All the same, Kheda scooped a double handful of the loose sand from Dev's digging in his cupped palms, instinct driving him to quell the fire. Then movement on the beach held the warlord motionless. The dragon had whirled around and was running back along the sand in their direction. Before it had looked almost clumsy with its heavy plodding gait. Now it was racing like a hunting hound, long body at full stretch, head outthrust on its sinuous neck, tail straight as an arrow behind it.

It's heading this way! What is it after? The magical fire? It must be!

Kheda threw himself on the wizard, knocking Dev awkwardly on to his back, his legs twisted beneath him. Straddling the barbarian, he tore Dev's hands apart, seeing his face beneath scorched and burned as if the mage had stood too close to a fire when a resin-filled log ignited. The blisters on Dev's hands burst beneath Kheda's grip, the flesh slick and raw. Kheda felt the impossible flames fasten on to his own hands, crawling up his arms, the fine black hairs curling and disappearing, the skin reddening and growing sore.

'Dev!' Kheda yelled. 'Stop it!'But the barbarian had his eyes screwed tight shut. His whole body was tense beneath Kheda, shuddering like a man in a fever. The flames burned ever brighter, ever hotter, and the roar of the dragon filled Kheda's ears. He let go of Dev's hands. They fell loosely on to the wizard's chest. Kheda braced himself with one hand on the wizard's breastbone and reached for his dagger with the other.

If the beast is seeking Dev's fire, his death will put an end to that.

Better yet, cut his throat. You can tell anyone who saw the fire it was the dragons work. There'll be no one to gainsay you.

Yes, but who's going to save all of us here, never mind Risala, Itrac and all of Chazen, from this new magic if Dev's dead?

Kheda let the weapon fall and wrapped his bare hands around the wizard's throat. He gripped, hard, the knuckles of his forefingers digging into Dev's lined, sun-toughened neck just behind the angle of his jaw.

Dev went limp beneath him and the flames vanished in the blink of an eye. Kheda looked around - tense, poised on his knees -to see where the dragon was and what it was doing.

It had stopped dead, scouring up a rut in the sand with the violence of its halt. Head swinging from side to side, its tongue continued that ceaseless flickering in the air. Its eyes shone with a crimson fire, searching the forest's edge. The blood hammered in Kheda's head, inheld breath a choking fire in his chest, hands and forearms scorched and sore.

The dragon continued to look from side to side, gaze sliding over the bushes that concealed the two men.

All at once it sprang upwards, vast wings unfolding and beating against the air with a deafening clap. As it soared overhead, Kheda looked up to see the dark lines of the creature's bones through the leathery wing membrane when its flight momentarily blotted out the sun.

Impossibly swift, it rose through the sky and disappeared over the hillock of the island.

Dev stirred beneath him, throwing Kheda off with a convulsive heave of his hips as he coughed. 'Good thinking,' he commented grudgingly as he rubbed at his neck with clumsy fingertips.

Kheda got to his feet, peering up through the sparse trees to search the fragmented clouds for any sign of the dragon. 'Is it coming back? Where's it gone?'

After the ships? Would it attack a trireme? What about a lesser boat? Risala, where are you?

'I'm not inclined to try finding out,' rasped Dev, now sitting up. 'Not with magic, anyway.'

A rustle in the bushes startled Kheda. It was three swordsmen, muddy-faced with terror.

'Go and gather everyone together,' the warlord barked. 'Stay under cover as best you can. As soon as we're all together, we'll head for the far side of the island, to see if we can signal to the Green Turtle and the Lilla Bat. Don't forget to keep your eyes open for those cursed traps,' he added.

The three of them just stood there, slack-jawed and uncomprehending.

'Go on!' Kheda urged.

His commanding tone reminding them of their duty, they turned and disappeared into the trees. Kheda heard other voices behind him, those who'd fled into the trees making themselves known now that his carrying words had put new heart into them. Twigs and leaves cracked and rustled as people began pushing their way towards him.

Kneeling to retrieve his fallen dagger, Kheda pushed his head close by Dev's. 'Your magic got away from you, mage. That happens again with anyone else at hand to see it and we're both dead - and not just because it looks as if the dragon can sniff out your fires. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you and have done. You said wizards can summon those beasts. What else do you know about these evils?

Quickly, before anyone else might hear!'

'I'm sorry, my lord, but I know precious little about dragons,' said Dev sourly. He paused to blow on the backs of his raw and weeping hands to cool the pain. 'But I do know someone who knows a cursed sight more than most.'

CHAPTER SIX.

Velindre, come in.' The man opening the age-darkened oak door was at least half a head shorter than thetall, blonde woman he welcomed.

'Cloud Master.' She inclined her head, face expressionless as she swept across the threshold. Her firm chin was held high, the long plait of her golden hair falling straight as a rule down her spine.

'Rafrid will do. This is all quite informal.' He was quite possibly twice as broad across the shoulders as his visitor, with a barrel chest for good measure. With his long back, the way he belted his blue woollen tunic under his paunch made his grey-breeched legs seem incongruously short. The hobnails of his sturdy leather half-boots had scarred a path across the polished floorboards from the door to the table laden with books and parchments, and from the table to the tall triple-mullioned window on the far side of the room. The sky beyond the diamond-shaped panes of glass was the same soft grey as the narrow slivers of the stone walls visible between bookshelves burdened with scholarship past and present.

The man's eyes were a harder, flinty grey, age and experience lining his brow and dusting his dark hair with silver. 'Please, have a seat. Can I get you something to take the chill off the day? A little wine or cordial? A tisane?'

His manner was brisk rather than solicitous as he gestured towards the modest hearth where a polished copper kettle hung on an iron spar ready to be swung over the self-effacing flames. An oil lamp glowed golden on the table even though it was barely midday.

'Thank you, no.'Velindre took a ladderback chair from an irregular circle of mismatched seats. She set it between the table and the fireplace on a rug whose pattern had long faded into obscurity. Sitting with her back straight, she folded her hands in the lap of her indigo gown, its full skirt cut short enough to avoid the worst of winter's mire. As she crossed her long legs neatly at the ankles, her black leather boots, finer sewn than Rafrid's, showed that she'd been through a succession of puddles on her way there.

'You know why I wanted to see you.' Rafrid sat in his own round-framed wooden chair, shoving at the cushions behind him as he looked expectantly at Velindre.

She laced nail-bitten fingers together, knuckles whitening. 'Not really.'

An angled crease between Rafrid's grizzled brows deepened. 'If you're as unforthcoming with the apprentices, I'm hardly surprised I'm hearing complaints.'

'From whom?' A faint blush highlighted Velindre's angular cheekbones and she silently cursed her fair complexion. 'Excuse me.' Standing, she moved the chair a few paces from the fire and sat down again.

'I'm a little warm.'

'And you one of the most talented mages born to command the air here in Hadrumal?' Rafrid wondered sardonically. 'I find it difficult to believe that you can't keep yourself cool.'

Velindre folded her arms tightly across her modest bosom. 'If you won't tell me who, you might tell me what's being said about me.'

'You spend very little time with the new apprentices compared to the other mages of your standing.'

Rafrid leaned back in his chair, tossing a battered patchwork cushion to the floor. 'And I gather that any of the more experienced apprentices making a formal request to study with you as your pupil can expect refusal without explanation or apology.'

'There are plenty of wizards keen enough to nursemaid the new arrivals.'Velindre shrugged one shoulder, her face impassive. 'I'll take on any apprentice with two or three years' learning to steady their affinity who comes up with a course of study I consider worth pursuing.'

'You're not excused from your responsibilities just because others are more mindful of all they owe to this island and these halls of learning,' Rafrid began sternly. 'We all have our own magical interests to pursue.

It's not the business of other wizards to give you the leisure to concentrate exclusively on your own studies.'

'I am fully mindful of all I owe to Hadrumal and my fellow mages,' Velindre said frostily. 'I have lived here all my life.'

'I'm well aware of that.' Rafrid scowled, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and twisting a heavy ring around the middle finger of his writing hand. A sizeable sapphire, dark and mysterious, was set deep into the silver. 'You're Hadrumal born, as were your parents, both of whom have added significantly to the scholarship of wizardry. Yet your parents have always found time to nurture the lads and lassesarriving on our dockside still reeling from the shock of discovering their magebirth. As for further study, your mother in particular has an unequalled record for guiding pupils on paths that seemed entirely unpromising at first glance.'

Velindre sat in silence, her narrow lips thinned almost to invisibility. Rafrid drummed his thick fingers on the edge of his table, his square jaw hardening.

'You used to spend more time with apprentices,' he pointed out with a visible effort at reasonableness. 'You've had past pupils who made notable progress and not just in the understanding of the element of air. Why the change of heart over this last winter?'

'Tell me how much time I'm to set aside for apprentices.' Velindre uncrossed her feet and stood. 'And how many pupils I'm required to take on.'

'Kalion did you no favours encouraging you to think that you stood a chance of being elevated to Cloud Mistress,' said Rafrid bluntly.

Velindre lifted her chin defiantly. 'I suggest you take that up with the Hearth Master.'

'I have done,' Rafrid assured her dourly, 'with him and Troanna both. Our esteemed Flood Mistress is under no illusions about what I think of her meddling.'

'I'm surprised you want me spending time with apprentices, since you think so little of my abilities,' said Velindre tartly.

'Don't be a fool,' he retorted, scathing. 'I think very highly of your wizardry. Your admirable focus on our element has led you to some remarkable insights. I can't recall seeing anyone with more feeling for the elemental air in the twenty years I've known you. What you're lacking are the necessary instincts for the demands of an office such as this.'

He waved a curt hand at the parchments littering the table. 'As Master of Hiwan's Hall before my elevation to this office, I got used to keeping all these balls in the air, better than a festival juggler. You've always been able to put your own interests first, and that's all very well, but an element master - or mistress - needs to take a wider view. He can't stay aloof if his feelings have been hurt. He can't turn unapproachable if he doesn't want his studies disturbed for days at a time. He needs to keep an ear to the ground, not have his head in the clouds.'

'And you had Planir's ear when it was time for him to make his nominations to the Council.' Velindre came perilously close to sneering.

Somewhat to her surprise, Rafrid laughed, a full-throated chuckle. 'You flatter me if you think our esteemed Archmage would hand me such an honour just because I fancied wearing this pretty blue ring myself.' He leaned forward, waving the faceted sapphire at Velindre, who flinched as if he'd offered her a blow. Rafrid scowled blackly for an instant before he continued. 'The only opinion of mine that Planir sought was who should replace me as Master of Hiwan's Hall. I don't know who first suggested that I should be elevated to this rank of Cloud Master, but I do know that Planir took a long time to think it through and consulted with wizards far more eminent and experienced than you or me, here in Hadrumal and beyond.'

He paused for a moment and when he went on, his voice was level, even kindly. 'I don't pride myself on defeating you, Velindre. I simply want to justify the faith our fellow mages have shown in me. I'm charged with the better guidance of those born to master our element and with helping those born with an affinity to another to a fuller understanding of the interactions of air with earth, fire and water. I want your help, not your hostility. That's what the apprentices need, and our pupils.'

Velindre said nothing, her sharp face icy calm.

Rafrid sighed with exasperation. 'Make yourself available to any apprentice wanting your instruction from breakfast till noon. Your time's your own after that. I'll let it be known that you'll be considering new pupils over the Equinox festival. There should be two or three keen enough and bold enough to put forward their ideas for your consideration. After Solstice, you can expect your contemporaries studying the other elements to recommend their most promising pupils in the normal fashion.'

'As you wish, Cloud Master.' Velindre turned to depart, her hazel eyes impenetrable.As she reached for the door latch, the Cloud Master spoke again. 'The next time a bunch of apprentices come to me, I want it to be because they can't sing your praises loudly enough. I told this last lot that you're one of the most skilful wizards on this isle. Don't let me down.'

Velindre showed no response as she opened the door, about to step out on to the stairs.

'Give some thought to what Otrick would have made of your behaviour lately,' Rafrid called after her.

Velindre slammed the door behind her so hard that the reverberations echoed all the way down to the bottom of the stairwell, pursued by the angry clatter of her booted steps on the aged treads.

'What would Otrick have made of all this?' she muttered, furiously scrubbing away the sting of angry tears with the back of one hand as she snatched her thick cloak from a peg. 'What would he have made of your prosy lecturing? Do you think he'd have started apprentices on summoning showers to freshen up a turnip's wilting leaves?'

Her stride lengthening, Velindre crossed the flagstoned courtyard walled on all four sides with ranges of accommodation. She glanced up at the garrets with their little gabled windows jutting through the stone-slated slopes of the roofs, chimney stacks spaced between them. Which of the apprentices crammed into those poky rooms had had the gall to complain about her?

Her gaze slid down to the first- and second-floor rooms, wider windows shut firmly against the bitter weather. Who were those ungrateful pupils who'd begged for her guidance and now felt entitled to whine when she'd cast them off to stand on their own two feet?

They were better off trailing around after the likes of Colna and Pemmel anyway, she thought with contempt. The uninspired deserved the insipid. Let them coddle the apprentices and the pupils; she had better things to do. She would find some insight into magic that would restore her reputation within the higher ranks of Hadrumal. She would find something to make Planir sit up and take notice, something to make the Archmage regret his mistake in passing her over.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the central tower of the wizard hall, at the triple-mullioned window of Rafrid's eyrie at the centre of the four quadrangles. What would Otrick have made of him as Cloud Master? The old scoundrel would have laughed himself breathless and then sent everyone into hysterics with his incisive dissection of Rafrid's inadequacies.

She raised a hand to her eyes as the pain of Otrick's loss stabbed her anew, heading blindly for the dim passage that threaded through one corner of the courtyard.

'Excuse me, miss.' A laundry maid tried to step out of Velindre's path, hampered by her wide wicker basket.

'I beg your pardon.' Velindre flattened herself against the plastered stone wall to let the servant pass. She felt the damp and cold on the back of her neck and pulled up the hood of her midnight-blue cloak, tying it loosely. The first impetus of her anger spent, she walked more slowly out through the gate and into the narrow lane running behind the Leeward Hall. So her mornings were to be taken up with the misapprehensions and misunderstandings new apprentices always spouted.

'No, you've not been sent into some irreversible exile. Ships that have the Archmage's trust come and go from Hadrumal all the time,' she mouthed as she walked along the cobbles. 'Yes, you'll be able to go home to visit your families - once you've learned how not to set chimneys alight when you're angry or freeze the water in the well when you're miserable.'

Velindre felt a measure of sympathy for the magebom of the mainland, most without any wizard nearby to guard and guide them through the first manifestations of their affinity, never mind the fearful rumours still perpetuated by the ignorance of the mundane populace. Then resentment put such feelings to flight.

'No, the Council of Wizards isn't a cabal of astute and powerful mages secretly directing kings and princes down the paths of wisdom. Don't you think the mainland might be less riven by faction and self-interest if that were the case? No, it's a circle of self-satisfied men and women who struggle to look beyond the sea mists they use to hide Hadrumal, scrying spells notwithstanding.'

She took a still narrower lane cutting across her path and leading between high stone walls towards the long, curved high road that was the backbone of the modest city of Hadrumal. Behind her lay the warren of humbler buildings housing the craftsmen and tradesmen who supported the island's mages in their studies. Reaching the high road, Velindre looked towards the fog-shrouded hills gently rising beyond thecity, where the island's yeomen raised their stock and tended their fields, the remote towers of the wizard halls a distant curiosity.

She could go and stay with her father's brother. Let these apprentices who were so keen to study with her prove their worth by traipsing all that way every morning. Let Rafrid make a fool of himself trying to drag her back to the city. And her aunt and cousins wouldn't give a Lescari penny piece for the gossip around the wizard city, any more than they had in those timeless summers she had spent on their farm as a child. There wouldn't be whispering in corners and bright-eyed, hushed speculation as to just why it was that Archmage Planir had found her lacking and why the Council had handed the prize that should have been hers to Rafrid, of all people.

No. That would be running away. Neither her father nor her mother would approve of that, always supposing they looked up from their books and parchments for long enough to notice her absence. As she walked along the flagstones, she glanced at the pale tower of Wellery's Hall, its yellow stone a contrast to the grey sky. Over to the east, the squat stump of Atten Hall's central tower was barely visible over the intervening roofs.

They would be expecting her to still be working towards a seat on the Council in her own right. They'd set that path before her ever since they'd first encouraged her adolescent fascination with her burgeoning affinity. Hadrumal needed to be guided by wizards with a sound understanding of the full potential of magic in the wider world. Then the clear-sighted leaders of this hidden isle could instruct the blinkered rulers of the mainland along better paths than the ones they inevitably chose for themselves.

Velindre's mouth quirked wryly. That remained to be seen. No matter. Her stride lengthened again, setting her cloak flapping, its azure silk lining bright as a summer sky. She passed the dark hollows of several gateways before turning into a courtyard with a fountain at its centre. The basin was dry and the statue at its centre invisible beneath a swaddling of straw and sacking. Was there no one in this hall with the time to spare for a charm to protect the stone from the frosts?

As Velindre passed the fountain, a stairwell door in the far wall opened and a slight woman emerged. She was almost as heavily muffled as the statue, with a mossy green scarf pulled right up to her vibrant chestnut eyes.

'Ely.' Velindre moved to intercept her.

The woman twitched her scarf down with a gloved hand to reveal a fine-boned face with wisps of black hair just visible around the edge of her knitted cap.

'Whatever you want, keep it short.'

'Rafrid's just lectured me about my responsibilities to the apprentices.' Velindre grimaced extravagantly.

'You must know who Troanna would like to see given a leg up, or Kalion, perhaps?'

'You still think it's worth keeping in with them?' Ely cocked her head to one side, birdlike.

'Naturally,' said Velindre, unperturbed. 'And Rafridcan go jump a rope if he doesn't like it.'

'I'll see what I can find out.' Ely shivered inside her cloak and her turquoise earrings trembled. 'Did Rafrid say anything else?'

Velindre shrugged. 'About what?'

'He's one of the few who get to see our esteemed Archmage in private.' Ely's elegant, finely plucked brows disappeared beneath the ribbed welt of her hat. 'Did he let slip anything about Planir's mood? Any clue as to what might be going on behind that granite facade?'

Velindra shrugged again.

'Oh well.' Ely's carefully painted mouth tightened with irritation- 'Have you seen Galen anywhere?'

'I came here looking for him.'Velindre raised her pale golden brows at Ely. 'You and he are keeping company again?'

'He has his uses,' Ely admitted with a sideways smile. 'Especially when it's this cold.'

'More fun in your bed than a warming pan?' Velindre wondered with faint amusement.

'Sometimes,' Ely said a trifle sourly. 'Still, who knows, he might make Stone Master someday.'