“Here we are, then,” said Raeta. Her shoulder was all fat and swollen. Stinky. Rippled like mud as she moved. Made a squashy farty noise when she raised her arm too high. Tobias had got down on bended knee and begged her not to raise her arm too high. Her face was grey-green-white-purple. Her voice wheezed as she spoke. Dying: be a race to see who died first, him or her or all three of them. They were camped maybe three hours’ walk from the walls of Ethalden.

“We’ll be off at dawn,” said Tobias.

“At dawn. Why not tonight?”

“Because it’s the Tower of Life and Death, the fortress of Amrath, and it therefore seems a jolly sensible idea not to walk there in the sodding dark. Yeah? And because I need a rest first.” I don’t want to be walking there at all, Tobias thought. Been there once. Never wanted to go back. They could feel it, all of them. He could see it in them. The pressure of it. Haunting them. Every step they took now, they walked on sacred god cursed ground. Going to the ruins of Amrath’s fortress to search for Amrath’s skeletal remains and pull a ring with a demon imprisoned in it from His skeletal hand. The Tower of Life and Death. Naff as fuck and twice as terrifying.

“One day too late, I remember you screaming at me.”

“At dawn,” said Tobias. “Dawn. Please.”

“At dawn. If you insist. But don’t blame me.” Raeta said then, “Tobias: I didn’t magic you to come here. I didn’t magic you to want to kill him.”

Dawn. They walked down through a narrow valley cutting between steep hills. A gash of moorland on the scorched black uplands of western Illyr, on the edge of the frigging world. The valley opened out into a huddle of burned-out houses. Some dead sheep. Three dead people. Tobias tried not to look at them and did and yet again swore off roast meat. Up above, on a hilltop, the ruins of a building. A watch tower. They felt it staring at them as they passed. The land rose again. Green barren walls closing. A stream of water trickling over boulders. Black rocks. White pale morning sky.

A beautiful place, oddly enough. The grass was soft underfoot. Mossy. A bare tree on the slope of the hillside thrust up against the white. The water sang as it fell. The curve of the hills like beasts sleeping. Rich, deep, warm green.

Maggots on a corpse, Tobias thought, looking at the landscape. That’s what human life is. Maggots on a fucking corpse. Look at this place. It’s beautiful. It’s too good to have people walking in it, knowing what it is that people do.

“Not people,” said Raeta. “Him.”

“They’re following him,” said Tobias. “They crowned him king.”

The hills dropped away suddenly to a broad river floodplain. Scrubby thorn trees, an outcrop of rock like a cairn, black mounds of ash. And noise, smoke smell, men smell. A salt wind. There, in front of them, the ruins of Ethalden, rearing golden out of the burned ground against the silver line of the sea.

A wound, it looked like. A world in the world. Pain.

It was vast. Bigger than Tobias remembered it. Like it had grown, since he last came here, like a tumour growing on a body, like a fungus growing on a tree. Dragon fire and ruin, and still it rose higher than mountains, squatted wide over the earth. Not a fortress but a city. A kingdom. The air over it was empty of everything. The air shimmered. The air was very cold. Battlements. Gatehouses. Armouries. Marching grounds. Silver towers. White marble terraces. Walls of mage glass. Walls of gold. Walls of human bones. It stank of death and deathlust. Beat into the mind calling out to all who saw it to bow down in worship, rebuild it as the centre and heart and hearthstone of the world. Here, the broken stones screamed, here is the seat of the only true and real king. Here is power. Here is glory. Here is god. This is the only real place in the world.

Landra clapped her hands to her face in wonder. Began to weep.

The Illyian army was camped near to it, between the ruins and the river and the sea. The Illyian army now consisting of two men and a dog and a horse with three legs. They’d thrown up a palisade of thorn branches, in front of that a pathetic screen of wagons and farm carts. The thin line of the Jaxertane at least offered them some protection to the west. Silver lights shimmered in the sky around them. In the sea and in the river, things with teeth and clawed fingers stirred. Fight or die. Die fighting. Fight dying. Hold this last tiny stretch of ruined cursed ground. The shattered walls of Amrath’s stronghold: we will not let you have it, the camp shouted. We will not let you return here to this place from which we destroyed you and drove you out.

The camp was in turmoil, figures running, shouting; looking down on them, Tobias could feel the fear rising off them, panicked voices calling men to order, frantic donning of armour, saddling of horses, preparations made.

A scream. The Army of Amrath was streaming down towards them. Marith himself was visible as a shining light like a diamond, galloping up and down the ranks. The red standard beside him snapped and shuddered. Dripped blood. Overhead, the shadows circled. Twisted their shapeless bodies, bared their teeth.

“So quickly,” said Raeta. “He got here so quickly. I thought we’d have more time.”

Banefire rained down onto the Illyians. Little armoured figures shrieked and burned. The shadows poured in around the ruined towers. The stones of Ethalden seemed to sway.

The sea behind was a mass of thrashing limbs. Sea beasts. Sea monsters. Great white waves. Horse teeth gnashing. White foam hooves flailing out. Kicking madly at the shore. Desperate to reach him. Destroy him. Break his soldiers, as they had broken so many Altrersyr ships. The shadows flew out over the water and the waves rose up to try to drown them.

The waves broke back on themselves. White foam spraying, the waves swirling fighting thrashing round and round. A maelstrom building in the water, a whirlpool sucking at itself, pulling the sea beasts down. The water hissed up in steam. Waves crashed onto the shore reaching for the Illyian soldiers. Tiny stick limbs visibly flailing in their wake. Creatures in the water. Men and monsters together shattered. Smashed against the ruined walls of Ethalden, breaking against the stone.

Marith, Tobias remembered then, had had a weather hand with him in the White Isles. A man with power over the sea.

Bloody useless crossing a barren wasteland.

Bloody effective when your enemy’s standing backs onto a beach.

The silver lights flickered in the sky. Banefire shooting out and down and skyward. Uncontrolled. Burning up Marith’s own men. The shadows plunged at the Illyians. Golden god bird rushing to defend. Another circling, searching out something in Marith’s ranks. The weather hand? Marith himself? A blast of white fire hit the front ranks of the Army of Amrath, tore men apart, devoured them.

The tiny figure of Marith, watching as his men fell dying. Tobias could swear, even from this distance, he gave a mildly irritated sort of shrug.

Marith raised his sword. Shouted. Sound like bronze gates slamming. The death scream of hope.

Another wave crashed into the back of the Illyian ranks.

The Army of Amrath charged the Illyians. Marith a shining diamond at their head.

Kill him, Tobias’s mind screamed.

“Tobias,” said Raeta. “You can go. Do it.”

“Maybe I magicked you to want to stay alive,” said Raeta. “Do you think?”

The Illyian lines broke before the onslaught. Smeared and crushed. The Army of Amrath surged forwards. Every mind fixed. Only killing.

Kill them. Kill every single one of the sick poisonous vile bastards. I know what they are and what they feel, Tobias thought. They cannot be allowed to live.

Tobias found himself rushing down the hillside to join the Illyian soldiers. You can’t run into this, some part of his mind screaming. No one in their right mind would run into this. Never go up against a drink- and drug-addled death-obsessed invulnerable demon. Old secret sellsword’s wisdom, that. He drew his sword as he was running. The Army of Amrath! Destroy it. Wipe it out. Plague. Disease. Rabid ravening blind corrupting beast.

“Tobias!” Landra was howling behind him. “Tobias! No. Please.”

He drew closer and closer to the line of battle. The ruined walls towering over him. A shadow blotting out the sun. Tobias threw himself into the fighting. Hacked and smashed at bronze clad soldiers. Shouted “Marith! Marith!” as if the boy might hear him and come to fight him.

From a cloudless blue sky, it began to rain blood.