‘My Lord,’ the man blubbered, ‘I can’t – even if you torture me to death.’

Ulath slid down from his saddle and approached the cringing captive. ‘Oh, stop that,’ the Genidian said. He raised a hand, palm outstretched, over the prisoner’s head and spoke in a harsh, grating language Sparhawk did not understand but uneasily suspected was not a human tongue. The captured mercenary’s eyes went blank, and he fell to his knees. Falteringly and with absolutely no expression in his voice, he began to speak in the same language as Ulath had.

‘He’s been bound in a spell,’ the Genidian Knight reported. ‘Nothing we could have done to him would have made him talk.’

The mercenary went on in that dreadful language, speaking more rapidly now.

There were two who hired him,’ Ulath translated, ‘a hooded Styric and a man with white hair.’

‘Martel!’ Kalten exclaimed.

‘Very likely,’ Sparhawk agreed.

The prisoner spoke again.

‘It was the Styric who put the spell on him,’ Ulath said. ‘It’s one I’m not familiar with.’

‘I don’t think I am either,’ Sparhawk admitted. ‘We’ll see if Sephrenia knows it.’

‘Oh,’ Ulath added, ‘that’s one other thing. This attack was directed at her.’

‘What?’

The orders these men had were to kill the Styric woman.’

‘Kalten!’ Sparhawk barked, but the blond man was already spurring his horse.

‘What about him?’ Tynian pointed at the prisoner.

‘Let him go,’ Sparhawk shouted as he galloped off after Kalten. ‘Come on!’

As they rode over the hilltop, Sparhawk looked back. The two strange Pandions were nowhere in sight. Then, up ahead, he saw them. A group of men had surrounded the rocky knoll where Kurik had hidden Sephrenia and the others. The two black-armoured knights were sitting on their horses coolly between the attackers and the knoll. They were making no effort to fight, but merely stood their ground. As Sparhawk watched, one of the attackers launched a javelin which appeared to pass directly through the body of one of the black-armoured Pandions with no visible effect.

‘Faran!’ Sparhawk barked. ‘Run!’ It was something he seldom did. He called upon Faran’s loyalty instead of his training. The big horse shuddered slightly, then stretched himself out in a run that quickly outdistanced the others.

The attackers numbered perhaps ten men. They were recoiling visibly from the two shadowy Pandions blocking their path. Then one of them looked around and saw Sparhawk descending upon them with the others rushing along behind him, and he shouted a warning. After a moment of stunned paralysis, the shabby attackers bolted, fleeing across the meadow, fleeing in a kind of panic Sparhawk had seldom seen in professionals. He charged up the side of the outcrop with Faran’s steel-shod hooves striking sparks from the stones. Just below the crest, he reined in. ‘Is everybody all right?’ he called to Kurik.

‘We’re fine,’ Kurik replied, looking over the hasty breastwork of stone he and Berit had erected. ‘It was touch and go until those two knights got here, though.’ Kurik’s eyes looked a bit wild as he stared at the pair who had warded off the assailants. Sephrenia came up to the breastwork beside him, and her face was deathly pale.

Sparhawk turned to the two strange Pandions. ‘I think it’s time for introductions, brothers,’ he said, ‘and some explanations.’

The two made no reply. He looked at them a bit more closely. The horses upon which they sat now appeared even more skeletal, and Sparhawk shuddered as he saw that the animals had no eyes, but only vacant eye sockets, and that their bones protruded through their tattered coats. Then the two knights removed their helmets. Their faces seemed somehow filmy and indistinct, almost transparent, and they, too, were eyeless. One of them appeared very young, and he had butter-coloured hair. The other was old, and his hair was white. Sparhawk recoiled slightly. He knew both of them; he knew that they both were dead.

‘Sir Sparhawk,’ the ghost of Parasim said, his voice hollow and emotionless, ‘pursue thy quest with diligence. Time will not stay for thee.’

‘Why have you returned from the House of the Dead?’ Sephrenia asked the two in a profoundly formal tone. Her voice was trembling.

‘Our oath hath the power to bring us out of the shadows if need be, little mother,’ the form of Lakus replied, his voice also hollow and void of all emotion. ‘Others will also fall, and our company will increase ere the Queen returns to health.’ The hollow-eyed shade turned then to Sparhawk. ‘Guard well our beloved mother, Sparhawk, for she is in grave peril. Should she fall, our deaths are without purpose, and the Queen will die.’

‘I will, Lakus,’ Sparhawk promised.

‘Know also one last thing. In Ehlana’s death, thou shalt lose more than a queen. The darkness hovers at the gate, and Ehlana is our only hope of light.’ Then the two of them shimmered and vanished.

The four other knights came charging up the rocky slope and reined in. Kalten’s face was pallid and he was visibly trembling. ‘Who were they?’ he asked.

‘Parasim and Lakus,’ Sparhawk replied quietly.

‘Parasim? He’s dead.’

‘So’s Lakus.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘So it would seem.’

Tynian dismounted and pulled off his massive helmet. He was also pale and sweating. ‘I’ve dabbled at times in necromancy,’ he said, ‘though not usually by choice. Usually a spirit has to be summoned, but sometimes they’ll appear on their own – particularly if they left something important unfinished.’

‘This was important,’ Sparhawk said bleakly.

‘Was there something else you wanted to tell us, Sparhawk?’ Ulath asked then. ‘You seem to have left a few things out.’

Sparhawk looked at Sephrenia. Her face was still deathly pale, but she straightened and nodded to him.

Sparhawk took a deep breath. ‘The spell that sustains Ehlana and keeps her sealed in that crystal was the result of the combined efforts of Sephrenia and twelve Pandions,’ he explained.

‘I’d been sort of wondering how you did that,’ Tynian said.

There’s only one problem with it,’ Sparhawk continued. The Knights will die one by one until only Sephrenia is left.’

‘And then?’ Bevier asked, his voice shaking.