Book One – Chapter 1

For Yves, the desert held nothing. The Northlands were notorious for their poverty of Adhar. Energy here was scarce to the point of hostility. Any wizard who lingered too long found his Rothar bled dry with no replenishment, which was one reason to avoid casting magic in these lands. Accordingly, Yves had come prepared. He carried energy crystals, though only of the weakest kind. Over the past weeks, he had drawn from them most sparingly, carefully and with considerable frustration for the required restraint. Even the faintest stirring of energy could rouse the desert creatures. They hunted any shift or spell like blood-scent. That was the second reason magic was not used in the desert.

Within , Yves had dared to draw more. He had to replenish his reserves before they crossed the Veil under the white light of ςεψ and βυγς. There was no point in saving the crystals for later. Whatever he did not take now,   would drain.

So he emptied them, as they approached the Veil again. He emptied all but one. Then he used his Rothar to raise a dome of shards that enclosed both him and Midnight. Before them, the rain of glass suffocated the sky. It was a vertical flood, a raging cataract of blades, endlessly renewed and endlessly descending.

Yves’ own shards were nothing like those falling from the sky. As a Lightshifter, he had the disposition for what was generally called glass magic. The term was misleading to the point of slander, and yet it had somehow become the common translation for the original Byrmir word. But no, what Yves conjured was not glass in any ordinary sense, but ethereal shardwork: structures of Rothar and light, materialised only so long as he held them in disciplined relation. If Yves had possessed the time and motivation to explain this properly, he would insist that there was an intricate art to it.