. Kurellan called the order to retreat but they were already running. The black figure still had not moved and no man had reached him.

Then, there was a noise Idris thought he recognised: a voice, screaming, “Judge Kurellan!”

“Lila,” he burst, staring.

Blasting towards the gate was a black mare with two riders on its back.

Finally, the black figure turned.

Willard made a noise halfway between a wolf and an owl, swinging his sling above his head; Lila was bent hard against the horse’s neck, riding like her life depended on it. Instead of running out of the way, though, the black figure simply stepped aside, and Lila rode right into the midst of the green light.

The horse spooked, reared.

“Lila!” Idris cried.

She forced it back down, ordered Willard off it.

In the chaos, the black figure decided that now was the time to move. He started walking towards Harran Pass. Some of the archers loosed their arrows at him, but nothing seemed to hit.

“Right now is the time, Court Necromancer,” Idris whispered to himself, and he held out his bound hands, clawed them into the air in a motion he was not familiar with, and he tried something he had only ever read about.

He tried to wrestle the aria out of the other necromancer’s control.

Eyes fixed on the approaching form of the black figure, lungs filled with the unfamiliar cadences of the rival melody, he twisted his wrists so his palms turned up. The chains held him back, so he dropped his shoulders. The poor form was not going to help, but he had no other option.

“Loose,” he ordered.

Nothing happened. He hardly even felt the char in his throat.

Panic stirred in the base of his stomach, in his spine.

He reset his stance, his one leg firm on the ground, the other knee on the bucket, and tensed his arms up again. The black figure kept walking, undeterred by Idris’s intervention.

“Please,” Idris whispered. “Please, let everything I have given up be for something, please –” And he firmed his muscles and took the breath again, like he was meant to, and he felt the aria, and he said, as loudly as he could, “Loose!”

And nothing happened.

Idris felt everything he had learned to believe in, everything he had worked for, everything that had stripped him of an identity and forced upon him a new one – he felt it wither inside him.

What was he doing wrong? Was it the hand motion? His injuries? Maybe it was standing with only one foot.

Or…

Or maybe he just was not good at this.

Maybe everything he was always scared of was true.

He stood silent, staring, breathless, filled with an aria he should have relished and instead made him sick, and he gazed at the black figure walking toward the guard post.

The figure stopped. Its head tilted up.

Idris wanted to scream all of the questions he had down at him. But his emotion held the words in his throat. He was certain, somehow, that the figure smiled. Then, it moved on, and out of sight.

“No,” said Idris tearfully, resetting again. “No, I… I can do this, I…”

In his head, he was sitting on the ground, with a hunting trap cutting into his ankle and his hands on his wet skin, willing the aria to work, exhausted and aching and alone and -

“Idris?”

He blinked, sniffed, looked around. Below, Willard was staring up. The green glow had dissipated. The panic was over.

“Hello, Willard,” Idris said, holding back the tears. Willard smiled.

“You well up there?”

“No,” said Idris.

“Oh.” Willard hesitated. “Well… well, Miss Lila is coming to get you, stay there.”

Idris did not respond. He slid down the wooden wall until he was kneeling on the floor, and he tried to forget where he was.