Dar's hands gripped her shoulders. Lila remembered the night in Sathanor, the bioluminescent night, when she had held Dar's heart in hers. Now they were in synchrony again and the blade that was killing him was in her chest. For an instant she felt the wound's terrible pain and Dar's agonised effort to cling to the last seconds of his life. Through their sympathy she was aware of all his energy scattering, his aethereal body fading against Tath's.

Dar was trying to speak to her, she realised, as she saw his lips move. She routed power from her reactor through Tath into her bond with Dar.

“Surely no greater king has ever lived,” he gasped, fighting to draw one more breath. “No one with the loving kindness, strength, and courage…”

He was gone. His body, became a deadweight, slid off the knife blade with a grating wrench, and fell to the floor.

“What did he mean by that?” Arië demanded.

Lila dropped to her hands and knees beside Dar, letting the knife fall out of her fingers. “Good-bye,” she said, in Tath's voice. His final words had cut her to the heart. How many more times was she going to find that people dead were more loyal and true than when they were alive? She wanted it to feel worse than it did because she deserved to hurt but, because of the drugs, it didn't. And at the same moment her smart AI-self noticed that her hands were flat to the bubble's floor.

She set her speaker films to the lowest frequency they were able to produce—something well below even elvish hearing span—and upped the power to maximum. She sent a message in Sheean, the faery language, just three words tuned to their particular tones and scales: Zal Aparastil Help. The only faery she knew who might collect the message was Poppy, or Viridia at a push. The only chance she had was if the message carried and if they touched water. If the story was true, if Malachi had been right about their faery natures. So many ifs.

Lila felt the Lady's hand on her shoulder. “Your presence is required in the centre circle, Tath. Come with me now.”

What about Dar? Lila was jabbering inside to Tath as she got up to obey and handed him overall control. What will they do with him? Where has he gone? Can't you do something?

Dar is dead, Tath said. But we are not. You must concentrate on the matters at hand.

And now what? What's going to happen?

Now we are going to bleed Zal and bind him to a ley fracture halfway between Alfheim and Interstitial Space. It will not be a physical prison, merely an aetheric one. He will live here in the palace and Arië will look after him like a sacred son all the days of his miserable long life.

But what are we going to do about it? Lila pleaded.

When a moment arises that I think of anything, I will let you know, Tath said. Come, there are more vile deeds to execute before this trial is done.

Anguish and grief tightened Lila's jaw. She clung to Tath's self-possession as the effect of her drugs began to fade; she did not have much left and she must save that. But she dare not let go of their artificial restraint on her feelings. She was sure that she would collapse here if she had to face-up to what she'd done in any realistic way.

Then do not, Tath ordered her. Be strong and do what must be done. Time for recrimination and the rest later. Now you must act.

Surely no greater king…she thought. Dar had been telling her to carry on, just as Tath was, even if they could never have been real friends.

Because it was all he could give you at that moment, Tath said. And if you do not fulfil that command you will have twice betrayed him.

Arië and Tath had come to the centre of the circles. The other mages had followed them some of the way, each halting within the ring that denoted their particular shell of influence. Two mages stood in the circle beyond the centre. Eight in the circle beyond that. Lila/Tath and Arië were alone in the nucleus, until they fetched Zal.

As he got closer Lila saw his eyes were dilated and sheened in a classic opiate reaction. He was naked above the waist and his face and body were limned in sweat that was making the magical markings drawn on him run in streaks of coloured ink. He was doped, and when Arië took his arms and pushed him down, he sank to his knees on the floor and sat there, head slightly to one side, completely unresisting. His andalune body was quite withdrawn, not even projecting beyond his skin. He lolled against Arië's leg like a ragdoll and she stroked his hair absently with one hand as she signed orders with the other. Lila could feel, through Tath, Arië's great anticipation of relief, the pleasure with which she looked forward to the safety and restoration of a world she loved without limit.

Singers and speakers closed the outer shells of the seal, beginning with the least and outer ring, and then the inner ones. As each was completed they hazed Lila's view of the room, spheres of pale mist and aether leaping into instant life around them until, as the inmost ring was made whole, she and Tath, Arië and Zal were enclosed within an opaque bell whose walls shimmered with all colours like mother-of-pearl. This circle, unlike Zal's casts, did not transport them to another realm. It took them outside all realms, outside time, into the Interstitial. They hung nowhere and nowhen, everywhere and everywhen, held within the tidal powers of all seven regions, balanced as though on the point of a pin.

Finally Lila understood what Tath had meant when he called Arië the pearl, but she did not feel pearl-like herself. As her blood reverted to normal she felt cold and alone. She most longed to go home and to never have come anywhere near Alfheim.

You need not stay, Tath said to her and lifted their hands upwards to his jerkin. Lila witnessed herself opening hidden pockets on its front, lifting out the instruments they had always contained and which, until now, she had never even discovered. I will do it.

I will goddamn well do it. Whatever the hell it is, Lila said. The only shred of self-respect left in her demanded it. She could not let someone else take the blame.

She saw the things she held in Tath's glamoured hands: a length of bone carved into the ornate handle of a pen, the nib point replaced by an obsidian flake of black glass; a hollow crystal needle, like the ones she had used on Dar, but this one bigger and mounted between straps of fine leather upon which magical writing oozed and ran like liquid. The needle was slant cut at one end, ready to puncture, but the other end broadened and fanned out, the thin walls becoming liquid at their limits, then so thin that they evaporated. They were light to hold, but she felt them weigh on Tath suddenly and her hands drooped beneath the load.

The bone was his bone. The leather was his skin.

You're kidding, Lila said. Tath didn't say anything.

Around them in the ring the songs merged suddenly and became a single chanted line. Mesmeric syllables spun the pearl wall faster and beside him Tath felt Arië's energy suddenly intensify. And then the Lady of Aparastil began to sing.

She had the clear, sweet voice of a young girl. Her melody was sad and lonely, a heartbreakingly lovely lament such as Lila had never heard in her life. What words in High Elvish that she sang were borne on notes of such purity that they seemed to pierce all matter and Lila felt the song in her bones and in her circuits, in every cell and unit, all resonating where they were able, amplifying and harmonising with the spell until Lila was part of the charm, bound to it in synchrony against her will, and Tath with her, and Zal with them. The faint idea she had held of shooting Arië point blank seemed impossibly distant to her. She could never destroy anything like this, and she wanted to listen to it go on and on in any case, to let the song transport her to the places that it promised, so good and far from all this.

Tath bent down before Zal. Lila felt her hands take Zal's right arm and rest the forearm on her knee.

The faintest zip of wild magic, barely more than a flicker, ran down through her leg and up into her body. The note Arië was singing wavered ever so slightly. Zal's dreamy expression didn't alter.

Keep that in check! Tath pleaded. This must not get out of hand. He pressed the pen blade to Zal's skin and wrote quickly down the length of white skin from elbow to wrist in a series of flashing gestures. Blood spat from the nib. Zal groaned and his eyes rolled up in his head. The slashes stood out clearly for a moment or two and then began to blur deep scarlet. The characters were all from the Thanatopic alphabet. Where Zal's blood leaked from them it ran a short distance and then began to bubble and evaporate into a fine dark haze. The haze coiled and flicked. It drew wicked faces in the air and they spoke to Tath, though Lila could not understand a single word.

Meanwhile Lila fought the lull of Arië's song, but whenever the urge to shoot came close, the pretty sound pushed it away from her. She used the AI bypass, thinking Arië's magic was working on her feelings, but it made no difference when she locked herself in her AI mind. Only Tath moved, and he let go of that arm and took Zal's left arm up instead and wrote on that too, and spoke to the dark faces that emerged. She had given up hope that Tath would help her now. She doubted he even could, but she was wrong.

Play something. Anything! he said to her. You must drown her out and take back your will. At Lila's unspoken question he added, Thanatopic immersion at least has the virtue of blocking all other charm. If you are to do anything you must do it soon, before her song is finished, for then the pearl will break and whatever is done remains.

Lila didn't have the energy to search for a song. She simply accessed whatever played last, and turned up her internal systems as loudly as she could. Loud rock music beat through her head. The bass and drum negated Arië's languorous rhythms and the piercing guitar took out most of her midline.

Lila's mind cleared a little. She remained inside her AI-self, and took a long, calculated assessment of conditions. Then she searched every part of her systems.

Tath put the pen nib into her mouth and she felt a burning lick of pain as it cut her tongue.

All Thanatopic magic requires blood. Aloud he spoke again to the twisting figures that danced in the burning of Zal's blood and now the words he used took on form also, and became creatures that walked across the air and danced with the creatures Zal made. It was most interesting.

A wisp of pale green energy appeared at the junction of Lila's leg and Zal's dripping arm. Its appearance made the dark dancers pause and eagerly look its way. One or two of them zipped down towards Zal's wounds and began to burrow back in.

No! Tath reacted instantly, his voice and speech changing. Faster than she would have thought him able he slashed at her upper arm with the pen blade where her flesh met metal, and drew another ghostly djinn from the wound with whispers. At his direction it darted forward and where it touched Zal the blood ran faster from him and the tiny genies were pushed back. They were pushed back, but they grew larger, and stronger. I told you to keep that in check! He was almost panicked.

I need my hand for a moment, Lila said, increasing the volume as Zal's voice began to sing in her head, and replaced the pen in Tath's pocket. She put her hand to the floor, where water supported them above the gulf, the lake itself hidden completely by the pearl shell. She channelled the Mode-X music down into the lake in a sequence burst: two, eight, eighteen pulses. If she was right, if she had started to understand it, then magic was the user and their will, no more than that. A canticle was a summons, and she was calling.

Give me that back! Tath reclaimed her limb immediately. He took hold of Zal's wrist in his hand, set the crystal spike against the vein in his elbow, and pushed it through the skin, not very hard. He didn't need to, because as the instrument made contact it leapt from their hand and drove itself home, as though it was alive.

Zal shrieked, a terrible, multitonal cry of agony, as Tath bound the crystal to his arm. Bright scarlet blood ran down into the instrument's tiny pan and where it fanned out into the air its surface ran with bright red and golden flames. No smoke or genies came from it. Where the crystal pen seemed to become thin air the flames did too, vanishing from Alfheim, Lila realised.

Flowing into Interstice, Tath said grimly, watching the Demon flicker. “All done, brother.”

Arië's song stopped. There was a sound like the distant boom of a buried atomic bomb and a second later an aetheric wavefront passed through them, momentarily disabling Arië and Tath equally, obliterating the genies that had been skittering around, leaving only the burning flow from Zal's arm. Zal's body seemed to waver, as though it was passing into another reality, and Lila saw a shadow come over him.

It is his Death, Tath told her.

With the passing of the wave the shadow drew away again, lost in the tide.

At the same instant Lila began to rise and ready her guns, all pretences dropped. She felt within her body the cool, insistent pressure footprint of a major spellcast and then, as her metal and machine parts continued their action, her flesh and bone suddenly stopped and there was a blinding and devastating pain. It didn't entirely surprise her. She had suspected that either the energy Arië had had to use for the spell or the wild magic intrusion had given the game away.

Tath read the impact before she could.

Arië has bound your body not to oppose her. She can't command the metals, only the rest of you. If you try to move against her physically now, you'll tear yourself to pieces.

Lila didn't even pause. As she heard Tath, she retargeted, gaining her freedom, and shot the floor. The bullets punctured the tension easily but it didn't break. Where they went through it weakened however, and her foot suddenly plunged downward to the knee into the bitterly cold lake water. She was almost through.

At that moment something struck the pearl shell from beneath and it broke into a million glittering shards.