As she curled into the ground, it became cold and yielding, and when she blinked, she saw that she was lying in a field of snow. It was like the dream Ruidic had sent her, but her limbs were cold and heavy and the pain in her head was still overwhelming.

A bitter wind blew up, and she looked into it and saw the mage walking towards her. She tried to close her eyes, but they were frozen open and she could only stare at him.

His huge, booted feet made crunching, cracking sounds as he walked, and as he came closer she saw that he was walking over the frozen forms of people. They lay in the snow, their faces and mouths still open in terror or pain.

It's a dream, she thought. A dream. Don't believe it. Open your eyes. Open your eyes, Grace!

But he was right over her now, his huge form above her.

You can't hide, he said.

But then she felt someone lift her up, and hold her, his strong fingers running through her hair.

Afi, she thought.

The mage lifted his booted foot over her head. Its huge shape blotted out her vision, and she felt snow and mud and blood fall from it onto her face, into her open eyes. She tried to cry out as he brought it down towards her. But instead of a crushing blow, there was a light brush on her forehead, a kiss, and she was suddenly in the garden at the top of the tower.

She lay on soft grass, with his arms around her, his face as large as the boot as he leaned over her. He whispered, "Hold on, Grace."

With a rumble, the sunny garden started to crack apart, and something happened to Afi's face. His blue eyes turned a sickly green, dark magic pouring into them, and she tried to scrabble away from him. But his grip became iron-strong.

"This boy?" he asked, disgusted. But his voice was the tearing, booming roar of the mage. "This is what you believe in? A boy without power? I could crush him with a thought."

"No," she said, and then she screamed as the face of this Afi opened in a yell of pain and he fell backwards, dropping her to the grass. The ground opened up and she was falling, down the outside of the tower; falling endlessly.

"I'm still here," she heard, and it seemed as though the sky and the clouds were talking to her, but she knew it was still him. She wasn't falling any more, she was floating. As she looked towards the tower she saw the threads of the link still tied to her.

With a huge effort of concentration, she turned her mind to Roschan, realising that only a handful of seconds had passed since she took her mind away from him. He and a dozen men and women were crouched next to a small door in a wall of the tower, and he was signalling silently to them all.

This one?  the voice roared in her head, and then it laughed. Do you think he can help you?

Grace felt her own hands move beyond her control, making the symbol for fire.

No! she said, realising what he was trying to do.

She flung herself away from him, through the stones of the tower and out to where his army had descended into a disorderly, snapping and hissing mass of creatures. Her hands stopped moving, but she finished the spell for him, and hurled it towards where the mace lay, gleaming malevolently.

I'm going to help him, Grace told the mage, as the fire swept through the nearest of his creatures, burning and destroying them. She sent a blast of air after it, scattering the vaporous evanescents and leaving his army a fraction smaller.

Roschan, go now, she said, but she had no time to see if he made it to the mace. She felt herself hurtling through the air to land hard on the floor of the huge front hallway. She clambered to her feet, and saw the exhausted and the wounded clustered there, all in vivid palace scarlet and gold. Between them stood the bronze statues, still and silent and immovable, seeming to mock the soldiers all over again by being absolutely untouched.

And then she saw the mage again, walking unseen amongst them, touching a cold hand to a shoulder or a head here and there and turning them into nightmares or evanescents or flesh wolves that came towards her.

A dream, she thought. An illusion. But it was becoming harder and harder to be sure. She felt her certainty slipping away, and wondered if she had sent fire at his creatures, or her own people. Or had she done nothing at all? Was she still standing there, holding the link but not acting whilst they fell under attack?

She tried to feel the link, while he walked through her mind and laid waste to everything he found, dragging the doctor into her vision and turning her into an unfeeling fiend; and conjuring up Ruidic – but a Ruidic who stood in front of her and laughed.

"Guess again, Grace. When will you learn not to trust?"

That isn't him, she said, any more than you're Cartheno.

She looked up at his huge form, and into his sickly green eyes, and she wondered what his name was. He had been a man once, she was sure.

For a moment, she felt as though she were falling, and then she saw a boy: a boy whose hunger and fear came off him in waves; who stood alone on the corner of a rich street and hated as he watched, and whose hands were suddenly wreathed in green fire.

With a lurch, she shifted, and saw the same boy cowering in front of an overweight man with massive fists, while he shouted, "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" and a woman screaming, "No, please! Serid, run! Run away!"

Stop! The booming voice said, and she felt herself shoved away. She fell again, tensing as she prepared to hit the ground. But instead, she fell lightly on something soft and yielding.

She looked around, and her breath caught in her throat. It was a room, an achingly familiar one, with pale pine-wood wardrobes and a shelf full of books stacked two and three deep. On one of the walls was a poster with beautiful drawings of each of the tarot cards on it; and on another was a painting of a fantastical castle with winged creatures flying around it.

She was home.

She sat up, slowly, feeling heavy and tired as if she'd slept for days. She glanced down, expecting to see the soft red pyjamas the doctor had dressed her in, but instead seeing the faded white cotton slacks she usually slept in.

A moment of terror struck her.

It can't have been a dream. It can't. But then she heard a shout from the garden, and she walked to the window to see Maggie and Benjamin throwing snowballs at each other.

            Grace couldn't move. She was frozen there while she watched them, her mind forming two thoughts, over and over, but unable to join them up.

            Benjamin is safe... but I don't want it to be a dream. I want it to be true. Please, please be true.

            There was a flicker across her vision, and a feeling of pressure around her chest as if someone was squeezing her hard.

            "Grace," a whisper in her mind said. "Come back, Grace. Come back..."

            Out in the garden, Dad appeared from the house, charging out under a hail of snowballs and grabbing Maggie up onto his shoulder while she screeched and Benjamin laughed. Grace put her hand up to the window, desperate to be picked up and hugged by him too, and realised what she was supposed to think.

            This is supposed to be perfect. I'm supposed to want to go home.

            But she couldn't want it. No matter how strong the urge to help Benjamin was, it was about so much more than that now. It was about everyone in that world... and knowing that she wasn't just Grace the Dreamer.  

            "Please, Grace," the whisper said.

            She closed her eyes, and felt Afi's arms around her.

I'm sorry, but I don't want it, she thought.

When she blinked again, she was back in the room, the link still joined to her by a thread, and Afi was holding her so tightly that it hurt. For a moment, the pain in her head resurged, and then with a noise like the wash of waves on sand, it vanished.

With the part of her that was joined to the link, she saw Ma and Ruidic and Dedora, a sphere of power pulsing away from them and washing out over the tower. But with her own eyes, she could only see Afi, his blue eyes burning into her.

"You didn't leave," he said, and he kissed her so fiercely that she wondered how she had ever thought of him as gentle. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, unwilling to let it end even while she knew that she needed every minute possible to save them.

When he drew away, he whispered, "I thought you were dying. I think you were. I don't know what I'll do when you leave for real." He lay his hand gently along her cheek. "It was what the nightmare showed me up in the garden, you being gone, and I felt like I was falling apart."

Grace wanted to tell him that she wouldn't leave, but she knew that she would have to. She would have to take Benjamin home, and explain everything to Dad. She'd have to go back to her life. But not forever. So she smiled at him.

"You'll just have to wait for me to come back," she said.

She tried to stand on her own, but as she began to clamber to her feet, she staggered. She was dizzy and exhausted, and she realised with a surge of worry that Mr. Fredrickson had warned her about using possibility. She hadn't trained; hadn't built up any resistance. And through the link she was handling power that even some of the great mages had never achieved.

But I don't have any choice, she thought, and pushed herself away from Afi in frustration.

"I'll be fine," she told him, as she saw him look at her in concern. He might have argued with her if Edin hadn't lunged to his feet and raced out of the room.

Afi looked at her for a moment, and she knew he was thinking about those crazed words of Edin's... I know where it is... I'm going to wield it for him.

"It's ok," she said. "Go and help him."

And stop him, she thought, though she couldn't say it. Please stop him.

She watched him race away, and then bent stiffly to lift the book from the floor.

"How long do I have?" she asked Ma, as she smoothed out a crease in one of the pages where the book had fallen.

Resonant Substances, she read, her eyes beginning to find sense in the words.

"Maybe half an hour," Ma told her, and she looked at Grace with effort written plainly on her face.

There have been few mages in the history of the Cold Lands with the skills to use the properties that join substances, she read. But there are huge advantages to the few with the skill. Where an item has been created out of a substance, it becomes irrevocably linked to every other item fashioned out of that same material...

She needed to read, but part of her awareness travelled with Afi as he tore through the corridors after Edin.

"You'll never be fast enough," his younger brother called, before turning to send a searing beam of light towards Afi's running figure. She wanted to call out to warn him, but he was already twisting aside with that breath-taking speed of his. Edin's face drew into a furious frown, and then he turned and ran onwards.

With another part of her mind, she drifted back to watch Roschan. His men and women were at the huge mace, now, and Roschan was reaching out for it.

...The mage capable of using resonance can cast a simple spell on an item he or she holds, and see its effects on every shared item created from that substance. But the power of spells cast in this way can be magnified a hundred, even a thousand times...

She saw, quite vividly, the little piece of metal that had been strapped to the mage's belt; a piece of metal the same dark colour as the head of that awful mace.

And Grace could suddenly see what was going to happen, the few seconds between Roschan's hand stretching out and closing on the handle becoming long enough for her to see it all laid out in front of her with terrible clarity.

Roschan, stop! She called to him, and with the very last fragments of power left to her, she drove a shield between him and the mace, throwing him and his soldiers backwards just as the mace erupted in a second explosion of cold magic.

The force of it was extraordinary. It hit her shield and flung it backwards, scooping up Roschan and his squad like rags and blasting through the walls of the tower as easily as scattering cotton candy. She tried to cast another spell, to cushion Roschan's fall, but with a snapping sensation, the link broke, and she fell heavily back onto the ground.

She felt blind and deaf and powerless, and tiny within her own body. It was a feeling as terrifying as entering the Empty Room had been that first time.

"I've lost it," she said, unable to think of anything but her failure. But then she heard a murmur from behind her, and when she turned she saw Benjamin slowly blink his eyes open and sit up.

"Benjamin," she said, and saw Ma's head snap around to look at her son.

Grace stood, weaving and wavering on her feet, and stepped over three stirring figures on the floor to find him. She gathered him up into her arms and felt him hug her fiercely.

She jumped as she heard an echoing voice, expecting it to be the cold mage speaking to her once again. But instead it was a boy's echoing shout of triumph that drove coldness down her spine.

"Edin," she whispered, and she felt Benjamin's fingers tighten against her back.