Grace let the true-seer touch her skin again, and she knew it was a selfish action when the Queen had no such comfort, but it still eased the well of sadness rising in her to see the gleaming cluster of lights drift up into the air and out of sight. She smiled up at it, and tried not to let the howl that came from the Queen's mouth make her regret what she'd done.

She felt Afi move, and realised that she was still holding on to his arm. She released it, and saw that he was a little horrified. Of course he was. He had seen a boy vanish, and the Queen was slowly sliding to the ground, sobbing silently and desolately.

"He was a spell," she whispered. "That's why she needed the boys."

It wasn't enough of an explanation, but she knew it would have to do for now.

The Queen's head snapped up, and her eyes blazed through the rivers of tears.

"You took him! I knew you would. Ever since Ruidic told me about you, I knew you would hurt me."

Her hands clutched together in her lap, and fire began to build around them.

"No," Grace protested, urgently. "I'm not hurting you. You needed him to go, in the end. Because he wasn't real. You lost your Gregori before he came into being, didn't you?"

"He was mine!" the Queen was still weeping, even while she raged. "He was all I ever had!"

The light in her hands was growing blinding, and the swirls of colours were as brilliant as Ruidic's light show. But Grace hadn't been afraid of that show in the way she was now. She knew those blinding colours could kill her.

For a moment, she saw a surge of brilliant red, and she remembered thinking that it was Benjamin's colour. How could the Queen use Benjamin's power to hurt her?

Grace saw Afi move to stand in front of her, but she stepped aside, and drew the symbol of shielding in the air in front of her, more quickly than she had drawn any of these symbols before. And then she realised that it wouldn't be enough. She threw her will behind it and watched as it grew into a huge, blazing shape which rushed towards the Queen and struck the dazzling spell she was creating.

Grace heard the Queen cry out and stagger as if it had hurt her, and the spell fractured, but still came towards them. Grace lifted the wand, and had only drawn part of another mark of shielding when the remnants of the Queen's magic hit her.

It felt like being pummelled, on every part of her, but still as forcefully as Ruidic's single spell had hit her. It drove her backwards, through some of the gorgeous greenery that the illusionist had created. She had expected it to be soft and yielding, but vines and tendrils whipped across her skin, and her back caught on a thick branch and felt as though it might break as it arched around it.

She tipped backwards and saw a fountain of shredded blossoms flood past her as she fell to the ground, only just getting her arms out to cushion her head a little. It was still enough of an impact to stun her, and she dizzily wondered how many head injuries one skull could take over a short period of time.

As she was righting herself, she heard a yell of fury and blinked as a flash of light illuminated the room like lightning. Through the greenery, she saw Afi, who must have recovered a great deal more quickly, fighting the Queen with his bare hands. She threw spells at him, but even at that distance he was too quick for her, ducking and dodging and driving her to fury as he landed blows on her.

And then the Queen seemed to erupt. A surge of grey-white force blasted from her and caught him, lifting him helplessly into the air. He struck the crystal ceiling hard enough to crack it, but he grabbed on to something and hung on.

The Queen stood beneath him, and began to weave another spell between her hands as a shower of crystal shards cascaded down around her, lit from below by her colourful magic. It was an eerie, beautiful, terrible sight, and Grace knew that she had to do something to stop her before she killed him.

But I'm not fast enough to fight her, she thought. And then, Of course I'm not. She isn't using a wand.

And neither had Ruidic.

In another age, a quiet bookshop owner had told her that the symbols only needed to be written until a riezehn had been fully trained, after which time they would be able to hold them in their mind and cast without drawing. Wands and staffs, to the great mage,are only ways of increasing their magic, he had told her. But for you, they will be essential.

The conversation flashed through her mind between one heartbeat and the next, and by the third heartbeat she had decided that she would just have to make it possible to manage without training.

Grace held the symbol of fire in her mind, and with a strength that came out of desperation to help Afi, she flung it from her mind and into reality.

It had more effect than she had hoped. Flame roared from her hand in an expanding cone, blocking out her view of the Queen and then of Afi. It grew beyond the point where she felt that it was hers any more, and she snatched her hand back in fear. The flames stopped pouring from her hand, and instead billowed away from her through the room.

The flames receded enough for her to see. She watched molten fragments of crystal fall to the ground, and little pockets of flame and smoke rising from the scorched remains of the beautiful flowers Ruidic had made. But the Queen was no longer there.

Her heart thumping, she wondered if she might have destroyed her. But she knew that the Queen had magics far beyond hers, and far more experience. She would have shielded herself. Which meant she was hiding...

Grace heard a hissing sound, and ducked. Something she could hardly see passed over her head, and she threw herself onto the ground and rolled until there was a flowering shrub between her and where the Queen had been.

She only realised as she peered through its leaves that the spell hadn't been offensive. The Queen had brought a Nightmare into being, and it was looking around for her with sightless eyes.

Grace smiled, thinking of the true-seer, and then with a shock remembered Afi.

What if I caught him in the fire? She thought, and it made her want to be sick.

"Afi!" she shouted. "Nightmare!"

She saw the creature's eyes lock on to her hiding-place, and its mouth drew into an empty grin as it saw her.

Which means the Queen will know where I am too, she thought, and then she jumped to her feet and ran for the cover of the thick trees further into the garden.

There was a rush of movement in the corner of her vision, and she whirled, and then saw that it was Afi, landing easily and gracefully on the springy grass.

Another nightmare rounded the side of the trees and began floating towards them. Grace didn't want to think about what it was showing Afi, and then she realised as he scanned over the open ground, that he couldn't see it - and that he couldn't see her, either.

She tugged the true-seer over her head, feeling it catch painfully on her hair. She tried to ignore the vision of Afi she saw the moment it left her skin: an image of him hideously burned and reaching out for her.

The stone met his arm, and touched her fingers at the same time. She saw him, whole again, swing at her with his arm before his eyes registered that it was her, and then his fist knocked into her and she staggered, her hand clutching onto his arm and squeezing the true-seer between her skin and his painfully.

With his free arm, he steadied her, gently, and he used a precious second kissing her on the temple in apology before he kicked out at the oncoming nightmare and made it reel away in anger.

"Don't use magic," he told her, quietly, as he pulled out a knife from his boot and ducked into a crouch in front of the hissing nightmare. "She's waiting for you to show yourself."

Grace growled in frustration, but she knew that he was right, and she watched in silence as he slashed at the nightmare, twice, and it puffed out of existence as the one in the corridor had.

Afi took her hand and drew her further past the tall trees and towards a little forest of hot pink flowers set on vivid green and gold stems. She saw a pair of insects whizz past her, buzzing, and then she was hit by the scent of the flowers and felt sick.

He pulled her onwards, towards another stream and a tiny ornamental bridge over it. They were moving away from the burned part of the garden, and away from the Queen. At least, Grace hoped that they were. She had powerful magic, and she could have been hiding anywhere...

And then Grace realised that she was still clutching the True-Seer, and that the Queen didn't have one of her own. Neither did she have Ruidic's eyes, or the strange knowing of the boy Ori. So they could vanish as easily as she could.

"Wait," she told him, and drew out the wand again. Afi's eyes roamed the trees, restlessly, but she let him watch for her, concentrating on remembering the symbol of turning she had used before. She remembered what she had read about it now, as she hadn't when she had stood in the corridor; that it was a much harder symbol to master than the symbol of concealment that deflected attention from the riezehn.

But it was far more powerful, she remembered, and would turn sight, sound and malign spells away from the caster, though it would do nothing against fire or wind or physical forces.

We'd better stay out of the way of any of those, I guess, she thought, and flinched slightly as she remembered her own out-of-control casting. She drew the symbol on Afi's arm, and wondered whether she would be able to control fire any better if she cast it again.

There was a change in Afi, but it was faint. His skin took on a light blue haze to it, almost as if she had moved a camera whilst taking a picture of him.

So the true-seer lets me see him, but shows me that there's an enchantment there, she thought, and wondered how anyone could have created anything so subtle in a piece of simple stone.

To Afi, the effects were clearly greater.

"What happened to my arm?" he asked, holding it in front of his face.

"Here," she said, and touched it, lightly. "It's a spell of turning. It's protection, and it'll stop her from seeing you, too."

She drew the lines on herself, and felt the slight rush of the spell coursing through her. Afi gave a slow smile.

"I can see everything that's behind you, and not a trace of you yourself."

Grace nodded, realised that he couldn't see it, and then opened her mouth to speak before realising that he wouldn't be able to hear it either. Frowning, she slid the true-seer off, losing sight of him until she touched it to his skin again.

"I don't know if I can beat her with magic," she said, "but I'm willing to try. And if you can see me, then you can follow me and find her if she attacks."

"You want me to sneak up on her and stab her between the ribs?" he asked, and the thought didn't seem to worry him as much as it worried her.

"I want you to knock her out or something."

Afi gave a sigh. "It's not easy to do, you know."

"Well, at least distract her for long enough for me to bind her, ok? Just - be the surprise attack. And, you know... help me if I get in trouble."

She gave him a crooked smile, thinking slightly at a tangent that away from the burned plants, this place was still beautiful, and that she'd like to hide here with him. But then the distant howling of the flesh wolves stepped up, and she pushed the thought away.

"What if I get in trouble?" he asked, with an answering smile.

"Well... don't," she said.

He caught her up for a moment and kissed her mouth. The thoughts she had just pushed away resurged, and then she extricated herself and let go of the true-seer, watching him vanish with a quirk of fear.

What if I don't see him again? she thought. What if that's it?

The thought froze her in place for a moment, until she thought, sternly, Well at least you got to kiss him.

She decided she'd have to be happy with that, and she set out across the grass again.

The Queen was nowhere within sight as she rounded the hot pink trees again. And neither were the nightmares. She knew that she'd handicapped herself by giving the true-seer away, but at invisible as she was, she had other methods of finding her. And without doubt, Afi should be the one to launch a surprise attack from up close. He was the one who was quicker than thinking.

She paused as she saw a little circle of lights on the grass ahead of her. She frowned, wondering if they were something to do with the Queen.

Softly, quietly, she trod towards them - and then jumped in horror as they sprung up from the ground and became ropes that wrapped around her and bound her until she tripped and fell.

With a roar of triumph, the Queen flew from the trees, and jumped, to land on her stomach.

Grace's breath was knocked out of her and she wanted to gasp for air, the way Merrily had told her to, but she couldn't move. She could only watch as the Queen's lovely face with its large and maddened eyes drew close to hers, the long brown hair tickling Grace's skin.

"Invisibility is so clever," she whispered. "But you still have to breathe in, and breathe out. I know all about illusions, Lena's daughter. You can't trick me with simple spells."

Come on, Afi, Grace thought, urgently. Stop her!

The Queen's head rose, as if she listened to something, and her hair blocked Grace's vision entirely before it fell away again. When the Queen looked back at her, she was smiling, almost happily.

"I hear the sound of another trap sprung," she said, and Grace's heart squeezed in her chest. "Isn't it fun?"

She leaned close to look carefully at Grace, and she wondered what the Queen could be seeing with the spell in place. Though perhaps the bonds that held her had brought her back to visibility. She couldn't even raise her head to see.

"No, it isn't fun, is it?" the Queen said, the joy dying from her face. "You took him away, and there will never be fun again."

Grace could only close her eyes as she drew her hand back with power seething around it.

But the blast of power that came wasn't from the Queen's hand. It came from somewhere over Grace's head, and it knocked the Queen from her chest and sent her sprawling onto the grass.

Something touched Grace's head, and she was suddenly free, and scrambling up and away. She turned to see who had helped her, expecting to find Ruidic. But it was a woman who stood there, with blinding light around her black clothing, and a woman's voice that said, "Don't ever touch her again."

It took Grace four endless seconds to recognise that it was Ma.