***I've split this chapter in half, once again, as it was going to be rather long. 

I hope you enjoy them. And if you are willing to vote on both if you really like them, I might even whoosh back into the top 10 ;-) ***

Afi met her eyes, and she felt as if the link led to him instead of the sleeping boys. His pain and anger reverberated through her, drowning out the presence of the cold mage.

We'll help him somehow, she said, speaking the words straight into his mind and trying to infuse them with certainty. But he flinched away from her, not believing that she could.

Why would he believe it? she thought bitterly. I don't think I can either.

"Who's here, Edin?" he asked, his hands stretching out uselessly to comfort someone who didn't want comfort. "Who's here?"

"Cartheno," Edin told his brother.

What? Grace thought.

But before she had a chance to wonder how an ages-dead King could be here, there was a voice in her head. It boomed in her ears and thudded into her chest and her throat like a bass-beat turned up too loud.

Yield, it told her. Yield all this. To fight me will destroy you, and them too.

For a moment, she saw a vision of the boys screaming in pain as she sucked power away from them and hurled it against an impassable wall, blood pouring from their noses and their ears, and then it vanished, and she was left breathless and shaking.

You see?

Grace tried to think, to plan.

He's trying to intimidate me, she thought. Just like the cold mage I defeated.

Edin suddenly scuttled towards her across the floor, moving more like an animal than like a boy. She took a step backwards and settled into a defensive pose, her weight on her back foot so that she might kick. But he didn't move any closer. He settled into a crouch, and smiled up at her.

"He's speaking to you, isn't he?" he asked. And he smiled. It was such a childish smile, so guileless and delighted, that Grace shivered.

My acolyte, the deafening voice told her. He's right to worship me. What other choice is there?

Grace put her hand up to her head, willing the pain away and willing herself to keep thinking.

You have the link still, she realised. You can see him if you try.

She drew her mind up to the very top of the tower and felt the magic there, wrapped around that crystal spire lovingly. She chose a strand of it and poured herself into it, stretching out until she floated free in the air. She could see the whole kingdom again, every city turned shadowy beneath the storm the mage had conjured up. Their beautiful and eccentric patterns of buildings and streets were no longer breathtaking, but seemed ominous, as though each had been slashed apart by its own roads.

She tore her thoughts away from them and looked down at the capital city where it stood around the tower. The shock almost drove her back into her body. There was a swathe of destruction leading up to the palace, a path of crumbled and crushed buildings, standing echoing and empty now in the false night cast by the storm. Snow rained down on them again, and it was beginning to settle in a rim of white around holes and openings.

There would have been people in there, she knew. People hiding from his creatures. Were there even any townsfolk left now? The city was a silent, huddling mass of greys and whites and blacks, and the only living creatures she could see stood in front of the palace.

It was an army, a mass of creatures both familiar and strange, all of them grotesque in some way. And as she floated down towards them she saw that in front of them all was the cold mage, a man who stood ten feet tall or more in black furs and a horned helmet. In his hand, instead of a wand, he held a mace that burned with green power.

His head snapped up as her magic floated towards him, and she felt the meeting of her eyes with his as more of the endless pain he seemed to drive into her. Her power wavered, and she found herself in her body once again, doubled over on the mosaic floor.

You aren't Cartheno, she said, fixing her mind on him and speaking back as he had to her.

She felt him laugh, a rumble through her head. No. I am what Cartheno would have been if he had understood power instead of fearing it. And soon I will wield his weapon, joining it with a force greater than Cartheno ever knew.

Grace looked up at Edin, whose face was level with her now, and saw his smile turn devious and secretive.

"I know where it is," he told her. "I know now. I've found it, and I'll use it for him."

Grace shook her head. Didn't he understand that this man had come to kill? To take life and raise the cold in its place? And that he would kill Edin as easily as he killed any of the others?

"He isn't Cartheno," she said, and knew it was hopeless. There was madness and also a fire of bizarre faith in his eyes. He had made a religion out of vengeance, and the cold mage was standing in the place where his God might be. "If he was Cartheno, why did you have to find the weapon? Why didn't he tell you where it was?"

He shook his head, his smile mocking her. "It was a test. He needed to know that I was strong enough, and devious enough. He knows what I'm capable of now."

"He isn't going to let you use it," she told him, trying not to let her desperation to stop him show. "He's going to use it himself."

Edin shook his head, his expression still sly. "He can't wield it. He needs me."

Afi stood up, slowly, a little behind him. His face was blank, empty, and she ached to comfort him somehow.

She heard another voice, and tensed, before realising that it was Roschan.

"We're within the walls, Grace," he told her, "but I don't like the look of that army. We're low on numbers and there are a lot of my men wounded. I've lost two captains, too."

She saw him in front of her, briefly, walking down a disordered rabble of men and women who looked haggard and terrified, but who scrambled to form ranks as he strode past.

They're controlled by the mage, she told him. If I can destroy him...

She watched Roschan nod, and felt wretched. She wasn't strong enough to fight him. What could she do? She needed more power.

Dedora, she said, speaking straight to the elderly woman. As she brushed at her mind to speak with her, she felt the woman's fatigue. But she also felt her satisfaction, and knew that even in the exhaustion of pouring her magic out against the cold, she was happier than she had ever been. Can you link your power to mine?

Dedora's eyes glazed for a moment, as a wash of power flowed over her.

"I can, I think. But I'll need to see you to do it. I can't send it without knowing where I'm sending it to."

Then bring the girls, and we'll do it, Grace said. I'm with the boys.

Dedora turned and began to speak to the others, but Grace didn't wait to hear her. With her mind she found Ma and Ruidic, who held the Queen between them as they travelled down the winds towards her. The Queen still wore her circlet, but the vacant madness of her expression hadn't changed. It was as if the woman she had been had been erased.

What can I do, Ma? She asked. I can link with the women, and with you, too. But I can feel how much power he has, and it's ten times what I'm holding. How can I fight him?

Ma looked at Ruidic, her face troubled. Grace saw that there was a trickle of blood oozing down past her ear, and wondered with a chill how badly the Queen had injured her.

"You saw this," she said to him, quietly. "You saw this, and you saw that Grace would help. How can she help?"

Grace watched Ruidic as his ever-moving, stormy eyes pulsed and glowed, and she wondered how much he could see. Had he seen her before she came? Had he seen the future?

He shook his head after a moment, and his eyes dimmed again. "I can't see how it happens. I just know that she's our only chance. And it's something about her. About what she knows."

But I don't know anything! she thought. I've had to look everything up in the book.

With that thought came another, quickly on its heels. That the book told her more than anyone here seemed to understand; that Mr. Fredrickson or whoever had written it had understood a great deal, and perhaps had been some kind of prophet too.

Maybe it isn't something I know yet, she thought, with a slightly desperate hope. So maybe all I need is time...

So you're going to stand against me, mageling? The thunderous voice said to her.

She wanted to give in, to plead with him just to let her and Ma and Benjamin go; but then there was Afi, too, and unbalanced Edin; and there was Roschan, and the blunt doctor who had helped to heal her; and Dedora and Aniela and the other girls. She couldn't leave them.

So she gathered her courage, and said, No, not stand.

She drew power into her mind and her body and her hands, so much that she felt dizzy with it; so much that it was a pleasure so great it almost hurt. And then she blasted it out in a single, spear-like point, driving it into the mage's unprotected face.

Through the link, she saw it hit him, and saw him fly backwards. The mace fell from his hand with a crackling crash, and a pulse of power burst out from it. She watched in fascinated horror as it rippled over the cold creatures and they screamed, and then winked out of existence in a twenty-foot circle around it.

Roschan, she called, even while she watched the mage soar into the air and out over the snow-covered plains, I need you to get out there now, and take that mage's mace. No matter what happens, you have to take it before he can come back. And you'll have to do it without Dedora and the girls.

She saw Roschan nod, as if she had asked him to do something simple and easy instead of to face an army of hideous and vicious creatures, and then begin shouting orders to the nearest squad of men and women.

Ma, Ruidic, Dedora, she called, next, as through the link she saw the mage strike the ground with an explosion of snow and earth some four miles away. Hurry. We've got maybe a minute before he comes back at me, and I need you to create a shield strong enough to keep him out.

"For how long?" Ruidic asked her.

Long enough to work out what the hell I'm going to do, she shot back, and she heard Ruidic laugh while with her own shaking hands she began to leaf through the pages of the book with desperate haste. Striking out at random, she found a chapter on the history of the tower, and began to read.

But then the book dropped from her hands as a pain greater than anything she had ever felt tore through her. Through it, she could hear words made of fury.

Stupid little girl, he said, and she could only close her eyes and try to hide from his anger.